MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
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MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
"Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas,
Nocturnos lemures, partentaque Thessala rides?"
_Hor. Epist. ii. 2. 208._
LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
1852.
PRINTED BY
JOHN EDWARD TAYLOR, LITTLE QUEEN STREET,
LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS.
PREFACE.
We have long wished that some English or foreign university would offer a
prize for a history of Magic and Witchcraft. The records of human opinion
would contain few chapters more instructive than one which should deal
competently with the Black Art. For gross and painful as the details of
superstition may be, yet superstition, by its very etymology, implies a
dogma or a system of practice standing upon some basis of fact or truth:
and however vain or noxious the superstructure may be, the foundation of
it is in some way connected with those deep verities upon which rest also
the roots of philosophy and religion.
For a grand error, and such alone can at any time essentially affect the
opinions of mankind in general, is ever the imitation or caricature of
some grand truth. From one soil spring originally the tree which yields
good fruit and the plant which distils deadly poison. The very
discernment of the causes of error is a step towards the discovery of its
opposite. The bewilderments of the mind of man, when fully analysed,
afford a clue to the course of its movements from the right track, or at
least enable us to detect the point at which began the original separation
between Truth and Error. Alchemy led, by no very circuitous route, to the
science of chemistry; the adoption of false gods by the majority of the
human race rendered necessary the dispensations of the Jewish and
Christian schemes; and the corruption of true reverence for the Good, the
Beautiful, and the Holy, was the parent of those arts, which, under the
several appellations of Magic, Witchcraft, Sorcery, etc., drew their
professors at first and the multitude afterwards to put faith in the evil,
the deformed, and the impure. Magic and Witchcraft are little more than
the religious instincts of mankind, first inverted, then polluted, and
finally, like all corrupted matter, impregnated with the germs of a
corrupt vitality.
So universal is the belief in spiritual influences, and more especially in
their malignant influences, that no race of men, no period of time, no
region of the globe, have been exempt from it. It meets us in the remote
antiquity of Asiatic life, in the comparatively recent barbarism of the
American aborigines, in the creeds of all the nations who branched off
thousands of years ago eastward and westward from their Caucasian cradle,
in the myths, the observances, and the dialects of nations who have no
other affinity with one another than the mere form of man.
No nation, indeed, can reproach another nation with its addiction to magic
without in an equal degree condemning itself. All the varieties of mankind
have, in this respect, erred alike at different periods of their social
existence, and all accordingly come under the same condemnation of making
and loving a lie. The Chaldean erred when, dissatisfied with simple
observation of the heavenly bodies through the luminous atmosphere of his
plains, he perverted astronomy into astrology: the Egyptian erred when he
represented the omnipresence of the Deity by the ubiquity of animal
worship: the Hindoo erred when, having conceived the idea of an
incarnation, he clothed with flesh and fleshly attributes the members of
his monstrous pantheon: the Kelt and Teuton erred when, in their silent
and solitary forests, they stained the serenity of nature with the deified
attributes of war; and the more settled and civilized races who built and
inhabited the cities of the ancient world, erred in their conversion of
the indivisible unity of the Demiourgos or World-Creator into an
anthropomorphic system of several gods. But the very universality of the
error points to some common ground for it in the recesses of the human
heart; and since Paganism under all its forms was the corruption of
religion, and Witchcraft in its turn the corruption of Paganism, an
inquiry into the seeds of this evil fruit cannot fail to be also in some
measure an investigation of the very 'incunabula' of human error.
We have stated, or endeavoured to state, the real scope and dimensions of
the subject of Magic and Witchcraft--not however with any purpose of
expatiating upon it in so small a volume as the present one. In the pages
which follow we offer only a few remarks upon theories or modes of belief
which in remote or in nearer ages have affected the creeds and the conduct
of mankind. The subject, _in extenso_, belongs to larger volumes, and to
maturer learning and meditation.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
The Legendary Lucifer 3
Sources of Superstition 9
Monkish Superstition 11
Executions for Witchcraft 17
Self-Delusions 19
Spectral Illusions 25
Coincidences in Evidence 29
Sweden. The Blocula 31
Delusions 33
Confessions 35
The Reformation 37
Persecutions in Germany 39
Persecutions in Hungary 41
Edict of Louis XIV. 43
Persecution in England 45
Scottish Superstition 49
Trials in Scotland 55
Remarkable Trials 57
Case of Lady Fowlis 59
James the First 65
Tortures 67
Convention of Witches 69
Dr. Fian 71
Euphemia Macalzean 73
Charles the First 75
The Puritans 77
The Restoration 79
Isobel Gowdie 81
Amusements of Witches 83
Anecdotes of Witches 85
Superstitious Enthusiasm 87
Pagan Witchcraft 91
Lucian and Apuleius 93
The Baker's Wife 95
High Treason 97
Later Pagan Superstitions 99
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT.
