The value of every new truth or discovery is relative, and depends upon
the state of ideas or knowledge prevalent at the time. Should it go
greatly beyond this, it may lose much in practical effect, like good
seed falling on unprepared soil; but the discoverer is no less worthy
of praise though he be so far in advance of his fellows that they
refuse to accept his teaching, and persecute instead of honouring him.
Posterity, however, often ignores former conditions, especially in an
era of rapid progress, for the quicker the advance the sooner will the
early stages be forgotten, however important and difficult they may
have been.
[Illustration: EFFIGIES IOANNIS WIERLANNO ÆTATIS LX SALVTIS M.D.LXXVI]
Among those who were so far beyond their age that the truths they
proclaimed not only were rejected by the majority but brought them into
danger was Dr. John Weyer, the first serious opponent of the witch
mania. He stood almost alone. His attack on the witch-hunters, though
it marks the turn of the tide, was followed by more than a century of
cruelty, injustice, and superstition; yet our ideas on the subject are
now so entirely altered that it is hard to imagine the value and danger
of the service he performed, and his name was almost forgotten even by
members of his own profession, when his biography was published by Dr.
K. Binz in 1885.[265]
Let us try to get some idea of the nature of the witch mania, that we
may better appreciate the courage and intelligence of this ancient
physician.
In the second half of the fifteenth century a new age began in
Western Europe. The revival of Greek, the invention of printing,
and the discovery of America gave fresh ideas and new prospects to
mankind. But, as the sun’s rays were believed to breed serpents in
fermenting matter, so amid this ferment of new life and light rose a
hideous monster, more terrible than any fabled dragon of romance or
superstition of the darkest ages, which for generations satiated itself
on the tears and blood of the innocent and helpless. This was the
witch mania. For two centuries the majority of theologians and jurists
in Western Europe were convinced that vast numbers of their fellow
creatures, especially women, were in league with the devil, that they
had sexual intercourse with him or his imps, and that he bestowed on
them in exchange for their souls the power of injuring their neighbours
in person or property. They thought it their duty to search out these
witches, to force from them, by the most terrible tortures they could
devise, not only confessions of their own guilt, but also denunciations
of their associates, and finally to put them to death, preferably by
burning. In consequence, many thousands of innocent persons of all ages
and ranks, but especially poor women, were judicially murdered, after
being first compelled by unspeakable torments to commit moral suicide
by declaring themselves guilty of unmentionable crimes, and to involve
their dearest friends and relations in a similar fate. There is no
sadder scene in the whole tragicomedy of human history.
There had been nothing like it in the darkest of the dark ages, there
was nothing like it among the far more ignorant and superstitious
adherents of the Eastern Church. The witch mania in its extreme form
has been manifested only by the Catholics and Protestants of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and by some tribes of African
savages.
In early Christian times, witchcraft was recognized as a relic of
paganism, but it was not feared. Christ had overcome the powers of
darkness, and His true followers need fear no harm from them. A canon
of the Church, at least as early as the ninth century, declared that
women who thought they rode through the air with Diana or Herodias were
only deluded by the devil, and that those who believed human beings
could create anything, or change themselves or others into animal
forms, were infidels and worse than heathens; and confessors were
instructed to inquire into and inflict penance for the belief that
witches could enter closed doors, make hail-storms, or kill persons
without visible means.[266]
In the enlightened sixteenth century, any one who professed his
disbelief that witches could ride through the air, change themselves
into cats, or make caterpillars and thunder-storms, would have had an
excellent chance of being burnt as a heretic or concealed sorcerer.
St. Boniface (680-755) classed belief in witches and were-wolves among
the works of the devil, and St. Agobard of Lyons (779-840) declared
the idea that witches caused hail and thunder-storms to be impious and
absurd.[267] The laws of Charlemagne made it murder to put any one to
death on charge of witchcraft, and in the eleventh century King Coloman
of Hungary asserted briefly, ‘Let no one speak of witches, seeing there
are none’.[268] Few, indeed, were quite so sceptical as this; still
witchcraft was in the Middle Ages looked upon by the educated in a
half-contemptuous fashion, and even those who openly professed sorcery
frequently escaped with no worse punishment than penance, banishment,
or an ecclesiastical scourging.
This may be well illustrated by a story told in the life of the learned
Dominican, St. Vincent of Beauvais. An old woman once (1190-1264) came
to a priest in his church and demanded money from him, saying she had
done him a great service, for that, when she and her companions, who
were witches, had entered his bedroom the previous night, she had
prevented them from injuring him. ‘But how’, asked the priest, ‘could
you enter my chamber, seeing that the door was locked?’ ‘Oh,’ said
the witch, ‘that matters naught to us, for we go through keyholes as
easily as through open doors.’ ‘If what you say is true,’ replied the
holy man, ‘you shall not lack a reward, but I must first have proof of
it.’ With these words, he locked the church door, and began vigorously
to beat the old woman with the handle of the crucifix he carried,
asking her, when she complained, why she did not escape through the
keyhole.[269]
The great Pope Nicholas I (died 867) strongly condemned the use of
torture to induce confessions, and Gregory VII (died 1085) forbade
inquisition to be made for witches and sorcerers on occasions of plague
or bad weather.[270] Later, the inquisitorial process, combined with
torture to enforce denunciations, became the chief agent in spreading
and maintaining the witch mania.
The Eastern Church remained in this mediaeval stage, and never
developed a witch mania. In the West the change seems to have been
brought about mainly by two causes, the development of heresies and the
increasing prominence of the devil.
There is no doubt that the Albigensian and other heresies of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries contained Manichean elements. It
was taught that there were two divinities--one perfectly good, the
creator of the invisible spiritual world, the other the creator of
the material world, the Demiurgus, a being capable of evil passions,
wrath, jealousy, &c., who was identified with the Jehovah of the Old
Testament.[271] It required very little to confound this Demiurgus with
Satan, the Prince of this world; after which it was easy to look upon
Satan as a being not entirely evil, as Lucifer, son of the morning, the
disinherited son or brother of God, a natural object of worship for the
oppressed and discontented.[272]
The serfs, equally tyrannized over by bishop and noble, the relics
of the persecuted sects Waldenses and Cathari,[273] sought refuge,
like Saul of old, in forbidden arts, and thus sects of Luciferans,
or devil-worshippers, arose (especially in Germany and France) whose
numbers were exaggerated by the fear and horror of the orthodox.[274]
At the same time the devil acquired more importance in other ways.
That fearful calamity, the Black Death, seemed to display his power
over both the just and the unjust; while the Great Schism in which each
pope excommunicated the other, handing him and his adherents over to
Satan, put every one not absolutely certain of being on the right side
in reasonable fear of the powers of darkness.
The belief in the great activity and power of the devil and his
servants the sorcerers was further supported by the vast authority of
St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), whose ingenuity enabled him to explain
away those ancient canons which seemed opposed to the more extreme
views. Thus the synod of Bracara (A.D. 563) had declared the doctrine
that the devil can produce drought or thunder-storms to be heresy; to
which the Doctor Angelicus replied that though it is doubtless heresy
to believe the devil can make natural thunder-storms, it is by no means
contrary to the Catholic faith to hold that he may, by the permission
of God, make artificial ones.[275]
For these and other reasons, the devil assumed greater prominence
during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries than ever before. Men
believed that he might appear to them from behind every hedge or ruin,
that his action was to be seen in almost all pains and diseases, but
that he was to be dreaded most of all when he entered into a league
with some man or woman. Thus everything was ready for the outbreak
of witch mania when, in 1484, Pope Innocent VIII by his bull _Summis
desiderantes_ gave the sanction of the Church to the popular beliefs
concerning witches, such as sexual intercourse with devils, destruction
of crops, and infliction of sterility and disease on man and beast.
The charge of sorcery had usually been employed in earlier times either
to check learned men who seemed to be going too far, or tending to
heresy in their researches, as in the case of the physicians Arnold
of Villanova (1240-1312) and Peter of Abano (1250-1320), or to crush
individuals and societies who were politically dangerous, as with
Joan of Arc, the Duchess of Gloucester, and the Templars--the Church
being called in to aid the civil power. Now it was the Church which
called upon the civil power to assist in a crusade against witches and
sorcerers as being the worst and most dangerous of heretics.
