Can God Become A Man??

[Amigo]

In this case though, it's not a matter of things being good or not. If God becomes man, he can no longer logically be God. This cannot make sense. Also, isn't it technically against God's nature to be man, since man is by nature imperfect?

If man was made by God then man is by nature perfect since God can not make imperfect things... the imperfections in man are not from God...
And it is a matter of goodness or not since goodness is the only 'direction/orientation' of God and all his attributes:
God is perfectly good, his goodness is unlimited/infinite, and all powerful...it is in his goodness that we can understand him (and all of his other attributes) clearly..
Thanks to this all powerfull, unlimited goodness, God became man without ceasing to be God...the original perfect human nature was then made known.

 

[IAmZamzam]

Tyrion, Amigo is right. It says in The Qur'an, "We created man in the best make." (Surah 95, verse 4, Shakir) Any imperfections of ours are merely our own fault. There is no inherent reason why a human being can't be perfect. In fact weren't Mary and the wife of Pharaoh supposed to have been that way? Are we free agents or not? A human body is not a trap, it is a vessel.

We must stick to better arguments against the incarnation.

 

[Tyrion]

If man was made by God then man is by nature perfect since God can not make imperfect things... the imperfections in man are not from God...

Tyrion, Amigo is right. It says in The Qur'an, "We created man in the best make." (Surah 95, verse 4, Shakir) Any imperfections of ours are merely our own fault.

Hmm, I'm not sure I agree. Maybe we have different definitions of perfection, but I think that we are by nature imperfect, just like how we are by nature limited while God is unlimited. We can and do make mistakes. Making something in the 'best' form doesn't necessarily mean you are making it perfect, and from my understanding (which I admit, could be way off), man was made by God the way he is, partly because he could sin and then seek forgiveness. We were created imperfect, but this doesn't mean God is imperfect for creating something like us, since he did so intentionally and for a purpose. That's how I see it anyway.

 

[IAmZamzam]

What is your definition of "perfection" anyway?

 

[ccc]

we, the humans, share a common nature but are many persons. This nature is present in al of us, but we are not self suficient and our beiing does not exist trough itself our beiing is sustained by God, but before he fall we were all one, even if not in the way God is One in three ersons.

 

[IAmZamzam]

"Before we fell we were all one." Where exactly did you come by this idea anyway? And that's not getting into all the mondo problems inherent in the very concept of a "fall of man". Mondo, mondo problems.

So we are not self-sufficient and must be sustained by something else. What of it? I could say the same thing of my car. That doesn't make it one with the mechanic and the can of gasoline.

Nothing can exist without God, including inanimate objects. Like, say for instance, my car.

 

[ccc]

i mean that god is one being in three persons, but his being is self suficient so for him this does not mean separation of being or separate existence.

 

[جوري]

God isn't three persons, the word person doesn't even enter into this picture!

best,

 

[Berries'forest]

But why can't it be just an 'aspect' of God that is embodied?

According to Christian doctrine God is omnipresent in both place and time. So even if God is said to inhabit a bush or a human form or anything else, that can never be the 'whole' of God. It wouldn't make sense to say that God is too powerful to come into our presence because he is supposed to be here already.

For us, we only have one consciousness that can focus on one thing at a time. But for God to exist, he has to be aware of what is going on in every person's head simultaneously - not just this second but throughout history and the future.

This is unimaginable for a human. (For instance, there is a rare mental condition which means that some people continue to experience their whole lives and memories as if they are always happening - and it drives them half insane. Imagine that multiplied many billions of times). The best way we can conceive of it is to imagine an infinite number of Gods looking at each circumstance individually, but of course this is just a convenience for our imagination and in no way represents what it must be like to be God. Therefore, there is no more reason for it to be impossible for God's consciousness to inhabit a human form than anything else. Surely it is not the 'whole' of God's consciousness that inhabits the body, but just an aspect?

Dissecting and subdiving a collectively whole entity into seperate independant branches which are functioning together still does not make the likely hood or possibility of God becoming human anymore happen. The arising problem with the thesis here is that you are reducing him in quantitive terms into non-existance. He is either existent inside of all His creatures and a part of them or a completely seperate and independant being. Again another extended version of a loaded question which does not only draw and redraw circles but also never gives you a solid answer. It's always relative and only subjective answers that are reached through these kind of questions. We are also speaking in hypethtical terms any of these sentiments are yet unproven. What would'nt make sense is not Him being too powerfull to become man but rather the staggering reason of why He ( an independant unique distinct autonomy whom is also self-suffiecient and certainly most wise) would choose to give up His immortal and umlimited powers to transform into a very different and opposite form for only to save and emancipate humanity from their original sin that He Himself had entitled them to. The only thing that comes up to mind here is to question actuall powers that He posesses making us only assume that He ran out of options and resources thus He inorder to carry out His own will had to restrict Himself and become a part of His own creation; otherwise He couldn't get the job done up there in the heavens all bu himself.The only objective the thesis really serves is likening the works of God to that of bacteria endlessy multiplying into inumberable parts yet at the same time without reducing the original state of the one bacteria from which all other bacteria' are subdivided. Notice the flaw in such a premise?

"For us, we only have one consciousness that can focus on one thing at a time. But for God to exist, he has to be aware of what is going on in every person's head simultaneously - not just this second but throughout history and the future."

You would also have to be fair enough to apply this for all other creatures that have existed since the begging of time. Why human consciousness in particular; humans are not even the smartest species existing in this world. And somehow you are contradicting your own given thesis. For God to exist? Or for Him to have fullfillled His beffited qualities? In that case we sinply are not aware of even our own subconscious let alone other people's or even the enitire inhabitants of this earth. Only leaving us to admit that not only are we not competent to have such a superior enitty embody our form but also leaving us wonder what power and abilities did He have left after transforming into a humanbeing.


"This is unimaginable for a human. (For instance, there is a rare mental condition which means that some people continue to experience their whole lives and memories as if they are always happening - and it drives them half insane. Imagine that multiplied many billions of times). The best way we can conceive of it is to imagine an infinite number of Gods looking at each circumstance individually, but of course this is just a convenience for our imagination and in no way represents what it must be like to be God."


