Well, it's time for an overly lengthy examination. Under examination in this post is an essay that was posted online quite a while ago. Upon stumbling upon it I decided to try to look into some of its claims to see if they had validity to them or not, and this blog post can perhaps be considered the results of that. So, hopefully it might be of use to people. Although it was later taken down from the original place is was posted, it hsa been re-posted on various sites.
What is this essay about? Well, the title perhaps gives it away. Though in the off chance you haven't looked at this blog post's title to see it, the essay is entitled "Estimates of the Number Killed by the Papacy in the Middle Ages and Later". There is a claim that has gone around for a while that the papacy/Roman Catholic Church killed 50 million. The specifics of the claim can vary a bit (some claim it's 50 million Christians, some say it's 50 million including non-Christians, some claim it's the total number whereas some claim it's specifically from the Inquisition), but that's the basic claim; sometimes other numbers are offered, but the 50 million is a recurring one.
Usually this is just thrown out without real backing. However, one popular source for is is the aforementioned online essay from 2006 on the subject. While it avoids definitively asserting that the 50 million claim is true, it is fairly clear that it is taking the side of those who come up with large figures such as that.
There are some issues with this essay being the apparent go-to source. One is that the author is a computer programmer with no historical credentials. Now, that doesn't mean he's inherently wrong. Plenty of useful information can be given about things by people who are not professionals in the field. But it's notable that the apparent go-to essay is not one by a true historian.
Still, a non-expert can of course mount an argument if they are using the arguments of actual experts. For example, they can cite historians in support of their arguments. But if you look at the sources that are used in the essay, you will find they constantly fall into at least one of the following three categories (sometimes all three!):
1) The source is old, and thus not up to date on scholarship, making its claims questionable.
2) The source is highly biased against Catholicism, with some of these sources being a downright attacks on Catholicism. These is not the places to find an objective historical examination.
3) The work is not by a historian or anyone who is particularly credentialed to provide a historical examination.
Thus you will see 19th century works by non-historians written with the goal of attacking Catholicism accepted quite readily, but only rarely will you see something from more recent decades from a neutral historian. When you're heavily relying on polemical, obsolete, popular sources rather than more neutral, up-to-date, scholarly ones, it is not to be surprising what kind of results you end up with. Garbage in, garbage out.
It should be noted, for the record, that the author himself (David Plaisted or David Alan Plaisted, listed as David A. Plaisted on the essay) has removed the essay from his website. However, others have posted it elsewhere, hence this examination. As the original author is not presently hosting it and therefore may
not stand by it, I will attempt in this post to try to criticize the
essay rather than the author.
I list the name primarily because it may allow people searching for
information on the essay to more easily find this post.
In some fairness to this essay, there are a few points where it is
willing to give the other side at least somewhat of a hearing, though it
tends to be rather dismissive of them. But overwhelmingly it relies, often
uncritically, on sources of the above type.
This post will not go through everything in the essay. That would be an overly massive undertaking, and this post is already one of the longest things I have ever posted here. But I can point out some problems in it, problems you'll often see recurring. When you see enough of the same sorts of problems repeated, one can reasonably assume that it extends enough to the rest of the essay that one should be very cautious taking information from it.
I have a number of disagreements with James White (a Calvinist apologist), but there is a statement in particular of his that I felt always rung very true. In a criticism of the book New Age Bible Versions, he wrote:
"There simply is no need to take the time to do a page-by-page rebuttal of this book. Why? Because once it is demonstrated that there is a consistent pattern of simple error that flows throughout NABV, we might as well move on and give our time to more important pursuits."
Similarly, if we can see a recurring pattern of errors being made due to relying uncritically on (often out of date) polemical sources, then it is not necessary to go through every single point and citation it brings up. One can simply demonstrate the pattern of error in a critique or review and then move on to other pursuits. I have not personally examined every single claim the essay makes. But the ones I have examined, as we will see, have left me without much confidence in the rest of it.
It is important to stress this. A major recurring problem is that it so frequently will uncritically take claims from sources that fall into the above categories (out of date, polemical, and/or not by a historian), and repeatedly gives unjustified claims on how to keep the numbers big in order to reach the 50 million.
With these factors in mind, we'll begin and go through it according to each individual chapter of the essay.
Chapter 1. Examples of figures concerning the number killed
Almost every single one of the sources in this section fall into at least one of the above three categories (out of date, polemical, non-scholarly), with most falling into at least two. To be fair, this portion is devoted to trying to investigate where the 50 million (or 68 million or 100 million) number came from, and that number is of course used mostly in polemical literature. So it is more excusable in this case; it will be less excusable in subsequent parts. Nevertheless, the essay appears to accept these numbers with less skepticism than it should. Here are a few especially notable examples.
Concerning the figure of two million killed, Bourne writes
Bertrand, the Papal Legate, wrote a letter to Pope Honorius, desiring to be recalled from the croisade against the primitive witnesses and contenders for the faith. In that authentic document, he stated, that within fifteen years, 300,000 of those crossed soldiers had become victims to their own fanatical and blind fury. Their unrelenting and insatiable thirst for Christian and human blood spared none within the reach of their impetuous despotism and unrestricted usurpations. On the river Garonne, a conflict occurred between the croisaders, with their ecclesiastical leaders, the Prelates of Thoulouse and Comminges; who solemnly promised to all their vassals the full pardon of sin, and the possession of heaven immediately, if they were slain in the battle. The Spanish monarch and his confederates acknowledged that they must have lost 400,000 men, in that tremendous conflict, and immediately after it-but the Papists boasted, that including the women and children, they had massacred more than two millions of the human family, in that solitary croisade against the southwest part of France.
-- Bourne, George, The American Textbook of Popery, Griffith & Simon, Philadelphia, 1846, pp. 402-403.
In only one crusade, two million Albigenses were killed. How many must there have been altogether, and how many millions more must have been killed during the entire Middle Ages!
As noted, this falls into all of the categories: It's a polemical work (its usage of the pejorative term "popery" in the title gives that away) written in the 19th century by someone who, as far as I can tell, was not a historian. But note how the essay appears to accept this two million figure without reservation. Even setting aside the fact it's a polemical 19th century work by a non-historian, note that even Bourne does not say that millions were killed. Rather, he says that "the Papists boasted, that including the women and children, they had massacred more than two millions of the human family, in that solitary croisade against the southwest part of France." Furthermore, Bourne provides no citation for this (or anything in the above paragraph, actually). Who exactly were the Papists who "boasted" of this? If they did boast, is there any reason we should take the number seriously given that people can exaggerate things in boasting? Let's review: This was a claim from a polemical out-of-date work not by a historian that says (without giving any source) that Papists boasted that they massacred more than two million. Apparently, this is enough for the essay to take the two million claim as accurate.
This lack of critical discernment also leads to comments like the following. Here the essay is attempting to argue for a massive loss of life in Spain:
In fact, the population of Spain had at one time been twenty million higher:
It is estimated that the total population in the middle of the tenth century was about thirty millions: a phenomenal increase of population, betokening of itself a very high degree of civilization. A population normally, with fair sanitation and hygienic conditions, doubles in a quarter of a century. It will tell you in a word what the Moors had done, and what the Spaniards afterwards undid, if you reflect that this Spanish population, which was thirty millions in the tenth century, is now only twenty- two millions. The figure of thirty millions in the tenth century is an extraordinary tribute to the science and wisdom of the Moors. England, for instance, had then a population of about two or three million people.
-- Joseph McCabe, The Story of Religious Controversy, Chapter XXV.
This suggests that the Christian reconquest of Spain cost this country alone over 20 million lives. This loss could not have resulted from the Plague, because the loss from the Plague was recovered by 1500.
The problem is that Joseph McCabe's claim of thirty million people in Spain in the middle of the tenth century is, as far as I can tell, completely wrong. I consulted with the more recent (and certainly more scholarly!) "Atlas of world population history" by Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones (1978), which for the year 1000 gives the population of Spain as 4 million and 0.6 million for Portugal. The Maddison Project Database 2023 gives the same population estimates. Even combining the two to 4.6, that's less than 1/6 the number McCabe gave! Where in the world did McCabe get this claim of 30 million from? I have not been able to find any scholarly source that confirms it. Hoping that perhaps McCabe gave a source, I got a copy of his work to check (the quote is found on page 433 of the 1929 edition I looked at), and he gives no source at all for it. McCabe's argument about the reduction in population absolutely relies on this number, and yet by all appearances he got it completely wrong.
But this is the problem we see with the methodology of the essay. Its claim of "20 million lives" being lost comes from speculative calculations on the essay's part that are based on an apparent error that McCabe makes in a polemic. Rather than attempting to confirm the number with a more recent, neutral, and scholarly source (the essay actually cites "Atlas of world population history" later on, so it was clearly available), the essay simply accepts McCabe's claim despite McCabe offering no citation and then adds extra speculations on top of it.
One last point of Part 1 that should be noted is his citation of Robert Bellarmine:
'The church,' says [Martin] Luther, has never burned a heretic.' . . I reply that this argument proves not the opinion, but the ignorance or impudence of Luther. Since almost infinite" numbers were either burned or otherwise killed,' Luther either did not know it, and was therefore ignorant, or if he was not ignorant, he is convicted of impudence and falsehood, for that heretics were often burned by the [Catholic] Church may be proved from many examples.
-- Robert Bellarmine, Disputationes de Controversiis, Tom. ii, Lib. III, cap. XXII, Objections Answered, 1682 edition. (Bellarmine was a Roman Catholic.)
At first glance, this seems more powerful than the rest of the quotes given it was written by a Catholic. However, it is also very obviously obsolete, and upon closer inspection it ends up not aiding the claim.
This is one of those quotes that seems to get copy/pasted online by some anti-Catholic websites. Whether it was independently verified for this essay or simply copy/pasted I do not know, but the citation indeed is not quite full, usually a sign of a citation that was not checked. It is found in Volume 2 ("Tom. ii"), but Volume 2 consists of several "Controversies" which are then divided into books ("Lib.") and then into chapters ("cap.") and the above citation does not identify which Controversy it is (this is somewhat like saying something is in page 48 of the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, but without specifying which volume). This made it harder to find and does make me wonder if it was independently verified. But in the end, I did find it in the second "Controversy" (at least in the edition I read, I think things may have been divided up differently in other ones). The above text does seem to be a reasonable translation of the section.
It is not clear to me how well Bellarmine is representing Luther here, as he gives no clear source for this remark he attributes to Luther. Regardless, Bellarmine disputes this, making the above statement, and then goes on to give his examples. But while he is able to point to specific examples of the execution of heretics (notably, some of his examples were done in areas outside of anything the pope had control over and therefore useless for this essay), he falls far short of offering actual evidence for this claim of there being an almost infinite number being killed. Ultimately all he proved is that some heretics were executed--a claim no one denies--but utterly fails to back up the almost infinite claim. It seems either Bellarmine was being hyperbolic with that statement (thus making it useless for any support of the 50 million claim) or did believe that but was apparently unable to actually support it (still making it useless for any support of the 50 million claim).
In the end, this chapter accomplishes little other than pointing to a bunch of people who gave very large numbers, but does not offer evidence any of them are accurate. Once again, in fairness, the primary purpose of this chapter is to show that a bunch of people did offer these sorts of estimates, so one cannot complain too much about it giving examples. But we do nevertheless already see examples of the issues that will permeate through this essay, such as relying strongly on (and uncritically accepting) biased/amateur/obsolete sources while engaging in unwarranted speculations.
Chapter 2. The plausibility of massive persecution
Here is where we really start to run into some real problems. First, we again see the pattern of the sources usually being outdated, being from a polemical work, or being written by a non-historian (sometimes all at once!) and them being accepted with little if any reservation. And unlike the prior chapter, this cannot be excused by it simply giving examples of the assertion, as here it is far more clearly accepting these. In addition, speculations are thrown out without real support being offered:
These persecutions were not necessarily directed by the hierarchy of the church, but for the most part probably originated at a much lower level, from the ecclesiastical feudalism of the Middle Ages, as described by Williams:
Abbes and bishops in consequence became suzerains, temporal lords, having numerous vassals ready to take up arms for their cause, counts of justice in fact all the prerogatives exercised by the great landlords. This ecclesiastical feudalism was so extensive, so powerful, that in France and England it possessed during the Middle Ages more than a fifth of all the land; in Germany nearly a third.
-- Williams, Henry Smith, The Historians History of the World, vol. 8, p. 487.
Probably the greatest number of those who perished by the Papacy in Europe did so at the hands of these local authorities, on the grounds of suspected heresy or opposition to the church, and not necessarily at the direction of the Pope, preceded by a trial, nor mentioned in records. Who would there have been to interfere with the actions of the local abbes and bishops? The
constant elimination of a few heretics here and there, in many
locations, continued for many years, could easily have added up to a
total of millions without making much of an impression on recorded
history.
First, there is an inconsistency here. It says "the greatest number of those who perished by the Papacy" while simultaneously saying this was "not necessarily at the direction of the Pope." If it wasn't at the direction of the Pope, how exactly can one say they "perished by the Papacy"? Second, note the lack of proof given for this. The source cited does note that abbes and bishops were powerful, but nothing to indicate they were killing all of these people, let alone without any records. The essay simply offers this as a speculation and runs with it.
In addition to that, as noted above, the essay continues to constantly rely on polemical non-scholarly sources for its claims. For example:
Such persecutions even continued until very recent times, as illustrated by the following quotation from W. C. Brownlee, Popery the Enemy of Civil and Religious Liberty, J. S. Taylor, New York, 1836, page 124:
I beg to direct you to the history of Spain, which, at length, is beginning to raise her head from the dust; and of Austria, Italy, and Naples. There everything is exclusive and sanguinary. Utter a word against the priest, or his senseless mummery, or refuse to fall down before the wafer god, and the dagger is plunged into your heart!
Note that it was common knowledge in Brownlee's day that such executions of dissenters from Catholicism took place.
Exactly how this shows it was "common knowledge" is unclear; it could just as easily be said that William Charles Brownlee simply heard this somewhere and, because it aided his polemic, just accepted it without any real verification (just like this essay does repeatedly), or was exaggerating things for rhetorical effect. There
are many things that are "common knowledge" that are wrong; it is "common knowledge" that Julius Caesar's last words were "Et tu, Brute?" but no historical source of the time attests to this. I am not, of course, saying that these countries were anything close to paragons of religious tolerance. But there's a difference between not being religiously tolerant and Brownlee's dramatic claim that "refuse to fall down before the wafer god, and the dagger is plunged into your heart!" to indicate this was a constant thing that happened. If it did happen constantly, Brownlee does not provide support, nor does this essay.
