FROM PAGANISM TO CHRISTIANITY
Seeing that it affects ourselves so considerably, we are in the habit
of proclaiming the introduction of Christianity as the greatest
revolution in history--a claim which will be more capable of
demonstration when a few more thousand years have passed, and a few
more religions have waxed and waned. At least, the mind of the cultured
"Christian" of to-day varies little in its outlook--save in so far
as it is affected by modern material discoveries--from that of the
cultured "Pagan" of Imperial Rome, much less, indeed, than do either
of them from the earnest Early Christian. The ovine tendency of human
nature makes it inevitable that a few sincere believers--whatever
their belief--will always attain a comet-like tail of followers,
hypnotised by their earnestness, and themselves understanding very
little about it. However it may have been with the small band of early
Christians--whose belief was given reality by their sufferings in its
cause--one may be sure that the ideas of the sixth century Christian
in the village street upon Heaven, Hell, and their denizens, differed
only in the change of a few names, and the addition of some intolerance
from those of his pagan ancestor six centuries before. His spiritual
advisers bade him worship the names of Christ, St. John, and St. Peter,
in place of Apollo, Mercury, or Mars, and he, troubling his head about
very little but his means of daily livelihood, accepted the change
without demur. Meanwhile his mind--such as it was--worked along its
old lines. As in all great religious movements, we find no sudden or
violent change--except, of course, in individual cases--the older ideas
were abandoned, in name, though only very slowly, and the change from
Diana to Christ, so far as it affected the great bulk of worshippers,
was mentally imperceptible.
There were many Christians before Christ, just as there were many
pagans after the death of Paganism. For centuries the new ideas,
afterwards called Christian, had been fermenting in the minds
of thoughtful pagans. The spirit of the age called for their
crystallisation in a leader and the call of the West again received
its answer from the East. But just as Naaman, a believer in the God
of Israel, was yet permitted to bow down in the house of Rimmon--or
as the theory and practice of modern Socialism are time after time
directly contrary--so, save for martyrs and enthusiasts--the Tolstoys
of their age--the general public accepted Christianity as filling up
awkward gaps in their earlier beliefs rather than as superseding them
altogether.
Roman witchcraft--continually reinforced from the Orient--grew in
importance as faith in the greater gods decreased. Frowned upon by
the police, as being contrary to public order, it was thus liable
to be confounded with Christianity--which was forbidden on similar
grounds--both alike being practised in secret and penalised if brought
too prominently into public notice. Christianity, as being the more
aggressive, was more severely repressed--and was accordingly destined
to more success. And it was reserved for the successful Christian to
prove upon his former companions in misfortune the utter uselessness of
persecution. Just as we may thank the pagan persecutor that we now live
in the Christian era, so the mediæval--and modern--witch owed much of
her existence to the persevering efforts of the early Christian towards
the suppression of witchcraft and the witch. It was natural--and
indeed praiseworthy--that the prominent features of paganism should
be relegated to the realms of darkness by the successors to the pagan
empire--the god of one religion inevitably becomes the devil of its
supplanter. But whereas it was easy enough to lump together satyr,
faun, centaur and siren, as varieties of demon, the witch was on a
different footing. She really existed, for one thing--in so far as that
she was of flesh and blood at any rate--and she exercised more personal
functions than any number of divinities. Everyone was ready to acclaim
reforms which did not interfere with his own comfort--and the witch
was a fireside necessity. She was family doctor, lawyer, and spiritual
director--and payer-off of your old scores to boot--a factor in your
life the loss of which could be compensated by no amount of religion.
Also she stood for tradition, "the good old times," the respectability
of unchanging conservatism. Christianity--novel and iconoclastic--might
make head among the inconstant townsfolk, always ready for some new
thing; the provinces, the village, the lonely farmhouse or the fishing
hamlet clung tenaciously to what had been good enough for their
grandfathers--as, indeed, they have been doing ever since.
Nevertheless, from the great cities the creed of Christ spread slowly
to the villages--suffering many modifications before it reached them.