Actually in reality it's not uminaginable infact humanity has fantasized through out ages for the event of having a God-human being. Mythology is a great evidence for that. We have conceived to imagine God inside of His creatures; only leading us to your alternative suggestion that He would also have to be inside everything and everyone that ever existed. No wonder why there are billions of dieties in polytheistic religions; and the real tragedy here is you are suggesting that God had experienced some kind of internal conflict He can't seem to reslove which drove Him half insane major plurality crisis for him ro multiplied into different gods because it was the only resolution available. How disgraceful, wouldn't you think? Is it really a sin to 'imagine' that God is much higher than to go this low? Or is it really the fact that this is the only cop-out argument invented to encounter monthesitic arguements.

"Surely it is not the 'whole' of God's consciousness that inhabits the body, but just an aspect?"

Yeah, and the consciousness of God or the aspect of it that does inhabit a human body. Should also inhabit other objects to restore the inadequecy created. On a seperate note; we have no knowledge of the state of God's consciousness and it can no where nearly be compared to that of ours. Our consciousness are operated through our senses. For example; without the functioning of my eyes; I lose my vision hence reducing my conciousness or even perception. Our awareness is mainly built through our five senses.

 

[IAmZamzam]

That does not address what I said at all.

Look, it all boils down to my previous point. Of any particular action, ask yourself, Whence did it come? Is it from person A or person B? Of any particular trait ask the same. Is it the trait of person A or person B? Repeat this process for ten, a hundred, a million, a googolplex actions or traits and the situation will never change. You'll still be stacking things further up in the A and B columns respectively, with nothing ever crossing over from one into the other. Every person is separate, period.

But of course it's no use. The Trinity is a psychological death trap. It's perfectly designed (possibly by Satan himself) to be absolutely fortified against all reason. No argument could ever work against it. I mean, think about it:

* You have three interconnected persons which can always be used as a reference point for each other as a defense.
* The very inconsistent nature of the whole thing can also be used as proof it itself (though of course never in a way which is consciously acknowledged).
* The whole thing is supposed to be beyond our comprehension in the first place, so one can always just fall back on that as a last resort. Especially if two minutes ago the argument was, "No no no, you're not understanding this at all. Let me explain to you what it really means."

So no matter what we do there's always an out. We can't win. The Trinity doctrine is like a dreamcatcher placed at the window of the rational mind, only it's the good things being kept out.

 

[Berries'forest]

^ I wasn't addressing what you said. I am responding to Independent's post.

 

[IAmZamzam]

I was actually talking to ccc. No harm done.

 

[Independent]

I'm simply saying that, for me, it is not logically impossible for an aspect of God to choose to experience the human condition in certain specific ways, especially human suffering. I don't see why it is degrading. And I don't think it makes the perfect imperfect, or the immortal mortal, because it doesn't mean He ceases to exist everywhere else.

However, as I am no longer a Christian, my views are now philosophically based rather than religious. I now understand this idea as a stunning act of empathy, with an impact that was revolutionary in moral thought, whatever its religious origins.

Actually in reality it's not uminaginable infact humanity has fantasized through out ages for the event of having a God-human being.

I don't mean that God-in-man is unimaginable, I mean that the multiple awareness that is consequent with the idea of an all seeing God is unimaginable for humans.

the real tragedy here is you are suggesting that God had experienced some kind of internal conflict He can't seem to reslove which drove Him half insane

Not God, I mean humans. A human can't cope with experiencing even their own life simultaneously, let alone everyone else's. I just gave this as an example to show how hard it is for us to imagine omniscience.

 

[Berries'forest]

However, as I am no longer a Christian, my views are now philosophically based rather than religious. I now understand this idea as a stunning act of empathy, with an impact that was revolutionary in moral thought, whatever its religious origins.

It only originates in christian dogma. The 'crucification' of Jesus in itself doesn't reresent anything empathetic; especially that it goes to prove the complete opposite of its irtue. A God demanding blood be spilled regardless of whether the offence was initially 'forgiven'. He supposedly tortured His own 'son' -where is empathy in that?- just to whipe out humanity's record of sinning; a record mind you that was predetermined 'by' Him before they even existed. What is remarkebly revolutionary what Christ's spiritual message, his teachings and not the christian doctrine there's nothing revolutionary about that it's far from uncommon it was another version of psuedo'monethesim' in a polytheistic form. Water and fire can not be the same elements at one time.

Not God, I mean humans. A human can't cope with experiencing even their own life simultaneously, let alone everyone else's. I just gave this as an example to show how hard it is for us to imagine omniscience.

Thank you for making that clear.

 

[Independent]

What is remarkebly revolutionary what Christ's spiritual message, his teachings

I'm not sure how much of what I learned of Christ's teaching is included in Islam. i can't recognise much of it in what I read on this forum or elsewhere but on the other hand I haven't read anything specific on the subject. Some of the things that are missing I would regret.

Personally, I find Islam to be far more different from Christianity than I expected. The Muslim 'Allah' seems like a wholly different personality to that of the Christian 'God'.

 

[Berries'forest]

^ What something is like and what it is are different things. God,Allah,Dieu,Dios,G-d..all the same person described differently. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all worship the God of Abraham, the same ancient figure. That's why they're called the Abrahamic religions. The fact that the different religions report different views about their god does not mean that they're actually different gods. The perception are definately different and yes they are not the same. But keep in my the version of story I telll about my life may not be the same as the one an autobiographer might write. Many things have been altered in christian doctrine; as a matter of fact there's no one consented reference on who exactly is the author of the Bible. It's not very handy to argue that it is the literall 'word of God' anymore and so it's not suffeicient to use as a valid refernce. Bottom line is they are the same God but the beliefs of both faiths are remotely different.

 

[Berries'forest]

Typo mistake:

The perception are definately different and yes they are not the same-exclusively in that sense. Otherwise they're no different.

 

[IAmZamzam]

I'm not sure how much of what I learned of Christ’s teaching is included in Islam. i can’t recognise much of it in what I read on this forum or elsewhere but on the other hand I haven’t read anything specific on the subject. Some of the things that are missing I would regret.

