JackDaniels
10-03-2007, 08:58 PM
enlighten me then. or is all you can make personal jabs?
You don't sound like a very educated guy.
Violent inclinations in Christianity are apparent right from the beginning. Jesus is traditionally portrayed as a kind and loving teacher, such that even non-Christians often have an idealized image of him. However, not all of what he reportedly said or did fits within such a characterization - and some of what he did certainly doesn't reflect the better teachings he is supposed to have promoted. For example, he was quite explicit in his condemnation of those who would not follow his teachings, saying to his disciples: "And if any one will not receive you in your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly, I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town." (Matt. 10:14-15).
If Jesus and God have so little regard for nonbelievers, why should any of their followers? If Jesus can relegate nonbelievers to an eternity of torment, why should they expect higher standards from his followers here? In fact, nonbelievers did not fare any better after Christianity gained official support from the Roman Empire. Despite having been on the receiving end of persecution for many years, Christians refused to take any moral high ground and quickly proceeded to treat pagans with as much contempt and violence as they previously experienced.
Despite the fact that forgiveness is supposed to be a central aspect of Christian theology, Jesus was clear that not everyone could be forgiven: "...whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness and is guilty of an eternal sin." (Mark 3:29) If someone considers another person to have committed such an act, they would not need to take their feelings very far into account - after all, if Jesus will not forgive that person, why should anyone else? As we will see, Christians certainly did not act in a forgiving manner to the pagans whom they had in their control.
Harsh History
As Christianity developed over time, such attitudes continued to strengthen. Fear was a key ingredient in the theology of many early Christians. Fear of God is promoted in the Bible, and Church Fathers such as Tertullian and St. John Chyrsostom paraded fear as an important virtue; and indeed it was, both to secular as well as church leadership, since it was essential in maintaining order. Promotion of fear continues down to this day, as people like Pat Robertson tell whole cities that they should fear the "wrath of God" for daring to not discriminate against gays. Fear of some sort is always a key ingredient in violence, and Christianity won't be able to eliminate its potential for fostering violence until it can also eliminate the elements of fear which have played a key role since the beginning.
After Christianity gained dominance in the Roman Empire, it became clear that they regarded their God as very authoritarian in nature - and as a result, they proceeded to imitate their God and become exceptionally authoritarian themselves. Controlling society, they ruthlessly exterminated other religious beliefs, with only Judaism being permitted to co-exist with their own One True Faith. The exclusivist ideology which fostered such attitudes has continued on through today, with little alteration.
Pagan religion was first prohibited wholesale in 392 by emperor Theodosius. Heavy financial penalities were enacted, but it was not initially very effective. In Theodosius' code it was written:
We command that those persons who follow this rule shall embrace the name of Catholic Christians. The rest, however, whom We adjudge demented and insane, shall sustain the infamy of heretical dogmas, their meeting places shall not receive the name of churches, and they shall be smitten first by divine vengeance and secondly by the retributions of Our own initiative, which We shall assume in accordance with the divine judgment.
And later, with regards to Pagan buildings:
We command that all their fanes, temples, and shrines, if even now any remain entire, shall be destroyed by the command of the magistrates, and shall be purified by the erection of th sign of the venerable Christian religion.
This resulted in further legislation, culminating in the death penalty for non-Christians in 435. All citizens had to belong to the official "Catholic" Christianity - the only other permitted religion was Judaism, and Jews were isolated as much as possible from the rest of the population. As the geopolitical and military position of the failing Roman Empire gradually deteriorated, people readily turned towards the activity of trying to appease God - a reaction which is not unknown in contemporary society. Between 429 and 439 about 150 different laws were passed defining and defending the "Catholic faith." Church lands became exempt from taxation and bishops became immune to any sort of secular oversight or punishment.
Christianity is traditionally exclusivist in nature - Jesus made it that way, by declaring that no one could go to heaven or spend eternity with God except through him. Accepting this as fact, what possible value could any other religion have? Moreover, the very existence of another religion competing with Christianity on a level playing field threatens many souls with eternal damnation. If you really care about a person's fate, you won't want them to be tempted to follow the Wrong Path. Although this may lead to rather draconian regulations, we should all keep in mind that Jesus never once praised religious pluralism. If he didn't value it, why should anyone else?