Delivered straight from the lips of a Church father, Christian doctrine
might be rigid and direct enough. Passed from mouth to mouth, ignorant,
or understanding, they might reach the distant flock so diluted as
to have opportunity for compromise with time-honoured precedent--and
what more so than witchcraft. You might--if you were an open-minded
husbandman--conceive that you had been mistaken in seeing fauns
dancing where the sunlight glinted down through tossing leaves, or
in hearing the voices of nymphs in the chattering of a brook; but a
witch--whom you could see, touch, hear, who had cured your toothache
and revenged you on your dishonest neighbour--she took a great deal of
explaining away. Wicked she might be, getting her power from unholy
compact with the Evil One--burn, slay, persecute her by all means--if
it would please Heaven--but to disbelieve in her altogether, that
were asking too much of a plain man. How, indeed, could you expect it
of him when the very Emperors proved by their edicts the openness of
their minds. A Marcus Aurelius not only studied magic, but persecuted
Christians--slaying, among others, the venerable Polycarp. An Augustus
might feel called upon to take police measures against witches; an
Aurelian rebuked the Senate for not consulting the Sibylline books when
the barbarians threatened the gates of Rome. "One might imagine," he
said, "that we were assembled in a Christian church, rather than in the
temple of all the gods." Where an Elagabalus renewed old superstitions
and introduced yet others, a Constantine executed his favourite for
seeking to influence the weather.
The personal predilections of the Emperors did but reflect the many
and involved influences at work during the first four centuries after
Christ. Apart from the enduring influx of Eastern practices and
superstitions, Neo-Platonism was responsible for the revival of belief
in the supernatural as apart from the divine. The Alexandrian school,
discarding the old systems of philosophy, converted its study into
that of magic. The barbarians, again, were everywhere astir. The long
warrings between Rome and the Germans culminated in the 9th year of the
new era when the German Herman by his great victory over Varus brought
about the eventual liberation of his country. In 259 A.D. the Emperor
Gallienus married a barbarian princess and before the close of the
third century A.D. the Empire had become largely "barbarised" by the
Goths and Vandals who did it military service, and who, incidentally,
served to bolster up paganism and to introduce new features into it.
The Teutonic witch met her Roman sister, and introduced her to darker,
grimmer, and more vigorous conceptions of her art. The dreadful
pestilence which, in the third century, ravaged the Empire gave a new
popularity to the black arts, and the Roman witch was never more sought
after than in the years preceding the last and most violent persecution
of the Christians at the hands of Diocletian.
Persecuted or petted, the witch was never able to progress in the good
opinion of the Christian, whose protest against her existence was
steady and constant whatever his own fate or condition. As soon as the
last of his own persecutors had laid aside the sword, he at once seized
it and set to harassing the witch with a deserving vigour which has
never altogether relaxed.
Whereas the pagan had chastised the witch with rods for injuring man,
the Christian set about her with scorpions as an enemy of God. Nor was
the exalted testimony of the Fathers lacking to inspire his energies.
Tertullian, in the second century, declared the world to be over-run
with evil spirits, including among them all heathen gods, whether
amiable or the reverse, from Hebe to Hecate. Origen, in his third
book on Job, mentions that enchantments are sometimes of the devil.
Saint Augustine, in "De Civitate Dei," has no doubt that demons and
evil spirits have connection with women. The earliest ecclesiastical
decree bearing on the subject is that of Ancyra, in 315 A.D., by which
soothsayers are condemned to five years' penance. In 525 the Council
of Auxerre prohibited all resort to soothsayers. Witchcraft, which
thus took upon its shoulders all the enormities of paganism, attained
an importance it had never before possessed. The plain man began to
realise that his family witch was a more important person than he
had hitherto believed. If not herself of semi-infernal birth, he had
it on Saint Augustine's authority, as aforesaid, that she was in all
probability the mistress of a sylvan, faun, or other variety of devil,
and that her offspring were themselves no less diabolical. Naturally
enough they increased and multiplied, so that between corporeal and
spiritual devils the world was over-populated. The Messalians, indeed,
went so far as to make spitting a religious exercise--in the hope
of casting out the devils inhaled at every breath; and the common
superstition concerning sneezing has the same origin. It might almost
be said, indeed, that in those early days devils filled, and to
admiration, the part now played by the microbe in every-day life.