I don’t ordinarily quote my old site anymore but since another reference point on this doesn’t spring immediately to mind…

There are three places in the Koran in which the teachings of Jesus (peace be on him) are recorded specifically, and those are Surah 3, Surah 5 and Surah 61. Together, these give a summary of his teachings in a nicely concise manner…

“I have come to you with a sign from your Lord. I will create for you out of clay as the likeness of a bird; then I will breathe into it, and it will be a bird, by the leave of God. I will also heal the blind and the leper, and bring to life the dead, by the leave of God. I will inform you too of what things you eat, and what you treasure up in your houses. Surely in that is a sign for you, if you are believers. Likewise confirming the truth of the Torah that is before me, and to make lawful to you certain things that before were forbidden unto you. I have come to you with a sign from your Lord; so fear you God, and obey you me. Surely God is my Lord and your Lord; so serve Him. This is a straight path.” (Noble Quran 3:49-3:51)

“Fear God, if you are believers." (5:112)

“And when God said, 'O Jesus son of Mary, didst thou say unto men, Take me and my mother as gods, apart from God?’ he said, ‘To thee be glory! It is not mine to say what I have no right to. If I indeed said it, Thou knowest it, knowing what is within my soul, and I know not what is within Thy soul; Thou knowest the things unseen.’ I only said to them what Thou didst command me: ‘Serve God, my Lord and your Lord.’ And I was a witness over them, while I remained among them; but when Thou didst take me to Thyself, Thou wast Thyself the watcher over them; Thou Thyself art witness of everything. If Thou chastisest them, they are Thy servants; if Thou forgive them, Thou are the All-mighty, the All-wise.’” (5:116-118)

…Every bit and piece of them can be found in the four Gospels. First, let’s take a look at the passage from Surah 3 and compare it to the Bible.

“I will also heal the blind and the leper, and bring to life the dead, by the leave of God.”

“And Jesus answered them, ‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.” (Matthew 11:4-5)

“I will inform you too of what things you eat, and what you treasure up in your houses. Surely in that is a sign for you, if you are believers.”

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also...Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” (Matthew 6:19-25)

“Likewise confirming the truth of the Torah that is before me.”

“Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” (Matthew 5:17-18)

“And to make lawful to you certain things that before were forbidden unto you.”

“One sabbath he was going through the grainfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees said to him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?’ And he said to them, ‘Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God, when Abi’athar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?’ And he said to them, ‘The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath; so the Son of man is lord even of the sabbath.’” (Mark 2:23-28)

“I have come to you with a sign from your Lord; so fear you God, and obey you me.”

This generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of Jonah.” (Luke 11:29)

“What was the sign of Jonah (peace be on him), by the way? Why, it was that someone was supposed to die and didn’t!”…

“Surely God is my Lord and your Lord.”

“Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” (John 20:17)

“So serve Him. This is a straight path.”

“It is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’” (Matthew 4:10)

...The greatest commandment of the Bible is contained in the Koran (and emphasized repeatedly, I should add)...

“And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him,’Which commandment is the first of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘The first is, Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.’” (Mark 12:28-29)

“Your God is one God.” (Noble Quran 2:163)

And it is only to be expected that God expects us to be merciful to each other, and both Books preach the principle of forgiveness...

“Do not resist one who is evil. But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if any one would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:39-44)

“Not equal are the good deed and the evil deed. Repel with that which is fairer and behold, he between whom and thee thereis enmity shall be as if he were a loyal friend.” (Noble Quran 41:34)

Both Books tell us to prepare more for the next life than for this one...

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” (Matthew 6:19-21)

“Prosperous is he who has cleansed himself, and mentions the Name of his Lord, and prays. Nay, but you prefer the present life; and the world to come is better, and more enduring.” (The Koran Intepreted 87:14-17; see also 28:60)

What are the other major teachings of Christianity that have not been mentioned so far? Well, let’s go through the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), which is at the heart of Christian teachings. In it you are told to pray and to give charity, but to do neither just for the sake of being seen. This is echoed in Koran 2:270-274. You are told to let your light from God shine before men, which is echoed in Koran 24:35-38. You are told not to insult people out of anger, and this matches Koran 16:125. You are told not to approach indecency inwardly as well as outwardly, and this matches Koran 6:150.

Then come the only real disagreements between the Koran and the Sermon on the Mount, which are over matters of divorce and oath-taking. Oath-taking is prohibited in the Sermon, but the Koran prohibits only the swearing of false oaths on purpose, and knowing in your heart that you are swearing falsely (2:225). The divorce rights of the Koran in Surah 2 are simply a matter of common sense, with both men and women getting rights, and you don’t automatically make someone an adulteress just by divorcing her excepting on the grounds of unchastity. The Koran’s philosophy is clearly superior here, but since this is the only disagreement between the two books, I would chock it up to textual corruption in the Bible. Look at the text notes in those passages in any Bible and see the textual variants and you’ll get an idea of what I’m talking about.

The “Lord’s Prayer” is given, and it is completely compatible with Islam (for instance, see 2:286 and 114:1-6). You are told not to pray empty prayers to be heard for your many words, which is very close to the statement in Koran 4:142. You are told not to be anxious about tomorrow, and this matches 6:151. Hypocrisy is preached against (in the vein of hypocritical judgment), as it is in Koran 4:145. You are told that they way to salvation is hard and that few ever find it, which matches Koran 3:110, 6:111, 26:174 and 41:4. You are told that you can tell evil by its evil fruit and what not, and this matches Koran 47:30. Finally, that not everyone who says to the blessed Jesus “Lord, Lord” will enter heaven, but those who do the will of God. I don’t think I need to explain that.

I wrote that article many years ago and naturally would have written it very differently now. But as long as you get the general idea I guess it's okay for there to be a few flaws in the details.

(In case you're wondering all of the above citations were from "The Koran Interpreted". I don't know why only a few of them are marked as such.)

 

[Independent]

There are three places in the Koran in which the teachings of Jesus (peace be on him) are recorded

Thank you for posting this. I will give you my reactions based solely on what you've given me to read. I'm not that interested in the theology or scripture, only in the philosophical and moral impact on society, so I have a very different perspective from you.