Theological support for repression of religious plurality was formally developed by no less a church luminary than Saint Augustine, celebrated Doctor of the Church and Bishop of Hippo. The influence of his ideas upon basic Christian theology is inestimable, and his opinion of "heresies" (from the Greek hairesis or "choice") is unmistakable. As part of his opposition to the Donatist heresies, he developed his doctrine of Cognite intrare, or "compel them to enter" which was used throughout the Middle Ages to justify the suppression of dissent and oppression of difference. In his own words, Augustine stated:
The wounds of a friend are better than the kisses of an enemy. To love with sternness is better than to deceive with gentleness... In Luke 14:23 it is written: 'Compel people to come in!' By threats of the wrath of God, the Father draws souls to the Son.
We see here perhaps the first Christian formulation of how "love" justifies violence and persecution. When you genuinely believe in the horror called Hell by Christians, it becomes easy to create mini-hells here on earth. When you believe in a God capable of creating torment for all of eternity, what is a short-lived torment here on earth designed to save people from Hell? With friends like Augustine and his ilk, people certainly have no need for enemies.
One of the most famous examples of religious violence in the Middle Ages is of course the Crusades - attempts by European Christians to impose their vision of religion upon Jews, Orthodox Christians, heretics, Muslims, and just about anyone else who happened to get in the way. Traditionally the term "Crusades" are limited to describing massive military expeditions by Christians to the Middle East, but it is more accurate to acknowledge that there also existed "crusades" internal to Europe and directed at local minority groups.
Amazingly, the Crusades have often been remembered in a romantic fashion, but perhaps nothing has deserved it less. Hardly a noble quest in foreign lands, the Crusades represented the worst in religion generally and in Christianity specifically. The broad historical outlines of the Crusades are available in most history books, so I will instead present some examples of how greed, gullibility and violence played such important roles.
Not all crusades were led by kings greedy for conquest, although they certainly didn't hesitate when they had a chance. An important fact often overlooked is that the crusading spirit which gripped Europe throughout the High Middle Ages had particularly religious roots. Two systems which emerged in the church deserve special mention has having contributed greatly: penance and indulgences. Penance was a type of worldly punishment, and a common form was a pilgrimage to the Holy Lands. Pilgrims resented the fact that sites holy to Christianity were not controlled by Christians, and they were easily whipped into a state of agitation and hatred towards Muslims. Later on, crusading itself was regarded as a holy pilgrimage - thus, people paid penance for their sins by going off and slaughtering adherents of another religion. Indulgences, or waivers of temporal punishment, were granted by the church to anyone who contributed monetarily to the bloody campaigns.
Early on, crusades were more likely to be unorganized mass movements of "the people" than organized movements of traditional armies. More than that, the leaders seemed be chosen based on just how in-credible their claims were. Tens of thousands of peasants followed Peter the Hermit who displayed a letter he claimed was written by God and delivered to him personally by Jesus. This letter was supposed to be his credentials as a Christian leader, and perhaps he was indeed qualified - in more ways than one.
Not to be outdone, throngs of crusaders in the Rhine valley followed a goose believed to be enchanted by God to be their guide. I'm not sure that they got very far, although they did manage to join other armies following Emich of Leisingen who asserted that a cross miraculously appeared on his chest, certifying him for leadership. Showing a level of rationality consistent with their choice of leaders, Emich's followers decided that before they traveled across Europe to kill God's enemies, it would be a good idea to eliminate the infidels in their midst. Thus suitably motivated, they proceeded to massacre the Jews in German cities like Mainz and Worms. Thousands of defenseless men, women and children were chopped, burned or otherwise slaughtered.
This sort of action was not an isolated event - indeed, it was repeated throughout Europe by all sorts of crusading hordes. The lucky Jews were given a last-minute chance to convert to Christianity in accord with Augustine's doctrines. Even other Christians were not safe from the Christian crusaders. As they roamed the countryside, they spared no effort in pillaging towns and farms for food. When Peter the Hermit's army entered Yugoslavia, 4,000 Christian residents of the city of Zemun were massacred before they moved on to burn Belgrade.
Professionalized Slaughter
Although I am tempted to laugh at the people described above, a glance at some of America's current religious leaders prevents me from imagining that we've progressed very far. Eventually the mass killings by amateur crusaders were taken over by professional soldiers - not so that fewer innocents would be killed, but so that they would be killed in a more orderly fashion. This time, ordained bishops followed along to bless the atrocities and make sure that they had official church approval. Leaders like Peter the Hermit and the Rhine Goose were rejected by the church not for their actions, but for their reluctance to follow church procedures.
