And to explain political systems-like why a particular family had absolute rule over a kingdom-leaders turned to religion, claiming a divine right from God.īut during this time, a series of religious, political, and scientific upheavals began challenging the status quo, culminating in the Enlightenment-an intellectual movement in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that sought to improve society through fact-based reason and inquiry. To understand the world-including phenomena such as plagues of caterpillars-people would turn to supernatural belief in witches or religious belief in Satan. Then again, science and reason have not always prevailed.įor centuries, intellectual and political authority came from religion and other traditional beliefs. How did this happen? Surely anyone using science and reason could have deduced that such charges were ludicrous, right? Between 15, Europe executed tens of thousands of people-mostly women-on charges of witchcraft. While extraordinary by today’s standards, Henot’s case was alarmingly common for the time. For these alleged crimes, she was repeatedly tortured and publicly executed. They claimed she wielded magic, worked with the devil, and had infested a local nunnery with a plague of caterpillars. In 1627, officials in Cologne, Germany, accused Katharina Henot-a local postmaster and influential socialite-of witchcraft.
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