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven,

This is important morally but equally so for both religions. To be honest, I find the Biblical version better written - although both are in translation so I can only comment on what they sound like in English. (I should add that I am a big fan of the King James Bible as a piece of language.)

‘The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath; so the Son of man is lord even of the sabbath.

To me this could be paraphrased as 'don't get too hung up on the rules, but follow the principle' which I would strongly agree with. My impression is that, by comparison, Islam is more rule-focussed on the grounds that the principle cannot be separated from the rules.

if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also

'Turn the other cheek' is perhaps the single most morally impactful of all the sayings of Jesus. The line you quote from the Qu'ran (“Not equal are the good deed and the evil deed. Repel with that which is fairer and behold, he between whom and thee thereis enmity shall be as if he were a loyal friend.” ) is not entirely equivalent in meaning. For one thing is it a little harder to understand. In fact it seems to be closer to a different Christian principle: "Two wrongs don't make a right".

To me, 'turn the other cheek' is a far more radical moral concept that brings you to a complete halt and makes you consider everything about your behaviour. (I certainly am not a good enough person to live by it.) It's also very interconnected with the act of empathy involved in Jesus living as a human. Together these concepts give a completely different moral impact to Christianity compared to Islam, in my view. Parables like The Prodigal Son also add very powerfully to the message of empathy and understanding with weakness. In contrast, the message I take from Muslims is much tougher with an emphasis on the need for you to make the standard, or else. (eg people are always telling me I'm going to hell.)

“And when God said, 'O Jesus son of Mary, didst thou say unto men, Take me and my mother as gods, apart from God?’ he said, ‘To thee be glory! It is not mine to say what I have no right to.

This doesn't have any moral impact but it's interesting for me to read all the same because it makes the Muslim claim (that Jesus is just another messenger) explicit. I assume there's nothing like that in the Bible? That would be very interesting.

Other powerful phrases such as 'Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's' and 'Father forgive them for they know not what they do' seem to be absent?

Overall, based on this, it seems to me that Jesus in the Koran has a relatively minor role with little to say that's new or impactful? (I understand he is supposed to be simply another messenger.)

 

[جوري]

To me, 'turn the other cheek' is a far more radical moral concept that brings you to a complete halt

Except of course when super-imposed on ''"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.'' Matthew 10:34
and well there's the entire christian hx to go with it which reconciles better with the sword the the other cheek:

[TABLE="align: center"]
[TR]
[TD="width: 100%"] WONDERFUL EVENTS THAT TESTIFY TO GOD'S DIVINE GLORY"Listed are only events that solely occurred on command of church authorities or were committed in the name of Christianity. (List incomplete)
Ancient Pagans

• As soon as Christianity was legal (315), more and more pagan temples were destroyed by Christian mob. Pagan priests were killed.
• Between 315 and 6th century thousands of pagan believers were slain.
• Examples of destroyed Temples: the Sanctuary of Aesculap in Aegaea, the Temple of Aphrodite in Golgatha, Aphaka in Lebanon, the Heliopolis.
• Christian priests such as Mark of Arethusa or Cyrill of Heliopolis were famous as "temple destroyer." [DA468]
• Pagan services became punishable by death in 356. [DA468]
• Christian Emperor Theodosius (408-450) even had children executed, because they had been playing with remains of pagan statues. [DA469]
  According to Christian chroniclers he "followed meticulously all Christian teachings..."
• In 6th century pagans were declared void of all rights.
• In the early fourth century the philosopher Sopatros was executed on demand of Christian authorities. [DA466]
• The world famous female philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria was torn to pieces with glass fragments by a hysterical Christian mob led by a Christian minister named Peter, in a church, in 415.
  [DO19-25]

Mission

• Emperor Karl (Charlemagne) in 782 had 4500 Saxons, unwilling to convert to Christianity, beheaded. [DO30]
• Peasants of Steding (Germany) unwilling to pay suffocating church taxes: between 5,000 and 11,000 men, women and children slain 5/27/1234 near Altenesch/Germany. [WW223]
• Battle of Belgrad 1456: 80,000 Turks slaughtered. [DO235]
• 15th century Poland: 1019 churches and 17987 villages plundered by Knights of the Order. Victims unknown. [DO30]
• 16th and 17th century Ireland. English troops "pacified and civilized" Ireland, where only Gaelic "wild Irish", "unreasonable beasts lived without any knowledge of God or good manners, in common of their goods, cattle, women, children and every other thing." One of the more successful soldiers, a certain Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, ordered that "the heddes of all those (of what sort soever thei were) which were killed in the daie, should be cutte off from their bodies... and should bee laied on the ground by eche side of the waie", which effort to civilize the Irish indeed caused "greate terrour to the people when thei sawe the heddes of their dedde fathers, brothers, children, kinsfolke, and freinds on the grounde".
  Tens of thousands of Gaelic Irish fell victim to the carnage. [SH99, 225]

Crusades (1095-1291)

