THE WITCH-BULL AND ITS EFFECTS
I have elsewhere in this volume attempted to show that, even in our
own days, there is nothing particularly incredible about a witch--and
that the disrespect into which she has fallen is due rather to our
modern lack of any sense of proportion in our beliefs, than to any
fault of her own. Certainly we have no cause to pride ourselves on
any intellectual superiority to the great divines and scholars of
past ages who devoted themselves to the dissection or condemnation
of witchcraft--rather we should deplore our lack of faith and of
imagination. For them there existed no possibility of doubt, no
relative standard of fact or theory. The premises were absolute.
The spiritual world was based upon the word of God as expressed in
the Bible and translated by the Church. To argue the absurdity or
inadmissibility of any particular tenet of Christian doctrine was to
suppose a paradox--the fallibility of the infallible. Eminent jurists,
as was Bodin, or learned physicians such as Wierus, both writing
towards the close of the sixteenth century, arguing with great mental
dexterity on opposite sides, alike accepted the initial axiom, cramp
and confine them though it might. They had, indeed, no alternative--as
well might two modern astronomers in disputing over the whereabouts
of an undiscovered planet deny the existence of the sun. The humane
Wierus, a friend of Sir Philip Sidney, by the way, preaches from the
same text as does the judicial Bodin--though he delivers a different
sermon. Bodin, supporter of the old conventions, makes a formidable
onslaught on Wierus--not for any scepticism as to the existence of
witches--no ground was given him for such an accusation--but for
maintaining against the view of the Church that witches were victims
rather than disciples of the Devil. Nor, in the face of the very
explicit injunction, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"--and the
suggestion was still to be mooted that "witch" in the original stood
for "poisoner"--can we accuse those who obeyed it of having acted from
any other motives than those of earnest Christians. It is true that
they carried zeal to the point of enthusiasm--but zeal has always been
accounted a mark of grace.
As we have seen the severest period of witch-persecution commences from
their definite classification as heretics by the Bull of Innocent VIII.
issued in 1484. The Bull itself was not lacking in directness:--"It
has come to our ears," it commences, "that great numbers of both sexes
are not afraid to abuse their own bodies with devils that serve to both
sexes. And with their Inchantments, charms and sorceries to vex and
afflict Man and Beast with inward and outward pains and tortures....
Therefore with the authority apostolic we have given power to the
Inquisitor ... to convict, imprison and punish."
The Inquisitor, Sprenger, lost little time in making use of
this delegated authority--and such was his zeal and so many his
opportunities of acquiring knowledge that within two years after the
issue of the Bull he gave to the world his famous "Witch's Hammer,"
for the direction and guidance of those upon whom should fall the duty
of exterminating so vile a heresy. This "Malleus Maleficarum" contains
minute accounts of every description of witch, with suggestions for
counteracting and exterminating their influence. Like most of his
predecessors--and successors--Sprenger blames the whole existence of
witchcraft upon the notorious frailty of women. The very word "fœmina,"
he declares, in the accents of authority, is derived from "fe" and
"minus"--because women have less faith than have men. From this
unhappy constitution of the sex countless ills have sprung--among them
innumerable varieties of witch. Of these, thirteen are exhaustively
described, that all may recognise them. Worst are those who slay and
devour children. Others raise hail, tempests, lightning and thunder,
procure barrenness in man, woman and beast, make horses kick until
they throw their riders, or pass from place to place through the air,
invisible. Others can render themselves taciturn and insensible under
torture, can find things hidden or lost, foretell the future and
alter men's minds to inordinate love or hate. They can draw down the
moon, destroy unborn children, raise spirits--in a word, there is no
department of devilry, major or minor, in which they are not adepts, if
we may trust their enthusiastic historian, whose work at once became
an authority--almost a ready reckoner of witchcraft, by which anyone
with a knowledge of Latin had at his fingers' ends the best possible
method of recognising, convicting and destroying any variety or variant
whatsoever.