An amusing work appeared at Mainz, in 1826, from the pen of "Herr
Kirchenrath" Horst, the title of which, translated _in extenso_, runs
thus:--"The Magical Library; or, of Magic, Theurgy, and Necromancy;
Magicians, Witches, and Witch Trials, Demons, Ghosts, and Spectral
Appearances. By G. C. Horst, Church-Counsellor to the Grand Duke of
Hesse." The following pages formed a review of this work, which appeared
many years ago[1].
* * * * *
This book of the worthy Church-Counsellor is rather a singular one: it is
not a history of Magic, but a sort of spiritual periodical, or magazine of
infernal science, supported in a great measure by contributions from
persons of a ghostly turn of mind, who, although they affect occasionally
to write in a Sadducee vein, are many of them half-believers at heart, and
would not walk through a churchyard at night, except for a consideration
larger than we should like to pay. The field over which it travels is too
extensive, for us to attempt to follow the author throughout his elaborate
subdivisions. Dante divided hell, like Germany, into circles; and Mr.
Horst, adopting something of a similar arrangement, has parcelled out the
territory of the Prince of the Air into sundry regular divisions, by which
its whole bearings and distances are made plain enough for the use of
infant schools. It is only at one of the provinces of the Inferno,
however, that we can at present afford to glance; though for those who are
inclined to make the grand tour, the Counsellor may be taken as an
intelligent travelling companion, well acquainted with the road. In fact
his work is so methodical and distinct, and the geography of the infernal
regions so clearly laid down, according to the best authorities, from
Jamblichus and Porphyry down to Glanvil and the Abbé Fiard, that the whole
district is now about as well known as the course of the Niger; and it
must be the traveller's own fault if he does not find his exit from
Avernus as easy as its entrance has proverbially been since the days of
Virgil.
The picture, however, drawn by these intelligent spiritual travellers is
by no means calculated to impress us with a high notion of the dominions
of the Prince of the Air, or that the _personnel_ of his majesty or his
government are prepossessing. The climate, as all of them, from Faust
downwards, agree, is oppressively hot, and the face of the country
apparently a good deal like that between Birmingham and Wolverhampton,
abounding with furnaces and coal-pits. Literature is evidently at a low
ebb, from the few specimens of composition with which we are favoured in
the Zauber-Bibliothek, and the sciences, with the exception of some
practical applications of chemistry, shamefully neglected. The government
seems despotical, but subject to occasional explosions on the part of the
more influential spirits concerned in the executive. In fact, the
departments of the administration are by no means well arranged; there is
no proper division of labour, and the consequence is, that Beelzebub,
"Mooned Ashtaroth," and others of the ministry, who, according to the
theory of the constitution[2] are entitled to precedence, are constantly
jostled and interfered with by Aziel, Mephistopheles, Marbuel, and other
forward second-rate spirits, who are continually thrusting in their claws
where they are not called for. The standing army is considerable[3],
besides the volunteers by which it is continually augmented. Nothing is
heard however of the navy, and from the ominous silence which our
geographers preserve on this point, it is easy to see that water is a rare
element in this quarter.
The hints given as to the personal appearance and conduct of Lucifer, the
reigning monarch, are not flattering. Common readers are apt to believe
that Satan occupies that dignity[4], but this is a great error, and only
shows, as Asmodeus told Don Cleofas, when he fell into a similar mistake
about Beelzebub, "that they have no true notions of hell." The morals of
Lucifer, as might be expected, are as bad as possible, with this
exception, that we see no evidence of his being personally addicted to
drinking. His licentious habits, however, are attested by many a
scandalous chronicle in Sprenger, Delrio, and Bodinus; and for swearing,
all the world knows that Ernulphus was but a type of him. His jokes are
all practical and of a low order, and there is an utter want of dignity in
most of his proceedings. One of his most facetious amusements consists in
constantly pulling the spits, on which his witches are riding, from
beneath them, and applying them vigorously to their shoulders; and he has
more than once administered personal chastisement to his servants, when
they neglected to keep an appointment. He is a notorious cheat; many
enterprising young men, who have enlisted in his service on the promise of
high pay and promotion, having found, on putting their hands into their
pockets, that he had paid them their bounty in tin sixpences, and having
never risen even to the rank of a corporal. His talent might, from these
narratives, be considered very mediocre, and therefore we are afraid that
the ingenious selection from his papers, published by Jean Paul[5], must
be a literary forgery. At least all his printed speeches are bad,--flashy
enough, no doubt, in the commencement, but generally ending in smoke. He
has always had a fancy for appearing in masquerade, and once delivered a
course of lectures on magic at Salamanca, in the disguise of a professor.
