the heads of the Catholic Church. The spread of heresy betokened, it was
thought, the coming of Antichrist. Florimond, in his work concerning
Antichrist, exposed the secret of these prosecutions. He says: "All who
have afforded us some signs of the approach of Antichrist agree that the
increase of sorcery and witchcraft is to distinguish the melancholy period
of his advent; and was ever age so afflicted as ours? The seats destined
for criminals in our courts of justice are blackened with persons accused
of this guilt. There are not judges enough to try them. Our dungeons are
gorged with them. No day passes that we do not render our tribunals bloody
by the dooms which we pronounce, or in which we do not return to our homes
discountenanced and terrified at the horrible confessions which we have
heard. And the devil is accounted so good a master, that we cannot commit
so great a number of his slaves to the flames but what there shall arise
from their ashes a sufficient number to supply their place."
Florimond here spoke the general opinion of the Church of Rome; but it
never suggested itself to the mind of any person engaged in these trials,
that if it were indeed a devil who raised up so many new witches to fill
the places of those consumed, it was no other than one in their own
employ--the devil of persecution. But so it was. The more they burned, the
more they found to burn, until it became a common prayer with women in the
humbler walks of life, that they might never live to grow old. It was
sufficient to be aged, poor, and half-crazed, to ensure death at the stake
or the scaffold.
[Illustration: GATE OF CONSTANCE.]
In the year 1487 there was a severe storm in Switzerland, which laid waste
the country for four miles around Constance. Two wretched old women, whom
the popular voice had long accused of witchcraft, were arrested on the
preposterous charge of having raised the tempest. The rack was displayed,
and the two poor creatures were extended upon it. In reply to various
questions from their tormentors, they owned in their agony that they were
in the constant habit of meeting the devil; that they had sold their souls
to him; and that at their command he had raised the tempest. Upon this
insane and blasphemous charge they were condemned to die. In the criminal
registers of Constance there stands against the name of each the simple
but significant phrase, "_convicta et combusta_."
This case and hundreds of others were duly reported to the ecclesiastical
powers. There happened at that time to be a pontiff at the head of the
Church who had given much of his attention to the subject of witchcraft,
and who, with the intention of rooting out the supposed crime, did more to
increase it than any other man that ever lived. John Baptist Cibo, elected
to the papacy in 1485, under the designation of Innocent VIII., was
sincerely alarmed at the number of witches, and launched forth his
terrible manifesto against them. In his celebrated bull of 1488, he called
the nations of Europe to the rescue of the Church of Christ upon earth,
imperilled by the arts of Satan, and set forth the horrors that had
reached his ears; how that numbers of both sexes had intercourse with the
infernal fiends; how by their sorceries they afflicted both man and beast;
how they blighted the marriage-bed, destroyed the births of women and the
increase of cattle; and how they blasted the corn on the ground, the
grapes of the vineyard, the fruits of the trees, and the herbs of the
field. In order that criminals so atrocious might no longer pollute the
earth, he appointed inquisitors in every country, armed with the apostolic
power to convict and punish.
It was now that the _Witch Mania_, properly so called, may be said to have
fairly commenced. Immediately a class of men sprang up in Europe, who made
it the sole business of their lives to discover and burn the witches.
Sprenger, in Germany, was the most celebrated of these national scourges.
In his notorious work, the _Malleus Maleficarum_, he laid down a regular
form of trial, and appointed a course of examination by which the
inquisitors in other countries might best discover the guilty. The
questions, which were always enforced by torture, were of the most absurd
and disgusting nature. The inquisitors were required to ask the suspected
whether they had midnight meetings with the devil? whether they attended
the witches' sabbath on the Brocken? whether they had their familiar
spirits? whether they could raise whirlwinds and call down the lightning?
and whether they had had sexual intercourse with Satan?
