Tricks Dedicated to Witches - Ch. 3 - Search for Chocolate!

[xboxbam]

The author of this series clearly doesn't know his world history at all. The roman empire fell over a century before 1585 AD. Also, I doubt any form of chocolate would be available yet, seeing as cocoa plants grew in the lower central america and northern part of south america, and Columbus journeyed to north america. So him bringing back cocoa seeds seems unlikely to me.

The story is interesting though. I do like the story (even with all the incorrect history and BS physics).

 

[reu]

@camlakorns across 300 years and all of europe. So, in each case, they killed 5 to 20 people and got away with it
Some died as scapegoats some died because of assets they held, that's what happens when you've got 300 years of constant wars and revolts

 

[Tonikill1]

Why are priests always depicted as extremely corrupt and creepy

 

[Yolomax]

@xboxbam

Use your brain, 400years before 2021 what's more is that the spanish and portugeuse didn't go to north america first but south america and i can also add the fact that right now most of america has been colonized making it logic that cacao is a thing, i mean cacao was used since nearly 3-4k years old since it was used by mayans for their traditions the chance of chocolate being a thing relatively high


My comment:
So they are in the holy roman empire ?
Edit: i posted this comment before reading the whole chapter and so didn't really knew and only said this cuz he writed "Nein" and she understood

 

[xboxbam]

@Yolomax
You say "use your brain", but do you realize what the Spanish were doing between 1492 (when columbus "discovered" the americas (predominantly the Caribbean) on behalf of the spanish trade groups) and 1580?
They literally wiped out 80% of the indigenous populations of everywhere they settled at. A large part is due to spread of disease, but another large part is due to aggressive invasion tactics, which included burning entire cities to the ground (and that includes their crops in order to starve them into surrendering).

Do you really think they'd have the resources to do such a thing as regrowing and harvesting cacao and sending it back to europe during that period, especially when they likely didn't even know what it was? (Plus, they went around killing/enslaving just about everyone that would know about cacao too)
Due to language barriers and the mass genocide/enslavement by the spanish, we (humans) lost much of the knowledge related to cacao and had to practically learn about it from scratch again.

And yes, Columbus stumbled upon cacao seeds on his fourth journey (which led him along the central american coastline), but cacao didn't even take root at all in spain until the late 1500s (supposedly close to when this takes place). It only fully took root once they began the enslavement of the indigenous and forced them to start farming the cacao to be sent to spain and portugal as a medicine for stomach aches. That was until it was discovered that adding milk and sweeteners (sugar or honey) made it taste good as a candy. It only started spreading to the rest of europe around the early 1600s (though, by then, it was being spread as a sweet candy instead of a sour medicine).

P.S.: According to the story, they are supposedly in the Roman Empire still (even though the roman empire fell well before then).

 

[llde]

They are in the HRE (Holy Roman Empire) that existed until the unification of the memeber states into Germany.

Now there are errors in the representation of post medieval europe.
The first can be seen at ch 1: a priest wouldn't torture an accused directly. They would have ordered to a secular executioner (sometimes a non cleric member of the inquisition other times assigned from the state authorities). The also wouldn't ignite the fire themselves.
The witch hunts were in first place extremly uncommon in the middle age in Catholic states. Indiscriminated Witch Hunts were started mainly in protestant territories and only in a second time diffused to the Catholic germans states. Often these hunts weren't actually managed by an Inquisition (many protestant churches didn't even had an inquisition) but by the secular authority, albeit priests did help with the trials and accusations.
The reason is clear: the Catholic Church was way more focused on controlling and cleansing heresies. Also a single monolithic inquisition never existed. Every Inquisition had they ways.
For example the Spanish inquisition was quite focused on controlling the Spanish jews, and acting a strict control on the conversos (jews converted to catholicism). They were ruthless and often they didn't even follow the proper iter for the processes (iter established by one of them, Nicolas Eymerich domenican and general inquisitor of Aragon).
The Roman Inquisition was a lot different. They were almost garantistic, rarely carrying an execution until proof of heresy was found. However they were responsible on one of the first "witch hunts" of northern italy. In the region of Friuli, there were the inheritors of an pre-cristhian tradition, they called themsevles the "Benadanti". In this case however they were the first that were saying that they possesed mystical powers, and they were also mixing into the cristhian doctrine their own traditions. This was labelled heretic from the inquisition, and they were cracked down, killing quite a number of them.

 

[Yolomax]

@xboxbam

I see, welp semms like i don't have a brain