So late as 1626, he lived _incog._, but in a very splendid style, for a
whole winter, in Milan, under the title of the Duke of Mammon[6]. It is in
vain, however, for his partial biographers to disguise the fact, that in
his nocturnal excursions, of which, like Haroun Alraschid, he was at one
time rather fond, and where, we learn from the Swedish witches, he
generally figured in a grey coat and red small-clothes, ornamented with
ribbons and blue stockings, he has more than once received a sound
drubbing from honest people, whom he has attempted to trip up by laying
his tail in their way. And, in fact, since his affair with St. Dunstan, he
has kept pretty much withindoors after nightfall. Luther, as we know, kept
no terms with him when he began to crack hazel-nuts in his bedroom at the
Wartburg, but beat him all to nothing in a fair contest of ribaldry and
abuse, besides leaving an indelible blot of ink upon his red smalls[7].
St. Lupus shut him up for a whole night in a pitcher of cold water, into
which he had (as he thought, cunningly) conveyed himself, with the hope
that the saint would swallow him unawares[8]. This however, considering
his ordinary temperature, must have been an act of kindness, which should
have brought on St. Lupus the censure of the church. St. Anthony, in
return for a very polite offer of his services, spat in his face; which
hurt his feelings so much, that it was long before he ventured to appear
in society again[9]. And although in his many transactions with mankind he
is constantly trying to secure some unfair advantage, a person of any
talent, particularly if he has been bred a lawyer[10], is a match for him;
and there are numerous cases in the books, in which his majesty,
attempting to apprehend the person of a debtor, has been unexpectedly
defeated by an ingenious saving clause in the bond, which, like Shylock,
he had overlooked, and non-suited in the ecclesiastical courts, where he
commonly sues, with costs[11]. Finally, we infer from the Mora Trials,
that his general health must have suffered from the climate, for in 1669
he was extremely ill in Sweden; and though he got over the attack for a
time, by bleeding and an antiphlogistic regimen, the persons who were
about him thought his constitution was breaking up, and that he was still
in a dying way.
Such is the grotesque aspect of the legendary Lucifer and his court, which
a course of dæmonology presents to us! But though we have thus spoken with
levity of these gross and palpable conceptions of the evil principle, and
though undoubtedly the first impression produced by such a farrago must be
a ludicrous one, the subject, we fear, has also its serious side. An
Indian deity, with its wild distorted shape and grotesque attitude,
appears merely ridiculous when separated from its accessories and viewed
by daylight in a museum. But restore it to the darkness of its own hideous
temple, bring back to our recollection the victims that have bled upon its
altar, or been crushed beneath its car, and our sense of the ridiculous
subsides into aversion and horror. So, while the superstitious dreams of
former times are regarded as mere speculative insanities, we may for a
moment be amused with the wild incoherencies of the patients; but when we
reflect that out of these hideous misconceptions of the principle of evil
arose the belief in witchcraft; that this was no dead faith, but one
operating on the whole being of society, urging on the mildest and the
wisest to deeds of murder, or cruelties scarcely less than murder; that
the learned and the beautiful, young and old, male and female, were
devoted by its influence to the stake and the scaffold,--every feeling
disappears except that of astonishment that such things could be, and
humiliation at the thought that the delusion was as lasting as it was
universal.
It is true that the current of human opinion seems now to set in a
different direction, and that if the evil spirit of persecution is again
to re-appear on earth, his _avatar_ must in all probability be made in a
different form. Our brains are no longer, as Dr. Francis Hutchinson says
of Bodinus, "mere storehouses for devils to dance in;" and if the
influence of the great enemy is still as active as before on earth, in the
shape of evil passions, he at least keeps personally in the background,
and has changed his tactics entirely since the days of the 'Malleus
Maleficarum.'
"For Satan now is wiser than before,
And tempts by making _rich_--not making _poor_."
Still however it is always a useful check to the pride of the human mind,
to look to those delusions which have darkened it, more especially to
such as have originated in feelings in themselves exalted and laudable.
