CHAPTER I

The History of Civilization

_Edited by C. K. OGDEN, M.A._

The History of Witchcraft

The History of Civilization

_Edited by C. K. OGDEN, M.A._

HARRY ELMER BARNES, Ph.D., Consulting American Editor.

_The volumes already published are_:

*SOCIAL ORGANIZATION W. H. R. Rivers, F.R.S.

*A THOUSAND YEARS OF THE TARTARS Professor E. H. Parker

*THE THRESHOLD OF THE PACIFIC Dr. C. E. Fox

THE EARTH BEFORE HISTORY Edmond Perrier

PREHISTORIC MAN Jacques de Morgan

LANGUAGE Professor J. Vendryes

*HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF CHRISTIANITY Professor P. de Labriolle

*CHINA AND EUROPE Adolf Reichwein

*LONDON LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY M. Dorothy George

A GEOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION TO HISTORY Professor Lucien Febvre

*THE DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION V. Gordon Childe, B.Litt.

MESOPOTAMIA: BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN CIVILIZATION Prof. L. Delaporte

*THE ÆGEAN CIVILIZATION Professor Gustave Glotz

*THE PEOPLES OF ASIA L. H. Dudley Buxton

*THE MIGRATION OF SYMBOLS Donald A. Mackenzie

*LIFE AND WORK IN MODERN EUROPE Professor Georges Renard

*TRAVEL AND TRAVELLERS OF THE MIDDLE AGES Edited by Prof. A. P. Newton

*CIVILIZATION OF THE SOUTH AMERICAN INDIANS Rafael Karsten

RACE AND HISTORY Professor E. Pittard

FROM TRIBE TO EMPIRE Professor A. Moret

*A HISTORY OF WITCHCRAFT Montague Summers

*ANCIENT GREECE AT WORK Professor G. Glotz

THE FORMATION OF THE GREEK PEOPLE Professor A. Jardé

*THE ARYANS V. Gordon Childe, D.Litt.

PRIMITIVE ITALY Professor Léon Homo

ROME THE LAW-GIVER Professor J. Declareuil

THE ROMAN SPIRIT Professor A. Grenier

_In preparation_:

*LIFE AND WORK IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE Professor Boissonade

*A HISTORY OF MEDICINE C. G. Cumston, M.D.

ANCIENT PERSIA AND IRANIAN CIVILIZATION Professor C. Huart

*ANCIENT ROME AT WORK Paul Louis

THE LIFE OF BUDDHA E. H. Thomas, D.Litt.

* _An asterisk indicates that the volume does not form part of the French

collection “L’Évolution de l’Humanité.”_

_A complete classified list of the SERIES will be found at the end of

this volume._

[Illustration: PLATE I

THE DEPARTURE FOR THE SABBAT. David Teniers

[_frontispiece_]

The History of Witchcraft and

Demonology

By

MONTAGUE SUMMERS

_Initiati sunt Beelphegor: et comederunt sacrificia mortuorum._

_Et immolauerunt filios suos, et filias suas dæmoniis_

_Et effuderunt sanguinem innocentem. Et fornicati sunt in

adinuentionibus suis._—PSALM CV.

[Illustration]

NEW YORK

ALFRED A. KNOPF

1926

_To_

_PATRICK,_

_in memory of Loreto and Our Lady’s Holy House, as also

of Our Lady’s miraculous Picture at Campocavallo, Our

Lady of Pompeii, La Consolata of Turin, Consolatrix

Afflictorum in S. Caterina ai Funari at Rome, la Santissima

Vergine del Parto of S. Agostino, the Madonna della Strada

at the Gesù, La Nicopeja of San Marco at Venice,

Notre-Dame-de-Bonne-Nouvelle of Rennes, Notre-Dame de

Grande Puissance of Lamballe, and all the Italian and

French Madonnas at whose shrines we have worshipped._

Printed in Great Britain at

_The Mayflower Press, Plymouth_. William Brendon & Son, Ltd.

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION vii

CHAPTER

I. THE WITCH: HERETIC AND ANARCHIST 1

II. THE WORSHIP OF THE WITCH 51

III. DEMONS AND FAMILIARS 81

IV. THE SABBAT 110

V. THE WITCH IN HOLY WRIT 173

VI. DIABOLIC POSSESSION AND MODERN SPIRITISM 198

VII. THE WITCH IN DRAMATIC LITERATURE 276

BIBLIOGRAPHY 315

INDEX 347

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATE

I. THE DEPARTURE FOR THE SABBAT (David Teniers) _Frontispiece_

PAGE

II. THE WORLD TOST AT TENNIS. 4to., 1620 8

(_Facsimile title-page._)

III. COMPENDIVM MALEFICARVM. MEDIOLANI, 1626 82

(_Facsimile title-page of second edition._)

IV. OFF TO THE SABBAT (Queverdo) 120

V. THE SABBAT (Ziarnko) 144

VI. THE WITCH OF ENDOR (W. Faithorne) 178

(_Frontispiece to Sadducismus Triumphatus_, 1681)

VII. S. JAMES VISITS THE WARLOCK’S DEN (Pieter Breughel) 250

VIII. THE WITCH OF EDMONTON. 4to., 1658 290

(_Facsimile title-page._)

INTRODUCTION

The history of Witchcraft, a subject as old as the world and as wide as

the world,—since I understand for the present purpose by Witchcraft,

Sorcery, Black Magic, Necromancy, secret Divination, Satanism, and

every kind of malign occult art,—at once confronts the writer with a

most difficult problem. He is called upon to exercise a choice, and his

dilemma is by no means made the easier owing to the fact he is acutely

conscious that whichever way he may decide he is laying himself open to

damaging and not impertinent criticism. Since it is essential that his

work should be comprised within a reasonable compass he may elect to

attempt a bird’s-eye view of the whole range from China to Peru, from the

half-articulate, rhythmic incantations of primitive man at the dawn of

life to the last spiritistic fad and manifestation at yesterday’s séance

or circle, in which case his pages will most certainly be thin and often

superficial: or again he may rather concentrate upon one or two features

in the history of Witchcraft, deal with these at some length, stress some

few forgotten facts whose importance is now neglected and unrealized,

utilize new material the result of laborious research, but all this at

the expense of inevitable omissions, of hiatus, of self-denial, the

avoidance of fascinating by-ways and valuable inquiry, of silence when he

would fain be entering upon discussion and exposition. With a full sense

of its drawbacks and danger I have selected the second method, since in

dealing with a topic such as Witchcraft where there is no human hope of

recording more than a tithe of the facts I believe it is better to give

a documented account of certain aspects rather than to essay a somewhat

huddled and confused conspectus of the whole, for such, indeed, even at

best is itself bound to have no inconsiderable gaps and lacunæ, however

carefully we endeavour to make it complete. I am conscious, then, that

there is scarcely a paragraph in the present work which might not easily

be expanded into a page, scarcely a page which might not to its great

advantage become a chapter, and certainly not a chapter that would not be

vastly improved were it elaborated to a volume.