Taking the heads of slain enemies and impaling them upon pikes appears to have been a favorite pastime among crusaders. I myself fail to find the fun in that, but I have been cautioned not to judge people living in another time by my own modern standards. Chronicles record a story of a crusader-bishop who referred to the impaled heads of slain Muslims as a joyful spectacle for the people of God.
When Muslim cities were captured by Christian crusaders, it was standard operating procedure for all inhabitants - no matter what their age - to be summarily killed. It is not an exaggeration to say that the streets ran red with blood as Christians reveled in church-sanctioned horrors. Jews who took refuge in their synagogues would be burned alive, not unlike the treatment they received in Europe.
In his reports about the conquest of Jerusalem, Chronicler Raymond of Aguilers wrote that "It was a just and marvelous judgment of God, that this place [the temple of Solomon] should be filled with the blood of the unbelievers." St. Bernard announced before the Second Crusade that "The Christian glories in the death of a pagan, because thereby Christ himself is glorified."
Sometimes, atrocities were excused as actually being merciful. When a crusader army broke out of Antioch and sent the besieging army into flight, the Christians found that the abandoned Muslim camp was filled with the wives of the enemy soldiers. Chronicler Fulcher of Chartres happily recorded for posterity that "...the Franks did nothing evil to them [the women] except pierce their bellies with their lances."
Fatal Heresy
Although members of other religions obviously suffered at the hands of good Christians throughout the Middle Ages, it should not be forgotten that other Christians suffered just as much. Augustine's exhortion to compel entry into the church was used with great zeal when church leaders dealt with Christians who daredto follow a different sort of religious path. This was not always the case - during the first millennium, death was a rare penalty. But in the 1200s, shortly after the beginning of the crusades against the Muslims, wholly European crusades against Christian dissidents were enacted.
The first victims were the Albigenses, sometimes called the Cathari, who were centered primarily in southern France. These poor freethinkers doubted the biblical story of Creation, thought that Jesus was an angel instead of God, rejected transubstantiation, and demanded strict celibacy. History has taught that celibate religious groups generally tend to die out sooner or later, but contemporary church leaders weren't anxious to wait. The Cathari also took the dangerous step of translating the bible into the common language of the people, which only served to further enrage religious leaders.
In 1208, Pope Innocent III raised an army of over 20,000 knights and peasants eager to kill and pillage their way through France. When the city of Beziers fell to the besieging armies of Christendom, soldiers asked papal legate Arnald Amalric how to tell the faithful apart from the infidels. He uttered his famous words: "Kill them all. God will know His own." Such depths of contempt and hatred are truly frightening, but they are only possible in the context of a religious doctrine of eternal punishment for unbelievers and eternal reward for believers.
Followers of Peter Waldo of Lyon, called Waldensians, also suffered the wrath of official Christendom. They promoted the role of lay street preachers despite official policy that only ordained ministers be allowed to preach. They rejecting things like oaths, war, relics, veneration of saints, indulgences, purgatory, and a great deal more which was promoted by religious leaders. The church needed to control the sort of information which the people heard, lest they be corrupted by the temptation to think for themselves. They were declared heretics at the Council of Verona in 1184 and then hounded and killed over the course of the following 500 years. In 1487, Pope Innocent VIII called for an armed crusade against populations of Waldensians in France. Some of them still apparently survive in the Alps and Piedmont.
Dozens of other heretical groups suffered the same fate - condemnation, excommunication, repression and eventually death. Christians did not shy away from killing their own religious brethern when even minor theological differences arose. For them, perhaps no differences were truly minor - all doctrines were a part of the True Path to heaven, and deviation on any point challenged the authority of the church and the community. It was a rare person who dared to stand up and make independent decisions about religious belief, made all the more rare by the fact that they were massacred as fast as possible.
Varying attempts to stamp out infidels and heretics often proved to be inadequate, so the Holy Inquisition was formed to make the efforts more organized and efficient (not to mention putting them all under more official church oversight). Pope Gregory IX established the Inquisition in 1231, and burning was quickly decided upon as the official punishment. Administrators and Inquisitors were all answerable directly to the Pope - which essentially made him directly responsible for their actions. In 1245, the Pope gave Inquisitors the right to absolve their assistants of any acts of violence which they might commit in the fulfillment of their duties.
