implicated a large number of others. The vicars, uncertain as to their
duty, sent the confessions to two notable clerks, Gilles Carlier, dean,
and Gregoire Nicolai, official, of Cambrai, who replied that if the
accused were not relapsed and if they would recant they were not to be
put to death, provided they had not committed murder and abused the
Eucharist. Here we recognize a transition period between the old
practice with heretics and the new with sorcerers, but du Boys and the
Bishop of Beirut were fully imbued with the new notions, and insisted
that all should be burned. They declared that whoever disputed this was
himself a sorcerer, that any one who should presume to aid or counsel
the prisoners should share their fate. The welfare of Christendom was
concerned, a full third of nominal Christians were secretly sorcerers,
including many bishops, cardinals, and grand masters, and that if they
could assemble under a leader it would be difficult to estimate the
destruction which they could inflict on religion and society. Possibly
one of these worthies may be credited with the authorship of a tract
upon the subject, a copy of which, formerly belonging to Philippe le
Bon, is now in the Royal Library of Brussels. The anonymous writer, who
describes himself as a priest, speaks of "Vauderie" as something new and
unheard of, more execrable than all the detestable errors of paganism
since the beginning of the world. He calls on the prelates to arise and
purge Christendom of these abominable sectaries, and to excite the
people by denouncing their most damnable crimes, but his most burning
eloquence is addressed to the princes. Not without significance is the
sword borne before them, for it is to remind them that they are
ministers and officers of God, whose duty it is to order unsparing
vengeance on these criminals. If the sectaries are allowed to multiply
the most fearful results are to be expected, and the King of Darkness is
already rejoicing at the prospect. Wars and enmities will come; strife
and sedition will rage in the fields, in the cities, and in the
kingdoms. In mutual slaughter men will fall dead in heaps. Children will
rise against their elders and the villeins will assail the nobles. It
was not only religion, but the whole social order, which was threatened
by a few strumpets and the Abbé-de-peu-de-sens.[573]
Like the agent of Conrad Tors in the days of Conrad of Marburg, the
Bishop of Beirut boasted that he could recognize a Vaudois or sorcerer
at sight. In conjunction with du Boys he procured another arrest, and
induced the Comte d'Estampes to order the vicars to hasten their
proceedings. Under this pressure, an assembly of all the principal
ecclesiastics of Arras, with some jurists, was held on May 9, 1460, to
consider the evidence. The deliberation was short, and the accused were
condemned. The next day, on a scaffold in front of the episcopal palace,
and in presence of a crowd which had gathered from twelve leagues
around, the convicts were brought forward, together with the body of one
of them, Jean le Febvre, who had been found hanging in his cell. Mitres
were placed on their heads, with pictures representing them as
worshipping the devil. The inquisitor preached the sermon, and read the
description of the Sabbat and of their visits to it, and then asked them
individually if it was true, to which they all assented. Then he read
the sentence abandoning them to the secular arm, their property to be
confiscated, the real estate to the seigneur and the movables to the
bishop, and they were delivered to their several jurisdictions,
Deniselle being handed over to the authorities of Douai who were present
to receive her, and the rest to those of Arras. At once they began with
shrieks to assert that they had been cruelly deceived--that they had
been promised that if they would confess they would be discharged with a
pilgrimage of ten or twelve leagues, and had been threatened with
burning for persistence in denial. With one voice they declared that
they had never been to the "Vauderie," that their confessions had been
extorted under stress of torture and false promises and blandishments,
and until they were silenced by the flames they begged the people to
pray for them, and their friends to have masses sung in their behalf.
The last words heard from the Abbé-de-peu-de-sens, were "_Jesus autem
transiens per medium illorum_." Gilles Flameng, an advocate who had been
active in the whole proceeding, was the especial object of their
reproaches; they reviled him as a traitor who had been particularly
earnest in the false promises which had lured them to destruction.
Appetite grew by what it fed on. This execution was followed immediately
by the arrest, on the requisition of the inquisitor, of thirteen
persons, including six public women, who had been implicated by the
confessions. The managers of the business, however, seemed to tire of
the pursuit of such worthless game, and grew bold enough to strike
higher. On June 22 Arras was startled by the arrest of Jean Tacquet, an
eschevin and one of the richest citizens; on the next day by that of
Pierre des Carieulx, equally wealthy and esteemed the best accountant in
Artois; and on the next by that of the Chevalier Payen de Beauffort, a
septuagenary and the head of one of the most ancient and richest houses
in the province, who had manifested his piety by founding three
convents. He had been warned that his name was on the list of accused,
but had declared that if he were a thousand leagues away he would return
to meet the charge, and in fact he had come to the city for the purpose.
In his hôtel of la Chevrette his children and friends had entreated him
to depart if he felt himself guilty, when with the most solemn oaths he
asserted his innocence. His arrest had not been ventured upon without
the consent of Philippe le Bon, secured by Philippe de Saveuse; the
Comte d'Estampes had come to Arras to insure it, and refused to see him
when he begged an interview. This was followed, July 7, by an _auto de
fé_ of seven of those arrested on May 9; five of these were burned, and,
like their predecessors, asserted that their confessions had been wrung
from them by torture, and died begging the prayers of all good
Christians. Two were sentenced to imprisonment for definite terms, the
reason alleged being that they had not revoked after their first
confession--a highly irregular proceeding of which the object was to
facilitate further convictions.
The affair was now beginning to attract general attention and
animadversion. Philippe le Bon was disturbed, for he heard that at Paris
and elsewhere it was reported that he was seizing the rich men of his
dominions to confiscate their property. Accordingly he sent to Arras,
as supervisors, his confessor, a Dominican and titular Bishop of
Selimbria, together with the Chevalier Baudoin de Noyelles, Governor of
Péronne, while the Comte d'Estampes deputed his secretary, Jean Forme,
together with Philippe de Saveuse, the Seigneur de Crèvecoeur, who was
bailly of Amiens, and his lieutenant, Guillaume de Berri. The first
effort of these new-comers seems to have been to share in the spoils. On
July 16 Baudoin de Noyelles arrested Antoine Sacquespée, an eschevin and
one of the richest of the citizens, who had been urged to fly, but who,
like de Beauffort, had declared that he would come a thousand leagues to
face the accusation. The next day another eschevin, Jean Josset, was
seized, and a sergent-de-ville named Henriet Royville, while three whose
arrest was pending fled, two of them being wealthy men, Martin Cornille,
and Willaume le Febvre, whom the Comte d'Estampes pursued as far as
Paris without success. A panic terror by this time pervaded the
community; no one knew when his turn would come, and men scarce dared to
leave the city for fear they would be accused of flying through
conscious guilt, while citizens who were absent were unwelcome guests
everywhere, and could scarce find lodgings. Similarly, strangers would
not venture to visit the city. Arras was a prosperous seat of
manufactures, and its industries suffered enormously. Its merchants lost
their credit; creditors importunately demanded settlement, for the risk
of confiscation hung over every man, and we have seen how the rights of
creditors in such cases were extinguished. The vicars endeavored to
soothe the general alarm and distress by a proclamation that no one need
fear arrest who was innocent, for none were arrested unless eight or ten
witnesses swore to seeing them at the Sabbat--though it was afterwards
found that many were seized on the evidence of only one or two.