It is pleasant to reflect that so careful and conscientious a work
earned for its author the affection and admiration alike of his
contemporaries and of posterity. Later writers based their theories
and arguments upon his discoveries as upon a firm rock, while during
his lifetime he directed public opinion upon the evil he had set
himself to combat so successfully that not one old woman in fifty
could be sure of dying in her bed for generations. It is a pregnant
sign of the genuine horror in which witches were held that all the
ordinary legal conventions were suspended at these trials. Contrary
to the usual procedure, witness might be borne against them by
excommunicated persons, convicts, infants, dishonest servants and
runaways. Presumption and conjecture were accepted as evidence, an
equivocal or doubtful answer was regarded as a confession and rumour
or common report sufficient to ensure a conviction. It is true that
such improvements in legal procedure cannot be altogether attributed
to the exertions of the Inquisitor--dating, as many of them do, from
centuries before the publication of his magnum opus--at least he
devoted a splendid enthusiasm to the object he had set before him, and
on his death-bed was able to look forward with confident humility to
the reward merited by a well-spent life.
The effects of the Witch-Bull were immediate and in every way
satisfactory to its authors--a perfect frenzy of witch-finding
resulting. Forty-one women were burned in one year--commencing in
1485--by the Inquisitor Cumanus. A colleague, not to be outdone,
executed a hundred in Piedmont--and was perfectly willing to continue
the good work, had not public enthusiasm waned in view of the
inevitable monotony in this form of amusement. A little later a tempest
devastated the country around Constance. The inhabitants recognising
that--in face of the recent Bull--it were blasphemous to attribute such
a storm to natural causes, seized two old women, obtained confessions
in the usual way, and burned them. About 1515, some five hundred
persons were executed in Geneva as "Protestant witches"--an instance
of the alliance between heresy and witchcraft. In Lorraine the learned
and enthusiastic Inquisitor Remigius put to death nine hundred persons
in 15 years. Hutchinson, indeed, writing in 1718, puts the number
at eighteen hundred, but even the smaller--and more correct--total
shows that Remigius did his duty nobly. Italy, naturally enough, was
determined not to be outdone by foreign holocausts, and accordingly we
find that more than a thousand executions took place in Como in 1524,
and an average of more than a hundred was maintained for several years.
Mere lists of figures such as these are apt to pall, especially when,
as in such a case, it is almost impossible for a modern reader to
realise their actual meaning, as that every day throughout a whole
year, three unhappy women, old, poor, and defenceless, should be
inhumanly tortured, and afterwards publicly murdered in the most
painful way imaginable in one district, not only without a word of
protest being raised, but with the approval of all Europe. That it
should have actually taken place vouches for the earnestness with which
our forefathers regarded their religion, if for nothing else.
Nor is it to be supposed that Protestants were in any way less
attentive to this branch of their religious duties than were their
Catholic neighbours. They might differ upon every other point--on
this at least there was no room for disagreement. Martin Luther,
with his usual decision, makes his attitude perfectly clear, "I have
no compassion on these witches. I would burn them all." Perhaps one
reason for this uncompromising attitude may have been his contempt
for Satan's snares, of which he had considerable experience. So
accustomed did he grow to the assaults of the Devil that, having been
once, as it is related, awakened at dead of night by an alarming
clatter, "he perceived that it was only the Devil and so went to
sleep again." Calvin, again, says of Psalm v., 6, "If there were no
charms of sorcery, this were but a childish and absurd thing which
is here written." It is true that Protestant and Catholic regarded
the witchcraft question from diametrically opposite standpoints.
Whereas the Roman Church regarded heretics as a variety of witch,
the Reformers were inclined to regard Catholic rites and forms as
among the most virulent of the black arts. At a somewhat later date,
during the New England persecutions, a girl was deposed to have been
allowed, by the Devil, to read "Popish Books"--such as "Cambridge and
Oxford Tracts"--while good Protestant works, as "The Bible Assemblies'
Catechism" or Colton's "Milk for Babes" sent her, being in the power
of the Devil, into violent convulsions!
However enduring might be the enthusiasm of the judges, the commonalty
in time grew sated with the spectacle of their own and their friends'
aunts and grandmothers being burned to ashes for the glory of God.