• First Crusade: 1095 on command of pope Urban II. [WW11-41]
• Semlin/Hungary 6/24/96 thousands slain. Wieselburg/Hungary 6/12/96 thousands. [WW23]
• 9/9/96-9/26/96 Nikaia, Xerigordon (then turkish), thousands respectively. [WW25-27]
• Until Jan 1098 a total of 40 capital cities and 200 castles conquered (number of slain unknown) [WW30]
• after 6/3/98 Antiochia (then turkish) conquered, between 10,000 and 60,000 slain. 6/28/98 100,000 Turks (incl. women & children) killed. [WW32-35]
  Here the Christians "did no other harm to the women found in [the enemy's] tents - save that they ran their lances through their bellies," according to Christian chronicler Fulcher of Chartres. [EC60]
• Marra (Maraat an-numan) 12/11/98 thousands killed. Because of the subsequent famine "the already stinking corpses of the enemies were eaten by the Christians" said chronicler Albert Aquensis. [WW36]
• Jerusalem conquered 7/15/1099 more than 60,000 victims (jewish, muslim, men, women, children). [WW37-40]
  (In the words of one witness: "there [in front of Solomon's temple] was such a carnage that our people were wading ankle-deep in the blood of our foes", and after that "happily and crying for joy our people marched to our Saviour's tomb, to honour it and to pay off our debt of gratitude")
• The Archbishop of Tyre, eye-witness, wrote: "It was impossible to look upon the vast numbers of the slain without horror; everywhere lay fragments of human bodies, and the very ground was covered with the blood of the slain. It was not alone the spectacle of headless bodies and mutilated limbs strewn in all directions that roused the horror of all who looked upon them. Still more dreadful was it to gaze upon the victors themselves, dripping with blood from head to foot, an ominous sight which brought terror to all who met them. It is reported that within the Temple enclosure alone about ten thousand infidels perished." [TG79]
• Christian chronicler Eckehard of Aura noted that "even the following summer in all of palestine the air was polluted by the stench of decomposition". One million victims of the first crusade alone. [WW41]
• Battle of Askalon, 8/12/1099. 200,000 heathens slaughtered "in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ". [WW45]
• Fourth crusade: 4/12/1204 Constantinople sacked, number of victims unknown, numerous thousands, many of them Christian. [WW141-148]
• Rest of Crusades in less detail: until the fall of Akkon 1291 probably 20 million victims (in the Holy land and Arab/Turkish areas alone). [WW224] Note: All figures according to contemporary (Christian) chroniclers.

Heretics

• Already in 385 C.E. the first Christians, the Spanish Priscillianus and six followers, were beheaded for heresy in Trier/Germany [DO26]
• Manichaean heresy: a crypto-Christian sect decent enough to practice birth control (and thus not as irresponsible as faithful Catholics) was exterminated in huge campaigns all over the Roman empire between 372 C.E. and 444 C.E. Numerous thousands of victims. [NC]
• Albigensians: the first Crusade intended to slay other Christians. [DO29]
  The Albigensians (cathars = Christians allegedly that have all rarely sucked) viewed themselves as good Christians, but would not accept roman Catholic rule, and taxes, and prohibition of birth control. [NC]
  Begin of violence: on command of pope Innocent III (greatest single pre-nazi mass murderer) in 1209. Bezirs (today France) 7/22/1209 destroyed, all the inhabitants were slaughtered. Victims (including Catholics refusing to turn over their heretic neighbours and friends) 20,000-70,000. [WW179-181]
• Carcassonne 8/15/1209, thousands slain. Other cities followed. [WW181]
• subsequent 20 years of war until nearly all Cathars (probably half the population of the Languedoc, today southern France) were exterminated. [WW183]
• After the war ended (1229) the Inquisition was founded 1232 to search and destroy surviving/hiding heretics. Last Cathars burned at the stake 1324. [WW183]
• Estimated one million victims (cathar heresy alone), [WW183]
• Other heresies: Waldensians, Paulikians, Runcarians, Josephites, and many others. Most of these sects exterminated, (I believe some Waldensians live today, yet they had to endure 600 years of persecution) I estimate at least hundred thousand victims (including the Spanish inquisition but excluding victims in the New World).
• Spanish Inquisitor Torquemada alone allegedly responsible for 10,220 burnings. [DO28]
• John Huss, a critic of papal infallibility and indulgences, was burned at the stake in 1415. [LI475-522]
• University professor B.Hubmaier burned at the stake 1538 in Vienna. [DO59]
• Giordano Bruno, Dominican monk, after having been incarcerated for seven years, was burned at the stake for heresy on the Campo dei Fiori (Rome) on 2/17/1600.

Witches

• from the beginning of Christianity to 1484 probably more than several thousand.
• in the era of witch hunting (1484-1750) according to modern scholars several hundred thousand (about 80% female) burned at the stake or hanged. [WV]
• incomplete list of documented cases:
  The Burning of Witches - A Chronicle of the Burning Times

Religious Wars

• 15th century: Crusades against Hussites, thousands slain. [DO30]
• 1538 pope Paul III declared Crusade against apostate England and all English as slaves of Church (fortunately had not power to go into action). [DO31]
• 1568 Spanish Inquisition Tribunal ordered extermination of 3 million rebels in (then Spanish) Netherlands. Thousands were actually slain. [DO31]
• 1572 In France about 20,000 Huguenots were killed on command of pope Pius V. Until 17th century 200,000 flee. [DO31]
• 17th century: Catholics slay Gaspard de Coligny, a Protestant leader. After murdering him, the Catholic mob mutilated his body, "cutting off his head, his hands, and his genitals... and then dumped him into the river [...but] then, deciding that it was not worthy of being food for the fish, they hauled it out again [... and] dragged what was left ... to the gallows of Montfaulcon, 'to be meat and carrion for maggots and crows'." [SH191]
• 17th century: Catholics sack the city of Magdeburg/Germany: roughly 30,000 Protestants were slain. "In a single church fifty women were found beheaded," reported poet Friedrich Schiller, "and infants still sucking the breasts of their lifeless mothers." [SH191]
• 17th century 30 years' war (Catholic vs. Protestant): at least 40% of population decimated, mostly in Germany. [DO31-32]