Many omissions are, as I have said, a necessary consequence of the plan I

have adopted; or, indeed, I venture to suppose, of any other plan which

contemplates the treatment of so universal a subject as Witchcraft. I

can but offer my apologies to these students who come to this History to

find details of Finnish magic and the sorceries of Lapland, who wish to

inform themselves concerning Tohungaism among the Maoris, Hindu devilry

and enchantments, the Bersekir of Iceland, Siberian Shamanism, the blind

Pan Sus and Mutangs of Korea, the Chinese Wu-po, Serbian lycanthropy,

negro Voodoism, the dark lore of old Scandinavia and Islam. I trust my

readers will believe that I regret as much as any the absence of these

from my work, but after all in any human endeavour there are practical

limitations of space.

In a complementary and companion volume I am intending to treat the

epidemic of Witchcraft in particular localities, the British Isles,

France, Germany, Italy, New England, and other countries. Many famous

cases, the Lancashire witch-trials, the activities of Matthew Hopkins,

Gilles de Rais, Gaufridi, Urbain Grandier, Cotton Mather and the Salem

sorceries, will then be dealt with and discussed in some detail.

It is a surprising fact that amongst English writers Witchcraft in

Europe has not of recent years received anything like adequate attention

from serious students of history, who strangely fail to recognize the

importance of this tragic belief both as a political and a social factor.

Magic, the genesis of magical cults and ceremonies, the ritual of

primitive peoples, traditional superstitions, and their ancillary lore,

have been made the subject of vast and erudite studies, mostly from an

anthropological and folk-loristic point of view, but the darker side of

the subject, the history of Satanism, seems hardly to have been attempted.

Possibly one reason for this neglect and ignorance lies in the fact that

the heavy and crass materialism, which was so prominent a feature during

the greater part of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in England,

intellectually disavowed the supernatural, and attempted not without

some success to substitute for religion a stolid system of respectable

morality. Since Witchcraft was entirely exploded it would, at best,

possess merely an antiquarian interest, and even so, the exhumation of

a disgusting and contemptible superstition was not to be encouraged.

It were more seemly to forget the uglier side of the past. This was

the attitude which prevailed for more than a hundred and fifty years,

and when Witchcraft came under discussion by such narrowly prejudiced

and inefficient writers as Lecky or Charles Mackay they are not even

concerned to discuss the possibility of the accounts given by the earlier

authorities, who, as they premise, were all mistaken, extravagant,

purblind, and misled. The cycle of time has had its revenge, and this

rationalistic superstition is dying fast. The extraordinary vogue of

and immense adherence to Spiritism would alone prove that, whilst the

widespread interest that is taken in mysticism is a yet healthier sign

that the world will no longer be content to be fed on dry husks and the

chaff of straw. And these are only just two indications, and by no means

the most significant, out of many.

It is quite impossible to appreciate and understand the true lives of men

and women in Elizabethan and Stuart England, in the France of Louis XIII

and his son, in the Italy of the Renaissance and the Catholic Reaction—to

name but three countries and a few definite periods—unless we have

some realization of the part that Witchcraft played in those ages amid

the affairs of these kingdoms. All classes were concerned from Pope to

peasant, from Queen to cottage gill.

Accordingly as actors are “the abstracts and brief chronicles of the

time” I have given a concluding chapter which deals with Witchcraft as

seen upon the stage, mainly concentrating upon the English theatre.

This review has not before been attempted, and since Witchcraft was so

formidable a social evil and so intermixed with all stations of life it

is obvious that we can find few better contemporary illustrations of it

than in the drama, for the playwright ever had his finger upon the public

pulse. Until the development of the novel it was the theatre alone that

mirrored manners and history.

There are many general French studies of Witchcraft of the greatest

value, amongst which we may name such standard works as Antoine-Louis

Daugis, _Traité sur la magie, le sortilège, les possessions,

obsessions et maléfices_, 1732; Jules Garinet, _Histoire de la Magie

en France depuis le commencement de la monarchie jusqu’à nos jours_,

1818; Michelet’s famous _La Sorcière_; Alfred Maury, _La Magie et

l’Astrologie_, 3rd edition, 1868; L’Abbé Lecanu, _Histoire de Satan_;

Jules Baissac, _Les grands Jours de la Sorcellerie_, 1890; Theodore de

Cauzons, _La Magie et la Sorcellerie en France_, 4 vols., 1910, etc.

In German we have Eberhard Hauber’s _Bibliotheca Magica_; Roskoff’s

_Geschichte des Teufels_, 1869; Soldan’s _Geschichte der Hexenprozesse_

(neu bearbeitet von Dr. Heinrich Heppe), 1880; Friedrich Leitschuch’s

_Beitræge zur Geschichte des Hexenwesens in Franken_, 1883; Johan

Dieffenbach’s _Der Hexenwahn vor und nach der Glaubensspaltung in

Deutschland_, 1886; Schreiber’s _Die Hexenprozesse im Breisgau_; Ludwig

Rapp’s _Die Hexenprozesse und ihre Gegner aus Tirol_; Joseph Hansen’s

_Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Hexenwahns_, 1901; and

very many more admirably documented studies.

In England the best of the older books must be recommended with necessary

reservations. Thomas Wright’s _Narratives of Sorcery and Magic_, 2 vols.,

1851, is to be commended as the work of a learned antiquarian who often

referred to original sources, but it is withal sketchy and can hardly

satisfy the careful scholar. Some exceptionally good writing and sound,

clear, thinking are to be met with in Dr. F. G. Lee’s _The Other World_,

2 vols., 1875; _More Glimpses of the World Unseen_, 1878; _Glimpses in

the Twilight_, 1885; and _Sight and Shadows_, 1894, all of which deserve

to be far more widely known, since they well repay an unhurried and

repeated perusal.

Quite recent work is represented by Professor Wallace Notestein’s

_History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718_, published in

1911. This intimate study of a century and a half concentrates, as its

title tells, upon England alone. It is supplied with ample and useful

appendixes. In respect of the orderly marshalling of his facts, garnered

from the trials and other sources—no small labour—Professor Notestein

deserves a generous meed of praise; his interpretation of the facts and

his deductions may not unfairly be criticized. Although his incredulity

must surely now and again be shaken by the cumulative force of reiterated

and corroborative evidence, nevertheless he refuses to admit even the

possibility that persons who at any rate affected supernatural powers

held clandestine meetings after nightfall in obscure and lonely places

for purposes and plots of their own. If human testimony is worth

anything at all, unless we are to be more Pyrrhonian than the famous

Dr. Marphurius himself who would never say, “Je suis venu; mais; Il me

semble que je suis venu,” when in 1612 Roger Nowell had swooped down on

the Lancashire coven and carried off Elizabeth Demdike with three other

beldames to durance vile in Lancaster Castle, Elizabeth Device summoned

the whole Pendle gang to her home at Malking Tower, in order that they

might discuss the situation and contrive the delivery of the prisoners.

As soon as they had forgathered, they all sat down to dinner, and had

a good north country spread of beef, bacon, and roast mutton. Surely

there is nothing very remarkable in this; and the evidence as given in

Thomas Potts’ famous narrative, _The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches

in the countie of Lancaster_ (London, 1613), bears the very hall-mark

and impress of truth: “The persons aforesaid had to their dinners Beefe,

Bacon, and roasted Mutton; which Mutton (as this Examinates said brother

said) was of a Wether of Christopher Swyers of Barley: which Wether was

brought in the night before into this Examinates mothers house by the

said Iames Deuice, the Examinates said brother: and in this Examinates

sight killed and eaten.” But Professor Notestein will none of it. He

writes: “The concurring evidence in the Malking Tower story is of no

more compelling character than that to be found in a multitude of

Continental stories of witch gatherings which have been shown to be the

outcome of physical or mental pressure and of leading questions. It seems

unnecessary to accept even a substratum of fact” (p. 124). In the face

of such sweeping and dogmatic assertion mere evidence is no use at all.

