imperfection of their science, which suspended the strength of their
appeal to reason and common sense against the condemning of wretches to
a cruel death on account of crimes which the nature of things rendered
in modern times totally impossible. We cannot doubt that they suffered
considerably in the contest, which was carried on with much anger and
malevolence; but the good seed which they had sown remained uncorrupted
in the soil, to bear fruit so soon as the circumstances should be
altered which at first impeded its growth. In the next letter I shall
take a view of the causes which helped to remove these impediments, in
addition, it must always be remembered, to the general increase of
knowledge and improvement of experimental philosophy.
LETTER VII.
Penal Laws unpopular when rigidly exercised--Prosecution of Witches
placed in the hand of Special Commissioners, _ad
inquirendum_--Prosecution for Witchcraft not frequent in the Elder
Period of the Roman Empire--Nor in the Middle Ages--Some Cases took
place, however--The Maid of Orleans--The Duchess of
Gloucester--Richard the Third's Charge against the Relations of the
Queen Dowager--But Prosecutions against Sorcerers became more common
in the end of the Fourteenth Century--Usually united with the Charge
of Heresy--Monstrelet's Account of the Persecution against the
Waldenses, under pretext of Witchcraft--Florimond's Testimony
concerning the Increase of Witches in his own Time--Bull of Pope
Innocent VIII.--Various Prosecutions in Foreign Countries under this
severe Law--Prosecutions in Labourt by the Inquisitor De Lancre and
his Colleague--Lycanthropy--Witches in Spain--In Sweden--and
particularly those Apprehended at Mohra.
Penal laws, like those of the Middle Ages, denounced against witchcraft,
may be at first hailed with unanimous acquiescence and approbation, but
are uniformly found to disgust and offend at least the more sensible
part of the public when the punishments become frequent and are
relentlessly inflicted. Those against treason are no exception. Each
reflecting government will do well to shorten that melancholy reign of
terror which perhaps must necessarily follow on the discovery of a plot
or the defeat of an insurrection. They ought not, either in humanity or
policy, to wait till the voice of the nation calls to them, as Mecænas
to Augustus, "_Surge tandem carnifex_!"
It is accordingly remarkable, in different countries, how often at some
particular period of their history there occurred an epidemic of terror
of witches, which, as fear is always cruel and credulous, glutted the
public with seas of innocent blood; and how uniformly men loathed the
gore after having swallowed it, and by a reaction natural to the human
mind desired, in prudence, to take away or restrict those laws which had
been the source of carnage, in order that their posterity might neither
have the will nor the means to enter into similar excesses.
A short review of foreign countries, before we come to notice the
British Islands and their Colonies, will prove the truth of this
statement. In Catholic countries on the Continent, the various kingdoms
adopted readily that part of the civil law, already mentioned, which
denounces sorcerers and witches as rebels to God, and authors of
sedition in the empire. But being considered as obnoxious equally to the
canon and civil law, Commissions of Inquisition were especially
empowered to weed out of the land the witches and those who had
intercourse with familiar spirits, or in any other respect fell under
the ban of the Church, as well as the heretics who promulgated or
adhered to false doctrine. Special warrants were thus granted from time
to time in behalf of such inquisitors, authorizing them to visit those
provinces of Germany, France, or Italy where any report concerning
witches or sorcery had alarmed the public mind; and those Commissioners,
proud of the trust reposed in them, thought it becoming to use the
utmost exertions on their part, that the subtlety of the examinations,
and the severity of the tortures they inflicted, might wring the truth
out of all suspected persons, until they rendered the province in which
they exercised their jurisdiction a desert from which the inhabitants
fled. It would be impossible to give credit to the extent of this
delusion, had not some of the inquisitors themselves been reporters of
their own judicial exploits: the same hand which subscribed the sentence
has recorded the execution.