This problem extends to the other quotations of Brownlee provided, which are simply accepted uncritically by the essay despite them not giving much in the way of citations. For another example:
In fact, threats and persecution even took place in the United States, according to Brownlee, pp. 210-211:
Who have their dungeon cells under their cathedrals, in which they claim, as inquisitors of their own diocese, to imprison free men in our republic? Foreign popish bishops! And the facts respecting a man being so confined and scourged, in the cells at Baltimore, until he recanted, have been published, and not to this day contradicted! ... Who are in the habit of uttering ferocious threats "to assassinate and burn up" those Protestants who successfully oppose Romanism? The foreign papists! I have in my possession the evidence of no less than six such inhuman threatenings against myself.
Again, this is simply taken as fact uncritically. Brownlee is rather low on actual proof for this or details on the subject. What are the "facts respecting a man being so confined and scourged" that "have been published"? Where was this published? He doesn't say. Was it apparently impossible for Brownlee to simply give a name of the publication and date for us to look up or at least the name of the person? Without it, the vagueness makes it extremely difficult to find information about. Now, Brownlee claims it hasn't been contradicted, but again without information we have no way of ascertaining if that is true or not. As for his claim about receiving threats... well, that's often the case for anyone who gives angry polemical speeches.
As a side note, while not explicitly quoted in the essay, I should note something that Brownlee says slightly earlier, on page 209. Here he is complaining about how mobs and riots were caused by "foreign papists." For the most part, his citations are again too vague for me to properly investigate the accuracy of his claims, but he does say one that is more specific when he says "Who caused the unjustifiable riot of Charlestown? The proud and impudence defiance given forth to public sentiment by vicious foreign papists, from their den of pollution!" For those unaware, this appears to refer to the Ursuline Convent riots which took place in August of 1834, where a a mob of Protestants, believing that nuns were being treated poorly, went off and burned down buildings in a convent. Somehow, Brownlee takes this act of Protestant violence against Catholics and blames it on the "foreign papists."
After the essay presents polemical claims by Brownlee that are accepted uncritically, the essay changes focus to accepting polemical claims by someone else uncritically, namely "F. Paul Peterson". For example:
Persecution also took the form of murders by
corrupt authorities, as described in the following passage from Peter's Tomb
Recently Discovered in Jerusalem, by F. Paul Peterson, 1960,
p. 45:
At length a Sclavonian waterman came to the
palace with a startling story. He said that on the night when the prince
disappeared, while he was watching some timber on the river, he saw two men
approach the bank, and look cautiously around to see if they were observed.
Seeing no one, they made a signal to two others, one of whom was on horseback,
and who carried a dead body swung carelessly across his horse. He advanced to
the river, flung the corpse far into the water, and then rode away. Upon being
asked why he had not mentioned this before, the waterman replied that it was a
common occurrence, and that he had seen more than a hundred bodies thrown into
the Tiber in a similar manner.
It
is unclear how this relates to the papacy or even Catholicism in
general. It is also unclear how someone in Sclavonia, better known as
Slavonia and part of Croatia, was able to see bodies being thrown into
the Tiber when the Tiber is over in Italy. Perhaps both of these are
answered in the book and the context is not provided in the above quote,
but if so it would have been better to have mentioned such.
Counting the above, no fewer than 6 quotes in a row are taken from his F. Paul Peterson's works which are high on referring to testimonies involving anonymous Catholics and Protestants but rather low on providing actual proof for its claims. All of the citations given from this Peterson are hearsay, and anonymous hearsay at that. He refers to "a Sclavonian waterman", "quite a number of Spanish Catholics", "a pastor in Britain", and "one Irishman." There is also a reference to what "an acquaintance told me of a recent conversation between a Protestant relative of hers and a Roman Catholic" as well as "a British Consul in Yugoslavia told the following incident to a good friend of mine", both of which which sound suspiciously like one of those "a friend of a friend of mine" urban legends.
Still, even if all of these quotes he provides from Peterson were accurate statements of fact, how much of any of them can go back to the papacy? None of the things he listed seem traceable to the actual papacy, and would at most be the actions of individual Catholics.
But ultimately, how credible is this F. Paul Peterson, considering how many quotes are produced from him? One of his works that the essay quotes from several times is "Peter's Tomb Recently Discovered in Jerusalem" from 1960 which seems to mostly be an attempt to argue that Peter's bones are found in Jerusalem rather than Rome and this therefore is a major mark against the Catholic Church's claim that Peter was martyred in Rome. Most references to this work online are simply copy/pasting the same extracts from the book as others are without giving information about who he is. All I could ultimately find concerning the author is this Catholic blog discussing the Peter's Tomb work. Although there is obviously considerable bias--a Catholic is hardly going to be supportive of Peterson's claims--they do seem to bring up some legitimate points about inaccuracies in the work. I am not sure if the blog post's claim of F. Paul Peterson's work being self published is accurate, though it certainly would make him less credible if that were the case; I am not saying nothing that is self-published is worthwhile, but it certainly raises the odds that it's not particularly useful. At any rate, even if we disregard the linked blog's criticisms of the work due to bias, I have been unable to find any information that indicates F. Paul Peterson should in any way be considered a reliable source on these matters.
So we have all of these quotes from Peterson that are (1) anonymous secondhand or even thirdhand hearsay, (2) from a non-scholarly source, and (3) even if all true, most do not even provide proof of deaths caused by the papacy itself, but either lay Catholics or priests. One may ask why I stress the "non-scholarly source" in this case when the issue is Peterson repeating claims he had heard other people make, but it draws doubt on his ability to look into these matters more independently and verify their accuracy. Peterson simply does not seem a reliable source.
After that the essay makes the following inaccurate claim:
During its rise to power, the Papacy also essentially exterminated the Heruli shortly after 493 A.D., the Vandals soon after 533 A.D., and the Ostrogoths in 554 A.D, all of whom were asserted to hold to the Arian belief. However, Limborch (The History of the Inquisition, p. 95) doubts that Arius held the views attributed to him. Concerning the Vandals, Bunch writes
It is reckoned that during the reign of Justinian, Africa lost five millions of inhabitants; thus Arianism was extinguished in that region, not by any enforcement of conformity, but by the extermination of the race which had introduced and professed it. History of the Christian Church, J.C. Robertson, Vol. 1, p. 521.
-- Bunch, Taylor, The Book of Daniel, p. 101.
Of course, the Heruli and the Ostrogoths also undoubtedly numbered in the millions, and were exterminated.
This claim of how the pope was responsible for the destruction of the
Heruli, Vandals, and Ostrogoths is something you'll occasionally see some people
claim; it is especially common (though not universal) among Seventh Day-Adventists. From what I can tell, this Taylor Bunch
was a Seventh-Day Adventist and presumably was advancing this claim in
his book. This is almost certainly where the essay lifted this claim from, given that he makes it right next to a citation by Taylor Bunch. The problem is that this claim is historically inaccurate. As was noted on this site:
"As
noted above, Uriah Smith and other SDAs teach that the Vandals,
Ostrogoths, and Heuli were destroyed by the Pope of Rome. Such a
revision of history is nothing less than pure fiction. None of these
tribes were destroyed by the Pope. Any history textbook will explain
that the Heruli were defeated by the Lombards, the Vandals and
Ostrogoths by the Byzantines. Now the Pope benefited to some degree by
the defeat of the Vandals and Ostrogoths, but it is uncertain, what, if
any, role the Pope played in their demise. More importantly, the Heruli
were defeated by the Lombards, who were Arians and avowed enemies of the
Catholic Church."
Another source, in more detail, discusses this here, again referring to works of history as showing the papacy did not destroy these groups. The essay therefore is simply uncritically repeating inaccurate history,
presumably from that "The Book of Daniel" book (the one by Taylor Bunch, not the biblical Book of Daniel). The fact the essay makes such
an error here that would be solved by, as noted in our quote, simply
looking at a history textbook or encyclopedia, bodes poorly for it. And again this is just a sign of how it simply takes polemical non-historical sources without the necessary grains of salt. Had it not been relying on a polemical non-historical source here, and used something that was objective, it wouldn't have made this claim, which incidentally is repeated later on in the essay.
Of course, you may say that the sites I cited are also polemical and hardly objective. Fair enough. So let's look directly at a more professional historical source, namely the current edition of the online Encyclopedia Britannica, and see if it backs up those claims:
Vandals: "In 533 the Byzantines under Belisarius invaded North Africa following the deposition by the usurper Gelimer of Huneric’s son, Hilderich, who was a close friend of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I. In one campaigning season the Vandal kingdom was destroyed."
Heruli: "From then until the mid-6th century, when they vanished from history, their fortunes varied. They were subjugated first by the Goths, then by the Huns. Their kingdom on the middle Danube, founded in the late 5th century, fell to the Lombards early in the 6th century."
Ostrogoths: "A period of instability then ensued in the ruling dynasty, provoking the Byzantine emperor Justinian to declare war on the Ostrogoths in 535 in an effort to wrest Italy from their grasp. The war continued with varying fortunes for almost 20 years and caused untold damage to Italy, and the Ostrogoths thereafter had no national existence."
Other scholarly sources say the same things. So it seems these polemics were correct; the pope appears to have had nothing to do with these. It is especially absurd to claim the Heruli were exterminated by the papacy, as it was the explicit enemies of the papacy that did it!
But there is another error here. The essay cites Bunch as proof that the population of Africa decreased by five million. Bunch's source is J.C. Robertson. That claim of Robertson can be found here... though this is page 534. Perhaps Bunch was using a different edition? In any event, the citation for the above quote is "Procop. Hist. Arcana 18, p. 53; Gibbon, iv. 122."
The first one is a reference to
Procopius's "Secret History" (Historia Arcana) book, an work
by the 6th-century Procopius. Procopius was an assistant to Belisarius,
a general of Justinian. Secret History is basically one giant polemic
against Justinian, and is so astoundingly over the top in its attacks that some have apparently
speculated that he basically made it up due to worries of Justinian
being overthrown, and that he could then point to the work as proof he
never approved of Justinian.
This does give the five million citation. But let us look at it in a little more context:
"That Justinian was not a man, but a demon, as I have said, in human form, one might prove by considering the enormity of the evils he brought upon mankind. For in the monstrousness of his actions the power of a fiend is manifest. Certainly an accurate reckoning of all those whom he destroyed would be impossible, I think, for anyone but God to make. Sooner could one number, I fancy, the sands of the sea than the men this Emperor murdered. Examining the countries that he made desolate of inhabitants, I would say he slew a trillion people. For Libya, vast as it is, he so devastated that you would have to go a long way to find a single man, and he would be remarkable. Yet eighty thousand Vandals capable of bearing arms had dwelt there, and as for their wives and children and servants, who could guess their number? Yet still more numerous than these were the Mauretanians, who with their wives and children were all exterminated. And again, many Roman soldiers and those who followed them to Constantinople, the earth now covers; so that if one should venture to say that five million men perished in Libya alone, he would not, I imagine, be telling the half of it."
According to Procopius, Justinian killed a trillion people! That is flatly impossible. For that to occur, Justinian would have had to kill more people than have ever lived up to our present day, let alone back when he lived when the world had a much lower population. Yet we are to accept the claim of five million dead
in Africa on the authority of someone who just a few sentences ago
offered an utterly impossible number? Even if one wishes to claim that the trillion number was hyperbole, we should then consider that the five million number would likely also be hyperbole and therefore be much lower than what he says. Finally, even if we accept this number, note the author puts the blame on Justinian, not the pope.
Next we come to the Gibbon citation. This obviously is a reference to his work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I have looked at several editions and did not see anything on page 122; however, this edition has what seems to be referred to on page 501-502, noting "the secret historian [Procopius] has confidently affirmed, that five millions of Africans were consumed by the wars and government of the emperor Justinian." This is a repeat of the Procopius note. However, Gibbon writes in his footnote on page 502 that "The desolate condition to which Africa was reduced had not been the work of twenty years; nor can we give credit to the rapid and extensive depopulation which Procopius asserts to have taken place." In other words, while Gibbon does seem to accept the idea that there was a 5 million loss in population, he believes this was a gradual process and rejects the claim that it occurred as a result of wars within the span of twenty years. It would have been nice had he indicated this skepticism in the main text rather than a footnote, though, so it was more obvious.
So not only was the essay's claim about the papacy being the ones to get rid of the Vandals/Ostrogoths/Heruli wrong, it then makes the claim of a decrease in population by five million when the only source for that is a polemic that claims that Justinian killed a trillion people! And incidentally, I should note something: All these sources attribute this to Justinian, not the pope. Why? It seems it's because, contrary to what the essay implies, the pope wasn't responsible for the reasons already given.
Again this simply shows how this essay will readily accept claims from polemical sources without doing proper fact-checking from more neutral ones to make sure the claims are right. Now, it is true that sometimes it does mention how more neutral sources disagree with a source being cited, but far too frequently it does what he did above, making a historical error due to relying on a polemical source rather than trying to verify its information with something more neutral. And if the essay is going to make historically wrong claims like the papacy exterminating the Vandals/Heruli/Ostrogoths due to simply accepting what polemical non-scholarly works say, or is going to make a claim of five million deaths when the source for this is someone who claimed a trillion people were killed, why should I trust it when it simply accepts what other polemical non-scholarly works say? And this wasn't just a one-off thing; this point about the Vandals/Heruli/Ostrogoths is repeated later.
One other thing from that section does bear noting. In the context of discussing sects that the Roman Catholic Church supposedly exterminated, it is claimed:
One of these sects lost a hundred
thousand to persecution:
An
edict was issued under the regency of Theodora,
which decreed that the Paulicians should be exterminated by fire and sword, or
brought back to the Greek church. It is affirmed by civil and
ecclesiastical historians, that, in a short reign, one hundred thousand Paulicians were put to death.
-- Andrew Miller, Short Papers on
Church, London, Chapter 16.
Even if this many of them were killed, given that the quote itself attributes this to Byzantine Empress Theodora, not the papacy, it is unclear why this is cited as if it is some kind of proof for massive deaths caused by the papacy.
Chapter 3. The 50 Million Figure
But now we get to the meat of the whole thing. Unfortunately, we see the same kinds of errors as before. Namely, relying primarily on outdated polemical works by non-historians, and often throwing in some of his own speculations on top of that. I know I keep saying that over and over, but it's such a recurring problem it must be stressed. For an example of the kind of speculations that occurs:
Estimates
for the number killed in the Huguenot wars in France range as high as 4
million, and probably almost all of these were killed by Catholics.
Pierre Miquel [Les guerres de religion, Paris : Fayard, c1980, p. 396]
writes,
Henri
IV n'était pas plus riche. Son royaume était dévasté: en quarante ans
de guerres civiles étrangères, la France avait sans doute perdu plusiers
millions d'hommes et de femmes (4 millions, selon Mariéjol).
Now, this
is actually a case where a useful source is utilized. It's recent,
isn't polemical (as far as I can tell), and seems to be by an actual historian.
