Did people in the Middle Ages actually believe that giants/ghosts/whateverthefuck

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>>3208148
people believe in these things today

>>3208148
No, they were just metaphors.

>>3208148
yes, I have an old book on mexican history where the author talks about giants and shit

>>3208148
People did believe in all kinds of weird stuff. The Church initially suppressed the folk traditions about supernatural entities, because they were usually related to pagan traditions. Cf Canon Episcopis.

On the other hand the Church probably didn't fight with the notions of there being mundane giant people or sea monsters because they weren't supernatural as such. The idea itself wasn't any weirder than say, yellow-skinned or black people and elephants or whales respectively.

>>3208148
Probably the way we believe in superheroes today.

>>3208148
People believes in aliens today. Is it so hard to believe that people believed in giants and dog-headed guys?

>>3208148
Well at least witches were proven to be real.

>>3208264
>The Church initially suppressed the folk traditions about supernatural entities
One of the Church's biggest jobs were exorcisms. The world was filled with evil spirits and demons to them.

>>3208313
Except the church drew the line between "oh shit guys this is actual demonic possession!" and "stop that shit, that's pagan nonsense."

>>3208148
In Sweden atleast people believed in trolls and all sorts of creatures (female forestdevils, sealadies, elfkings living inside mountains etc) up until the 17th century, to the point that some people got executed for having sex with the creatures (the accused admitted it themselves, often going to the authorities and testifying before any accusations had been made against them).

>>3208369
And also of course Näcken, the naked guy playing violin next to a river luring people out in the water so they drowned (cant remember his name in English)

>>3208313
Yeah, because in the bible, Jesus exorcises people. That has nothing to do with Paganism

>>3208377
Apparently "neck" or "nix"(I think this might be plural?)

>>3208481
Nixies are a type of water faerie so there might be a connection there.

I heard my grandma refer to evaporation as the "water being kidnapped by the devil". Now I'm somewhat certain my grandmother has a basic understanding evaporation as a concept, but if we simply look at the phrase it would suggest that the peasants of yore literally blamed evaporation on the devil.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hödekin

>>3208148
Some people probably did. Now, who these people were and how many they numbered is up to questioning.

>>3208148
Its pretty clear they did, I once encountered a story about a priest interviewing a ghost, who claimed that sinners suffered horribly in purgatory and that God was quite pleased with the crusade against the Cathars.

Ghost were often seen as the projections of people in hell or purgatory, and could be interacted with safely by invoking the name of Jesus.

obviously roman, Chinese, African, etc ghosts did not have these properties but instead obeyed the cultural norms of where they were written about.

From this we can infer that ghosts follow cultural norms or its all bullshit

people still believe it, bro

>>3208148
I work in Cambodia and people with university education truly believe in the existence of spirits, ghosts, and witches. If people in the current year can believe, I think people from centuries ago can also have that type of belief

>>3210725
Why the Hell are you in Cambodia? Are you Cambodian?

>>3208148
You should check out /x/. People will believe anything, even people roleyplaying as the demiurge.

I mean when you think about it, a rhino is basically a monster

>>3210725
Are you saying that they cannot exist because le STEM meme?

They are existent and tangible.

>>3208148
people develop weird beliefs about things that will never affect them

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>>3211190
I wonder why.

>>3208313
The church literally made a statment that witchcraft was a load of bullshit and forbade the persecution of witches in like 8th century. Witch hunts were a 16-17th century thing mostly carried out by protestants.

>>3208299
If you dont believe in alien life you're the real retard here

>>3213716
Not that guy but I assume he meant the people who literally think aliens are little green martians who come down in flying saucers and anal probe people.

>>3208312
What