RELIGION AND WITCHCRAFT
_Better that a man's body should be destroyed than his soul. The
worst death of the soul is freedom to err_.
ST. AUGUSTINE.
_It would be hard to calculate the perilous import of so treacherous
an utterance, an utterance the latent sentiment of which has been
responsible for I know not how much human agony. Menacing indeed to
human happiness was such a claim, and in the course of time when the
corporate body of the church became all-powerful in Christendom, it
put into tyrannical practice what had been but a theological
theory_.
LLEWELYN POWYS.
It is the purpose of this chapter to trace the origin of witches,
wizards, and devils, the widespread belief in them at the time of pagan
Rome, and the manner in which these were incorporated into Christian
theology.
With the rise of Christianity and the gain of political power by its
adherents, the perverted pagan idea of witchcraft became the source of
the most terrible persecutions in the bloody history of religion. The
numerous references to witches and devils in both the Old and New
Testaments established the authority for the organized religious mania
that scourged both Roman Catholic and Protestant Europe, and extended
its tentacles into the New England colonies.
Instigated by ecclesiastics, and carried into effect by the intellectual
serfs, their adherents, hundreds of thousands of "witches" were tortured
and burned during the sway of the Witchcraft Delusion. With the Bible
as an inspiration, the clergy inflamed the superstitious minds of the
masses of that time with the conception of a ceaseless strife between
the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan for possession of their
souls and their bodies.
We of the present age may readily wonder how such a belief could have
had so firm a grasp on the minds of our ancestors. Perhaps we will be
tempted to attribute it to the ignorance of that time, particularly to
the ignorance of the untutored masses. On the contrary, this does not
approximate the actual situation. History reveals that the greatest
minds of that age, men eminent in law, letters, and philosophy, not only
defended this conception strenuously, but even engaged in the
extermination of "witches."
That men of such superior intellect could defend such a barbaric
institution, which today is revolting to our senses, necessitates the
conclusion formulated at the end of this chapter.
* * * * *
The ancient Greeks and Romans believed that it was possible by
supernatural means to inflict evil on their fellowmen, and all the sects
of philosophers admitted this, with the exception of the Epicureans, who
denied the existence of evil spirits. The magicians, in Greece and Rome,
were at times punished because they injured men and not because they
offended the gods. During the latter period of pagan Rome, some of the
emperors passed laws against the magicians, if it was proven that by
casting the horoscope the magicians had ascertained what was, according
to their belief, the most auspicious time to start a rebellion against
their rule. The emperors, however, notably Marcus Aurelius and Julian,
were the patrons of magicians who foretold coming events to them. The
public methods of foretelling the future, such as the oracle of the
gods, formed part of their religion.
When the first Christians came into Rome and spread Christianity
throughout the empire, they were inspired by an intense religious
enthusiasm. They thought much less of the civil than of the religious
consequence of magic, and sacrilege seemed much more terrible in their
eyes than anarchy.
The Christians found in Rome a vast polytheistic religion in contrast to
their own in which the entire world was divided into the Kingdom of God
and the Kingdom of Satan. For them the world seemed to be teeming with
malignant demons, who had in all ages persecuted and deluded mankind.
"According to these Christians, the immediate objects of the devotions
of the pagan world were subsidiary spirits of finite power and imperfect
morality; angels, or, as they were then called, demons, who acted the
part of mediators, and who, by permission of the Supreme and
Inaccessible Deity, regulated the religious government of mankind. The
Christians had adopted this conception of subsidiary spirits, but they
maintained them to be not the willing agents, but the adversaries of the
Deity; and the word demon, which among the pagans, signified only a
spirit below the level of a Divinity, among the Christians signified a
devil." (_Lecky._)
"This notion seems to have existed in the very earliest period of
Christianity; and in the second century, we find it elaborated with the
most minute and detailed care. Tertullian, who wrote in that century,
assures us that the world was full of these evil spirits, whose
influence might be descried in every portion of the pagan creed. If a
Christian in any respect deviated from the path of duty, a visible
manifestation of the devil sometimes appeared to terrify him. The terror
which such a doctrine must have spread among the early Christians may
be easily conceived. They seemed to breathe an atmosphere of miracles.
Wherever they turned they were surrounded and beleaguered by malicious
spirits, who were perpetually manifesting their presence by supernatural
arts. Watchful fiends stood beside every altar, they mingled with every
avocation of life, and the Christians were the special objects of their
hatred. All this was universally believed, and was realized with an
intensity which, in this secular age, we can scarcely conceive. The
bearing of this view upon the conception of magic is very obvious. Among
the more civilized pagans, magic was mainly a civil, and in the last
days of the empire, a political crime. In the early church, on the other
hand, it was esteemed the most horrible form of sacrilege effected by
the direct agency of evil spirits. It included the whole system of
paganism, explained all its prodigies, and gave a fearful significance
to all its legends. When the Church obtained the direction of the civil
power, she soon modified or abandoned the tolerant maxims she had
formerly inculcated; and in the course of a few years, restrictive laws
were enacted, both against Jews and heretics." (_Lecky._)
Constantine, after his conversion to Christianity, enacted laws against
the magicians. These were made more rigid under Constantius, his son,
but suspended under Julian. These persecutions were renewed by
Valentinian, spasmodically carried on to a slight extent, and then
lapsed. During the period that elapsed between the sixth and thirteenth
centuries the executions for sorcery were comparatively rare.