For we know that the Continental stories of witch gatherings are with

very few exceptions the chronicle of actual fact. It must be confessed

that such feeble scepticism, which repeatedly mars his summary of the

witch-trials, is a serious blemish in Professor Notestein’s work, and in

view of his industry much to be regretted.

Miss M. A. Murray does not for a moment countenance any such summary

dismissal and uncritical rejection of evidence. Her careful reading

of the writers upon Witchcraft has justly convinced her that their

statements must be accepted. Keen intelligences and shrewd investigators

such as Gregory XV, Bodin, Guazzo, De Lancre, D’Espagnet, La Reynie,

Boyle, Sir Matthew Hale, Glanvill, were neither deceivers nor deceived.

The evidence must stand, but as Miss Murray finds herself unable to

admit the logical consequence of this, she hurriedly starts away with

an arbitrary, “the statements do not bear the construction put upon

them,” and in _The Witch-Cult in Western Europe_ (1921) proceeds to

develop a most ingenious, but, as I show, a wholly untenable hypothesis.

Accordingly we are not surprised to find that many of the details

Miss Murray has collected in her painstaking pages are (no doubt

unconsciously) made to square with her preconceived theory. However much

I may differ from Miss Murray in my outlook, and our disagreement is, I

consider, neither slight nor superficial, I am none the less bound to

commend her frank and courageous treatment of many essential particulars

which are all too often suppressed, and in consequence a false and

counterfeit picture has not unseldom been drawn.

So vast a literature surrounds modern Witchcraft, for frankly such is

Spiritism in effect, that it were no easy task to mention even a quota

of those works which seem to throw some real light upon a complex and

difficult subject. Among many which I have found useful are Surbled,

_Spiritualisme et spiritisme_ and _Spirites et médiums_; Gutberlet,

_Der Kampf um die Seele_; Dr. Marcel Viollet, _Le spiritisme dans ses

rapports avec la folie_; J. Godfrey Raupert, _Modern Spiritism_ and

_Dangers of Spiritualism_; the Very Rev. Alexis Lépicier, O.S.M., _The

Unseen World_; the Rev. A. V. Miller, _Sermons on Modern Spiritualism_;

Lapponi, _Hypnotism and Spiritism_; the late Monsignor Hugh Benson’s

_Spiritualism_ (_The History of Religions_); Elliot O’Donnell’s _The

Menace of Spiritualism_; and Father Simon Blackmore’s _Spiritism: Facts

and Frauds_, 1925. My own opinion of this movement has been formed not

only from reading studies and monographs which treat of every phase of

the question from all points of view, but also by correspondence and

discussion with ardent devotees of the cult, and, not least, owing to

the admissions and warnings of those who have abandoned these dangerous

practices, revelations made in such circumstances, however, as altogether

to preclude even a hint as to their definite import and scope.

The History of Witchcraft is full of interest to the theologian, the

psychologist, the historian, and cannot be ignored. But it presents a

very dark and terrible aspect, the details of which in the few English

studies that claim serious attention have almost universally been

unrecorded, and, indeed, deliberately burked and shunned. Such treatment

is unworthy and unscholarly to a degree, reprehensible and dishonest.

The work of Professor Notestein, for example, is gravely vitiated,

owing to the fact that he has completely ignored the immodesty of the

witch-cult and thus extenuated its evil. He is, indeed, so uncritical, I

would even venture to say so unscholarly, as naïvely to remark (p. 300):

“No one who has not read for himself can have any notion of the vile

character of the charges and confessions embodied in the witch pamphlets.

It is an aspect of the question which has not been discussed in these

pages.” Such a confession is amazing. One cannot write in dainty phrase

of Satanists and the Sabbat. However loathly the disease the doctor must

not hesitate to diagnose and to probe. This ostrich-like policy is moral

cowardice. None of the Fathers and great writers of the Church were thus

culpably prudish. When S. Epiphanius has to discuss the Gnostics, he

describes in detail their abominations, and pertinently remarks: “Why

should I shrink from speaking of the things you do not fear to do? By

speaking thus, I hope to fill you with horror of the turpitudes you

commit.” And S. Clement of Alexandria says: “I am not ashamed to name the

parts of the body wherein the fœtus is formed and nourished; and why,

indeed, should I be, since God was not ashamed to create them?”

A few authors have painted the mediæval witch in pretty colours on

satin. She has become a somewhat eccentric but kindly old lady, shrewd

and perspicacious, with a knowledge of healing herbs and simples, ready

to advise and aid her neighbours who are duller-witted than she; not

disdaining in return a rustic present of a flitch, meal, a poult or eggs

from the farm-yard. And so for no very definite reason she fell an easy

prey to fanatic judges and ravening inquisitors, notoriously the most

ignorant and stupid of mortals, who caught her, swum her in a river,

tried her, tortured her, and finally burned her at the stake. Many modern

writers, more sceptical still, frankly relegate the witch to the land of

nursery tales and Christmas pantomime; she never had any real existence

other than as Cinderella’s fairy godmother or the Countess D’Aulnoy’s

Madame Merluche.

I have even heard it publicly asserted from the lecture platform by

a professed student of the Elizabethan period that the Elizabethans

did not, of course, as a matter of fact believe in Witchcraft. It

were impossible to imagine that men of the intellectual standard of

Shakespeare, Ford, Jonson, Fletcher, could have held so idle a chimæra,

born of sick fancies and hysteria. And his audience acquiesced with no

little complacency, pleased to think that the great names of the past had

been cleared from the stigma of so degrading and gross a superstition. A

few uneducated peasants here and there may have been morbid and ignorant

enough to dream of witches, and the poets used these crones and hags with

effect in ballad and play. But as for giving any actual credence to such

fantasies, most assuredly our great Elizabethans were more enlightened

than that! And, indeed, Witchcraft is a phase of and a factor in the

manners of the seventeenth century, which in some quarters there seems a

tacit agreement almost to ignore.

All this is very unhistorical and very unscientific. In the following

pages I have endeavoured to show the witch as she really was—an evil

liver; a social pest and parasite; the devotee of a loathly and obscene

creed; an adept at poisoning, blackmail, and other creeping crimes; a

member of a powerful secret organization inimical to Church and State;

a blasphemer in word and deed; swaying the villagers by terror and

superstition; a charlatan and a quack sometimes; a bawd; an abortionist;

the dark counsellor of lewd court ladies and adulterous gallants; a

minister to vice and inconceivable corruption; battening upon the filth

and foulest passions of the age.