Such is unquestionably the case in regard to one of the gloomiest chapters
in the history of human error, the belief in witchcraft and its
consequences. The wish to raise ourselves above the visible world, and to
connect ourselves with beings supposed to occupy a higher rank in
creation, seemed at first calculated to exercise only a beneficent
influence on the mind. Men looked upon it as a sort of Jacob's ladder, by
which they were to establish a communication between earth and heaven, and
by means of which angelic influences might be always ascending and
descending upon the heart of man. But, unfortunately, the supposition of
this actual and bodily intercourse with spirits of the better order,
involved also a similar belief as to the possibility of establishing a
free trade with the subterranean powers,
"Who lurk in ambush, in their earthy cover,
And, swift to hear our spells, come swarming up;"
and from these theoretical opinions, once established and acted upon, all
the horrors of those tempestuous times flowed as a natural consequence.
For thus the kingdoms of light and darkness were brought into open
contest: if Satan was ready at every one's call, to send out his spirits
like Swiss mercenaries, it became equally necessary for the true believer
to rise in arms against him with fire and sword; any wavering on his part
was construed into apostasy, and he who did not choose to be persecuted
himself was driven in self-defence to become a persecutor.
The grand postulate of direct diabolical agency being once assumed and
quietly conceded on all hands, any absurdity whatever was easily engrafted
on it. Satan being thus brought home, as it were, to men's business and
bosoms, every one speculated on his habits and demeanour according to his
own light; and soon the insane fancies of minds crazed by nature, disease,
or misfortunes, echoed and repeated from all sides, gathered themselves
into a code or system of faith, which, being instilled into the mind with
the earliest rudiments of instruction, fettered even the strongest
intellects with its baleful influence. The mighty minds of Luther, of
Calvin, and of Knox, so quick in detecting error, so undaunted and
merciless in exposing it, yielded tamely to its thrall; the upright and
able Sir Matthew Hale passed sentence of death, in 1664, on two poor women
accused of witchcraft, and Sir Thomas Browne, the historian of "Vulgar
Errors," who was examined as a witness on the trial, gave it as his
opinion that the fits under which the patients had laboured, though
natural in themselves, were "heightened by the Devil co-operating with the
malice of the witches, at whose instance he did the villanies!" and
apparently on this evidence chiefly did the conviction proceed.
Neither, in fact, were the incongruities and inconsistencies of the
witch-creed of the time so calculated, as they might at first sight
appear, to awaken men's minds to the radical insanity of the belief. The
dash of the ludicrous, which mingles itself with almost all the exploits
of Satan and his satellites, grew, naturally enough, out of the monkish
conception of Satan, and might be supposed not inconsistent with the
character of a set of beings whose proceedings of course could not be
expected to resemble those either of men or angels. The monkish Satan has
no dignity about him: in soul and body he is low and deformed.
"Gli occhi ha vermigli, e la barba unta ed atra,
E 'l ventre largo, ed unghiate le mani,
Graffia gli spirti, gli scuoja, ed isquatra[12]."
His apish tricks and satyr-like gambols were sufficiently in unison with
the idea of a spirit with boundless malice but limited powers, grinning in
despite where he could not injure, and ridiculing those sacred rites the
power of which he was compelled to acknowledge and obey. Hence he preaches
to his infernal flock, and mocks the institution of the sacrament; wreaks
his native malice even on his own adherents; plunges his deluded victims
into misery, or deserts them in their distress, deprives them of the
rewards he has promised to them; plagues and torments the good, but cowers
whenever he is boldly resisted, and is at once discomfited by any one who
wields by commission the thunders of heaven. Writers of fiction in general
have seldom seized these features of his character; indeed hardly any one
has done so, except Hoffman, who, in most of his supernatural pictures,
has painted him not with the grandeur and sullen gloom of the fallen
archangel, but with the coarse and comic malice of the spirit of the
middle ages, and has thus, on the whole, deepened the real horror of his
goblin scenes by the infusion of these outbreakings of mirth, just as the
frightful effect of an execution would be increased, if the criminal,
instead of joining in the devotions, were suddenly to strike up a lively
air from the top of the ladder.
But whether the delusion of witchcraft was thus a natural sequence of the
monkish notions of an evil principle, and of the almost universal
persuasion that intercourse with a higher order of beings was possible for
man, no one can cast a glance over its history without being satisfied
that the comprehensive nature of its influence, and its long duration,
were owing to penal laws and prosecutions. It adds one more to the long
list of instances which prove that there is no opinion, however absurd and
revolting, which will not find believers and martyrs, if it is once made
the subject of persecution. From the earliest ages of Christianity it is
certain the belief existed, and must occasionally have been employed by
strong minds as an instrument of terror to the weak; but still the frame
of society itself was not shaken, nor, with one exception[13], does the
crime begin to make any figure in history till the Bull of Innocent VIII.
in 1484 stirred up the slumbering embers into a flame.