It is to be borne in mind, then, that magic as existing in pagan Rome
was part of the religious conceptions of the Romans. The oracle as well
as the various demons, which to them signified what the word "angel"
signifies to us now, formed an elaborate system of mythology and
idolatry. The early Christians coming into contact with these
conceptions, at first found an insurmountable difficulty in spreading
their beliefs among the rural inhabitants of the Roman empire.
Polytheism was dominant while their monotheism was as yet a persecuted
belief. The road of least resistance was compromise, and so this vast
system of polytheism was perverted, while seemingly accepted into their
beliefs, by making these "angels," "demons," as we now understand the
word. Since the early Christians were dominated by a belief in constant
Satanic presence, these demons were said to be the "Hosts of Satan." It
was firmly believed that the arch-fiend (Satan) was forever hovering
about the Christians, but it was also believed that the sign of the
cross, or a few drops of holy water, or the name of Mary, could put him
to an immediate and ignominious flight.
"In the twelfth century, however, the subject passed into an entirely
new phase. The conception of a witch, as we now conceive it, that is to
say of a woman who had entered into a deliberate compact with Satan, who
was endowed with the power of working miracles whenever she pleased, and
who was continually transported through the air to the Sabbath, where
she paid her homage to the Evil One--first appeared. The panic created
by the belief at first advanced slowly, but after a time with a
fearfully accelerated rapidity. Thousands of victims were sometimes
burnt alive in a few years. Every country in Europe was stricken with
the wildest fever. Hundreds of the ablest judges were selected for the
extirpation of this crime. A vast literature was created on the subject,
and it was not until a considerable portion of the eighteenth century
had passed away that the executions finally ceased. The vast majority of
those accused of witchcraft were women, and again the Bible furnished
the authority for the belief that women were inherently wicked. That
the Fathers of the Church believed this is exemplified by the statement
of Chrysostom in which he said that women were a 'necessary evil, a
natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic peril, a deadly
fascination, and a painted ill.'" (_Lecky._)
At this period the conception of a witch is radically different from
that which was prevalent in the era prior to this one. The popular
belief of the witchcraft ages, a belief sanctioned by most of the
learned men of the time, was that the earth swarmed with millions upon
millions of demons. They multiplied by reproduction in the usual way, by
the accession of the souls of wicked men, of women dying in childbirth,
of children still-born, of men killed in duels. The air was filled with
them, and one was always in danger of inspiring them with the air, of
swallowing them in food and drink. Most Christian writers and legendists
said that there were so many of them they could not be counted, but
Wierus took a census of them and reported that there were only 7,505,926
divided into seventy-two companies, each commanded by a captain or
prince. They could make themselves hideous, or beautiful, as suited
their purposes, and assume any shape. While capable of appearing at any
time, they preferred the night between Friday and Saturday. Any human
being who gave up to them his immortal soul could command their services
for a certain time. Occasionally general conferences took place, at the
pleasure of Satan, which were attended by all the demons and all the
witches.
"These 'sabbaths' were held on the Brocken or other high mountain. Upon
the spot where they met, nothing would ever grow afterwards, as their
hot feet burnt all the fecundity out of the soil. In France, England,
and the American Colonies, it was supposed that witches made their trips
on broomsticks; in Spain and Italy it was believed that they twirled on
the back of the Devil himself, who, for the occasion, transformed
himself into male goat. On no account would a witch, when starting for a
sabbath, go out through the open door or window; she would pass through
the keyhole or up the chimney. While they were gone, inferior demons
assumed their shape, and lay in their beds, feigning illness. Assembled
on the Brocken, the Devil, as a double-headed goat, took his seat on the
throne. His subjects paid their respects to him, kissing his posterior
face. With a master of ceremonies appointed for the occasion, he made a
personal examination of all the wizards and witches, to see if they had
the secret mark about them by which they were stamped as the Devil's
own. This mark was always insensible to pain, and it was the sure proof
of witchery when found by the inquisitor. Any witches found by the Devil
not so marked received the mark from him then and there, also a
nickname. Then they all sang and danced furiously. If a stranger came to
be admitted, silence reigned while he denied his salvation, spat upon
the Bible, kissed the Devil, and swore absolute obedience to him.
Singing and dancing was resumed, a mythical formula being used in the
singing. When tired, they sat down and told of their evil deeds; those
who had not been bad enough were scourged by Satan himself with thorns
and scorpions until they could neither sit nor stand. Then came a dance
by thousands of toads who were conjured out of the ground and standing
on their hind legs kept time to the music Satan evoked from bagpipes or
a trumpet. They could all talk, and asked the witches to give them the
flesh of unbaptized babes for food. The witches promised to do so. The
Devil told them to remember and keep their word and then stamped his
foot, and the frogs disappeared instantly into the earth. Next came a
most disgusting banquet, except for a few of the most wicked witches,
to whom were given rich viands on golden plates and expensive wines in
crystal goblets. Then came more dancing; those who did not care for that
amused themselves by mocking the sacrament of baptism. For this purpose
the toads were again called up and sprinkled with filthy water, the
Devil making the sign of the cross, while the witches repeated a formula
as absurd as that used in ordinary baptisms. Sometimes the Devil made
the witches take off their clothes and dance before him, each with a cat
tied around her neck, and another dangling behind as a tail. Sometimes,
again, there were lascivious orgies. At cock-crow, all disappeared; the
sabbath was over." (_"The Story of the Inquisition"--Freethought Press
Association._)
This conception of a witch continued from the twelfth century to the
time witch-burning ceased. With this idea of a witch being constantly
instilled into the minds of their listeners, the clergy set loose
fervidly religious mobs to scourge the countries of innocent women. With
the entire world divided into the "Hosts of Heaven" and the "Hosts of
Satan," with witches abounding in the air, in the water, and in the
food, and with their immortal souls at stake, the frenzied population
found evidences of witchcraft in all manner of happenings.
