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On 25 August 1538 there was much discussion about witches and sorceresses who poisoned chicken eggs in the nests, or poisoned milk and butter. Doctor Luther said: "One should show no mercy to these [women]; I would burn them myself, for we read in the Law that the priests were the ones to begin the stoning of criminals." [13]
The bull recognized the existence of witches: Many persons of both sexes, unmindful of their own salvation and straying from the Catholic Faith, have abandoned themselves to devils, incubi and succubi, and by their incantations, spells, conjurations, and other accursed charms and crafts, enormities and horrid offences, have slain infants yet in the mother's womb, as also the offspring of ...
Following her death, they duly did so, but on the first two nights, as priests were chanting psalms around the body, devils broke into the church and snapped two of the chains on the coffin lid. On the third night, another devil, more powerful and terrifying that the others, burst into the church and snapped the chain, dragging the witch from ...
William Blake's painting of Saul, the shade of Samuel and the Witch of Endor. Various forms of witchcraft and divination are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh or Old Testament), which are expressly forbidden.
Witch hunts began to increase first in southern France and Switzerland, during the 14th and 15th centuries. Witch hunts and witchcraft trials rose markedly during the social upheavals of the 16th century, peaking between 1560 and 1660. [72] The peak years of witch-hunts in southwest Germany were from 1561 to 1670. [73]
In the Witches' case, these are mostly sabbaths, the six holidays throughout the year to denote the changing seasons and their meaning in people’s lives and the moon cycles," Berger says.
John of Salisbury is one of the first examples related by Richard Kieckhefer, but as a Parisian ecclesiastical court record of 1323 shows, a "group who were plotting to invoke the demon Berich from inside a circle made from strips of cat skin" were obviously participating in what the Church would define as "necromancy". [29]
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