>Well yes, you are right. I just prefer my
>investigations into history/whatever subject not to be
>surrounded by bile (I do not mean you BTW.)
>
>Specifically with respect to the WC event, I know very
>little about it, specifically just what has been
>bandied about here and reading the Malleus Maleficaram
>itself. Based ENTIRELY ON THIS and my own common
>sense, I suspect that Justin is right.
>
>It strains my suspension of disbelief to imagine that
>in a big city like Trier (what was the pop at that
>time? 100,000 or so?)
OK, the specific claim, fwiw, is, "In 1585 two villages in the Bishopric of Tier in Germany were each left with only one female inhabitant." (Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 1980.) That's what I get for relying on memory for something I haven't paid attention to for years. I'm not a big fan of Merchant, but she does have some delicious quotes from the "Malleus" such as "These women satisfy their filthy lusts not only in themselves, but even in the mighty ones of the age, of whatever state and condition, causing by all sorts of witchcraft the death of their souls through the excessive infatuation of carnal love, in such a way that for no shame or persuasion can they desist from such acts ... But indeed such hatred is aroused by witchcraft between those joined in the sacrament of matrimony and such freezing up of the generative forces, that men are unable to perform the necessary action for begetting offspring."
I'm not clear what Justin is claiming, other than that everything I've suggested is wrong. I'm open to better explanations.
Jenny Brown