towns across Europe had the equipment. — in 1453
For the purposes of our study, it is important to note that printing, which made an
impact only comparable in modern times to that of the Internet, led to information spreading more quickly, within a more literate citizenry, so that more reports of unusual events survived. On the negative side, it also spread disinformation and misinformation, just as the Internet does today. Publishers shamelessly exploited people’s fears by trumpeting strange events, while stories of portents and signs in the sky were cynically invented to support political or religious objectives. th Printing was expensive. It became a source of significant profits, two facts that combined to spread sensational news broadsheets of dubious validity, creating incentives to compile information about unusual incidents. Chroniclers correlated such visions with current affairs and future predictions. As we study the records of unusual sightings in the sixteenth century and beyond, increasingly sharp analysis is required to take these social distortion effects into consideration. Another important factor appears in the late fifteenth century with European scholars’ novel obsession with witchcraft, putting the topic of unusual phenomena (and ordinary folks’ interaction with them) in a new and dangerous light. The most authoritative and influential treatise on the subject of witchcraft was indisputably the Malleus Maleficarum, or “The Witch’s Hammer,” written in 1486 by two erudite Dominican friars. It served as the official witch-hunter’s handbook for nearly two centuries, the maximum authority used by inquisitors, magistrates and priests to justify the brutal torture and execution of alleged witches in every European country. The text was reprinted at least sixteen times in German, eleven times in French, twice in Italian and went through more than half a dozen editions in English. It became the principal source of inspiration for every work published after it. The authors of the Malleus Maleficarum, Jacob Sprenger (1436-95), Dean of the Theology Faculty at the University of Cologne, and the prior Heinrich Kramer (1430-1505), divided their treatise into three parts. The first part discussed the need for governing authorities to comprehend the true diabolical nature of witchcraft in all its aspects: the threat posed to Catholicism, pacts with the Devil, problems caused by lascivious demons, and so on. The second part deals with the three kinds of maleficia (dark magic) and how they may be “successfully annulled and dissolved.” The third part considers methods to hold a witchcraft trial and the punishment that best suits each crime. Here we can find advice on what punishment should be given “in the Case of one Accused upon a Light Suspicion” and about “the Method of passing Sentence upon one who has been Accused by another Witch, who has been or is to be Burned at the Stake.” Of particular interest to us is the issue of physical contact with beings assumed to be demons, a form of interaction the two scholars call “transvection”. Of all the issues dealt with in the Malleus Maleficarum, the most prominent were (1) whether humans could feasibly procreate with demons and bear their children, and (2) whether people were taken physically by demonic beings and transported to secret locations, or if it was all in the mind. In other words, five hundred years ago they were debating the exact same issues as ufologists today. It may seem a horrid, unfair thought, but it is difficult to read ancient books such as the Malleus Maleficarum or Remy’s later De Demonolatriae (1595) without coming away with the impression that today’s leading abduction researchers, who abuse witnesses with dubious hypnotic techniques to extract information, would have enjoyed a successful collaboration with the chief inquisitors of yore. PART I-C Sixteenth-Century Chronology The sixteenth century is marked, first and foremost, by extraordinary expansion of the knowledge of the world, thanks to numerous expeditions to the Americas. In 1519 Magellan leaves for the first voyage around the world; he sails into the Pacific Ocean, previously unknown to Europeans. As a result, the commercial prominence of Mediterranean cities decreases, to the advantage of ports like Lisbon and the premier colonial empires, Portugal and Spain. In Mexico and Peru, explorers find thriving civilizations and many opportunities for enrichment that help transform European society. Parallel to the expansion of geographic knowledge, navigation, and trade, the world undergoes a deep transformation of ideas under the influence of the humanist philosophy that feeds the Renaissance, blending with mystical notions that refuse to disappear, while early scientists like Copernicus (1473-1543) and Galileo (1564-1642) use critical observation and the experimental method to build new theories of the world that conflict with traditional teachings. It is the time of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael in art, and of Martin Luther in religion. In 1520 the Reformation shakes the foundations of the Catholic church, which reacts with renewed commitment to its mystical basis: When Ignatius of Loyola founds the Jesuit Order in 1534, first as a tool against the Moslem religion, and eventually against Protestantism, he is said to have been threatened by an assassin, who fled when an angel came down from the sky and confronted him! Fig. 11: Ignatius of Loyola saved by an angel Thus reports of unusual phenomena gradually become caught between increasing rational interest in all natural effects and lingering temptation to attribute them to celestial powers, in the phraseology of traditional religion- a polarity that has survived to the present day.
Source: Case: W113