In the Middle Ages it was held that a man who called up the devil,
knowing it to be wrong, was not a heretic but merely a sinner. But
if he thought it was not wrong, or that the devil would tell him the
truth, or that the devil could do anything without God’s permission,
he was also a heretic, since these beliefs are contrary to Church
doctrine. In the fifteenth century it was taught that all sorcerers
are heretics, _maleficus_ being, according to the learned authors of
the _Malleus Maleficarum_, a contraction of _male de fide sentiens_ or
heretic.[276]
Nor was the identification of heresy and witchcraft illogical,
whatever we may think of the etymology. The Church is the kingdom of
God, heretics form the kingdom of the devil, and just as the Church
possesses saints who see visions, work miracles, and commune with
Christ face to face, so there are specially eminent heretics, saints of
the devil’s church, who work miracles and have obscene intercourse with
their master. All true Christians are potential saints, all heretics
potential sorcerers, for all have committed treason against the divine
Majesty, though only some may have entered into a definite compact
with the enemy. The former, if they repent, may hope for perpetual
imprisonment; the latter are to be put to death whether they repent or
not.
This view was also of advantage to the Church, for it increased the
horror of heresy and facilitated its suppression. The laity had never
entirely reconciled themselves to the sight of their apparently
harmless neighbours being tortured and burnt for differences in
abstract belief, but almost every one was ready to torture and burn a
sorcerer, and local outbreaks of witch-hunting were frequently started
by mob violence. In 1555 it was declared by the Peace of Augsburg
that no one should suffer in life and property for his religion; but
to take a Lutheran, call him a sorcerer, confiscate his goods, and
force him by torture to confess that he was led into his errors by
the devil himself, seems to have been too great a temptation for the
prince-bishops who headed the ‘counter-reformation’ in South Germany
to resist. That this was partly the cause of the great witch-burnings
in the bishoprics of Würzburg, Bamberg, Fulda, and Trèves is evidenced
by the large proportion of male victims, and by the frequent and
significant appearance of the phrase ‘is also Lutheran’ in the
official reports.
As soon as the Reformation was established, Protestants vied with
Catholics as witch-hunters. Eager to show that they were in no way
inferior to their opponents in zeal for the Lord and enmity against
Satan and his servants, they had the advantage of being able to follow
the scriptural injunction, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’,
without previously explaining away ancient canons and decrees of Church
synods which seemed to throw doubt on the very existence of the more
typical forms of witchcraft. Nor did they hesitate to attack their
rivals with similar weapons. If Protestants were burnt as sorcerers at
Würzburg, we find the first Danish Lutheran bishop, Peter Palladius,
recommending the zealous members of his flock to seek out the so-called
wise women of their neighbourhoods on pretence of having some disease.
If then the latter use paternosters, holy water, or invocations of
saints, they are probably not only Catholics but witches, and should be
treated accordingly.[277]
Almost all the victims of the witch mania were executed on their own
confession, extorted in the vast majority of instances by torture
or the fear of torture. In England, where torture was theoretically
illegal, confessions were comparatively rare, and nearly all died
protesting their innocence. The few exceptions prove the rule; thus
Elinor Shaw and Mary Philips, almost the last witches legally executed
in England, 1705, confessed because they were threatened with death
if they refused, and promised release if they pleaded guilty,[278]
while others were induced to admit their guilt by being kept awake
several nights, and forced to run up and down their cells till utterly
exhausted, methods almost as effectual in producing ‘a readiness to
confess’ as the rack or the thumb-screw.[279]
Nearly all the confessions were to a similar effect. From Lisbon to
Liegnitz, from Calabria to Caithness, the central point of the story
was the ‘sabbat’, an assembly of witches and sorcerers in some barren
spot where they adored a visible devil, indulged in feasts, dances,
and sexual orgies, reported what evil they had done and plotted more.
A few examples will therefore suffice, and they may be best taken from
the _Daemanolatria_[280] of Nicholas Remy, Inquisitor of Lorraine, who
burned nearly 900 witches and sorcerers in fifteen years, 1575-90.
He proves the reality of the witch dances as follows: A boy named John
of Haimbach confessed that his mother took him to a sabbat to play the
flute. He was told to climb up into a tree that he might be heard the
better, and was so amazed by what he saw that he exclaimed: ‘Good God!
where did this crowd of fools and lunatics come from?’ Thereupon he
fell from the tree and found himself alone with a dislocated shoulder.
Ottilia Velvers, who was arrested soon after, confirmed the whole
story, as did also Eysarty Augnel, who was burnt the following year.
So too, Nicholas Langbernard, while going home in the early morning of
July 21, 1590, saw in full daylight a number of men and women dancing
back to back, some of them with cloven hoofs. He cried out ‘Jesus’ and
crossed himself, upon which all vanished except a woman called Pelter,
whose broomstick dropped, and who was then carried off by a whirlwind.
The grass was afterwards found to be beaten down in a circle with marks
of hoof-prints. Pelter and two other women were arrested and confessed
they were present, as also did John Michael, who said he was playing
the flute in a tree, and fell down when Nicholas crossed himself, but
was carried off in a whirlwind, his broomstick not being at hand.
‘What further evidence’, asks the inquisitor, ‘can any one require?’
The only possible objection, viz. that they were phantoms or spirits of
people whose bodies were asleep in their beds, is worthless, ‘it being
the pious and Christian belief that soul and body when once parted do
not reunite till the day of judgement’.
The food at these sabbats usually included the flesh of unbaptized
children, and was always abominable. A certain Morel said he was
obliged to spit it out, at which the demon was much enraged. ‘Dancing
opens a large window to wickedness,’ and is therefore specially
encouraged by the devil, but the dances cause great exhaustion, just as
his feasts cause loathing, and his money changes to dung or potsherds.
‘Barberina Rahel, and nearly all others, declared they had to lie in
bed two days after a witch dance, but even the oldest cannot excuse
themselves, and the devil beats them if they are lazy.’ The music is
horrible; every one sings or plays what he likes, a favourite method
being to drum on horse skulls or trees. Sometimes the devil gives a
concert of his own, at which all are required to applaud and show
pleasure; those who do not are beaten so that they are sore for two
days, as Joanna Gransandeau confessed.
All are compelled to attend and give an account of their evil deeds
under heavy penalties. C. G. said ‘he was beaten till he nearly died
for failing to attend a sabbat, and for curing a girl whom he had been
told to poison. The devil also carried him up into the air over the
river Moselle, and threatened to drop him unless he swore to poison
a certain person.’ The witch Belhoria was attacked by dropsy because
she refused to poison her husband. If they failed in their attempts on
others, they were compelled to poison their own children, or destroy
their own property.
Antonius Welch was asked to lend his garden for a witch dance. He
refused, and found it full of snails and caterpillars. Men of little
faith have objected that only God can create, for ‘without Him nothing
is made that was made’; but why should not demons collect vast numbers
of insects in a moment? Look at the well-known rain of frogs, blood,
&c. This is doubtless done by devils out of mere sport: how much more
would they do for love of harm? The making of thunder-storms is harder
to believe, but has been admitted by more than 200 condemned witches
and sorcerers. Almost all confessed that they could creep into locked
rooms and houses in the form of small animals, and resuming their
natural shape commit all sorts of crimes, showing, says Remy, what a
peril they are to mankind.
A worthy comrade of Remy was Peter Binsfeld, suffragan Bishop of Trèves
and foremost opponent of John Weyer. He is said to have burnt no fewer
than 6,500 persons and to have so desolated his diocese that in many
villages round Trèves there was scarcely a woman left. His _Tractatus
de confessionibus maleficorum_[281] begins with the following case,
which with those mentioned above affords a complete view of the usual
witch confessions. John Kuno Meisenbein, a youth about eighteen years
old, was studying ‘poetry and the humaner letters’ at the High School
in Trèves, when he confessed to the authorities that his mother,
brother, sister, and self were all in league with the devil. He said
that in his ninth year his mother had initiated him as a sorcerer,
and had carried him up the chimney on a goat to a heath near Trèves,
where he took part in the usual sabbat and had intercourse with a
female demon named Capribarba. The mother, Anna Meisenbein, a woman of
good position, had already escaped to Cologne, but a son and daughter
were arrested, strangled, and burned. ‘They died with much sorrow and
penitence.’ The eldest son, John Kuno, thereupon urged the judges to
use all means to capture his mother, ‘that by punishment and momentary
death in this world she might escape eternal damnation’.
