No. It was because it was an age of violence, ignorance, and corruption that even worked its way into the Church. It was an age when armies leaving for crusades would kick off the trip by having a slaughter of Jews.
I quote from an article debunking the normal “eblightenment” propaganda concerning the crusades, which were under taken in a self defense mode, not out of prejudice or greed as often proposed:
thearma.org/essays/Crusades.htm
"The Crusades were wars, so it would be a mistake to characterize them as nothing but piety and good intentions. Like all warfare, the violence was brutal (although not as brutal as modern wars). There were mishaps, blunders, and crimes. These are usually well-remembered today. During the early days of the First Crusade in 1095, a ragtag band of Crusaders led by Count Emicho of Leiningen made its way down the Rhine, robbing and murdering all the Jews they could find. Without success, the local bishops attempted to stop the carnage. In the eyes of these warriors, the Jews, like the Muslims, were the enemies of Christ. Plundering and killing them, then, was no vice. Indeed, they believed it was a righteous deed, since the Jews’ money could be used to fund the Crusade to Jerusalem. But they were wrong, and the Church strongly condemned the anti-Jewish attacks.
Fifty years later, when the Second Crusade was gearing up, St. Bernard frequently preached that the Jews were not to be persecuted:
Ask anyone who knows the Sacred Scriptures what he finds foretold of the Jews in the Psalm. “Not for their destruction do I pray,” it says. The Jews are for us the living words of Scripture, for they remind us always of what our Lord suffered… Under Christian princes they endure a hard captivity, but “they only wait for the time of their deliverance.”
Nevertheless, a fellow Cistercian monk named Radulf stirred up people against the Rhineland Jews, despite numerous letters from Bernard demanding that he stop. At last Bernard was forced to travel to Germany himself, where he caught up with Radulf, sent him back to his convent, and ended the massacres."
Barbarian:
It was a time when the usual punishment for perceived heresy was to be burned alive. And that is far more horrible than it sounds.
Witches were brned alive at times because they used abortion of babies as part of their witchcraft and the evil of abortion was what brought about that terrible sentence. Even today a woman who says she is a “Wiccan” and runs an abortion clinic down in Florida has stated publically that abortion is ‘their sacrament’’
"We use the word “neopagan” freely these days. But there are murderous polytheists among us, and there should be more, according to a slim and frightening book by Ginette Paris of Canada, L’Enfant, l’Amour, la Mort (1990), translated into English as The Sacrament of Abortion. (Ms. Paris’s other works include such titles as Pagan Meditations and Pagan Grace.) Paris invokes the goddess Artemis, archer, huntress, and twin sister of Apollo. While Artemis’s birth to Leto was painless, that of Apollo took nine long days, during which Artemis nursed the laboring mother and observed how painful childbirth is. Artemis vowed to remain a virgin, and she became the guardian of women who are becoming mothers. How does Paris make her the deity of abortion? " more can be read at:
Ritualizing Abortion
soli.inav.net/~jfischer/mar99/waborst.html
This is not to condone an act of burning anyone alive, because i don’t condone that but it does explain why those drastic actions were taken. I am sure they were taken wronmgly at times. But let’s not judge other time periods and stick to cleaning up our own.
Barbarian:
You think the Founders of the United States didn’t know God? And yet they considered themselves part of the Enlightenment.
mary:
The 'Enlightenment" was a beam in the eye of faith for many people and even whole nations. The link of some founding fathers to the Enlightenment is not a positive one. (Jefferson removed all the miracle stories from his version of the bible)
There certainly have been people as bloody and vengeful as any in medieval Europe. But as you learned, they were the ones who rejected science.
Mary:
Rejecting faith? And what do you call it when scientists reject the possibility of a 'soul" at conception? isn’t that a rejection of faith/ Look where it has gotten us. 48 million abortions…some of those babies chemically burned alive in their Mother’s womb…
Barbarian:
Not blasphemous, merely foolish and self-destructive. This is why Ben Stein is so widely regarded as an evil fool.