In the earlier period of the Church of Rome witchcraft is frequently
alluded to, and a capital punishment assigned to those who were supposed
to have accomplished by sorcery the death of others, or to have
attempted, by false prophecies or otherwise, under pretext of consulting
with the spiritual world, to make innovation in the state. But no
general denunciation against witchcraft itself, as a league with the
Enemy of Man, or desertion of the Deity, and a crime _sui generis_,
appears to have been so acted upon, until the later period of the
sixteenth century, when the Papal system had attained its highest pitch
of power and of corruption. The influence of the Churchmen was in early
times secure, and they rather endeavoured, by the fabrication of false
miracles, to prolong the blind veneration of the people, than to vex
others and weary themselves by secret investigations into dubious and
mystical trespasses, in which probably the higher and better instructed
members of the clerical order put as little faith at that time as they
do now. Did there remain a mineral fountain, respected for the cures
which it had wrought, a huge oak-tree, or venerated mount, which beauty
of situation had recommended to traditional respect, the fathers of the
Roman Church were in policy reluctant to abandon such impressive spots,
or to represent them as exclusively the rendezvous of witches or of evil
spirits. On the contrary, by assigning the virtues of the spring or the
beauty of the tree to the guardianship of some saint, they acquired, as
it were, for the defence of their own doctrine, a frontier fortress
which they wrested from the enemy, and which it was at least needless to
dismantle, if it could be conveniently garrisoned and defended. Thus the
Church secured possession of many beautiful pieces of scenery, as Mr.
Whitfield is said to have grudged to the devil the monopoly of all the
fine tunes.
It is true that this policy was not uniformly observed. The story of the
celebrated Jeanne d'Arc, called the Maid of Orleans, preserves the
memory of such a custom, which was in that case turned to the prejudice
of the poor woman who observed it.
It is well known that this unfortunate female fell into the hands of the
English, after having, by her courage and enthusiasm manifested on many
important occasions, revived the drooping courage of the French, and
inspired them with the hope of once more freeing their country. The
English vulgar regarded her as a sorceress--the French as an inspired
heroine; while the wise on both sides considered her as neither the one
nor the other, but a tool used by the celebrated Dunois to play the part
which he assigned her. The Duke of Bedford, when the ill-starred Jeanne
fell into his hands, took away her life in order to stigmatize her
memory with sorcery and to destroy the reputation she had acquired among
the French. The mean recurrence to such a charge against such a person
had no more success than it deserved, although Jeanne was condemned both
by the Parliament of Bordeux and the University of Paris. Her indictment
accused her of having frequented an ancient oak-tree, and a fountain
arising under it, called the Fated or Fairy Oak of Bourlemont. Here she
was stated to have repaired during the hours of divine service, dancing,
skipping, and making gestures, around the tree and fountain, and hanging
on the branches chaplets and garlands of flowers, gathered for the
purpose, reviving, doubtless, the obsolete idolatry which in ancient
times had been rendered on the same spot to the _Genius Loci_. The
charmed sword and blessed banner, which she had represented as signs of
her celestial mission, were in this hostile charge against her described
as enchanted implements, designed by the fiends and fairies whom she
worshipped to accomplish her temporary success. The death of the
innocent, high-minded, and perhaps amiable enthusiast, was not, we are
sorry to say, a sacrifice to a superstitious fear of witchcraft, but a
cruel instance of wicked policy mingled with national jealousy and
hatred.
To the same cause, about the same period, we may impute the trial of the
Duchess of Gloucester, wife of the good Duke Humphrey, accused of
consulting witches concerning the mode of compassing the death of her
husband's nephew, Henry VI. The Duchess was condemned to do penance, and
thereafter banished to the Isle of Man, while several of her accomplices
died in prison or were executed. But in this instance also the alleged
witchcraft was only the ostensible cause of a procedure which had its
real source in the deep hatred between the Duke of Gloucester and
Cardinal Beaufort, his half-brother. The same pretext was used by
Richard III. when he brought the charge of sorcery against the Queen
Dowager, Jane Shore, and the queen's kinsmen; and yet again was by that
unscrupulous prince directed against Morton, afterwards Archbishop of
Canterbury, and other adherents of the Earl of Richmond. The accusation
in both cases was only chosen as a charge easily made and difficult to
be eluded or repelled.