Jews

• Already in the 4th and 5th centuries synagogues were burned by Christians. Number of Jews slain unknown.
• In the middle of the fourth century the first synagogue was destroyed on command of bishop Innocentius of Dertona in Northern Italy. The first synagogue known to have been burned down was near the river Euphrat, on command of the bishop of Kallinikon in the year 388. [DA450]
• 17. Council of Toledo 694: Jews were enslaved, their property confiscated, and their children forcibly baptized. [DA454]
• The Bishop of Limoges (France) in 1010 had the cities' Jews, who would not convert to Christianity, expelled or killed. [DA453]
• First Crusade: Thousands of Jews slaughtered 1096, maybe 12.000 total. Places: Worms 5/18/1096, Mainz 5/27/1096 (1100 persons), Cologne, Neuss, Altenahr, Wevelinghoven, Xanten, Moers, Dortmund, Kerpen, Trier, Metz, Regensburg, Prag and others (All locations Germany except Metz/France, Prag/Czech) [EJ]
• Second Crusade: 1147. Several hundred Jews were slain in Ham, Sully, Carentan, and Rameru (all locations in France). [WW57]
• Third Crusade: English Jewish communities sacked 1189/90. [DO40]
• Fulda/Germany 1235: 34 Jewish men and women slain. [DO41]
• 1257, 1267: Jewish communities of London, Canterbury, Northampton, Lincoln, Cambridge, and others exterminated. [DO41]
• 1290 in Bohemian (Poland) allegedly 10,000 Jews killed. [DO41]
• 1337 Starting in Deggendorf/Germany a Jew-killing craze reaches 51 towns in Bavaria, Austria, Poland. [DO41]
• 1348 All Jews of Basel/Switzerland and Strasbourg/France (two thousand) burned. [DO41]
• 1349 In more than 350 towns in Germany all Jews murdered, mostly burned alive (in this one year more Jews were killed than Christians in 200 years of ancient Roman persecution of Christians). [DO42]
• 1389 In Prag 3,000 Jews were slaughtered. [DO42]
• 1391 Seville's Jews killed (Archbishop Martinez leading). 4,000 were slain, 25,000 sold as slaves. [DA454] Their identification was made easy by the brightly colored "badges of shame" that all jews above the age of ten had been forced to wear.
• 1492: In the year Columbus set sail to conquer a New World, more than 150,000 Jews were expelled from Spain, many died on their way: 6/30/1492. [MM470-476]
• 1648 Chmielnitzki massacres: In Poland about 200,000 Jews were slain. [DO43]

(I feel sick ...) this goes on and on, century after century, right into the kilns of Auschwitz.
​

Native Peoples

• Beginning with Columbus (a former slave trader and would-be Holy Crusader) the conquest of the New World began, as usual understood as a means to propagate Christianity.
• Within hours of landfall on the first inhabited island he encountered in the Caribbean, Columbus seized and carried off six native people who, he said, "ought to be good servants ... [and] would easily be made Christians, because it seemed to me that they belonged to no religion." [SH200]
  While Columbus described the Indians as "idolators" and "slaves, as many as [the Crown] shall order," his pal Michele de Cuneo, Italian nobleman, referred to the natives as "beasts" because "they eat when they are hungry," and made love "openly whenever they feel like it." [SH204-205]
• On every island he set foot on, Columbus planted a cross, "making the declarations that are required" - the requerimiento - to claim the ownership for his Catholic patrons in Spain. And "nobody objected." If the Indians refused or delayed their acceptance (or understanding), the requerimiento continued:

I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter in your country and shall make war against you ... and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church ... and shall do you all mischief that we can, as to vassals who do not obey and refuse to receive their lord and resist and contradict him." [SH66]​

• Likewise in the words of John Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony: "justifieinge the undertakeres of the intended Plantation in New England ... to carry the Gospell into those parts of the world, ... and to raise a Bulworke against the kingdome of the Ante-Christ." [SH235]
• In average two thirds of the native population were killed by colonist-imported smallpox before violence began. This was a great sign of "the marvelous goodness and providence of God" to the Christians of course, e.g. the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony wrote in 1634, as "for the natives, they are near all dead of the smallpox, so as the Lord hath cleared our title to what we possess." [SH109,238]
• On Hispaniola alone, on Columbus visits, the native population (Arawak), a rather harmless and happy people living on an island of abundant natural resources, a literal paradise, soon mourned 50,000 dead. [SH204]
• The surviving Indians fell victim to rape, murder, enslavement and spanish raids.
• As one of the culprits wrote: "So many Indians died that they could not be counted, all through the land the Indians lay dead everywhere. The stench was very great and pestiferous." [SH69]
• The indian chief Hatuey fled with his people but was captured and burned alive. As "they were tying him to the stake a Franciscan friar urged him to take Jesus to his heart so that his soul might go to heaven, rather than descend into hell. Hatuey replied that if heaven was where the Christians went, he would rather go to hell." [SH70]
• What happened to his people was described by an eyewitness:
  "The Spaniards found pleasure in inventing all kinds of odd cruelties ... They built a long gibbet, long enough for the toes to touch the ground to prevent strangling, and hanged thirteen [natives] at a time in honor of Christ Our Saviour and the twelve Apostles... then, straw was wrapped around their torn bodies and they were burned alive." [SH72]
  Or, on another occasion:
  "The Spaniards cut off the arm of one, the leg or hip of another, and from some their heads at one stroke, like butchers cutting up beef and mutton for market. Six hundred, including the cacique, were thus slain like brute beasts...Vasco [de Balboa] ordered forty of them to be torn to pieces by dogs." [SH83]
• The "island's population of about eight million people at the time of Columbus's arrival in 1492 already had declined by a third to a half before the year 1496 was out." Eventually all the island's natives were exterminated, so the Spaniards were "forced" to import slaves from other caribbean islands, who soon suffered the same fate. Thus "the Caribbean's millions of native people [were] thereby effectively liquidated in barely a quarter of a century". [SH72-73] "In less than the normal lifetime of a single human being, an entire culture of millions of people, thousands of years resident in their homeland, had been exterminated." [SH75]
• "And then the Spanish turned their attention to the mainland of Mexico and Central America. The slaughter had barely begun. The exquisite city of Tenochtitln [Mexico city] was next." [SH75]
• Cortez, Pizarro, De Soto and hundreds of other spanish conquistadors likewise sacked southern and mesoamerican civilizations in the name of Christ (De Soto also sacked Florida).
• "When the 16th century ended, some 200,000 Spaniards had moved to the Americas. By that time probably more than 60,000,000 natives were dead." [SH95]

Of course no different were the founders of what today is the US of Amerikkka.

