During the big festivals, the European Christians in the Middle Ages would abuse and even kill cats to death in various strange ways to show that they had successfully killed the "Satan/Devil", so as to increase their sense of mission to God, and to add joy to the big festival, and also to show a high respect for the God they believed.

What's even more numbing to the scalp is that in order to please the gods, all kinds of hollow-out cat abuse techniques have also been invented.

For example, some Christians will show their hatred and disgust for "Satan/the devil" by tying them to miniature stakes and burning them alive in the same way as heretics.

Others prepare a bucket of water and drown the cat alive in a bowl, while others disembowels the cat alive and gouges out its heart.

There are also some of the most twisted cat sadists, who like very complicated methods of killing cats, they use all kinds of sharp and hard objects to cut the cat's throat, and then stuff iron tools into the cut throat to block the cat's respiratory tract, and then squeeze out the cat's tongue and cut it off, and finally hang the dying cat high, so that the tortured cat will die very hard and slowly.

In Gaul, the public burning of live cats in the squares, sometimes including hapless stray dogs, in the middle of summer became an important leisure activity for Parisians!

Travelers at the time recorded this cruel scene, and a later discovery of a travel notebook records the following incident: on June 24, the feast of John the Baptist, a high bonfire was lit in the square, and scaffolding was erected around the fire.

The magistrates and their servants poured the wild cats they had caught from high places into the fire, and the people laughed at the wails of the animals until the demon-possessed spirit was charred into charcoal.

In 1533, when Queen Elizabeth I was crowned, the priest prayed loudly to the sound of boxes of cats screaming in the flames.

The result was that when the Black Death broke out in 1348, there were almost no domestic cats left in the whole of Europe! Only a few areas still had some wild cats survive, and as you know, there were no rat-catching cats, and the plague with rats as the carrier swept across Europe, bringing about a tragedy that could not bear to be looked at.

In medieval Europe, it was widely believed that every night, witches would smear themselves with "devil's oil" made from babies, and then go through cracks and keyholes, slide up chimneys, ride on broomstick handles, and fly to witch gatherings in demonic gatherings......

Miscarriage and debauchery are often seen as witches, as well as natural disasters such as hailstorms, poor harvests, and disease.

On the surface, the most direct reason for this hatred of witches is from the Christian Bible.

For witchcraft is severely condemned and forbidden many times in the Bible, such as in the book of Deuteronomy:

Let no one among you put his children through fire, nor soothsayers, or soothsayers, nor sorcerers, nor those who pass through the shadows, but all those who do these things are an abomination to the LORD, because the people have done this abomination, and therefore the LORD your God has cast them out from before you.

Christian priests launched a persecution of witches for nearly 400 years based on the Bible's "saying" that "a woman who practices sorceries shall not allow her to live."

During these dark 400 years, countless women from good families were falsely accused of being "witches", or beheaded in public, or burned at the stake.

In 1487, the Church published the Witch's Hammer, a "specialized book" on witch hunting, which directly pushed the persecution of women to a climax.

The book declares that "witchcraft is the lust of the flesh, which is never satisfied in women, and the devil knows that women love sensual pleasures, and seduces them to be loyal with sexual pleasures."

Therefore, in many court documents about witch accusations, there is a charge of selling the soul with Devil X.

In addition, at that time, those elderly women who lived alone and had the habit of keeping cats were more likely to be the object of suspicion, and the combination of cats and women was simply a target to send to the door, and it was a shame to teach if they were not persecuted.

Witches sentenced to death have their property confiscated, and economic benefits have made the political and judicial circles more active in witch hunting. At the height of the persecution, many women who did not understand witchcraft were falsely accused of witchcraft and burned alive.

Moreover, at its peak in the 16th century, witch hunting trials were mostly tried by secular courts rather than religious courts, and at that time, the judgments of secular courts on witches were often based on personal accusations, and often contained prejudices and religious attitudes.

Especially after the rise of the Reformation, the Church gradually lost control of European society, and the rise of Protestantism coincided with the rise of various witchcraft beliefs, so it was gradually treated as an important enemy by the Church.

At that time, it was not only the Catholic Inquisition that burned witches, but also some Protestant churches that had undergone the Reformation regarded witches as their great enemies and killed them in large numbers.