But in the meanwhile, as the accusation of witchcraft thus afforded to
tyranny or policy the ready means of assailing persons whom it might not
have been possible to convict of any other crime, the aspersion itself
was gradually considered with increase of terror as spreading wider and
becoming more contagious. So early as the year 1398 the University of
Paris, in laying down rules for the judicial prosecuting of witches,
express their regret that the crime was growing more frequent than in
any former age. The more severe enquiries and frequent punishments by
which the judges endeavoured to check the progress of this impious
practice seem to have increased the disease, as indeed it has been
always remarked that those morbid affections of mind which depend on the
imagination are sure to become more common in proportion as public
attention is fastened on stories connected with their display.
In the same century schisms arising from different causes greatly
alarmed the Church of Rome. The universal spirit of enquiry which was
now afloat, taking a different direction in different countries, had in
almost all of them stirred up a sceptical dissatisfaction with the
dogmas of the Church--such views being rendered more credible to the
poorer classes through the corruption of manners among the clergy, too
many of whom wealth and ease had caused to neglect that course of
morality which best recommends religious doctrine. In almost every
nation in Europe there lurked in the crowded cities, or the wild
solitude of the country, sects who agreed chiefly in their animosity to
the supremacy of Rome and their desire to cast off her domination. The
Waldenses and Albigenses were parties existing in great numbers through
the south of France. The Romanists became extremely desirous to combine
the doctrine of the heretics with witchcraft, which, according to their
account, abounded especially where the Protestants were most numerous;
and, the bitterness increasing, they scrupled not to throw the charge of
sorcery, as a matter of course, upon those who dissented from the
Catholic standard of faith. The Jesuit Delrio alleges several reasons
for the affinity which he considers as existing between the Protestant
and the sorcerer; he accuses the former of embracing the opinion of
Wierus and other defenders of the devil (as he calls all who oppose his
own opinions concerning witchcraft), thus fortifying the kingdom of
Satan against that of the Church.[47]
[Footnote 47: Delrio, "De Magia." See the Preface.]
A remarkable passage in Monstrelet puts in a clear view the point aimed
at by the Catholics in thus confusing and blending the doctrines of
heresy and the practice of witchcraft, and how a meeting of inoffensive
Protestants could be cunningly identified with a Sabbath of hags and
fiends.
"In this year (1459), in the town of Arras and county of Artois, arose,
through a terrible and melancholy chance, an opinion called, I know not
why, the Religion of Vaudoisie. This sect consisted, it is said, of
certain persons, both men and women, who, under cloud of night, by the
power of the devil, repaired to some solitary spot, amid woods and
deserts, where the devil appeared before them in a human form--save that
his visage is never perfectly visible to them--read to the assembly a
book of his ordinances, informing them how he would be obeyed;
distributed a very little money and a plentiful meal, which was
concluded by a scene of general profligacy; after which each one of the
party was conveyed home to her or his own habitation.
"On accusations of access to such acts of madness," continues
Monstrelet, "several creditable persons of the town of Arras were seized
and imprisoned along with some foolish women and persons of little
consequence. These were so horribly tortured that some of them admitted
the truth of the whole accusations, and said, besides, that they had
seen and recognised in their nocturnal assembly many persons of rank,
prelates, seigneurs, and governors of bailliages and cities, being such
names as the examinators had suggested to the persons examined, while
they constrained them by torture to impeach the persons to whom they
belonged. Several of those who had been thus informed against were
arrested, thrown into prison, and tortured for so long a time that they
also were obliged to confess what was charged against them. After this
those of mean condition were executed and inhumanly burnt, while the
richer and more powerful of the accused ransomed themselves by sums of
money, to avoid the punishment and the shame attending it. Many even of
those also confessed being persuaded to take that course by the
interrogators, who promised them indemnity for life and fortune. Some
there were, of a truth, who suffered with marvellous patience and
constancy the torments inflicted on them, and would confess nothing
imputed to their charge; but they, too, had to give large sums to the
judges, who exacted that such of them as, notwithstanding their
mishandling, were still able to move, should banish themselves from that
part of the country." Monstrelet winds up this shocking narrative by
informing us "that it ought not to be concealed that the whole
accusation was a stratagem of wicked men for their own covetous
purposes, and in order, by these false accusations and forced
confessions, to destroy the life, fame, and fortune of wealthy persons."