My present work is the result of more than thirty years’ close attention

to the subject of Witchcraft, and during this period I have made a

systematic and intensive study of the older demonologists, as I am

convinced that their first-hand evidence is of prime importance and

value, whilst since their writings are very voluminous and of the

last rarity they have universally been neglected, and are allowed to

accumulate thick dust undisturbed. They are, moreover, often difficult

to read owing to technicalities of phrase and vocabulary. Among the most

authoritative I may cite a few names: Sprenger (_Malleus Maleficarum_);

Guazzo; Bartolomeo Spina, O.P.; John Nider, O.P.; Grilland; Jerome

Mengo; Binsfeld; Gerson; Ulrich Molitor; Basin; Murner; Crespet; Anania;

Henri Boguet; Bodin; Martin Delrio, S.J.; Pierre le Loyer; Ludwig Elich;

Godelmann; Nicolas Remy; Salerini; Leonard Vair; De Lancre; Alfonso de

Castro; Sebastian Michaelis, O.P.; Sinistrari; Perreaud; Dom Calmet;

Sylvester Mazzolini, O.P. (Prierias). When we supplement these by the

judicial records and the legal codes we have an immense body of material.

In all that I have written I have gone to original sources, and it has

been my endeavour fairly to weigh and balance the evidence, to judge

without heat or prejudice, to give the facts and the comment upon them

with candour, sincerity, and truth. At the same time I am very well aware

that several great scholars for whom I have the sincerest personal regard

and whose attainments I view with a very profound respect will differ

from me in many particulars.

I am conscious that the rough list of books which I have drawn up does

not deserve to be dignified with the title, Bibliography. It is sadly

incomplete, yet should it, however inadequate, prove helpful in the

smallest way it will have justified its inclusion. I may add that my

Biblical quotations, save where expressly otherwise noted, are from the

Vulgate or its translation into English commonly called the Douai Version.

IN FESTO S. TERESEIÆ, _V._

1925.

THE HISTORY OF WITCHCRAFT

CHAPTER I

THE WITCH: HERETIC AND ANARCHIST

“Sorcier est celuy qui par moyens Diaboliques sciemment s’efforce

de paruenir a quel que chose.” (“A sorcerer is one who by commerce

with the Devil has a full intention of attaining his own ends.”) With

these words the profoundly erudite jurisconsult Jean Bodin, one of

the acutest and most strictly impartial minds of his age, opens his

famous _De la Demonomanie des Sorciers_,[1] and it would be, I imagine,

hardly possible to discover a more concise, exact, comprehensive, and

intelligent definition of a Witch. The whole tremendous subject of

Witchcraft, especially as revealed in its multifold and remarkable

manifestations throughout every district of Southern and Western Europe

from the middle of the thirteenth until the dawn of the eighteenth

century,[2] has it would seem in recent times seldom, if ever, been

candidly and fairly examined. The only sound sources of information are

the contemporary records; the meticulously detailed legal reports of

the actual trials; the vast mass of pamphlets which give eye-witnessed

accounts of individual witches and reproduce evidence _uerbatim_ as

told in court; and, above all, the voluminous and highly technical

works of the Inquisitors and demonologists, holy and reverend divines,

doctors _utriusque iuris_, hard-headed, slow, and sober lawyers,—learned

men, scholars of philosophic mind, the most honourable names in the

universities of Europe, in the forefront of literature, science,

politics, and culture; monks who kept the conscience of kings, pontiffs;

whose word would set Europe aflame and bring an emperor to his knees at

their gate.

It is true that Witchcraft has formed the subject of a not inconsiderable

literature, but it will be found that inquirers have for the most

part approached this eternal and terrible chapter in the history of

humanity from biassed, although wholly divergent, points of view, and

in consequence it is often necessary to sift more or less thoroughly

their partial presentation of their theme, to discount their unwarranted

commentaries and illogical conclusions, and to get down in time to the

hard bed-rock of fact.

In the first place we have those writings and that interest which may be

termed merely antiquarian. Witchcraft is treated as a curious by-lane

of history, a superstition long since dead, having no existence among,

nor bearing upon, the affairs of the present day. It is a field for

folk-lore, where one may gather strange flowers and noxious weeds. Again,

we often recognize the romantic treatment of Witchcraft. ’Tis the Eve

of S. George, a dark wild night, the pale moon can but struggle thinly

through the thick massing clouds. The witches are abroad, and hurtle

swiftly aloft, a hideous covey, borne headlong on the skirling blast. In

delirious tones they are yelling foul mysterious words as they go: “Har!

Har! Har! Altri! Altri!” To some peak of the Brocken or lonely Cevennes

they haste, to the orgies of the Sabbat, the infernal Sacraments, the

dance of Acheron, the sweet and fearful fantasy of evil, “Vers les

stupres impurs et les baisers immondes.”[3] Hell seems to vomit its

foulest dregs upon the shrinking earth; a loathsome shape of obscene

horror squats huge and monstrous upon the ebon throne; the stifling air

reeks with filth and blasphemy; faster and faster whirls the witches’

lewd lavolta; shriller and shriller the cornemuse screams; and then a

wan grey light flickers in the Eastern sky; a moment more and there

sounds the loud clarion of some village chanticleer; swift as thought the

vile phantasmagoria vanishes and is sped, all is quiet and still in the

peaceful dawn.

But both the antiquarian and the romanticist reviews of Witchcraft may

be deemed negligible and impertinent so far as the present research is

concerned, however entertaining and picturesque such treatment proves to

many readers, affording not a few pleasant hours, whence they are able

to draw highly dramatic and brilliantly coloured pictures of old time

sorceries, not to be taken too seriously, for these things never were and

never could have been.[4]

The rationalist historian and the sceptic, when inevitably confronted

with the subject of Witchcraft, chose a charmingly easy way to deal with

these intensely complex and intricate problems, a flat denial of all

statements which did not fit, or could not by some means be squared with,

their own narrow prejudice. What matter the most irrefragable evidence,

which in the instance of any other accusation would unhesitatingly have

been regarded as final. What matter the logical and reasoned belief of

centuries, of the most cultured peoples, the highest intelligences of

Europe? Any appeal to authority is, of course, useless, as the sceptic

repudiates all authority—save his own. Such things could not be. We must

argue from that axiom, and therefore anything which it is impossible

to explain away by hallucination, or hysteria, or auto-suggestion,

or any other vague catch-word which may chance to be fashionable at

the moment, must be uncompromisingly rejected, and a note of superior

pity, to candy the so suave yet crushingly decisive judgement, has

proved of great service upon more occasions than one. Why examine the

evidence? It is really useless and a waste of time, because we know that

the allegations are all idle and ridiculous; the “facts” sworn to by

innumerable witnesses, which are repeated in changeless detail century

after century in every country, in every town, simply did not take place.

How so absolute and entire falsity of these facts can be demonstrated

the sceptic omits to inform us, but we must unquestioningly accept his

infallible authority in the face of reason, evidence, and truth.

Yet supposing that with clear and candid minds we proceed carefully to

investigate this accumulated evidence, to inquire into the circumstances

of a number of typical cases, to compare the trials of the fifteenth

century in France with the trials of the seventeenth century in England,

shall we not find that amid obvious accretions of fantastic and

superfluous detail a certain very solid substratum of a permanent and

invaried character is unmistakably to be traced throughout the whole?

This cannot in reason be denied, and here we have the core and the

enduring reality of Witchcraft and the witch-cult throughout the ages.