Of the extent of the horrors which for two centuries and a half followed,
our readers we suspect have but a very imperfect conception; we remember
as in a dream that on this accusation persons were occasionally burnt, and
one or two remarkable relations from our own annals or those of the
Continent may occur to our recollection. But of the extent of these
judicial murders, no one who has not dabbled a little in the history of
demonology has any idea. No sooner has Innocent placed his commission of
fire and sword in the hands of Sprenger and his brethren, and a regular
form of process for the trial of this offence been laid down in that
unparalleled performance, the 'Malleus Maleficarum,' which was intended as
a theological and juridical commentary on the Bull, than the race of
witches seems at once to increase and multiply, till it replenishes the
earth. The original edict of persecution was enforced by the successive
bulls of the infamous Alexander VI. in 1494 (to whom Satan might indeed
have addressed the remonstrance "et tu Brute!"), of Leo X. in 1521, and
of Adrian VI. in 1522. Still the only effect of these commissions was to
render the evil daily more formidable, till at last, if we are to believe
the testimonies of contemporary historians, Europe was little better than
a large suburb or outwork of Pandemonium. One-half of the population was
either bewitching or bewitched. Delrio tells us in his preface that 500
witches were executed in Geneva in three months, about the year 1515. A
thousand, says Bartholomæus de Spina, were executed in one year in the
diocese of Como, and they went on burning at the rate of a hundred per
annum for some time after. In Lorraine, from 1580 to 1595, Remigius boasts
of having burned 900. In France the multitude of executions about 1520 is
incredible; Danæus, in the first part of his dialogue concerning witches,
calls it "infinitum pene veneficorum numerum." The well-known sorcerer,
_Trois Echelles_, told Charles IX., while he was at Poitou, the names of
1200 of his associates. This calculation is according to Mezeray's more
reasonable version of the story, for the author of the 'Journal du Règne
de Henri III.' makes the number 3000, and Bodinus, not satisfied even with
this allowance, adds a cypher, and makes the total return of witches
denounced by Trois Echelles 30,000, though he does at the same time
express some doubt as to the correctness of this account.
In Germany, to which indeed the bull of Innocent bore particular
reference, this plague raged to a degree almost inconceivable. Bamberg,
Paderborn, Wurtzburg, and Treves were its chief seats, though for a
century and a half after the introduction of the trials under the
commission no quarter of that great empire was free from its baneful
influence. It would be wearisome and revolting to go through the details
of these atrocities; but "ab uno disce omnes." A catalogue of the
executions at Wurtzburg for the period from 1627 to February 1629, about
two years and two months, is printed by Hauber in the conclusion of his
third volume of the 'Acta et Scripta Magica.' It is regularly divided into
twenty-nine burnings, and contains the names of 157 persons, Hauber
stating at the same time that the catalogue is not complete. It is
impossible to peruse this catalogue without horror. The greater part of it
consists of old women or foreign travellers, seized, it would appear, as
foreigners were at Paris during the days of Marat and Robespierre: it
contains children of twelve, eleven, ten, and nine years of age, fourteen
vicars of the cathedral, two boys of noble families, the two little sons
(_söhnlein_) of the senator Stolzenburg; a stranger boy; a blind girl;
Gobel Babelin, the handsomest girl in Wurtzburg, etc.
"Sanguine placârunt Divos _et virgine cæsá_!"
And yet, frightful as this list of 157 persons executed in two years
appears, the number is not (taking the population of Wurtzburg into
account) so great as in the Lindheim process from 1660 to 1664. For in
that small district, consisting at the very utmost of six hundred
inhabitants, thirty persons were condemned and put to death, making a
twentieth part of the whole population consumed in four years.
How dreadful are the results to which these data lead! If we take 157 as a
fair average of the executions at Wurtzburg (and the catalogue itself
states that the list was by no means complete), the amount of executions
there in the course of the century preceding 1628 would be 15,700. We know
that from 1610 to 1660 was the great epoch of the witch trials, and that
so late as 1749 Maria Renata was executed at Wurtzburg for witchcraft; and
though in the interval between 1660 and that date it is to be hoped that
the number of these horrors had diminished, there can be little doubt that
several thousands must be added to the amount already stated. If Bamberg,
Paderborn, Treves, and the other Catholic bishoprics, whose zeal was not
less ardent, furnished an equal contingent, and if the Protestants, as we
know[14], actually vied with them in the extent to which these cruelties
were carried, the number of victims from the date of Innocent's bull to
the final extinction of these persecutions must considerably exceed
100,000 in Germany.
