Suffering as Medicine

This was not hypocrisy to medieval people. They believed earthly suffering was temporary and spiritual salvation was eternal. Punishing the body — your own or someone else's — was a kind of spiritual medicine. The logic was internally consistent, even if the results were horrifying.

The paradox is not medieval — it is human. Every large institution produces both its ideals and its pathologies. Seeing this does not excuse the cruelty; it guards you against neat stories that split the past into heroes and villains. The medieval Church was neither pure light nor pure darkness.