Moved by this most creditable and merciful petition (_honestissima et
plenissima misericordiae petitione excitatus_), the prior wrote to his
friends at Cologne, and the unhappy woman was arrested and taken back
to Trèves. At first she protested her innocence, ‘but when more severe
tortures were employed’ she made the usual admissions. Having lost a
baby, she had, for a moment, doubted the goodness of God. Whereupon
a man in black raiment appeared at the side of the bed, and promised
if she would renounce God and serve him he would give her peace of
mind. She did so, and he became her lover, and gave her money, which
however vanished. He called himself Fedderhans, and had asses’ feet.
Then follows the usual story of the sabbat. ‘This woman’, concludes
the bishop, ‘was burnt alive October 20, 1590, and had a good end.’
They offered to behead John Kuno as a reward for his filial piety
and repentance, but he said he was unworthy of such a favour and was
therefore strangled and burnt. ‘He had a most edifying end,’ says
the bishop, who proceeds to comment upon sexual intercourse between
witches, sorcerers, and demons, ‘which is so certain that it is an
impudence to deny it, as St. Augustine saith,[282] being supported by
the confessions of learned and unlearned, and by all the doctors of the
Church, though a few medical men, advocates of the devil’s kingdom [an
obvious reference to Weyer, whom he abuses in the preface], have dared
to deny it’.[283]
It is not our purpose to try and discover what amount of truth is
contained in the immense farrago of absurdities comprised in the witch
confessions. Actual nocturnal meetings of peasants, either to celebrate
heathen rites or to plot against their oppressors, or merely to enjoy
rude dances and music, as the negro in the Southern States was supposed
to play the banjo nightly after his labours on the plantation, may or
may not have assisted in spreading and confirming the belief in the
sabbat, but they were not necessary. The whole story of child murder,
obscene worship of a demon, dances and sexual orgies, was ready to hand
long before. It had been applied in classic times to the worshippers
of Isis and Bacchus, by the pagans to the early Christians, by the
orthodox to the first heretics, to the Jews, to the Templars, and in
our own day we have seen very similar charges brought against the
Freemasons. All these sets of people had known meeting-places--the
witches had none; they must therefore meet on some barren moor or
mountain and be carried there supernaturally. Once started, the belief
spread rapidly. Indeed we know from contemporary writers that it was a
common subject of village gossip, and if any wretched victim had any
doubt as to what she was expected to confess, the gaoler and judges
were always ready with hints or leading questions.
One learned German[284] has attributed the whole witch mania to the
_Datura Stramonium_, or thorn-apple, a plant introduced into Europe
about this time. Women dosed themselves with this drug, or applied
it in ointments, and forthwith had hallucinations of broomstick
rides and witch dances. Others look upon belladonna as the principal
agent, and one ardent investigator took dangerous doses of it in the
hope of experiencing the adventures of a mediaeval sorcerer, but
without definite effect. A similar experiment has recently been made
by Kiesewetter, the historian of ‘Spiritualism’. He used the witch
ointments described by Baptista Porta and others, but could produce
nothing more diabolical than dreams of travelling in an express
train.[285] Others, again, have supposed that the badly baked rye bread
of the period must have produced an immense amount of nightmare among
the poorer classes. The power of suggestion, doubtless, had a very real
influence both on the victims and their judges, and with the aid of
narcotics may not infrequently have produced vivid dreams of dancing
and other intercourse with demons.
No doubt many persons were quite ready to become witches or sorcerers,
and some really believed they had acquired such powers. Cases are
recorded in which formal agreements, duly signed in blood, and awaiting
the devil’s acceptance, were discovered, and resulted in the arrest and
burning of the would-be wizard. Others took pleasure in the terror the
reputed powers inspired, and may have sometimes caused or increased it
by the use of actual poisons.
But these formed but a small minority of the vast army of victims; and
even when some real criminal was arrested or some half-insane person
voluntarily ‘confessed’, she was encouraged or compelled to denounce
her supposed associates, and thus often involved scores of innocent
acquaintances in her own awful fate.
The witch-hunters are not to be blamed for believing in witchcraft,
or even for carrying out the scriptural injunction ‘Thou shalt not
suffer a witch to live’. It is the methods they employed, compared with
which the procedure of a Jeffreys or a Caiaphas was just and merciful,
which cannot be excused by any talk about the spirit of the age, which
brought agony and death to many thousands of innocent men, women and
little children, and which excited the fiery and righteous indignation
of Dr. John Weyer.
According to Pascal, men never do wrong so thoroughly and so cheerfully
as when they are obeying the promptings of a false principle of
conscience. To which we may add that men are never more cruel and
unjust than when they are in a fright. The witch-hunters, most of
them at least, were pious and conscientious men. They appeal to God,
the Church, and the Bible at every step. Nicholas Remy, for instance,
after torturing and burning over 800 of his fellow creatures, retired
from work thinking he had done God and man good service. But one thing
troubled his conscience. He had spared the lives of certain young
children, and merely ordered them to be scourged naked three times
round the place where their parents were burning. He is convinced
that this was wrong, and that they will all grow up into witches and
sorcerers. Besides, if God sent two she-bears to slay the forty and two
children who mocked Elisha, of how much greater punishment are those
worthy who have done despite to God, His Mother, the saints, and the
Catholic religion?[286] He hopes his sinful clemency will not become a
precedent--a fear which was quite unnecessary, for scores of children
under twelve were burnt for witchcraft; and the one plea which even
then respited the most atrocious murderess did not always avail a
witch, since it was believed that her future child, if not the actual
offspring of the devil, would infallibly belong to his kingdom.
But the witch-hunters were urged on by fear as well as by piety, for
not only did they think themselves exposed to personal attacks from the
devil and his allies, but they believed there was a vast and increasing
society of men and women in league with the evil one, and that the fate
of the world depended on its suppression.
All the machinery, therefore, which the Roman emperors had devised for
their protection against treason and the Church for the suppression
of heresy was brought into action against the witches, for witchcraft
was the acme of treason and heresy, a _crimen laesae maiestatis
divinae_.[287]
For a description of the methods employed we cannot do better than
go to the _Malleus Maleficarum_,[288] the guide and handbook of the
witch-hunters.
All proceedings in cases of witchcraft, say the reverend authors,
must be on the plan recommended by Popes Clement V and Boniface VIII,
‘summarie, simpliciter, et de plano, ac sine strepitu ac figura
iudicii’, a harmless looking phrase which swept away at a stroke all
the safeguards which the lawyers of pagan Rome and the ruder justice
of ancient Gaul and Germany had placed around accused persons. There
are, says the _Malleus_,[289] two forms of criminal procedure: (1)
the old legal or _accusatorial_ form where the prosecutor offers to
prove his charge and to accept the consequences of failure, which must
be carefully avoided as being dangerous and litigious; and (2) the
_inquisitorial_, where a man denounces another either from zeal for
the faith, or because called upon to do so, but takes no further part
nor offers to prove his charge, or where a man is suspected by common
report and the judge makes inquiry, and this method must always be
preferred. The inquisitors, on entering a new district, should issue
a proclamation calling on all persons to give information against
suspected witches on pain of excommunication and temporal penalties.
Any one may be compelled, by torture if necessary, to give evidence,
and if he refuses must be punished as an obstinate heretic. Other
sorcerers, or the man’s wife and family, are lawful witnesses against,
but not for, the accused. Criminals and perjured persons, if they show
zeal for the faith, may be admitted to give evidence. Priests, nobles,
graduates of universities, and others legally exempt from torture are
not exempt in the case of witch trials.[290]
‘Delation,’ the scandal of imperial Rome, was not only encouraged
but enforced, and in some places, as at Milan, boxes were put in the
churches, into which any one might drop an anonymous denunciation of
his neighbour.
