Ohh, if you want to learn more about depravity committed because someone thought they gleaned something from the bible that said they should...
You should research - thoroughly - the Crusades, the Heretic Burnings (came before the 'Witch' burnings), the Inquisition, and the Witch Burnings.
Just to give you a sample...
"Black-garbed Philip II of Spain loved his children dearly, and to amuse them he wrote letters telling about such trivia as the health of an alcoholic court dwarf, an elephant soon to arrive from India, and his presentation of the Order of the Fleece to the Duke of Braganza: "He helped me at Mass and we both wore the Collar {ruff?] - mine was more elegant."...The king also ordered a growing daughter to be measured in silk ribbon and thread, casually adding that he and his nephew had yesterday attended an auto: "We watched it from a window and heard everything as well...First of all there was a sermon, as is customary. We stayed for the pronouncements of the sentences. Then we withdrew because they needed the house we were in for the civil power to condemn to the fire all those whom the inquisitor had handed over. ...May God keep you as I pray He will, Your good father."
The auto was actually a religious ceremony preceding the human holocaust, a mass declaration of faith at which officialdom sat enthroned in boxes as if at the theater. Not since the heyday of Byzantium had Europe seen such observance of protocol as paralyzed Renaissance Spain. An obsession with orders of precedence, distinctions of title, and the position of each rank in a church pew or the tier of a grandstand clutched the Spanish in the same stranglehold as their religion. Obsequious servants scurried ahead of their masters to measure the height of a dais or bench so as not to imperil a hidalgo's dignity. An iron code of honor backed by etiquette, rampant superstition and bigotry burned into the Spanish soul, a chiaroscuro of passions. Like watchful spiders in a web of deadly lace, the spectators waited with patience for their victims. Pale and immobile as moonlit effigies, stony as their sheep-shorn plains, they waited, heads erect, as if to catch the shrieks of agony in the blackness of the Inquisitor's cell.
Not only the living were set afire for their crimes but also the dead and buried. {!!!!!!} To complete the grisly pageants, putrid corpses were torn from their graves and borne aloft along with the condemned themselves, exhumed bodies of suspected heretics, and painted effigies of fugitives, dressed alike in a travesty of a monk's robe, a yellow sack [echoes of Buddhist monks' robes?] called the "San Benito", a corruption of "saco bandito:, a name given before the 13 th century to a penitent's dress. Upon the head of each - the quick, the dead, the hideous dolls - was jammed a yellow paste-board parody of the bishop's miter decorated, as was the rough knee-length woolen sack, with red figures of devils, dancing flames, and other infernal symbols. These, if the condemned man were versed in the diabolic heraldry of the Holy Office, might reveal to him his final destination, purgatory or hell. Finally, as at the launching of a ship today, an honored guest would be singled out graciously to set a torch to bright paper, bone, and living flesh." Pp 117-118 of Mirror Mirror - A Social History of Fashion by Michael and Ariane Batterberry.
Enjoy.....??? Zid
