As the item is actually not just European (and Colonial) history, but also a trope in Fantasy, a German (who speaks English "wid ö tscharming dschörman äkzent" that's not as thick as Schwarzy's) who specialises in advice to fantasy writers made a video about it.
What's Wrong With Burning Mages in Fantasy?
The Tale Tinkerer | 17 Aug. 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFJIe0vCANQ
If you have heard 9 000 000 were killed, you have basically fallen prey to a fake history from the Endarkenment. (Some put light inside that word, but the light of the 18th C was more like in Catholics often enough opposing it).
I could have said "fake history from the Endarkenment, but I'm repeating myself" ... this is not the sole historic error that hankers back to this era or just before. I wrote within the last year or so about sth I knew since studying the council of Tours in Latin at University.
A certain young bishop asked if one could call a woman "homo" ... what he wanted to know was whether a woman can be called "a man". In earlier Latin, as in Greek, as in German, there would be no confusion. A woman very certainly was a "homo" to Cicero, and as certainly not a "vir", certainly is an "anthropos" and not an "anér", certainly is "ein Mensch" and certainly not "ein Mann" ... but the colloquial version of Latin in his day was already treating the word as French treats "homme" and specifically treated it before the Endarkenment, colloquially. I e, someone had for some reason mentioned woman as being human and he had heard (with his not quite erudite ears) a woman as being male. The confusion was quickly resolved and remembered as an anecdote, it is not in the acts of the council, but in the chronicle of it, by St. Gregory of Tours. "Jesus is the Son of Man, because He is the Son of Mary, so Mary is a Man [i e is Human]". (Adding the last bit because the phrase would otherwise sound odd to American ears.
καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Αἱ ἀλώπεκες φωλεοὺς ἔχουσιν, καὶ τὰ πετεινὰ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ κατασκηνώσεις; ὁ δὲ Υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, οὐκ ἔχει ποῦ τὴν κεφαλὴν κλίνῃ.
Yes, "Son of Man" is in Greek "ὁ Υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου", the young bishop got the right answer.
Now the point is in Sweden some people highly influenced by the Endarkenment will tell you (in actual reference to this) that the Council of Nicea "decided that women have souls" ... my Latin Professor (an Atheist, so presumably pro-"Enlightenment" in many ideological areas) traced the misunderstanding to "the Enlightenment" ...
In this video, you will find a historic error from the Endarkenment too.
A certain Gottfried Christian Voigt* took the number of witches burned in Quedlinburg** and simply scaled the number up. Here is how wiki describes it:
He was criticizing Voltaire's estimate of "several hundred thousand" as too low. His extrapolation was based on finding evidence for thirty victims of witch trials in Quedlinburg, adding another ten victims, and then assuming the same rate of witch executions to population for the whole of Europe in the same century, and finally applying the same number of victims per century to eleven centuries.
Tale Tinkerer forgot he had been scaling up in centuries as well.
However, he gives a real estimate by a more thorough historian summing up between a first witch trial in 1420's Savoy and a last one in 1782 in Switzerland, and the total is about 30—60,000 over 350 years. He also makes a point about what kind of difference this means for who was doing it and why. Here is what he says:
9 million is a civilization at war with a category of person. A continentwide machine grinding away for centuries with archives and a chain of command. 40,000 spread across 350 years is something much smaller and much stranger. It's a great many separate local decisions. ...
One valley had a bad decade 40 years ago, and it still has three families who won't speak to each other about what was said at that trial. The next valley over never had one at all, and the people there think of the whole business as something that happens somewhere else. They'd be perfectly friendly to the same woman the first valley would have hanged.
He also tells us that the number 9.5 Million was both rounded to 9 Million and popularised ...
And the American suffragist Matilda Joselen Gage° put it in front of a wide readership in 1893.
Sometimes Marxists are better than the heirs of the Endarkenment. When it comes to history, that's for sure. (OK, when Marxist crimes are not being discussed, at least***).
Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Bernard of Clairvaux
20 Aug. 2026
In territorio Lingoniensi deposito sancti Bernardi primi Claraevallensis Abbatis, vita, doctrina et miraculis gloriosi, quem Pius Octavus Pontifex Maximus universalis Ecclesiae Doctorem declaravit, et confirmavit.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Christian_Voigt
** Today that's in Germany, not Austria, and in 1989 it was in East Germany, not West Germany. Ossis may be kind and considerate in many ways, but it's not what I admire in German culture. Sorry, Rammstein! Gern gescheh'n Twinnies und Goldried Quintett! Given the theme in the best known hit by Twinnies, I might probably have had better luck getting a Swedish girl, prior to 2004, if Swedish culture and education had been less East German ... (yes, Swedish schools back to before my schooldays have been infiltrated by Stasi educated influencers)
*** Like how many will deny Hitler was in the Munich Soviet government, back in the day.
° https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matilda_Joslyn_Gage