It is to be feared that, except by those who seriously studied the
question, the existence of so many devils of one kind or another did
not cause such general uneasiness as the clergy might desire--very much
as now happens when the medical world is appalled by the discovery of
some new microbe in strawberry, telephone receiver, or shirt-cuff. The
plain man accepted them, and having after some centuries discovered
that they made little practical difference to his life, ceased to
feel more than a languid interest in even the most appalling new
varieties discovered by saintly specialists. Their constant insistence
upon the inherent wickedness of humanity and the almost insuperable
dangers which assail the Christian on all sides lost something of
their freshness in time, one may suppose, and were succeeded by a
certain weariness. Granted that Christianity was the one sure road to
salvation in the next world, it was so difficult to follow without
stumbling that few, if any, could hope to arrive at the goal, save by
some such lucky accident as a martyrdom. Christianity was thus bound,
in practice, if not in theory, to come to some working agreement
with the old, comfortable pagan customs it had superseded. Certain
of the more popular pagan customs and festivals found their way into
Christian observance, certain popular deities were baptised and became
Christian saints. A familiar instance of this occurs in the case of
Saint Walpurg. In Christian hagiology she occurs as a virgin saint, and
as having accompanied Saint Boniface upon his missionary travels--all
of which would seem to show that pious scandal-mongering was less
rife in contemporary religious circles than is the case to-day. In
folk-lore we find many wells and springs associated with her and thus
acquiring valuable medicinal qualities. The oil exuded from her bones
upon Walpurgis-nacht was valued as relieving the pangs of toothache
and of childbirth. Potent in the cure of hydrophobia, the dog is
included among her pictorial attributes, while she is also represented
as bearing in her hand either oil or ears of corn--the symbols of
agricultural fertility. The festivals and rejoicings which took place
upon Walpurgis-nacht, with their special connection with witchcraft,
would further seem to show that Walpurg before she became a Christian
saint had a long history as a mother-goddess. In the same manner in the
cult of the Virgin may be found traces of that worship of Diana which
for 600 years persisted side by side with Christianity, and is far from
being altogether extinct in Italy even to-day.
As may readily be understood, these paganising tendencies were not
favourably regarded by the fathers. In the year 600 A.D. St. Eligius
felt called upon to forbid dancing, capering, carols, and diabolical
songs upon the festival of Saint John. A statute of Saint Boniface
forbids choruses of laymen and maidens to sing and feast in the
churches. As the Church increased in power, many such practices--as,
for example, the dancing of women round sacred trees and wells, with
torches or candles in their hands, the common meal, the choral song
and sacrifice--were roundly forbidden as witchcraft, the uprooting of
which the Church at last felt capable of taking seriously in hand. This
was indeed become a matter almost of life and death, for the Church
found itself in many ways in acute competition with the witch, the one
attaining by lawful means similar results to those achieved by the
other through the assistance of Satan. And just as Adam, upon learning
that the apple was forbidden to him, immediately hungered after it to
the exclusion of all other fare, so the public showed itself more
eager to obtain the forbidden services of the witch than those of the
legitimate practitioner. So much was this the case that the Church was
sometimes forced to resort to other means than persecution to show
itself capable of competing against the witch with her own weapons.
Occasionally, it must be confessed, these methods suggested rather the
American Trust magnate than the fair competitor, as, for instance,
the case of the Blocksberg. This hill was a place of considerable
importance to witches, providing a large choice of magical herbs as the
raw material for their trade in weather-charms. These could, however,
be gathered only upon the eve of Saint John and during the ringing of
the neighbouring church-bells. The ecclesiastical authorities, becoming
aware of this, gave orders that the bells should be rung only for the
shortest possible period on that date--a proceeding the unfairness of
which could only have been exceeded by not ringing the bells at all.
