The first conclusion is that Europe needs Christian missionaries no less than distant and pagan China. And to lead a mission, you need missionaries. Priests must turn to the people and become teachers more than correctors. And then it turned out that some requirements were made of a priest who only repeated prayers written centuries before him in the Latin "missal" ("service book"), and quite different requirements should now be made of a preacher and a missionary.11 First of all, the church hierarchs took a closer look at their clergy. And as a result, the Inquisition had a job. Between 1560 and 1620 in Spain, a large proportion of the Inquisition tribunals had two-thirds of all cases investigated by the priests themselves (the proportion of such investigations in the country as a whole was 40 percent).12

Further, attention was paid to the goodness of the faith of the parishioners. And then it turned out that the peasants saw the Catholic priest as a magician rather than a preacher and teacher. And since Protestantism rejected the authority of the priest, it was easier for the peasant to find a substitute for him in a long-known village sorceress than in a city professor of theology. But if he did not see a mystical threat in the priest, then relations with the sorceress were more complicated: hope and fear were indistinguishably intertwined here. A witch hunt inevitably turns into a witch hunt.

Is it a coincidence that the Reformation and the witch-hunt coincide?13 I don't think so. In all religions of the world, there is a memory of some deep and "ancient evil" (in The Lord of the Rings, it was woken up by dwarves who dug too deep into caves). And yet the man of the Middle Ages felt relatively safe from this evil: church shrines and shrines gave him a sense of mystical security.

However, newborn Protestantism resolutely rejected this habitual defensive line. For Luther and Calvin, for Zwingli and Hobbes, the recognition of a place or image as holy means only the recognition of it as withdrawn from everyday use: the meaning of the word "holy" "does not imply the real presence of God and God's grace in a place or image, but only a new attitude of man towards them due to the fact that he considers this or that thing to remind him of God. For Luther, therefore, the water in the baptismal font is indistinguishable from that which splashes in the cow's swill (baptismal "water is water, no better than that which a cow drinks"14). In general, "in the picture of the world of Luther and Calvin there are no special "sacred" points either in space or in time, because everything is sacred. In this picture of the world, there are no ontologically nobler spheres or less noble, contemptible lower levels of being... From the Calvinist point of view, for example, the Creator imprinted no less truth in the secretions of the organism than in the Scriptures."15 For a philosopher, this identity could mean that everything is sacred. For a simpler person, this meant that nothing was sacred, that Epiphany water had no more protective properties than ordinary water. But old Freud was right when he asserted that the greatest motivation is not libido, but the need for security. The previous "security systems" were broken. New ones did not appear immediately.

And – the Great Fear came. 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.

Well, when talking about the birth of science, there is no way to get away from 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.

People of the Middle Ages are constantly accused of superstition. But they did not read these "superstitions" in the Bible or in patristic works.

The "Laws of Hammurabi" of ancient Babylon said: "If a person has thrown an accusation of witchcraft at a person and has not proved it, then the one on whom the accusation of witchcraft has been thrown must go to the Deity of the River and immerse himself in the River; if the River captures him, his accuser can take his house. If the River cleanses this person and he remains unharmed, then the one who accused him of witchcraft must be killed, and the one who immersed himself in the River can take the house of his accuser."16 We are talking about "ordeal" - a judicial test through immersion in water. The water exposed the guilty by drowning; if the accused swam out, then this was considered proof of his innocence. The Ordeal was probably resorted to only in cases of crimes threatening the death penalty, and especially in accusations of illicit sorcery and adultery, if this accusation was not actually proved by the accuser and witnesses: according to the Babylonian views, water as a pure element would certainly expose the sorcerer and adulteress.17 "At the same time," writes A. A. Nemirovsky, "it should be taken into account that the Laws of Hammurabi do not represent an exhaustive set of legal norms; For example, they do not contain articles relating to the simplest crimes - ordinary theft, murder, witchcraft, although there are norms related to accusations of these crimes. Obviously, the norms relating to such crimes were considered to be well-known."18

In Egypt, in the event of a pestilence, "in the city of Eileithyia," writes Manetho, "they burned alive people who were called Typhon, and, winnowing their ashes, scattered and destroyed them" (Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris, 73).

The Indian "Laws of Manu" (II century BC) prescribed: "For all incantations, for incantations on roots, for sorcery of any kind - in case of failure - a fine of two hundred [pans]" (Laws of Manu, 9, 290). The punishment was comparable to the fine for robbery – about 2 kilograms of gold (Arthashastra, 3.17). However, if the result of sorcery is death, then the death penalty is imposed on the sorcerer.19 In addition to state punishment, Brahmins impose religious "penances" for such equal sins as "sorcery and sorcery by means of roots,.. not lighting sacred fires, stealing, not paying debts, studying erroneous books and practicing the craft of a dancer and singer" (Laws of Manu 11, 64 and 66).

Japanese laws stated: "If someone out of hatred makes a witchcraft image or a written spell or verbally curses someone and thus intends to destroy another person, then the guilty person is to be tried as for conspiracy to kill with a reduction of punishment by two levels (in cases involving relatives, the punishment is not reduced). If a person dies as a result of witchcraft, then in any case to be judged as for real murder... If the sovereign's personal belongings are used for witchcraft, then the guilty person must be hanged."20 Another Japanese law contained the "Index of Forbidden Books": "It is forbidden to keep in private homes: astronomical instruments, works on astronomy, Chinese maps; divination cards; Chinese military writings; a book of predictions; for violation of this prohibition – 1 year of hard labor."21

The "Laws of the Twelve Tables" of ancient Rome, compiled in the fifth century BC, suggested that those guilty of the evil eye could be sentenced to death.22 The texts of this Law have come down to us in an incomplete form. In the Eighth Table there is an article (VIII, 8a) beginning with the wording of the crime - "Whoever bewitches the crops..." 23, but there is no further break in the text and the wording of the punishment. However, this lacuna is filled by quoting this law by Pliny: "According to the Twelve Tables, the death penalty was prescribed for the secret destruction of crops... more serious than for the murder of a person" (Natural History. 18, 3, 12, 8-9).

Plato dreamed of a society in which "the law of poisoning and divination would be expressed as follows: . . . If it turns out that a person has become like someone who harms another because of magic knots, spells or spells, let him die if he is a diviner or fortune-teller. If, however, he is a stranger to the art of divination, and is nevertheless caught in divination, let him suffer the same fate as the poisoner among the common people; let the court decide what punishment he should be subjected to" (Laws 933d). Demosthenes "brought the priestess Theoris to trial and obtained this execution" (Plutarch, Demosthenes, 14); Theoris was accused of sorcery and was executed with her entire family.24

So Augustine's question is quite appropriate: "Perhaps Christians have established these laws punishing the magical arts? Was Apuleius accused of magic before Christian judges?" (On the City of God 8:19).