Global Lords: I Have Information System-Chapter 518 - 370: A Girl’s Nightmare, Castle Night 1
Until 1486, two clerics, James Sprunger and Henry Cremer, co-authored a book called "Witch’s Hammer." The beginning of the book warns readers that witches are heretics and details how witches copulate with demons, eat human hearts and livers, dance madly, indulge in lust, and so on; how they obstruct fertility, seize male reproductive organs, kill infants in the cradle in different ways, harm livestock, cause hail and storms, and strike humans and animals with lightning, among other forms of damage. It finally explains the procedures and methods of witch trials and judgments.
For example, the book describes the method of identifying witches like this:
If the accused leads an immoral life, it of course proves she has dealings with demons; if she is devout and behaves decorously, then she is obviously pretending to use her piety to divert suspicion from her dealings with demons and her nocturnal participation in the Witchcraft Demon Assembly. If she appears afraid during questioning, she is evidently guilty, her conscience betraying her. If she believes herself innocent and remains calm, she is undoubtedly guilty: for witches are accustomed to shamelessly lying. If she defends herself against the accusations made against her, this proves her guilt; if she is so terrified and despairing due to the extreme horror of the accusations against her, and she becomes despondent and silent, this is direct evidence of her guilt. If an unfortunate woman rolls her eyes in pain due to suffering under torture, it means she is seeking her demon with her eyes; if her eyes are vacant and unmoving, it means she sees her demon and is gazing at him. If she appears to have acquired the strength to withstand torture, it means the demon is sustaining her, so more severe torture must be applied; if she cannot endure it and perishes under punishment, it means the demon made her die to ensure she doesn’t confess or reveal secrets."
In other words, no matter what behavior or reaction the accused shows, she would be judged as a witch and subjected to extreme punishment.
All of this is the authors’ sinister venting. According to records, Cremer once bribed an old woman to crawl into a baker’s oven, shouting that the devil brought her there, and then constantly shouted the names of local witches. Cremer subsequently arrested the witches whose names were called, subjecting them to torture until satisfactory confessions were acquired.
They were obsessed with certain things, abundantly describing sexual acts within witchcraft in the book, and this desire for sexual lust became the beginning of more ignorant and cruel commoners’ framing of innocent women.
With the publication of this book in the European region, a witch hunt movement lasting three centuries began to sweep across the European Continent. Prior to this, it was just Christianity killing pagans; what followed was a frenzied mob’s flood-like destruction of all women who didn’t conform to their own liking. Throughout three whole centuries, about one hundred thousand "witches" were executed. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺
At this time in Europe, nations were engaged in long-term wars, production development was slow, religion was people’s only solace, and striking against witches also became the "divine mission" of maintaining God’s will.
In the trial court, the round ceiling stands with poles for hanging people, and on the floor, there are nailed iron shackles on the torture platform. The women bound with iron wires were stripped bare, with all body hair removed except the hair on their heads (said to facilitate finding black moles and spots confirming demonic possession, etc.), and then tortured with needles all over the body to search for signs of demons.
What we think of as burning in fact was one of the most common forms of punishment; more crueler ones included cat’s paw, wheel punishment, head crusher, iron maiden, Judas chair, witch’s wedge, etc.
From this began, all dark and ugly parts of humanity found an outlet. Not getting the woman they desired, envying the neighbor woman’s life, framing for personal vendetta, diverting their own crisis, enjoying the superiority of being an informant, etc., were all their reasons for persecuting women. Judgment didn’t require a trial court, one pole sufficed for a trial scene.
At the time, it was common for an entire town to rush out, charge into a household, drag out a woman, humiliate and beat her along the way to force a confession, and then take her to some place (usually the market, the bustling center of town) to be hanged or burned in public.
And it also required absolutely no reason to point out a woman as a witch, two completely illogical events back then could also be a witch’s persecution of him. For example, if someone’s horse suddenly died, he could accuse the old woman or girl of wearing black clothes one night to meet with the devil, hence the horse was cursed to death by her!
Some men would even report a woman for coveting her in hopes of seeing her naked body. In a sense, executing "witches" was equivalent to a kind of pornographic performance, often attracting throngs of spectators. Men even more so, the painful twist of "witches" gave them a deformed sensory stimulation.
On the square where burning or boiling punishment was administered, at the river-throwing bridge, the crowd and stalls gathered as if attending a temple fair, while at this time, the naked witch could not escape the scene with magic or seek the devil’s help.
In 1616, a woman in the Chufu Fortress area was accused of being a "witch," under heavy torture, she confessed: "I have been a prostitute since as long as I can remember. I tortured 104 children to death, including my own three. They were later exhumed by me from their graves, some were boiled and eaten, some were processed into salve and other potions used in witchcraft, their leg bones were made into flutes. I tortured my daughter-in-law and two children, tormented my two husbands for many years, and finally caused their deaths.