There were some gross superstitions; there were some unbridled

imaginations; there was deception, there was legerdemain; there was

phantasy; there was fraud; Henri Boguet seems, perhaps, a trifle

credulous, a little eager to explain obscure practices by an instant

appeal to the supernormal; Brother Jetzer, the Jacobin of Berne, can

only have been either the tool of his superiors or a cunning impostor;

Matthew Hopkins was an unmitigated scoundrel who preyed upon the fears of

the Essex franklins whilst he emptied their pockets; Lord Torphichen’s

son was an idle mischievous boy whose pranks not merely deluded both

his father and the Rev. Mr. John Wilkins, but caused considerable

mystification and amaze throughout the whole of Calder; Anne Robinson,

Mrs. Golding’s maid, and the two servant lasses of Baldarroch were

prestidigitators of no common sleight and skill; and all these examples

of ignorance, gullibility, malice, trickery, and imposture might easily

be multiplied twenty times over and twenty times again, yet when every

allowance has been made, every possible explanation exhausted, there

persists a congeries of solid proven fact which cannot be ignored, save

indeed by the purblind prejudice of the rationalist, and cannot be

accounted for, save that we recognize there were and are individuals and

organizations deliberately, nay, even enthusiastically, devoted to the

service of evil, greedy of such emotions and experiences, rewards the

thraldom of wickedness may bring.

The sceptic notoriously refuses to believe in Witchcraft, but a sanely

critical examination of the evidence at the witch-trials will show that a

vast amount of the modern vulgar incredulity is founded upon a complete

misconception of the facts, and it may be well worth while quite briefly

to review and correct some of the more common objections that are so

loosely and so repeatedly maintained. There are many points which are

urged as proving the fatuous absurdity and demonstrable impossibility of

the whole system, and yet there is not one of these phenomena which is

not capable of a satisfactory, and often a simple, elucidation. Perhaps

the first thought of a witch that will occur to the man in the street

is that of a hag on a broomstick flying up the chimney through the

air. This has often been pictorially impressed on his imagination, not

merely by woodcuts and illustrations traditionally presented in books,

but by the brush of great painters such as Queverdo’s _Le Départ au

Sabbat_, _Le Départ pour le Sabbat_ of David Teniers, and Goya’s midnight

fantasies. The famous Australian artist, Norman Lindsay, has a picture

_To The Sabbat_[5] where witches are depicted wildly rushing through

the air on the backs of grotesque pigs and hideous goats. Shakespeare,

too, elaborated the idea, and “Hover through the fog and filthy air”

has impressed itself upon the English imagination. But to descend from

the airy realms of painting and poetry to the hard ground of actuality.

Throughout the whole of the records there are very few instances when

a witness definitely asserted that he had seen a witch carried through

the air mounted upon a broom or stick of any kind, and on every occasion

there is patent and obvious exaggeration to secure an effect. Sometimes

the witches themselves boasted of this means of transport to impress

their hearers. Boguet records that Claudine Boban, a young girl whose

head was turned with pathological vanity, obviously a monomaniac who

must at all costs occupy the centre of the stage and be the cynosure of

public attention, confessed that she had been to the Sabbat, and this

was undoubtedly the case; but to walk or ride on horseback to the Sabbat

were far too ordinary methods of locomotion, melodrama and the marvellous

must find their place in her account and so she alleged: “that both she

and her mother used to mount on a broom, and so making their exit by the

chimney in this fashion they flew through the air to the Sabbat.”[6]

Julian Cox (1664) said that one evening when she was in the fields

about a mile away from the house “there came riding towards her three

persons upon three Broom-staves, born up about a yard and a half from the

ground.”[7] There is obvious exaggeration here; she saw two men and one

woman bestriding brooms and leaping high in the air. They were, in fact,

performing a magic rite, a figure of a dance. So it is recorded of the

Arab crones that “In the time of the Munkidh the witches rode about naked

on a stick between the graves of the cemetery of Shaizar.”[8] Nobody can

refuse to believe that the witches bestrode sticks and poles and in their

ritual capered to and fro in this manner, a sufficiently grotesque, but

by no means an impossible, action. And this bizarre ceremony, evidence

of which—with no reference to flying through the air—is frequent, has

been exaggerated and transformed into the popular superstition that

sorcerers are carried aloft and so transported from place to place, a

wonder they were all ready to exploit in proof of their magic powers. And

yet it is not impossible that there should have been actual instances of

levitation. For, outside the lives of the Saints, spiritistic séances

afford us examples of this supernormal phenomenon, which, if human

evidence is worth anything at all, are beyond all question proven.

As for the unguents wherewith the sorcerers anointed themselves we have

the actual formulæ for this composition, and Professor A. J. Clark, who

has examined these,[9] considers that it is possible a strong application

of such liniments might produce unwonted excitement and even delirium.

But long ago the great demonologists recognized and laid down that of

themselves the unguents possessed no such properties as the witches

supposed. “The ointment and lotion are just of no use at all to witches

to aid their journey to the Sabbat,” is the well-considered opinion

of Boguet who,[10] speaking with confident precision and finality, on

this point is in entire agreement with the most sceptical of later

rationalists.

The transformation of witches into animals and the extraordinary

appearance at their orgies of “the Devil” under many a hideously

unnatural shape, two points which have been repeatedly held up to

scorn as self-evident impossibilities and proof conclusive of the

untrustworthiness of the evidence and the incredibility of the whole

system, can both be easily and fairly interpreted in a way which offers

a complete and convincing explanation of these prodigies. The first

metamorphosis, indeed, is mentioned and fully explained in the _Liber

Pœnitentialis_[11] of S. Theodore, seventh Archbishop of Canterbury

(668-690), capitulum xxvii, which code includes under the rubric _De

Idolatria et Sacrilegio_ “qui in Kalendas Ianuarii in ceruulo et in

uitula uadit,” and prescribes: “If anyone at the Kalends of January goes

about as a stag or a bull; that is, making himself into a wild animal

and dressing in the skin of a herd animal, and putting on the heads of

beasts; those who in such wise transform themselves into the appearance

of a wild animal, penance for three years because this is devilish.”

These ritual masks, furs, and hides, were, of course, exactly those the

witches at certain ceremonies were wont to don for their Sabbats. There

is ample proof that “the Devil” of the Sabbat was very frequently a

human being, the Grand Master of the district, and since his officers

and immediate attendants were also termed “Devils” by the witches some

confusion has on occasion ensued. In a few cases where sufficient

details are given it is possible actually to identify “the Devil” by

name. Thus, among a list of suspected persons in the reign of Elizabeth

we have “Ould Birtles, the great devil, Roger Birtles and his wife, and

Anne Birtles.”[12] The evil William, Lord Soulis, of Hermitage Castle,

often known as “Red Cap,” was “the Devil” of a coven of sorcerers. Very

seldom “the Devil” was a woman. In May, 1569, the Regent of Scotland was

present at S. Andrews “quhair a notabill sorceres callit Nicniven was

condemnit to the death and burnt.” Now Nicniven is the Queen of Elphin,

the Mistress of the Sabbat, and this office had evidently been filled

by this witch whose real name is not recorded. On 8 November, 1576,

Elizabeth or Bessy Dunlop, of Lyne, in the Barony of Dalry, Ayrshire,

was tried for sorcery, and she confessed that a certain mysterious Thom

Reid had met her and demanded that she should renounce Christianity and

her baptism, and apparently worship him. There can be little doubt that

he was “the Devil” of a coven, for the original details, which are very

full, all point to this. He seems to have played his part with some

forethought and skill, since when the accused stated that she often saw

him in the churchyard of Dalry, as also in the streets of Edinburgh,

where he walked to and fro among other people and handled goods that were

exposed on bulks for sale without attracting any special notice, and was

thereupon asked why she did not address him, she replied that he had

forbidden her to recognize him on any such occasion unless he made a sign

or first actually accosted her. She was “convict and burnt.”[13] In the

case of Alison Peirson, tried 28 May, 1588, “the Devil” was actually her

kinsman, William Sympson, and she “wes conuict of the vsing of Sorcerie

and Witchcraft, with the Inuocatioun of the spreitis of the Deuill;

speciallie in the visioune and forme of ane Mr. William Sympsoune, hir

cousing and moder-brotheris-sone, quha sche affermit wes ane grit scoller

and doctor of medicin.”[14] _Conuicta et combusta_ is the terse record of

the margin of the court-book.

