The Burning Times

In the film, Thea Jensen calls this period in history a "Women's Holocaust". She notes that a total number of victims is unknown but that the high number often given is nine million deaths, over a period of 300 or more years.[1] Otherwise, scholarly "high" estimates range around 100,000, with estimates around 60,000 more common.[2] The nine million figure, according to modern scholarship, originates with a 1784 article by Gottfried Christian Voigt, in which he estimates the figure of 9,442,994 executions between AD 600 and 1700 - a period of 1,100 years - unsupported by any evidence.[3][4]

According to William Donohue and Robert Eady of the Catholic Civil Rights League, the movie is inaccurate in other respects, e.g., placing Trier in France instead of Germany, and dating a stone cross there that is recorded to have been erected in 958 AD to 1132 AD without further explanation. The cross is shown as a "symbol of a new religious cult that was sweeping across Europe," despite Christian presence since 286.[1] Eady, a member of the League in Canada, has cited the film in a complaint to broadcast regulators, in particular mentioning offense at the movie's quote: "it took the Church two hundred years of terror and death to transform the image of paganism into devil worship, and folk culture into heresy."[1] Eady describes the documentary as propaganda intended to represent the Christian Church as "a wicked, patriarchal, misogynist institution".[1] Jack Kapica adds "Women have genuine grievances with the Church. The Burning Times, however, is not going to help their cause."[1]