At length, at the expense of the prisoners, the inquisitor, with the
vicars and Gilles Flameng, was sent to the Duke of Burgundy at Brussels,
to lay before him the evidence of the trials. The duke called a great
assembly of clerks, including the doctors of Louvain, who gravely
debated the matter. Some held, with the _Cap. Episcopi_, that it was all
a delusion, others that it was a reality. No conclusion was reached, and
the duke finally sent his herald, Toison d'Or (Lefebvre, Seigneur de
Saint-Remy) in whom he had great confidence, back with the vicars, to
be present at all examinations. They reached Arras August 14, after
which there were no further arrests, although innumerable names were on
the lists of accused. The prisoners were less inhumanly treated, and but
four of the pending trials were pushed to a conclusion. Reports of these
were sent to Brussels for the duke's consideration, and they were
brought back, October 12, by the president of the ducal chamber, Adrien
Collin, in whose presence the accused were again examined. Finally, on
October 22, the customary assembly was held, immediately followed by the
_auto de fé_, where the sermon was preached by the Inquisitor of
Cambrai, and the sentences were read by the Inquisitor of Arras, and by
Michael du Hamel, one of the vicars. The four convicts had different
fates.
The Chevalier de Beauffort, it was recited, had confessed that he had
thrice been to the Sabbat--twice on foot and once by flying on an
anointed staff. He had refused to give his soul to Satan, but had given
him four of his hairs. The inquisitor asked him if this was true, and he
replied in the affirmative, begging for mercy. The inquisitor then
announced that, as he had confessed without torture, and had never
retracted, he should not be mitred and burned but be scourged (a penance
inflicted by the inquisitor on the spot, but without removing the
penitent's clothes), be imprisoned for seven years, and pay a long list
of fines for pious purposes, amounting in all to eight thousand two
hundred livres, including one thousand five hundred to the Inquisition.
But besides these fines, thus publicly announced, he was obliged to pay
four thousand to the Duke of Burgundy, two thousand to the Comte
d'Estampes, one thousand to the Seigneur de Crèvecoeur, and one hundred
to his lieutenant, Guillaume de Berry.[574]
The next was the rich eschevin, Jean Tacquet. He admitted that he had
been to the Sabbat ten times or more. He had endeavored to withdraw his
allegiance from Satan, who had forced him to continue it by beating him
cruelly with a bull's pizzle. He was now condemned to scourging,
administered as in the case of de Beauffort, to ten years' prison, and
to fines amounting to one thousand four hundred livres, of which two
hundred went to the Inquisition; but, as in de Beauffort's case, there
were secret contributions exacted from him.
The third was Pierre du Carieulx, another rich citizen. His sentence
recited that he had been to the Sabbat innumerable times; holding a
lighted candle he had kissed, under the tail, the devil in the shape of
a monkey; he had given him his soul in a compact written with his own
blood; he had thrice given to the Abbé-de-peu-de-sens consecrated wafers
received at Easter, out of which, with the bones of men hanged, which he
had picked up under the gallows, and the blood of young children, of
whom he had slain four, he had helped to make the infernal ointment and
certain powders, with which they injured men and beasts. When asked to
confirm this he denied it, saying that it had been forced from him by
torture; and he would have added much more, but he was silenced.
Abandoned to secular justice, the eschevins demanded him as their
bourgeois, and on their paying his prison expenses he was delivered to
them. They allowed him to talk in the town-hall, when he disculpated all
whom he had accused, of whom he said there were many present, eschevins
and others, adding that, under torture, he had accused every one he
knew, and if he had known more he would have included them. He was
burned the same day.
The fourth was Huguet Aubry, a man of uncommon force and resolution. In
spite of the severest and most prolonged torture, he had confessed
nothing. He had been accused by nine witnesses, and he was now asked if
he would confess under promise of mercy; but he repeated that he knew
nothing of Vauderie, and had never been to the Sabbat. Then the
inquisitor told him that he had broken jail and been recaptured, which
rendered him guilty. He threw himself on his knees and begged for mercy,
but was condemned to prison, on bread and water, for twenty years; a
most irregular sentence, which could never have been rendered under the
perfected system of procedure, for the evidence against him was strong,
and his constancy under torture only proved that Satan had endowed him
with the gift of taciturnity.
This was the last of the persecution. There had been only thirty-four
arrests and twelve burnings; which, in the flourishing times of
witchcraft, would have been a trifle, but the novelty of the occurrence
in Picardy, the character of the victims, and the subsequent proceedings
in the Parlement attracted to it a disproportionate attention. That it
came to so early a termination is possibly attributable to the fact that
Philippe de Saveuse had directed the torture of the women not only to
convict de Beauffort, but to incriminate the Seigneurs de Croy and
others, from avaricious and perhaps political motives. The de Croy were
at this time all-powerful at the ducal court, and doubtless used their
interest to arrest the ecclesiastical machinery which was strong enough
to crush even them. It has every appearance of a repetition of the old
story of Conrad of Marburg.
Whatever the cause, the inquisitor and the vicars now put a stop to the
prosecutions, without calling in the Bishop of Beirut, Jacques du Boys,
de Saveuse, and others, who urged them to proceed with the good work. In
vain the latter talked of the imminent dangers impending over
Christendom from the innumerable multitude of sorcerers, many of whom
held high station in the Church and in the courts of princes. Vainly
even the last card was played, and the superstitious were frightened by
rumors that Antichrist was born, and that the sorcerers would support
him.[575]
One by one the accused were discharged, as they were able to raise money
to pay the expenses of their prison and of the Inquisition, which was a
condition of liberation in all cases except those of utter poverty. Some
had to undergo the formality of purging themselves with compurgators.
