History Marches On: Difference between revisions

* For centuries it was assumed that Europe's first introduction to plague (the Black Death) was in 1348-1350, when roughly one-third of the population died. Nobody knows exactly when plague arrived in Europe for the first time, but recent scholarship suggests that plague was behind many ancient epidemics, including the Plague of Justinian and the pandemics that affected Egypt in the time of Amenhotep III and Greece in classical times.

** Plague can infect people in three ways: through the lymph system ("bubonic plague"), through the lungs ("pneumonic plague"), and through the bloodstream ("septicemic plague"). Most of the descriptions handed down to us by medieval doctors describe bubonic plague, so it was once thought that it was the most common form; many people even today think that "bubonic plague" is the correct name for the disease. But the main reason doctors described bubonic plague so often was because bubonic plague victims lived long enough for the doctor to arrive, unlike victims of pneumonic and septicemic plague who generally died within hours of the first symptoms. Meanwhile, evidence from the 20th century plague pandemic supports the idea that pneumonic plague is actually slightly more common than bubonic.

** Witchhunts were in fact a very Protestant thing during the Reformation, while the Catholic world remained generally apathetic about it (the main exception being [[Joan of Arc|France]]). So if you are planning to follow [[Dan Brown]] or [[Creator/Veronica Roth|Veronica Roth]] and write a story about teenage peasant girls being rounded up and burned by the [[Corrupt Church]] because they are feminists ahead of their time that know the truth about Mary Magdalene, consider that for example, the entire number of witches burned by the terrible [[The Spanish Inquisition|Spanish Inquisition]] was ''12''. In a single trial in 1609 directed by a French inquisitor [[Bittersweet Ending|that was sacked after it]], and after which the whole existence of witchcraft was [[This Is Reality|declared bollocks]] by his superiors. Essentially the Inquisition was too busy [[Fridge Horror|killing]] [[Society Marches On|Jews]] and [[The Troubles|Protestants]] to bother with peasants' superstitions.

** [[Memetic Mutation|The Spanish Inquisition]] actually spent very little time killing Protestants and "crypto-Jews/Muslims" and did spend most of their time correcting peasant superstitions]]. Because the Church in Spain was reformed 20 years before Luther, and all of Luther's works were banned, Protestantism never really spread to Spain. Instead the Inquisition spent most of the latter half of the Sixteenth century correcting folk superstitions in rural Spain ([[Historical Villain Upgrade|and not by torture, amazingly enough]]). It's true they were a surprisingly small organisation with little effect outside the cities in which the minority of the population lived. Most (approx 70%) of the cases brought before the Inquisition dealt with lapses of morality and [[Pervert|general sexual misconduct]], and most of those concerned ordinary Spanish people. The other 30% dealt with charges of religious ignorance which they strove to correct. Roughly 3% would concern people brought up on full charges of heresy and fewer still were burnt. The Inquisition sought primarily to [[Knight Templar|educate ordinary people about and uphold the faith]], [[Lawful Evil|not to go around burning witches and heretics]]. That said, [[Fridge Horror|we have no idea how many people]] in Portugal, Castile and Aragon were tried and hanged as witches by [[Corrupt Hick|local authorities]] and [[Aristocrats Are Evil|nobles]] acting under their own jurisdictions. [[A Million Is A Statistic|The number]] could be in the thousands, [[Nothing Is Scarier|but the records simply don't exist]].