However, note what the essay does; it simply asserts "probably almost all of
these were killed by Catholics." Why does it conclude this? It doesn't say. Even the source doesn't say that; it mentions that several million men and women were lost in the wars, but not saying who belonged to what side. The essay makes a similar statement on another matter, simply saying that of the people killed in Poland, Hungary, and Lithuania during the Thirty Years War: "Almost all of these would be Protestants, because Protestants do not generally massacre Catholics but Catholics in the past have often massacred Protestants." Even if we accept the claim that Catholics massacred Protestants more often (evidence is not given), would this make that big of a difference here? In terms of the battles of the wars themselves, both sides are trying to kill each other. If, as he claimed, almost all of these deaths are Protestants, one is perplexed as to how Protestantism is even still around given how astoundingly triumphant the Catholics allegedly are in these battles where they supposedly suffer almost no losses. If almost all of the casualties in a war are on one side, one is hard pressed to figure out how that side managed to actually survive the war.
In fact, this source does not say that four million were actively killed by people, but rather that this many people died "la France avait sans doute perdu plusiers millions d'hommes et de femmes (4 millions, selon Mariéjol)" (France had undoubtedly lost several million men and women (4 million, according to Mariéjol)). The war aided in famine and disease, which of course caused many people to die outside of any actual killings. Robert Knecht's "The French Religious Wars" asserts on pages 90-91 that "Yet the wars cannot be blame for all the distress of the times. From about 1500 onwards the French population grew faster than food production, which was hampered partly by technological backwardness, partly by climate changes." It then just a little later goes on to say "Fighting alone cannot account for the death toll during the wars; famine and disease were also responsible. The total of deaths during the wars has been roughly estimated at between two and four milion." Clearly people who died from famine or disease were not, as the essay claims, "killed by Catholics" or in fact killed by anyone.
So even when dealing with more neutral sources, these sorts of speculations of "probably almost all of these were killed by Catholics" are thrown in. One also is left wondering, setting that aside, how many of these deaths can actually be traced to the papacy.
The essay also will take things out of context:
Concerning the Cathari, who were similar to the Waldenses, near the end of the twelfth century "The Dominican Rainerius gave 4,000,000 as a safe estimate of their number and declared this was according to a census made by the Cathari themselves" [Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 8 volumes (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman’s, 1910; reprint, 1978), Volume V, Chapter X]. Of course nearly all of the Cathari were killed. They were said to be very zealous for their faith, and few would have recanted. In addition, if the Cathari conducted a census, they must have been a cohesive group.
While an older source, Philip Schaff actually is a qualified historian from what I can tell and managed to keep things fairly neutral in his writings (he did not always succeed, but made much greater effort than most other sources cited in the essay). He is certainly better qualified than most of the citations we've seen. However, the essay ignores neglects to mention that Schaff, being a reasonable historian, almost immediately afterwards states that one shouldn't take the figure too seriously. Here is his statement in greater context:
"Contemporary reports represent the number of heretics as very large. They were compared by William of Newburgh to the sand of the sea, and were said by Walter Map to be infinite in number in Aquitaine and Burgundy. By the end of the twelfth century they were reported to have followers in nearly 1000 cities. The Dominican Rainerius gave 4,000,000 as a safe estimate of their number and declared this was according to a census made by the Cathari themselves. Joachim of Flore stated that they were sending out their emissaries like locusts. Such statements are not to be taken too seriously, but they indicate a widespread religious unrest."
Interestingly, I did look at Rainerius's work... but I don't see four million. He gives the numbers of Cathar in different locations, which adds up to four thousand. Were these supposed to be in numbers of a thousand itself? My Latin's not great but I didn't see it. I don't think Schaff would make such a mistake in reading, but it's not impossible. But in any event, the fact this essay seizes upon this number despite its own source warning against it is notable. It also simply assumes that almost all of the Cathari were killed without giving much of a reason; certainly, some would have been zealous for their faith, but to assert almost all of them without proof? What often happens in cases such as this is that the most public ones are executed while the others, even those who may still hold to its doctrines, keep their faith a secret and keep up appearances of orthodoxy to avoid punishments.
There is another problem here. The essay claims that the Cathari "were similar to the Waldenses." The two groups appear to have been quite different. The Cathari believed procreation was morally wrong, that there were two gods (the evil god of the Old Testament who created the physical world and the good god of the New Testament who made the non-physical realm), and that reincarnation was real. One can easily discover this in neutral encyclopedias. The current digital version of Encyclopedia Britannica discusses their doctrine, and here are two excerpts:
"Although the various groups emphasized different doctrines, they all agreed that matter was evil. Man was an alien and a sojourner in an evil world; his aim must be to free his spirit, which was in its nature good, and restore it to communion with God. There were strict rules for fasting, including the total prohibition of meat. Sexual intercourse was forbidden; complete ascetic renunciation of the world was called for."
"They viewed much of the Old Testament with reserve; some of them rejected it altogether. The orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation was rejected. Jesus was merely an angel; his human sufferings and death were an illusion. They also severely criticized the worldliness and corruption of the Catholic Church."
Save for the last sentence, these views were not (as far as I can tell) held by the Waldenses. All of these (save for that last sentence) are considered wrong by virtually all Christians nowadays. They were "similar" to the Waldenses in the sense that they had some of the same criticisms of the Catholic Church, but this is "similar" in the same way someone can say a Jehovah's Witness and a Lutheran are similar. You can certainly point to some points they agree on, but that ignores the considerable differences. Even in the mid-19th century, Samuel Maitland was pointing out the flaws in this argument (see his work "Facts and documents illustrative of the history, doctrine and rites, of the ancient Albigenses & Waldenses"), and he did not even have access to some evidence discovered later. Now, someone may object to my citation of this, saying that it seems to be what I'm criticizing the essay of (out-of-date, polemical, and by a clergyman rather than a historian), but I would like to point out that Maitland was a Protestant, and more importantly there's not much written about this issue in the present day because historians are well aware of how different the Cathars and Waldenses were, similar to how you do not see many journal articles arguing that the Earth is not flat. Still, a less in-depth but more recent writing on the Cathars can be seen in "Baptist Successionism: A Crucial Question in Baptist History" by James Edward McCarrick (more specifically, Chapter 8, starting on page 57). I am aware that despite this, there are still some who still try to argue that the Cathar were much more orthodox in their beliefs, but such a view is fringe, and if the essay is going to take that position, it should offer an argument about it rather than just throwing out the claim they were "similar" to the Waldenses.
Indeed, the quote that was provided in the essay from Schaff's work was on page 473 (at least in my edition). But just a few pages earlier (page 469) Schaff makes this remark:
"The
mediaeval dissenters have sometimes been classed with the Protestants.
The classification is true only on the broad ground of their common
refusal to be bound by the yoke of the Catholic hierarchy. Some of the
tenets of the dissenters and some of their practices the Protestant
Reformation repudiated, fully as much as did the established Church of
the Middle Ages."
This
flies in the face of what you see attempted during the essay of trying
to link the various dissenters with modern Protestantism.
The essay's mention of Schaff noting the claim of the four million but ignoring his immediate statement the number is exaggerated is hardly the only part where the essay, or even this section, where it neglects to mention something important from his source:
Another source ["HUNGARY." LoveToKnow 1911 Online Encyclopedia. © 2003, 2004 LoveToKnow. http://3.1911encyclopedia.org/H/HU/HUNGARY.htm] says the population of Hungary was 5 million in about 1500 and 3 million in 1715. Unless there is a deliberate effort to massacre the people, a war will not cause such losses of population. This suggests that a million or more persons were killed in persecutions in Hungary.
But if you look at the page in question (you need to use The Wayback Machine to see it), you will see this is what it says:
"Recent historical research has ascertained that the country was densely peopled in the 15th century. Estimates, based on a census of the tax-paying peasantry in the years 1494 and 1495, give five millions of inhabitants, a very respectable number, which explains fully the predominant position of Htingary in the east of Europe at that epoch. The disastrous invasion of the Turks, incessant civil wars and devastation by foreign armies and pestilence, caused a very heavy loss both of population and of prosperity. In 1715 and 1720, when the land was again free from Turkish hordes and peace was restored, the population did not exceed three millions."
(yes, the writing of "Htingary" was there. I expected this was a scan of the original and it mistook Htingary for Hungary)
So yes, it does say that it went from 5 million to 3 million. But it does not lay the blame for this on persecution by Catholics, instead saying it was "the invasion of the Turks, incessant civil wars, and devastation by foreign armies and pestilence."
I also wish to share a bad case of taking things out of context. Here the essay is pointing to sources that discuss a large loss of population in Bohemia, and tries to argue that this couldn't have been from people leaving the country. So it claims:
As additional evidence that only a few people emigrated from Bohemia, James A. Wylie [The History of Protestantism Volume Third - Book Nineteenth, Chapter 10] writes,
Of the common people not fewer than 36,000 families emigrated. There was hardly a kingdom in Europe where the exiles of Bohemia were not to be met with. Scholars, merchants, traders, fled from a land which was given over as a prey to the disciples of Loyola, and the dragoons of Ferdinand. Of the 4,000,000 who inhabited Bohemia in 1620, a miserable remnant, amounting not even to a fifth, were all that remained in 1648.
Even the quote without context doesn't make sense to appeal to, because Wylie (a very anti-Catholic 19th-century writer, for the record) is talking about how a lot of people emigrated! That's his whole point, that a lot of people left Bohemia for other countries. Yet the essay confusingly claims that this quote from Wylie about how there were many people who emigrated is "evidence that only a few people emigrated."
Things get even worse when we look at Wylie's statement in context. Remember, the claim of the essay is that this loss of population was religious persecution resulting in deaths. This is a problem because in the paragraph immediately preceding the one that is quoted above, Wylie says this, emphases added:
"Some, unwilling to abjure, and yet unable to bear their prolonged tortures, earnestly begged their persecutors to kill them outright. “No,” would their tormentors reply, “the emperor does not thirst for your blood, but for your salvation.” This sufficiently accounts for the paucity of martyrs unto blood in Bohemia, notwithstanding the lengthened and cruel persecution to which it was subject. There were not wanting many who would have braved death for their faith; but the Jesuits studiously avoided setting up the stake, and preferred rather to wear out the disciples of the Gospel by tedious and cruel tortures. Those only whose condemnation they could color with some political pretext, as was the case with the noblemen whose martyrdoms we have recorded, did they bring to the scaffold. Thus they were able to suppress the Protestantism of Bohemia, and yet they could say, with some little plausibility, that no one had died for his religion."
The very source being cited says that there was a "paucity of martyrs unto blood in Bohemia." Yes, Wylie tries to argue there was a lot of terrible torture going on, but even he says there were few actual martyrs, and he does so in the paragraph just before the quote the essay gave. Trying to cite Wylie as proof of mass deaths in Bohemia from religious persecutions makes little sense and is not citing him accurately. If anything it shows how weak the argument is, given even the strongly anti-Catholic Wylie admits that there were few martyrs and makes his criticisms about torture instead.
Near the beginning I noted how the essay suffers from a case of "garbage in, garbage out." That is, by relying primarily on polemical out-of-date sources by non-historians, it picks up on a bunch of incorrect information and then bases arguments off of that incorrect information. Thus garbage in, garbage out. Here is a particularly bad case:There is some additional information about the number killed in Europe in the Middle Ages. For this, G. H. Orchard in A Concise History of the Baptists, 1855, chapter 2, section 11 estimates that there were over 3 million persons possessing evangelical views in northern Italy in 1260, and mentions another authority as giving an estimate twice as large. He states that the number eventually "quadrated," which may imply that it became four times as large, that is, 12 million or possibly 24 million persons, whom he calls Anabaptists. Almost all of these were presumably killed in persecutions.
Now let's look at this work that is being cited. It says (regarding the Waldenses) that "Perrin estimates their number in 1260, at eight hundred thousand persons." So that gives us a figure of 800,000 Waldenses. There's a major problem with that which I'll get to momentarily, but first I want to discuss the claim of how that 800 thousand turns into 3 million. Orchard writes that "Benedict, in his History of the American Baptists, computes seven adherents to each communicant; suppose we say three to each communicant of this name, this would make the adherents alone to these churches, amount to nearly two millions and a half; these added to the members or communicants, 800,000, produce 3,200,000 persons, possessing evangelical views. This number will quadrate by and by, with the moving shoals of Anabaptists in Germany and other kingdoms."
This is a sloppy citation; the work by David Benedict is actually named "A General History of the Baptist Denomination in America and other Parts of the World." Orchard also doesn't say where in this 800+ page work this statement is made. Without context, I have to guess that it is saying is that for each "communicant" (a person who goes to church) there would be a number of adherents who believe in the doctrine, but do not actually go to church. Even if this is true, why should we assume that the 800,000 number is the number of communicants rather than that of the adherents?
However, that 800,000 number is still pretty big, right? If there were that many in 1260 that would support the point, right? Wrong. The problem is, this is a faulty claim by Orchard. In support of his claim of eight hundred thousand people in 1260, it cites "Hist. of the Old. Wald., b. 2, c. 11" (it is actually chapter 2--perhaps the 11 was supposed to mean II but the printing of Orchard's work I looked at says 11). But that cited source ("History of the Old Waldenses") doesn't say it at all! What his source says is that there were eight hundred thousand people with views like that of the Waldensians... in the year 1530! 270 years later! G.H. Orchard got his source horribly wrong and takes a number from 1530 and claims it applies to 1260. So the essay takes someone who messed up their own citation while adding in extra speculations regarding adherents/communicants. Then, after doing that, the essay for several paragraphs after the quoted section makes new speculations based on those errors to try to achieve the 50 million killed number. All of this based on one polemicist's speculations regarding a number that he assigned the wrong date to!
I feel these examples suffice to demonstrate that the calculations and sources cannot be considered trustworthy in this section. It relies heavily and often uncritically on polemical and out of date works that were not by historians, then adds in a bunch of speculations. This results in errors like those described above. Again: Garbage in, garbage out.
Chapter 4. The Spanish Inquisition
While still having problems, this is better than most of the essay. Despite bias, there is at least an attempt at objectivity, and a higher number of scholarly sources cited. However, it still does fall into the same issue of greater reliance on older polemical sources than newer scholarly ones, although certainly not to the same extent. There is only a brief reference to the well reviewed "The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision" by Henry Kamen:
Lower estimates for the number of victims of the Inquisition also exist, as cited by a Roman Catholic on a discussion board:
The best estimate of the total number of executions under the Spanish Inquisition comes from the Encyclopedia Judaica (not a Catholic source) which estimates the number at around 7,000. It should be remembered that the Inquisition was a court charged with hearing cases for all crimes committed on Church property or against the Church, clerics, or professed religious. There were several capital crimes under the Inquisition's jurisdiction besides heresy. These included murder, rape, kidnapping, assault on a bishop, and others. Might I recommend that you get Henry Kamen's recent book The Spanish Inquisition : A Historical Revision (N.B.- Kamen's estimate is that there were only 3,000 executions.)
