HIST 421 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Black Death, Baud, Catharism
Document Summary
Cohen shows how horrific diabolical witchcrafts tended to congregate around evil groups. These people worshipped satan and came together in nocturnal readings to practice infanticide, cannibalism, promiscuous sex and incest. These things are not true, they represent human fears of the inversion and destruction of civilized values. These fears were associated first with the christians, but once the christians became the state religion of the empire, these fears transitioned to heretical groups within christianity. This forced people into confessing the impossible, and naming accomplices. Cohen shows how the inquisition and fanaticism attached to it could create heresy hunts that were similar to later witch hunts. Many people were arrested and executed until he went too far and accused count. Henry who was a pious person and founder of monasteries. In the end, the witnesses supported the count and not the inquisitor so. Cohen demonstrates the ideas in addition to the inquisitorial process can generate the hunt.