Antoine Sacquespée, for instance, who had been tortured without
confession, had to furnish seven, and was not allowed to escape without
surrendering a portion of his substance. Others had light penance, like
Jennon d'Amiens, a woman who had confessed after being several times
tortured, and was now only required to make a five-league pilgrimage to
Nôtre Dame d'Esquerchin. This was an admission that the whole affair was
a fraud; and even more remarkable was the case of _fille de joie_ named
Belotte, who had been repeatedly tortured, and had confessed. She would
have been burned with the other women on May 9, but it happened,
accidentally or otherwise, that her mitre was not ready, and her
execution was postponed, and now she was only banished from the diocese,
and ordered to make a pilgrimage to Nôtre Dame de Boulogne. Of the whole
number arrested nine had the constancy to endure torture--in most cases
long and severe--without confession.
As the terror passed away the feelings of the people expressed
themselves sportively in some verses scattered through the streets,
lampooning the principal actors in the tragedy. The stanza devoted to
Pierre le Brousart runs thus:
"Then the inquisitor, with his white hood,
His shining nose and his repulsive mazzard,
Among the foremost in the game has stood
To torture these poor folk as witch or wizard.
But he knows only what he has been told,
For his sole thought throughout has been to hold
And keep their goods and chattels at all hazard.
But he has failed in this, and been cajoled."
The vicars and their advocates and the assembly of experts are all held
guilty, and the verses conclude by threatening them:
"But you shall all be punished in a mass,
And we shall learn who caused the wondrous tale
Of Vaudois in our city of Arras."[576]
The prophecy was not wholly unverified. Fortunately there was in France
a Parlement which had succeeded in establishing its jurisdiction over
both the great vassals and the Inquisition, and the relations between
the courts of Paris and Brussels were such as to render it nothing loath
to interfere. De Beauffort, before his examination, had made an appeal
to this supreme tribunal, which had been disregarded and suppressed, but
his son Philippe had carried to Paris the tale of the wrongs committed
on his father. The Parlement moved slowly, but on January 16, 1461,
Philippe came back with an usher commissioned to bring de Beauffort
before it after investigating the case. This official took testimony,
and on the 25th, accompanied by de Beauffort's four sons and thirty
well-armed men, he presented himself before the vicars. Frightened by
this formidable demonstration, they refused to see him; but he went to
the episcopal palace, took the keys of the prison by force, and carried
de Beauffort to the Conciergerie in Paris, after serving notice on the
vicars to answer before the Parlement on February 25. The matter was now
fairly in train for a legal investigation in which both sides could be
heard. The convicts who had been condemned to imprisonment were set at
liberty and carried to Paris, where their evidence confirmed that of de
Beauffort. The conspirators were grievously alarmed. Jacques du Boys,
the dean, who had been the prime mover, became insane about the time set
for the hearing; and though he recovered his senses, his limbs failed
him; he took to his bed, where bed-sores ate great holes in his flesh,
and he died in about a year, some persons attributing to sorcery and
others to divine vengeance what evidently was mental trouble, causing
temporary insanity followed by paresis. The Bishop of Beirut was thrown
in prison, charged with having set the affair on foot, but he managed to
escape, by miracle as he asserted; he made a pilgrimage to Compostella,
and on his return secured the position of confessor to Queen Marie,
dowager of Charles VII., where he was safe. Other conspicuous actors in
the tragedy left Arras to escape the hatred of their fellow-citizens.
Meanwhile the legal proceedings dragged on with the interminable delays
for which the Parlement was notorious, enhanced on this occasion by the
political vicissitudes of the period, and the final decision was not
rendered until 1491, thirty years after its commencement, when all the
sufferers had passed off the scene except the indomitable Huguet Aubry,
who was still alive to enjoy a rehabilitation celebrated in a manner as
imposing as possible. On July 18 the decree was published from a
scaffold erected on the spot where the sentences had been pronounced.
The magistrates had been ordered to proclaim a holiday, and to offer
prizes for the best _folie moralisée_ and _pure folie_, and to send
notice to all the neighboring towns, so that a crowd of eight or nine
thousand persons was collected. After a sermon of two hours and a half,
preached by the celebrated Geoffroi Broussart, subsequently chancellor
of the University, the decree was read, condemning the Duke of Burgundy
to pay the costs, and the processes and sentences to be torn and
destroyed as unjust and abusive; ordering the accused and condemned to
be restored to their good name and fame, all confiscations and payments
to be refunded, while the vicars were to pay twelve hundred livres each,
Gilles Flameng one thousand, de Saveuse five hundred, and others smaller
sums, amounting in all to six thousand five hundred; out of which
fifteen hundred were to be applied to founding a daily mass for the
souls of those executed, and erecting a cross on the spot where they had
been burned. The cruel and unusual tortures made use of in the trials
were, moreover, prohibited for the future in all secular and
ecclesiastical tribunals. It was probably the only case on record in
which an inquisitor stood as a defendant in a lay court to answer for
his official action. One cannot help reflecting that, if the Council of
Vienne had done its duty as fearlessly as the Parlement, the affair of
the Templars, so similar in many of its features, might have had a
similar termination; and the contrast between this and the
rehabilitation proceedings in the case of Joan of Arc shows how the
Inquisition had fallen during the interval.[577]
Besides the general significance of this transaction in the history of
witchcraft and of its persecution, there are several points worthy of
attention in their bearing on the practical application of the methods
of procedure described above. In the first place, it is evident
throughout that no counsel were allowed to the accused. Then, the
combined episcopal and inquisitorial court permitted no appeals, even to
the Parlement, whose supreme jurisdiction was unquestioned. Not only was
the attempt of de Beauffort to interject such an appeal contemptuously
suppressed, but when Willaume le Febvre, who had fled to Paris and
constituted himself a prisoner there to answer all charges, sent his son
Willemet with a notary to serve an appeal, the service was rightly
regarded as involving considerable risk. After watching their
opportunity, Willemet and the notary served the notice on one of the
vicars at church, then leaped on their horses and made all speed for
Paris, but the vicars instantly despatched well-mounted horsemen, who
overtook them at Montdidier and brought them back. They were clapped in
jail, along with a number of friends and kinsmen who had been privy to
their intention without betraying it, and were not released until they
agreed to withdraw the appeal. Thus, an appeal was treated as an offence
justifying vigorous measures. It is more difficult to understand the
contemptuous indifference with which a papal bull was treated. Martin