Even the feeling of horror excited by the perusal of the Wurtzburg murders
is perhaps exceeded by that to which another document relative to the
state of matters in 1629 must give rise: namely a ballad on the subject of
these executions, detailing in doggrel verses the sufferings of the
unfortunate victims, "to be sung to the tune of Dorothea"--a common
street-song of the day. It is entitled the 'Druten Zeitung,' or Witches'
Chronicle, "being an account of the remarkable events which took place in
Franconia, Bamberg, and Wurtzburg, with those wretches who from avarice or
ambition have sold themselves to the devil, and how they had their reward
at last; set to music, and to be sung to the air of Dorothea." It is
graced also with some hideous devices in wood, representing three devils
seizing on divers persons by the hair of their heads, legs, etc., and
dragging them away. It commences and concludes with some pious reflections
on the guilt of the witches and wizards, whose fate it commemorates with
the greatest glee and satisfaction. One device in particular, by which a
witch who had obstinately resisted the torture is betrayed into
confession--namely, by sending into her prison the hangman disguised as
her familiar (Buhl Teufel)--seems to meet with the particular approbation
of the author, who calls it an excellent joke; and no doubt the point of
it in his eyes was very much increased by the consideration that upon the
confession, as it was called, so obtained, the unhappy wretch was
immediately committed to the flames[15]. What are we to think of the state
of feeling in the country where these horrors were thus made the subject
of periodical ballads, and set to music for the amusement of the
populace[16]?
It was one fatal effect of the perseverance with which Satan and his
dealings were thus brought before the view of every one, that thousands of
weak and depraved minds were actually led into the belief that they had
formed a connection with the evil being, and that the visions which had so
long haunted the brain of Sprenger and his associates had been realized in
their own case. In this way alone can we in some measure account for the
strange confessions which form the great peculiarity in the witch trials,
where unhappy creatures, with the full knowledge of their fate, admit
their intercourse with Satan, their midnight meetings, incantations, their
dealings with spirits, "white, black, and grey, with all their trumpery,"
the grotesque horrors of the sabbath,--in short, every wild and impossible
phantasm which had received colour and a body in the 'Malleus,'--and
seemed to be perfectly satisfied that they had fully merited the fiery
trial to which their confession immediately subjected them. When we read
these trials, we think of the effect of the Jew's fiddle in Grimm's fairy
tale; we see the delusion spreading like an epidemic from one to another,
till first the witnesses, then the judges, and lastly the poor criminals
themselves, all yield to the giddy whirl, and go off like dancing Dervises
under its influence.
True it is that, in many of the cases, and particularly those which occur
in the earlier part of the seventeenth century, when the diabolical
doctrines of Sprenger and Delrio were in their full vigour, the
confessions on which these convictions proceeded were elicited by torture,
moral and physical, and frequently retracted, till a fresh application of
the rack produced a fresh admission. One instance from Delrio may stand in
place of a thousand. He mentions that an unfortunate gentleman in
Westphalia had been twenty times put to the rack, "vicies sævæ quæstioni
subditum," in order to compel him to confess that he was a were-wolf! All
these tortures he resisted, till the hangman gave him an intoxicating
draught, and under its influence he confessed that he _was_ a were-wolf
after all. "En judicum _clemens_ arbitrium," says Delrio, "quo se porrigat
in illis partibus aquilonaribus."--See how long-suffering we judges are in
the north! we never put our criminals to death till we have tried them
with twenty preliminary courses of torture! This is perfectly in the
spirit of another worthy in Germany, who had been annoyed with the
pertinacity of a witch, who, like the poor lycanthrope, persisted in
maintaining her innocence. "Da liess ich sie tüchtig foltern," says the
inquisitor--"und sie gestand;"--I tortured her _tightly_ (the torture
lasted four hours), and she confessed! Who indeed under such a system
would not have confessed? Death was unavoidable either way, and the great
object was to attain that consummation with the least preparatory pain. "I
went," says Sir George Mackenzie, "when I was a Justice Depute, to
examine some women who had confessed judicially. One of them, who was a
silly creature, told me that she had not confessed because she was guilty,
but, being a poor creature who wrought for her meat, and being defamed for
a witch, she knew she would starve, for no person hereafter would give her
meat or lodging, and that all men would beat her and hound dogs at her,
and that therefore she desired to be out of the world. Whereupon she wept
most bitterly, and upon her knees called God to witness to what she
said[17]." In other cases, the torture was applied not only to the
individual accused, but to his relations or friends, to secure confession.
