f the inquisitors would be answered as
they wanted them answered. It would be incredible were it not attested
by such a multitude of witnesses, that men could honestly believe that
testimony so extorted had the slightest value. But it is indisputable
that hundreds of thousands of human beings were sent to a cruel death on
this utterly worthless "evidence."

As few people realize the degree in which these superstitions were
encouraged by the Church that claims infallibility, I may mention that
the reality of this particular crime was implied and its perpetrators
anathematized by the provincial councils or synods of Troyes, Lyons,
Milan, Tours, Bourges, Narbonne, Ferrar, Saint Malo, Mont Corsin,
Orleans, and Grenoble; by the Rituals of Autun, Chartres, Perigueux,
Evreux, Paris, Chalons, Bologna, Troyes, Beauvais, Meaux, Rheims, etc.,
and by the decrees of a long series of bishops.

The infection was everywhere--Germany, Spain, Portugal, France, Italy,
England, Scotland, and even America was scourged. It has been estimated
that one hundred thousand perished in Germany from the middle of the
fifteenth century to the middle of the sixteenth century.

Pope Gregory IX wrote a great mass of nonsense to the bishop and other
chiefs urging stringent methods against the Stedingers, Frieslanders,
inhabiting the country between Weser and Zeider Zee. He wrote, "The
Devil appears to them (the Stedingers) in different shapes, sometimes as
a goose or duck, and at other times in the figure of a pale, black-eyed
youth, with a melancholy aspect, whose embrace fills their hearts with
eternal hatred against the Holy Church of Christ. This Devil presides at
their sabbath when they all kiss him and dance around him. He then
envelops them in total darkness, and they all, male and female, give
themselves up to the grossest and most disgusting debauchery."

The infallible pope of Rome!

The result was that the Stedingers, men, women, and children, were
slain, the cottages and woods burned, the cattle stolen and the land
laid waste. The pope's letter is a fair example of the theological
literature of the time; the slaughter of the Stedingers an average
illustration of the evangelistic methods of the Church.

Millions of men, women, and children were tortured, strangled, drowned,
or burned on "evidence" that today would be accepted nowhere unless by a
court and jury composed of the inmates of a lunatic asylum, if even by
them. It is unnecessar