• Although none of the settlers would have survived winter without native help, they soon set out to expel and exterminate the Indians. Warfare among (north American) Indians was rather harmless, in comparison to European standards, and was meant to avenge insults rather than conquer land. In the words of some of the pilgrim fathers: "Their Warres are farre less bloudy...", so that there usually was "no great slawter of nether side". Indeed, "they might fight seven yeares and not kill seven men." What is more, the Indians usually spared women and children. [SH111]
• In the spring of 1612 some English colonists found life among the (generally friendly and generous) natives attractive enough to leave Jamestown - "being idell ... did runne away unto the Indyans," - to live among them (that probably solved a sex problem).
  "Governor Thomas Dale had them hunted down and executed: 'Some he apointed (sic) to be hanged Some burned Some to be broken upon wheles, others to be staked and some shott to deathe'." [SH105] Of course these elegant measures were restricted for fellow englishmen: "This was the treatment for those who wished to act like Indians. For those who had no choice in the matter, because they were the native people of Virginia" methods were different: "when an Indian was accused by an Englishman of stealing a cup and failing to return it, the English response was to attack the natives in force, burning the entire community" down. [SH105]
• On the territory that is now Massachusetts the founding fathers of the colonies were committing genocide, in what has become known as the "Peqout War". The killers were New England Puritan Christians, refugees from persecution in their own home country England.
• When however, a dead colonist was found, apparently killed by Narragansett Indians, the Puritan colonists wanted revenge. Despite the Indian chief's pledge they attacked.
  Somehow they seem to have lost the idea of what they were after, because when they were greeted by Pequot Indians (long-time foes of the Narragansetts) the troops nevertheless made war on the Pequots and burned their villages.
  The puritan commander-in-charge John Mason after one massacre wrote: "And indeed such a dreadful Terror did the Almighty let fall upon their Spirits, that they would fly from us and run into the very Flames, where many of them perished ... God was above them, who laughed his Enemies and the Enemies of his People to Scorn, making them as a fiery Oven ... Thus did the Lord judge among the Heathen, filling the Place with dead Bodies": men, women, children. [SH113-114]
• So "the Lord was pleased to smite our Enemies in the hinder Parts, and to give us their land for an inheritance". [SH111].
• Because of his readers' assumed knowledge of Deuteronomy, there was no need for Mason to quote the words that immediately follow:
  "Thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth. But thou shalt utterly destroy them..." (Deut 20)
• Mason's comrade Underhill recalled how "great and doleful was the bloody sight to the view of the young soldiers" yet reassured his readers that "sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents". [SH114]
• Other Indians were killed in successful plots of poisoning. The colonists even had dogs especially trained to kill Indians and to devour children from their mothers breasts, in the colonists' own words: "blood Hounds to draw after them, and Mastives to seaze them." (This was inspired by spanish methods of the time)
  In this way they continued until the extermination of the Pequots was near. [SH107-119]
• The surviving handful of Indians "were parceled out to live in servitude. John Endicott and his pastor wrote to the governor asking for 'a share' of the captives, specifically 'a young woman or girle and a boy if you thinke good'." [SH115]
• Other tribes were to follow the same path.
• Comment the Christian exterminators: "God's Will, which will at last give us cause to say: How Great is His Goodness! and How Great is his Beauty!"
  "Thus doth the Lord Jesus make them to bow before him, and to lick the Dust!" [TA]
• Like today, lying was OK to Christians then. "Peace treaties were signed with every intention to violate them: when the Indians 'grow secure uppon (sic) the treatie', advised the Council of State in Virginia, 'we shall have the better Advantage both to surprise them, & cutt downe theire Corne'." [SH106]
• In 1624 sixty heavily armed Englishmen cut down 800 defenseless Indian men, women and children. [SH107]
• In a single massacre in "King Philip's War" of 1675 and 1676 some "600 Indians were destroyed. A delighted Cotton Mather, revered pastor of the Second Church in Boston, later referred to the slaughter as a 'barbeque'." [SH115]
• To summarize: Before the arrival of the English, the western Abenaki people in New Hampshire and Vermont had numbered 12,000. Less than half a century later about 250 remained alive - a destruction rate of 98%. The Pocumtuck people had numbered more than 18,000, fifty years later they were down to 920 - 95% destroyed. The Quiripi-Unquachog people had numbered about 30,000, fifty years later they were down to 1500 - 95% destroyed. The Massachusetts people had numbered at least 44,000, fifty years later barely 6000 were alive - 81% destroyed. [SH118] These are only a few examples of the multitude of tribes living before Christian colonists set their foot on the New World. All this was before the smallpox epidemics of 1677 and 1678 had occurred. And the carnage was not over then.
• All the above was only the beginning of the European colonization, it was before the frontier age actually had begun.
• A total of maybe more than 150 million Indians (of both Americas) were destroyed in the period of 1500 to 1900, as an average two thirds by smallpox and other epidemics, that leaves some 50 million killed directly by violence, bad treatment and slavery.
• In many countries, such as Brazil, and Guatemala, this continues even today.

More Glorious events in US history

• Reverend Solomon Stoddard, one of New England's most esteemed religious leaders, in "1703 formally proposed to the Massachusetts Governor that the colonists be given the financial wherewithal to purchase and train large packs of dogs 'to hunt Indians as they do bears'." [SH241]
• Massacre of Sand Creek, Colorado 11/29/1864. Colonel John Chivington, a former Methodist minister and still elder in the church ("I long to be wading in gore") had a Cheyenne village of about 600, mostly women and children, gunned down despite the chiefs' waving with a white flag: 400-500 killed.
  From an eye-witness account: "There were some thirty or forty squaws collected in a hole for protection; they sent out a little girl about six years old with a white flag on a stick; she had not proceeded but a few steps when she was shot and killed. All the squaws in that hole were afterwards killed ..." [SH131]
  More gory details.
• By the 1860s, "in Hawai'i the Reverend Rufus Anderson surveyed the carnage that by then had reduced those islands' native population by 90 percent or more, and he declined to see it as tragedy; the expected total die-off of the Hawaiian population was only natural, this missionary said, somewhat equivalent to 'the amputation of diseased members of the body'." [SH244]

20th Century Church Atrocities

• Catholic extermination camps
  Surpisingly few know that Nazi extermination camps in World War II were by no means the only ones in Europe at the time. In the years 1942-1943 also in Croatia existed numerous extermination camps, run by Catholic Ustasha under their dictator Ante Paveli, a practising Catholic and regular visitor to the then pope. There were even concentration camps exclusively for children!
  
