The Middle Ages cherished Augustine's words: "If I had only seen myself, I would have seen You." But now there is a conviction that man, with his narrow egoism, self-will, and the violence of base passions (which manifested themselves with particular force in the disasters of the wars of the seventeenth century: in the Thirty Years' War, Germany lost two-thirds of its population) is far from the best aid for the study of God's law. In man, the action of these laws is clouded, distorted by the chaos of his affects. The physical world, on the other hand, reveals to the inquisitive mind the natural laws in their pure form. However, in order to comprehend them, man himself must first be cleansed of the filth of his self-will.

In fact, as early as the fourth century, St. John Chrysostom gave an example to man of the movement of the stars, which do not deviate from their path, unlike man...: "The heavens, and the sun, and the moon, and the chorus of stars, and all other creatures, are in great order, but our deeds are in disorder" (1 Discourse on the Devil, 7).

But in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a new form of spiritual vigilance and readiness to distrust obvious statements emerged. The discovery of perspective in painting and the discovery of prejudices in philosophy are equally fundamental events of modern times: the world as it appears and the world as it is are not one and the same. And all this requires the discipline of thought, the verification of what seems obvious. And here Copernicus explained that the truth can be found only in spite of the data of human senses (for the senses tell us that the Earth is motionless, and it is the Sun that walks in the sky).

Thus, "It is not the laughter and riot of the flesh of the medieval carnival, not the Renaissance brilliance of beauty and the desire for glory, but a deep inner concentration, in the silence of which one can hear the voice of personal fate and the meaning of life, that becomes the main orientation of life. The emergence of mechanistic philosophy, the formation of the experimental method in science and the flowering of the genre of still life in the XVII century have the same social roots. In still life, on the one hand, there is a rejection of worldly joys, and on the other hand, there is a keen interest in all the details of the world. For just "admiration" there was no need to kill nature. A similar mood for thinking about death was created in the seventeenth century by mechanical devices. If living nature was associated with the affects inherent in damaged human nature, then mechanical devices were associated with complete control of the mind over oneself and the world. The image of the world as a clockwork mechanism and the image of God as a watchmaker were perceived as soul-saving. Paradoxically, the image of an artificial thing, of "dead nature," of a mechanism, was contrasted by Protestantism of the seventeenth century with the phenomena of living nature as an expression of higher spirituality as opposed to the old "soulfulness"[6].

It is precisely because of its opposition to the world of human affects and passions that the world of natural rationality and immutability looks like something morally attractive.

The world into which Europe is emerging from the Middle Ages (more precisely, from the period of the Renaissance crisis of the Middle Ages) is the world of the Reformation. The world of religious tension.

The Reformation, in its search for allies against Rome, appealed to the people. A new wave of intra-European missionary work began. And then it turned out that the average person is essentially unfamiliar with Christianity. It turned out that paganism lives not only in the cardinal's chambers, but also in the peasant's hut. It turned out that the peasants saw the Catholic priest as a magician rather than a preacher and teacher. And since Protestantism rejects the authority of the priest, it was easiest to find a replacement for it in the village witch, and not in the city professor of theology. The intellectual elite of Europe is discovering the world of nocturnal superstitions of the people – the world of witches. And the witch hunt begins. And the Inquisition began to flourish. And science is born.

On the other hand, when talking about the birth of science, there is no way to avoid this vile word – "inquisition". And since we are talking about the Inquisition (and secular people always talk about it, it is only necessary to mention the Church), then let us dwell on this sad page of church history longer.

A Good Word About the Inquisition

I must say right away that it is reading modern occult literature that makes you treat the Inquisition and the "witch hunt" in a different way. As long as people do not believe in witches, witchcraft and corruption, witch hunting seems to be an incredible savagery, purely shameful for Christians. But if this is serious? If such a black effect is really possible on a person for whom neither distance nor walls are an obstacle? And if there really are people who are ready to make the most terrible sacrifices for the sake of receiving "black grace"?

People of the Middle Ages are constantly accused of superstition. But they did not read these "superstitions" in the Bible or in patristic works. Rumor spread secrets that crept out of witchcraft's kitchens. The witches themselves assured that nothing would take them, that they did not burn in fire and did not drown in water, and that for a certain fee they could bring damage to anyone... The witches convinced the people, and then the hierarchs, of their reality and of their power, and there was a response, a reaction of public self-defense...

Before you accuse those impressionable Christians (or me) of intolerance and misanthropy, try to predict your own reaction. Imagine if you believed Blavatsky's report that "In ancient times, Thessalian witches mixed the blood of a newborn baby with the blood of a black lamb and thereby summoned the shadows of the dead"[7]? And what if your neighbor declared her determination to resume the ancient witchcraft rites[8], and said that the spirits with whom she is trained consider her a sorceress[9]?

So, witches themselves boast of their art, and often do not even mask their anti-Christian fervor. And if ordinary people believe them, then how should they react?

Not only is the Russian revolt "senseless and merciless," but any revolt. People were sincerely afraid of evil spirits and believed in the reality of harm from communicating with them. The "lynch trial" in such cases flared up by itself. The inquisitors, on the other hand, snatched the accused from the hands of the crowd and offered at least some formal procedure of investigation, in which it was possible to justify himself. And they justified themselves (as, for example, the mother of the astronomer Kepler was acquitted of the accusation of witchcraft).