Earlier, back in Soviet times, the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism was located in the Kazan Cathedral of Leningrad, where a collection of torture instruments of the Inquisition was exhibited, clearly demonstrating all the cruelty of the Middle Ages. From school years we know that then all over Europe bonfires blazed on which thousands and thousands of people accused of witchcraft were burnt alive. Any person could fall into the clutches of the Inquisition, regardless of his social status, gender and age. Sometimes even judges and executioners themselves became victims here.
Devil's seal
By the end of the 15th century, the European Inquisition had established a clear system of dealing with the "servants of the devil". In studying these processes, researchers usually pay attention to the various tortures to which suspected witchcraft were subjected. But in the old manuals for the destruction of witches there are several very curious moments that allow you to look completely differently at the causes of those bloody events.
First, historical documents say that judges and executioners should avoid close bodily contact with the accused. The latter were kept in isolated prisons. Secondly, in addition to the inquisitors themselves, the composition of the judicial boards necessarily included doctors, whose conclusion often influenced the verdict. Thirdly, the torture was preceded by a procedure to search the body of the suspect for the so-called seals of the devil, or witch signs. The judges tried to find sores, bumps, white spots, bumps and other traces of unknown origin on the skin of their victim. Theologian Lambert Dano wrote: "There is not a single witch on which the devil would not put some mark as a sign of his power." After finding the "marks", the person was blindfolded and the suspicious places were pierced with a needle. If the alleged servant of the devil did not feel pain and there was no bleeding at the injection site, this served as the main proof that the inquisitors were facing a witch or a sorcerer.
Is Satan guilty?
According to the historian Dmitry Zankov, almost all people accused of witchcraft had some kind of skin disease. Perhaps, unwittingly, the Inquisition was fighting not against heresy, but against the epidemic that swept Europe - leprosy. Leprosy, or leprosy, is one of the worst ills of the Middle Ages. In 1876, scientists discovered that the disease was caused by the bacterium Microbactterium leproe. It is transmitted both by close tactile contact and by airborne droplets and affects the skin, peripheral nerves, upper respiratory tract, mucous membranes of the eyes and nose. Leprosy does not understand the age of the victim, its incubation period lasts several years, and each infected person poses a danger to others. Described by the inquisitors "marks of the devil" one to one - the symptoms of leprosy at different stages of the disease. In addition, the location of the "devil's signs" coincided with lepromatous spots on the human body.
Promotional video:
By the way, these places are bloodless and lifeless, so it is understandable why people did not feel pain during the injections. Indirect confirmation that the hunt for witches and sorcerers was actually a fight with lepers is even found in the infamous treatise Hammer of the Witches: “… There is no such disease that a witch could not send to a person with God's permission. They can even send leprosy and epilepsy."
Zankov's version does not contradict the classical image of a witch that has developed in the popular mind: hunchbacked, toothless, with a hoarse voice and a large hooked nose. These signs exactly correspond to the picture of leprosy described by modern medicine in the last stages of the development of the disease.
Hundreds of years have passed since then, and it is difficult to pinpoint the exact cause of those terrible events. But with a high degree of probability it can be argued that those condemned to death for "having a relationship with the devil" were precisely lepers, and mass executions were carried out in places of epidemic outbreaks. It turns out that the inquisitors were not only fanatical madmen, but, without even knowing it, became medics of the Middle Ages?
Source: Magazine "Secrets of the XX century". Valery Kukarenko