"Pope after pope set the seal of his infallibility upon the bloody
persecutions. At length came Innocent VIII who, on the 7th of December,
1484, sent forth his bull Summis Desiderantis. Of all documents ever
issued from Rome, imperial and papal, this, doubtless, first and last,
caused the greatest shedding of innocent blood. Yet no document was ever
more clearly dictated by conscience. Inspired by the scriptural command,
'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,' Pope Innocent exhorted the
clergy of Germany to leave no means untried to detect sorcerers, and
especially, those who by evil practice destroy vineyards, gardens,
meadows, and growing crops. These precepts were based upon various texts
of scripture, especially upon the famous statement in the Book of Job;
and to carry them out, witch-finding inquisitors were authorized by the
Pope to scour Europe, especially Germany, and a manual was prepared for
their use, the Witch-Hammer, Malleus Maleficarum." (_White: "Warfare of
Science."_)
Another important and much discussed department was the connection
between evil spirits and animals. That the Devil could assume the form
of any animal he pleased, seems to have been generally admitted, and it
presented no difficulty to those who remembered that the first
appearance of that personage on earth was as a serpent, and that on one
occasion a legion of devils had entered into a herd of swine. Saint
Jerome also assures us that in the desert St. Anthony had met a centaur
and a faun, a little man with horns growing from his forehead, who were
possibly devils, and at all events, at a later period, the "Lives of the
Saints" represent evil spirits in the form of animals as not infrequent.
Lycanthropy, however, or the transformation of witches into wolves,
presented more difficulty. The history of Nebuchadnezzar and the
conversion of Lot's wife were, it is true, eagerly alleged in support of
its possibility; but it was impossible to forget that St. Augustine
appeared to regard lycanthropy as a fable, and a canon of the Council of
Ancyra had emphatically condemned the belief. On the other hand, that
belief has been very widely diffused among the ancients. It had been
accepted by many of the greatest and most orthodox theologians, by the
inquisitors who were commissioned by the popes, and by the law courts of
most countries. The evidence on which it rested was very curious and
definite. If the witch was wounded in the form of an animal, she
retained that wound in her human form, and hundreds of such cases were
alleged before tribunals. Sometimes the hunter, having severed the paw
of his assailant, retained it as a trophy; but, when he opened his bag,
he discovered in it only a bleeding hand, which he recognized as the
hand of his wife.
A French judge named Boguet, at the end of the sixteenth century,
devoted himself especially to the subject and burnt multitudes of
lycanthropes. He wrote a book about them and drew up a code in which he
permitted ordinary witches to be strangled before they were burnt, but
excepted lycanthropes who were to be burnt alive.
Now let us examine on what authority the popes and afterwards the
reformers so rigorously persecuted the "witches." Both the Old and the
New Testaments are riddled with references to witches, wizards, and
devils. For example, this passage from Exodus XXII 18, "Thou shalt not
suffer a witch to live."
From Matthew VIII 28-32, "There met him two possessed with devils coming
out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that
way. And, behold, they cried out, saying, 'What have we to do with thee,
Jesus, Son of God? Art thou come hither to torment us before the time?'
And there was a good way off from them a herd of many swine feeding. So
the devils besought him, saying, 'If thou cast us out, suffer us to go
away into the herd of swine. And he said unto them, 'Go!' And when they
were come out, they went into the herd of swine. And behold, the whole
herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea and perished
in the waters."
The Old Testament, therefore, definitely commands its adherents to kill,
and the New Testament gives a brilliant example of its chief magician,
Jesus, exorcising devils from men and driving them into swine. There
are numerous passages of the Bible which speak of the Devil, the Devil
and his angels, spirit of an unclean devil, dumb spirit, foul spirit,
unclean spirit, evil spirit, witch, witchcraft, wizards, necromancers,
satan, the tempter, prince of the power of the air, prince of devils,
etc.
These passages in the Bible were at once the chief source and sanction
of the terrible atrocities which extended over several centuries and
have come to be known, taken collectively, as the "Witchcraft
Persecutions." The Devil, with his subordinate demons and the human
beings who sold their souls to him, were supposed to be both capable and
guilty of blighting the crops; causing the lightning; bringing
destructive storms; withholding the rain; drying up cows; killing
domestic and wild beasts; afflicting the nations with pestilence,
famine, and war; causing all manner of diseases; betwitching men, women,
and children; planting doubts in the mind and weeds in the fields; and
in brief, doing about everything that was disagreeable to man in
general, or that offended the priests as a caste.
Thus buttressed by the Bible, and with the nearly entire current of
Church literature setting in the same direction, it is no wonder that
the witchcraft delusion became one of the most appalling, if not the
most appalling, fact in the development of the Christian religion.
There is extant no other record of destruction and cruel slaughter
growing out of such beliefs in supernatural persons and powers that can
ever begin to tell such a story of degradation and mercilessness as the
record made by the Christian Church. Theologians laid stress especially
upon the famous utterances of the Psalmist that "All the gods of the
Heathens are devils," and St. Paul, "The things which the Gentiles
sacrifice, they sacrifice to the devils."