So there is considerable disagreement in the figures concerning the Spanish inquisition.
There is no real interaction with Kamen's work here; it simply says there is disagreement. I'm also not sure if the "N.B." is supposed to be something the essay added, or something that the poster he's quoting added. It is true that N.B. is normally used to show editor comment on a quote, but it could have been something in the post itself. Whatever forum this post was on seems to be gone now, as searches for it only turn up people reposting this essay, so I cannot tell if the "N.B." was original to the quote or something the essay added. As occurs with most of the times it cites a website, no link is offered so that I could see if it's available on archive.org. Still, the "considerable disagreement" appears to be primarily between up-to-date scholarly sources by neutral authorities compared to out-of-date polemical sources not written by actual historians.
The essay then says that the numbers decreasing with time are a sign that, removed from the Inquisition, people are minimizing it, saying:
And such disagreements occur in the larger context, as well. The figures are rapidly decreasing with time, and our memory of past persecutions is being lost. Because records and memories are lost with the passage of time, in general the earliest records and those closest to the source are to be preferred.
But people like Kamen do use the early records as far as I am aware. This seems to just be an attempt to come up with an excuse for scholarship giving lower estimates. Rather than the conclusion that the estimated numbers are going down because we've been able to do a better job looking at it and are less biased in favor of coming up with a large number for the benefit of polemics, the essay has to come up with the idea of them decreasing with time due to memory being lost.
Still, despite suffering from the usual problems of this essay, this chapter does suffer from them the least, hence why I have spent little text on it compared to others. It does rely primarily on polemical works, but unlike most of the rest there is at least some attempt at balance.
Chapter 5. Alethia's Estimate
What this section focuses on is an estimate in "The Rationalist's Manual", an anti-Christian work written in the late 19th century by "Aletheia, M.D." (the actual identity of the author is unknown, as "Aletheia, M.D." is a pseudonym). A bit oddly, the name of the author is misspelled in the chapter title as "Alethia" even though it correctly renders it as Aletheia in the main text of the essay (I have retained the misspelling in the heading above). Anyway, Aletheia (quoting an earlier 18th century writer) offers a supposed breakdown of deaths caused by Christians, coming to 56 million, though it is not quite clear how the numbers were arrived at.
This section includes the same problems seen above, namely relying primarily on out-of-date polemical works by people who seem to have no historical credentials (the aforementioned Aletheia being one of them). So I will not directly comment on much of it, because it simply repeats the same problem over and over for the most part. In a few cases there is at least a small attempt to give the other side a hearing, though usually only to then swat away those objections with little actual answer. Still, there are some points I wished to respond to.
Aletheia arrives at 56 million, but breaks it up into several smaller numbers, one of which is 9 million being burned for witchcraft. Interestingly, the essay says "However, it would be useful to look at one of these figures in
more detail, to see how reliable it is. This can help to give insight
into the reliability of the entire estimate." The "figure in more
detail" it chooses to examine is that of the 9 million witches being
killed; but the thing is, this ultimately should actually give us the insight that the entire estimate is not reliable, because the 9 million certainly is not.
There is a good article on the history of this 9 million figure (and the problems with it) here,
entitled "Neun Millionen Hexen: Entstehung, Tradition und Kritik eines
populären Mythos" by Wolfgang Behringer. This was published in the journal Geschichte
in Wissenschaft und Unterricht in 1998, pages 664-85. Wolfgang
Behringer is a legitimate historian on this issue, and this was
published in a journal, which makes this much more credible than
estimates from the 19th century from people without historical credentials that have a bias in that their goal is to attack
Christianity or Catholicism. Now, the linked article is in German, and while I do not know German particularly well, I
was able to use an automated translation to understand it. It discusses
the history of estimates of witch deaths, particularly the "9 million"
claim that is bandied around. Essentially, this comes from how in the 18th century; a writer named Gottfried Voigt took the number of witches executed in his area in a particular 30-year period, increased it a bit on the assumption there could have been some that weren't recorded, then performed an extrapolation by multiplying the numbers to match the population of Europe (compared to just his area) and then multiplied it further to reach a 1100-year period (600 to 1700 AD), with which he came up with the over 9 million figure.
The problems with this calculation by Voigt seem almost willful; the time period Voigt was calculating from (1569 to 1598) appears to have been a particularly high mark of witch hunts, and was in Germany, one of the countries where witch hunts appear to have been particularly prominent. Furthermore, Voigt's expansion to the massive 600-1700 AD ignores the obvious fact that witch hunts were rare through most of that period. The entire methodology he used was hopelessly flawed and the number seems to only persist because it's good in rhetoric. Wolfgang Behringer's article notes that modern estimates put the number around 50,000. So the whole 9 million claim appears a massive exaggeration based on faulty logic, similar to if I were to conclude that over 38 million people died to terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001 (on the basis that about 3,000 died in New York City on September 11, I should multiply it by 365 to get the whole year, then multiply it by 38 because New York City is about 1/38th the US population, thus ending with a death toll of 38 million for the year).
In some fairness to the essay under examination, it does mention how Voigt's numbers have gotten criticism. However, it still seems to be trying to defend him, such as with the statement "Voigt felt that his area of Germany was representative of Europe as a whole for this 500 year period" (the essay claims the calculation was for 1100 to 1600, but as noted above it appears to have actually been 600 to 1700). But why should we consider Voigt in any way competent enough to conclude whether his area of Germany was representative of Europe, let alone for centuries? Voigt's calculations are simply not credible and the essay is unable to save it. So perhaps we should follow the essay's own advice. As the 9 million claim is unreliable, we can consider the rest of Aletheia's figures, including the total of 56 million, to be unreliable as well.
The essay tries to persist with this idea of mass deaths of witches with this:
According to a web site, "Modern research (Dreschner, 1987, Kung, 1991) indicates that the previous estimates of the number of victims of witch trials are seriously attenuated. Church archives on concremiret trials remain closed even to academic scholars. Research by Kung is unique by presenting the insider's estimate of the number of victims of witch trials. For this, Kung was expelled from his teaching position and denied the right to teach at parochial schools in Germany. Kung maintains that not hundreds of thousands of victims as previously estimated, but several million human beings were subject to torture and murder by the justice system on charges of witchcraft. Among the infamous judges presiding over witch trials were Bernard Gui and Heinrich Boblig of Edelstadt. Of their victims, perhaps the best known is Joan of Arc." This gives added support for a number of victims in the millions.
The citation here is vague indeed, merely telling us "According to a website." Virtually anything at all can be said to be true "according to a website." What is this website? Why should we trust it? Citations of websites by this essay are often frustratingly vague, but normally they at least say something about it, rather than simply saying "a website." And since we know nothing at all about this website, it is impossible to assess its credibility; there is no shortage of websites that have totally inaccurate information on them. Even if we attempt to judge the quotation on its own merits, the citation there is vague also. It simply gives "Dreschner" and "Kung" with what are presumably years of publication; why can the names of the works or names of the authors not be given? If the website gave this information elsewhere, why did the essay not provide it? If the website did not give this information elsewhere, why did the essay just accept it as accurate without any verification?
But let's see what we can figure out. I will begin with the Kung reference. Works from 1991 with a "Kung" as the author turns up 919 matches on
WorldCat. I would be inclined to believe it's Hans Küng given the
reference to being expelled from a teaching position (partially expelled, at
least--his license to teach as a Catholic theologian was revoked, but he
did continue to teach ecumenical theology). However, if he is in view,
him losing his position was not for the reasons the essay gives. As any
small amount of research will easily show, he lost his position because
he denied the doctrine of papal infallibility, not for anything regarding the number of witches killed. Further, Küng was
expelled in 1979; how could a position he expressed in a 1991 work be
the cause?
Even if we limit the
search to works by Hans Küng in 1991 on WorldCat, we end up with more than 50 results. While many are just new editions or translations of previous
works, we still end up with a lot of possibilities, and it is simply not possible to figure out which work is supposed to be the one in view, let alone where in the book the citation is. There is not even any guarantee that it is an English book being cited. It's simply impossible for me to look into this. Given
the incorrect claim about why he was expelled from his teaching
position, however, and the sheer vagueness of all of these citations (both in only telling us it's from "a website" and also the vagueness of that website's references), I see little reason
to give this credence. One notices the essay mentions this again, asserting "Kung maintains that not hundreds of thousands of victims as previously estimated, but several million human beings were subject to torture and murder by the justice system on charges of witchcraft." Keep in mind that the essay's source for this is apparently a website that gives a very vague citation.
I should note that, even if Hans Küng said this in 1991 (and the claim that he did at this point must be regarded as dubious), his opinion in a later writing is the opposite. In a later work in 2010 ("Women in Christianity") he writes on page 76: "If present-day scholarship, while no longer thinking in terms of millions of victims, at any rate reckons there were at least 100,000 executions (and further punishments like banishment and open contempt)". In other words, he rejects the idea of there being millions of deaths. As for the 100,000 executions, even if we accept this as true (this is higher than what Wolfgang Behringer, discussed earlier, said), note further he mentions in the same paragraph that "from the Protestant side there was no vigorous protest against the witch-craze and the trials and burnings of witches" so even if that 100,000 number is correct we have to split it between Catholics and Protestants, which is of significantly less help to this essay. So ultimately, this citation to Küng fails. While the essay cannot be blamed for being unaware of something he would write several years after the essay was published, it certainly can be blamed for accepting as fact such a vague citation from a website that, given its error about his expulsion, is not necessarily trustworthy.
This brings us to the other one, the "Dreschner". I expect that the "Dreschner" is a typo for Deschner, and what is in mind is Karlheinz Deschner (also known as Karl Deschner), a German writer who was a strong critic of Christianity. He is in fact cited slightly later in this section of he essay with this comment:
What we know of the fierce hostility shown in the past by the Papacy towards Bible believers, Jews, and other religions suggests that the intense persecutions continued in force for many, many years. In support of the extended nature of the persecutions, Deschner notes that in Poland about 200,000 Jews were slain in Chmielnitzki in 1648 (K.Deschner, Opus Diaboli, Reinbek 1987).This is presumably the work being referred to with the "Dreschner 1987" citation; Deschner does not seem to have published anything else that year. However, notice that in one case it says Dreschner (an R after the D), and the other Deschner (no R after the D). You might think this is simply a typo on the essay's part in one case, but in the ending index (some re-postings of the essay omit the index at the end) we see Deschner and Dreschner listed separately. Based on that, it does not seem like the author of the essay was aware these are apparently the same people. Indeed, this raises
the question of whether the author of this essay actually looked at
either of these citations (the above one quoted that uses "Dreschner" or
the "K.Deschner" one). It would require knowledge of German, as the work in question is in that language. While the essay's author could very well know German (the essay did quote from a German work earlier, though it isn't clear whether the author knew the language or had someone else translate it for him), another indication it was never checked on it is the odd method of citation, which goes against the typical way the essay cites things. Rather than give
the full name of the author, it oddly says "K.Deschner" and no page or even chapter number is provided, diverging from how the essay normally cites things. This suggests that these citations of Deschner in this essay were simply copied
from some other work without verification.
I cannot verify the Deschner/Dreschner citations as I do not know German (and the book is nowhere near me anyway), but as long as I have noted the other Deschner citation quoted above, I might as well discuss it. It claims that "about 200,000 Jews were slain in Chmielnitzki in 1648" and this is being used by the essay as an example of persecution by the papacy. We run into two big problems with this, however. The first is that while there was a massacre against Jews in Chmielnitzki (also known as Khmelnytsky), more recently the estimated deaths have been lowered considerably, viewing the earlier figures as inflated. For example, the article "What Actually Happened to the Jews of Ukraine in 1648?" in Vol. 17, No. 2 of Jewish History (pages 207-227) asserts "Using demographic tools and applying them to all the regions of the Ukraine, it appears that no more, and possibly much fewer, than fifty percent of the 40,000 or so Jews in that region perished."
However, even if there were 200,000 deaths, or even far more than that, this wasn't done by Catholics or the papacy. The "Khmelnytsky Uprising" was an uprising of the primarily Eastern Orthodox Cossacks against the primarily Catholic Polish. To cite this as some kind of evidence of Catholics or the papacy killing people is nonsensical. One might as well cite China's persecution of the Uyghurs (who are mostly Muslim) as Islamic terrorism!
The essay goes on with more, but they generally bear the issues already discussed (older polemical works not by historians). Still, I
will give a brief treatment on its discussion of the deaths of Native
Americans by the Spanish. In my view the essay is unfairly dismissive of
their deaths being mostly attributed to diseases (this will be
discussed a little in the next section, with one of the essay's own
sources stating that the deaths were primarily from disease). And while
the essay does concede that even the deaths that were actually caused
more directly by the Spanish aren't necessarily all to blame to the
papacy, it claims "The Indians were killed when they would not convert
to Catholicism and for political reasons. Clearly the Papacy was
responsible for the killing of those who would not convert." Setting
aside the fact the essay does not provide evidence that many of the
deaths were due to the the Spaniards killing them for not
converting to Catholicism (the things it appeals to refer to Spanish
cruelty, but they do not say they were specifically out to kill people for not
converting), notice how it simply says it was "clearly" the fault of the
papacy without offering any actual proof of the matter; was there any directive
from the pope to kill them if they do not convert? If not, this claim
is baseless. It then mentions about how the Papacy gave permission for
Spain and Portugal to take over Central and South America, making it
responsible... but Spain and Portugal would have done this with or
without the papacy. The essay does not clarify what it means by
"permission", but the "permission" is presumably in reference to the
guidelines that Pope Alexander VI gave them (in the bull "Inter
Caetera") as to who got what part of the continent, but these were
ignored by the two countries, and they negotiated the Treaty of
Tordesillas instead. So the claim that the pope was responsible when his
proclamation was simply ignored makes little sense. And then the
essay pulls out another claim with no backing offered: "The Papacy was
aware of the killings and did not attempt to stop them." No evidence is
given of this (either that they were aware or that they did not try to
stop them). And even if the papacy did not try to stop them (again not
backed up), is there any indication that the rulers engaging in it would
have paid attention if the pope did? Rulers have thumbed their nose at
papal directives at times of greater papal power; indeed, as I just
noted, the pope's attempt to settle the land dispute between Spain and
Portugal was flat-out ignored!
Finally, even if the Papacy was aware and did not try to stop them,
this would be inaction rather than actually causing it. Is not the
essay's discussion on the number killed by the papacy, of which this would not appear to count? So attempts to lay these deaths on the papacy come up quite short.
And in any event, we can take the essay's own advice of taking a look at the witch death figure to see how reliable it is, which can help to give insight into the reliability of the entire estimate. Given the 9 million number of those killed for witchcraft appears quite unreliable, it seems that the applicable insight is that the entire estimate from Aletheia is likely as unreliable as that.