Another story of the kind, quoted by Mr. Lecky, shows that, even in
fair and open competition, holy water could hold its own against the
most powerful of black magic. A certain Christian, Italicus by name,
was addicted to horse-racing at Gaza. One of his most dangerous and
constant competitors was a pagan Duumvir. This latter, being versed
in the black arts, therewith "doped" his horses so successfully that
he invariably won. Italicus, being prohibited from following his
example, at last appealed to Saint Hilarion, exhorting him to uphold
the honour of the Church by some signal display of supernatural power.
The saint, after some hesitation, complied, and presented Italicus with
a bowl of specially consecrated holy-water. At the start of the next
race Italicus liberally besprinkled his team, whereupon they drew his
chariot to the winning-post with supernatural rapidity. The Duumvir's
horses, on the other hand, faltered and staggered, as though belaboured
by an unseen hand--and, needless to say, lost the race. Whether the
Duumvir appealed to the contemporary Jockey Club to disqualify the
winning team, and, if so, with what result, we are not informed.
Considering the vast and ever-increasing population of witches
and demons, it seemed an almost hopeless task to exterminate them
altogether. Nor indeed was it until after the thirteenth century that
the Church attempted the task on any universal scale. If an individual
witch was unlucky enough to fall into priestly hands, her fate was
likely to be unhappy--but in the early days of the faith the priest
felt himself capable of triumphing over her by less material weapons.
Only, as priests could not be everywhere, and the number of witches
so largely exceeded their own, means were provided whereby even the
layman might withstand them. Thus burning sulphur was very efficacious
in the driving out of devils, the subtlety (!) of its odour having
great power of purification. The gall of a black dog put in perfume was
another acknowledged recipe, as was the smearing of his blood upon the
walls of the infested house.
It is noteworthy, and a fact that vouches strongly for the sincerity
of the early Church, that although she thus practised what was nothing
less than sanctified witchcraft, she never attempted one of the most
frequent and popular of witch-practices--the foretelling of the future,
so far, at any rate, as this world was concerned. It is true that the
Christian's earthly future, being but an uncomfortable preliminary to
posthumous joys, might be more happily left unforetold. Yet many of
them did not altogether despise the pleasures of this life, and were
very willing to pay for an anticipatory glimpse of any likely to be
encountered.
Familiarity in some measure breeding contempt, the public in these
early days thus regarded neither witch nor dæmon with the dread and
hatred so manifest in the fifteenth century and onwards. For one
thing, faith in the power of the Church was more implicit. To dally
with the forbidden had all the fascination of a sport with a spice
of danger in it, when you knew that at any time a power vastly
greater than those of evil was ready to step in to protect you from
the consequences of your over-rashness. Before the name of a fairly
efficient saint the most powerful demon must bend his head, especially
with holy water anywhere in the neighbourhood. If you fell under the
power of a witch it could only be through neglecting to take proper
precautions or to employ someone else to do so for a moderate fee. Our
own Anglo-Saxon forefathers showed a very nice spirit of prudence in
such matters--as in the famous meeting between Ethelbert King of Kent
and Saint Augustine, held, by royal command, in the open air, lest the
missionary, being under a roof, might practise unlawful arts upon the
King. The witch, in a word, was everywhere, but so were the necessary
antidotes--some of them of the simplest. Thus, in the story of Hereward
we learn how the Wise Woman of Brandon, near Ely, anathematised the
hero from a wooden scaffolding. To be really efficacious her curses
must be thrice repeated, but before she had time to do this the
scaffold was set on fire by Hereward's followers, and the Wise Woman
perished miserably. The witch, in fact, like her gossip the Devil,
always comes off second best in folk-lore where she is matched against
the truly virtuous--a comforting reflection for everybody, however
ominous for their friends.