Those suspected of heresy and witchcraft must confess; they were to be
tortured until they did confess. This made suspicion equivalent to
confession and conviction. In the witch "trial" the victim must not only
incriminate herself but her accomplices, or all whom she "knew" to be in
partnership with the Devil. She was bound to be tortured until she had
given the names or described the persons of those she had seen at the
"witches' sabbath." Then they would be put to the torture and the
process repeated. It was not in human nature long to bear the awful
pain; soon the leading questions of the inquisitors would be answered as
they wanted them answered. It would be incredible were it not attested
by such a multitude of witnesses, that men could honestly believe that
testimony so extorted had the slightest value. But it is indisputable
that hundreds of thousands of human beings were sent to a cruel death on
this utterly worthless "evidence."
As few people realize the degree in which these superstitions were
encouraged by the Church that claims infallibility, I may mention that
the reality of this particular crime was implied and its perpetrators
anathematized by the provincial councils or synods of Troyes, Lyons,
Milan, Tours, Bourges, Narbonne, Ferrar, Saint Malo, Mont Corsin,
Orleans, and Grenoble; by the Rituals of Autun, Chartres, Perigueux,
Evreux, Paris, Chalons, Bologna, Troyes, Beauvais, Meaux, Rheims, etc.,
and by the decrees of a long series of bishops.
The infection was everywhere--Germany, Spain, Portugal, France, Italy,
England, Scotland, and even America was scourged. It has been estimated
that one hundred thousand perished in Germany from the middle of the
fifteenth century to the middle of the sixteenth century.
Pope Gregory IX wrote a great mass of nonsense to the bishop and other
chiefs urging stringent methods against the Stedingers, Frieslanders,
inhabiting the country between Weser and Zeider Zee. He wrote, "The
Devil appears to them (the Stedingers) in different shapes, sometimes as
a goose or duck, and at other times in the figure of a pale, black-eyed
youth, with a melancholy aspect, whose embrace fills their hearts with
eternal hatred against the Holy Church of Christ. This Devil presides at
their sabbath when they all kiss him and dance around him. He then
envelops them in total darkness, and they all, male and female, give
themselves up to the grossest and most disgusting debauchery."
The infallible pope of Rome!
The result was that the Stedingers, men, women, and children, were
slain, the cottages and woods burned, the cattle stolen and the land
laid waste. The pope's letter is a fair example of the theological
literature of the time; the slaughter of the Stedingers an average
illustration of the evangelistic methods of the Church.
Millions of men, women, and children were tortured, strangled, drowned,
or burned on "evidence" that today would be accepted nowhere unless by a
court and jury composed of the inmates of a lunatic asylum, if even by
them. It is unnecessary to say that the more severe the persecution, the
more widespread did witchcraft become. Every person tortured accused
others and whole communities went mad with grief and fear and
superstition. No amount of human evidence establishing the actual
whereabouts of the accused at the time they were asserted by the witness
on the rack to have been at the sabbath would avail. The husbands were
told that they had seen or held only the devil-created semblance of
their wives. The originals were with Satan under the oak. The
confessions of tens of thousands of witches are to be found in Europe's
judicial records of the period of the Inquisition.
"The Protestant Reformers zealously seconded the exertions of Rome to
extirpate witchcraft; they felt that they must prove that they were as
orthodox as the Catholics, and were as loyal to the Bible. No one urged
their fundamental ideas more than did Luther, Calvin, Beza, the Swedish
Lutherans, Casaubon, Wesley, Richard Baxter, the Mathers,--all stood
loyally by Rome." (_Lecky._)
At Lisbon, a horse whose master had taught him many tricks, was tried in
1601 and found guilty of being possessed by the Devil, for which he was
burned.
The witchcraft mania proper in England began in the sixteenth century
and reached its climax in the early part of the seventeenth century. Sir
Matthew Hale, the great jurist, sanctioned the delusions and passed
sentences of death by burning.
Queen Elizabeth made witchcraft a capital offense in England; and King
James I wrote a book on the subject, and lent his personal aid and royal
support to the persecutions.
Joan of Arc, the noblest of all the victims of this belief, perished by
English hands, though on French soil, and under the sentence of a French
bishop.
In Scotland, during the sixteenth century, as well as the seventeenth,
were seen the most horrible examples of what domination of superstitious
minds by ecclesiastics could do.
"Nothing was natural, all was supernatural. The entire course of affairs
was governed, not by their antecedents, but by a series of miracles.
Going still further, they claimed the power (the clergy) not only of
foretelling the future state, but also of controlling it; and they did
not scruple to affirm that, by their censures, they could open and shut
the Kingdom of Heaven. As if this were not enough, they also gave out
that a word of theirs could hasten the moment of death, and by cutting
off the sinner in his prime, could bring him at once before the
Judgment Seat of God.
"The Scotch clergy preached that, 'Hell was created before man came into
the world. The Almighty,' they did not scruple to say, 'having spent his
previous leisure in preparing and completing this place of torture, so
that, when the human race appeared, it might be ready for their
reception.'
"Of all the means of intimidation employed by the Scotch clergy none was
more efficacious than the doctrines they propounded respecting evil
spirits and future punishment. On these subjects, they constantly
uttered the most appalling threats. The language which they used was
calculated to madden men with fear and to drive them to the depths of
despair.
"It was generally believed that the world was overrun by evil spirits
who went not only up and down the earth, but also lived in the air, and
whose business it was to tempt and hurt mankind. Their number was
infinite, and they were to be found at all places and in all seasons.