Straightway the inquisitors set to work: Cumanus, in Italy, burned
forty-one poor women in one province alone; and Sprenger, in Germany,
burned a number which can never be ascertained correctly, but which, it is
agreed on all hands, amounted to more than five hundred in a year. The
great resemblance between the confessions of the unhappy victims was
regarded as a new proof of the existence of the crime. But this is not
astonishing. The same questions from the _Malleus Maleficarum_ were put to
them all, and torture never failed to educe the answer required by the
inquisitor. Numbers of people, whose imaginations were filled with these
horrors, went further in the way of confession than even their tormentors
anticipated, in the hope that they would thereby be saved from the rack,
and put out of their misery at once. Some confessed that they had had
children by the devil; but no one who had ever been a mother gave
utterance to such a frantic imagining, even in the extremity of her
anguish. The childless only confessed it, and were burned instanter as
unworthy to live.
For fear the zeal of the enemies of Satan should cool, successive popes
appointed new commissions. One was appointed by Alexander VI. in 1494,
another by Leo X. in 1521, and a third by Adrian VI. in 1522. They were
all armed with the same powers to hunt out and destroy, and executed their
fearful functions but too rigidly. In Geneva alone five hundred persons
were burned in the years 1515 and 1516, under the title of Protestant
witches. It would appear that their chief crime was heresy, and their
witchcraft merely an aggravation. Bartolomeo de Spina has a list still
more fearful. He informs us that in the year 1524 no less than a thousand
persons suffered death for witchcraft in the district of Como, and that
for several years afterwards the average number of victims exceeded a
hundred annually. One inquisitor, Remigius, took great credit to himself
for having, during fifteen years, convicted and burned nine hundred.
In France, about the year 1520, fires for the execution of witches blazed
in almost every town. Danæus, in his _Dialogues of Witches_, says they
were so numerous that it would be next to impossible to tell the number of
them. So deep was the thraldom of the human mind, that the friends and
relatives of the accused parties looked on and approved. The wife or
sister of a murderer might sympathise in his fate, but the wives and
husbands of sorcerers and witches had no pity. The truth is that pity was
dangerous, for it was thought no one could have compassion on the
sufferings of a witch who was not a dabbler in sorcery: to have wept for a
witch would have insured the stake. In some districts, however, the
exasperation of the people broke out, in spite of superstition. The
inquisitor of a rural township in Piedmont burned the victims so
plentifully and so fast, that there was not a family in the place which
did not lose a member. The people at last arose, and the inquisitor was
but too happy to escape from the country with whole limbs. The archbishop
of the diocese proceeded afterwards to the trial of such as the inquisitor
had left in prison.
Some of the charges were so utterly preposterous that the poor wretches
were at once liberated; others met a harder, but the usual fate. Some of
them were accused of having joined the witches' dance at midnight under a
blasted oak, where they had been seen by creditable people. The husbands
of several of these women (two of whom were young and beautiful) swore
positively that at the time stated their wives were comfortably asleep in
their arms; but it was all in vain. Their word was taken, but the
archbishop told them they had been deceived by the devil and their own
senses. It was true they might have had the semblance of their wives in
their beds, but the originals were far away at the devil's dance under the
oak. The honest fellows were confounded, and their wives burned forthwith.
[Illustration: CHARLES IX.]
In the year 1561, five poor women of Verneuil were accused of transforming
themselves into cats, and in that shape attending the sabbath of the
fiends--prowling around Satan, who presided over them in the form of a
goat, and dancing, to amuse him, upon his back. They were found guilty,
and burned.[27]
[27] Bodin, p. 95 Garinet, p. 125; _Anti-demon de Serclier_,
p. 346.
In 1564, three wizards and a witch appeared before the Presidents Salvert
and D'Avanton: they confessed, when extended on the rack, that they
anointed the sheep-pens with infernal unguents to kill the sheep; that
they attended the sabbath, where they saw a great black goat, which spoke
to them, and made them kiss him, each holding a lighted candle in his hand
while he performed the ceremony. They were all executed at Poitiers.
