Reformation
...Church worked to reform their ideas and present themselves as completely different schools of thought. The Catholic Church became seen as the conservative view and the Protestant Church became seen as the liberal view. The two readings, Whether it is believable that Jews Secretly Kill Christian Children and Use Their Blood by Andreas Osiander and The Hammer of the Witches by Heindrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger, represent a riff of spiritual thought instigated by the ideological turmoil left in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. While philosophers like Osiander were moving toward less traditional means of study characterized by scientific observation typical of protestant thought, Kramer and Sprenger used more traditional superstitions, hearsay accounts and literal biblical interpretations that long typified pre-reformation Church doctrine.
Experiencing unease and political unrest, the Catholic Church used every possible tactic to keep its followers from leaving. The idea of blood libel was revived from the greek and roman days. Suddenly the Jews were to blame for everything. A child did not die from a parent being careless, allowing a child to run off and get lost in the woods. No, it was a Jew who stole the child away and killed it, using it's blood to perform satantic rituals. The Jew became the scape goat for everything. Soon a strong anti-semitism movement had formed.
Along with Jews, the minority sect of women has also been attacked. Kramer and Sprenger write of women “being weak and easily succumbed to the devil's will”.
This same idea of using a minority religious sect to explain away fears and unrest within a population has continuously been brought up through the years. Most recently the Islamic pop has been attacked used to as blame for lost of economic power, and lost of security in the United States. Women have also been targeted...
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