"At their head was Satan himself, whose delight it was to appear in
person ensnaring or terrifying every one he met. With this object, he
assumed various forms. One day he would visit the earth as a black dog,
on another day as a raven, on still another day he would be heard in the
distance roaring like a bull. He appeared sometimes as a white man in
black clothes, and sometimes he became a black man in black clothes,
when it was remarked that his voice was ghastly, that he wore no shoes,
and that one of his feet was cloven. His stratagems were endless. For,
in the opinion of divines, his cunning increased with his age; and
having been studying for more than 5000 years, he had now attained to
unexampled dexterity. He could, and he did, seize both men and women
and carry them away through the air. Usually he wore the garb of laymen,
but it was said that, on more than one occasion, he had impudently
attired himself as a minister of the Gospel. At all events, in one dress
or other, he frequently appeared to the clergy, and tried to coax them
over to his side. In that, of course, he failed; but out of the
ministers thus tempted, few indeed could withstand him. He could raise
storms and tempests. He could work, not only on the mind, but also on
the organs of the body, making men hear and see whatever he chose. Of
his victims, some he prompted to suicide, others to commit murder.
Still, formidable as he was, no Christian was considered to have
attained to a full religious experience unless he had literally seen
him, talked to him, and fought with him.
"The clergy were constantly preaching about him, and preparing their
audiences for an interview with their great enemy. The consequence was
that the people became almost crazed with fear. Whenever the preacher
mentioned Satan, the consternation was so great that the church
resounded with sighs and groans. They believed that the Devil was always
and literally at hand; that he was haunting them, speaking to them, and
tempting them. The clergy boasted that it was their special mission to
thunder out the wrath and curses of the Lord. In their eyes the Deity
was not a Beneficent Being, but a cruel and remorseless tyrant. They
declared that all mankind, a very small portion only excepting, were
doomed to eternal misery.
"The Scotch clergy taught their hearers that the Almighty was
sanguinary, and so prone to anger that he raged even against walls and
houses, and senseless creatures, wreaking his fury more than ever, and
scattering desolation on every side.
"The people, credulous and ignorant, listened and believed.
"For in Scotland as elsewhere, directly the clergy succeeded in
occupying a more than ordinary amount of public attention, they availed
themselves of that circumstance to propagate those ascetic doctrines
which, while they strike at the root of human happiness, benefit no one
except the class which advocates them; that class, indeed, can hardly
fail to reap the advantages from a policy which by increasing the
apprehensions to which the ignorance and timidity of men make them
liable, does also increase their eagerness to fly for support to their
spiritual advisers; and the greater their apprehension, the greater the
eagerness." (_Buckle: "The History of Civilization in England."_)
James I of England had become imbued with the idea of witchcraft while
in Scotland, and he believed that his stormy passage on his return from
Denmark was due to witches. This storm was the origin of one of the most
horrible of the many horrible Scotch trials on record. One Dr. Fian was
suspected of having aroused the wind and a confession was wrung from him
by torture which, however, he almost immediately retracted. Every form
of torture was in vain employed to vanquish his obduracy; the bones of
his legs were broken into small pieces in the boot. All the torments
that Scottish law knew of were successively applied. At last, the king
(who personally presided over the tortures) suggested a new and more
horrible device. The prisoner, who had been removed during the
deliberation, was brought in and "His nails upon his fingers were riven
and pulled off with an instrument, called in Scottish a 'turkas,' which
in England we call a 'payre' or 'pincers' and under everie nayle there
was thrust in two needles over, even up to the heads. So deeply had the
devil entered his heart, that he utterly denied all that which he
avouched," and he was burnt unconfessed.
And this from a king of England!
The methods of obtaining a confession were as follows: If the witch was
obdurate, the first, and it was said, the most effective method of
obtaining confession was by what was termed "waking her." An iron bridle
or hoop was bound across her face with four prongs which were thrust
into her mouth. It was fastened behind to the wall by a chain, in such a
manner that the victim was unable to lie down, and in this position she
was sometimes kept for several days, while men were constantly with her
to prevent her from closing her eyes for a moment in sleep. Partly in
order to effect this object, and partly to discover the insensible mark
which was the sure sign of a witch, long pins were thrust into her body.
At the same time, as it was a saying in Scotland that a witch would
never confess while she could drink, excessive thirst was added to her
torments. Some prisoners have been "waked" for five nights, one it is
said, even for nine.
The physical and mental suffering of such a process was sufficient to
overcome the resolution of many, and to distract the understanding of
not a few. But other and perhaps worse tortures were in reserve. The
three principal ones that were habitually applied were the "pennywinks,
the boot, and the caschielawis." The first was a kind of thumbscrew; the
second was a frame in which the leg was inserted, and in which it was
broken by wedges driven in by a hammer; the third was also an iron frame
for the leg, which was from time to time heated over a brazier.
Fire-matches were sometimes applied to the body of the victim. We read
in a contemporary legal register, of one man who was kept for
forty-eight hours in "vehement torture" in the caschielawis; and of
another who remained in the same frightful machine for eleven days and
nights, whose legs were broken daily for fourteen days in the boots, and
who was so scourged that the whole skin was torn from his body. This
was, it is true, censured as an extreme case, but it was only an
excessive application of the common torture.
The witches were commonly strangled before they were burnt, but this
merciful provision was very frequently omitted. An Earl of Wear tells
how, with a piercing yell, some women once broke half-burnt from the
slow fire consuming them, struggled for a few moments with a despairing
energy among the spectators, but soon with shrieks of blasphemy and wild
protestations of innocence sank writhing in agony amid the flames.
But just picture this scene for a moment! The horror of such a scene!
What a crime for one human to commit against another! A burnt offering
to the gods! How well pleased the Almighty God must have been with the
stench of burning human flesh rising to his nostrils. And how well he
must have rewarded his faithful servants, for was this not done in His
name? "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."