Chapter 6. An estimate based on population growth
This chapter, using information from the work "Atlas of World Population History" (which I referred to earlier), tries to offer estimates based on population growth, or rather (by its claims) the lack of it at points. However, outside of the mention of the Black Death in the 14th century and a few other cases, the essay seems to without warrant lay basically all the variations in the amount of persecutions. There are so many factors that go into how much the population grows that this analysis is woefully underdeveloped and much of it is wildly speculative; in fact, it's hard to really figure out exactly how to approach it because it's so blatantly speculative.
Aside from its speculative nature, there are some very odd claims it makes. Referring to the Waldenses and accepting as fact someone's rhetorical statement of them being like the sand of the sea (which, as noted before, the essay's own source, Philip Schaff, cautioned us to not take too seriously), it says "By following a Biblical lifestyle, they would have had low infant mortality and disease rates, long lives, and substantial wealth." Exactly how the former creates the latter is unstated. The substantial wealth statement is especially odd given that the Waldenses were trying to avoid wealth.
Another odd claim is the fact it acknowledges that, the Black Death aside, the population growths for Europe compared to worldwide are fairly similar. The reasonable conclusion of this would be that it's evidence against its assertion, as it shows the population growth in Catholic-controlled Europe is quite similar to that of the rest of the world, and so it makes no sense to try to blame it on persecutions because the Catholic Church had no real power outside of Europe. Surprisingly, the essay tries to argue the opposite:
"Despite the differences, there are remarkable similarities in the population growth patterns in Europe and the world as a whole from 1000 to 1800. In all centuries except the twelfth through fourteenth, the population growths were very close, except possibly for the fifteenth. The population growths of the fourteenth century would have been very close but for the Black Death. This suggests that there was some common driving force for these rates of population growth. It seems unlikely that this could have been climactic or political or technological in nature because of the considerable diversity all over the world. However, the global reach and policies of the Papacy provides such a unifying factor. An increase in persecutions would affect population trends the world over. Furthermore, the worldwide decline in the power of the Papacy from the sixteenth century onwards would have had a global effect."
Even if the pope decided to go as strong as he could on persecutions, the only place he had actual power for most of that period was western Europe. He didn't have power over the Eastern churches due to the Great Schism (and they had been drifting apart even before that), he didn't have any power over Islamic-controlled lands (the Crusades only achieved at best a few temporary gains), he had no power in Asia, no power in Africa, and nothing in North and South America because they wouldn't be discovered by Europeans until 1492! The pope couldn't have had any real effect on persecution outside of Europe. And if anyone wants to claim he could have in North and South America after they were discovered, we note that in 1500 and 1600 we see strong worldwide population growth, so one can hardly blame persecutions for population growth. Perhaps the essay would point to specific losses of population in the Americas like it did before as evidence of persecution. But while Atlas of World Population History shows a reduction from 1500 to 1600 (14 million to 11.5), again this is far more ascribed to illness than persecution. As the work says on page 272-273:
"It is easy but entirely wrong to blame the Spainiards for this demographic disaster. Their combination of brutality, cupidity and religiosity make them popular scapegoats, but they probably killed no more people in the course of their conquest of the continent than the Aztecs had in their wars of the preceding quarter century. The killers, in truth, were not men but microbes. Smallpox and measles were unknown in pre-Columban America and Amerindians had no resistance to them. In the course of the 16th century repeated epidemics of these diseases swept through the native population cutting it back again and again until, towards the end of the period, a new equilibrium was established. The new level was usually about three quarters of the pre-Columban figure, though it could be better or worse than this."
This is from the very source that the essay is citing! Thus this whole claim of how population growth worldwide being similar to that of Europe proving persecutions by the papacy makes little sense. It somehow attributes to the papacy changes in population where it had no power. The information in "Atlas of World Population History" is actually an argument against this essay's conclusions.
Chapter 7. Indirect evidence of persecution
Much is made about how there were skeletons and human remains found in huge underground vaults in Rome. The information given in regards to this is unfortunately not very specific, making it difficult to look the information up. If what is being referred to is the Capuchin Crypt, while there were many skeletons, these were not the result of persecution, but of burial.However, it does try to make claims about people being freed by French soldiers from Inquisitor prisons in Spain. First it offers a dramatic account of how a "colonel Lehmanowsky" found a secret prison of the Inquisition and freed the people there. However, for once we have a small attempt at not simply relying on old polemical sources, as the essay admits that the historian Cecil Roth says concerning the entire account that "It is a waste of time to point out the absurdities and incoherences in this egregious account, which was foisted on the horrified public at the height of a period of mid-Victorian respectability." Cecil Roth does refer to the alleged colonel as Lemanoir rather than Lehmanowsky, but his description of the event matches up very well with the Lehmanowsky account, so it is clear the same person is being referred to (the name difference perhaps came from the account he consulted getting the name wrong). As
a quick note, however, the essay claims Cecil Roth's work was "History
of the Inquisition" when it is actually "The Spanish Inquisition" (oddly, it cites it by "The Spanish Inqusition" later). I
found the quote on page 258 rather than the page 251 that was cited, but
I think I was consulting a different printing.
However, immediately after giving Cecil Roth's statement of skepticism, the essay claims "Because he does not point out these "absurdities," it is difficult to evaluate his statement." The fact he thought it was so absurd it needed no time spent on refutation is perhaps sign enough of its problems, but it admittedly is not necessarily that useful for someone unversed in the subject matter who wants to know the why.
In my searching for information on this, I came across a work that discusses Lehmanowsky's claims and does explain what the aforementioned absurdities are. Frances Luttikhuizen's "Underground Protestantism in Sixteenth Century Spain: A Much Ignored Side of Spanish History" discusses this claim beginning with page 340 (it also mentions that his full name was Johann J. Lehmanowsky).
Looking at reviews, Luttikhuizen's work seems to have received some criticism for bias towards the Reformation. The Catholic Historical Review (Volume 104, Number 1, Winter 2018, pages 146-148), while giving some compliments, still says "The book does not have an argument; rather, it can be viewed as a polemic, akin to the works of Jean Crespin or John Knox. The author writes that her "main aim . . . [is] to vindicate the memory of those men and women who died for their 'Lutheran' convictions, of those who were fortunate enough to escape, and of those who rediscovered their stories and their works" [p. 350]. In the process of that vindication, the author indulges in Black Legend stereotypes about early modern Spain." Of course, The Catholic Historical Review is likely not going to be without biases of its own. But the same criticism is leveled, albeit less harshly, in the Lutheran Quarterly (2019-04, Vol. 33 (1), p. 104-106). While mostly complimentary ("More profound interpretive work is available in Spanish (found in the bibliography), but Luttikhuizen's work is highly recommended as the definitive English guide to this"), it does say "A major lacuna of this tome is its failure to treat this infamous institution [the Inquisition] with more subtlety and insight–even the notes are devoid of reference to the many studies which shed light on it" and "As a product of the Reformation's 500th anniversary, moreover, the book falls short, reading at times like an updated Martyr's Mirror, with little attempt to engage with the ecumenical church's reconciliations with its past."
Still, even if there is some bias, it is clearly regarded as reasonably scholarly. In fact, this bias against the Inquisition makes it a more powerful citation, as it is in this case defending the Inquisition against Lehmanowsky's claims.
So, what is wrong with Lehmanowsky's claims? The book notes one of the major problems with the story was that was that Lehmanowsky claims there was an Inquisition palace in a place there wasn't (there was a palace, but in a different location than was claimed). I don't want to go against copyright by quoting too much, but here are a two excerpts from the work. On page 342 we have:
"... Benjamin Wiffen became very alarmed and published a lengthy article in the prestigious literary journal "Notes and Queries" (August 4, 1854) in which he put forth factual information obtained from persons living in Madrid in 1809–furnished by his friend Luis de Usoz–to refute Lehmanowsky's story. Wiffen's note received empathetic support from the much-travelled Englishman, Lord Monson, who had been in Madrid in 1820 and had seen with his own eyes the old Inquisition palace on Maria Cristina Street."
After Lehmanowsky attempted a reply, the following is noted:
"When Luis de Usoz y Rio, also a subscriber to "Notes & Queries", read Lehmanowsky's reply letter in the next issue, he went straightaway to a notary public, together with four witnesses who were living in Madrid in 1809, and had an affidavit drawn up in which they testified–as eye witnesses–that there never existed an Inquisition palace in Charmatin, as Lehmanowsky claimed, and that the whole story was an invention."
Both Benjamin Wiffen and Luis de Usoz were Protestants (for that matter, Frances Luttikhuizen appears to have been Protestant as well), so they have no bias towards Catholicism in this matter.
If one is interested in the "Notes & Queries" articles in question, they can be found in "Choice Notes from "Notes and Queries"" published in 1858, on pages 186-204. It is available for reading here. I would ask the reader to simply consult that work for themselves, but I will include a few excerpts from that. After referring to a number of writers who have repeated the story in their works, Wiffen (referred to above) writes the following regarding how some Protestant works made use of Lehmanowsky's story:
"It is strange that such respectable writers never thought of consulting the current histories of the Peninsular war, or the leading newspapers of the time–The Courier and Morning Chronicle–which could scarcely have passed so public an event by without recording it; and that they did not mistrust the tale from the silence of Llorente and Puigblanch, who would certainly have mentioned it; for neither the ex-secretary of the tribunal, nor Sn. Puigblanch, who first published his Inquisicion sin Mascára at Cadiz in 1811, and occupied the Hebrew Professor's chair in the central university of Madrid in 1820-1, could have remained ignorant of such a consummating circumstance. Neglecting the pains to verify the fact, they have left in their pages a striking instance, for an intelligent opponent to point at, of simple credulity and the unsubstantial worth of their books."
Lehmanowsky did try to publish a reply that is included. He does not offer evidence of his claims, and he dodges completely the very powerful note that outside of Lehmanowsky, no one (even those critical of the Inquisition) seems to have mentioned this despite it being, according to Lehmanowsky's account, such a public affair. Lehmanowsky also offers the complaint that "I am astonished that any one should wait twenty years since my first statement, to correct the same." But Lehmanowsky was giving his statements in the United States, where proper investigation of Spain would have been much harder. It took time to make it to Britain and additional time for someone who was in a position to properly investigate it to be exposed to it. Beyond that, the reply Wiffen offers in the link, including the multiple sworn witnesses described previously saying that the story was impossible, should suffice as an answer.
As noted earlier, Wiffen was a Protestant (a Quaker, to be precise) and thus had no bias towards the Inquisition. Indeed, in his first letter (page 190) he refers to the Inquisition as "that evil sanhedrim." Thus we have people with no bias towards the Inquisition--and in fact bias against--stating that the whole story is rubbish and contradicted by other people. Cecil Roth may not have pointed out the absurdities, but hopefully this has.
In some fairness to the essay under examination, it was published over a decade before Luttikhuizen's book, and the essay was also published before the "Notes & Queries" were digitized and easily available. But this once again shows the repeated weakness of the essay: Instead of relying on up-to-date scholarly neutral works, it instead relies on the claims of out-of-date non-scholarly polemics, and as a result makes these kinds of errors. This is far from the worst example, of course--at least here it admitted that there was skepticism by a historian, although it largely brushed it aside--but had it tried to base itself on up-to-date scholarly works rather than older polemical ones it would not have published this claim to begin with.
Unfortunately, it doesn't even give that level of a fair shake to its next claim, which it gives without any note of issues with it:
A historian of Napoleon's
wars, describing the capture of Toledo, Spain by Napoleon's army, discussed the opening of
another Inquisition prison:
When
the French took Toledo, and broke open the Inquisition prison there, we read, "Graves seemed to open, and pale figures like ghosts
issued from dungeons which emitted a sepulchral odour. Bushy beards hanging
down over the breast, and nails grown like birds claws, disfigured the
skeletons, who with labouring bosoms inhaled, for the first time for a long
series of years, the fresh air. Many of them were reduced to cripples, the head
inclined forward, and the arms and hands hanging down, rigid and helpless: they
had been confined in dens so low they could not rise up in them: . . . in spite
of all the care of the surgeons, many of them expired the same day. The light
of the sun made a particularly painful impression on the optic nerve. . . . On
the following day General Lasalle minutely inspected the place, attended by
several officers of his staff. The number of machines for torture thrilled even
men inured to the battle-field with horror; only one of these, unique in its
kind for refined cruelty, seems deserving of more particular notice.
"In a recess in a subterraneous vault,
contiguous to the private ball for examinations, stood a wooden figure, made by
the hands of monks, and representing the Virgin Mary. A
gilded glory encompassed her head, and in her right hand she held a banner. It
struck us all, at first sight, as suspicious, that, notwithstanding the silken
robe, descending on each side in ample folds from her shoulders, she should
wear a sort of cuirass. On closer scrutiny, it appeared that the fore part of
the body was stuck full of extremely sharp nails and small narrow knife-blades,
with the points of both turned towards the spectator. The arms and hands were
jointed; and machinery behind the partition set the figure in motion. One of
the servants of the Inquisition was compelled, by command of the General, to
work the machine, as he termed it. When the figure extended her arms, as though
to press some one most lovingly to her heart, the well-filled knapsack of a
Polish grenadier was made to supply the place of a living victim. The statue
hugged it closer and closer; and when the attendant, agreeably to orders, made
the figure unclasp her arms and return to her former position, the knapsack was
perforated to the depth of two or three inches, and remained hanging on the
points of the nails and knife-blades. To such an infernal purpose, and in a
building erected in honour of the true faith, was the Madonna rendered
subservient!" [Thiers & Bowen, The
Campaigns Of Napoleon,
cited by H. Grattan Guinness, The
Approaching End Of The Age (London:
Hodder and Stoughton, 1878), 205-207]
Guinness's book is one in which he claims that various end-time prophecies in the Bible are warnings about the Catholic Church, trying to cite the Inquisition as evidence of such; this is again a case of the essay relying on polemical materials. However, I looked at the applicable pages in Guinness's book, and while the text is there presented in quotes, I see no citation as to where the information comes from at all, so I do not know where the essay gets the claim that he was citing The Campaigns of Napoleon by Thiers and Bowen (though it should be noted that the only writer was Thiers; Bowen is merely credited by the book as an editor). In fact, I looked at The Campaigns of Napoleon on The Internet Archive and did searches for phrases from the above, but results do not come up. So it does not seem to be from there at all, meaning the essay's claims that "a historian of Napoleon's wars" made the claim appears false. Thus I am again left wondering where the essay gets the idea it comes from that work, given that I do not see Guinness specify that as its source, nor does it seem to be there in the first place. Guinness presents it as a quote, so it is coming from somewhere, but he does not seem to say where.
This account was published in several works prior to Guinness that I have found. The earliest I have been able to find of this is in a publication called "Repository
of Arts, Literature, Fashions, Manufactures, &c." which included
the testimony in Volume XIV, No. LXXXIV, in December 1822 (page 340).
