Real Vampires, Night Stalkers and Creatures from the Darkside. Brad Steiger

Europe and England. Those Templars who insisted upon presenting a defense were finally brought to trial in 1312; and in spite of 573 witnesses for their defense, at least 54 knights were tortured en masse, burned at the stake, and their order disbanded by Pope Clement V.

      In 1313, as he was being burned to death on a scaffold especially erected for the occasion in front of Notre Dame, the Templar’s Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, recanted the confession that was forced from him by torture and reaffirmed his innocence to both the Pope and the King. With his last breath, de Molay invited his two former friends and allies to join him at Heaven’s gate. When both dignitaries died soon after de Molay’s public execution, it seemed to the public and a good number of political and religious figures that the Grand Master had truly been innocent of the charges of heresy and Satanism.

       The Black Death Decimates the European Population but Increases the Number of Witchcraft Trials

      In the fourteenth century, the Christian Establishment of Europe was forced to deal with an onset of social, economic, and religious changes. It was also during this time (1347–1349) that the Black Death, the bubonic plague, decimated the populations of the European nations and greatly encouraged rumors of devil-worshippers who conspired with other heretics, such as Jews and Muslims, to invoke Satan to bring about a pestilence that would destroy Christianity and the West. During most of the Middle Ages, those who practiced the Old Religion and worked with herbs and charms were largely ignored by the Church and the Inquisition. After the scourge of the Black Death, witchcraft trials began to increase steadily throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

      In 1407, men and women suspected of being werewolves were tortured and burned at Basel. The first major witch-hunt occurred in Switzerland in 1427; and in 1428, in Valais, there was a mass burning of 100 witches.

       The Spanish Inquisition Fashions Its Own Rules

      In 1478, at the request of King Ferdinand V and Queen Isabella I, papal permission was granted to establish the Spanish Inquisition and to maintain it separate from the Inquisition that extended its jurisdiction over all the rest of Europe. The Spanish Inquisition was always more interested in persecuting heretics than those suspected of witchcraft. It has been estimated that of the 5,000 men and women accused of being witches, less than one percent were condemned to death. The Spanish Inquisition was concerned with trying the Marranos or conversos, those Jews suspected of insincerely converting to Christianity; the converts from Islam, similarly thought to be insincere in practicing the Christian faith; and, in the 1520s, those individuals who were believed to have converted to Protestantism.

      Prisoners of the inquisition were held captive under the most abominable conditions, such as this iron-barred cell.

      The support of Spain’s royal house enabled Tomas de Torquemada to become the single Grand Inquisitor whose name has become synonymous with the Inquisition’s most cruel acts and excesses. Torquemada is known to have ordered the deaths by torture and burning of thousands of heretics and witches.

      The Spanish Inquisition seemed to take special delight in the pomp and ceremony of the auto-de-fe, during which hundreds of heretics might be burned at one time. If an auto-de-fe could not be made to coincide with some great festival day, it was at least held on a Sunday so that the populace could make plans to attend the burnings.

       The Malleus Maleficarum—A Hammer for Witches

      In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII became so outraged by the spread of witchcraft in Germany that he issued the papal bull Summis Desiderantes Affectibus and authorized two trusted Dominican inquisitors, Henrich Institoris (Kramer) and Jacob Sprenger, to develop a new weapon with which to squelch the power of Satan in the Rhineland.

      In 1486, Sprenger and Kramer published their Malleus Maleficarum, “A Hammer for Witches,” which quickly became the official handbook for professional witch hunters. Malleus Maleficarum strongly condemned all those who claimed that the works of demons existed only in troubled human minds. The Bible clearly revealed how certain angels fell from Heaven and sought to bewitch and seduce humans, and Sprenger and Kramer issued a strict warning that to believe otherwise was to believe contrary to the true faith. Therefore, any persons who consorted with demons and became witches must recant their evil ways or be put to death.