Catholics killed heretics; Protestants killed witches

Heresies

Catholic Answers

The Inquisition was set up in the Catholic Church to root out & punish heresy. In 1184 Pope Lucius III sent bishops to southern France to track down Cathar heretics. In 1231 Pope Gregory officially charged the Dominican & Franciscan Orders with hunting heretics. Then in the C14th, the church pursued the Waldensians in Germany and Northern Italy.

Inquisitors moved into a town and announced their arrival, giving citizens a chance to admit to heresy. Those who confessed were forced to testify and received a punishment. If the heretic did not confess, torture and execution were inescapable. Heretics weren’t allowed to face accusers and received no counsel. The Inquisitors, on the other hand, were supported with a manual called “Conduct of the Inquisition into Heretical Depravity”.

Nonetheless there were many abuses of power. In 1307 Inquisitors were involved in the mass arrest and tortures of 15,000 Knights Templar in France, resulting in many executions. Joan of Arc was also burned at the stake in 1431 by this Inquisition.

In the late C15th, King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella of Spain believed corruption in the Spanish Catholic Church was caused by Jews who, to survive increasing anti-Semitism, converted to Christianity. These Conversos were viewed with suspicion and were blamed for plagues, accused of poisoning peoples’ water and abducting Christian children.

Auto de fé, final, public stage for punishing religious heretics.
Jan Hus at the stake, 1485
FreeSpeechHistory

The 2 monarchs believed Conversos were secretly practising their old religion;  and that Christian support would be crucial for their upcoming crusade in Muslim Granada. King Ferdinand felt an Inquisition was the best way to fund that crusade, by seizing the wealth of heretic Conversos.

In 1478, urged by clergyman Tomas de Torquemada, the two monarchs created the Tribunal of Castile to investigate heresy among Conversos. The effort at first focused on stronger Catholic education for Conversos, but by 1480, Jews in Castile were forced into isolated and locked up ghettos. The Inquisition expanded to Seville and a mass exodus of Conversos followed. In 1481, 20,000 Conversos confessed to heresy, hoping to avoid execution. But by the year’s end, hundreds of Conversos were burned at the stake.

Hearing the complaints of Conversos who had fled to Rome, Pope Sextus stated that the Spanish Inquisition was wrongly accusing Conversos. In 1482 Sextus appointed a council to take command of the Inquisition, but the same Torquemada was named Inquisitor Gen­eral and established courts across Spain. Torture became systemised and routinely used to elicit confessions. Sent­encing of confessed heretics was done in a public event called the Auto-da-Fe. Torque­mada’s downfall came only when he investigated members of the clergy for heresy. Diego de Deza took over as Inquisitor General, escalating the hunt for heresy within cities and rounding up scores of accused heretics, including members of the nobility and local governments. Some were able to bribe their way out of imprisonment.

After Isabella’s death in 1504, Ferdinand promoted Cardinal Gonzalo Ximenes de Cisneros, head of the Spanish Catholic Church, to In­qu­is­itor General. Ximenes had previously been successful in pers­ecuting Islamic Moors in in Granada. As Inquisitor General, Ximenes pursued Muslims into North Africa, encouraging the king to take military action and to establish the Inquisition there.

The Protestant Reformation

Martin Luther published his 95 Theses in 1517 and the Reformation began.  Rome renewed its own Inquisition in 1542 when Pope Paul III created the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman Inquisition to combat Protestant heresy!! And in 1545, the Spanish Index was created, a list of heretical European books forbidden in Spain, based on the Roman Inquisition’s own index.

The popul­at­ion of Spanish Protestants increased, particularly in the 1550s. In 1556, King Philip II ascended the Spanish throne - he had previously brought the Roman Inquisition to the Netherlands, where Lutherans had been hunted and burned at the stake. Although origin­al­ly organised to deal only with Jews and Moors, The Spanish Inquisition now had to widen out to include Protestant heretics.

As Spain expanded into the Americas, so did the New World Inquis­it­ion; it was established in Mexico in 1570 and in 1574 in Peru. In 1580 Spain conquered Portugal, and began rounding up and kill­ing Jews and Protestants who had fled Spain. Philip II also renewed hostilities against the Moors, selling them into slavery. 

A late witch trial in Protestant Europe in Paisley, near Glasgow, 1697.
Amusing Planet

Witch-hunts were completely different. They started only after the Reformation in majority-Protestant countries, with the num­ber of cases increasing in the later C16th. At the very same time in Catholic countries in southern Europe, there were almost no witch trials because they were banned by the Catholic Church. As a result the Spanish killed only a handful of witches, the Portuguese just one and the Italians none at all. 

So the witch-craze focused on Protestant northern Europe, in countries like Germany, France and Scotland. Presumably in those countries witchcraft was seen as a remnant of ignorant Catholic beliefs that needed to be eradicated. 

Witchcraft and heresy were thus inversely related: as witchcraft trials were on the rise in Protestant countries, large-scale heresy trials rapidly decreased. In Scotland there were large-scale witch-hunts in 1590, 1597, the 1620s and 1649. Was witchcraft merely an alternative way of accusing heretics, without calling it heresy? 

Even in majority Protestant populations, there were regional differences. In places like Russia and Estonia the majority of executed witches were men (68%), not women (32%). In Germany the vast majority of executed witches were women (82%).  Did Eastern Europe communities have different views of women? And witch prosecutions in the Protestant Low Countries had almost ended by 1578, many decades before they died out in Germany and Scotland. 

Where the Catholic Church was strong (Spain, Portugal, Italy), the Reformation was definitely the first time that the church had to cope with a large-scale threat to its existence and legitimacy. The Spanish Inquisition was so busy executing c32,000 religious heretics in 200+ years that they didn’t have the time or the need to go after witches. 

In 150 years in Protestant countries, c80,000 people were tried for witch­craft and c40,000 of them were executed. Only after 1700 did witch trials disappear, almost completely, in Protestant communities.