Remember This ...
Persecution Throughout The Ages
Robin DuMolin
With the demise of the Heaven's Gate Cult, attention again is
being focused on any group that is clumped together outside of
mainstream religion. All these groups are clumped together and
labeled as cults. Even if innocent of any wrong doing, all groups are
viewed with suspicion. Any group of people whether it's workers of a
business corporation, a family or members of a church, represent on a
smaller scale what is going on in the world at large. We forget that
the large and powerful religious orders throughout history have done
many bizarre and hideous acts in the name of their beliefs.
St. Valentine was a Roman priest whose name was actually
Valentine. He lived in the third century after Christ. At that time
most Romans worshipped many different gods and did not accept the
relatively new Christian religion. Christians then were persecuted
and forbidden to worship as they pleased. Valentine was reported to
have performed valiant service in assisting Christians during this
time of persecution. He was imprisoned under Emperor Claudius II. He
was executed February 14, 270 A.D.
 The Crusades were military expeditions carried out by western
European Christians. They started around 1095. Their purpose was to
conquer and take control of the Holy Land from the Muslims. Jerusalem
was the Holy Land and the European Christians believed with their
religious zeal that it was their fate and right to succeed in their
mission. The first crusade was started by Pope Urban II. He incited
the people of France with his plan to start the Crusades. The people
cheered in agreement. Urban brought together all the bishops and used
them and all their villages to join the crusades.
The Crusaders captured Antioch. Then they moved into Jerusalem.
The city was under Egyptian control. The Crusaders finally forced the
Egyptians to surrender. Everyone in the city was massacred by the
Crusaders. The Crusaders believed that the blood of the former
holders purified Jerusalem.
The Spanish Inquisition was fostered by the Catholic faith. The
Inquisition was initiated by Pope Innocent II in 1230 A.D. who
ordered Church members to persecute heretics. The Inquisition was
more firmly established by Pope Gregory IX. The people of the
Inquisition believed the torture and cruelty they inflicted was
justified, they felt morally in the right. Many of the accused were
often wealthy men with property worth confiscating.
Pope Innocent II believed that the citizens in the south of France
were worse heretics than those being fought by the Crusaders in the
Holy Land. The people in the south of France were warred against for
fifteen years. A man named Simon was chosen by the Pope to lead the
fight here. His officers however, were not told which citizens were
the heretics and which the good Catholics. To be certain no heretics
remain, all 20,000 citizens, women and children included were
slaughtered. During the 1500's the Inquisition was extended to Spain
and took a firm hold there under the reign of Philip II. He was
determined to extend the persecution to all his lands. People in the
Netherlands were sometimes buried alive if accused of being heretics.
Before the famous Salem witch hunt in America, witchcraft was
always condemned by the church in Rome. In the fourteenth century the
popes believed they recognized a very dangerous evil in sorcery and
they began to issue mandates against it. At the close of the
fifteenth century and beginning of the sixteenth century thousands of
executions were carried out in Germany, Italy and other countries. In
1541 witchcraft became a felony in England. From that time on, for
more than a century, the burning of accused witches were kept up in
England and Scotland.
Sources: Encyclopedia Americana,
Valentines Day/Fern Brown. Tokens of Love/Robert Etter. Various
Internet Sites.
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