Everyone is familiar with Notre Dame by French writer victor hugo. The protagonist of this masterpiece, Esmeralda, a gypsy tramp, lived a miserable life. She was abandoned as a child and wandered with gypsies. In order to save her life, she voluntarily married the hapless playwright Granguwa in name. What she really loves is the charismatic guard captain Forbis, but she was arrested and imprisoned because he was stabbed by a priest who secretly followed him during a tryst with the captain. You may remember that when Esmeralda was tried, she was not regarded as a murderer, but as an evil witch.

The novel describes the composition of the court through the dialogue between the playwright Granguwa and others who came to attend:

"On the right is the judge of the Grand Court, and on the left is the judge of interrogation; The priest wears a black robe and the judge wears a red robe. "

"Over there, they are the first batch. Who's the big red-faced fat man who is sweating? " Grand ancient tile asked.

"Yes, Mr. President."

"What about the wild boar in front of him?"

"That's Mr. Clerk of the Criminal Court of Dali Court."

"What about the crocodile on the right?"

"Your Majesty's Special Envoy, Sir Philip Lelear"

"What about the big black cat on the left?"

"Sir Jacques Chamorro, prosecutor of the Inquisition, and judges of the Inquisition."

"Well, sir," said Granguwa, "what on earth are these heroes doing?"

"trial."

"Trial who? I didn't see the defendant. "

"It's a woman, Sir. You can't see her. She turned her back on us. And it was blocked by the crowd. Look, there are a bunch of spears over there, and the defendant is there. "

"What is this woman? Do you know her name? " Grand ancient tile asked.

"No, sir, I just arrived. I just guess that this case must involve witchcraft, and even the religious judge attended the trial. "

In the trial of Esmeralda's case, another defendant and witness who "proved" her witchcraft turned out to be her domestic goat.

Jacques Chamorro, the inquisitor of the Inquisition, is still fiddling with the tambourine to entice the goat to play some tricks, such as the date, month and so on. In fact, readers have already seen these tricks.

To make matters worse, the king's prosecutor dropped all the active letters in a leather around the goat's neck on the ground, and everyone immediately saw that the goat used its hoof to sort out the letters in this deadly name: Phobis.

In this way, it seems that witchcraft killed the captain of the guard, which has been incontrovertibly verified. So in the eyes of everyone, the charming gypsy dancer who dazzled passers-by many times with her elegant charm suddenly became a vicious witch.

Finally, the prosecutor asked Esmeralda to admit that he often attended banquets, group meetings and walked in hell with evil spirits, masked ghosts and vampires, worshipped the vicious knight idol of the Templar, was associated with the devil who turned into a goat, and used the devil and ghost commonly known as the wild monk to murder and assassinate a guard captain named faubus de ChaTopel.

Political persecution in Europe

The middle of the15th century described in Hugo's famous works, and the two centuries from that time to the middle of the17th century, are the craziest witch-hunting periods in the history of western Europe.

The total number of witches hanged or burned in this period is never clear, and the estimated number ranges from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. 1590 A tourist in Germany recorded that in the countryside he passed, burning pillars and hanging pillars were everywhere to execute witches, just like evil groves. There are some sporadic records that are creepy enough: 15 13 Geneva executed 500 witches in three months; However, in an area called Trevize in Germany, 1580 ~ 1590 actually executed 7000 witches, and two villages were completely extinct, leaving only two living women. Saxony executed 133 witches in one day. St. Alaman of Alsace executed more than 200 witches in 1596; Labor in another local city executed more than 600 witches in four months from 65438 to 0609. In the 40 years since 16 15, more than 5,000 witches were executed in the famous city of Strasbourg, while in Wü rzburg, more than 800 witches were executed, and Hamburg did not lag behind, sending more than 500 witches to the execution ground in/kloc-0. ...

Many judges are also proud of their achievements in hunting witches. Remy, a judge of the German Empire, claimed that during the 30 years from 1576 to 1606, he ordered two or three thousand witches to be burned in Lorraine. Another French judge, lanke Blanc, said that he sentenced 400 witches in Bordeaux to death in 1577, and claimed that since 1609, he and his colleague Desbagne "bloodbath" Labou and set fire to hundreds of wooden stakes. Such bloody boasting makes many historical researchers suspect that these data may have been fabricated by them for meritorious service.

Strange to say, in fact, western European society is entering the upward line of historical development at this time, the great Renaissance movement is going on, and the Reformation movement and the Roman law revival movement are also rising. This shows the cruelty and darkness of political persecution.