Following church traditions, Inquisitor Franciso Pena declared in 1578 that:
We must remember that the main purpose of the trial and execution is not to save the soul of the accused but to achieve the public good and put fear into others.
Torture of suspects was authorized by Pope Innocent IV in 1252, and thus inquisition chambers were turned into places of abject horror. I don't know what he was thinking when he signed the proclamation, but I am starting to suspect that "Innocent" was an inappropriate name for many of these church leaders to be choosing. Torture was not finally removed as a legal option for church officials until 1917 when the Codex Juris Canonici was put into effect.
Some inquisitors really excelled at their job. Robert le Bourge sent 183 people to the stake in a single week. Conrad of Marburg burned every single suspect who came before him and had the audacity to claim innocence. Bernard Fui convicted 930 people - confiscating all of their property for himself, of course. Inquisitors like him grew rich in their jobs with little or no oversight.
Even the dead could be accused of heresy, allowing Inquisitors to confiscate property from their heirs. It is ironic that the office of Inquisitor was usually filled by Dominican and Franciscan monks whose monastical orders were founded upon vows of poverty. Franciscans who actually attempted to uphold Francis' ideal of poverty were in fact persecuted as heretics.
The Inquisition was not limited to Europe, as Spaniards brought it to the Americas and used it to punish the native inhabitants. Through the 1500s, 879 heresy trials were recorded in Mexico alone. Thus, other than people, the Inquisition was one of Europe's first exports to the Americas. Church leaders supported the suppression, enslavement and murder of native inhabitants - a 1493 papal Bull justfied declaring war on all non-Christian natives in the Americas. Jurist Encisco wrote in 1509:
The king has every right to send his men to the Indies to demand their territory from these idolaters because he had received it from the pope. If the Indians refuse, he may quite legally fight them, kill them and enslave them, just as Joshua enlsaved the inhabitants of the country of Canaan.
One factor often ignored is the devastating impact which the Inquisition had on the basic economic life of Europe. The tragedy of seizing vast amounts of property is the most obvious but perhaps not even the worst part. Some occupations became suspect, like map-making. It is unquestionable that map-making was essential to navigation and trading of all sorts.
But inquisitors regarded the printed word as a vehicle for heresy and for this reason they seriously hampered communication of all sorts. In addition, when a person was accused of heresy by the Inquisition, all of their debts became null and void. Because no merchant could be certain of the religious orthodoxy and reliability of another, it became difficult to trust others enough to allow them to go into debt to you.
The effect upon how people lived their lives was clear to all people - the Inquisition was not a secret affair by any means. In the 1490s Juan de Mariana reported that people "...were deprived of the liberty to hear and talk freely, since in all cities, towns and villages there were persons placed to give information of what went on." Some people regardthis time period as the "Spanish Inquisition" and claim that it existed more under the secular authority of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella rather than the authority of the church.
But in fact, the Spanish Inquisition's most influential leader was the Dominican Monk Tomas de Torquemada, appointed Inquisitor General by Pope Sixtus IV and not a secular ruler. The reason that the leaders of the Spanish Inquisition persecuted the Jews and eventually called for their expulsion was the fear that they would contaminate Christians.
The Catholic Church was obviously corrupt throughout the middle ages - and this corruption resulted in regular calls for reform and improvement. Pope John XII had open love affairs. Urban VI tortured and murdered some of his cardinals. Innocent VIII proudly acknowledged his illegitimate children and heaped church riches upon them. Simony and nepotism were rampant. Most efforts ended in the reformers being called heretics and dying for their trouble.
In the 1100s, Arnold of Brescia was excommunicated, hanged and then burned. John Wycliffe of England translated the bible into English, and his followers were later hunted down and killed. John Hus from Prague was excommunicated then in 1415 he was captured and burned, despite the fact that he had a letter of safe passage from the Emperor.
But eventually the weight of the reformers grew strong enough to survive, but only at the cost of millions of lives as the Protestant Reformation battled the Catholic Counter Reformation in towns and fields throughout Europe. Martin Luther's 95 theses, nailed to a church door, set off a fire storm of violence and blood. German princes managed to fight Catholic armies to standstill by 1555, which resulted in the Peace of Augsburg. Protestant "heretics" were allowed to live in Germany, but that level of tolerance was not extended to other countries.
Unfortunately, that "peace" didn't last - from 1618 to 1648 Europe experienced The Thirty Years' War which left Germany a wasteland after millions and millions were slaughtered. Catholic armies under the leadership of Catholic Emperor Ferdinand II kept defeating Protestant armies, but then made the mistake of trying to eliminate Protestantism completely, engaging in terrible repression and persecution.