Names of informers are not to be revealed under penalty of
excommunication; the advocate, if there is one, need be told the
charges only. This advocate must not be chosen by the accused but
by the inquisitor, and he must refuse the case if it seems to him
unjust or hopeless. He must not use legal quibbles or make delays or
appeals, and is to be specially warned that if he be found a protector
of heretics or a hinderer of the inquisition, he will incur the usual
penalties for those heinous crimes. If he reply that he defends the
person, not the error, this avails not, for he must make no defence
which interferes with proceeding _summarie, simpliciter, et de
plano_.[291] After this it is not surprising to find that those accused
of witchcraft were rarely defended by an advocate.
Faith need be kept with heretics and sorcerers ‘for a time only’.[292]
Therefore an inquisitor may promise not to condemn a person if he
confesses, and then pass sentence after a few days, or if of very
tender conscience by the mouth of another. It is also lawful to
introduce persons, _etiam mulieres honestae_, to the accused who
promise to find means for their escape if they will teach them some
form of witchcraft. This, say the authors, is a most successful method
for getting convictions.[293]
Torture, though it may not be repeated on the same charge, may be
continued as long as necessary, and any fresh evidence justifies a
repetition. Finally the accused may be burnt without confession if the
evidence is strong enough, or he may be kept in prison for months
or years, when the _squalor carceris_ may induce him to confess his
crimes.[294]
Such are the proceedings recommended against persons suspected of or
denounced for witchcraft, and they conclude appropriately with the
hideously hypocritical formula with which they were delivered over to
be burnt: ‘Relinquimus te potestati curiae secularis, deprecantes tamen
illam ut erga te citra sanguinis effusionem et mortis periculum suam
sententiam moderetur’,[295] which means, according to the _Malleus_,
that sorcerers are to be burned even though they repent, while
repentant heretics may be imprisoned for life.
What was meant by the _squalor carceris_ may be seen from the following
description by an eye-witness, Pretorius:[296]
‘Some [of the dungeons] are holes like cellars or wells, fifteen
to thirty fathoms (?) deep with openings above, through which they
let down the prisoners with ropes and draw them up when they will.
Such prisons I have seen myself. Some sit in great cold, so that
their feet are frost-bitten or frozen off, and afterwards, if they
escape, they are crippled for life. Some lie in continual darkness,
so that they never see a ray of sunlight, and know not whether it
be night or day. All of them have their limbs confined so that they
can hardly move, and are in continual unrest, and lie in their own
refuse, far more filthy and wretched than cattle. They are badly
fed, cannot sleep in peace, have much anxiety, heavy thoughts, bad
dreams. And since they cannot move hands or feet, they are plagued
and bitten by lice, rats, and other vermin, besides being daily
abused and threatened by gaolers and executioners. And since all
this sometimes lasts months or years, such persons, though at first
they be courageous, rational, strong, and patient, at length become
weak, timid, hopeless, and if not quite, at least half idiotic and
desperate.’
Yet all this was not considered torture, and if some poor wretch, after
a year of it, went mad, or preferred a quick death to a slow one, her
confession was described as being ‘entirely voluntary and without
torture’.
As to the torture itself, it combined all that the ferocity of savages
and the ingenuity of civilized man had till then invented. Besides the
ordinary rack, thumb-screws, and leg-crushers or Spanish boots, there
were spiked wheels over which the victims were drawn with weights on
their feet; boiling oil was poured on their legs, burning sulphur
dropped on their bodies, and lighted candles held beneath their
armpits. At Bamberg they were fed on salt fish and allowed no water,
and then bathed in scalding water and quicklime. At Lindheim they were
fixed to a revolving table and whirled round till they vomited and
became unconscious, and on recovery remained in so dazed a state that
they were ready to confess anything.[297] At Neisse they were fastened
naked in a chair ‘with 150 finger-long spikes in it’ and kept there
for hours. And so effective were these tortures that nine out of ten
innocent persons preferred to die as confessed sorcerers rather than
undergo a repetition of them.
The Jesuit Father Spee, a worthy successor of John Weyer, accompanied
nearly two hundred victims to the stake at Würzburg in less than two
years. At the end of this time his hair had turned grey and he seemed
twenty years older, and on being questioned as to the cause, declared
that he was convinced that all these persons were innocent. They had,
he said, at first repeated the usual confession, but on being tenderly
dealt with had one and all protested their innocence, adjuring him at
the same time not to reveal this, for they would much rather die than
be tortured again. He added that he had received similar reports from
other father confessors.[298] A few years later, 1631, he plucked up
courage to publish anonymously his _Cautio Criminalis_, in which he
exclaims:
‘Why do we search so diligently for sorcerers? I will show you
at once where they are. Take the Capuchins, the Jesuits, all the
religious orders, and torture them--they will confess. If some
deny, repeat it a few times--they will confess. Should a few still
be obstinate, exorcise them, shave them: they use sorcery, the
devil hardens them, only keep on torturing--they will give in. If
you want more, take the Canons, the Doctors, the Bishops of the
Church--they will confess. How should the poor delicate creatures
hold out? If you want still more, I will torture you and then you
me. I will confess the crimes you will have confessed, and so we
shall all be sorcerers together.’[299]
In the most notorious of judicial murders, we read that the judges had
some difficulty owing to a disagreement between the witnesses. This
rarely troubled the witch-hunters. At Lindheim a woman was accused
of having dug up and carried off the body of an infant, which, under
torture, she admitted, denouncing four others as her accomplices.
But on the grave being opened, the body was found uninjured. The
inquisitors at once decided that this must be a delusion of the devil,
and all five women were burned. A man confessed, under torture, that
he was a were-wolf, and in that form had killed a calf belonging to a
neighbour; the latter, however, said he had never lost a calf, though
two or three years ago two hens had disappeared, he believed through
witchcraft. The accused was burnt, for what need had they of witnesses?
Had they not heard his confession?[300]
It was even laid down as a principle that doubtful points must be
decided ‘in favour of the faith’--in other words, against the accused.
‘If a sorcerer retracts his denunciations at the stake, it is not void,
for he may have been corrupted by friends of the accused. Also when
witnesses vary, as they often do, the positive assertion is always to
be believed,’ says Bishop Covarivias, a prominent member of the Council
of Trent. In which he is supported by the jurist Menochius of Padua,
‘ne tam horrendum crimen occultum sit’.
Anything might start a witch-hunting, and once started it increased
like an avalanche. If an old woman happened to be out of doors in a
thunder-storm; if the winter was prolonged; if there was a more than
usual number of flies and caterpillars; if a woman had a spite against
her neighbour, some one might be denounced and forced in turn to
denounce others. The prolonged winter of 1586 in Savoy, for instance,
resulted in the burning of 113 women and two men, who confessed, after
torture, that it was due to their incantations.
It is thus not difficult to understand how, in the diocese of Como,
witches were burnt for many years at an average rate of 100 per annum;
how in that of Strassburg 5,000 were burnt in twenty years, 1615-35;
how in the small diocese of Neisse 1,000 suffered between 1640-50,
insomuch that they gave up the stake and pile as being too costly,
and roasted them in a specially prepared oven; and how the Protestant
jurist Benedict Carpzov could boast not only of having read the Bible
through fifty-three times, but also of having passed 20,000 death
sentences, chiefly on witches and sorcerers.[301]
One of Carpzov’s victims is specially interesting to medical men, the
Saxon physician, Dr. Veit Pratzel, who on one occasion (1660) produced
twenty mice by sleight of hand in a public-house, probably for the
sake of advertisement. He was denounced as a sorcerer, tortured and
burnt, while his children were bled to death in a warm bath by the
executioner, lest they should acquire similar diabolical powers.[302]
A like fate befell the servant of a travelling dentist at Schwersenz
in Poland. The dentist, John Plan, left his assistant in the town
to attract attention by conjuring tricks, while he went to sell his
infallible toothache tinctures in the neighbouring villages. On
his return next evening, he was horrified to see the body of the
unfortunate man hanging on the town gallows, and was told on inquiry
that he was an evident sorcerer who had made eggs, birds, and plants
before everybody in the market-place. He had therefore been arrested,
scourged, put on the rack, and otherwise tortured till he confessed
he was in league with the devil. Whereupon the town council, ‘out
of special grace and to save expense’, had, instead of burning him,
mercifully condemned him to be hanged. The dentist fled in terror to
Breslau.[303]
But it was by no means necessary to be so foolhardy as this to fall
into the hands of the witch-hunters. A woman at Lindheim was noticed to
run into her barn as the inquisitorial officials came down the street.