Cornille, the other fugitive, had pursued a different policy. He carried
with him an ample store of money, part of which he invested in a bull
from Pius II. transferring the whole matter to Gilles Charlier and
Grégoire Nicolai of Cambrai, and two of the Arras vicars. This was
brought to Arras in August, 1460, by the Dean of Soignies, after which
we hear nothing more of it, though it may have contributed to cool the
ardor of those who were expecting to profit by the prosecutions.[578]
The means employed to obtain confession show that Sprenger only recorded
the usage of the period in advising recourse to whatever fraud or force
might prove necessary. Promises of immunity or of trifling penance were
lavished on those whom it was intended to burn if they yielded to the
blandishment, and these were supplemented with threats of burning as the
punishment of taciturnity. De Beauffort's confession without torture
excited general astonishment until it was known that, on his arrest,
after he had sworn to his innocence, Jacques du Boys entreated him to
confess, even kneeling before him and praying him to do so, assuring him
that if he refused he could not be saved from the stake, and that all
his property would be confiscated, to the beggaring of his children,
while, if he would confess, he should be released within four days
without public humiliation or exposure; and when de Beauffort argued
that this would be committing perjury, du Boys told him not to mind
that, as he should have absolution. Those whose constancy was proof
against such persuasiveness were tortured without stint or mercy. The
women were frightfully scourged. Huguet Aubry was kept in prison for
eleven months, during which, at intervals, he was tortured fifteen
times, and when the ingenuity of the executioners failed in devising
more exquisite forms of torment, he was threatened with drowning and
thrown into the river, and then with hanging and suspended from a tree
with his eyes duly bandaged. Le petit Henriot's resolution was tried
with seven months' incarceration, during which he was also tortured
fifteen times, fire being applied to the soles of his feet until he was
crippled for life. Others are mentioned whose endurance was equally
tried, and we hear of such strange devices as pouring oil and vinegar
down the throat, and other expedients not recognized by law.[579]
With regard to the death-penalty, it is to be observed that none of
these were cases of relapse, and under the old inquisitorial practice
they would all have been entitled to the penance of imprisonment. Their
burning had not even the pretext of being punishment for injuries
inflicted on their neighbors, for, with the exception of Pierre du
Carieulx, the only offence assigned to them was attendance at the
Sabbat. At the same time there was no resort to the juggle suggested by
later authorities, of assigning penance, and then not inquiring what the
secular power might see fit to do. The condemned were formally delivered
to the magistrates to be burned, and though at the first _auto_ a
death-sentence was pronounced by the eschevins, at the second even this
formality was omitted, and the victims were dragged directly from the
place of sentence to that of execution.[580]
One specially notable feature of the whole affair was the utter
incredulity everywhere excited. Just as the crimes imputed to the
Templars found credence nowhere out of France, so, outside of Arras, we
are told not one person in a thousand believed in the truth of the
charges. This was fortunate, for the victims naturally included in their
lists of associates many residents of other places, and the
conflagration might readily have spread over the whole country, had it
found agents like Pierre le Brousart, who carried the spark from Langres
to Arras. On the strength of revelations in the confessions several
persons were arrested in Amiens, but the bishop, who was a learned clerk
and had long resided in Rome, promptly released them and declared that
he would dismiss all brought before him, for he did not believe in the
possibility of such offences. At Tournay others were seized, and the
matter was warmly debated, with the result that they were set free,
although Jean Taincture, a most notable clerk, wrote an elaborate
treatise to prove their guilt. It was the same with the accused who
managed to fly. Martin Cornille was caught in Burgundy and brought
before the Archbishop of Besançon, who acquitted him on the strength of
informations made in Arras. Willaume le Febvre surrendered himself to
the Bishop of Paris; the Inquisitor of Paris came to Arras to get the
evidence concerning him, and the vicars furnished the confessions of
those who had implicated him. The result was that the tribunal,
consisting of the Archbishop of Reims, the Bishop of Paris, the
Inquisitor of France, and sundry doctors of theology, not only acquitted
him, but authorized him to prosecute the vicars for reparation of his
honor, and for expenses and damages.[581] Evidently up to this time the
excitement concerning witchcraft was to a great extent artificial--the
creation of a comparatively few credulous ecclesiastics and judges: the
mass of educated clerks and jurists were disposed to hold fast to the
definition of the _Cap. Episcopi_, and to regard it as a delusion. Had
the Church resolutely repressed the growing superstition, in place of
stimulating it with all the authority of the Holy See, infinite
bloodshed and misery might have been spared to Christendom.
* * * * *
The development of the witchcraft epidemic, in fact, had not been rapid.
The earliest detailed account which we have of it is that of Nider, in
his _Formicarius_, written in 1337. Although Nider himself seems to have
sometimes acted as inquisitor, he tells us that his information is
principally derived from the experience of Peter of Berne, a secular
judge, who had burned large numbers of witches of both sexes, and had
driven many more from the Bernese territory, which they had infested for
about sixty years. This would place the origin of witchcraft in that
region towards the close of the fourteenth century, and Silvester
Prierias, as we have seen, attributes it to the first years of the
fifteenth. Bernardo di Como, writing about 1510, assigns to it a
somewhat earlier origin, for he says the records of the Inquisition of
Como showed that it had existed for a hundred and fifty years. It is
quite likely, indeed, that the gradual development of witchcraft from
ordinary sorcery commenced about the middle of the fourteenth century.
The great jurist Bartolo, who died in 1357, when acting as judge at
Novara, tried and condemned a woman who confessed to having adored the
devil, trampled on the cross, and killed children by touching and
fascinating them. This approach to the later witchcraft was so novel to
him that he appealed to the theologians to explain it. In this there
seems no reference to the distinctive feature of the Sabbat, but the
popular beliefs concerning Holda and Dame Habonde and their troop were
rife, and the coalescence of the various superstitions was only a
question of time. As early as 1353 an allusion to the witches' dance
occurs in a trial at Toulouse. Thus the stories grew, under the skilful
handling of such judges as Peter of Berne, until they assumed the
detailed and definite shape that we find in Nider. The latter also
acknowledges his obligation to the Inquisitor of Autun, which would
indicate that witchcraft was prevalent in Burgundy at a comparatively
early period. In 1424 we hear of a witch named Finicella burned in Rome
for causing the death of many persons and bewitching many more.