As Lecky points out in his famous work on the "History of European
Morals," such incidents are but illustrations of the great truth that
when men have come to regard a certain class of their fellow creatures
as doomed by the Almighty to eternal and excruciating agonies, and when
their theology directs their minds with intense and realizing
earnestness to the contemplation of such agonies, the result will be an
indifference to the suffering of those whom they deem the enemies of
their God, as absolute as it is perhaps possible for human nature to
attain.
It is a historical fact that in 1591, a lady of rank, Eufame Macalyane,
sought the assistance of Agnes Sampson for the relief of pain at the
time of birth of her two sons. Agnes Sampson was tried before King James
for her heresy, was condemned as a witch, and was burned alive on the
Castle Hill of Edinburgh.
It is generally said that the last execution in Scotland was in 1722,
but Captain Burt, who visited the country in 1730, speaks of a woman who
was burnt as late as 1727. As late as 1736, the divines of the
Associated Presbytery passed a resolution declaiming their belief in
witchcraft, and deploring the scepticism that was then general.
The Pilgrim Fathers brought to our shores the seeds of the Witchcraft
Delusion at a time when it was rapidly fading in England, and again
history furnishes us with an example of a people with strong religious
instincts who, being freed from their persecutors, became in turn the
most violent persecutors of those that did not profess their particular
creed. It was particularly due to the preaching of Cotton Mather that a
panic of fear was created through the New England Colonies. Mrs. Ann
Hibbons was tried before the Great and General Court of Massachusetts,
sentenced and hanged on the 19th of June, 1656. "Goody Oliver" was
executed as a witch on November 16th, 1688.
There were twenty murders in 1692, and these before a civil court. The
trials took place before the illegal Court of Oyer and Terminer,
appointed by Governor Phipps, at the instigation of the
Lieutenant-Governor and Chief Justice Stoughton, and Joseph Dudley,
formerly governor, and the Chief Judge of the Court which, in 1688, had
sent "Goody Oliver" to her death at the gallows.
Cotton Mather defended this practice in his book, "The Wonders of The
Invisible World," and Increase Mather, the father of Cotton, was equally
as strenuous in the "Witch Hunt." Increase Mather survived this massacre
thirty years, and his son, five years longer, but there is hardly a word
of regret or sympathy to be found anywhere, even in their private
diaries and correspondence. These executions in Massachusetts form one
of the darkest pages in the history of America.
It is not surprising that the clergy of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries supported both in practice and theory the Witchcraft Delusion,
but when we find the ablest minds of the laity bursting into print with
a vehement defense of this belief, it is difficult for us, in the
present day, to conceive of such folly. And yet, today, we have able
minds defending a precept of which the Witchcraft Delusion is but a
part.
"The defenders of the belief (Witchcraft), who were men of great and
distinguished talent, maintained that there was no fact in all history
more fully attested, and that to reject it would be to strike at the
root of all historical evidence of the miraculous." (_Lecky._)
The subject was examined in tens of thousands of cases, in almost every
country in Europe, by tribunals which included the acutest lawyers and
ecclesiastics of the ages, on the scene and at the time when the alleged
acts had taken place, and with the assistance of innumerable sworn
witnesses. The judges had no motive whatever to desire the condemnation
of the accused, and as conviction would be followed by fearful death,
they had the strongest motives to exercise their power with caution and
deliberation. The whole force of public opinion was directed constantly
and earnestly to the question for many centuries, and although there was
some controversy concerning the details of witchcraft, the fact of its
existence was long considered undoubted.
For many centuries the ablest men were not merely unwilling to repudiate
the superstition, but they often pressed forward earnestly and with the
utmost conviction to defend it. Indeed, during the period when
witchcraft was most prevalent there were few writers of real eminence
who did not, on some occasion, take especial pains to throw the weight
of their authority into the scales.
St. Thomas Aquinas was probably the ablest writer of the thirteenth
century, and he assures us that diseases and tempests are often the
direct act of the Devil; and the Devil can transform men into any shape
and transport them through the air.
Gerson, the chancellor of the University of Paris, and, as many think,
the author of "The Imitation," is justly regarded as one of the master
minds of his age; he too, wrote in defense of this belief. "These men,"
he wrote, "should be treated with scorn, and indeed, sternly corrected,
who ridicule theologians whenever they speak of demons, or attribute to
demons any effects, as if these things were entirely fabulous. This
error has arisen among some learned men, partly through want of faith,
and partly through weakness and imperfection of intellect."
Bodin was unquestionably the most original political philosopher who had
arisen since Machiavelli, and he devoted all his learning and acuteness
to crushing the rising scepticism on the subject of witches. The truth
is that in those ages ability was no guarantee against error; for the
single employment of the reason was to develop and expand premises that
were furnished by the Church. And this statement is as valid today as it
was three hundred years ago.
Bodin was esteemed, by many of his contemporaries, the ablest man who
had then arisen in France, and the verdict has been but little
qualified by later writers. Amid all the distractions of a dissipated
and an intriguing court, and all the labors of a judicial position, he
had amassed an amount of learning so vast and so various as to place him
in the very first rank of the scholars of his nation. He has also the
greater merit of being one of the chief founders of political philosophy
and political history, and of having anticipated on these subjects many
of the conclusions of our own day. In his judicial capacity he had
presided at some trials of witchcraft. He had brought all the resources
of his scholarship to bear upon the subject, and he had written a great
part of his "Demonomanie des Sorciers" before the appearance of the last
work of Wier.
John Wier was a physician of Cleves who had in 1563 published a work
which he called, "De Praestigus Daemonum." He was quite convinced that the
world was peopled by crowds of demons, who were constantly working
miracles among mankind; and his only object was to reconcile his sense
of their ubiquity with his persuasion that some of the phenomena that
were deemed supernatural arose from disease.
