Without any laws to prevent religious persecution (or laws in place to stop it when it occurred), Catholics and Protestants tormented each other for centuries. With each side thinking it had the only correct answers, death and torture were frequent results. In this scene, Catholic authorities killed two Dutch Menonites. The method of death could hardly be more cruel: First strangling, then burning, then finally killing with an iron pitchfork. (Victims were David van der Leyen and Levina Ghyselins in Ghent, 1554.)

Protestants were no better. On March 10, 1615, John Ogilvie (Ogilby), a Jesuit priest, is killed (by hanging), then mutilated in Glasgow.

The reigning Catholic ruler kicked 20,000 Lutherans out of Salzburg, Austria on Reformation Day, October 31, 1731. Many froze to death as they wandered, homeless, through the winter. Others survived and ultimately came to America.

An exiled Salzburg couple try to figure out what to do next. Note their knapsacks and what they are holding. The caption between them says: "We are driven into exile for the Gospel's sake; we leave our homeland and are now in God's hands."

French Huguenots (French Protestants) were unmercifully persecuted by French Catholics for years. Finally, a law (the Edict of Nantes) was passed giving the Huguenots religious freedoms. During the 17th century, those rights eroded, and the formality of the Edict was ultimately revoked in 1685. Four hundred thousand Huguenots left France. Many came to America. Before that happened, though, they endured mass slaughter. Here is the massacre of Huguenots at Sens, Burgundy in 1562.

Lest any Protestant get too self-righteous, keep in mind that Huguenots equally dispensed death and torture when they were in control. This drawing captures "frightful outrages" perpetrated by the Huguenots in France.

England certainly was not free from religious persecution. After Henry VIII closed the monasteries, life was very difficult for priests. In 1643, a praying Jesuit priest in Yorshire was seized by Protestant authorities who severely beat and imprisoned him. He died of his injuries.

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