In 1571 the celebrated sorcerer Trois Echelles was burned in the Place de
Grève in Paris. He confessed, in the presence of Charles IX., and of the
Marshals de Montmorency, De Retz, and the Sieur du Mazille, physician to
the king, that he could perform the most wonderful things by the aid of a
devil to whom he had sold himself. He described at great length the
saturnalia of the fiends, the sacrifices which they offered up, the
debaucheries they committed with the young and handsome witches, and the
various modes of preparing the infernal unguent for blighting cattle. He
said he had upwards of twelve hundred accomplices in the crime of
witchcraft in various parts of France, whom he named to the king, and many
of whom were afterwards arrested and suffered execution.
At Dôle, two years afterwards, Gilles Garnier, a native of Lyons, was
indicted for being a _loup-garou_, or man-wolf, and for prowling in that
shape about the country at night to devour little children. The indictment
against him, as read by Henri Camus, doctor of laws and counsellor of the
king, was to the effect that he, Gilles Garnier, had seized upon a little
girl, twelve years of age, whom he drew into a vineyard and there killed,
partly with his teeth and partly with his hands, seeming like wolf's paws;
that from thence he trailed her bleeding body along the ground with his
teeth into the wood of La Serre, where he ate the greatest portion of her
at one meal, and carried the remainder home to his wife; that upon another
occasion, eight days before the festival of All Saints, he was seen to
seize another child in his teeth, and would have devoured her had she not
been rescued by the country people, and that the said child died a few
days afterwards of the injuries he had inflicted; that fifteen days after
the same festival of All Saints, being again in the shape of a wolf, he
devoured a boy thirteen years of age, having previously torn off his leg
and thigh with his teeth, and hid them away for his breakfast on the
morrow. He was furthermore indicted for giving way to the same diabolical
and unnatural propensities even in his shape of a man; and that he had
strangled a boy in a wood with the intention of eating him, which crime he
would have effected if he had not been seen by the neighbours and
prevented.
Gilles Garnier was put to the rack after fifty witnesses had deposed
against him. He confessed every thing that was laid to his charge. He was
thereupon brought back into the presence of his judges, when Dr. Camus, in
the name of the parliament of Dôle, pronounced the following sentence:
"Seeing that Gilles Garnier has, by the testimony of credible witnesses,
and by his own spontaneous confession, been proved guilty of the
abominable crimes of lycanthropy and witchcraft, this court condemns him,
the said Gilles, to be this day taken in a cart from this spot to the
place of execution, accompanied by the executioner (_maître exécuteur de
la haute justice_), where he, by the said executioner, shall be tied to a
stake and burned alive, and that his ashes be then scattered to the winds.
The court further condemns him, the said Gilles, to the costs of this
prosecution."
"Given at Dôle, this 18th day of January, 1573."
In 1578, the parliament of Paris was occupied for several days with the
trial of a man named Jacques Rollet. He also was found guilty of being a
_loup-garou_, and in that shape devouring a little boy. He was burnt alive
in the Place de Grève.
In 1579, so much alarm was excited in the neighbourhood of Melun by the
increase of witches and _loup-garous_, that a council was held to devise
some measures to stay the evil. A decree was passed that all witches and
consulters with witches should be punished with death; and not only those,
but fortune-tellers and conjurors of every kind. The parliament of Rouen
took up the same question in the following year, and decreed that the
possession of a _grimoire_, or book of spells, was sufficient evidence of
witchcraft, and that all persons on whom such books were found should be
burned alive. Three councils were held in different parts of France in the
year 1583, all in relation to the same subject. The parliament of
Bourdeaux issued strict injunctions to all curates and clergy whatever to
use redoubled efforts to root out the crime of witchcraft. The parliament
of Tours was equally peremptory, and feared the judgments of an offended
God if all these dealers with the devil were not swept from the face of
the land. The parliament of Rheims was particularly severe against the
_noueurs d'aiguillette_, or "tyers of the knot"--people of both sexes who
took pleasure in preventing the consummation of marriage, that they might
counteract the command of God to our first parents to increase and
multiply. This parliament held it to be sinful to wear amulets to preserve
from witchcraft; and that this practice might not be continued within its
jurisdiction, drew up a form of exorcism, which would more effectually
defeat the agents of the devil, and put them to flight.