Delrio himself confesses that Franciscus Balduinus gives an account of
the pretended punishment, but real persecution, of these Waldenses, in
similar terms with Monstrelet, whose suspicions are distinctly spoken
out, and adds that the Parliament of Paris, having heard the affair by
appeal, had declared the sentence illegal and the judges iniquitous, by
an arrét dated 20th May, 1491. The Jesuit Delrio quotes the passage, but
adheres with lingering reluctance to the truth of the accusation. "The
Waldenses (of whom the Albigenses are a species) were," he says, "never
free from the most wretched excess of fascination;" and finally, though
he allows the conduct of the judges to have been most odious, he cannot
prevail on himself to acquit the parties charged by such interested
accusers with horrors which should hardly have been found proved even
upon the most distinct evidence. He appeals on this occasion to
Florimond's work on Antichrist. The introduction of that work deserves
to be quoted, as strongly illustrative of the condition to which the
country was reduced, and calculated to make an impression the very
reverse probably of that which the writer would have desired:--
"All those who have afforded us some signs of the approach of Antichrist
agree that the increase of sorcery and witchcraft is to distinguish the
melancholy period of his advent; and was ever age so afflicted with them
as ours? The seats destined for criminals before our judicatories are
blackened with persons accused of this guilt. There are not judges
enough to try them. Our dungeons are gorged with them. No day passes
that we do not render our tribunals bloody by the dooms which we
pronounce, or in which we do not return to our homes discountenanced and
terrified at the horrible contents of the confessions which it has been
our duty to hear. And the devil is accounted so good a master that we
cannot commit so great a number of his slaves to the flames but what
there shall arise from their ashes a number sufficient to supply their
place."[48]
[Footnote 48: Florimond, "Concerning the Antichrist," cap. 7, n. 5,
quoted by Delrio, "De Magia," p. 820.]
This last statement, by which it appears that the most active and
unsparing inquisition was taking place, corresponds with the historical
notices of repeated persecutions upon this dreadful charge of sorcery. A
bull of Pope Innocent VIII. rang the tocsin against this formidable
crime, and set forth in the most dismal colours the guilt, while it
stimulated the inquisitors to the unsparing discharge of their duty in
searching out and punishing the guilty. "It is come to our ears," says
the bull, "that numbers of both sexes do not avoid to have intercourse
with the infernal fiends, and that by their sorceries they afflict both
man and beast; that they blight the marriage-bed, destroy the births of
women, and the increase of cattle; they blast the corn on the ground,
the grapes of the vineyard, the fruits of the trees, the grass and herbs
of the field." For which reasons the inquisitors were armed with the
apostolic power, and called upon to "convict, imprison, and punish," and
so forth.
Dreadful were the consequences of this bull all over the Continent,
especially in Italy, Germany, and France,[49] About 1485 Cumanus burnt
as witches forty-one poor women in one year in the county of Burlia. In
the ensuing years he continued the prosecution with such unremitting
zeal that many fled from the country.
[Footnote 49: Dr. Hutchinson quotes "H. Institor," 105, 161.]
Alciatus states that an inquisitor, about the same period, burnt an
hundred sorcerers in Piedmont, and persevered in his inquiries till
human patience was exhausted, and the people arose and drove him out of
the country, after which the jurisdiction was deferred to the
archbishop. That prelate consulted Alciatus himself, who had just then
obtained his doctor's degree in civil law, to which he was afterwards an
honour. A number of unfortunate wretches were brought for judgment,
fitter, according to the civilian's opinion, for a course of hellebore
than for the stake. Some were accused of having dishonoured the crucifix
and denied their salvation; others of having absconded to keep the
Devil's Sabbath, in spite of bolts and bars; others of having merely
joined in the choral dances around the witches' tree of rendezvous.