Witch-trials and witch-burnings, however dramatically exciting, were
lacking in variety--and were expensive as well as entertaining. While
the energy of the Inquisitors was stimulated by the forfeiture--in
their favour--of the witch's worldly goods--the community had to lose
them, such as they were, besides suffering complete disorganisation of
daily business routine. There were even those--difficult of belief as
it may seem--who so far risked their chance of Paradise as to sicken at
the continuance of such useless bloodshed and to grow sceptical as to
the singlemindedness of its promoters. Such a one was the humane and
learned Dr. Wierus, who, in 1563, published at Basel his famous volume,
"De Præstigiis." At the time, indeed, this plea for the witch as the
victim rather than the ally of Satan, served only to fan the flame of
persecution, by the bitter controversy to which it gave rise, though
subsequently quenching it in no small degree. Although, needless to
say, a firm believer in the reality of the black art, Wierus branded
it as the direct rather than the indirect work of the Devil. As
helpless victims, therefore, his agents should not be punished for
crimes in which their human frailty was alone guilty. He adopted, in
a word, towards the witch, the modern attitude towards the dangerous
lunatic--that she should be restrained rather than punished. He even
displays a certain contempt for her powers--understanding, in the light
of his own medical knowledge, that many so-called cases of bewitchment
or demoniacal possession, were the result of purely natural causes.
Like his contemporaries, Wierus concludes that the Devil chooses women
rather than men to do his will as being easier to influence. Naturally
malicious and impatient, they are unable to control their affections
and are all too credulous--qualities of which Satan takes every
advantage. Particularly does he appreciate stupid, weak old women,
the shakiness of whose wits places them the more surely in his power.
Wierus parts company from his contemporaries in urging that this very
frailty should arouse compassion--that they should be pitied rather
than treated as stubborn heretics--and that if punished they should be
treated less severely than were men, because of this infirmity of their
sex.
Not content with stirring up doubt as to the spiritual nature of
witchcraft, Wierus has the audacity to question the motives of some
of its judges. He quotes an example of the profitable side of the
witch-mania as having happened in Wurtemburg. The skins of animals
that died by mischance there became the property of the executioner.
This functionary evidently possessed a spirit far in advance of his
age, for coincidently with the rise of a local witch-mania, a fatal
epidemic--attributed, of course, to witchcraft--broke out among the
sheep, pigs, and oxen of the neighbourhood. The executioner grew
rich--and had not the wisdom to conceal it. The jealous suspicions of
his neighbours were aroused, he was put to the torture, confessed to
having poisoned the animals, and was condemned to be torn to pieces
with pincers.
Wierus had studied the natural history of the witch no less closely
than his predecessor, the Inquisitor Sprenger. Indeed, judging from
some of the charges brought against them at contemporary trials,
we may agree with him that they were more suited to the attentions
of a physician than of a judge. Thus, among the commonest of their
crimes--as frequently proved by their own confession, it is to be
remembered--were the dishonouring of the crucifix and the denial
of salvation, the absconding, despite bolts and bars, to attend
the Devil's Sabbath and the partaking in choral dances around the
witch-tree of rendezvous. Remigius tells us that many confessed to
having changed themselves into cats, to having belaboured running
water with rods in order to bring about bad weather--more particularly
hail-storms--and other doings of the kind customary to witches of
all the ages. Wierus, who was held to be a disciple of that prince of
sorcerers, Cornelius Agrippa, was naturally as expert in all things
relating to the Devil and his kingdom as to his earthly slaves. No
modern revivalist could exceed the minuteness of his knowledge, nor,
indeed, the thoroughness expressed in his detailing of it. He even
seems to have taken a census of the more official population in
the under-world, enumerating seventy-two princes of evil, who rule
over seven million four hundred and five thousand nine hundred and
twenty-six devils of inferior rank.