She had never been accused or even suspected of witchcraft, but was
nevertheless immediately arrested, and brought more dead than alive to
the chief inquisitor, Geiss,[304] who declared her flight justified the
strongest suspicion. Exposed to the most extreme torture, she confessed
nothing, but at length, at the question whether she had made a compact
with the devil, one of the inquisitors declared he saw her nod her
head. This was enough; she was burnt; probably a happy fate under the
circumstances, for she thus escaped being forced by further tortures to
give details of her imaginary crime and to denounce her neighbours.
Once in the clutches of the witch-hunters, the unfortunate victim was
confronted by a series of dilemmas from which few escaped. A favourite
beginning was to ask whether he believed in witchcraft. If he said
‘Yes’, he evidently knew more of the subject; if ‘No’, he was _ipso
facto_ a heretic and slanderer of the inquisition; if in confusion he
tried to distinguish, he was _varius in confessionibus_,[305] and a
fit subject for immediate torture. If he confessed under torture, the
matter was, of course, settled; if he endured manfully, it was evident
that the devil must be aiding him. If a mark could be found on his body
which was insensible and did not bleed when pricked, it was the devil’s
seal and a sure sign of guilt; but if there was none, his case was no
better, for it was held that the devil only marked those whose fidelity
he doubted, so that a suspected person who had no such mark was in all
probability a specially eminent sorcerer.[306]
Then came the water test, of which there is no better account than the
report sent by W. A. Scribonius, Professor of Philosophy at Marburg, to
the town council of Lemgo in 1583:
‘When I came to you, most prudent and learned consules, 26th
September, there were, two days later on St. Michael’s eve, three
witches burnt alive for divers and horrible crimes. The same day
three others, denounced by those aforesaid, were arrested, and on
the following day about 2 p.m. for further proving of the truth
were thrown into water to see whether they would swim or not. Their
clothes were removed and they were bound by the right thumb to
the left big toe and vice versa, so that they could not move in
the least. They were then cast three times into the water in the
presence of some thousands of spectators, and floated like logs
of wood, nor did one of them sink. And it is also remarkable that
almost at the moment they touched the water a shower of rain then
falling ceased, and the sun shone, but when they were taken out it
started raining as before.’
On request of the burgomaster, he investigated ‘the philosophy’ of
this, and, though he could find nothing definite, had no doubt of
its value as a test of witchcraft. ‘The physician Weyer rejects it
as absurd and fallacious, but he can produce no good arguments or
examples against it, and may therefore be ignored.’ Perhaps witches are
made lighter because possessed by demons who are ‘powers of the air’
and often carry them through the air. All who float have afterwards
confessed, therefore though not scriptural nor of itself sufficient to
convict, the swimming test is not to be despised.[307]
With regard to the number of victims, even sober historians, such as
Soldan, speak of millions, but if we take three-quarters of a million
for the two centuries 1500-1700, it will give a rate of ten executions
daily, at least eight of which were judicial murders.
Even more pathetic than the notice of 800 condemned in one body by the
senate of Savoy[308] are the long lists of yearly executions preserved
in the fragmentary records of small towns and villages. Thus at
Meiningen, between 1610-31 and 1656-85, 106 suffered--in 1610 three,
1611 twenty-two, 1612 four, &c. &c., the intervening records being
omitted owing to war. Similar notices have survived at Waldsee, Thun in
Alsace, and many other hamlets, where through a long series of years
we read of one to twenty persons burnt annually, some of them being
previously ‘torn with red-hot pincers’.[309]
At Würzburg the Prince-bishop, Philip of Ehrenberg, is said to
have burnt 900 in five years (1627-31), and we have terrible lists
of twenty-nine of the burnings, almost all of which include young
children. Here are two of them:
‘In the thirteenth burning, four persons: the old court smith, an
old woman, a little girl of nine or ten years, a younger girl her
sister.’
‘In the twentieth burning, six persons: Babelin Goebel, the
prettiest girl in Würzburg; a student in the fifth form who knew
many languages and was an excellent musician, instrumental and
vocal; two boys from the new minster, twelve years old; Babel
Stepper’s daughter; the caretaker on the bridge.’[310]
At Bamberg the Prince-bishop, John George, 1625-30, burnt at least
600 persons, and his predecessors had been hardly less vigorous
witch-hunters. He was ably seconded by his suffragan, Bishop Förner,
and two doctors of law, Braun and Kötzendörffer, who besides the
ordinary torture implements, salt fish and quicklime baths, found a
so-called prayer stool or bench covered with spikes, on which the
victim was forced to kneel, and a cage with a sharp ridged floor on
which he could not stand, sit, or lie without torment, of great value
in extorting confessions. The record of their deeds has been published
by Dr. F. Leitschuh,[311] librarian of Bamberg, and contains, among
other cases, that of the Burgomaster, John Junius, which throws more
light on the nature of the witch trials than do volumes of second-hand
history.[312]
John Junius, a man universally respected, had been five times
Burgomaster of Bamberg, and held that office in June 1628, when he was
arrested on a charge of sorcery. He protested his innocence though
six witnesses declared, under torture, that they had seen him at the
witch dances. On June 30 he endured the torment of the thumb-screws and
leg-crushers (Spanish boots) without confession. Then they stuck pins
in him and found a ‘devil’s mark’, and finally drew him up with his
arms twisted backwards, but he would admit nothing. Next day, however,
when threatened with a repetition of the torture, he broke down, made
the usual confession (including intercourse with a female demon who
turned into a he-goat), and denounced twenty-seven persons whose names
and addresses are given.[313] He was condemned to be beheaded and
burnt, but before his death wrote the following letter to his daughter:
‘Many hundred thousand good-nights, my dearest daughter Veronica!
Guiltless was I taken to prison, guiltless have I been tortured,
guiltless I must die. For whoever comes here must either be a
sorcerer, or is tortured until (God pity him) he makes up a
confession of sorcery out of his head. I’ll tell you how I fared.
When I was questioned the first time, there were present Dr. Braun,
Dr. Kötzendörffer, and two strangers. Dr. Braun asked me, “Friend,
how came you hither?” I answered, “Through lies and misfortune.”
“Hear you,” said he, “you’re a sorcerer. Confess it willingly or
we’ll bring witnesses and the executioner to you.” I said, “I am
no sorcerer. I have a clear conscience on this matter, and care
not for a thousand witnesses, but am ready to hear them.” Then the
chancellor’s son, Dr. Haan, was brought out. I asked, “Herr Doctor,
what do you know of me? I never had anything to do with you, good
or bad.” He answered, “Sir, it is a judgement matter, excuse me
for witnessing against you. I saw you at the dances.” “Yes, but
how?” He did not know. Then I asked the commissioners to put him on
oath, and examine him properly. “The thing is not to be arranged
as you want it,” said Dr. Braun; “it is enough that he saw you.”
I said, “What sort of witness is that? If things are so managed,
you are as little safe as I or any other honourable person.” Next
came the chancellor and said the same as his son. He had seen me,
but had not looked carefully to see who I was. Then Elsa Hopffen.
She had seen me dancing on Haupt’s moor. Then came the executioner
and put on the thumb-screws, my hands being tied together, so that
the blood spurted from under the nails, and I cannot use my hands
these four weeks, as you may see by this writing. Then they tied
my hands behind and drew me up. I thought heaven and earth were
disappearing. Eight times they drew me up and let me fall so that I
suffered horrible agony. All which time I was stark naked, for they
had me stripped.
‘But our Lord God helped me, and I said to them, “God forgive
you for treating an innocent man like this; you want not only to
destroy body and soul, but also to get the goods and chattels.” [At
Bamberg, two-thirds of the property of convicted sorcerers went to
the bishop, and the rest to the inquisitors.] “You’re a rascal,”
said Dr. Braun. I replied, “I am no rascal, but as respectable as
any of you; but if things go on like this, no respectable man in
Bamberg will be safe, you as little as I or another.” The doctor
said he had no dealings with the devil. I said, “Nor have I. Your
false witnesses are the devils, your horrible tortures. You let no
one go, even though he has endured all your torments.”