According to Peter of Berne, the evil originated with a certain Scavius,
who openly boasted of his powers, and always escaped by transforming
himself into a mouse, until he was assassinated through a window near
which he incautiously sat. His principal disciple was Poppo, who taught
Staedelin; the latter fell into the hands of Peter, and, after four
vigorous applications of torture, confessed all the secrets of the
diabolical sect. The details given are virtually those described above,
showing that the subsequent inquisitors who drew their inspiration from
Nider were skilled in their work and knew how to extract confessions in
accordance with their preconceived notions. There are a few unimportant
variants, of course; infants, as already stated, when killed, were
boiled down, the soup being used to procure converts by its magic power,
while the solid portion was worked up into ointment required for the
unholy rites. Apparently, moreover, the theory had not yet established
itself that the witch was powerless against officers of public justice,
for the latter were held to incur great dangers in the performance of
their functions. It was only by the most careful observance of religious
duties and the constant use of the sign of the cross that Peter of Berne
escaped, and even he once, at the castle of Blankenburg, nearly lost his
life when, going up a lofty staircase at night in such haste that he
forgot to cross himself, he was precipitated violently to the
bottom--manifestly the effect of sorcery, as he subsequently learned by
torturing a prisoner.[582]
Although, in 1452, a witch tried at Provins declared that in all France
and Burgundy the total number of witches did not exceed sixty, no
believer contented himself with figures so moderate. In 1453 we hear of
an epidemic of witchcraft in Normandy, where the witches were popularly
known as Scobaces, from _scoba_, a broom, in allusion to their favorite
mode of equitation to the Sabbat. The same year occurred the case of
Guillaume Edeline, which excited wide astonishment from the character of
the culprit, who was a noted doctor of theology and Prior of St.
Germain-en-Laye. Madly in love with a noble lady, he sought the aid of
sorcery. He doubtless fell victim to some sharper, for on his person was
found a compact with Satan, formally drawn up with reciprocal
obligations, one of which was that in his sermons he should assert the
falsity of the stories told of sorcerers, and this, we are told, greatly
increased their number, for the judges were restrained from prosecuting
them. Another condition was that he should present himself before Satan
whenever required. The methods of his examination must have been sharp,
for he confessed that he performed this obligation by striding a
broomstick, when he would be at once transported to the Sabbat, where he
performed the customary homage of kissing the devil, in the form of a
white sheep, under the tail. Prosecuted before Guillaume de Floques,
Bishop of Evreux, he persuaded the University of Caen to defend him; but
the bishop procuring the support of the University of Paris, he was
forced to confess and was convicted. It shows the uncertainty of
procedure as yet that he was not burned, but was allowed to abjure, and
was penanced with perpetual imprisonment on bread and water. At the
_auto de fé_ the inquisitor dwelt upon his former high position and the
edification of his teaching, when the unfortunate man burst into tears
and begged mercy of God. He was thrown into a _basse-fosse_ at Evreux,
where he lingered for four years, showing every sign of contrition, and
at last he was found dead in his cell in the attitude of prayer. The
epidemic was spreading, for in 1446 several witches were burned in
Heidelberg by the inquisitor, and in 1447 another, who passed as their
teacher; but there was as yet no uniform practice in such cases, for in
this same year, 1447, at Braunsberg, a woman convicted of sorcery was
only banished to a distance of two (German) miles, and three securities
were required for her in the sum of ten marks.[583]
It was probably about this time that the inquisitors of Toulouse were
busy with burning the numerous witches of Dauphiné and Gascony, as
related by Alonso de Spina, who admired on the walls of the Toulousan
Inquisition pictures painted from their confessions, representing the
Sabbat, with the votaries adoring, with lighted candles, Satan in the
form of a goat. The allusions of Bernardo di Como show that at the same
period persecution was busy in Como. In 1456 we hear of two burned at
Cologne. They had caused a frost so intense in the month of May that all
vegetation was blasted, without hope of recovery. The steward of the
archbishop asked one of them to give him an example of her art, when she
took a cup of water, and muttering spells over it for the space of a
couple of Paternosters, it froze so solidly that the ice could not be
broken with a dagger. In this case, at least, the hand of justice had
not weakened her power, though why she allowed herself to be burned is
not recorded. In 1459 Pius II. called the attention of the Abbot of
Tréguier to somewhat similar practices in Britanny, and gave him papal
authority for their suppression, showing how vain had been the zeal of
Duke Artus III., of whom, at his death in 1457, it was eulogistically
declared that he had burned more sorcerers in France, Britanny, and
Poitou than any man of his time.[584]
These incidents will show the growth and spread of the belief throughout
Europe, and it must be borne in mind that they are but the indications
of much that never attracted public attention or came to be recorded in
history. A chance allusion, in a pleading of 1455, shows what was
working under the surface in probably every corner of Christendom. In
the parish of Torcy (Normandy) there had been for forty years a belief
that a family of laborers--Huguenin de la Meu and his dead father before
him, and Jeanne his wife--were all sorcerers who killed or sickened many
men and beasts. An appeal to the Inquisition would doubtless have
extracted from them confessions of the Sabbat and devil-worship, with
lists of accomplices leading to a widespread epidemic, but the simple
peasants found a speedier remedy in beating Huguenin and his wife, when
the person or animal whom they had bewitched would recover. A certain
André suspected them of causing the death of some of his cattle, and
Jeanne said to his wife, Alayre, "Your husband has done ill in saying
that I killed his cattle, and he will find it so before long." That same
day Alayre fell sick and was not expected to survive the night. To cure
her André went next morning to Jeanne, and threatened that if she did
not restore Alayre he would beat her so that she would never be well
again--and Alayre recovered the next day.[585]
This shows the material which existed everywhere for development into
organized persecution when properly handled by the Inquisition, and the
_Flagellum Hæreticorum Fascinariorum_ of the Inquisitor, Nicholaus
Jaquerius, in 1458, indicates that the Holy Office was beginning to
appreciate the necessity of organizing its efforts for systematic work.
Perhaps the untoward result of the affair at Arras may have retarded
this somewhat by the over-zeal and unscrupulous greed of its
manipulators, but if there was a reaction it was limited, both in extent
and duration. All the accumulated beliefs in the occult powers of
demonic agencies inherited from so many creeds and races still
flourished in their integrity. In the existing wretchedness of the
peasantry throughout the length and breadth of Europe, recklessness as
to the present and hopelessness as to the future led thousands to wish
that they could, by transferring their allegiance to Satan, find some
momentary relief from the sordid miseries of life. The tales of the
sensual delights of the Sabbat, where exquisite meats and drink were
furnished in abundance, had an irresistible allurement for those who
could scantily reckon on a morsel of black bread, or a turnip or a few
beans, to keep starvation at bay. Sprenger, as already stated, tells us
that the attraction of intercourse with incubi and succubi was a
principal cause of luring souls to ruin. The devastating wars, with
bands of écorcheurs and condottieri pillaging everywhere with savage
cruelty, reduced whole populations to despair, and those who fancied
themselves abandoned by God might well turn to Satan for help.