This writing is called "Horrors of the Spanish Inquisition", and the
only identification of its source is "From the Papers of a French
Officer." The name this French Officer, however, is not stated. It is not
clear if this was the first English publication of this and others took it from this, or if it was simply taking it from some (possibly not available online) source which is also where others took it from. Unfortunately, it does not seem like it is possible to go further in English.
But what of French? Well, I was able to find a mention of this in 1820 from "Lettres Normandes" Volume 11 page 288. This is not the full text, though, just a shorter synopsis of it. So this account apparently existed in French, though I can't find the actual French text; it may simply not be online. However, we once again are left in the dark as to where this came from.
However,
when attempting to find information on it, I found that Edgar Allen
Poe's famous story The Pit and the Pendulum says something similar at
the end. At the end of this story, a man is saved from the Inquisition
by the arrival of General Lasalle in Toledo (it is quite possible that
Poe was inspired by the above account). However, several commentators
have said that this is a historical inaccuracy in The Pit and the
Pendulum, on the basis of them saying that Lasalle was not part of the
army that arrived in Toledo and was elsewhere. See for example https://jottedlines.com/the-pit-and-the-pendulum-setting-historical-context.
So, if Lasalle was not there at the taking of Toledo, it would mean that the account is false. Now, the date of this supposed event is (suspiciously?) unclear. The start of the account found in "Repository
of Arts, Literature, Fashions, Manufactures, &c." opens with "The
tremendous battle of Samosierra was fought, a way was opened to the
capital over the steep cliffs of this gate to New Castile, and its keys,
brought by General Morla, were already in the camp of the conquerors."
The Battle of Samosierra (though usually rendered as Somosierra now) occurred in November 30, 1808, so this should
have been sometime after, probably soon after.
So I decided to try to see if I could determine whether Lasalle was there for the taking of Toledo or not. As one might expect, though, most of the information about a French officer would be in French, a language I do not know particularly well. However, with the power of automated translation, I can at least understand things well enough. I obtained a biography of Lasalle called "Le Général Comte Charles Lasalle" from 1970 by Hourtoulle. The Battle of Somosierra is on pages 199-200. Page 200 ends with him visiting Novés on December 9, and there is no mention of Toledo between these.
On the next page, 201, Toledo is mentioned: "Lasalle doit pousser des reconnaissances en direction de Salamanque, il passe sous les ordres de Lefebvre qui est à Talavera. Le maréchal Victor est à Tolède. Madrid est à couvert." This, however, indicates that Toledo was taken independent of Lasalle, as it mentions that Victor (Claude-Victor Perrin) was in Toledo. This is indicated again on the next page on 202: "Pendant ce temps, Victor est menacé au sud de Tolède par l'armée (rénovée) du centre que commande le duc de l'Infantado." Again, there is no mention of Lasalle ever visiting or taking Toledo. Lasalle first is mentioned as going to Toledo at the end of the page, in reference to January of 1809: "Lasalle, lui, rentré vers Madrid sagement, est envoyé à Tolède; le 13, il doit quitter cette ville pour aller à Almaraz et établir une tête de pont qui sera gardée par un bataillon de la division Leval." In other words, he had gone to Madrid, then come to Toledo, then left it on January 13.
What does all of this mean? It means that, if this work is accurate, Toledo was captured without Lasalle's involvement. Lasalle did come to it, but only after its capture. That it was Victor, not Lasalle, who captured Toledo is verified by Volume 1 of "History of the Pensinular War" by Robert Southey which on page 737 says "On the 11th of December Victor had his detachments in Aranjuez and in Ocaña; on the 19th he occupied Toledo". Volume 1 of "A History of the Pensinular War" by Charles Oman on page 480 tells us "Of Victor's infantry, one division (Ruffin) marched on Toledo, which opened its gates without resistance." (it does not give an explicit date for them entering Toledo, but the prior sentence was discussing events of December 11) Again nothing is stated here about Lasalle being involved, though it does mention him on the next page, as capturing the separate city of Talavera.
Thus it indeed does not appear that Lasalle was involved with the capture of Toledo at all, and was elsewhere at the time. I should note also that the full account of the alleged French officer on the capture of Toledo claims there was fighting ("Close to the gates of the city another warm encounter took place. The Polish lancers broke at full gallop through the ranks of the infantry, and the voltigeurs forced their way at the point of the bayonet through the olive-plantations of the suburbs into the city"), in opposition to the mention by Oman that there was not resistance in Toledo.
I admit I am putting considerable faith into these works, and I do not know enough about the Pensinsular War to be sure of this. But it very much looks to me that, like was noted, Lasalle was not involved in the taking of Toledo, and only went there later. This would therefore mean the story, which portrays Lasalle as being present during the taking of Toledo and this event, would simply have to be false.
Even if Lasalle was in fact present when Toledo was taken, there is another thing that renders this account extremely
suspect. Namely, its description of an iron maiden in the second
paragraph of the quoted text. While perhaps better known as the name of a
heavy metal band, iron maiden also was a term for an alleged torture or
execution device. In the torture variant, someone would be forced to
stand in a locked cabinet with sharp nails embedded towards them, which
would injure them if they did not stand up perfectly straight. In the
execution variant, which is described above, the nails would pierce them
immediately and kill them. The name comes from the fact these torture
devices were (supposedly) sometimes sculpted to look like a figure of
the Virgin Mary.The problem
is that while you'll see people claim these were used as torture or
execution devices, sometimes claiming they were used in the medieval
period, there is a decided lack of evidence they were ever used for
such.
It
is true there are physical iron maidens, with what seems to have been
the original being from Nuremberg in 1802. But there is again a lack of
evidence they were ever used for torture or execution, and they instead
seem to be just made after the fact. This article
discusses it a little. This lends further credence to the entire
account given being just a false concoction, if it was claiming they
used a torture/execution device that people didn't actually use. By 1820, the
(apparently false) stories about iron maiden could definitely spread
enough for the writer of this to have heard of them, and they, not
knowing the lack of actual evidence, chose to insert it into their
account.
We not having any idea what the origin of this account is already is a strike against it, but these additional issues seem to clinch it as false. It puts Lasalle in Toledo at a time that he does not appear to have been there. And it claims the usage of the iron maiden, a device most likely never actually used for torture or killing.
Therefore, both of these accounts, one by Lehmanowsky, and the other claiming to be from an anonymous French officer, both have major problems with them, and are very weak evidence. Yet again we see the problems of this essay, where it will simply take claims from polemical older works as fact, despite the issues they end up having.
Chapter 8. Cloistered convents
I am not sure why this chapter, which is about abuses in cloistered convents of nuns, was even included. It mostly bears little relation to the question at hand of deaths and seems to just be an excuse to complain about treatment of nuns; even if the complaints are valid, it does little to prove the large death tolls this essay tries to justify. Indeed, it makes the essay look much worse due to all of the errors it makes; although many
issues have been observed already in the essay under examination, this chapter may be the worst of the bunch.
Now, obviously there certainly have been abuses that occurred in convents. It would be foolish to dispute that. However, some have been exaggerated, and in any event the question is whether the examples given are accurate. For example, it gives a quotation without citation in which someone states:
"Moreover, I grew up in San Antonio, Texas, living about 6 blocks from a large Catholic Church that was once a Cloistered Convent. Most today don't know about them. My step-father was an altar boy at the church, planning to go into the priesthood, until the government forced that Convent to open up. Then they found the bones of babies under the floor that came from the sex escapades of the priests (who represent Christ) and the nuns (who were 'married to christ'), which was supposed to mean that when the nun had sex with the priest, they were having sex with Christ and it was not sin. When a priest came wanting a young nun, the Mother Superior lined them up for the priest to pick out his victim of the day. They then went into a private room with a bed and he got what he didn't get at home, since priests are not allowed to marry."
This unclear source further claims that "When a baby was born, the Mother Superior would suffocate the baby and bury it within the Convent."
As noted, the essay does not say where he got this quote from (from research, it appears to be from the owner of a no-longer-available website that did some attacking of Catholicism). Yet one cannot help but notice that real information is not given. While it does at least tell us this was in San Antonio, the name of the convent/church is not listed, nor is it said when this was discovered. I tried searching around for information on this, but have been unable to find anything confirming this claim, outside of course of those who are simply repeating the above quote (one person was apparently under the impression that the author of this essay was the one who said that, when the essay is actually just quoting someone else). I even tried searching some older newspapers from San Antonio on newspaper archive sites in case the information just didn't make it online, but still couldn't find anything. While the scanning on such sites can be imperfect (meaning that one could search for something and it would be missed in a newspaper) and it is possible I was searching for the wrong terms, a story like the above is the sort of thing one would expect to appear in multiple newspapers, dramatically decreasing the chance of that happening. But I found nothing. I tried to see if there was maybe just one or two convents there and I could try to search by their names, but this site lists more than a dozen! (even worse, the quotation the essay offers claims that it was a former convent turned into a church, so it probably wouldn't be listed there)
Surely it would not be difficult at all for the person who made this assertion to give the name of the convent or at least the name of the parish that the convent was turned into. Then someone could much more easily look up the information to verify it. So why in the world was this critical information omitted that would have required only a few additional words and would have strengthened this argument if it were true?
This is also stated as part of the quote the essay offers from that source:
I personally met a dear nun who was enslaved within a cloistered convent in the United States. She managed a daring escape and ran for her life, then began to speak out and was a part of the governments finally forcing them to be opened and stop the terrible farce of religious piety and holiness behind those walls (she testified before Congress). As soon as she escaped and begin to speak out so that the other enslaved nuns being held against their will might be set free, (for to enter the convent was to be sealed within it's walls until death without ever being able to leave), they began trying to murder her.
Again, no information is given that would allow us to identify who this nun was, so it is impossible to verify this story, such as her managing "a daring escape" or the claim that people tried to murder her over it. It cannot be claimed that the name was omitted for privacy purposes given she supposedly testified before congress, a very public event. Like before, simply giving the name would let the reader check up on it and, if it is true, make them take the story more seriously. Thus its absence is again quite conspicuous.
The fact that this quoted individual again omitted information that could have easily allowed someone to verify this is quite noticeable, and leaves one wondering if perhaps this was not coincidental. That is, it could be that the information was intentionally left off to make it so that the information couldn't be properly checked (making it harder to disprove if it is false). Or perhaps it was false but there was no dishonesty intended, and the author was relying on vague memories that could have been wrong, and the reason for their lack of stating them was because the memories were vague enough they could not remember. Or perhaps it was just something they heard but had not verified. But if any of these are the reasons they did not give this information, it puts the rest of the claims in doubt as well (if they were relying on vague memories or vague hearsay and could not give specifics, why should we expect those memories or hearsay to be accurate?) Ultimately, it is up to them to prove their claims, and by leaving out such important information, they have not done so. Again: All that would be required would be to give the name of the church/convent and the name of the nun in question, which if these claims were true could have led to easy verification. But this information was suspiciously not given, making it very hard if impossible to verify these claims. I certainly was unable to verify them.
So
ultimately, the citations given here are simply too vague to do
anything with. I tried my best to find information on these things but
have come up short. If anyone has further information on this, please by
all means tell me. But for now I just have to conclude that there is a
major lack of proof for these claims and there is a high probability they are simply false.
In fact, the essay can't figure out name of the nun alluded to above either, writing:
The nun referred to may have been Edith O Gorman, who was still alive in 1947, or Eva Moss, who spoke to thousands in Washington, D.C. in March, 1928.
From what I can tell, Edith O'Gorman actually died in 1929 (see
here). Indeed, if she was alive in 1947, she would have been 105 years old, as she was born in 1842. While not impossible, this is highly unlikely, especially given the time period. So this claim that she was alive in 1947 seems flatly false. Anyway, given she died in 1929, she would seem to be a no-go for the nun that the quoted person claims to have met.
Though as long as we are discussing Edith O'Gorman, I did do some research on her. The usual claim about her seems to be that she was an "escaped nun" after suffering abuses in the convent. Unlike some other "escaped nuns" (one of which we will be examining shortly), it is true she was a nun. What is less clear is how accurate her account is.
Here is an analysis of Edith O'Gorman ("The Identity of Edith O’Gorman, the "Escaped Nun"" by Augustine J Curley) that points out some questionable parts of her story. After pointing out some discrepancies, it says "There are many other discrepancies, but these should be sufficient to show that the material in her book must be taken with a fairly large grain of salt". I also in my research uncovered
this newspaper article that takes strong issue with her claims, showing alleged letters from her showing she wanted to go back into the convent, which seems to contradict her claims that she was an escaped nun. (in case this website no longer works in the future, I will note that this is on the front page of the March 25, 1871 edition of The Pilot, a Catholic newspaper in Boston). Lastly, there is a pamphlet by the Catholic Truth Society (alluded to by the first link) called
"Edith O'Gorman and her book" by G. Elliot Anstruther now available at HathiTrust (it was previously unavailable, but entered public domain recently). Now, none of these are neutral sources. The second and third are outright polemics. The first, while more neutral and scholarly, is by a Benedictine monk. So they should themselves be taken with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, I felt I should post them for reference.
As for Eva Moss, I cannot find much
information about her at all outside of the fact she gave a speech in
Washington, D.C. where a few members of congress were apparently in attendance. However, this is a far cry from testifying before congress! In any event, the fact that was so long ago also makes it unlikely this was the nun in question, though depending on how old she was when she gave that speech and how old the person was who wrote up the claim of meeting a nun who testified before congress, it's not impossible. Again, if they had simply given the name, this speculation would be unnecessary.
One very much wishes that, rather than this speculation from the essay, the person who made the claim had been contacted and asked who the nun was. After all, the website was available then and contact would have been possible, unlike today.
After that, we get the following incredible claim:
Sister Charlotte gave a similar testimony about abuses in convents. She left her home in the USA for a convent overseas in 1910, and later escaped. Afterwards she accepted Christ and began giving her testimony, from which the following excerpt is taken:
I saw scores of babies born in the convents. Most were abnormal and deformed and seldom was one normal. With my hands I have delivered many, many of them, therefore I know. With my eyes I have seen the horror of it all and the world must be told of what goes on in those chambers of horrors.
Many have said I exaggerate and that these things are not so, but I have yet to be hauled into court to refute the charges. They would have to open the cloisters and this they dare not do. After being snared in this rotten system for twenty-two years, I know whereof I speak.
Normal young expectant mothers eagerly anticipate the arrival of their precious baby. Everything is ready, nursery, crib, clothing, and everyone is happy with her. By contrast, a little nun in the convent dreads the moment when she gives birth. The child is the product of a shameful, illicit union with a drunken priest which was forced on her. She knows from bitter experience that the baby will only be permitted to live four or five hours at the very most. It will never be cleaned or wrapped in a warm blanket for Mother Superior will put her hand over its mouth and pinch its nostrils to snuff out its life.