‘It was Friday, 30th June, that, with God’s help, I endured these
tortures. I have ever since been unable to put my clothes on or use
my hands, besides the other pains I had to suffer innocently.
‘When the executioner took me back to prison, he said to me, “Sir,
for God’s sake confess something, whether true or not. Think a
little. You can’t stand the tortures they’ll inflict on you, and
even if you could you wouldn’t escape, though you were a count, but
they’ll go through them again and again and never leave you till
you say you are a sorcerer, as may be seen by all their judgements,
for all end alike.” Another came and said the bishop had determined
to make an example of me which would astonish people, and begged me
for God’s sake to make up something, for I should not escape even
though I were innocent, and so said Neudecker and others.
‘Then I asked to see a priest, but could not get one.... And then
this is my confession as follows, but all of it lies.
‘Here follows, dearest child, what I confessed that I might escape
the great torments and agonies, for I could not have endured them
any longer. This is my confession, nothing but lies, that I had to
make on threat of still greater tortures, and for which I must die.
‘“I went into my field, and sat down there in great melancholy,
when a peasant girl came to me and said, ‘Sir, what is the matter?
Why are you so sorrowful?’ I said I did not know, and then she sat
down close to me, and suddenly changed into a he-goat and said,
‘Now you know with whom you have to do.’ He took me by the throat
and said, ‘You must be mine, or I’ll kill you.’ Then I said, ‘God
forbid.’ Then he vanished and came back with two women and three
men; bade me deny God, and I did so, denied God and the heavenly
host. Then he baptized me and the two women were sponsors; gave me
a ducat, which turned into a potsherd.”
‘Now I thought I had got it over, but they brought in the
executioner, and asked where I went to the witch dances. I did not
know what to say, but remembered that the chancellor and his son
and Elsa Hopffen had mentioned Haupt’s moor and other places, so I
said the same. Then I was asked whom I had seen there. Replied I
did not recognize any. “You old rascal, I must get the executioner
to you. Was the chancellor there?” Said “Yes.” “Who else?” “I
recognized none.” Then he said, “Take street by street, beginning
from the market.” Then I had to name some persons. Then Long
Street. I knew nobody; had to name eight persons.... Did I know
any one in the castle? I must speak out boldly whoever it was.
So they took me through all the streets till I could and would
say no more. Then they gave me to the executioner to strip, shave
off my hair, and torture me again. “The rascal knows a man in the
market-place, goes about with him daily, and won’t name him.” They
meant Dietmeyer, so I had to name him.
‘Next they asked what evil I had done. I replied, “None.” The
devil bade me to, and beat me when I refused. “Put the rascal on
the rack.” So I said I was told to murder my children but killed
a horse instead. That wasn’t enough for them. I had also taken a
sacramental wafer and buried it. When I said this they left me in
peace.
‘There, dearest child, you have all my confession, for which I must
die, and it is nothing but lies and made-up things, so God help me.
For I had to say all this for fear of the tortures threatened me,
besides all those I had gone through. For they go on torturing till
one confesses something; be he as pious as he will, he must be a
sorcerer. No one escapes, though he were a count. And if God does
not interfere, all our friends and relations will be burnt, for
each has to confess as I had.
‘Dearest child, I know you are pious as I, but you have already had
some trouble, and if I may advise, you had better take what money
there is and go on a pilgrimage for six months, or somewhere where
you can stay for a time outside the diocese till one sees what
will happen. Many honourable men and women in Bamberg go to church
and about their business, do no evil, and have clear consciences as
I hitherto, as you know, yet they come to the witch prison, and if
they have a tongue to confess, confess they must, true or not.
‘Neudecker, the chancellor, his son, Candelgiesser, Hofmeister’s
daughter, and Elsa Hopffen all denounced me at once. I had no
chance. Many are in the same case, and many more will be, unless
God intervenes.
‘Dear child, keep this letter secret so that nobody sees it, or I
shall be horribly tortured and the gaoler will lose his head, so
strict is the rule against it. You may let Cousin Stamer read it
quickly in private. He will keep it secret. Dear child, give this
man a thaler.
‘I have taken some days to write this. Both my hands are lamed. I
am in a sad state altogether. I entreat you by the last judgement,
keep this letter secret, and pray for me after my death as for your
martyred father ... but take care no one hears of this letter. Tell
Anna Maria to pray for me too. You may take oath for me that I am
no sorcerer, but a martyr.
‘Good-night, for your father, John Junius, will see you never more.
24th July, 1628.’
On the margin is written:
‘Dear child, six denounced me: the chancellor, his son, Neudecker,
Zaner, Ursula Hoffmaister, and Elsa Hopffen, all falsely and on
compulsion as they all confessed. They begged my pardon for God’s
sake before they were executed. They said they knew nothing of me
but what was good and loving. They were obliged to name me, as I
should find out myself. I cannot have a priest, so take heed of
what I have written, and keep this letter secret.’
The letter is still preserved, with its crippled handwriting, in the
library at Bamberg. This case is beyond comment. It is like the trial
of Faithful at Vanity Fair, but with rack and thumb-screw in place of
a jury. Yet it is but a moderate sample of those outrages on justice
and humanity called witch trials. Men rarely held out long, but, did
space permit, we might tell stories of many heroic women who endured
ten, twenty, even fifty repetitions of torture, till they died on the
rack or in the dungeon rather than falsely accuse themselves or their
neighbours.[314]
For when once arrested, the victim had small hope of acquittal, and in
the most favourable cases, when there was no external evidence, and no
amount of torture could induce a ‘confession’, the accused was sent
back friendless and crippled to her home, which she was forbidden to
leave, having first sworn to have no more dealings with the devil, and
to take no proceedings against her accusers. To acquit her would imply
that an innocent person had been tortured, a thing naturally repugnant
to the tender consciences of the inquisitors.
Nor was the mania confined to any special class. Protestants vied with
Catholics, and town councils with bishops in cruelty and injustice.
At Nördlingen they had a special set of torture instruments which the
Protestant town council lent to neighbouring district authorities, with
the pious observation that ‘by these means, and more especially by the
thumb-screw, God has often been graciously pleased to reveal the truth,
if not at first, at any rate at the last’.[315]
It is obvious from the above cases that the main cause of the
continuance of the witch-burnings, and of the number of the victims,
was the use of torture to obtain denunciations. The instances in which
insane persons accused themselves or others seem to have been fewer
than we might have expected.
Then, as now, there were melancholics who thought they had committed
the unpardonable sin, and in those days the unpardonable sin might
be represented by an imaginary compact with the devil. Then, as
now, the ‘mania of persecution’ was a prominent symptom in some
forms of insanity, and the idea of being bewitched by some old woman
corresponded to the modern dread of detectives, electric batteries, or
telephones.
Some of the supposed signs of witchcraft resemble those of mania and
melancholia. Thus maniacs sometimes collect dirt for money, and witches
often confessed that the devil’s money changed to dirt. Melancholics
mutter to themselves, look on the ground, and avoid society, all of
which were considered signs of witchcraft. But then red hair and
left-handedness were no less infallible indications.
Insanity and crime were indeed present at the witch trials, but they
were at least as obvious in the accusers and judges as in the victims,
and the first man who was bold enough to say so was Dr. John Weyer.
Though a few feeble protests may have been made by others, it was from
the medical profession that the first determined opposition came.
Mystics like Paracelsus and Cardan might encourage the superstition;
pious and able members of the profession like Ambroise Paré and Sir
Thomas Brown might give it their sanction, but it was the physician
Cornelius Agrippa who first successfully defended a witch at the
risk of his own life,[316] and it was his pupil John Weyer who first
declared open war against the witch-hunters and invoked the vengeance
of heaven upon their atrocities.