A case of witchcraft, which created a great sensation in its day, occurred
in 1588, at a village in the mountains of Auvergne, about two leagues from
Apchon. A gentleman of that place being at his window, there passed a
friend of his who had been out hunting, and who was then returning to his
own house. The gentleman asked his friend what sport he had had; upon
which the latter informed him that he had been attacked in the plain by a
large and savage wolf, which he had shot at without wounding, and that he
had then drawn out his hunting-knife and cut off the animal's fore-paw as
it sprang upon his neck to devour him. The huntsman upon this put his hand
into his bag to pull out the paw, but was shocked to find that it was a
woman's hand, with a wedding-ring on the finger. The gentleman immediately
recognised his wife's ring, "which," says the indictment against her,
"made him begin to suspect some evil of her." He immediately went in
search of her, and found her sitting by the fire in the kitchen, with her
arm hidden underneath her apron. He tore off her apron with great
vehemence, and found that she had no hand, and that the stump was even
then bleeding. She was given into custody, and burnt at Riom in presence
of some thousands of spectators.[28]
[28] Tablier. See also Boguet, _Discours sur les Sorciers_; and M.
Jules Garinet, _Histoire de la Magie_, p. 150.
In the midst of these executions, rare were the gleams of mercy. Few
instances are upon record of any acquittal taking place when the crime was
witchcraft. The discharge of fourteen persons by the parliament of Paris,
in the year 1589, is almost a solitary example of a return to reason.
Fourteen persons condemned to death for witchcraft appealed against the
judgment to the parliament of Paris, which for political reasons had been
exiled to Tours. The parliament named four commissioners--Pierre Pigray,
the king's surgeon, and Messieurs Leroi, Renard, and Falaiseau, the king's
physicians--to visit and examine these witches, and see whether they had
the mark of the devil upon them. Pigray, who relates the circumstance in
his work on Surgery (book vii. chap. 10), says the visit was made in
presence of two counsellors of the court. The witches were all stripped
naked, and the physicians examined their bodies very diligently, pricking
them in all the marks they could find to see whether they were insensible
to pain, which was always considered a certain proof of guilt. They were,
however, very sensible of the pricking, and some of them called out very
lustily when the pins were driven into them. "We found them," continues
Pierre Pigray, "to be very poor, stupid people, and some of them insane.
Many of them were quite indifferent about life, and one or two of them
desired death as a relief for their sufferings. Our opinion was, that they
stood more in need of medicine than of punishment; and so we reported to
the parliament. Their case was thereupon taken into further consideration;
and the parliament, after mature counsel amongst all the members, ordered
the poor creatures to be sent to their homes, without inflicting any
punishment upon them."
Such was the dreadful state of Italy, Germany, and France during the
sixteenth century, which was far from being the worst crisis of the
popular madness with regard to witchcraft. Let us see what was the state
of England during the same period. The Reformation, which in its progress
had rooted out so many errors, stopped short at this, the greatest error
of all. Luther and Calvin were as firm believers in witchcraft as Pope
Innocent himself; and their followers shewed themselves more zealous
persecutors than the Romanists. Dr. Hutchinson, in his work on Witchcraft,
asserts that the mania manifested itself later in England, and raged with
less virulence than on the continent. The first assertion only is true;
for though the persecution began later both in England and Scotland, its
progress was as fearful as elsewhere.
It was not until more than fifty years after the issuing of the bull of
Innocent VIII. that the legislature of England thought fit to make any
more severe enactments against sorcery than those already in operation.
The statute of 1541 was the first that specified the particular crime of
witchcraft. At a much earlier period many persons had suffered death for
sorcery, in addition to other offences; but no executions took place for
attending the witches' sabbath, raising tempests, afflicting cattle with
barrenness, and all the fantastic trumpery of the continent. Two statutes
were passed in 1551: the first relating to false prophecies, caused
mainly, no doubt, by the impositions of Elizabeth Barton, the holy maid of
Kent, in 1534; and the second against conjuration, witchcraft, and
sorcery. But even this enactment did not consider witchcraft as penal in
itself, and only condemned to death those who, by means of spells,
incantations, or contracts with the devil, attempted the lives of their
neighbours. The statute of Elizabeth, in 1562, at last recognised
witchcraft as a crime of the highest magnitude, whether exerted or not to
the injury of the lives, limbs, and possessions of the community. From
that date the persecution may be fairly said to have commenced in England.