This is why there are lime pits in all the convents. Babies' bodies are tossed in these holes to be destroyed. Pray for the government to force the convents to open their doors to release the prisoners and let the whole world see what horrors are hidden behind those doors of cruel religious hypocrisy.
If this happens, I assure you that even the Catholic people will agree to the closing of the convents as they did in Mexico in 1934. They have no idea what is transpiring there either, or they would never expose their daughters to such barbarous debauchery and torture.
The convents in old Mexico have been turned into government museums which you can tour for a modest fee. You should go and see with your own eyes and touch with your hands the things of which I speak. Go down into the dungeons, through the tunnels and torture chambers and see all the fiendish devices, demonically conceived, to inflict suffering on the bodies of helpless nuns. See for yourself the cells in which nuns were locked each night and examine the beds, and the prayer boards.
For those unaware, this "Sister Charlotte" (who went variously as either Charlotte Keckler or Charlotte Wells) is almost certainly a fraud. "Sister Charlotte" offered, as far as I can tell, no evidence for her even being a nun, let alone for the rest of the story. See
here for an analysis. The text on that page has been copied to
here for those who want a live website, though it lacks some of the links of the former page. As is noted there, Charlotte never offered any tangible proof of anything, there are considerable implausibilities in her story (e.g. her claim the convent had 180 nuns when Carmelite convents apparently don't have that many), and her verbiage indicates a Protestant background rather than a Catholic one. And it must yet again be stressed that she, as far as I can tell, never told anyone what this convent was. One would think she would want to stop the abuses there by trying to get popular opinion to make the government step in; indeed, she says "pray for the government to force the convents to open their doors to release the prisoners" but was apparently unwilling to take the simple step of telling people what this convent was in order to help with that.
Yet despite all of the issues with her testimony, the essay simply accepts her testimony uncritically, in keeping with the recurring problem that has been noted over and over. It should be noted that the first link was available years prior to the publication of this essay, so this information would have been available at the time. But there is no attempt to try to respond to it, nor any admission that Charlotte offered no proof for her claims; again, she did not offer even the identity of the convent this all supposedly happened in.
Now, the essay does try to back up Charlotte's claims regarding the lime pits with two quotes. The first is this:
A web site of a homosexual order of hospitaler
Friars contains the following statement:
The sexual-orientation and/or inclination of
the priesthood has been scandalous and so very damaging for a very long time.
With the rest of the world, we shamefacedly have to look at the
"lime-pits" that academic archeology has unearthed close to almost
every convent while the "official church" feigns zero tolerance for
birth-control or abortion.
Where the web site in question is is not stated (nor the name of this "homosexual order of hospitaler Friars"), and it appears to no longer be around given that searching for the above quote only turns up postings of this essay. Thus it is impossible to determine on what basis, if any, this was asserted. There is a strong probability that it ends up just tracing back to Charlotte's claims. Thus this quote really means little.
The other quote, while more tangible in that we actually know who said it, is highly problematic for other reasons. The claim made is:
In a
sermon Wisdom versus Faith, delivered on Sunday,
1st April 1962 at
the Branham Tabernacle in Jeffersonville, Indiana, U.S.A, William Branham stated,
I went down there in Mexico myself and seen them lime pits. That's what made communism spring up in Mexico. They broke up that tommyrot. That's what
made communism spring up yonder.
Now, the above quote can be found in the context of a lengthy sermon by Branham here. A bit oddly, the quote presented in the essay actually takes out the portion that makes it clear he's talking about the supposed lime pits the babies were killed in. Here's the quote on the site I linked to with the larger context:
"I went down there in Mexico, myself, and seen them lime pit, pits where them nuns' babies; when the priests would have them by them, babies; where they was burnt in them lime pits, and things like that. That's what made communism spring up in Mexico. They broke up that tommyrot. That's what made communism spring up yonder."
That page does have an audio file of the sermon, and I listened to it to make sure the transcription above is correct, which it seems to be. Now, just before he makes the above statement, he says "How many heard that testimony of that little nun that just got out? You got it here? I want that played some Wednesday night here at church, and every person here should have the testimony." He doesn't say the name of the "little nun" but it almost certainly is Charlotte (who I believe was sharing her testimony at the time) given the reference to the lime pits and Mexico.
There is a major problem with attempting to appeal to Branham as confirmation, though. Branham does not seem to be a reliable source on matters like this, given we can find cases where he described visiting places he appears to have never visited. Let's take a look at this:
https://en.believethesign.com/index.php?title=Did_William_Branham_visit_the_graves_of_Muhammad,_Buddha,_and_Confucius%3F
The issue is also discussed here:
https://en.believethesign.com/index.php?title=Did_William_Branham_travel_around_the_world_seven_times%3F
As is noted on that site (apparently run by a former follower of Branham), Branham claimed to have visited the graves of Confucius, Buddha, and Muhammad, and Branham gives a description of the last one. However, the site says that he hadn't visited China (where Confucius's grave was) and also says his description of Muhammad's tomb is inaccurate. Now, I don't know enough about Branham's travels or Muhammad's tomb to be able to verify the statements made on that site, but we can be sure he didn't visit Buddha's grave because there is no grave of Buddha. Buddha was cremated and his ashes distributed to different places. Even if one claims the cremation story was a myth, the fact remains there is no recognized grave of Buddha. It is impossible to visit the grave of Buddha, which he claims to have done.
If we know he's made claims about places he's visited that are clearly false--such as claiming to visit a place that does not exist--why exactly should we trust this one about seeing lime pits in convents in Mexico? Given that in his speech he shows knowledge of Charlotte's claims, it seems quite plausible that his claim about lime pits came not from any first hand knowledge but rather simply hearing Charlotte's claim and endorsing it despite not having any actual knowledge of it.
This has been bad enough. But the following claim that is offered may reflect even more poorly on the essay's accuracy:
Here is a particularly sad example of a nun who escaped from St. Joe's Convent in Tipton County, Indiana and was sent back by the sheriff:
Menace, Feb., 1927
Rome has won another victory, a victory which forever places a dark blot upon the history of one of the strongest Protestant counties in one of the strongest Protestant States in the Union Tipton County, Indiana.
Little Nellie Fortune, a girl of twenty years, Convent Number 096, saw a chance to escape. Although the night was bitter cold she made her way across fields, through woodlands and over streams, finally reaching a farm house a distance of five miles away, before the coming of daylight forced her to seek shelter She crept into an out-building and was found by a kindly farmer and was taken in and given food and clothing. This man was preparing to move and Nellie was taken to the home of a neighbor, Mr. and Mrs. Charlie Fuller of the Rock Prairie community. Here she was welcomed and given a home by this good Protestant family.
She related the many things which take place behind the convent walls of St. Joseph's Convent, and said she could stand the conditions there no longer and resolved to escape or die in the attempt. She had come to America from Northern Ireland, and stated that conditions in the convents here were far worse than they were in Ireland.
She was happy in her new home, telling her benefactors that "it felt good to be a Protestant." Plans had been made for her to attend church and "be a real Protestant", as she expressed it.
Life was beginning to take on a brighter aspect for poor little Nellie Fortune. She had a good home. she had freedom, and what was more, human love and companionship. But her joy was to be short lived. The unrelenting hounds of Rome were hot on the trail. At last she was located. Sheriff Claud Louks, of Tipton, (elected on a 100 per cent ticket and sworn to defend the American home, etc.) was called and without a warrant or any authority, save the request of the church of Rome, went straightway to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Fuller and seized the pleading, crying defenseless girl, who begged for her liberty and fought with her last ounce of strength to be permitted to remain with those who had befriended her. Mr. and Mrs. Fuller also pleaded and begged but to no avail.
Nellie was dragged back to the convent of St. Joseph, to face God alone knows what.
I have already covered this in
a previous post. In fact, it was going over this essay that prompted me to do my research on Nellie Fortune to begin with, which I felt was important enough I created a separate blog post entirely just to deal with that. The time between that post in 2021 and this post should tell you something about how long it takes me to actually finish these posts of mine. Information about how inaccurate the above quoted text is can be found at my link, but if one wishes the short version: Nellie Fortune was not a nun. Rather, she was a student at St. Joseph's Academy who was from Ireland. She was in the United States on what was essentially the equivalent of a "student visa." She was taken back to the academy because she had violated said "student visa" by leaving the academy (which appears to have been due to homesickness) and therefore was no longer eligible to stay in the United States. And unlike the claim that "God alone knows what" happened to her, we do know what happened: She was then returned to Ireland (the above text incorrectly claims she was from northern Ireland; she was from southern Ireland). I was not able to find out too much about her life afterwards, but marriage records show she did get married several years later, and online genealogical records show she had a number of children.
So the story this essay repeats is quite false. Now, this essay was published in 2006 and unlike Charlotte, the resources I used to research this probably were not as easily available back then (NewspaperArchive was launched in 1999 but may not have had the newspapers in question at the time). But the fact that the attributed source--The Menace--was a highly polemical anti-Catholic newspaper means caution should have been exercised about trusting something that comes entirely from such a source without it providing better proof.
Indeed, this polemic source is so blindly trusted in that the Nellie Fortune claim is repeated later by saying "Not only
this, but they [the Papal hierarchy] demanded that poor Nellie Fortune
be returned to the convent!" It has already been demonstrated how that
claim is utterly wrong, so it reflects even more poorly on the essay that it feels the need to emphasize this inaccurate point.
This has been mentioned before, but it needs to be stressed again how this is a major problem of the essay. It so constantly will accept claims by polemical sources without any question. That's why it accepts, without any mention of the major problems with it, the testimony of Charlotte. That's why it accepts, despite the fact he made false claims about other places he had visited, William Branham's claim about seeing the lime pits. That's why it accepts, without any admission that the only source offered is highly biased, this inaccurate story about Nellie Fortune. I know I have not looked up every claim and citation in the essay, but errors like this are exactly why I am so dubious about the rest of it. This kind of insufficient discernment is what causes errors like the above; what reason do I have to believe that the other claims don't suffer from similar problems?
Some other "nun horror stories" and claims are given, but given the lack of discernment in the examples we have viewed so far, I have to be skeptical of their accuracy, especially given how vague some of the sources are as to where the information comes from. This means that even if I felt it was worth looking into these after the problems already noticed, I am still unable to examine its claims properly.
One thing someone may notice is that while we've seen a bunch of claims about abuse of nuns, we haven't really seen much about actual killings, outside of two very dubious testimonies. We finally get to that, leaving one wondering why we spent so much time on accusations of nun abuse that had nothing to do with the death toll of the papacy:
It is
hard to believe that all of these statements could result from anti-Catholicism without some basis in fact. In fact, the discovery of the bodies of
babies buried in a great many convents in Spain helped to lead to the Second Republic which lasted from 1931 to 1936. I received email from a person whose father
was present in Spain when one of these convents was opened at
this time and the bodies of babies were discovered buried inside. This person verified that the bodies of
babies were found in a great number of convents, that the exposure of these
convents took place over a number of years, and that these exposures generated
considerable hostility towards the Roman Catholic Church among the Spanish people.
Also, the graves of the babies were not marked in any way. In addition, there are many labyrinths of
underground passages in Spain connecting churches, monasteries, castles,
and convents and some of them are opened to the public on rare occasions. Probably many others are still alive who
either recall these incidents themselves or have heard about them from their
parents.
I had difficulty finding information about this claim of bodies found in "a great many convents" online (apart from dubious and biased sources), so I contacted two historians of the Spanish Civil War to see if they could confirm it. I feel uncomfortable listing their names, because when I e-mailed them I didn't ask them about publishing what they said; the reader will unfortunately have to take my word for it. Anyway, one said that said that bodies of babies were found in convents, but (in contrast what is claimed above, where it says it helped to lead to the second Republic) they said "that was not the reason for popular support of the Republic nor the basis for anticlericalism." This person also told me that "overall, the numbers of bodies was probably not that many, perhaps not more than twenty" which seems wells short of the claims above of this occurring in many convents. The other historian, however, said that "though it was claimed that infant bodies were found, none of these claims have been authenticated and I am sure that it's a fiction, albeit one that was widely believed."
So it seems the historians do not agree on this, with one affirming and the other denying. However, even the one that does affirm it still says that it played little if any part in support for the Republic, and that the total number of bodies found was low. Either way, it does not seem to back up the claims made above that a "great number of convents" had this or that it was the reason for support of the Second Republic.
We do get a citation afterwards, but not one that actually confirms any of the above:
Such occurrences have even been
noted by historians:
In the ninth century, many monasteries were the haunts of homosexuals,
many convents were brothels in which babies were killed and
buried. Since the end of the Roman Empire,
historians say that infanticide was probably not practiced in the West on any
great scale -- except in convents. The Council of Aix-la-Chapelle in the year 836 openly admitted it. As to the
sex-starved secular clergy, they were so often accused of incest that they were
at length forbidden to have mothers, aunts or sisters living in their house.
Children, the fruits of incest, were killed by the clergy, as many a French prelate put on record.
-- Peter de Rosa, Vicars
of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy, pp. 566-567.
Vicars of Christ is a book that is heavily critical of Catholicism by a former Catholic (I believe he may have left mainstream Christianity altogether, if the title of a later book he wrote called "The Fatal Flaw of Christianity: He Did Not Rise From the Dead and the Dogma of Original Sin Is Pure Invention" is any indication). However, Vicars of Christ is not a book I find particularly reliable. For starters, it almost never offers sources for its claims. In the epilogue the author tries to defend this by saying that if he were to include sources, it would make the book unreadable... which is nonsense, as all one needs to do is add some numbers in the text to indicate the footnotes, then add at most a few dozen extra pages at the end of the book to show those footnotes in more detail. No hindrance to reading is caused at all.
This makes the book very frustrating when one sees people offer quotes attributed to popes from it, but the book provides no citation itself. And with no citations, we have no idea where much of the information is even coming from, which is aggravating when it seems blatantly wrong. For example, on page 65, he writes:
"Or had he fled, like Benedict V in 964, who, after dishonouring a young girl, immediately took off for Constantinople with the entire treasury of St Peter's, only to reappear when funds ran out and cause more havoc in Rome? The pious church historian Gerbert called Benedict 'the most iniquitous of all the monsters of ungodliness', but his judgement was premature. This pontiff was eventually slain by a jealous husband. His corpse, with a hundred dagger wounds in it, was dragged through the streets before being tossed into a cesspool."
I have looked at multiple encyclopedias on Benedict V and none say anything like this. The current online Encyclopedia Britannica article says he had a one-month papacy before being deposed by Otto I, who reduced him to a deacon and brought him back to Hamburg, "where he earned a reputation for personal holiness". Nothing at all like what de Rosa claimed! If one wishes an encyclopedia that does not require a subscription and is out of copyright, let's look back at the 1911 edition, which has simply this to say:
"Benedict V. was pope from 964 to 965. He was elected by the Romans on the death of John XII. The emperor Otto I. did not approve of the choice, and carried off the pope to Hamburg, where he died."