‘The feareful abounding at this time in this countrie of those
detestable slaves of the divell, the witches or enchanters hath
moved me (beloved reader) to dispatch in post the following
treatise of mine, not in any wise (as I protest) to serve for a
shewe of my learning and ingine, but only (moved of conscience to
preasse thereby) so far as I can, to resolve the doubting hearts
of manie both that such assaults of Satan are most certainly
practised, and that the instruments thereof merit most severely
to be punished, against the damnable opinions of two principally
in our age, whereof the one called Scot, an Englishman, is not
ashamed in public print to denie that there can be such a thing
as witchcraft and so maintains the old error of the Sadduces in
denying of spirits, the other called Wierus, a German physition
sets out a publike apologie for all these crafts-folks, whereby
procuring for their impunity, he plainly bewrayes himself to have
been of that profession.’
Thus did our ‘British Solomon’, James I, commence his _Daemonologia_
(1598), a work directed against the two men who alone up to that time
had made a bold and open protest against the witch mania and its
abominations. Reginald Scot in his _Discovery of Witchcraft_ (1584)
took the view of a modern common-sense Englishman, that the whole thing
is absurd, a mixture of roguery and false accusations. Weyer, on the
other hand, his predecessor by twenty years, is a firm believer in the
activity of the devil, whose object, however, is not to get possession
of the souls of crazy old women, but by deluding them, to convert pious
and learned lawyers and theologians into torturers and murderers.
Born about 1516 at Grave in Brabant, the son of a dealer in hops and
faggots, Weyer was acquainted with the supernatural from his earliest
years, for they had a domestic ‘house cobold’ or _Poltergeist_, who was
heard tumbling the hop-sacks about whenever a customer was expected. At
seventeen years of age the boy was sent to study medicine as apprentice
to Cornelius Agrippa, an extraordinary man, long held to be a sorcerer,
who had recently incurred yet stronger suspicion by his heroic and
successful defence of a woman accused of witchcraft at Metz, and by his
fondness for a black dog called ‘Monsieur’ which scarcely ever left
him. The young Weyer used to take this animal out on a string, and
soon became convinced, to use his own words, that it was ‘a perfectly
natural male dog’.[317] He next went to Paris and thence to Orleans,
a university then famous for its medical school, where he took the
degree of M.D. in 1537. He commenced practice in Brabant, became public
medical officer at Arnheim in 1545, and in 1550 physician to Duke
William of Cleves. In 1563 he published his great work _De praestigiis
daemonum et incantationibus ac veneficiis_,[318] the object of which
is to show that so-called witchcraft is usually due to delusions of
demons, who take advantage of the weaknesses and diseases of women to
bring about impious and absurd superstitions, hatreds, cruelties, and
a vast outpouring of innocent blood, things in which they naturally
delight.
He proposes to treat the subject under four heads corresponding to
the four faculties, theology, philosophy, medicine, and law. In the
first section he attempts to show that the Hebrew word _Kasaph_ does
not mean ‘witch’ but ‘poisoner’, or at any rate that Greek, Latin,
and Rabbinical interpreters so vary, that no reliance can be placed
upon them. Moreover the law of Moses was given to the Jews ‘for the
hardness of their hearts’, and is by no means always to be used by
Christians.[319] Magicians and sorcerers do indeed still exist, as
in ancient Egypt, but these are always men, and usually rogues and
swindlers, such as was Faust, of whom Weyer gives us one of the
earliest and most authentic notices. Faust, he says, was once arrested
by Baron Hermann of Batoburg, and given in charge of his chaplain, J.
Dursten, who hoping to see some sign or wonder, treated him with much
kindness, giving him the best of wine. But all he got out of him was
a magic ointment to enable him to shave without a razor, containing
arsenic, and so strong that it brought not only the hair but the skin
from the reverend gentleman’s cheeks. ‘The which he has told me more
than once with much indignation.’[320]
Weyer, however, firmly believes that the devil may assist sorcerers,
such as Faust, in some of their feats, though he does this chiefly by
deluding the eyes of the spectators. He may also delude women into the
belief that they have been at witch dances and caused thunder-storms,
&c., but his greatest deception is to make men believe in the reality
of witchcraft and so torture and murder the innocent.[321] Women are
more liable to his deceptions owing to their greater instability both
of mind and body, and the delusion may be favoured by the use of
drugs and ointments, especially those containing belladonna, lolium,
henbane, opium, and even more by herbs recently introduced from east
and west, such as Indian hemp, datura, ‘and the plant called by
the Indians “tabacco”, by the Portuguese “peto”, and by the French
“nicotiana”’.[322]
As for the supposed compact with the devil, it is an absurdity only
surpassed by the belief in sexual intercourse with demons. This
delusion, Weyer points out, may be explained medically by the phenomena
of nightmare and the effects of certain drugs, and is not sanctioned
by Scripture. For, though holy men such as Lactantius, Justin Martyr,
and Tertullian have maintained that the ‘sons of God’ mentioned in
Genesis vi. 2 were spirits, this interpretation is opposed by still
more eminent theologians, such as Saints Jerome, Gregory Nazianzen,
and Chrysostom, though he is obliged to admit that St. Augustine
believed in _incubi_ and _succubae_,[323] and that distinguished living
theologians hold that Luther’s father was literally the devil. This,
however, says Weyer, is an unfair and prejudiced way of attacking the
Lutheran heresy.[324]
People who fancy themselves bewitched are really possessed or assaulted
by the devil, as were Job and the demoniacs of the New Testament. If
these demoniacs had lived in our days, he remarks, they would probably
have each cost the lives of numerous old women.[325] The strange
objects vomited by such persons are either deceptions or put into the
person’s mouth by the devil, as is shown by there being no admixture
of food, and the absence of pain or injury in spite of the size of the
objects.[326]
A girl near Cleves fell into convulsions with clenched hands and teeth
which, according to her father, could only be opened by making the sign
of the cross. She also complained of pains for which it was necessary
to buy a bottle of holy water from a priest at Amersfort, on drinking
which she proceeded to vomit pins, needles, scraps of iron, and pieces
of cloth. She spoke in an altered boyish voice, intended for that of a
demon, and declared the whole was caused by an ‘in my opinion honest
matron’, who was imprisoned with her mother and two other women.
Weyer undertook the case, ‘whereupon she said in her boy’s voice she
would have nothing to do with me, and that I was a cunning fellow.
“Look what sharp eyes he has.”’ Weyer opened her hands and mouth,
without making the sign of the cross, ‘not that I would in any way
speak irreverently thereof’. He also showed that the objects produced,
even soon after eating, were free from admixture of food, and had
therefore never been farther than the mouth; and he thus obtained the
release of the four women after a month’s imprisonment.[327]
As for the stories of men changed into animals, they are partly poetic
and moral allegories, as the sailors of Ulysses, and partly a form of
insanity long recognized by physicians, and termed lycanthropy.[328]
Many think they are possessed when they are only melancholic, and
others pretend to be so to excite interest and obtain money. Those who
fancy themselves attacked by devils should, instead of accusing their
neighbours, take to themselves the armour of God as described by St.
Paul. Unfortunately, spiritual pastors, in their ignorance and greed,
teach that not only diabolical possession, but even ordinary diseases
are to be cured by charms, incantations, palm branches, consecrated
candles, and an execrable abuse of scriptural words. Cures are, indeed,
sometimes so produced, but are really due to the imagination.
Persons supposed to be possessed should first be taken to an
intelligent physician, who should investigate and treat any bodily
disorder. Should spiritual disorders be also present he may then send
the patient to a pious minister of the Church, but this will often
be unnecessary. The devil is especially fond of attacking nuns, who
should be separated from the rest, and, if possible, sent home to their
relations.[329]
Here Weyer inserts several instances in his own experience.
