Talk:Oudewater

The Spanish massacre of 1575
From Jacobus Arminius "the Spanish massacre of Oudewater in 1575".

Can anybody write a paragraph on this? -- 16 Feb 2006


 * Oudewater Massacre deserves its own article in wiki. I will try to get around to it. Here are some webpages I found on the issue in the meantime:

timeline - http://memo.hum.uu.nl/oudewater/pages/oudewater.html

description - http://covenantoflove.net/reformed-theology-theology/arminianism-reformed-theology-theology/massacre-of-oudewater-the-sad-context-of-arminius/
 * Wowaconia (talk) 17:04, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

witches
So in medieval times when accusations of witchcraft (and resultant burnings) were prevalent, the town of Oudewater offered the accused a chance of proving his or her innocence. This was more special than it sounds. It is a sign of the growing power of a third force next to church and nobility, i.e. citizens. In a bid for total domination, the witchhunts were sanctioned by the church to break the power of the local herb doctors (especially the females). The citizens of Oudewater therefore were, simply by being honest, defying the church.

i disagree with this part. because it suggests witch-burning was common in the middle ages and only stopped when citizens said 'NO MORE' in the renaissance, when large-scale witch-hunts only started at the end of the middle ages. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_hunt and they were used by the church as a way of combating protestantism, rather than 'herb-ladies'.

i feel a much more interesting approach would be to hold up oudewater as proof that people in the past did NOT constantly burn witches on only the flimsiest of evidence, that it WAS possible for an accused witch to prove her innocence (without drowning in the process or anything). and that maybe in this whole story the only mass-panic that actually DID take place was the one in the 19th and early 20th century that accused previous generations of 'a holocaust against women'Selena1981 (talk) 23:12, 1 May 2012 (UTC)