One of the most interesting identifications of “the Devil” occurs in the

course of the notorious trials of Dr. Fian and his associates in 1590-1.

As is well known, the whole crew was in league with Francis Stewart, Earl

of Bothwell, and even at the time well-founded gossip, and something more

than gossip, freely connected his name with the spells, Sabbats, and

orgies of the witches. He was vehemently suspected of the black art; he

was an undoubted client of warlocks and poisoners; his restless ambition

almost overtly aimed at the throne, and the witch covens were one and

all frantically attempting the life of King James. There can be no sort

of doubt that Bothwell was the moving force who energized and directed

the very elaborate and numerous organization of demonolaters, which was

almost accidentally brought to light, to be fiercely crushed by the

draconian vengeance of a monarch justly frightened for his crown and his

life.

In the nineteenth century both Albert Pike of Charleston and his

successor Adriano Lemmi have been identified upon abundant authority as

being Grand Masters of societies practising Satanism, and as performing

the hierarchical functions of “the Devil” at the modern Sabbat.

God, so far as His ordinary presence and action in Nature are concerned,

is hidden behind the veil of secondary causes, and when God’s ape, the

Demon, can work so successfully and obtain not merely devoted adherents

but fervent worshippers by human agency, there is plainly no need for him

to manifest himself in person either to particular individuals or at the

Sabbats, but none the less, that he can do so and has done so is certain,

since such is the sense of the Church, and there are many striking cases

in the records and trials which are to be explained in no other way.

That, as Burns Begg pointed out, the witches not unseldom “seem to have

been undoubtedly the victims of unscrupulous and designing knaves, who

personated Satan”[15] is no palliation of their crimes, and therefore

they are not one whit the less guilty of sorcery and devil-worship, for

this was their hearts’ intention and desire. Nor do I think that the man

who personated Satan at their assemblies was so much an unscrupulous and

designing knave as himself a demonist, believing intensely in the reality

of his own dark powers, wholly and horribly dedicated and doomed to the

service of evil.

[Illustration: PLATE II

THE WORLD TOST AT TENNIS. The First Quarto

[_face p. 8_]

We have seen that the witches were upon occasion wont to array

themselves in skins and ritual masks and there is complete evidence

that the hierophant at the Sabbat, when a human being played that rôle,

generally wore a corresponsive, if somewhat more elaborate, disguise.

Nay more, as regards the British Isles at least—and it seems clear that

in other countries the habit was very similar—we possess a pictorial

representation of “the Devil” as he appeared to the witches. During the

famous Fian trials Agnes Sampson confessed: “The deuell wes cled in ane

blak goun with ane blak hat vpon his head.... His faice was terrible, his

noise lyk the bek of ane egle, greet bournyng eyn; his handis and leggis

wer herry, with clawes vpon his handis, and feit lyk the griffon.”[16]

In the pamphlet _Newes from Scotland, Declaring the Damnable life and

death of Doctor Fian_[17] we have a rough woodcut, repeated twice, which

shows “the Devil” preaching from the North Berwick pulpit to the whole

coven of witches, and allowing for the crudity of the draughtsman and

a few unimportant differences of detail—the black gown and hat are not

portrayed—the demon in the picture is exactly like the description Agnes

Sampson gave. It must be remembered, too, that at the Sabbat she was

obviously in a state of morbid excitation, in part due to deep cups of

heady wine, the time was midnight, the place a haunted old church, the

only light a few flickering candles that burned with a ghastly blue flame.

Now “the Devil” as he is shown in the _Newes from Scotland_ illustration

is precisely the Devil who appears upon the title-page of Middleton and

Rowley’s Masque, _The World tost at Tennis_, 4to, 1620. This woodcut

presents an episode towards the end of the masque, and here the Devil

in traditional disguise, a grim black hairy shape with huge beaked

nose, monstrous claws, and the cloven hoofs of a griffin, in every

particular fits the details so closely observed by Agnes Sampson. I

have no doubt that the drawing for the masque was actually made in the

theatre, for although this kind of costly and decorative entertainment

was almost always designed for court or some great nobleman’s house we

know that _The World tost at Tennis_ was produced with considerable

success on the public stage “By the Prince his Seruants.” The dress,

then, of “the Devil” at the Sabbats seems frequently to have been an

elaborate theatrical costume, such as might have been found in the stock

wardrobe of a rich playhouse at London, but which would have had no such

associations for provincial folk and even simpler rustics.

From time to time the sceptics have pointed to the many cases upon record

of a victim’s sickness or death following the witch’s curse, and have

incredulously inquired if it be possible that a malediction should have

such consequences. Whilst candidly remarking that personally I believe

there is power for evil and even for destruction in such a bane, that a

deadly anathema launched with concentrated hate and all the energy of

volition may bring unhappiness and fatality in its train, I would—since

they will not allow this—answer their objections upon other lines. When

some person who had in any way annoyed the witch was to be harmed or

killed, it was obviously convenient, when practicable, to follow up the

symbolism of the solemn imprecation, or it might be of the melted wax

image riddled with pins, by a dose of subtly administered poison, which

would bring about the desired result, whether sickness or death; and

from the evidence concerning the witches’ victims, who so frequently

pined owing to a wasting disease, it seems more than probable that lethal

drugs were continually employed, for as Professor A. J. Clark records

“the society of witches had a very creditable knowledge of the art of

poisoning,”[18] and they are known to have freely used aconite, deadly

nightshade (belladonna), and hemlock.

So far then from the confessions of the witches being mere hysteria

and hallucination they are proved, even upon the most material

interpretation, to be in the main hideous and horrible fact.

In choosing examples to demonstrate this I have as yet referred almost

entirely to the witchcraft which raged from the middle of the thirteenth

to the beginning of the eighteenth century, inasmuch as that was the

period when the diabolic cult reached its height, when it spread as a

blight and a scourge throughout Europe and flaunted its most terrific

proportions. But it must not for a moment be supposed, as has often been

superficially believed, that Witchcraft was a product of the Middle

Ages, and that only then did authority adopt measures of repression

and legislate against the warlock and the sorceress. If attention has

been concentrated upon that period it is because during those and the

succeeding centuries Witchcraft blazed forth with unexampled virulence

and ferocity, that it threatened the peace, nay in some degree, the

salvation of mankind. But even pagan emperors had issued edicts

absolutely forbidding goetic theurgy, confiscating grimoires (_fatidici

libri_) and visiting necromancers with death. In A.U.C. 721 during

the triumvirate of Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus, all astrologers and

charmers were banished.[19] Maecenas called upon Augustus to punish

sorcerers, and plainly stated that those who devote themselves to magic

are despisers of the gods.[20] More than two thousand popular books of

spells, both in Greek and Latin, were discovered in Rome and publicly

burned.[21] In the reign of Tiberius a decree of the Senate exiled all

traffickers in occult arts; Lucius Pituanius, a notorious wizard, they

threw from the Tarpeian rock, and another, Publius Martius, was executed

_more prisco_ outside the Esquiline gate.[22]

Under Claudius the Senate reiterated the sentence of banishment:

“De mathematicis Italia pellendis factum Senatus consultum, atrox

et irritum,” says Tacitus.[23] During the few months he was emperor

Vitellius proceeded with implacable severity against all soothsayers and

diviners; many of whom, when accused, he ordered for instant execution,

not even affording them the tritest formality of a trial.[24] Vespasian,

again, his successor, refused to permit scryers and enchanters to set

foot in Italy, strictly enforcing the existent statutes.[25] It is clear

from all these stringent laws, and the list of examples might be greatly

extended, that although under the Cæsars omens were respected, oracles

were consulted, the augurs honoured, and haruspices revered, the dark

influences and foul criminality of the reverse of that dangerous science

were recognized and its professors punished with the full force of

repeated legislation.