Fifteen years after the publication of "De Præstigiis," appeared
Jean Bodin's counterblast. The eminent jurist was well qualified to
speak, having done some persecuting on his own account and thus gained
first-hand experience of the ways and customs of the witch. To him
the theories of Wierus appeared as those either of a very ignorant
or of a very wicked man. The suggestion that witches and sorcerers
should be pitied rather than punished appeared to him to aim a blow
at the very framework of society, human and divine, and he felt it
his duty to refute Wierus and all his works, "not through hatred, but
primarily for the honour of God." He also gives detailed accounts of
the various kinds of witches, but unlike Wierus discreetly refrains
from setting down the spells and invocations to the Devil with which
he is acquainted, lest, falling into the hands of the evilly disposed,
improper use be made of them. For such crimes as those habitually
committed by witches he can find no penalty severe enough, while as to
Wierus' plea that allowance be made for the weakness of women he quotes
approvingly the law, that "the punishment for witchcraft shall not be
diminished for women as is the case in all other crimes."
England was in no way singular from the rest of Europe in her method
of approaching the question, though her persecutions were on a smaller
scale. The Act of 1541 whereby various kinds of sorcery, such as the
destruction of a neighbour's goods or person, the making of images or
pictures of men, women, children, angels, devils, beasts and fowls
for magical purposes, were declared felony without benefit of clergy,
was repealed in the reign of Edward VI. Another, distinguishing the
various grades of witchcraft, was passed in 1562. By it, conjurations,
invocations of evil spirits, the practice of sorceries, enchantments,
charms and witchcrafts whereby deaths resulted were declared felony,
without benefit of clergy, and punishable with death. If only
bodily harm ensued, the penalty for the first offence was a year's
imprisonment and exposure in the pillory, and for the second, death.
Notwithstanding such laws, the highest in the land were not averse
to personal dealings with followers of the black art. Queen Elizabeth
herself so far exercised her royal prerogative as to have been--unless
rumour lie--on excellent terms with Dr. John Dee, the eminent
crystal-gazer, whose "black stone" is now in the British Museum. In
Scotland the principal Act was passed in 1563. By it the practice of
witchcraft, sorcery and necromancy, the pretence of possessing magical
knowledge, and the seeking of help from witches were declared capital
offences.
It says much for the common sense of the English nation that it should,
at such a period, have produced so enlightened a writer on the subject
as was Reginald Scot. As against his contemporary, Holland, who,
writing in 1590, urges that since witches were in the Bible, "shall
Satan be less cruel now?", Scot, in "The Discoverie of Witchcraft,"
scoffs at "Sprenger's fables and Bodin's bables"--a conceit that must
have afforded him infinite satisfaction. "I denie not," he argues,
"that there are witches or images, but I detest the idolatrous opinions
conceived of them." And again: "I am well assured that if all the old
women in the world were witches, and all the priests conjurers, we
should not have a drop of rain the more or the less for them." The
suggestion of priests as conjurers is, of course, a hit at "Papish
practices," and another description of witches as "Papists" betrays
his religious attitude. It must be said that the Anglican Church was
inclined towards tolerance--the severe witch-persecutions in these
islands, which I detail elsewhere, being chiefly due to that Puritan
spirit which dwelt with more satisfaction on the sins than the virtues
of mankind. For just as it has been said that the only antagonist more
redoubtable on the battle-field than a swearing Irishman is a praying
Scotsman, so the Puritan was a deadlier persecutor of witches than the
most zealous Inquisitor. This with good reason, if we remember that
the Catholic offered the chance of Heaven to anyone who was not an
obstinate heretic; while the Puritan was of much the same opinion as
the old Scotswoman, who, having with her brother seceded from the local
kirk, and being asked by the minister whether she seriously believed
that no one but her brother and herself would be saved, replied that
she had grave doubts about her brother.
James I., although upon his succession to the English throne he found
the Episcopacy well suited to his theories of kingship, yet preserved
the Puritanical sense of other people's sinfulness in his heart. To
this no less than to his desire for literary laurels, is to be ascribed
his painstaking--not to say pedantic--"Dæmonologia," published in
1597, which the loyal Hutchinson excuses in his "Historical Essay on
Witchcraft"--excuses on the ground of his youth and inexperience.