She was still to some extent a shadowy personality, of shifting and
indefinite attributes. Although in 696 the Council of Berkhampstead
decreed that any person sacrificing to the Devil should be punished--a
clear enough reference to witches--it was not until some centuries
later that the conception of the witch definitely crystallised into
its modern form of a woman carrying out an actual compact with Satan,
working miracles by his power, and frequently transported through the
air to pay him homage at Sabbath gatherings. Until then the Church may
be said to have been obtaining and sifting evidence, building up a
formidable mass of precedent and tradition, to be employed with deadly
effect when witchcraft was definitely branded as heresy.
Whether or no the sins of witch and sorcerer be definitely codified, it
is the duty of the law-giver to provide for all contingencies; and just
as Justinian devoted part of his code to dealing with witchcraft, so
Charlemagne, two centuries and a half later, enacted new and stringent
laws for the abatement of sorcery--as in the Capitular of 789, wherein
supernatural meteorology is forbidden. More direct, though perhaps less
efficacious, were such deterrent methods as those of the pious Bishop
Barbatus, who in the seventh century cut down and uprooted a certain
nut-tree famous as a meeting place for witches. It may here be noted
that trees were at all times much favoured by the evil sisterhood, more
especially as meteorological offices. Numerous witch-oaks throughout
Germany served for this purpose--one, at Buckenhofen, was used as a
swing by witches attending the Walpurgis-nacht. It is something of a
paradox that while a grove of oaks--the sacred tree of the Teutons, as
is the linden of the Slavs--is a protection against magic, particular
trees should be famous as gathering-points for witches.
As the year 1000 approached, the generally optimistic outlook upon
things in general suffered a decline. Famine and pestilence grew
always more commonplace; the price of corn increased unprecedentedly;
starvation became the normal condition of millions throughout Europe;
cases occurred in which children were killed and devoured by their
famished parents; dead bodies were disinterred and used for food.
Old prophecies had placed the end of the world in the year 1000, and
to the miseries of hunger and disease were added those of universal
terror. The forward movement in the Church seemed to have died away,
and Christian fervour gave place to increased insistence on forms and
ceremonies, regarded by the commonalty as tiresome, if necessary,
duties. Small wonder that they sought for something which, instead of
the hopeless contemplation of inherent sin, should provide some ray of
present comfort. Here was the opportunity of the witch, the sorcerer,
and the alchemist--and here also began the bitterest contest between
priesthood and witchcraft. Hitherto the Church had been able to regard
such rivals, if not with tolerance, at least with contempt. Now it
had to fight against weapons forged in its own furnaces, appealing
to that abysmal ignorance ordained by the priest upon his flock. If
the monopoly in knowledge be power, its application is double-edged;
the Church was forced to seek some new means of inspiring the fear of
celestial wrath to come into those who could imagine no circumstances
more dreadful than what they already daily endured. The time had come
to prove that those who tampered with the forbidden must expect a
double share of punishment--in this world as well as the next--and
that the earthly penalty was quite as much to be dreaded as the best
infernal efforts.
In 1025, Burckhard of Worms inserts the significant question in the
confessional:--"Have you believed that there are women who can turn
love into hate and hatred into love, or who can harm their neighbours
and seize their goods for themselves? Have you believed that godless
women blinded by the Devil ride abroad at night with the demon Holda,
obeying her as goddess?" Followed in due course Ethelred's decree of
banishment against witches, soothsayers, and magicians, and that of
Canute, which included love-witchcraft as a branch of heathendom.
Though the anathemas of the Church might for a time stem the increasing
tide of witch-popularity, they were fundamentally only incentives
towards a cult which did not include anathemas or persecution--except,
indeed, those within the control of the humblest individual. In the
twelfth century, moreover--the century of the Crusaders--many new
influences were at work. To counteract the general lethargy into which
the Church was sinking, the Popes availed themselves of their knowledge
of human nature. Epidemical frenzy was aroused by remission of penance,
absolution of all sins, past, present, and to come, and the assurance
of eternal felicity for all who took the cross. Sham miracles and
prophecies stimulated the popular enthusiasm, and more potent than
either was the knowledge among millions that any change they might
experience must be for the better. But however promising at the time,
the great "revival" was fraught with danger to the Church that provoked
it. New conditions evolved new ideas. Asia provided greater luxury for
body and mind than any hitherto known to its European invaders. The new
world thus opened before them might be sinful; it was at least very
pleasant. Future damnation presents few terrors to the well-fed, and
the discovery that millions existed, and in comfort, who had never
taken off their hat to a priest in their lives--however shocking it
might seem at first--was bound to give furiously to think.
