Are We Simply A Few Centuries Up The Road?

[Khandro]

I'm reminded that on this day 323 years back the Salem Witch Trials commenced, resulting in 19 people hanged and one 'pressed to death' !
A century prior to that we were busy beheading and merrily disembowelling, hang, drawing and quartering folk in public and displaying their heads in spikes.
As Peter Kominsky, director of Wolf Hall said in an interview, (with reference to Anne Boleyn's beheading) "Does this sound familiar today?".

[Khandro]

v_e; The point I'm making is that though we rightly condemn, we shouldn't be too smug, we only need go back a little in time or scratch the surface today and we can find unpleasant parallels (homily ends).
Something that might interest you that I'm researching, and along with Wolf Hall, why these things loom large perhaps stems from seeing some time ago a piece of wooden stake in glass case in the folk museum in Gloucester. It is the remains of the post that Bishop John Hooper was tied to as he was burned alive, - full account here, in an earlier English, but quite comprehensible.
http://www.exclassics.com/foxe/foxe268.htm
If you can't read it all (recommended) at least the details of his end are worth a look.

[naomi24]

'Smug' is not the word I'd used.

[Svejk]

Civilized?

[ludwig]

I saw the same interview. He wasn't referring to Anne Boleyn specifically, just the general barbarity of those times, often either inspired directly by religion, or using religion as an excuse, with its associated 'crimes' of heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft etc etc.

I think it was a fair point. Christianity and western culture have matured to the extent that those things aren't acceptable any more. Other religions and cultures haven't, so the world is still experiencing the same barbarity and ignorance for pretty much the same stupid reasons.

[ludwig]

..let's hope it doesn't take another 500 yrs to rid ourselves of religiously inspired savagery altogether.

[Khandro]

Ludwig; It may reinforce may case, but one hopes make the wait shorter; the last person to be beheaded in England was Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, on the 9th of April 1747, a mere 268 years ago. :0(