According to Sprenger, a prolific source of witches was the seduction of
young girls who when refused marriage had nothing more to hope for, and
sought to avenge themselves on society by acquiring at least the power
of evil.[586] Not only thus was there on the part of many a desire to
enter the abhorred sect of Satan-worshippers, which the Church declared
to be so numerous and powerful, but doubtless not a few performed the
ceremonies to effect it, when perhaps some evil wish which chanced to be
realized would convince them that Satan had really accepted their
allegiance, and granted them the power which they sought. Certain minds
might, in moments of high-wrought exaltation, even imagine that they had
obtained admission to the foul mysteries whose reality was rapidly
becoming an article of orthodox belief. Others again, in weakness and
poverty, found that the reputation of possessing the power of evil was a
protection and a support, and they encouraged rather than repressed the
credulity of their neighbors. To these must be added the multitudes who
derived a source of gain from curing the sorcery which the Church was
confessedly unable to relieve, and there was ample material in the
despised and lower stratum of society for the innumerable army of
witches conjured up by the heated imaginations of the demonographers.
Unfortunately the Church, in its alarm at the development of this new
heresy, stimulated it to the utmost in the endeavor to repress it. Every
inquisitor whom it commissioned to suppress witchcraft was an active
missionary who scattered the seeds of the belief ever more widely. We
have seen what a brood of witches Pierre le Brousart hatched at Arras
out of the single one burned at Langres, and how Chiabaudi succeeded in
infecting the valleys of the Canavese. It mattered little in the end
that le Brousart overreached himself and that Chiabaudi was outwrangled.
The minds of the people became more and more familiarized with the idea
that witches were everywhere around them, and that every misfortune and
accident was the result of their malignity. Every man was thus
assiduously taught, when he lost an ox or a child, or a harvest, or was
suddenly prostrated with illness, to suspect his neighbors and look for
evidence to confirm his suspicions, so that wherever an inquisitor
passed he was overwhelmed with accusations against all who could be
imagined to be guilty, from children of tender years to superannuated
crones. When Girolamo Visconti was sent to Como he speedily raised such
a storm of witchcraft that in 1485 he burned no less than forty-one
unfortunates in the little district of Wormserbad in the Grisons--an
exploit repeatedly referred to by Sprenger with honest professional
pride.[587]
A special impulse was given to this development when Innocent VIII.,
December 5, 1484, issued his Bull _Summis desiderantes_, in which he
bewailed the deplorable fact that all the Teutonic lands were filled
with men and women who exercised upon the faithful all the malignant
power which we have seen ascribed to witchcraft, and of which he
enumerates the details with awe-inspiring amplification. Henry
Institoris and Jacob Sprenger had for some time been performing the
office of inquisitors in those regions, but their commissions did not
specially mention sorcery as included in their jurisdiction, wherefore
their efforts were impeded by over-wise clerks and laymen who used this
as an excuse for protecting the guilty. Innocent therefore gives them
full authority in the premises and orders the Bishop of Strassburg to
coerce all who obstruct or interfere with them, calling in, if
necessary, the aid of the secular arm. After this, to question the
reality of witchcraft was to question the utterance of the Vicar of
Christ, and to aid any one accused was to impede the Inquisition. Armed
with these powers the two inquisitors, full of zeal, traversed the land,
leaving behind them a track of blood and fire, and awakening in all
hearts the cruel dread inspired by the absolute belief thus inculcated
in all the horrors of witchcraft. In the little town of Ravenspurg alone
they boast that they burned forty-eight in five years.[588]
It is true that they were not everywhere so successful. In the Tyrol
the Bishop of Brixen published Innocent's bull July 23, 1485, and on
September 21 he issued to the inquisitor Henry Institoris a commission
granting him full episcopal jurisdiction, but recommending him to
associate with him a secular official of the suzerain, Sigismund of
Austria. The latter, however, ordered the bishop to appoint a
commissioner, and he named Sigismund Samer, pastor of Axams near
Innsbruck. The pair commenced operations October 14, but their career,
though vigorous, was short and inglorious. It chanced that some of the
archduke's courtiers desired to separate him from his wife, Catharine of
Saxony, and spread reports that she had endeavored to poison him; and
they followed this up by placing in an oven a worthless woman who
personated an imprisoned demon and denounced a number of people.
Institoris at once seized the accused and applied torture without stint.
Then the bishop interposed, and by the middle of November ordered him to
leave the diocese and betake himself to his convent, the sooner the
better. Institoris, however, was loath to abandon his duty, and drew
upon himself a sharper reproof on Ash Wednesday, 1486; he was told that
he had nought to do there, that the bishop would attend to all that was
necessary through the exercise of the ordinary jurisdiction, and he was
warned that if he persisted in remaining he was in danger of
assassination from the husbands or kinsmen of the women whom he was
persecuting. He finally withdrew to Germany, richly rewarded for his
labor by Sigismund, and from his account of the matter it is easy to see
that all the sick and withered of Innsbruck had flocked to him with
complaints of their neighbors so detailed that he was justified in
regarding the place as thoroughly infected. The next year the Tyrolese
Landtag complained to the archduke that recently many persons, on
baseless denunciations, had been imprisoned, tortured, and disgracefully
treated, and we can readily understand the complaint of the _Malleus
Maleficarum_ that Innsbruck abounded in witches of the most dangerous
character, who could bewitch their judges and could not be forced to
confess. Still, the seeds of superstition were scattered to fructify in
due time. Although in the Tyrolese criminal ordinance issued by
Maximilian I., in 1499, there is no allusion to sorcery and witchcraft,
yet in 1506 we find the craze fully developed. Some records which have
been preserved show trials before secular judges with juries of twelve
men, in which the unfortunate women accused, after due torture, confess
all the customary horrors.[589]
One result of this campaign of Institoris in the Tyrol was that it left
Sigismund of Austria in a condition of perplexity as to the reality of
witchcraft. His judges had apparently been inexperienced in such
matters, the confessions of the accused had varied greatly, and the
inquisition had been cut short before they could be forced to
consentaneous avowals. To satisfy his mind, in 1487, he consulted on the
subject two learned doctors of the law, Ulric Molitoris and Conrad
Stürtzel, and the result was published at Constance in 1489 by Ulric, in
