Hardly, the Christian Crusades and Inquisition, which lasted for three centuries burned more "witches" than everyone combined ...
Er ... a bit of a correction here ... the 'Crusades' and the 'Inquisition' are usually associated with the Roman Catholic Church (not being practiced by the other Christian denominations), but the Roman Catholic Church was not responsible for the execution of 'witches' ... this practice belonged to the post-Reformation Protestant states.
It's also worth noting that the Office of the Inquisition was instituted by the Church to protect those who were being tried on religious grounds by local authorities whose theological education and understanding was tenuous at best, and who invariably decided on the death penalty on the basis that the defendent must be guilty, because he or she wouldn't be here in the first place if innocent.
The Office of the Inquisition soon became the preferred route for trials of a religious nature, as more often than not the defendant was acquitted.
It's negative reputation rests largely on the time when Spanish inquisitors offered their services to the King and Queen of Spain, in their pursuit to 'ethnically cleanse' their kingdom of Jews. Other than that, the Inquisition was a far safer bet than trial by secular authorities.
Most cases of witchcraft were usually put forward by someone wishing to profit at the expense of a neighbour, although Matthew Hopkin, the self-declared 'Witchfinder General' managed, in just
4 years (1644-47), to account for something like
half the total number of witches executed in England over a
400 year period (15-18th centuries).
Hopkins' methodology, published in 1647, became the handbook for the witch-hunter. In the year following its publication, trials and executions for witchcraft began in the New England colonies. About eighty people throughout New England were accused of practising witchcraft during that period, of whom 15 women and 2 men were executed. In Salem, 19 executions for witchcraft, one man pressed to death for refusing to plead, and 150 imprisonments.
As for witch burnings, it's now agree that whilst numbers in their millions are bandied about, the more realistic figure is probably around 30,000, and probably much less than that, but the fact remains that the witch frenzy was a peculiar phenomena in the Protestant states, and especially so among the more severe. Thus the 'Puritans', for example, seemed to be associated quite a lot with witch trials.
What one has to remember in the English speaking West is history is slanted in favour of the Protestant author — the Catholic is invariably presented as the villain.
God bless,
Thomas