M. de Cauzons has expressed himself somewhat vigorously when speaking

of writers who trace the origins of Witchcraft to the Middle Ages:

“C’est une mauvaise plaisanterie,” he remarks,[26] “ou une contrevérité

flagrante, d’affirmer que la sorcellerie naquit au Moyen-Age, et

d’attribuer son existence à l’influence ou aux croyances de l’Eglise.”

(It is either a silly jest or inept irony to pretend that Witchcraft

arose in the Middle Ages, to attribute its existence to the influence or

the beliefs of the Catholic Church.)

An even more erroneous assertion is the charge which has been not

infrequently but over-emphatically brought forward by partial

ill-documented historians to the effect that the European crusade against

witches, the stern and searching prosecutions with the ultimate penalty

of death at the stake, are entirely due to the Bull _Summis desiderantes

affectibus_, 5 December, 1484, of Pope Innocent VIII; or that at any

rate this famous document, if it did not actually initiate the campaign,

blew to blasts of flame and fury the smouldering and half-cold embers.

This is most preposterously affirmed by Mackay, who does not hesitate

to write[27]: “There happened at that time to be a pontiff at the head

of the Church who had given much of his attention to the subject of

Witchcraft, and who, with the intention of rooting out the supposed

crime, did more to increase it than any other man that ever lived. John

Baptist Cibo, elected to the papacy in 1485,[28] under the designation

of Innocent VIII, was sincerely alarmed at the number of witches, and

launched forth his terrible manifesto against them. In his celebrated

bull of 1488, he called the nations of Europe to the rescue of the Church

of Christ upon earth, ‘imperilled by the arts of Satan’” which last

sentence seems to be a very fair statement of fact. Lecky notes the Bull

of Innocent which, he extravagantly declares, “gave a fearful impetus to

the persecution.”[29] Dr. Davidson, in a brief but slanderous account

of this great pontiff, gives angry prominence to his severity “against

sorcerers, magicians, and witches.”[30] It is useless to cite more of

these superficial and crooked judgements; but since even authorities of

weight and value have been deluded and fallen into the snare it is worth

while labouring the point a little and stressing the fact that the

Bull of Innocent VIII was only one of a long series of Papal ordinances

dealing with the suppression of a monstrous and almost universal evil.[31]

The first Papal Bull directly launched against the black art and its

professors was that of Alexander IV, 13 December, 1258, addressed to

the Franciscan inquisitors. And it is worth while here to examine

precisely what was the earlier connotation of the terms “inquisitor”

and “inquisition,” so often misunderstood, as our research, though

brief, will throw a flood of light upon the subject of Witchcraft, and,

moreover, incidentally will serve to explain how that those writers who

assign the beginnings of Witchcraft to the Middle Ages, although most

certainly and even demonstrably in error, have at any rate been very

subtilely and easily led wrong, since sorcery in the Middle Ages was

violently unmasked and the whole horrid craft then first authoritatively

exposed in its darkest colours and most abominable manifestations, as

had indeed existed from the first, but had been carefully hidden and

scrupulously concealed.

By the term Inquisition (_inquirere_ = to look into) is now generally

understood a special ecclesiastical institution for combating or

suppressing heresy, and the Inquisitors are the officials attached to

the said institution, more particularly judges who are appointed to

investigate the charges of heresy and to try the persons brought before

them on those charges. During the first twelve centuries the Church was

loath to deal with heretics save by argument and persuasion; obstinate

and avowed heretics were, of course, excluded from her communion, a

defection which in the ages of faith, naturally involved them in many and

great difficulties. S. Augustine,[32] S. John Chrysostom,[33] S. Isidore

of Seville[34] in the seventh century, and a number of other Doctors

and Fathers held that for no cause whatsoever should the Church shed

blood; but, on the other hand, the imperial successors of Constantine

justly considered that they were obliged to have a care for the material

welfare of the Church here on earth, and that heresy is always inevitably

and inextricably entangled with attempts on the social order, always

anarchical, always political. Even the pagan persecutor Diocletian

recognized this fact, which heretics, until they obtain the upper hand,

have throughout the ages consistently denied and endeavoured to disguise.

For in 287, less than two years after his accession, he sent to the

stake the leaders of the Manichees; the majority of their followers were

beheaded, and a few less culpable sent to perpetual forced labour in the

government mines. Again in 296 he orders their extermination (_stirpitus

amputari_) as a sordid, vile, and impure sect. So the Christian Cæsars,

persuaded that the protection of orthodoxy was their sacred duty, began

to issue edicts for the suppression of heretics as being traitors

and anti-social revolutionaries.[35] But the Church protested, and

when Priscillian, Bishop of Avila, being found guilty of heresy and

sorcery,[36] was condemned to death by Maximus at Trier in 384, S. Martin

of Tours addressed the Emperor in such plain terms that it was solemnly

promised the sentence should not be carried into effect. However, the

pledge was broken, and S. Martin’s indignation was such that for a long

while he refused to hold communion with those who had been in any way

responsible for the execution, which S. Ambrose roundly stigmatized as a

heinous crime.[37] Even more crushing were the words of Pope S. Siricius,

before whom Maximus was fain to humble himself in lowliest penitence, and

the supreme pontiff actually excommunicated Bishop Felix of Trier for his

part in the deed.

From time to time heretics were put to death under the civil law to

which they were amenable, as in 556 when a band of Manichees were

executed at Ravenna. Pope Pelagius I, who was consecrated that very

year, when Paulinus of Fossombrone, rejecting his authority, openly

stirred up schism and revolt, merely relegated the recalcitrant bishop

to a monastery. Saint Cæsarius of Arles, who died in 547, speaking[38]

of the punishment to be meted out to those who obstinately persevere

in overt paganism, recommends that they should first be remonstrated

with and reprimanded, that they should if possible be thus persuaded of

their errors; but if they persist certain corporal chastisement is to be

given; and in extreme cases a course of domestic discipline, the cutting

of the hair close as a mark of indignity and confinement within doors

under restraint, may be adopted. There is no hint of anything more than

private measures, no calling in of any ecclesiastical authority, far

less an appeal to any punitive tribunal.

In the days of Charlemagne the aged Elipandus, Archbishop of Toledo,

taught an offshoot of the Nestorian heresy, Adoptionism, a crafty but

deadly error, to which he won the slippery dialectician Felix of Urgel.

