How religious fanaticism exacted a dreadful toll in 17th century Europe

There’s a fascinating series running on BBC2 called Sex and the Church. In the second programme, Prof Diarmaid MacCulloch tells how perhaps 65,000 women were executed as ‘witches’ in Europe between 1500 and 1660. About 15,000 men were also killed. Any who tried to deny their ‘offence’, which often included some lurid tale of sexual intercourse with the devil, were tortured or threatened with torture, and that usually did the trick.

The worst place was what is now Germany, where 26,000 lost their lives. It was probably no accident that this was the place where the Reformation began, and where the battle lines between Protestants and Catholics were most clearly drawn, notably in the mindbogglingly devastating 30 Years War.

At first, the Protestants were less repressive than the Church of Rome, allowing priests to marry, for example, while the Catholic hierarchy decried all sex as sinful, even within marriage. (Controlling people’s access to sex, of course, is a very good way of controlling them.) But soon the Protestants were burning witches with as much enthusiasm as their enemies.

As part of the Counter-Reformation, its fightback against Protestantism, the Catholic Church also started running schools for poor boys. And what do you know? In no time, there was a scandal about sexual abuse. And how did the Church, right up to the Pope, react? They tried to hush it up. The first two episodes of Sex and the Church are still available on I-player.

*My account of the greatest volcanic eruption of modern times at Tambora (see my blog of April 11) in my book, Historia mundial de los desastres (A Disastrous History of the World) is quoted in this article on a Spanish website - http://untipodeletras.net/2015/04/07/el-monstruo-de-frankenstein-y-el-efecto-mariposa/

The sack of Magdeburg

This day…..379 years ago saw the most notorious atrocity of the dreadfully destructive 30 Years War – the sack of Magdeburg. Most of its people were Protestants, and on May 20, 1631, the city fell to the army of the Catholic League.

It had been under siege for six months, and once they entered, the conquering army - and particularly its Walloon and Croat soldiers - embarked on an orgy of murder, rape, looting and destruction. The great German writer Friedrich Schiller said it was “a scene of horrors for which history has no language – poetry no pencil.”

After they had reduced the city to rubble, the Catholic soldiers carried off thousands of women, and the atrocity caused such revulsion throughout Europe that the leader of the Catholic cause, the Holy Roman Emperor, had to call off the victory celebrations.

Altogether it’s estimated that 30,000 people may have been killed. For more details, see A Disastrous History of the World. (For more on the 30 Years War, see my blog of May 23, 2009.)

War horses + 30 Years War crime

Normally this blog confines itself to human disasters, but this week I went to see the magnificent play The War Horse at the New London Theatre, and was astonished to see in the programme the figures for the number of horses killed during the First World War. One million were sent from Britain to France, and only 62,000 returned.

One of the first revelations of the conflict was that cavalry was now virtually useless, and defenceless, in the face of machine guns, artillery, barbed wire. Apart from their cavalry duties, horses were also responsible for huge amounts of the fetching, hauling and carrying that fed the war machine. Many were killed by direct attack – bullets, shells, shrapnel, poison gas – others maimed by the lethal debris lying around the battlefield.

This day….378 years ago saw the most notorious atrocity of the Thirty Years’ War – the sack of Magdeburg. After a six-month siege, the mainly Protestant city was taken by Catholic soldiers, and then, in the words of the great German writer Friedrich Schiller, there followed “a scene of horrors for which history has no language – poetry no pencil. Neither innocent childhood, nor helpless old age; neither youth, sex, rank, nor beauty, could disarm the fury of the conquerors. “

The city was burned to the ground. Perhaps 30,000 citizens were murdered while thousands of women were dragged off to the victors’ camp. The atrocity caused horror across Europe, so much so that the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor had to call off a victory celebration, and during the war’s remaining 17 years, many a Catholic soldier crying for quarter would be greeted with the retort “Magdeburg quarter!” and killed.