Philip Wesselich, a monk of Knechtenstein near Cologne, an honest,
simple-minded man, was miserably afflicted by a spirit about the year
1550. Sometimes he was carried up to the roof, at others thrust in
among the beams of the belfry, often carried unexpectedly through the
wall (_plerumque per murum transferebatur inopinato_) and knocked about
generally. At length the spirit declared he was Matthew Duren, a former
abbot, condemned to penance for having paid an artist insufficiently
for a painting of the Blessed Virgin, so that the poor man went
bankrupt and committed suicide, ‘which was true’. He could only be
released if the monk went to Trèves and Aix and recited three masses in
the respective cathedrals. The theological faculty of Cologne advised
that he should do so, but the abbot Gerard, a man of firmness and
intelligence, told the possessed man that he was a victim of diabolical
deceptions, and that unless he put his trust in God, and pulled himself
together, he should be publicly whipped. Whereupon the monk did so, and
the devil left him and went elsewhere.[330]
A similar case was that of a young woman known to Weyer, who had
convulsions in church whenever the ‘Gloria in excelsis’ was sung in
German, and said she was possessed. It was observed, however, that she
looked about for a soft place to fall on. She was therefore sent for by
Weyer’s friend the Countess Anna of Virmont, who said she was about to
sing the chant, and that if the demon attacked her she would soon drive
him out. The young woman fell in the usual fit, on which the countess,
_prudens et cordata matrona_, with the aid of her daughter pulled up
her dress and gave her a good whipping. ‘She confessed to me afterwards
that it completely cured her.’ Extreme diseases, adds Weyer, require,
according to Hippocrates, extreme remedies, but care should be taken to
distinguish suitable cases.[331]
The last and most important section of the book treats of the
punishment of witches, who are to be carefully distinguished from
poisoners and magicians, such as Faust, who are often wealthy men and
spend much money in travel, books, &c., to learn diabolic arts; or
deceivers, such as the mason who buried wolves’ dung in a cattle stall,
and when the animals showed great excitement, said they were bewitched,
and offered to cure them for a consideration. Such men, when proved to
have done serious harm, are to be severely punished. The less guilty
should be admonished, and among them are those who spread superstitious
practices and persuade sick people that they are bewitched by some old
woman.
This is all that the laws of Church or State require, and is a
very different thing from seizing poor women possessed by diabolic
delusions, or on the malicious accusations or foolish suspicions of
the ignorant vulgar, and casting them into horrible dungeons, whence
they are dragged to be torn and crushed by every imaginable instrument
of torture, till, however guiltless they are, they confess to sorcery,
since it is better to give their souls to God in innocence, even
through flame, than longer endure the hideous torments of bloodthirsty
tyrants. And should they die under torture or in prison, the accusers
and judges cry out triumphantly that they have committed suicide, or
that the devil has broken their necks.
Here follows a burst of indignant eloquence which would have cost Weyer
dear had he fallen into the clutches of the witch-hunters, and which
may be given in the terse vigour of the original:
‘Sed ubi tandem is apparuerit quem nihil latet, Scrutator cordium
et renum, ipsius abstrusissimae etiam veritatis Cognitor et Iudex,
vestri actus palam fient, O vos praefracti tyranni, O iudices
sanguinarii, hominem exuti et caecitate ab omni misericordia
procul remoti. Ad ipsius extremi iudicii tribunal iustissimum
vos provoco, qui inter vos et me decernet ubi sepulta et culcata
Veritas resurget vobisque in faciem resistet latrociniorum ultionem
exactura.’[332]
Their credulity almost equals their cruelty, as shown by the belief
that a certain old woman caused the excessive cold of the preceding
winter, and by the absurd swimming test. What effect can denial of
faith, evil intentions, or a corrupt fantasy have upon a person’s
specific gravity, on which floating depends? Moreover, women usually
float, since their specific gravity is less than that of men, as
Hippocrates pointed out.[333] But nothing is too absurd for a witch
inquisitor. Some fishermen at Rotterdam drew up their nets full of
stones but fishless. This was clearly witchcraft, so they seized an
unfortunate woman who confessed in her terror that she had flown out
of the window through a hole the size of a finger-end, dived under the
sea in a mussel-shell,[334] and there terrified the fishes and put
stones in the nets. The woman, says Weyer, was evidently mad or deluded
by the devil, but they burnt her all the same. Treachery and cruelty
go together. A priest, having failed to make a witch confess, promised
that if she would admit some small act of sorcery, he would see that
she was released after some slight penance. Thereupon she confessed and
was burnt alive.[335]
In contrast to this, Weyer describes the method of dealing with
witchcraft in the duchy of Cleves. In 1563 a farmer, finding his cows
gave less milk than usual, consulted a witch-finder, who told him that
one of his own daughters had bewitched them. The girl, deluded by the
devil, admitted this and accused sixteen other women of being her
accomplices. The magistrate wrote to the duke proposing to imprison
them all, but the latter, probably at Weyer’s instigation, replied that
the witch-finder was to be imprisoned, the girl to be instructed by
a priest and warned against the delusions of demons, and the sixteen
women in no way to be molested.[336]
An old woman of eighty was arrested at Mons on charge of witchcraft,
the chief evidence being that her mother had long ago been tortured to
death on a similar charge. To make her confess they poured boiling oil
over her legs, which produced blisters and ulcers, and her son hearing
of it sent her a roll of lint to put round them. This was supposed to
make magic bandages by the aid of which the woman might escape, and the
son was promptly arrested. The mother was to be burnt in a few days,
and her son would probably have followed, when Weyer, by permission of
the Duke of Cleves, visited Count William of Mons and explained his
views on witchcraft. He also examined the old woman, who was so broken
down that she fainted several times, and finally obtained the release
of both.[337]
Theologians (says Weyer in conclusion) may object that he is only a
physician and bid him keep to his last. He can only reply that St. Luke
was a physician, and that he is one of those who hope by the mercy of
God and grace of Christ to attain that royal priesthood of which St.
Paul and St. John speak. Finally he is ready to submit all he has said
to the judgement of the Church, and to recant any errors of which he
may be convicted.
The Church answered by putting his name on the _Index_ as an _auctor
primae classis_, that is, one whose opinions are so dangerous
that none of his works may be read by the faithful without special
permission, while his book was solemnly burnt by the Protestant
University of Marburg.[338] The Duke of Alva, then engaged in his
notorious work in the Netherlands, used his influence to get Weyer
removed from his position at the court of Cleves. In this he was
aided by the duke’s increasing melancholia and ill health, which were
considered by many a judgement upon him for his protection of Weyer
and neglect of witch-burning. In 1578 Weyer resigned his post to his
son Galen, and in 1581 witch-hunting commenced in the duchy of Cleves.
Weyer, however, as befitted the chivalrous defender of outraged
womanhood, enjoyed the friendship and protection of Countess Anna of
Techlenburg, at whose residence he died, 1588, aged seventy-two.
The work on _The Deceptions of Demons_ has been aptly compared to a
torch thrown out into the darkness, which for a moment brightly illumes
a small space and then disappears. It made a temporary sensation, and
was welcomed by a few of the more enlightened spirits of the time;
it saved the lives of some unfortunate women (being successfully
quoted the very year after publication in defence of a young woman
at Frankfort, who confessed she had flown through the air and had
intercourse with the devil), and it marks the beginning of an open and
persistent opposition to the witch mania. Spee also has a curious story
showing the influence of Weyer’s book:
‘A great prince invited two priests to his table, both men of
learning and piety. He asked one of them whether he thought it
right to arrest and torture persons on the evidence of 10 or 12
witches. Might not the devil have deceived them in order to make
rulers shed innocent blood, as certain learned men had lately
argued, “thereby causing us pangs of conscience”? The priest
stoutly maintained that these pangs were needless, for God would
never allow the devil to bring innocent men to a shameful and
horrible death in this way; and so he (the prince) might continue
the witch trials as usual. He persisted in this, till the prince
said, “I am sorry, my father, you have condemned yourself and
cannot complain were I to order your immediate arrest, for no less
than 15 persons have sworn you were with them at the witch dances”,
and he produced the records of their trials in proof. Then the good
man stood like butter in the sun in the dog-days, and had nothing
more to say for himself.’[339] #/
But it had little effect on the superstition itself, which reached
its height during the following half-century; and the author is
compelled by his religious beliefs to admit so much that his position
is hardly tenable. Indeed, his premisses had already been granted by
the witch-hunters themselves. The jurist Molitor, for instance, admits
that much witchcraft is imaginary and due to the deceptions of demons,
but while the physician argues that these deceptions are rendered
possible by disease, and are themselves largely of the nature of
disease, so that the victims deserve pity and medical treatment rather
than burning, the lawyer asserts that a person can only be so deceived
by his free will, and therefore a woman who believes she has made a
compact or had intercourse with the devil is as deserving of punishment
as if she had actually done so.[340]