Martin Luther, for example, the founder of the European Reformation, once said, "There should be no sympathy for witches, and I will burn them with my own hands, because the law dictates that the clergy should take the lead in stoning criminals." ”

With the spread of modern printing technology invented by Gutenberg in Europe, the book was reprinted nearly 30 times in the nearly 200 years from 1487 to 1669, thus triggering a protracted "witch hunt".

The Hammer of the Witches details the specific methods of interrogation of "witches" and the effective methods used to ensure the success of the trial.

There is neither a prosecution process nor a defender, and in addition to torture as a means of extracting confessions, there is also the so-called "witch" test.

According to the theory provided in the book, since the "witches" were enchanted by the devil and were no longer sensitive to pain, they could be tortured as they pleased.

These include, but are not limited to, burning the defendant's hand with a piece of red-hot iron, which means that the defendant is guilty if the hand is burned, having the defendant take a holy ring in boiling water with his hand, and then putting a bandage and seal on his hand, and if there is no trace after three days, he is not guilty, etc......

One of the more bizarre ways to identify is that a witch is not going to fly all over the sky on a broomstick? The method of testing whether a woman is a witch or not is related to her weight, and anyone who is underweight is counted as a witch, and the absurd result of this absurd practice is that no matter whether the person being judged is "guilty" or not, they have only one way to die.

The witch trials of the Middle Ages had a very dark side, and the vast majority of "witches" who were executed were innocent women.

The unfair trial of women can be learned from the account of The Hammer of the Witches: "If the defendant leads an immoral life, then of course it proves that she has dealings with the devil, and if she is pious and behaves modestly, then she is obviously disguised in order to use her piety to divert suspicion from her demonic dealings and her attendance at witch meetings at night...... For witches are accustomed to lie shamelessly, and if she pleads to the accusations made against her, it proves her guilt, and if she is frightened, despaired, and silent because of the terrible accusations made against her, this is already direct evidence of her guilt......"

From the case of Our Lady of the East in Italy in 1390, when two witches were burned to death, to 1811, when a witch named Barbara Zdunke was executed in Prussia, becoming the last witch to be executed in recorded Europe, the witch hunt that lasted in Europe for more than 400 years finally came to an end.

The European Church in the Middle Ages showed a very strong tendency to suppress heresy, and physical extermination was the usual means.

The basis for determining a "witch" is varied, but the most critical is to violate the orthodox doctrine accepted by the church or challenge the authority of the church.

"Witches" or "wizards" mostly refer to enemies within the church. Because the church is inherently antithetical to God and the devil, insiders who oppose the church are often defined as "witches" or "wizards."

Joan of Arc, for example, did not oppose God, but argued that she was called by God to save Gaul. But her behavior was intolerable to the Church, and if an ordinary peasant woman could freely claim to see God, where would the authority of the Church go?

These are the cat slaughtering and witch hunting campaigns in European history, and the explanations given are also the results of later scholars' research, but after research, we found that things are not so simple. ”

Li Suifeng said a lot of things in front of him, and the two people below were drowsy when they listened, and when Li Suifeng's voice changed, Yang Pingfan and the others immediately came to their senses, and they were really tired! Li Suifeng would not have asked everyone to come over for history class for no reason.

I saw Li Suifeng turn on the holographic projection, and a strange skeleton appeared in the air, the torso and limbs were human-like, but the skull was more like an animal, and the overall size was about the same as that of a child.

"Can you guess what kind of skeleton this is?"

Li Donglai shook his head, Yang Pingfan had a vague answer in his heart, but he didn't dare to say it, it was too shocking.

Li Suifeng clicked and switched to the restoration map, Li Donglai let out a burst of exclamation, only to see that the skeleton had turned into a strange creature with a human body and a cat's head.

Li Suifeng ignored the surprised expressions of the two, and continued to click, and various strange-shaped bones continued to appear in the air, although they were incomplete, but under the modern restoration technology, it could still be seen that they were various limb remains of cat people.

"It's not a thriller, it's not a science fiction movie, it's all true, the stumps in the back are mainly found in cemeteries near churches handed down from the Middle Ages all over Europe, and the first picture you saw just now is the most complete -