The definition of human sacrifice: the offering of a life of a human being to a deity.
Typically the main difference between killing someone in the name of a god & human sacrifice is that in human sacrifice the victim is known to be innocent. On the surface this would make the witch trials in Europe (including Spain) not human sacrifice, as they were executed for being witches, not as a sacrifice. However, the Catholic Church (and Spanish Inquisition) knew witchcraft was a lingering superstition of pagan beliefs and didn’t fit into either Christian beliefs nor scientific knowledge. To their credit, they did try and limit the scope of the trials, but they still ordered people executed, knowing full well witchcraft didn’t exist. For example, the Basque Witch Trials of 1609. They knew they couldn’t force locals to give up pagan beliefs entirely, so they compromised. They were willing to sacrifice innocent people for the greater good of keeping locals Christian, which is the definition of human sacrifice. However, when we think of human sacrifice, we think of Aztecs not Europeans, despite the fact that both were doing this practice at the same time. I think it’s important to remember at the end of the day, it’s not Europeans vs natives. Both are people. And people in the past had wrong and backwards views. The idea that Europe ‘civilized’ natives by ending these practices is absurd as Europe was also practicing them.
by Leprechaun_lord
15 Comments
Too much text to me,🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🗺️🗺️🗺️🗺️🗺️🗺️🗺️🗺️💋💋💋💋💋💋💋💋💋💋💋💋💋💋💋💋💋💋💋
The Spanish inquisition didn’t have any witches executed. They just failed to stop them in like 3 instances.
As a Peruvian, country that was the center of Spanish viceroyalty in the Americas, I’m still glad that the Spanish came before British or Portugueses, those two were worse
Am I saying Spanish conquerors were good? Of course not, they were a bunch of rapers, slavers and most of them with a messias complex, but at least weren’t genocides
My ritualistic murder (cool and based)
vs
Your ritualistic murder (cringe and gay)
1. Witches were hanged, burning was for heretics.
2. Witch finding and Witch executions were much more of a Germany thing than a Spain thing.
3. The Spanish Inquisition held to the Papal assertion that witches weren’t real. They killed people for being secretly Jewish/Muslim post-Reconquista. If you’re going to demonize them, at least use their actual sins.
The Spanish Inquisition isn’t the best comparison to Mesoamerican human sacrifice in scale or purpose. A much better comparison would be religious wars — as human sacrifice was primarily done on prisoners of war, and battles themselves were usually fought to capture said prisoners, thus, some scholars propose, moving the violence of war off the battlefield into a more ritualized setting.
3-5k dead during the entire Spanish Inquisition vs daily ritual child sacrifices and total human sacrifices of over ten thousand a year. The Spanish were bad guys in the America but let’s not defend a cultural practice of ritual murder
You gotta understand. She weighed the same as a duck. We had to burn her.
Spain wasn’t big into witch hunting. They were believers in the Pope, who said witches weren’t real. Even during Visigothic rule, believing in witches, oracles, and fortune tellers was an actual crime. The enemies of the Inquisition were Jews and Muslims, who they killed, exiled, or (mainly) converted for being seditious elements in their society. Revolts were shockingly common from those two religious groups. And it makes sense, why would you have loyalty to Spain if you aren’t one of them? And also, how nice of the Inquisition. They actually gave them a choice in what happened. They could either convert, leave, or die. That’s pretty good for the time.
And besides, the Spanish Iquisition only executed 3000 – 5000 people in the 356 years it was around. That’s 8 people to 14 people killed a year. Doesn’t even come CLOSE to the sacrifices in the Aztec civilization.
But we’re on Reddit, so nuance doesn’t exist and the Spanish are the bad guys because they’re evil European colonizers and the Aztecs were defenseless natives who didn’t know any better.
Native religions have much bigger kill ratio than Christianity and Christianity is also philosophy and most people in middle ages had very far from it.
Wait, Is that the famous conquistador “La roca”?
I don’t know where this idea of conquistador caring about Aztec human sacrifice comes from but this excuse for the genocide of South American and Caribbean natives is so delusional and dangerous.
Trying to draw any equivalence between human sacrifices in pre-christian America and inquisitorial processes against heretics in Spain is absurd on scale and process alone, and ye olde “the catholic church burned witches” is plain fake. The idea that the catholic church was practicing human sacrifice though must be a truly new type of nonsense.
also- thats a whole like 400 years apart.
Spaniard saving aztec kids from being brutally sacrificed (so they can be worked to death in the silver mines)