Among the forbidden institutions upon which the Crusader found reason
to reconsider his ideas, witchcraft took a prominent place. Anathema
though it might be, it had a multitude of Oriental exponents, who,
whatever they might have to look for in the next world, had little
cause to complain of this. Such abominations cried for intelligent
investigation, if only that they might be refuted, with the result
that the Crusader returned home with the knowledge of many novel
features that might be profitably added to the Western ritual of magic.
Meanwhile in his absence his own native practitioners had not been
idle. Faithful wives were anxious to know something of their lords'
whereabouts, safety, or, it may be, fidelity. Those who were not
faithful had even more need of tidings as to his probable return and of
means for delaying it. In such emergencies the services of the witch
were indispensable--and priestly prohibitions only served to advertise
her powers and to increase the number of her suppliants. These various
causes, and more particularly the last, combined to give witchcraft an
importance in social life hitherto denied to it, and to draw down upon
it more and more the wrath of Mother Church. She had, indeed, other no
less pressing calls upon her attention. The long slumber of orthodoxy
was at an end; many heresies disturbed the minds of the faithful. The
revival of Latin literature stirred thoughts and feelings long blurred
by Church teaching. The Crusaders were not the sole importers of
Oriental ideas; Greek traders also, along with the drugs and perfumes
of the East, brought new doctrines, received with dangerous tolerance.
The vigorous Innocent III. quickly perceived the danger, and entered
upon a systematic persecution of heretics. In 1208 a Papal Legate
having been murdered by Raimond of Toulouse--against whom the Church
had already serious cause of complaint, Innocent at once proclaimed
a crusade, and the heretical Albigenses were involved in the ruin
of their most powerful protector, suffering a persecution of almost
unprecedented severity. The establishment of the Inquisition now became
a logical necessity if the spread of heresy was to be saved, and little
time was lost in its creation.
By this time Satan had assumed a definite form and personality in the
public mind, and the idea that the witch obtained her powers through
a compact with him, long sedulously inculcated, had taken root. It is
true that even yet the "Sabbath" was but a harmless servile carnival,
frowned upon, indeed, and discouraged wherever possible. Coincidentally
with the rise of the general heresy hunt, Europe was over-run by a
number of devastating epidemics. Leprosy, epilepsy, and every form
of skin disease raged almost unchecked. They were attributed to many
causes, from lack of faith to the consumption of various Eastern
drugs introduced by home-faring Crusaders--though lack of food and
cleanliness were doubtless the most active agents in spreading them
abroad. Dirt had long been accounted almost a mark of holiness--and
one so easy of attainment that few cared to disregard it and arouse
suspicion as to their orthodoxy by too frequent ablutions. Medical
science was at its lowest ebb; the priests, with keen common sense,
declared skin eruptions to be divinely-inflicted punishments, and
therefore not amenable to holy water. In despair the unhappy sufferers
turned to the witch for aid, who, by her knowledge of herbs and
simples, was qualified to alleviate, if not to cure. Everything seemed
to conspire in thrusting forward the witch into dangerous prominence.
The ecclesiastical measures of repression grew always more severe.
Canon Law decreed that soothsayers be subjected to excommunication,
and enjoined upon the bishops to leave no stone unturned for their
repression. By the fourteenth century the Sabbaths, under the
penetrating eye of the Inquisition lost their harmless character and
became forcing grounds of the Black Mass. The practice of medicine by
women, however beneficial, grew more and more into disfavour, and year
by year the attributes of the witch grew more infernal as the material
Devil became more and more familiar in men's minds. No doubt the
increase of witches was real as well as theoretical. Love of notoriety
is of no modern growth--and the reputation of possessing infernal
powers satisfactorily filled the position of the modern newspaper
paragraph. This in more senses than one--for not only could you obtain
notoriety for yourself, as does the modern Apache who murders for the
_réclame_ it will bring him, you could also satisfy a grudge against
a neighbour, with no risk to yourself, by anonymously accusing her to
the local clergy. Witchcraft, again, was open to all, without licence,
examination, or entrance fee. Poverty, the desire of solitude, a nice
taste in invective, and a black cat or so were all the stock-in-trade
required to start in business.
