Pagans, what were the "burning" times? ?

Question

Pagans, what were the "burning" times? ?

Answer 1

The burning times refer to period of time in Western Europe in which large numbers of people, particularly women, were persecuted, tortured, and killed for supposedly being witches.  Although the Roman Catholic Church took an active part in the widespread persecution, many victims were tried and executed by secular courts.  This "witchcraft hysteria" started gaining serious momentum in the mid 1400s after the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum ("The Witches Hammer"), a particularly nasty tome that detailed the supposed activities of those who practiced witchcraft, as well as procedures for torturing and extracting confessions from the accused.  There is no real consensus on how many people were tortured and killed during this time.   Many of the accused were women who practiced midwifery and herbal medicine, a practice that was considered a threat to what was becoming an increasingly male dominated profession - medicine.

The hysteria reached it's peak between 1600 and 1700, then gradually waned, although pockets of the hysteria would occasionally flare up in countries throughout Europe

In 1990, Erna Buffie (writer) and Donna Read (director) produced an excellent documentary called "The Burning Times"  regarding this time in early modern european culture.  It's a facinating through frightening look at how cultural stereotypes, religious oppression, and misogynist thought, when fueled by fear, can run amuck.  

Answer 2

The time of the Maleus Maleficorum (sp?)(The Witches Hammer) when Christians killed and tortured other Christians, thinking they were Witches.

Answer 3

It was a time in Europe when a lot of people were burned at the stake for going against the church.  It started in the 1200s or 1300s and lasted until the 1600s.  

Not as many were killed as some people think.  Also, I read that most of the people burned were garroted before being burned, so they weren't actually burned alive (not sure how correct that is).  I don't mean to downplay it.  It was a bad time.  But there's no need to make it out to be worse than it really was.  

Answer 4

There is a really good treatment of it here:

http://wicca.timerift.net/burning.shtml

Basically it was Christians burning other Christians while claiming they were Satanists.

Answer 5

A time during the middle ages (dark ages) when Paleopagan religions were destroyed in Europe (Charlamaigne decapatating thousands of Pagans in Northern Germany... on) through to when the Mesopagan traditions were repressed, to when pagan religions were made legal again. They don't necessarily refer to 'burning' though definitely to the torture and murder of many by the Spanish Inquisition and Puritans.  

Answer 6

Is that when pagan Rome was burning Christians as torches, boiling us in oil, feeding us to lions and crucifying us?

Answer 7

The times before tucks medicated pads