This caused new Protestant armies in foreign lands like Denmark and Sweden to be called up to oppose him. The result of all this was a victory for no one, and an estimated drop of Germany's population from 18 million to 4 million. With too few people left to work the field and trade for goods, starvation and disease ravaged the miserable survivors. Such are the fruits of European Christianity.
Catholics Killing Protestants
In France, the largest Protestant group was known as the Huguenots. They were mercilessly persecuted, and King Henry created a heresy court known infamously as The Burning Chamber because that was the standard punishment for heretics. On the night of August 24, 1572 - known as St. Bartholomew's Day - Catholic soldiers swept through Huguenot neighborhoods of Paris in a foreshadowing of what would happen to the Jews under Nazi rule.
Thousands were slaughtered in their homes and other massacres timed for the same night occurred in cities across France. In response to this, Pope Gregory XIII wrote to France's King Charles IX: "We rejoice with you that with the help of God you have relieved the world of these wretched heretics."
Pope Pius sent Catholic troops into France to aid in the repression efforts, ordering the army commander to kill all prisoners. Pius, unsurprisingly, was later canonized as a saint. In the Catholic Church, sainthood is an honor which goes not to the nicest person or to someone who has aided humanity, but to those Catholics who have done great deeds to advance the cause of Catholicism. As a result of such treatment, Huguenots fled France in large numbers. One group reached what would later become Florida - and when they were discovered by a Spanish expedition, all were killed.
In Flanders, all heretical Protestants were ordered executed and thousands were burned at the stake. But queen Mary was merciful to Protestants who recanted - instead of burning, the men would be killed by a sword and women buried alive. Philip II, Spanish king and also ruler of Holland and Belgium, was positively obsessed with eliminating Protestantism and ordered that all prisoners be killed so that there would be no chance that they might escape through neglect or mistakes. The Duke of Alva was sent in and began what became known as the "Spanish Fury" in which thousands of Antwerp Protestants were killed and almost all "heretics" in Haarlem were massacred.
Protestants Killing Catholics
Of course, Protestants should not be imagined as innocents in all of this. Attempting to abandon several centuries of developed church tradition, Protestant theology focused instead upon stricter adherence to scriptures. As an example, the harsher laws of the Old Testament developed greater prominence in Protestant lands than they did in Catholic lands. Protestant leaders also embraced some of the nastier doctrines of a few Catholic theologians, like Augustine's ideas about free will and predestination. Luther wrote in 1518: "Free will after the Fall is nothing but a word. Even doing what in him lies, man sins mortally."
In Switzerland, John Calvin created a vicious theocracy in which morality police were employed to control people's behavior. Citizens were harshly punished for a wide variety of moral infractions, including dancing, drinking, and generally being entertained. Theological dissidents were summarily executed, like Michael Servetus who was burned for doubting the Trinity. It isn't surprising that some of the nastiest Christians in America today, like Christian Reconstructionists, are unabashed Calvinists
During the many Huguenot wars ravaging France, Huguenot soldiers hunted priests like animals and one captain is reported to have worn a necklace of priests' ears. In England, after King Henry VIII created the Anglican Church, he went after both Catholics and Protestants. Catholic loyalists like Sir Thomas More were quickly executed, but Lutherans who doubted retained doctrines like transubstantiation were also not spared. When his daughter Mary reached the throne in 1553 she became known as "Bloody Mary" because she attempted to reinstitute Catholicism through violence - but she only managed to make the country even more Protestant.
Unsurprisingly, not all Protestants were created equal - some wretched groups were uniformly hated by all parties. One example of this is the Anabaptists, who were martyred for their faith in huge numbers. Anabaptists briefly took the German city of Munster, but Catholic armies regained control, torturing to death Anabaptist leaders with red-hot pincers. Their bodies were hung in cages from a church steeple where they remained for many years as a visible reminder of what happens to those who dare to oppose church authority.
Once again, there is quite a lot more to cover on the topic of religious violence, but I think that we've seen even more now which should lead reasonable people to conclude that religion in general, and Christianity in particular, doesn't do a very good job at all in preventing human violence. At a minimum, it does a wonderful job at serving as a justification for violence. In many cases, however, religious beliefs and attitudes appear to form the basis for violent acts or movements. In these instances, the violence would not have occurred if it had not been for religion.
