I am now led to the most painful part of my subject, but which does
not the less constitute one of its integral members, and which, though
painful, is deeply instructive, and constitutes a most essential
branch in the science of human nature. Wherever I could, I have
endeavoured to render the topics which offered themselves to my
examination, entertaining. When men pretended to invert the known laws
of nature, "murdering impossibility; to make what cannot be, slight
work;" I have been willing to consider the whole as an ingenious
fiction, and merely serving as an example how far credulity could go
in setting aside the deductions of our reason, and the evidence of
sense. The artists in these cases did not fail to excite admiration,
and gain some sort of applause from their contemporaries, though still
with a tingling feeling that all was not exactly as it should be, and
with a confession that the professors were exercising unhallowed arts.
It was like what has been known of the art of acting; those who
employed it were caressed and made every where welcome, but were not
allowed the distinction of Christian burial.
But, particularly in the fifteenth century, things took a new turn. In
the dawn of the day of good sense, and when historical evidence at
length began to be weighed in the scales of judgment, men became less
careless of truth, and regarded prodigies and miracles with a different
temper. And, as it often happens, the crisis, the precise passage from
ill to better, shewed itself more calamitous, and more full of
enormities and atrocity, than the period when the understanding was
completely hood-winked, and men digested absurdities and impossibility
with as much ease as their every day food. They would not now forgive
the tampering with the axioms of eternal truth; they regarded cheat
and imposture with a very different eye; and they had recourse to the
stake and the faggot, for the purpose of proving that they would no
longer be trifled with. They treated the offenders as the most
atrocious of criminals, and thus, though by a very indirect and
circuitous method, led the way to the total dispersion of those clouds,
which hung, with most uneasy operation, on the human understanding.
The university of Paris in the year 1398 promulgated an edict, in
which they complained that the practice of witchcraft was become more
frequent and general than at any former period. [190]
A stratagem was at this time framed by the ecclesiastical persecutors,
of confounding together the crimes of heresy and witchcraft. The first
of these might seem to be enough in the days of bigotry and implicit
faith, to excite the horror of the vulgar; but the advocates of
religious uniformity held that they should be still more secure of
their object, if they could combine the sin of holding cheap the
authority of the recognised heads of Christian faith, with that of
men's enlisting under the banners of Satan, and becoming the avowed
and sworn vassals of his infernal empire. They accordingly seem to
have invented the ideas of a sabbath of witches, a numerous assembly
of persons who had cast off all sense of shame, and all regard for
those things which the rest of the human species held most sacred,
where the devil appeared among them in his most forbidding form, and,
by rites equally ridiculous and obscene, the persons present
acknowledged themselves his subjects. And, having invented this scene,
these cunning and mischievous persecutors found means, as we shall
presently see, of compelling their unfortunate victims to confess that
they had personally assisted at the ceremony, and performed all the
degrading offices which should consign them in the world to come to
everlasting fire.
While I express myself thus, I by no means intend to encourage the
idea that the ecclesiastical authorities of these times were generally
hypocrites. They fully partook of the narrowness of thought of the
period in which they lived. They believed that the sin of heretical
pravity was "as the sin of witchcraft;" [191] they regarded them alike
with horror, and were persuaded that there was a natural consent and
alliance between them. Fully impressed with this conception, they
employed means from which our genuine and undebauched nature revolts,
to extort from their deluded victims a confession of what their
examiners apprehended to be true; they asked them leading questions;
they suggested the answers they desired to receive; and led the
ignorant and friendless to imagine that, if these answers were adopted,
they might expect immediately to be relieved from insupportable
tortures. The delusion went round. These unhappy wretches, finding
themselves the objects of universal abhorrence, and the hatred of
mankind, at length many of them believed that they had entered into a
league with the devil, that they had been transported by him through
the air to an assembly of souls consigned to everlasting reprobation,
that they had bound themselves in acts of fealty to their infernal
taskmasters [Errata: _read_ taskmaster], and had received from
him in return the gift of performing superhuman and supernatural feats.
This is a tremendous state of degradation of what Milton called the
"the faultless proprieties of nature," [192] which cooler thinking and
more enlightened times would lead us to regard as impossible, but to
which the uncontradicted and authentic voice of history compels us to
subscribe.
The Albigenses and Waldenses were a set of men, who, in the
flourishing provinces of Languedoc, in the darkest ages, and when the
understandings of human creatures by a force not less memorable than
that of Procrustes were reduced to an uniform stature, shook off by
some strange and unaccountable freak, the chains that were universally
imposed, and arrived at a boldness of thinking similar to that which
Luther and Calvin after a lapse of centuries advocated with happier
auspices. With these manly and generous sentiments however they
combined a considerable portion of wild enthusiasm. They preached the
necessity of a community of goods, taught that it was necessary to
wear sandals, because sandals only had been worn by the apostles, and
devoted themselves to lives of rigorous abstinence and the most severe
self-denial.