In Alison Pearson's case[18], it appears that her daughter, a girl of nine
years of age, had been placed in the _pilliewinks_, and her son subjected
to about fifty strokes in the _boots_. Where the torture was not
corporeally applied, terror, confusion, and the influence of others
frequently produced the same effect on the weak minds of the accused. In
the case of the New England witches in 1696, six of the poor women who
were liberated in the general gaol-delivery which took place after this
reign of terror began to decline, (and who had all confessed previously
that they had been guilty of the witchcrafts imputed to them,) retracted
their confessions in writing, attributing them to the consternation
produced by their sudden seizure and imprisonment. "And indeed," said
they, "that confession which it is said we made was no other than what was
suggested to us by some gentlemen, they telling us we were witches, and
they knew it, and we knew it, and they knew that we knew it, which made us
think that it was so, and our understanding, our reason, and our faculties
almost gone, we were not capable of judging our condition. And most of
what we said was but a consenting to what they said[19]."
But though unquestionably great part of these confessions, which at first
tended so much to prolong this delusion, were obtained by torture, or
contrary to the real conviction and belief of the accused, it is
impossible to deny that in many cases the confessions were voluntary, and
proceeded from actual belief. Nor was it to be wondered at that persons of
a weak and melancholy temperament should, more particularly at a time when
the phenomena of nature and of the human body were so little understood,
be disposed to set down every occurrence which they could not explain, and
every wild phantasm which crossed their minds, to the direct and immediate
agency of an evil power. At that period even the most natural events were
ascribed to witchcraft. If a child, after being touched by a suspected
individual, died or became ill, the convulsions were ascribed to
diabolical interference, as in Wenham's case, so late as 1712[20]. If, on
the contrary, she cured instead of killing, the conclusion was the same,
although the only charm employed might be a prayer to the Almighty[21]. If
an old woman's cat, coming to the door at night, took part in a concert
with other cats, this was nothing but a witch herself in disguise[22]. In
the case of Robert Erskine of Dun[23], tried for the murder of his
nephews, he is indicted for making away with them by _poisoning_ and
_witchcraft_, as if the poisoning was not of itself amply sufficient to
account for their death.
It was still less wonderful that those mysterious phenomena which
sometimes occur in the human frame, such as spontaneous combustion,
delusions arising from the state of the brain and nerves, and optical
deceptions, should appear to the sufferer to be the work of the devil,
whose good offices they might very probably have invoked under some fit of
despondency or misanthropy, little expecting, like the poor man in the
fable who called on Death, to be taken at their word. What a "Thesaurus of
Horror" would the spectres of Nicolai have afforded in the sixteenth
century or the commencement of the seventeenth, if embodied in the pages
of the 'Malleus' or the 'Flagellum Dæmonum,' instead of being quietly
published by the patients as optical and medical phenomena in the
'Berlinische Monatschrift' for 1799, and the 15th volume of the
'Philosophical Journal!' What a fearful glimpse into the infernal world
would have been afforded by the still more frightful illusions which
haunted poor Backzko of Königsberg[24] during his political labours in
1806; the grinning negro who seated himself opposite to him, the
owl-headed tormentor that used to stare at him every night through his
curtains, the snakes twisting and turning about his knees as he turned his
periods! If we go back to 1651, we find our English Jacob Böhme,
Pordage[25], giving an account of visions which must have been exactly of
the same kind, arising from an excited state of the brain, with the most
thorough conviction of their reality. His Philadelphian disciples, Jane
Leade, Thomas Bromley, Hooker, Sapperton, and others, were indulged, on
the first meeting of their society, with a vision of unparalleled
splendour. The princes and powers of the infernal world passed in review
before them, sitting in coaches, surrounded with dark clouds and drawn by
a _cortége_ of lions, dragons, tigers, and bears; then followed the lower
spirits arranged in squadrons with cats' ears, claws, twisted limbs, etc.;
whether they shut their eyes or kept them open, the appearances were
equally distinct; "for we saw," says the master-spirit Pordage, "with the
eyes of the mind, not with those of the body."
"And shapes that come not at a mortal call
Will not depart when mortal voices bid.
Lords of the visionary eye, whose lid
Once raised remains aghast, and will not fall[26]."
