The Russian "Tale of Bygone Years" under the year 1071 tells how pagan magi in the upper Volga region killed women, accusing them of witchcraft. "Two wise men from Yaroslavl appeared, saying that "we know who keeps the harvest." And they went along the Volga and wherever they went, they immediately called noble women, saying that she kept the grain, and that one honey, and that one fish, and that one furs. And they brought their sisters, mothers, and their wives to them. The Magi cut behind their shoulders and took out from there either livestock, or fish, or squirrel, and killed many women...." During interrogation, they explained that the women they killed "hold back the harvest, and if we exterminate, kill them, there will be abundance." Since it was a region with Finno-Ugric traditions, it seems possible to compare this story with the rituals of the Mordovians that existed in the 19th century. "When the time came for public sacrifices to the pagan gods of the Mordovians, special collectors went around the courtyards and collected all kinds of food, but they always took it from women. Naked to the waist, women, throwing bags and food over their shoulders, stood with their backs to the door waiting for the collectors. The latter cut off the bags, pricking the woman five times in the shoulder."26

The Arab traveler Abu Hamid al-Garnati, who visited Eastern Europe in the middle of the 12th century, also visited the Upper Volga region. About one of the tribes living there, he told the following: "Every 10 years they have a lot of witchcraft, and women from the old witches harm them. Then they seize the old women, tie their hands and feet and throw them into the river: the old woman who drowns is left behind, and they know that she is a sorceress, and the one who remains above the water is burned in the fire."27 Such "ordeals" (trials by fire or water) were in use among both the Slavs and the Germans.

Here is the Frankish "Salic Truth" of the VI century. It is difficult to call it a monument of Christian law and Christian culture. This is the most traditional "barbarian law" (although already softened by the influence of Roman legal culture and church preaching). And a quite traditional, "universal" attitude to witchcraft is behind its paragraphs: "If someone causes damage to another and the one to whom it is inflicted escapes danger, the perpetrator of the crime, in respect of whom it is proven that he committed it, is sentenced to pay 63 solidi. If anyone casts a curse on another or puts an imposition on any part of the body, he is sentenced to pay 62.5 shillings. If any woman spoils another so that she cannot have children, she is sentenced to pay 62.5 solidi28 (Salic Pravda, 19). German law introduced into European judicial practice the practice of "trial by water" (Leges Visitgothorum 6, 1, 3), already familiar to us from Babylonian sources.

So people's hostility to sorcerers is completely independent of Christianity...

Now let's step over the centuries and look at the modern world.

Here are just three of the considerable number of by no means archival publications on this topic: "In Mozhaisk, a criminal shot two women at once - 64-year-old Larisa Starchenkova and her 39-year-old daughter Nadezhda Samokhina For what? When the murderer was caught, he calmly explained, "They bewitched me." Here is what Nadezhda Samokhina's husband Evgeny told the correspondent of "Trud": - In the morning, at about nine o'clock, Larisa Tikhonovna began to prepare breakfast. And Nadya and I were still asleep. And then the phone rang. I woke up and heard my neighbor shouting outside the window: "Stop doing this." "What's the matter?" asked Larisa Tikhonovna. "You bewitched your neighbor to death, and now you're getting to us..." Then there were several pops that sounded like gunshots. Later it turned out that their neighbor, 51-year-old professional photographer Alexander Rodionov, shot the woman in the head four times. Rodionov admitted to the investigator that, after the "sorceresses" moved here, people began to die in the area. And all his relatives allegedly fell ill with an unknown ailment. And then he turned to the healer, who said that a neighbor had brought a curse on them. The most surprising thing is that all this nonsense was repeated by the seemingly healthy wife of the criminal. And Eugene kept repeating: "If I had not killed these sorceresses, they would have killed me." Alas, similar tragedies of the "witch hunt" occur in other regions of Russia. Until now, none of the residents of the village of Znamenki, Nizhny Novgorod region, can understand why the 87-year-old woman did not please the watchmen of the rural poultry house. Two guys twice tried to burn her alive, thinking that she was a witch. The woman miraculously escaped death, and her house burned to the ground. The savage crime was committed in the village of Drabovka, Korsun-Shevchenkivskyi district (Cherkasy region). A fire broke out in a private house owned by a 37-year-old local resident Mikhail V. Firefighters who arrived at the scene found the charred corpse of a woman on the veranda. Later, her roommate admitted that he burned the woman because she was a "witch." Moreover, he also burned the woman's black cat, which he also suspected of having ties with evil spirits."30