The Catholic church knew no other way in those days of converting
heretics, but by fire and sword; and accordingly pope Innocent the
Third published a crusade against them. The inquisition was expressly
appointed in its origin to bring back these stray sheep into the flock
of Christ; and, to support this institution in its operations, Simon
Montfort marched a numerous army for the extermination of the
offenders. One hundred thousand are said to have perished. They
disappeared from the country which had witnessed their commencement,
and dispersed themselves in the vallies of Piedmont, in Artois, and in
various other places. This crusade occurred in the commencement of the
thirteenth century; and they do not again attract the notice of
history till the middle of the fifteenth.
Monstrelet, in his Chronicle, gives one of the earliest accounts of
the proceedings at this time instituted against these unfortunate
people, under the date of the year 1459. "In this year," says he, "in
the town of Arras, there occurred a miserable and inhuman scene, to
which, I know not why, was given the name of _Vaudoisie_. There
were taken up and imprisoned a number of considerable persons
inhabitants of this town, and others of a very inferior class. These
latter were so cruelly put to the torture, that they confessed, that
they had been transported by supernatural means to a solitary place
among woods, where the devil appeared before them in the form of a man,
though they saw not his face. He instructed them in the way in which
they should do his bidding, and exacted from them acts of homage and
obedience. He feasted them, and after, having put out the lights, they
proceeded to acts of the grossest licentiousness." These accounts,
according to Monstrelet, were dictated to the victims by their
tormentors; and they then added, under the same suggestion, the names
of divers lords, prelates, and governors of towns and bailliages, whom
they affirmed they had seen at these meetings, and who joined in the
same unholy ceremonies. The historian adds, that it cannot be
concealed that these accusations were brought by certain malicious
persons, either to gratify an ancient hatred, or to extort from the
rich sums of money, by means of which they might purchase their escape
from further prosecution. The persons apprehended were many of them
put to the torture so severely, and for so long a time, and were
tortured again and again, that they were obliged to confess what was
laid to their charge. Some however shewed so great constancy, that
they could by no means be induced to depart from the protestation of
their innocence. In fine, many of the poorer victims were inhumanly
burned; while the richer with great sums of money procured their
discharge, but at the same time were compelled to banish themselves to
distant places, remote from the scene of this cruel outrage.--Balduinus
of Artois gives a similar account, and adds that the sentence of the
judges was brought, by appeal under the revision of the parliament of
Paris, and was reversed by that judicature in the year 1491. [193]
I have not succeeded in tracing to my satisfaction from the original
authorities the dates of the following examples, and therefore shall
refer them to the periods assigned them in Hutchinson on Witchcraft.
The facts themselves rest for the most part on the most unquestionable
authority.
Innocent VIII published about the year 1484 a bull, in which he
affirms: "It has come to our ears, that numbers of both sexes do not
avoid to have intercourse with the infernal fiends, and that by their
sorceries they afflict both man and beast; they blight the
marriage-bed, destroy the births of women, and the increase of cattle;
they blast the corn on the ground, the grapes of the vineyard, the
fruits of the trees, and the grass and herbs of the field." For these
reasons he arms the inquisitors with apostolic power to "imprison,
convict and punish" all such as may be charged with these
offences.--The consequences of this edict were dreadful all over the
continent, particularly in Italy, Germany and France.
Alciatus, an eminent lawyer of this period, relates, that a certain
inquisitor came about this time into the vallies of the Alps, being
commissioned to enquire out and proceed against heretical women with
whom those parts were infested. He accordingly consigned more than one
hundred to the flames, every day, like a new holocaust, sacrificing
such persons to Vulcan, as, in the judgment of the historian, were
subjects demanding rather hellebore than fire; till at length the
peasantry of the vicinity rose in arms, and drove the merciless judge
out of the country. The culprits were accused of having dishonoured
the crucifix, and denying Christ for their God. They were asserted to
have solemnised after a detestable way the devil's sabbath, in which
the fiend appeared personally among them, and instructed them in the
ceremonies of his worship. Meanwhile a question was raised whether
they personally assisted on the occasion, or only saw the solemnities
in a vision, credible witnesses having sworn that they were at home in
their beds, at the very time that they were accused of having taken
part in these blasphemies. [194]
In 1515, more than five hundred persons are said to have suffered
capitally for the crime of witchcraft in the city of Geneva in the
course of three months. [195]
In 1524, one thousand persons were burned on this accusation in the
territory of Como, and one hundred per annum for several year after.