A movement initiated by the Catholic Church.

Witch hunting is a movement initiated by the Holy See, which spreads all over western Europe from top to bottom.

Pope pope innocent viii issued the fatwa on1484 65438+February 5, which sounded the clarion call for the Catholic Church to intervene in witch hunting. The fatwa said that in many places, men and women "forget their own salvation, deviate from God's belief, have sex with the opposite sex in their sleep, curse and swear, use magic, spread rumors and confuse people, and act recklessly, making women infertile, making small animals die, making crops infertile and fruit trees wither". In other words, from now on, if these bad things happen everywhere, according to this fatwa, witches can be blamed.

With the Pope's decree, the Pope's judges took positive action. 1486, the book malleus maleficarum written by heretical interrogators Ingestidoris and Spallentai was officially published in Strasbourg. The book they wrote will become the standard textbook for interrogating witches in the next century and a half.

With the popularization of printing, more and more scholars, priests and judges "summarize" the methods of arresting and interrogating witches. These books clarify the definition of witch. For example, Bodan defined a witch in his book: "A witch is a person who is instructed by the devil to achieve the devil's goal." Judge Leo's definition: "A witch is a person who relies on the power gained by concluding a contract with the devil to carry out acts that common sense cannot understand."

Searching for witches usually begins with reporting the case. Some victims sue, some informers expose. There are even many special informers. Around 1644, there was a shepherd in Burgundy, France, who could find the "flickering devil's light" in the eyes of witches. In 1670, an apprentice in Beyene, southern France, 16 years old, traveled all over the local countryside and exposed 62 10 witches.

Witch's trial

As described in Notre Dame de Paris, the trial of exposed witches is conducted by secular courts and judges everywhere.

The Catholic Church led by the Holy See originally had no judicial power. With the expansion of the power of the Holy See, Pope Gregory IX issued a fatwa on1April 20, 233, and established a heresy court directly under the Holy See. The Pope announced that in order to suppress Christian heresy in France and its surrounding areas, it was decided that the Holy See would directly send missionaries as heresy interrogators to represent the power of the Pope in the trial of heresy suspects.

After Pope pope innocent viii's fatwa on witch hunting was released, the power of these heretical interrogators was greatly expanded, and they began to involve in civil and criminal proceedings. Therefore, it generally forms a mixed court with the courts at all levels of the local royal government, such as Notre Dame. After accepting the witch's accusation, the interrogator will judge whether the accusation is established or not, and the secular judge will announce the punishment.

In malleus maleficarum and other works, the method of judging witches is described in detail. For example, witches have a third nipple for the devil to suck; Several parts lost their pain after being kissed by the devil (this needs to be tested by a long needle one by one); Witches don't cry; Wait a minute. In addition to these physical evidence, we also need to rely on the defendant's confession to "prove" the crime: meet the devil regularly, have sex with the devil, ride a broom to the forest to attend a feast with the ghost, hold a "magic meeting", use the devil's power to practice witchcraft, spread diseases, infect people and animals with plague, or cause various strange phenomena in towns and villages.

Because witches are considered to have supernatural powers, they are completely curious during the trial. The way judges ask questions according to malleus maleficarum and other works is mostly carefully arranged to induce confessions, such as "Do you believe in witches?" If the defendant answers "no", it means that she denies the existence of heresy of the devil and his associates in the world; And if the answer is "yes", then it leads to "how do you know her?"

After the witch was convicted, the sentence was highly consistent: the death penalty. In many places, the only difference is that the defendant confessed first, hanged first, and then burned to death; If the defendant refuses to plead guilty, he will be burned alive.

It is generally believed that the witch hunting movement was the product of complex social contradictions at that time. The authority of the Catholic Church, represented by the Pope, began to be doubted. The social and economic recovery in Western Europe triggered huge social conflicts of interest, such as the religious war (1562 ~ 1598), the Thirty Years' War (16 18 ~ 1648) and the stone-throwing party. At the same time, the plague brought by urbanization-the Black Death (plague) has also visited many times. People urgently need a reasonable explanation for the disasters and misfortunes that follow, and need a scapegoat to be responsible for them. In the process of centralization of autocratic kingship in some countries after16th century, the creation and implementation of terror trial also promoted the establishment of kingship authority.

In any case, as Hugo described in the tragedy of Esmeralda in Notre Dame de Paris, the political persecution that has plagued for two centuries is the darkest page in the medieval history of Western Europe.

(Excerpted from Law and Life, the second half of August 2008)

It is said that the world is a good novel website, and you deserve it.