In the blessed Middle Ages, I would have been burned at the stake like a witch. At that time, they did not particularly stand on ceremony with women. And even more so with people like me.
Only one birthmark that appeared at birth would have served as an excuse to strangle the baby while still in the cradle. The speck was safely taken out, but the trace remained for life.
The desire to know the world, the craving for knowledge or a non-standard appearance - this is not a complete list of points on which one could accuse a person of collusion with the devil and betray his body to fire. Healing bonfires have been blazing in Europe for several centuries. For a couple of centuries, the gene pool of the countries where the Holy Inquisition ruled was undermined and depleted.
There were plenty of reasons for treating women with fire, and not only them. In order, God forbid, not to be mistaken and to conduct an auto-da-fe in accordance with traditions, the holy fathers used special training manuals. The most famous, from the reading of which the hair stands on end in especially impressionable natures, is the "Hammer of the Witches" from the founder of the Spanish Inquisition, Thomas de Torquemada. A voluminous work on demonology and law was published in 1486. In it, with the cruelty and frankness characteristic of those severe years, practical advice was given on how to correctly identify and persecute witches.
According to the authors, a woman is an inherently vicious and sinful being. Therefore, lovely ladies conjured more than men. In "Hammer" evidence was given of the witchcraft of the weaker sex. They talked in detail about how to punish for this.
They could be held accountable for any, even a trifling matter. It was enough to stand out from the crowd: height, hair color, moles or figure to interest the holy fathers. Beauty or congenital ugliness was definitely on the "black list". You could not even stand out, but inadvertently offend your neighbor or neighbor. The denunciation to the office of the Inquisition was received immediately. Further - a matter of technology, in the arsenal of the sadists-entertainers had a lot of ingenious devices to force a person to confess all mortal sins, just to be left behind. Death was often the easiest and easiest way to get rid of torment, but it also had to be earned.
The term "auto-da-fe" came into the modern lexicon from Portugal and Spain. Literally it should be understood as "execution without the shedding of blood", namely the ritual burning of a heretic at the stake. Of course, a painful death in fire can hardly be called liberation from suffering, but at least it was guaranteed. Auto-da-fe appeared at the end of the 15th century and lasted until the 17th. In the era of the late Renaissance, theatrical performances with repentant heretics decreased. Apparently, by this time there were practically no people left who, in all respects, fit the descriptions in The Hammer of the Witches. Torquemada alone in a little over ten years burned more than 8 thousand people at the stake. Even today, this is a large figure. And if we consider that in the Middle Ages the population was so annually "mowed down" by disease and war, then one can easily imaginewhat damage was done to the "human population".
In total, over the years of the existence of the Inquisition, about 50 tons of people were destroyed throughout Europe. In the aggregate of several centuries - not so many. The scale of the disaster, of course, is incomparable with the repressions of the 30s, but the methods of fighting the witches of Torquemada and his followers suspiciously resemble the work of the notorious "triplets". And denunciations about and without reason, just because the neighbor looked at you the wrong way, lead to sad thoughts. You involuntarily begin to think that history is really developing in a spiral. And each of its new rounds is a return to the past, but at a qualitatively new level. The naive cruelty of the Middle Ages is nothing compared to the deliberate hatred in New History.
Promotional video:
But back to Torquemada and his training manual.
For example, everyone knows that witches fly on brooms to Mount Brokken. Empirically, the inquisitors calculated that a broom, as an aircraft of the latest generation, can withstand a weight of no more than 50 kilograms. Here it is that same naivety and cruelty at the same time: how they figured it out, what experiments they set up and what bench tests they carried out, science is unknown. Perhaps, at special training grounds, the inquisitors tested brooms of various designs and modifications, which allowed them to say with confidence: “50 kg. Not more. Less is possible."
Remember how women were depicted in Rubens's paintings?
That's right - the burly, luxurious bodies, overfed models of the artist today cause tremulous horror and pity not only among the followers of healthy lifestyle. Excess weight and carefully prescribed folds of cellulite were the beauty ideal of those years. Titian's red-haired models also do not differ in their slender figure. I suspect that there were no other models at the disposal of the artists. The image of puffy beauties is firmly rooted in the minds of ordinary people and painters, as the most immaculate. All skinny women had already been exhausted by this time. Girls weighing less than 50 kg. did not pass the natural selection of history.
The liberal Netherlands were already loyal in those centuries. Of those fifty thousand in Holland, only 200 were killed.
The city of Ouderwater had the most honest and accurate weighing chamber. Having learned about this, people from all over Europe reached into the city in order to fix their weight without mistakes. In 1624, a woman accused of witchcraft presented her offenders with a certificate that proved her weight. The townswoman was acquitted. City officials valued their reputation: their scales always showed an accurate result. So, on someone else's mountain, the city treasury gradually cobbled together. Needless to say, the witch's checkweighing was not cheap. But life is still more valuable than money!
Thin women, beauties and simply unfortunate women who did not have the opportunity to stand up for themselves were mercilessly exterminated. Europe, especially those countries in which the Inquisition was especially "roamed", still cannot recover from the blow to genetics. Is this why scientists and nutritionists around the world are sounding the alarm today: humanity is rapidly gaining weight. No reasonable argument works for those who systematically gain fat mass day after day. The “body positive” movement is expanding and growing. Rubensian models compared to these "positive ladies", stunted anorexic on a perpetual diet. Bodies that do not fit into any framework are presented as "self-love."
What do you want? All genetically thin women were exterminated in the Middle Ages. The future belongs to "positive" buns. Here it is - history repeating itself in a spiral. And they will burn me: the broom can withstand me. Checked.