the form of a discussion between the three. Sigismund is represented as
urging the natural argument that the results obtained by witchcraft were
so wofully inadequate to the powers ascribed to it as to cast doubt upon
the reality of those powers--if they were real, a conqueror would only
have, like William the Manzer at Ely, to put a witch at the head of his
army to overcome all opposition. Against this view the customary texts
and citations were alleged, and the conclusions reached represent very
fairly the moderate opinions of the conservatives, who had not as yet
yielded fully to the witchcraft craze, but who shrank from a
rationalistic denial of that which had been handed down by the wisdom of
ages. These are summed up in eight propositions: 1. Satan cannot
himself, or by means of human instruments, disturb the elements, or
injure men and animals, or render them impotent, but God sometimes
permits him to do so to a certain determinate extent. 2. He cannot
exceed this designated limit. 3. By permission of God he can sometimes
cause illusions by which men appear to be transformed. 4. The
night-riding and assemblages of the Sabbat are illusions. 5. Incubi and
succubi are incapable of procreation. 6. God alone knows the future and
the thoughts of men; the devil can only conjecture and use his knowledge
of the stars. 7. Nevertheless witches, by worshipping and sacrificing to
Satan, are real heretics and apostates. 8. Finally, they should
therefore be put to death. In this cautious endeavor to harmonize the
old school and the new, the witch thus gained nothing; everything was
conceded, that had a practical bearing on the tribunals, and it was a
mere matter of speculation whether the Sabbat was a dream or a reality,
and whether the evil she wrought was the result of a special or a
general concession of power by God to Satan. Thus the work of Molitoris
is important as showing how feeble were the barriers which intelligent
and fair-minded men could erect against the prevailing tendencies so
sedulously fostered by popes and inquisitors.[590]
The fine-drawn distinctions of such men were quickly brushed aside by
the aggressive self-confidence of the inquisitors. Even more potent than
the personal activity of Sprenger was the legacy which he left behind
him in the work which he proudly entitled the _Malleus Maleficarum_, or
Hammer of Witches, the most portentous monument of superstition which
the world has produced. All his vast experience and wide erudition are
brought to the task of proving the reality of witchcraft and the extent
of its evils, and, further, of instructing the inquisitor how to elude
the wiles of Satan and to punish his devotees. He was no vulgar
witch-finder, but a man trained in all the learning of the schools. He
apparently was not inhumane. In many places he manifests a laudable
desire to give the accused the benefit of whatever pleas they might
rightfully put forward, but he is so fully convinced of the gigantic
character of the evils to be combated, he so thoroughly believes that
his tribunal is engaged in a contest with Satan for human souls, that he
eagerly justifies every artifice and every cruelty that could be
suggested to outwit the adversary, on whom fair play would be thrown
away. Like Conrad of Marburg and Capistrano, he was a man of the most
dangerous type, an honest fanatic. His work is, moreover, an
inexhaustible storehouse of marvels to which successive generations
resorted whenever evidence was needed to prove any special
manifestation of the power or malignity of the witch. Told as the
results of his own experience or that of his colleagues, with the utmost
good faith, they carried conviction with them. In fact, but for the
delusive character of human testimony in such matters, the evidence
would seem to be overwhelming. Statements of disinterested
eye-witnesses, complaints of sufferers, confessions of the guilty, even
after condemnation, and at the stake, when there was no hope save of
pardon of their sins by God, are innumerable, and so detailed and
connected together that the most fertile imagination would seem
inadequate to their invention. Besides, the work is so logical in form,
according to the fashion of the time, and so firmly based on scholastic
theology and canon law, that we cannot wonder at the position accorded
to it for more than a century of a leading authority on a subject of the
highest practical importance. Quoted implicitly by all succeeding
writers, it did more than all other agencies, save the papal bulls, to
stimulate and perfect the persecution, and consequently the extension of
witchcraft.[591]
Thus the Inquisition in its decrepitude had a temporary resumption of
activity, before the Reformation came to renew its vigor in a different
shape. Yet it was not everywhere allowed to work its will upon this new
class of heretics. In France edicts of 1490 and 1493 treat them as
subject exclusively to the secular courts, unless the offenders happen
to be justiciable by the ecclesiastical tribunals, and no allusion
whatever is made to the Inquisition. At the same time the growing
sharpness of persecution is seen in provisions which subject those who
consult necromancers and sorcerers to the same penalties as the
practitioners themselves, and threaten judges who are negligent in
arresting them with loss of office, perpetual disability, and heavy
arbitrary fines. It was doubtless owing to this exclusion of spiritual
jurisdiction over sorcery that the spread of witchcraft in France was
slower than in Germany and Italy.[592]
Cornelius Agrippa, whose learned treatises on the occult sciences trench
so nearly on forbidden ground, when he held the position of Town Orator
and Advocate of Metz, had the hardihood, in 1519, to save from the
clutches of the inquisitor, Nicholas Savin, an unfortunate woman accused
of witchcraft. The only evidence against her was that her mother had
been burned as a witch. Savin quoted the "_Malleus Maleficarum_" to show
that if she were not the offspring of an incubus she must undoubtedly
have been devoted to Satan at her birth. In conjunction with the
episcopal official, John Leonard, he had her cruelly tortured, and she
was then exposed to starvation in her prison. When Agrippa offered to
defend her he was turned out of court and threatened with prosecution as
a fautor of heresy, and her husband was refused access to the place of
trial, lest he should interject an appeal. Leonard chanced to fall
mortally sick, and, touched with remorse on his death-bed, he executed
an instrument declaring his conviction of her innocence and asked the
chapter to set her at liberty; but Savin demanded that she should be
further tortured and then burned. Agrippa, however, labored so
effectually with Leonard's successor and with the chapter that the woman
was discharged; but his disinterested zeal cost him his office, and he
was obliged to leave Metz. Relieved of his presence, the inquisitor
speedily found another witch, whom he burned after forcing her by
torture to confess all the horrors of the Sabbat and customary evil
deeds wrought through the power of Satan. Encouraged by this, he
organized a search for others, doubtless based on the confessions of the
victim, and imprisoned a number, while others fled, and there would have
been a pitiless massacre had not Roger Brennon, parish priest of St.
