Religion and Human Rights Violation in History: The Women and Witch-hunts in Medieval Europe

Abstract

What constitutes human rights and its protections or/and its violation have re-emerged in all socio-political, legal and religio-philosophic discussions of the contemporary period. The interest in human rights is an outgrowth of the atrocities committed against humanity during the 2nd world war. Thus humankind having awakened from the nightmare of the war realized that all lives are facing threats of obliteration, if nothing positive is done, therefore the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of 1948 was born to check further violation of all lives. The UDHR became a benchmark for all discussions on either human rights protection or its violation in the modern era. However, it is revealing to note that from the ancient Religious traditions, what constitutes human right and its protections was provided for in moral philosophy. The instrument of its maintenance was religious organizations, which then controls the powers of the state. In spite of the natural law provisions for the protections of all lives, it is discovered that several heinous crimes were committed against human beings. It was in this period that the church introduced ‘Inquisition and Witch hunting” as a common practice to flushing the society of those considered social miscreant. The women, non-Christians and heretics became the victims of these instruments. This paper betook itself to do a critical study on the practice of witch hunting within this period, with the aim of discovering its nature, instruments and dynamics in the violation of human rights with major emphasis on the women. Historical survey and sociological interpretations are adopted as methodological paradigm.