James, needless to say, saw no need of apology for the benefit he was
conferring on mankind in general and his subjects in particular. In his
love for police-court details, indeed, he showed himself altogether
at one with his subjects, if we may judge from the taste of their
present-day descendants. He had, again, every right to consider himself
an authority on his subject, as one who had himself suffered from
magical machinations. A Protestant King seeking a Protestant bride, he
suffered all the terrors and discomforts of a temptuous crossing from
Denmark, brought about through his earthly agents by Satan, filled with
wrath and consternation at the alliance of two such powerful enemies
of his kingdom. As he might have expected, his plans were brought to
nought, and his servants, Agnes Simpson and Dr. Fian, suffered the
appropriate penalty, the last-named especially being subjected to
perhaps the most sickening torture on record. King James showed so
close an interest in the minutiæ of the black art that had he moved in
a less exalted sphere he might well have come under suspicion himself.
Thus on one occasion he sent for Grellis Duncan, a performer on the
Jews' harp, and caused her to play before him the identical tune to
which Satan and his companions led the brawl at a Sabbath in North
Berwick churchyard. It is true, as against this, that many witches
executed in his reign quoted infernal pronouncements that the King was
"_un homme de Dieu_" and Satan's greatest enemy--a form of homage which
so whetted the Royal ardour that few juries ventured, with the fear of
his displeasure before them, to acquit any of their unhappy victims.
In the "Dæmonologia" James shows every sign of keen enjoyment. He
writes after the manner of the most eminent--and tedious--divines,
dividing his matter into firstlies, secondlies, and thirdlies--divisions
and sub-divisions, headings and sub-headings, with royal prodigality.
He is fearfully and wonderfully theological--and occasionally indulges
in touches of elephantine lightness such as might well have given pause
to the most obstinate sorcerer. His preface, eminently characteristic
of the whole, opens thus:--"The feareful abounding at this time in this
countrie of these detestable slaves of the Divil, the witches or
enchaunters, hath moved me (beloved reader) to dispatch in post this
following Treatise of mine, not in any wise (as I protest) to serve for
a shewe of my learning and ingine, but only (moved of conscience) to
preasse thereby, so farre as I can, to resolve the doubting heart of
manie; both that such assaults of Sathan are most certainly practised,
and that the instruments thereof merit most severely to be punished.... And
for to make this Treatise the more pleasant and facill, I have put it
in forme of a Dialogue"--an unwonted concession to the public taste, this
last, on the part of one who believed so firmly in the Divine Right of
Kings.
In common with most dogmatists on the subject, James declares that the
great majority of witches are women, woman being the frailer vessel,
and therefore, like Eve, more easily entrapped by the Devil than
those of his own sex. He recapitulates many of their commonly-quoted
misdeeds, and relates how Satan teaches them "to make pictures by
wax or clay," which, being roasted, utterly destroy the person they
represent. To some he gives powders such as cure certain diseases,
to others poisons, and so on and so forth. For the practice of such
infernal arts the English Solon declares that witches and magicians
should be put to death without distinction of sex, age, or rank.
Such august patronage of their efforts served the ever-increasing tribe
of professional witch-finders in good stead, and the Act of 1563 was
enforced more stringently than ever. The trials were sometimes held
in the ordinary courts, more often before special tribunals, set up,
as a rule, on the petition of a presbytery or of the Grand Assembly.
For the greater convenience and protection of the public, boxes were
placed in many churches to receive anonymous accusations, giving
magnificent opportunity to slanderers and backbiters. To such a pitch
had matters come by 1661 that Parliament directed the judges to visit
Dalkeith and Musselburgh, two notorious centres of the art magical,
twice a week to try those accused. In these trials any evidence was
relevant, especially if put forward by professional witch-finders or
witch-pinchers, while the ordinary methods of torture were aggravated
when confessions were sought for, in view of the Devil's penchant for
protecting his own.
The close of the sixteenth century saw the commencement of a series
of persecutions fiercer and more general than perhaps any which had
preceded them, which did not finally die out before the rising sun
of common-sense until almost our grandfathers' time, and which were
carried to almost greater extremes in the New World than in the Old.