Cross, openly opposed him and vanquished him in disputation, whereupon
the jail doors were thrown open and the fugitives returned.[593]
The most decided rebuff, however, which the Inquisition experienced in
its new sphere of activity was administered by Venice. I have had
occasion more than once to allude to the controversy between the Signory
and the Holy See over the witches of Brescia, when the Republic
definitely refused to execute the sentences of the inquisitors. To
understand the full significance of its action, it is to be observed
that for two generations the Church had been energetically cultivating
witchcraft throughout Lombardy by unceasingly urging its persecution and
breaking down all resistance on the part of the intelligent laity, until
it had succeeded in rendering upper Italy a perfect hot-bed of the
heresy. In 1457 Calixtus III. ordered his nuncio, Bernardo di Bosco, to
use active measures in repressing its growth in Brescia, Bergamo, and
the vicinage. Thirty years later Frà Girolamo Visconti found an abundant
field for his labor in Como, the result of which he communicated to the
world in his _Lamiarum Tractatus_, and Sprenger assures us that a whole
book would be required to record the cases, in Brescia alone, of women
who had become witches through despair in consequence of seduction,
although the episcopal court had shown the most praiseworthy vigor in
suppressing them. In 1494 we find Alexander VI. stimulating the Lombard
inquisitor, Frà Angelo da Verona, to greater activity, assuring him that
witches were numerous in Lombardy and inflicted great damage on men,
harvests, and cattle. When at Cremona, in the early years of the
sixteenth century, the inquisitor, Giorgio di Casale, endeavored to
exterminate the numberless witches flourishing there, and was interfered
with by certain clerks and laymen, who asserted that he was exceeding
his jurisdiction, Julius II., following the example of Innocent VIII. in
the case of Sprenger, promptly came to the rescue by defining his
powers, and offering to all who would aid him in the good work
indulgences such as were given to crusaders--provisions which, in 1523,
were extended to the Inquisitor of Como by Adrian VI. The result of all
this careful stimulation is seen in the description of the Lombard
witches by Gianfrancesco Pico, and in the alarming report by Silvester
Prierias that they were extending down the Apennines and boasting that
they would outnumber the faithful. The spread of popular belief is
illustrated in the remark of Politian, that, when he was a child he had
great dread of the witches whom his grandmother used to tell him lie in
wait in the woods to swallow little boys.[594]
Venice had always been careful to preserve the secular jurisdiction over
sorcery. A resolution of the great council in 1410 allows the
Inquisition to act in such cases when they involve heresy or the abuse
of sacraments, but if injury had resulted to individuals the spiritual
offence alone was cognizable by the Inquisition, while the resultant
crimes were justiciable by the lay court; and when, in 1422, some
Franciscans were charged with sacrificing to demons, the Council of Ten
committed the affair to a councillor, a capo, an inquisitor, and an
advocate. Brescia was a spot peculiarly infected with witchcraft. As
early as 1455 the inquisitor, Frà Antonio, called upon the Senate for
aid to exterminate it, which was presumably afforded, but when a fresh
persecution arose in 1486 the podestà refused to execute the
inquisitorial sentences, and the Signoria supported him, calling forth,
as we have seen, the vigorous protest of Innocent VIII. Under the
stimulus of persecution the evil increased with terrible rapidity. In
1510 we hear of seventy women and seventy men burned at Brescia; in 1514
of three hundred at Como. In such an epidemic every victim was a new
source of infection, and the land was threatened with depopulation. In
the madness of the hour it was currently reported that on the plain of
Tonale, near Brescia, the customary gathering at the Sabbat exceeded
twenty-five thousand souls; and in 1518 the Senate was officially
informed that the inquisitor had burned seventy witches of the
Valcamonica, that he had as many in his prisons, and that those
suspected or accused amounted to about five thousand, or one fourth of
the inhabitants of the valleys. It was time to interfere, and the
Signoria interposed effectually, leading to violent remonstrances from
Rome. Leo X. issued, February 15, 1521, his fiery bull, _Honestis_,
ordering the inquisitors to use freely the excommunication and the
interdict, if their sentences on the witches were not executed without
examination or revision, showing how transparent were the subterfuges
adopted to throw upon the secular courts the responsibility of putting
to death those who were not relapsed. On March 21 the imperturbable
Council of Ten quietly responded by laying down regulations for all
trials, including the cases in question, of which the sentences were
treated as invalid, and all bail heretofore taken was to be discharged.
The examinations were to be made without the use of torture by one or
two bishops, an inquisitor, and two doctors of Brescia, all selected for
probity and intelligence. The result was to be read in the court of the
podestà, with the participation of the two _rettori_, or governors, and
four more doctors. The accused were to be asked if they ratified their
statements, and were to be liable to torture if they modified them. When
all this was done with due circumspection, judgment was to be rendered
in accordance with the counsel of all the above-named experts, and under
no other circumstances was a sentence to be executed. In this way the
Signoria hoped that the errors said to have been committed would be
avoided for the future. Moreover, the papal legate was to be admonished
to see that the expenses of the Inquisition were moderate and free from
extortion, and was to find expedients to prevent greed for money from
causing the condemnation of the innocent, as was said to have often been
the case. He should also depute proper persons to investigate the
extortions and other evil acts of the inquisitors, which had excited
general complaint, and he should summarily punish the perpetrators to
serve as an example. He was further requested to consider that these
poor people of Valcamonica were simple folk of the densest ignorance,
much more in need of good preachers than of persecutors, especially as
they were so numerous.[595]
In an age of superstition this utterance of the Council of Ten stands
forth as a monument of considerate wisdom and calm common-sense. Had its
enlightened spirit been allowed to guide the counsels of popes and
princes, Europe would have been spared the most disgraceful page in the
annals of civilization. The lesson of cruel fear so sedulously
inculcated on the nations was thoroughly learned. Hideous as are the
details of the persecution of witchcraft which we have been considering
up to the fifteenth century, they were but the prelude to the blind and
senseless orgies of destruction which disgraced the next century and a
half. Christendom seemed to have grown delirious, and Satan might well
smile at the tribute to his power seen in the endless smoke of the
holocausts which bore witness to his triumph over the Almighty.
Protestant and Catholic rivalled each other in the madness of the hour.
Witches were burned no longer in ones and twos, but in scores and
hundreds. A bishop of Geneva is said to have burned five hundred within
three months, a bishop of Bamburg six hundred, a bishop of Würzburg nine
hundred. Eight hundred were condemned, apparently in one body, by the
Senate of Savoy. So completely had the intervention of Satan, through
the instrumentality of his worshippers, become a part of the unconscious
process of thought, that any unusual operation of nature was attributed
to them as a matter of course. The spring of 1586 was tardy in the
Rhinelands and the cold was prolonged until June: this could only be the
result of witchcraft, and the Archbishop of Trèves burned at Pfalz a
hundred and eighteen women and two men, from whom confessions had been
extorted that their incantations had prolonged the winter. It was well
that he acted thus promptly, for on their way to the place of execution
they stated that had they been allowed three days more they would have
brought cold so intense that no green thing could have survived, and
that all fields and vineyards would have been cursed with barrenness.
The Inquisition evidently had worthy pupils, but it did not relax its
own efforts. Paramo boasts that in a century and a half from the
commencement of the sect, in 1404, the Holy Office had burned at least
thirty thousand witches who, if they had been left unpunished, would
easily have brought the whole world to destruction.[596] Could any
Manichæan offer more practical evidence that Satan was lord of the
visible universe?