While not mentioning him as having a reputation for holiness, it nevertheless does not fit with what de Rosa claimed. It is of course possible those sources were wrong, but that means it is incumbent on Peter de Rosa to clearly cite his source. So where in the world does Peter de Rosa get this claim? He doesn't say. Perhaps it is the "Gerbert" he offers the quote from, but he offers no specification as to who Gerbert is or in what work this remark was stated. Maybe this Gerbert is Sylvester II, who was pope a few decades after Benedict V and whose original name was Gerbert, but it would be odd to use the vague "Gerbert" if that was who was in mind rather than clearly stating it was Sylvester II. Even if it was Sylvester II, without a citation as to where this was said, it can't really be tracked down.
Thus this grand claim he makes of Benedict V, without any clear citation, appears false. I have found no support for it, and rather have found sources that testify against it.
This is just one example of the problems one finds repeatedly with Vicars of Christ of making false or at least questionable claims but providing no proof whatsoever for them. I could go with more, but do not wish to go further on what is already a divergence. So, simply put, if I cannot find it verified by a more neutral source, I will not accept anything in Vicars of Christ. So if Peter de Rosa claims that "historians say that infanticide was probably not practiced in the West on any great scale -- except in convents" then I want to know which historians said this and where.
He does at least cite something with the "Council of Aix-la-Chapelle" (or the Council of Aachen) in the year 836. Unfortunately, he does not say where it was said in the council. I was able to find a copy of what I believe to be that council's decrees at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101078252150&view=1up&seq=356 (the work is "Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, cujus Johannes Dominicus Mansi et post ipsius mortem Florentius et Venetianus editores ab anno 1758 ad annum 1798 priores triginta unum tomos ediderunt, nunc autem continuatat et absoluta : tomus 0, 1-53. v.14 1769" column 671), apparently called "Concilium Aquisgranense II" in Latin, but my Latin is not good enough to figure much of it out, especially with about 30 pages to read through.
Looking over the descriptions of the canons, though, it looks to me like what is in mind is probably the canon labeled as "VII. Ut presbyteri qui feminas domi veritas habent ab episcopo corrigantur" (under Caput II, De vita & doctrina inferiorum ordinum) in the table of contents. This is found in full on colums 681-682, saying:
"Illud quoque non minus pericolosum esse didicimus, quod in quorumdam episcoporum parochiis, quoidam presbyteros, contra interdicta sanctorum canonum, feminas in domibus suis non solum habitare, sed etiam ministrare sibi faciunt, quas & laqueum sacerdotibus persaepe existisse, & multos hac occasione in sacandalum, & in detractionem corruisse cognovimus. Quae tranigressio & tempore genitoris vestri, & vestro in conventibus episcoporum secundum auctoritatem canonicam prohibita, sed necdum ad correctionem plene est perducta. Unde la commune censuimus, ut hi qui tantae transgressionis incorrectores hactenus exiterint, si abhinc hujus rei correctores esse neglexerint, juxta apostoli sententiam, quasi confentientes maolorum coerceantur."
An automated translation tells me this means:
"We have also learned that it is no less dangerous that in the parishes of certain bishops, certain priests, contrary to the prohibitions of the holy canons, make women not only live in their houses, but also minister to them, which we have learned has very often been a snare to priests, and many have fallen into scandal and detraction on this occasion. This transgression was forbidden both in the time of your father and in yours in the assemblies of bishops according to canonical authority, but has not yet been fully brought to correction. Hence we have decided that those who have hitherto been the correctors of so great a transgression, if they have neglected to be the correctors of this matter from now on, according to the apostle's sentence, should be coerced as if they were confessors of the devil."
However, this says nothing about babies being buried or infanticide, only saying that some had women living in their houses, which is forbidden. So unless there is something else in the council I have missed, this does nothing to back up de Rosa's other claims, or the claims of this essay.
But even if all of these claims about abuse of nuns were true and occurred frequently, these would be proof of widespread nun mistreatment--not widespread nun death. The essay finally puts forward the claim that "But in computing the number of persons killed
by the Papacy, if one includes all of the nuns and children who died in the
convents, surely the total would increase by many millions." Exactly how any of this would be traced back to the Papacy is unclear; the essay claims "the Papal hierarchy must have known what was happening, but did not take effective steps to stop it"--even accepting that this statement is fully true, it seems dubious to me that deaths from inaction can be considered part of the tally of those supposedly killed by the papacy. Even more unclear is how the essay manages to arrive at the number of "millions". Even if we accept all of these stories as true, the deaths of nuns appear quite rare (the accusatory claims are almost always on mistreatment, not death). The claim of killed children makes more sense at least insofar as the sources actually allege deaths (though for various reasons given above, their claims are questionable), but beyond the lack of real evidence offered as to it being so commonplace, the essay provides essentially no information as to how it arrived at those numbers, which it does not claim were ordered by the papacy.
As mentioned at the start of this section, the essay would have probably been better off leaving this chapter out entirely. Not only does it not benefit the essay's argument, the errors are so severe (even by the essay's standards) that it makes the essay look worse as a result and sheds more doubt on everything else in it.
Chapter 9. Wars
Chapter 9 starts with the following problematic claim:
There were also many killed in wars instigated by the Papacy. Chiniquy, Fifty Years in the Church of Rome, chapter 60, quotes President Lincoln as follows:
The common people see and hear the big, noisy wheels of the Southern Confederacy's cars; they call they Jeff Davis, Lee, Toombs, Beauregard, Semmes, ect., and they honestly think that they are the motive power, the first cause of our troubles. But this is a mistake. The true motive power is secreted behind the thick walls of the Vatican, the colleges and schools of the Jesuits, the convents of the nuns, and the confessional boxes of Rome.
There is a fact which is too much ignored by the American people, and with which I am acquainted only since I became President; it is that the best, the leading families of the South have received their education in great part, if not in whole, from the Jesuits and the nuns. Hence those degrading principles of slavery, pride, cruelty, which are as a second nature among so many of those people. Hence that strange want of fair play, humanity; that implacable hatred against the ideas of equality and liberty as we find them in the Gospel of Christ. You do not ignore that the first settlers of Louisiana, Florida, New Mexico, Texas, South California and Missouri were Roman Catholics, and that their first teachers were Jesuits. It is true that those states have been conquered or bought by us since. But Rome had put the deadly virus of her antisocial and anti-Christian maxims into the veins of the people before they became American citizens. Unfortunately, the Jesuits and the nuns have in great part remained the teachers of those people since. They have continued in a silent, but most efficacious way, to spread their hatred against our institutions, our laws, our schools, our rights and our liberties in such a way that this terrible conflict became unavoidable between the North and the South. As I told you before, it is to Popery that we owe this terrible civil war.
If indeed the Civil War was partly caused by the Papacy, then the Papacy was partially responsible for its victims.
To explain the problem with this quote, and why it's yet another case of the essay uncritically accepting dubious assertions from polemical sources, we need some background. Charles Chiniquy was a Catholic priest who later converted to Protestantism and became a very vocal opponent of his former church. His book Fifty Years in the Church of Rome, published in the 1880's, was an autobiography in which he also argued against Catholicism. What is pertinent for our issues is the claims that his work makes about Abraham Lincoln. Chiniquy first met Lincoln during a court case in which Lincoln was his attorney, and in his work, published about 20 years after Lincoln's death, Chiniquy describes several meetings he claims he had with Lincoln afterwards. Chiniquy attributes to Lincoln various quotes from those meetings, including the above, that are extremely critical of Catholicism, the Vatican, and the Jesuits.
There are reasons to be wary of these being the literal words of Lincoln. These quotations are given to us by Chiniquy about 20 years after they happened. I couldn't give you a word-for-word quote as lengthy as the one we see above from a conversation I had yesterday, let alone decades ago. Unless Chiniquy had an extraordinarily good memory, we can be certain that at a minimum, the above has been considerably paraphrased. Also, various traits of the quote are the sort of thing one might see in a rehearsed public speech or a letter, but are not likely to be seen in a private conversation, such as Lincoln giving a list of states settled by Catholics ("You do not ignore that the first settlers of Louisiana, Florida, New Mexico, Texas, South California and Missouri were Roman Catholics, and that their first teachers were Jesuits"). It seems unlikely someone in a private conversation would feel the need to enumerate all of these states.
But we run into a larger problem, which is the substance of the quotes. The problem is that Chiniquy's portrayal of Lincoln, and especially the quotes attributed to him (which are sometimes rather lengthy), are viewed very skeptically by many historians. An article that discusses this is "The Lincoln Writings of Charles P.T. Chiniquy" by Joseph George Jr. (a Lincoln historian) which is found in pages 17-25 of Vol 69 No. 1 of the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. You can see it online here and read it in full if you sign up for a free JStor account.
Here is an excerpt that summarizes its points (page 2 of the article, page 18 of the journal):
"Chiniquy's autobiography, Fifty Years in the Church of Rome, published in 1885, attributes remarks to the President on a variety of subjects, particularly religion. Most of Chiniquy's stories are so foreign to what is known about the Sixteenth President that scholars have ignored them. Nevertheless, many of the less sensational portions of Chiniquy's reminiscences have been used by serious students of Lincoln's life, and the most sensational passages have been widely quoted and disseminated by writers engaged in anti-Catholic polemics."
The article goes into more depth as to its reasons for the above assertion. Joseph George Jr. ultimately takes the position that one should disregard Chiniquy entirely when it comes to accounts of Lincoln. He does note that some historians do not have quite as negative a view of Chiniquy as he does, but even those historians view Chiniquy's account as containing clear exaggerations and should be treated cautiously. As the above excerpt notes, it is only the "less sensational portions" that are taken seriously at all, which would not seem to describe the quote from above.
A more recent article that goes into considerable detail on Chiniquy's quotes is "Chiniquy's Lincoln: Aiming Booth's Bullet at the Roman Catholic Church" by Michael Sobiech, and is found on pages 23-47 in Vol. 127, No. 4 (Winter 2016) of American Catholic Studies. This article similarly rejecs Chiniquy's claims. While it is true that a journal from the "American Catholic Historical Society" is probably going to have some bias in this area, the author himself is a professor at Carson-Newman University, which is affiliated with the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board, hardly a Catholic organization.
So as we can see, Chiniquy is a source to be used cautiously when it comes to offering quotes from Lincoln. Even
if someone disagrees with the assessments of George and Sobiech and supposes Chiniquy had such an amazing memory he could recreate multiple lengthy remarks of Lincoln word-for-word decades after the fact, the points against him mean one needs more to
establish Lincoln as saying this than simply throwing out the fact
Chiniquy claimed he did. But there is no indication whatsoever in the essay that the quotation offered is anything but definite fact. It slightly hedges when it says "If indeed the Civil War was partly caused by the Papacy" but there is no indication in the essay that the quote is questionable, and it very much is considering both the source and the fact it's secondhand from decades after the fact. Yet again we see the problem of uncritically accepting something from a polemical source and presenting it without any reservation. It leads to citing dubious or contested quotes without any note that they are dubious or contested by historians.
The essay then moves onto World War II, giving a quote from a priest in a newspaper praising Hitler's invasions. I am not able to verify it (it dates back to a newspaper from about 80 years ago in another country and was presumably in a different language), and even the essay says it came from another website that offered the quotes rather the essay's author having firsthand knowledge of it. But it should be noted that even if true, this doesn't actually go back to the papacy; at most it would go to the bishop it mentions who ran the newspaper. We run into another problem, which is that to blame this for World War II is absurd, given it was already in full swing when the article was allegedly published (August 1941).
Chapter 10. Conclusion
The Conclusion does not add anything that is not already covered, though the essay does take a more conciliatory tone in it... sort of. It does make the surprising claim that "As
church and state grow ever nearer to a union in the USA, it is vital for us to be familiar with the
dangers of religious persecution so that religious liberty can be guaranteed
for many years to come." But the 21st century has for the most part seen the church and state growing farther apart in the United States (and the Western world in general), hardly them growing "ever closer to a union".
If
there is any danger to religious liberty in the foreseeable future in
the United States it is not by any Christian religious group forcing people to
abide by the beliefs of that specific group; it is by
secularists requiring religious people to
maintain what they view as political correctness. These
trends may have not been so obvious back when this was published in
2006, but they were identifiable. At any rate, the statement has not
born out.
I know there has been some talk about "Christian nationalism" in the last few years. But the more mainstream elements of it--for a certain definition of mainstream--are generally more about defending religious liberty, particularly that of Christians, rather than doing anything to require people to become Christians.
Someone who has read this entire thing no doubt needs little extra information, but for those who may not have wanted to go through the whole thing, let's note some examples of how this uncritical reliance on polemical sources leads to notable errors. It is claimed that the papacy, in exterminating the Vandals, caused Africa's population to drop by 5 million. First, the Byzantines did that, not the papacy. Second, the original source for the 5 million claim is a source that, only a few sentences prior, says that Justinian (Byzantine emperor) killed a trillion people, an utter impossibility.
Another embarrassing error is a computation offered based on a supposed population of 800,000 Waldenses in the year 1260 (which, via speculative reasoning, is concluded to mean there were actually over 3 million), but the 800,000 figure comes not from 1260, but centuries later.
It also complains about the treatment of a Nellie Fortune, alleging she was an escaped nun forced back into the convent by the local sheriff... but the only source offered for this is a polemical newspaper that was strongly against Catholicism, which is then accepted uncritically by the essay. The actual truth is she was not a nun, was not forced into a convent, and instead returned to her home country of Ireland.
An example offered of Catholic persecution is that in 1648, about 200,000 Jews were slain in Chmielnitzki. Aside from the fact this number is nowadays considered lower, the slaughter in Chmielnitzki was by the Cossacks who were rebelling against the primarily Catholic Polish!
These are just a few examples, and more can be seen in this blog post. And the essay uncritically taking inaccurate or dubious information from out of date, polemical, and/or non-scholarly sources is a problem that happens over and over again.
It
is true that I did not cover every individual claim or quote offered in
this essay. However, I feel that enough has been demonstrated of the
problems in it that it is possible to move on from it. Remember the
quote I offered early on? It can be slightly edited to read "There
simply is no need to take the time to do a page-by-page rebuttal of
this essay. Why? Because once it is demonstrated that there is a
consistent pattern of simple error that flows throughout it, we might
as well move on and give our time to more important pursuits."
The essay is marred by uncritically relying on works that are polemical
and/or out-of-date and/or by people who are not real historians
(sometimes a work that is all three), and compounds this by adding in a
lot of extra speculations on top of that.
And that at long last brings us to the end of this post. Ultimately, my conclusion is that if someone is looking for an accurate number of deaths the papacy can be considered responsible for, one isn't going to get the relevant information from the essay under examination.