"Wier," said Bodin, "had armed himself against God. His book was a
tissue of 'horrible blasphemies.' For the word of God is very certain
that he who suffers a man worthy of death to escape, draws the
punishment upon himself, as the prophet said to King Ahab, that he would
die for having pardoned a man worthy of death. For no one had ever heard
of pardon accorded to sorcerers."
Such were the opinions which were promulgated towards the close of the
sixteenth century by one of the most advanced intellects of one of the
leading nations of Europe at that time; promulgated, too, with a tone of
confidence and of triumph that shows how fully the writer could count
upon the religious sympathies of his readers: the "Demonomanie des
Sorciers" appeared in 1581.
With a man of the caliber of Bodin writing the above, it is not to be
wondered at that the mobs were so active in the "Witch Hunt." For as
Lecky cites, "Although the illiterate cannot follow the more intricate
speculations of their teachers, they can catch the general tone and
character of thought which these speculations produce, and they readily
apply them to their own sphere of thought."
In 1587, Montaigne published the first great sceptical work in the
French language. The vast mass of authority which those writers loved to
array, and by which they shaped the whole course of their reasoning, is
calmly and unhesitatingly discarded. The passion for the miraculous, the
absorbing sense of diabolical capacities, have all vanished like a
dream. The old theological measure of probability has completely
disappeared, and is replaced by a shrewd secular common sense. The
statements of the witches were pronounced intrinsically incredible. The
dreams of a disordered imagination, or the terrors of the rack, would
account for many of them; but even when it is impossible to explain the
evidence, it is quite unnecessary to believe it. "After all," Montaigne
said, "it is setting a high value upon our opinions to roast men alive
on account of them."
"It was the merit of Montaigne to rise, by the force of his masculine
genius, into the clear world of reality; to judge the opinions of his
age, with an intellect that was invigorated but not enslaved by
knowledge; and to contemplate the systems of the past, without being
dazzled by the reverence that had surrounded them. He was the first
great representative of the modern secular and rationalistic spirit. The
strong predisposition of Montaigne was to regard witchcraft as the
result of natural causes, and therefore, though he did not attempt to
explain all the statements which he had heard, he was convinced that no
conceivable improbability could be as great as that which would be
involved in their reception." (_Lecky._)
Thirteen years after Montaigne, Charron wrote his famous treatise on
Wisdom. In this work he systematized many of the opinions of Montaigne.
Voltaire treated the whole subject with a scornful ridicule and observed
that, "Since there had been philosophers in France, witches had become
proportionately rare."
In 1681, Joseph Glanvil, a divine who in his day was very famous, took
up the defense of the dying belief. "The Sadducismus Triumphatus," which
he published, is probably the ablest book ever published in defense of
the superstition, and although men of the ability of Henry More, the
famous philosopher Casaubon, the learned Dean of Canterbury, Boyle and
Cudworth, came to his defense, the delusion was fast losing ground.
Lecky points out that by this time, "The sense of the improbability of
witchcraft became continually stronger, till any anecdote which involved
the intervention of the Devil was on that account generally ridiculed.
This spirit was exhibited especially among those whose habits of thought
were most secular, and whose minds were least governed by authority."
But the belief did not become extinguished immediately. In France, in
1850, the Civil Tribunal of Chartres tried a man and woman named
Soubervie for having caused the death of a woman called Bedouret. They
believed she was a witch, and declared that the _priest_ had told them
she was the cause of an illness under which the woman Soubervie was
suffering. They accordingly drew Bedouret into a private room, held her
down upon some burning straw, and placed a red-hot iron across her
mouth. The unhappy woman soon died in extreme agony. The Soubervies
confessed, and indeed, exulted in their act. At their trials they
obtained the highest possible characters. It was shown that they had
been actuated solely by superstition, and it was urged that they only
followed the highest ecclesiastical precedent. The jury recommended them
to mercy, and they were only sentenced to pay twenty-five francs a year
to the husband of the victim, and to be imprisoned for four months. In
1850!!
A great many may remember the "Hex" murder case near Lancaster,
Pennsylvania, in 1930! This is scarcely different from an incident which
had occurred in 1892 in Wemding, Germany: An hysterical woman was
"exorcised" by the Capuchin Father Aurelian, who accused a peasant woman
of bewitching him.
* * * * *
The foregoing has shown that witchcraft is not an isolated incident in
the history of Christianity, as the ecclesiastics would have us believe,
but is a vital part of their religion. Witchcraft bears the same
relation to Christianity that an arm bears to the body; neither can be
removed without destroying the symmetrical aspect of the whole.
Witchcraft is an integral part of the Christian religion, but its
falsity has become so obvious that even the most devout have had to
abandon it. Yet the other precepts are still maintained; and in the
Bible which is claimed to be infallible, something is forgotten and
discarded, something is declared to be ridiculous. And yet they call the
Bible infallible. Again, if witchcraft is given up, why not the chief
witch of the Bible, the Devil? Yet if this be yielded, then the idea of
Atonement, the central doctrine of the Christian Church, must also go.
"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." If this be God's word, did God
err when He said it? If He erred, He probably did so in many other
things; if He did not Christians must either still maintain the
Witchcraft Delusion or deny the Bible Delusion.