"In the Congo, in June 2002, a "month dedicated to getting rid of witches" was observed. Alas, this is not a joke, these are the words of the tribal leader Owu Sudar. This highly respected man with undisguised pride declared that he had personally instructed his subjects to engage in the massacre of their fellow tribesmen. Sorcerers and witches, according to local beliefs, are old people living on the outskirts of the village, as a rule, women with red watery eyes. They were dragged out into the street, beaten to death with sticks, chopped with machetes, and stoned. They demanded to confess and name the names of the "apprentices" and "accomplices". According to rough estimates, more than a thousand people died in this way, hundreds fled, fleeing from reprisals. The small town of Aru, 30 kilometers from Sudan on the border with Uganda, became the center of the witch hunt, after which a wave of aggression swept the entire northeastern part of the country. "Peasants say that some people cast a spell on others, causing them to get sick," said the commander-in-chief of the Congolese army, Henry Tumukunde. He said this to the fact that the inhabitants of the country mainly accuse "sorcerers" and "witches" of generating diseases characteristic of this region. In the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, 200 villagers were burned alive on suspicion of witchcraft, which allegedly killed two people, five of their fellow villagers - four women and a man. They were simply taken, dragged to the central square of the village, without being allowed to open their mouths, tied to a tree, doused with kerosene and set on fire. In the state of Bihar (also India), local residents, suspecting witchcraft, executed two women aged 90 and 60."31

"03.07.2003 In India, two women accused of witchcraft were burned alive. Two women accused of witchcraft were burned alive by fellow villagers in the state of Jharkhand in eastern India, AFP reported, citing state police. A police spokesman told the agency that the crime took place in one of the villages located 300 km north of the city of Ranchi (the state capital). In this village, he noted, the Godda tribe group is predominantly influential. A crowd of villagers grabbed 35-year-old Bahamai Kiska and 50-year-old Nanka Hambrom. Both women were then taken to a nearby field, where they were doused with gasoline and burned alive. Local residents accused them of witchcraft, because of which one of them allegedly fell ill. Human rights associations have issued statements about the brutal attacks suffered by women in remote villages in India, where witchcraft practices are widespread in tribal communities. Superstition, black magic, and belief in evil spirits form part of the tradition of tribes living in parts of eastern and southeastern India. In most cases, the victims' families and villagers do not report these attacks to the police, and tribal leaders are indifferent to them. NEWSru.com»32.

There was no Christian Inquisition in these countries and villages. And there is faith in sorcerers, fear of them and witch hunts. According to the laws of logic, this leads to the conclusion that Christianity and the Inquisition cannot be considered the cause of the "witch hunt".

Christianity, on the contrary, resisted the people's pagan fears for a long time.

"Popular belief in witches and their ability to bewitch people up to the 12th and 13th centuries was considered a "false superstition". The compilers of the manual for confession – penitentiaries or "penitential books", which spread in Europe since the 7th century, considered such superstitions of their parishioners as a "destructive infection" and indisputable evidence of the loss of the "true faith", and those who were seen in it were entitled to a two-year penance... The Catholic Church has never been known to be prone to corporal punishment or execution for witchcraft. Even for harmful (deadly) sorcery, a maximum of 7 years of repentance on bread and water was imposed. In fact, it was not so much the possible consequences of witchcraft actions, the success of which in the eyes of the Church was doubtful, that were condemned, but the very belief in their effectiveness, which meant the same idolatry."33 "We do not encounter sorcery before the fifteenth century at all."34 Witchcraft and witchcraft are not a very old phenomenon. As a matter of fact, it was as if witches had not been heard of at all until the fifteenth century."35 "Witchcraft was not widespread in the Middle Ages, and by the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th centuries it had not become very popular. The church council in Valencia, held in 1248, did not classify sorcerers as heretics and decided that only bishops should deal with them. In case of unwillingness to repent and with stubbornness, they were sentenced to imprisonment for a term determined by the bishop. Vernard Gun said that the Holy Chamber should deal with heretics, and therefore in almost all cases when sorcerers were brought before his tribunal, he simply handed their cases over to the episcopal courts... Almost until the end of the fourteenth century, witchcraft was considered the exclusive business of the Church. The secular authorities did not try to eradicate or tolerate it, and the cases of sorcerers were transferred to secular courts only in rare cases."36

The ecclesiastical punishments for sorcerers were milder than what the mob could have done to them. This remark is especially true in relation to Russia: for those sins for which in Europe in those centuries they were burned, in Russia only penances were imposed.

According to the rule of Metropolitan John II (1080-1088), "those who engage in sorcery and sorcery, whether men or women, should first be turned away from evil deeds by words and instructions; but if they remain unchanged, then in order to avert evil, punish them with greater severity, but not kill them to death and not mutilate their bodies, for this is not permitted by ecclesiastical punishment (discipline) and teaching"37...

Police measures and an appeal to the secular authorities are not provided for by the letter of Metropolitan Photius (it is dated June 22, 1410-1417): "Also teach that they do not listen to fables, do not accept dashing women, neither knots, nor silence, nor potions, nor potions, nor fortune-telling, if the wrath of God comes upon him. And where there are such dashing women, teach them to stop, and to repent; and do not have to listen, do not bless them; and order Christians not to keep their boundaries anywhere, but to flee from them, as from uncleanness. And whoever does not have to listen to you, let them also be excommunicated from the church."38