The convenience, from the Church point of view, of catching witch and
heretic in the same net was too obvious to be disregarded. By the
fourteenth century their connection was well established in the eyes
of church and law. In France, so early as the thirteenth century,
prosecution took place for "vauderie," an omnibus-word which covered at
once witchcraft and the heretical practices of those Vaudois from whose
name it was derived. In Ireland, in 1324, proceedings for witchcraft
taken against Dame Alice Kyteler and others in the Court of the Bishop
of Ossory, brought about a conflict between Church and State, such
cases, according to English law, being tried by a secular tribunal.
The substitution of linen for wool in dress was an efficient factor
in abating the ravages of skin-diseases, but their place was taken
by the more terrible Black Death, and, in 1350, epileptic dancings,
known as the Dance of Saint Guy, broke out with especial virulence in
Germany and Flanders. These and other diseases, constant wars, bad
harvests, and other troubles brought about a series of class-wars,
the Jacquerie in France, and Wat Tyler's insurrection in England, for
example; the Devil and the witch between them shared the blame in the
eyes of respectable Europe. The greater pestilences were attributed to
the Devil's personal intervention, while minor diseases, and especially
poisonings, fell to the witch's share--this latter accusation being,
perhaps, not altogether without cause. The public--or that portion
whose lives were cast in places sufficiently pleasant to prevent them
desiring such consolation as magic might afford them--were now fully
aroused to their iniquity. Against the agents of so grisly a horror
as the mediæval devil no measures could be too severe, no torture
too dreadful. Scholasticism vied with the Church in deploring the
increasing evil; John XXII.'s publication of the first Bull against
witchcraft was capped by the University of Paris, which, in 1398,
laid down rules for the judicial prosecution of witches, expressing at
the same time regret that the crime of sorcery should be growing more
common than in any former age. In England, from the Conquest onwards,
commissions were issued from time to time empowering the Bishops to
seek out sorcerers. In 1406 such a mission was delegated to the Bishop
of Lincoln. It was not, however, until 1542 that penalties more severe
than fine and imprisonment were inflicted by the Ecclesiastical Courts.
The ever-increasing prestige of witchcraft in time raised it to a point
where it could be made an apt weapon for political intrigues. The
burning of Jeanne d'Arc as a witch is a case in point, her tormentors
by their choice of indictment dimming for long centuries the halo
which surrounded her efforts towards the freeing of her country, while
at the same time it provided ample opportunity for those who, having
been among the first to hail the rising popular star, are also first
to enjoy his fall from greatness. Another case, even more definitely
political, was that of Eleanor Duchess of Gloucester, in which the
charge of witchcraft proved a serviceable weapon in the hands of
Cardinal Beaufort. The Duchess, although accused of no less a crime
than procuring a wax image of Henry VI., manufactured by the Witch of
Eye, with nefarious intent, escaped the death penalty indeed, but was
condemned to public penance, followed by life-long banishment.
As the Reformation grew nearer, public opinion veered round to some
slight extent in the direction of leniency. The Inquisition was itself
becoming so unpopular that its victims were bound to excite some secret
sympathy. The Renaissance, throwing wide the door to all the intellect
of classical days, already shook the dominion of the Church to its
foundations. The time had come for desperate measures if Orthodoxy was
to hold her own. In 1484 the Witch-Bull of Innocent VIII. definitely
handed the witch over to the care of the Inquisitors--and thus gave
the signal for a series of persecutions of unexampled horror, enduring
through more than two centuries, and the last echoes of which have
scarcely died away even to-day.