Comte de Sats Germain on Nostr: Thanks for clearing that up. I was very unhappy, thinking that one of my favorite ...

Thanks for clearing that up. I was very unhappy, thinking that one of my favorite nostr people was in favor of burning heretics (or anyone).

At Salem, the accusers gained financially from the deaths of those women - unfortunately I forgot the details, but I remember concluding that and arguing it in an essay in middle school (which certainly means the teacher was teaching it but being clever).

As for the Inquisition, it began in what's now south France, and it was essentially a land grab by the king of France, very similar to the extermination of the Knights Templar about 200 years later. Maybe the "success" of exterminating the Cathars (very devout Catholics, who just had some doctrinal differences not recognized as differences until **_after_** the extermination and they needed to justify it) probably inspired the later extermination of the Templars. It also continued on for decades in Spain after the Cathars were eliminated in France, and I'd bet a lot (except I don't actually bet) that there was financial gain there too. So it seems to me that the major difference between Protestant burnings of people and Catholic burnings is just that the Protestant version is more democratic.

Fun fact - the original reason they chose to burn them to death in south France was because they thought it would inflict such suffering that their souls wouldn't reincarnate on earth for a very long time (I've heard 700 years, but that seems speculative to me). Just more evidence on the enormous heap of evidence that near-ancient christians believed in reincarnation. The main piece of evidence is the decree by Justinian in the 6th century that that belief is heretical and punishable by death - he had just reconquered Italy and needed some pretext to exterminate his enemies, who by that time were all Christians. Isn't history fascinating?