Is it true that, throughout the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church killed millions of free-thinking women, calling them witches?
Tens of thousands of men and women were accused, and many killed, for alleged witchcraft from around 1500-1600. But the culprits were local courts in villages where the authority of both the church and state had broken down. The Catholic Church was almost never involved, and, in fact, successfully stopped some witch hunts. Jenny Gibbons is a historian — and a self-described pagan — who has researched this topic thoroughly. She says that, in truth, the Christians had rules against even accusing people of witchcraft. For example, the Synod of St. Patrick ruled that “a Christian who believes that there is a a witch — and lays that reputation upon a living being — shall not be received into the church until he revokes with his own voice the crime that he has committed.” In fact, killing people for witchcraft was — according to church law — a capital offense. Pope Alexander IV explicitly refused to allow the Spanish Inquisition to investigate any charges of witchcraft. Even while sanc