The Witchcraft Delusion is denied and forgotten, and no one thinks of
quoting, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." But the Bible Delusion
despite all manner of ecclesiastical sophistry still maintains that man
was created miraculously some 6000 years ago from the dust of the earth,
that woman was made from a bone taken from the side of man, that
language came into existence in the course of a single night, that God
instituted a horrible massacre of the people by drowning because they
did not come up to his expectations. It maintains miracles, virgin
births, resurrections from the dead, and a literal heaven and hell.
Again, in the New Testament, Matthew tells how the chief magician of the
New Testament, Jesus, exorcised the devils from men and drove them into
swine. What could be more explicit? If men were possessed of devils in
Jesus' time, what has happened to these devils now? Surely, Jesus could
not misinterpret his own words or deeds, if the religionists contend
that we are now misinterpreting the Bible? If they state that his
recorders were in error, then they admit the error of the entire Bible,
for it is illogical for one part to be true and another to be false,
when both are components of an infallible statement.
"But they who abandon belief in maleficent demons and in witches as
also, for this follows, in beneficent agents, such as angels, find
themselves in a serious dilemma. For to this are such committed: If
Jesus who came that he might destroy the Devil, and who is reported,
among other proofs of his divine ministry, to have cast out demons from
the 'possessed human beings,' and in one case, to have permitted a
crowd of infernal agents to enter into a herd of swine; if he verily
believed that he did these things, and if it be true that the belief is
a superstition limited to the ignorant or barbaric mind, then what value
can be attached to any statement that Jesus is reported to have made
about the spiritual world?" (_Edward Clodd: "Pioneers of Evolution."_)
The old adage that a chain is just as strong as its weakest link is very
apt in this case. A belief in witches is part of the Bible; and if the
civilized world rejects that concept, it must reject the Bible, for it
is no longer infallible, since it is in error.
Disregarding the internal evidence which declares the Bible to be
spurious, and the scientific advances which have proven the Bible to be
a myth and a fable, if man still insists on "revealed religion" he must
admit that sorcery and witchcraft are an integral part of the Bible
teaching. He must still either believe in witchcraft or disbelieve all
of the Bible. For again, one part cannot be true and another false of an
infallible statement.
I thoroughly and emphatically agree with John Wesley who, in 1769,
wrote, "The English in general, and indeed most of the men of learning
in Europe, have given up all accounts of witches and apparitions as mere
old wives' fables. I am sorry for it, and I willingly take this
opportunity of entering my solemn protest against this violent
compliment which so many that believe in the Bible pay to those who do
not believe it. I owe them no such service. I take knowledge that these
are at the bottom of the outcry which has been raised, and with such
insolence spread through the land, in direct opposition, not only to the
Bible, but to the suffrage of the wisest and best of men in all ages and
nations. They well know (whether Christians know it or not) _that the
giving up of witchcraft is in effect giving up the Bible_."
Lecky, in that masterful work, "The Rise and Influence of Rationalism in
Europe," from which I have so freely quoted, states, "A disbelief in
ghosts and witches was one of the most prominent characteristics of
Scepticism in the seventeenth century. Yet, for more than fifteen
hundred years it was universally believed that the Bible established in
the clearest manner, the validity of the crime, and that an amount of
evidence, so varied and so ample as to preclude the very possibility of
doubt, attested its continuance and its prevalence.... In our own day,
it may be said with confidence, that it would be altogether impossible
for such an amount of evidence to accumulate around a conception which
has no substantial basis in fact."
And yet today, in the twentieth century, we do have an amount of
"evidence" accumulated around a conception which had no substantial
basis of fact. What a perfect analogy presents itself between one
precept of revealed religion and religion in its entirety. In the
seventeenth century, scepticism confined itself to a disbelief in
witchcraft, one particular of revealed religion; in the twentieth
century, scepticism expands and reveals the absurdity of all revealed
religion. Just as when we read the annals of witchcraft today we sicken
with the horror of this insane conception, so will posterity in the none
too distant future, perhaps three more centuries, do for _all religion_
what three centuries did for witchcraft. Just so will they regard
revealed religion in its entirety as we look upon the one factor, the
_Witchcraft Delusion_.
Men came gradually to disbelieve in witchcraft because they learned
gradually to look upon it as absurd. This new tone of thought appeared
first of all in those who were least subject to theological influences,
and soon spread through the educated laity, and last of all, took
possession of the clergy. So shall it be with all religions.
A belief that was held for 1500 years, in the comparatively
insignificant period of 100 years, sinks into oblivion; for the last
judicial execution occurred in Switzerland in 1782; and the last law on
the subject, the Irish Statute, was repealed in 1821. It is not,
therefore, too much of a stretch of the imagination to conceive what the
inhabitants of this planet will think of all religion 300 years from
now. We have the sterling example of the Witchcraft Delusion before us.
Yes, despite the otherwise brilliant men of today who still maintain the
Bible Delusion, and the "Hedgers," that group of religious apologists
who form those various sects, such as the Unitarians, the Humanists,
etc. They are but the middle ground; they are but the intermediate
between the delusionists and those that maintain the philosophy that
eventually must triumph, the philosophy of atheism. When we think back
to that group of capable men headed by Bodin, Gerson, and Joseph
Glanvil, who turned their ability and learning to the defense of the
Witchcraft Delusion, we find the answer to that ever-present response
which the confused of this age give when confronted with the
incompatabilities in their religion, namely, "Oh, well, more brilliant
men than I believe in this delusion."
Bodin, Gerson, and Glanvil could not bolster up a dying belief; and the
Bodins, Gersons, and Glanvils of today cannot long bolster up the dying
belief in all religions ... no matter what their ability or capacities
may be. The handwriting is on the wall; the past teaches us what the
future may be, but there is still much work to be done.