From heresy to witchcraft | Humanists UK Convention 2025 скачать в хорошем качестве

From heresy to witchcraft | Humanists UK Convention 2025

Witchcraft became big news in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Torrents of learned discussion turned to action, and the corpses piled high. But the legal infrastructure for such a mass persecution did not arise fully-formed in the moment. The concepts and institutions were well established and had been used for other purposes all the way back to the ninth century. The early Middle Ages saw European empires re-coalesce after the decline of Rome. An ambitious Church set itself the task of designing and enforcing the architecture for control of its own self-defined domain across nations. Through schisms, crusades, and heresies, a theoretical and legal framework formed. Add the new technology of the printing press and the political turmoil of the Reformation, and the ideas of a religious empire were set to take a side-step to a new sphere. In this session at Humanists UK Convention 2025, Deborah Hyde tours history, belief, power, and perverse incentives to understand the making of a very bloody delusion. https://humanists.uk/festival2026 https://humanists.uk/join