Was the Nazi Holocaust religious or was it secular? A bit of both, actually. Nazi oppression and massacres against political opponents and gypsies were obviously secular in nature - but the determination to exterminate the Jews from the face of the earth cannot possibly be understood without the background of centuries of persistent and violent anti-semitism, generally encouraged by religious authorities.
Throughout Christian European history, Jews were accused of "Host Nailing" - ritually nailing communion wafers to wood as a symbolic recreation of the killing of Jesus. Jews were accused of the infamous "Blood Libel" - killing young Christian children in bizarre, satanic rituals.
Jews were forcibly baptized, then treated as heretics under the Inquisition if they dared to return to Jewish ways. Jews were accused of poisoning wells in an attempt to exterminate Christians (oh, the irony!). Jews were forced into ghettos. Jews were prohibited from participating in a wide variety of occupations. Jews were ordered to wear identifying badges by religious authorities so that everyone would know who they were.
Christians were regularly told by their church leaders that the Jews killed Christ - killed God, in fact. Christians were told that Jews were greedy and untrustworthy. Passion plays - recreations of Jesus' alleged sacrifice - depicted Jews as cruel mockers of Jesus. Cathedral paintings depicted Jews in a terrible manner. I remember from my stay in Germany a painting high up on the outside of a Lutheran church: a Jew with his arm pushed way up the nether-regions of a pig. This would be insulting enough even if we didn't remember that pigs are considered unclean by Jews.
This is how Jews were portrayed day-in and day-out by both Catholic and Protestant churches for hundreds of years. No one can reasonably look at this situation and not realize how tremendous a role Christian churches had in tilling and fertilizing the ground of anti-semitism and general hatred of others which ultimately led to the Holocaust. When Adolf Hitler needed a scapegoat, he needed look no further than the Jews which were regularly lambasted in his own Catholic churches.
Anyone who looks through Nazi propaganda of the time will quickly notice that religious - which is to say Christian - imagery appears very often. It's not uncommon to see Jews draining blood from Christians and reports of plans to kill off the German race. Such vilification of Jews simply would not have been possible had not the churches already paved the way. Fortunately, some Christian leaders have recognized this and attempted to apologize. In the early 1960's, Pope John XXIII wrote:
The mark of Cain is stamped upon our foreheads. Across the centuries, our brother Abel has lain in blood which we drew, and shed tears we caused by forgetting Thy love. Forgive us, Lord, for the curse we falsely attributed to their name as Jews.
Blood Libel
The Jews in Europe did not only suffer at the hands of Christians during spasms of crusading fever. Indeed, their lives were long on desperation and short of Christian love or tolerance. Most people are vaguely aware of the fact that Jews suffered through centuries of anti-Semitism, but too few are aware of the extent of human suffering - it's too remote in history for most.
The basis, as many know, was the popular perception that Jews were all "Christ-killers" and directly responsible for the death of Jesus. The fact that none of the Jews they knew were alive at the time was irrelevant - the fact that they were Jews meant that they had inherited any sins - real or perceived - from earlier Jews, whether direct ancestors or not.
The Christian church did not hesitate to promote this perception and encourage persecution. Saint Gregory called Jews "slayers of the Lord, murderers of the prophets, adversaries of God." And he was one of the nicer critics. Saint Ambrose wrote "Who cares if a synagogue - home of insanity and unbelief - is destroyed?" This sort of attitude among Christians was not limited to idle propaganda, but in the course of time boiled over into actual acts of violence.
Unfortunately, having killed God wasn't quite enough to inspire massacres, so something else had to fill that void. In 1144 a 12-year-old boy was found dead near Norwich England, and for some reason rumors started that the Jews had killed him in some sort of demonic ritual.
Thus began the infamous "Blood Libel" - the story that Christian children were kidnapped and sacrificed by evil Jews as part of their plot to undermine Christianity and help Satan. Killing God wasn't enough to inspire violence, but killing Christians was - and so Jews across Europe would be seized and executed en masse whenever blood libel hysteria arose.
Actual incidents are too numerous to fully list, so only a few can be briefly mentioned. Thirty-eight Jewish leaders in Blois, France, were burned alive after refusing to convert to Christianity in payment for the death of a boy whose body was never found and who in fact may never have existed. In England, 18 Jews were tortured and hung for having allegedly crucified a boy.