  In these camps - the most notorious was Jasenovac, headed by a Franciscan friar - orthodox-Christian serbians (and a substantial number of Jews) were murdered. Like the Nazis the Catholic Ustasha burned their victims in kilns, alive (the Nazis were decent enough to have their victims gassed first). But most of the victims were simply stabbed, slain or shot to death, the number of them being estimated between 300,000 and 600,000, in a rather tiny country. Many of the killers were Franciscan friars. The atrocities were appalling enough to induce bystanders of the Nazi "Sicherheitsdient der SS", watching, to complain about them to Hitler (who did not listen). The pope knew about these events and did nothing to prevent them. [MV]
• Catholic terror in Vietnam
  In 1954 Vietnamese freedom fighters - the Viet Minh - had finally defeated the French colonial government in North Vietnam, which by then had been supported by U.S. funds amounting to more than $2 billion. Although the victorious assured religious freedom to all (most non-buddhist Vietnamese were Catholics), due to huge anticommunist propaganda campaigns many Catholics fled to the South. With the help of Catholic lobbies in Washington and Cardinal Spellman, the Vatican's spokesman in U.S. politics, who later on would call the U.S. forces in Vietnam "Soldiers of Christ", a scheme was concocted to prevent democratic elections which could have brought the communist Viet Minh to power in the South as well, and the fanatic Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem was made president of South Vietnam. [MW16ff]
  
  Diem saw to it that U.S. aid, food, technical and general assistance was given to Catholics alone, Buddhist individuals and villages were ignored or had to pay for the food aids which were given to Catholics for free. The only religious denomination to be supported was Roman Catholicism.
  
  The Vietnamese McCarthyism turned even more vicious than its American counterpart. By 1956 Diem promulgated a presidential order which read:
• • "Individuals considered dangerous to the national defense and common security may be confined by executive order, to a concentration camp."

Supposedly to fight communism, thousands of buddhist protesters and monks were imprisoned in "detention camps." Out of protest dozens of buddhist teachers - male and female - and monks poured gasoline over themselves and burned themselves. (Note that Buddhists burned themselves: in comparison Christians tend to burn others). Meanwhile some of the prison camps, which in the meantime were filled with Protestant and even Catholic protesters as well, had turned into no-nonsense death camps. It is estimated that during this period of terror (1955-1960) at least 24,000 were wounded - mostly in street riots - 80,000 people were executed, 275,000 had been detained or tortured, and about 500,000 were sent to concentration or detention camps. [MW76-89].

To support this kind of government in the next decade thousands of American GI's lost their life....
​

• Rwanda Massacres
  In 1994 in the small african country of Rwanda in just a few months several hundred thousand civilians were butchered, apparently a conflict of the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups.

For quite some time I heard only rumours about Catholic clergy actively involved in the 1994 Rwanda massacres. Odd denials of involvement were printed in Catholic church journals, before even anybody had openly accused members of the church.
Then, 10/10/96, in the newscast of S2 Aktuell, Germany - a station not at all critical to Christianity - the following was stated:

"Anglican as well as Catholic priests and nuns are suspect of having actively participated in murders. Especially the conduct of a certain Catholic priest has been occupying the public mind in Rwanda's capital Kigali for months. He was minister of the church of the Holy Family and allegedly murdered Tutsis in the most brutal manner. He is reported to have accompanied marauding Hutu militia with a gun in his cowl. In fact there has been a bloody slaughter of Tutsis seeking shelter in his parish. Even two years after the massacres many Catholics refuse to set foot on the threshold of their church, because to them the participation of a certain part of the clergy in the slaughter is well established. There is almost no church in Rwanda that has not seen refugees - women, children, old - being brutally butchered facing the crucifix.

According to eyewitnesses clergymen gave away hiding Tutsis and turned them over to the machetes of the Hutu militia.
In connection with these events again and again two Benedictine nuns are mentioned, both of whom have fled into a Belgian monastery in the meantime to avoid prosecution. According to survivors one of them called the Hutu killers and led them to several thousand people who had sought shelter in her monastery. By force the doomed were driven out of the churchyard and were murdered in the presence of the nun right in front of the gate. The other one is also reported to have directly cooperated with the murderers of the Hutu militia. In her case again witnesses report that she watched the slaughtering of people in cold blood and without showing response. She is even accused of having procured some petrol used by the killers to set on fire and burn their victims alive..." [S2]
​

As can be seen from these events, to Christianity the Dark Ages never come to an end....
References:

[DA] K.Deschner, Abermals krhte der Hahn, Stuttgart 1962. [DO] K.Deschner, Opus Diaboli, Reinbek 1987. [EC] P.W.Edbury, Crusade and Settlement, Cardiff Univ. Press 1985. [EJ] S.Eidelberg, The Jews and the Crusaders, Madison 1977. [LI] H.C.Lea, The Inquisition of the Middle Ages, New York 1961. [MM] M.Margolis, A.Marx, A History of the Jewish People. [MV] A.Manhattan, The Vatican's Holocaust, Springfield 1986.
See also V.Dedijer, The Yugoslav Auschwitz and the Vatican, Buffalo NY, 1992. [NC] J.T.Noonan, Contraception: A History of its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists, Cambridge/Mass., 1992. [S2] Newscast of S2 Aktuell, Germany, 10/10/96, 12:00. [SH] D.Stannard, American Holocaust, Oxford University Press 1992. [SP] German news magazine Der Spiegel, no.49, 12/2/1996. [TA] A True Account of the Most Considerable Occurrences that have Hapned in the Warre Between the English and the Indians in New England, London 1676. [TG] F.Turner, Beyond Geography, New York 1980. [WW] H.Wollschlger: Die bewaffneten Wallfahrten gen Jerusalem, Zrich 1973.
(This is in german and what is worse, it is out of print. But it is the best I ever read about crusades and includes a full list of original medieval Christian chroniclers' writings). [WV] Estimates on the number of executed witches:

• N.Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons: An Enquiry Inspired by the Great Witch Hunt, Frogmore 1976, 253.
• R.H.Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, New York 1959, 180.
• J.B.Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages, Ithaca/NY 1972, 39.
• H.Zwetsloot, Friedrich Spee und die Hexenprozesse, Trier 1954, 56

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