[196]
Danaeus commences his Dialogue of Witches with this observation. "Within
three months of the present time (1575) an almost infinite number of
witches have been taken, on whom the parliament of Paris has passed
judgment: and the same tribunal fails not to sit daily, as malefactors
accused of this crime are continually brought before them out of all
the provinces."
In the year 1595 Nicholas Remi, otherwise Remigius, printed a very
curious work, entitled Demonolatreia, in which he elaborately expounds
the principles of the compact into which the devil enters with his
mortal allies, and the modes of conduct specially observed by both
parties. He boasts that his exposition is founded on an exact
observation of the judicial proceedings which had taken place under
his eye in the duchy of Lorraine, where for the preceding fifteen
years nine hundred persons, more or less, had suffered the extreme
penalty of the law for the crime of sorcery. Most of the persons tried
seem to have been sufficiently communicative as to the different kinds
of menace and compulsion by which the devil had brought them into his
terms, and the various appearances he had exhibited, and feats he had
performed: but others, says the author, had, "by preserving an
obstinate silence, shewn themselves invincible to every species of
torture that could be inflicted on them."
But the most memorable record that remains to us on the subject of
witchcraft, is contained in an ample quarto volume, entitled A
Representation (_Tableau_) of the Ill Faith of Evil Spirits and
Demons, by Pierre De Lancre, Royal Counsellor in the Parliament of
Bordeaux. This man was appointed with one coadjutor, to enquire into
certain acts of sorcery, reported to have been committed in the
district of Labourt, near the foot of the Pyrenees; and his commission
bears date in May, 1609, and by consequence twelve months before the
death of Henry the Fourth.
The book is dedicated to M. de Silleri, chancellor of France; and in
the dedication the author observes, that formerly those who practised
sorcery were well known for persons of obscure station and narrow
intellect; but that now the sorcerers who confess their misdemeanours,
depose, that there are seen in the customary meetings held by such
persons a great number of individuals of quality, whom Satan keeps
veiled from ordinary gaze, and who are allowed to approach near to him,
while those of a poorer and more vulgar class are thrust back to the
furthest part of the assembly. The whole narrative assumes the form of
a regular warfare between Satan on the one side, and the royal
commissioners on the other.
At first the devil endeavoured to supply the accused with strength to
support the tortures by which it was sought to extort confession from
them, insomuch that, in an intermission of the torture, the wretches
declared that, presently falling asleep, they seemed to be in paradise,
and to enjoy the most beautiful visions. The commissioners however,
observing this, took care to grant them scarcely any remission, till
they had drawn from them, if possible, an ample confession. The devil
next proceeded to stop the mouths of the accused that they might not
confess. He leaped on their throats, and evidently caused an
obstruction of the organs of speech, so that in vain they endeavoured
to relieve themselves by disclosing all that was demanded of them.
The historian proceeds to say that, at these sacrilegious assemblings,
they now began to murmur against the devil, as wanting power to
relieve them in their extremity. The children, the daughters, and
other relatives of the victims reproached him, not scrupling to say,
"Out upon you! you promised that our mothers who were prisoners should
not die; and look how you have kept your word with us! They have been
burned, and are a heap of ashes." In answer to this charge the devil
stoutly affirmed, that their parents, who seemed to have suffered,
were not dead, but were safe in a foreign country, assuring the
malcontents that, if they called on them, they would receive an answer.
The children called accordingly, and by an infernal illusion an answer
came, exactly in the several voices of the deceased, declaring that
they were in a state of happiness and security.
Further to satisfy the complainers, the devil produced illusory fires,
and encouraged the dissatisfied to walk through them, assuring them
that the fires lighted by a judicial decree were as harmless and
inoffensive as these. The demon further threatened that he would cause
the prosecutors to be burned in their own fire, and even proceeded to
make them in semblance hover and alight on the branches of the
neighbouring trees. He further caused a swarm of toads to appear like
a garland to crown the heads of the sufferers, at which when in one
instance the bystanders threw stones to drive them away, one monstrous
black toad remained to the last uninjured, and finally mounted aloft,
and vanished from sight. De Lancre goes on to describe the ceremonies
of the sabbath of the devil; and a plate is inserted, presenting the
assembly in the midst of their solemnities. He describes in several
chapters the sort of contract entered into between the devil and the
sorcerers, the marks by which they may be known, the feast with which
the demon regaled them, their distorted and monstrous dance, the
copulation between the fiend and the witch, and its issue.--It is easy
to imagine with what sort of fairness the trials were conducted, when
such is the description the judge affords us of what passed at these
assemblies. Six hundred were burned under this prosecution.
The last chapter is devoted to an accurate account of what took place
at an _auto da fe_ in the month of November 1610 at Logrogno on
the Ebro in Spain, the victims being for the greater part the unhappy
wretches, who had escaped through the Pyrenees from the merciless
prosecution that had been exercised against them by the historian of
the whole.