The Inquisition and Witch Hunts

Witches in all likelihood did not even exist, and those murdered in their stead numbered perhaps 40 to 50,000 over 300 years of persecution. From the perspective of Christian teaching, Jews are even worse than run-of-the-mill heretics. They are heretics who explicitly repudiate the divinity of Jesus Christ. The accounts of witch hunts resemble in most respects the more widespread persecution of heretics throughout the inquisition. Imprisonment on the basis of accusations alone, torture to extract confession, confessions deemed unacceptable until accomplices were named,. death by slow fire, and the rounding up of freshly accused.