In 1285, 180 Munich Jews were burned for having allegedly bled a Christian boy to death. In 1475, nearly all the Jews in Trent, Italy, were tortured and killed after rumors circulated that a boy had been sacrificed. Even as late as 1801, 128 Jews had their throats slit by Orthodox priests after being accused to drinking blood.
Host Nailing
A particularly odd form of persecution resulted from the decision of Christian leaders to accept the doctrine of transubstantiation: in other words, that the host wafer in holy communion miraculously changes into the actual body of Jesus. For some reason, superstitious Christians started believing that Jews would take the communion wafer and ritually nail it up in a grisly re-enactment of the crucifixion. The result was hundreds of massacres all across Europe. It seems like Christians would seize upon any excuse to kill off a few Jews.
In 1298, 628 Jews were killed in Nuremberg after host-nailing rumors spread. That same year, Bavarian knight Rindfleisch exterminated 146 Jewish communities in just six months. In 1337, the entire Jewish population of Deggendorf, Bavaria, was burned after stories of host-nailing became popular. In 1370, nearly all Belgian Jews were killed after someone in Brussels reported seeing a Jew break a communion wafer. Even as late as 1761, Jews were executed in Nancy, France, based upon similar allegations. I could go on and on with similar reports, but I am honestly sickened by having to spend so much time on these examples of how Christianity relates to violence.
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The terrible combination of nationalism, politics and religion has had deadly consequences for the people living in Northern Ireland. Catholics and Protestants have been vilifying, attacking, torturing and killing each other in a seemingly endless cycle which has only recently begun to show hopeful signs of finally ending. Ulster, the focal point of most of the violence, is an amazingly beautiful province.
But it's also a city where Catholics and Protestant live in walled-off, self-created ghettos for mutual protection. The sniper bullets are usually blocked, but stones and bottles make it over the top.
The origins of Ireland's "troubles" lie in the distant past of English imperialism. The creation of an Anglican Protestant church also created a fundamental religious conflict with an Irish population having little interest in converting with their neighbors. It wasn't until the reign of Elizabeth I that Ireland was finally "conquered," but she was never able to halt regular Catholic uprisings
Ulster was drawn forever into the conflict when James I seized Catholic lands in and around the city in order to give them to loyal Protestants from England and Scotland. Evicted Catholics starved in the surrounding hills until a few crawled back and begged for menial jobs on their former farms. Unsurprisingly, revolts among Catholics continued across Ireland. When Puritan Oliver Cromwell took control of England, his reprisals against Catholics were amazing in their brutality.
Under 1700's Penal Laws, Catholicism was outlawed and priests were banished. Catholics who tried to continue their faith in secret were hunted with dogs and regularly killed outright. Although Catholicism regained legal status in the 1800's, Catholics had to pay tithes to the Anglican church. When this led to the "Tithe War," both sides perpetrated cruelties in the name of the same God
Finally, in this century, the southern counties of Ireland were finally liberated from English rule - and became a 90% Catholic country where even today divorce is outlawed and women have to travel to England to obtain abortions. But the descendants of King James' colonists voted to remain united with England - they feared how they would be treated in a predominantly Catholic nation.
Later events indicate that such a fear may have been justified. In the 1950's, the Irish Republican Army was formed and began a terrorist campaign in and around Ulster to force reunification with the south. Protestants formed their own paramilitary organizations to retaliate. When British troops arrived to enforce peace, their heavy-handed and inexperienced tactics ended up alienating both sides, making British soldiers targets for both Catholic and Protestant terrorists.
Violence was perhaps worst during the 1970's when hundreds of terrorist acts were recorded year after year. Eventually, things settled down to the intensity of a small scale war. As James A. Haught has reported:
...in 1985, a relatively quiet year, authorities recorded fifty-four assassinations, 148 bombings, 237 shootings, 916 woundings, 522 arrests on terrorism charges, 31 kneecappings (shooting out a person's kneecaps) and 3.3 tons of explosives and weapons seized. All this in a tiny country with a population of 1.5 million people.
August 15, 2002, will be the fourth anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in over 30 years. In Omagh, 500 pounds of explosives shattered the downtown, killing 29 people and injuring over 100, including children and tourists. Even today, no one has been arrested. The anniversary was marked by riots in Londonderry as Catholic protestors hurled Molotov cocktails at police to express anger at the fact that Protestants had been granted permission to march in memorial of some ancient and forgettable battle.
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