Several of their husbands and relatives swore that they were in bed and
asleep during these pretended excursions. Alciatus recommended gentle
and temperate measures; and the minds of the country became at length
composed.[50]
[Footnote 50: Alciat. "Parerg. Juris," lib. viii. chap. 22.]
In 1488, the country four leagues around Constance was laid waste by
lightning and tempest, and two women being, by fair means or foul, made
to confess themselves guilty as the cause of the devastation, suffered
death.
About 1515, 500 persons were executed at Geneva, under the character of
"Protestant witches," from which we may suppose many suffered for
heresy. Forty-eight witches were burnt at Ravensburgh within four years,
as Hutchison reports, on the authority of Mengho, the author of the
"Malleus Malleficarum." In Lorraine the learned inquisitor, Remigius,
boasts that he put to death 900 people in fifteen years. As many were
banished from that country, so that whole towns were on the point of
becoming desolate. In 1524, 1,000 persons were put to death in one year
at Como, in Italy, and about 100 every year after for several years.[51]
[Footnote 51: Bart. de Spina, de Strigilibus.]
In the beginning of the next century the persecution of witches broke
out in France with a fury which was hardly conceivable, and multitudes
were burnt amid that gay and lively people. Some notion of the extreme
prejudice of their judges may be drawn from the words of one of the
inquisitors themselves. Pierre de Lancre, royal councillor in the
Parliament of Bourdeaux, with whom the President Espaignel was joined in
a commission to enquire into certain acts of sorcery, reported to have
been committed in Labourt and its neighbourhood, at the foot of the
Pyrenees, about the month of May, 1619. A few extracts from the preface
will best evince the state of mind in which he proceeded to the
discharge of his commission.
His story assumes the form of a narrative of a direct war between Satan
on the one side and the Royal Commissioners on the other, "because,"
says Councillor de Lancre, with self-complaisance, "nothing is so
calculated to strike terror into the fiend and his dominions as a
commission with such plenary powers."
At first, Satan endeavoured to supply his vassals who were brought
before the judges with strength to support the examinations, so that if,
by intermission of the torture, the wretches should fall into a doze,
they declared, when they were recalled from it to the question, that the
profound stupor "had something of Paradise in it, being gilded," said
the judge, "with the immediate presence of the devil;" though, in all
probability, it rather derived its charms from the natural comparison
between the insensibility of exhaustion and the previous agony of acute
torture. The judges took care that the fiend seldom obtained any
advantage in the matter by refusing their victims, in most cases, any
interval of rest or sleep. Satan then proceeded, in the way of direct
defiance, to stop the mouth of the accused openly, and by mere force,
with something like a visible obstruction in their throat.
Notwithstanding this, to put the devil to shame, some of the accused
found means, in spite of him, to confess and be hanged, or rather burnt.
The fiend lost much credit by his failure on this occasion. Before the
formidable Commissioners arrived, he had held his _cour plénière_ before
the gates of Bourdeaux, and in the square of the palace of Galienne,
whereas he was now insulted publicly by his own vassals, and in the
midst of his festival of the Sabbath the children and relations of the
witches who had suffered not sticking to say to him, "Out upon you! Your
promise was that our mothers who were prisoners should not die; and look
how you have kept your word with us! They have been burnt, and are a
heap of ashes." To appease this mutiny Satan had two evasions. He
produced illusory fires, and encouraged the mutinous to walk through
them, assuring them that the judicial pile was as frigid and inoffensive
as those which he exhibited to them. Again, taking his refuge in lies,
of which he is well known to be the father, he stoutly affirmed that
their parents, who seemed to have suffered, were safe in a foreign
country, and that if their children would call on them they would
receive an answer. They made the invocation accordingly, and Satan
answered each of them in a tone which resembled the voice of the
lamented parent almost as successfully as Monsieur Alexandra could have
done.