Thus, while phenomena which experience has since shown to be perfectly
natural were universally attributed to supernatural causes, men had come
to be on the most familiar footing with spiritual beings of all kinds. In
the close of the sixteenth century, Dr. Dee was, according to his own
account, and we verily believe his own conviction, on terms of intimacy
with most of the angels. His brother physician, Dr. Richard Napier, a
relation of the inventor of the logarithms, got almost all his medical
prescriptions from the angel Raphael. Elias Ashmole had a MS. volume of
these receipts, filling about a quire and a half of paper[27]. In fact,
one would almost suppose that few persons at that time condescended to
perform a cure by natural means. Witness the sympathetic nostrums of
Valentine Greatrakes and Sir Kenelm Digby; or the case of Arise Evans,
reported by Aubrey, who "had a fungous nose, and to whom it was _revealed_
that the king's hand would cure him; and at the first coming of King
Charles II. into St. James's Park he kissed the king's hand and _rubbed
his nose with it, which troubled the king, but cured him_." In Aubrey's
time, too, the visits of ghosts had become so frequent, that they had
their exits and their entrances without exciting the least sensation.
Aubrey makes an entry in his journal of the appearance of a ghost as
coolly as a merchant now-a-days makes an entry in his ledger. "Anno 1670.
Not far from Cirencester was an apparition. Being demanded whether good
spirit or bad, returned no answer, but disappeared with a curious perfume
and a melodious twang."
Is it to be wondered at then, that, surrounded on all hands with such
superstitious fancies, the weak and depraved were early brought to believe
that all the wild chimeras of the demonologists were true, and that they
had really concluded that covenant with Satan, the possibility of which
was universally inculcated as an article of faith, and the idea of which
was constantly present to their minds? or that, under the influence of
this frightful delusion, they should voluntarily come forward to confess
their imaginary crime, as in the Amsterdam case of the poor girl who
accused herself of bewitching cattle by the words Shurius, Turius,
Tirius[28], or in another still more remarkable case in 1687, mentioned in
Reichard's 'Beyträge,' where a young woman accused herself, her friend,
and the mother of her friend, of a long course of witchcraft, with all the
usual traditional and impossible horrors of Sprenger and his brethren?
Neither, we are afraid, is there much reason to doubt that some of the
most horrible of their conceptions were founded on facts which were but
too real; that the cunning and the depraved contrived to turn the
ecstasies and the fears of these poor wretches to their own purposes; in
short, that frauds similar to those which Boccaccio has painted in his
novel of the angel Gabriel, were occasionally played off upon the deluded
victims. Without entering further on a topic which is rather of a delicate
kind, the reader will have an idea of our meaning who recollects the
disclosures that took place in the noted French case of Father Girard and
La Cadière.
Much has been said as to the wonderful coincidences to be found in the
evidence of the accused when examined separately, the minuteness of their
details, and the general harmony of the infernal narratives, as collected
from the witch trials of different countries. But the truth is that this
assertion must in the first place be received with great limitations; for
in many cases, where, accepting the assertions of Sprenger and the rest as
true, we should suppose the coincidence to be complete, the original
confessions which still exist prove that the resemblance was merely
general, and that there were radical and irreconcileable differences in
the details of the evidence. Inasfar as the assertion is really true, one
simple explanation goes far to account for the phenomenon;--"Insanire
parent _certâ ratione_ modoque." The general notions of the devil and his
demeanour, the rites of the infernal sabbath, etc. being once fixed, the
visions which crossed the minds of the unfortunate wretches accused soon
assumed a pretty determinate and invariable form; so that, even if left to
tell their own story, there would have been the closest resemblance
between the narratives of different persons. But this was not all. In
almost every case the confessions were merely the echo of questions put by
the inquisitors, all of which again were founded on the demonological
creed of the 'Malleus.' One set of questions is put to all the witches,
and the answers, being almost always simple affirmatives, necessarily
correspond. Hence it is amusing enough to observe how different were the
results, when the process of investigation fell into the hands of persons
to whom Sprenger's manual was unknown. In the Lindheim trials in 1633, to
which we have already alluded, the inquisitor happened to be an old
soldier, who had witnessed several campaigns in the Thirty Years War, and
who, instead of troubling his head about Incubi, Succubi, and the other
favourite subjects of inquiry with the disciples of the Hammer, was only
anxious to ascertain who was the queen of the infernal spirits, the
general, officers, _corporals_, etc., to all of which he received answers
as distinct and satisfactory as any that are recorded for our instruction
in the chronicles of Bodinus or Delrio.