It reached its climax in the early part of the seventeenth century, which
was the hottest period of the mania all over Europe.
A few cases of witch persecution in the sixteenth century will enable the
reader to form a more accurate idea of the progress of this great error
than if he plunged at once into that busy period of its history when
Matthew Hopkins and his coadjutors exercised their infernal calling.
Several instances occur in England during the latter years of the reign of
Elizabeth. At this time the public mind had become pretty familiar with
the details of the crime. Bishop Jewell, in his sermons before her
majesty, used constantly to conclude them by a fervent prayer that she
might be preserved from witches. Upon one occasion, in 1598, his words
were, "It may please your grace to understand that witches and sorcerers
within these last four years are marvellously increased within this your
grace's realm. Your grace's subjects pine away even unto the death; their
colour fadeth--their flesh rotteth--their speech is benumbed--their senses
are bereft! I pray God they may never practise further than upon the
_subject_!"
[Illustration: JEWELL.]
By degrees, an epidemic terror of witchcraft spread into the villages. In
proportion as the doctrine of the Puritans took root, this dread
increased, and, of course, brought persecution in its train. The Church of
England has claimed, and is entitled to the merit, of having been less
influenced in these matters than any other sect of Christians; but still
they were tainted with the superstition of the age. One of the most
flagrant instances of cruelty and delusion upon record was consummated
under the authority of the Church, and commemorated till a very late
period by an annual lecture at the University of Cambridge.
This is the celebrated case of the witches of Warbois, who were executed
about thirty-two years after the passing of the statute of Elizabeth.
Although in the interval but few trials are recorded, there is,
unfortunately, but too much evidence to shew the extreme length to which
the popular prejudice was carried. Many women lost their lives in every
part of England without being brought to trial at all, from the injuries
received at the hands of the people. The number of these can never be
ascertained.
The case of the witches of Warbois merits to be detailed at length, not
only from the importance attached to it for so many years by the learned
of the University, but from the singular absurdity of the evidence upon
which men, sensible in all other respects, could condemn their
fellow-creatures to the scaffold.
The principal actors in this strange drama were the families of Sir Samuel
Cromwell and a Mr. Throgmorton, both gentlemen of landed property near
Warbois in the county of Huntingdon. Mr. Throgmorton had several
daughters, the eldest of whom, Mistress Joan, was an imaginative and
melancholy girl, whose head was filled with stories of ghosts and witches.
Upon one occasion she chanced to pass the cottage of one Mrs., or, as she
was called, Mother Samuel, a very aged, a very poor, and a very ugly
woman. Mother Samuel was sitting at her door knitting, with a black cap
upon her head, when this silly young lady passed, and taking her eyes from
her work she looked stedfastly at her. Mistress Joan immediately fancied
that she felt sudden pains in all her limbs, and from that day forth never
ceased to tell her sisters, and every body about her, that Mother Samuel
had bewitched her. The other children took up the cry, and actually
frightened themselves into fits whenever they passed within sight of this
terrible old woman.
Mr. and Mrs. Throgmorton, not a whit wiser than their children, believed
all the absurd tales they had been told; and Lady Cromwell, a gossip of
Mrs. Throgmorton, made herself very active in the business, and determined
to bring the witch to the ordeal. The sapient Sir Samuel joined in the
scheme; and the children, thus encouraged, gave loose reins to their
imaginations, which seem to have been of the liveliest. They soon invented
a whole host of evil spirits, and names for them besides, which they said
were sent by Mother Samuel to torment them continually. Seven spirits
especially, they said, were raised from hell by this wicked woman to throw
them into fits; and as the children were actually subject to fits, their
mother and her commeres gave the more credit to the story. The names of
these spirits were, "First Smack," "Second Smack," "Third Smack," "Blue,"
"Catch," "Hardname," and "Pluck."