Felix, as a Frankish prelate, was summoned to Aix-la-Chapelle. A synod

condemned his doctrine and he recanted, only to retract his words and to

reiterate his blasphemies. He was again condemned, and again he recanted.

But he proved shifty and tricksome to the last. For after his death

Agobar of Lyons found amongst his papers a scroll asserting that of this

heresy he was fully persuaded, in spite of any contradictions to which he

might hypocritically subscribe. Yet Felix only suffered a short detention

at Rome, whilst no measures seem to have been taken against Elipandus,

who died in his errors. It was presumably considered that orthodoxy could

be sufficiently served and vindicated by the zeal of such great names as

Beatus, Abbot of Libana; Etherius, Bishop of Osma; S. Benedict of Aniane;

and the glorious Alcuin.[39]

Some forty years later, about the middle of the ninth century,

Gothescalch, a monk of Fulda, caused great scandal by obstinately and

impudently maintaining that Christ had not died for all mankind, a

foretaste of the Calvinistic heresy. He was condemned at the Synods

of Mainz in 848, and of Kiersey-sur-Oise in 849, being sentenced to

flogging and imprisonment, punishments then common in monasteries

for various infractions of the rule. In this case, as particularly

flagrant, it was Hinemar, Archbishop of Rheims, a prelate notorious

for his severity, who sentenced the culprit to incarceration. But

Gothescalch had by his pernicious doctrines been the cause of serious

disturbances; and his inflammatory harangues had excited tumults,

sedition, and unrest, bringing odium upon the sacred habit. The sentence

of the Kiersey Synod ran: “Frater Goteschale ... quia et ecclesiastica

et ciuilia negotia contra propositum et nomen monachi conturbare iura

ecclesiastica præsumpsisti, durissimis uerberibus te cagistari et

secundum ecclesiasticas regulas ergastulo retrudi, auctoritate episcopali

decernimus.” (Brother Gothescalch, ... because thou hast dared—contrary

to thy monastic calling and vows—to concern thyself in worldly as well

as spiritual businesses and hast violated all ecclesiastical law and

order, by our episcopal authority we condemn thee to be severely scourged

and according to the provision of the Church to be closely imprisoned.)

From these instances it will be seen that the Church throughout all those

centuries of violence, rapine, invasion, and war, when often primitive

savagery reigned supreme and the most hideous cruelty was the general

order of the day, dealt very gently with the rebel and the heretic, whom

she might have executed wholesale with the greatest ease; no voice would

have been raised in protest save that of her own pontiffs, doctors,

and Saints; nay, rather, such repression would have been universally

applauded as eminently proper and just. But it was the civil power who

arraigned the anarch and the misbeliever, who sentenced him to death.

About the year 1000, however, the venom of Manichæism obtained a new

footing in the West, where it had died out early in the sixth century.

Between 1030-40 an important Manichæan community was discovered at

the Castle of Monteforte, near Asti, in Piedmont. Some of the members

were arrested by the Bishop of Asti and a number of noblemen in the

neighbourhood, and upon their refusal to retract the civil arm burned

them. Others, by order of the Archbishop of Milan, Ariberto, were brought

to that city since he hoped to convert them. They answered his efforts

by attempts to make proselytes; whereupon Lanzano, a prominent noble and

leader of the popular party, caused the magistrates to intervene and when

they had been taken into the custody of the State they were executed

without further respite. For the next two hundred years Manichæism

spread its infernal teaching in secret until, towards the year 1200,

the plague had infected all Italy and Southern Europe, had reached

northwards to Germany, where it was completely organized, and was not

unknown in England, since as early as 1159 thirty foreign Manichees had

privily settled here. They were discovered in 1166, and handed over to

the secular authorities by the Bishops of the Council of Oxford. In high

wrath Henry II ordered them to be scourged, branded in the forehead, and

cast adrift in the cold of winter, straightly forbidding any to succour

such vile criminals, so all perished from cold and exposure. Manichæism

furthermore split up into an almost infinite number of sects and systems,

prominent amongst which were the Cathari, the Aldonistæ and Speronistæ,

the Concorrezenses of Lombardy, the Bagnolenses, the Albigenses,

Pauliciani, Patarini, Bogomiles, the Waldenses, Tartarins, Beghards,

Pauvres de Lyon.

It must be clearly borne in mind that these heretical bodies with their

endless ramifications were not merely exponents of erroneous religious

and intellectual beliefs by which they morally corrupted all who came

under their influence, but they were the avowed enemies of law and

order, red-hot anarchists who would stop at nothing to gain their ends.

Terrorism and secret murder were their most frequent weapons. In 1199

the Patarini followers of Ermanno of Parma and Gottardo of Marsi, two

firebrands of revolt, foully assassinated S. Peter Parenzo, the governor

of Orvieto. On 6 April, 1252, whilst returning from Como to Milan, as he

passed through a lonely wood S. Peter of Verona was struck down by the

axe of a certain Carino, a Manichæan bravo, who had been hired to the

deed.[40] By such acts they sought to intimidate whole districts, and to

compel men’s allegiance with blood and violence. The Manichæan system was

in truth a simultaneous attack upon the Church and the State, a desperate

but well-planned organization to destroy the whole fabric of society, to

reduce civilization to chaos. In the first instance, as the Popes began

to perceive the momentousness of the struggle they engaged the bishops to

stem the tide. At the Council of Tours, 1163, Alexander III called upon

the bishops of Gascony to take active measures for the suppression of

these revolutionaries, but at the Lateran Council of 1179 it was found

these disturbers of public order had sown such sedition in Languedoc that

an appeal was made to the secular power to check the evil. In 1184 Lucius

III issued from Verona his Bull _Ad Abolendam_ which expressly mentions

many of the heretics by name, Cathari, Patarini, Humiliati, Pauvres de

Lyon, Pasagians, Josephins, Aldonistæ. The situation had fast developed

and become serious. Heretics were to be sought out and suitably punished,

by which, however, capital punishment is not intended. Innocent III,

although adding nothing essential to these regulations yet gave them

fuller scope and clearer definition. In his Decretals he precisely

speaks of accusation, denunciation, and inquisition, and it is obvious

that these measures were necessary in the face of a great secret society

aiming at nothing less than the destruction of the established order,

for all the sectaries were engaged upon the most zealous propaganda,

and their adherents had spread like a network over the greater part of

Europe. The members bore the title of “brother” and “sister,” and had

words and signs by which the initiate could recognize one another without

betraying themselves to others.[41] Ivan de Narbonne, who was converted

from this heresy, in a letter to Giraldus, Archbishop of Bordeaux, as

quoted by Matthew of Paris, says that in every city where he travelled he

was always able to make himself known by signs.[42]

It was necessary that the diocesan bishops should be assisted in their

heavy task of tracking down heretics, and accordingly the Holy See had

resource to legates who were furnished with extraordinary powers to

cope with so perplexing a situation. In 1177 as legate of Alexander

III, Peter, Cardinal of San Crisogono, at the particular request of

Count Raymond V, visited the Toulouse district to check the rising tide

of Catharist doctrine.[43] In 1181, Henry, Abbot of Clairvaux, who had

been in his suite, now Cardinal of Albano, as legate of the same Pope,

received the submission of various heretical leaders, and, so extensive

were his powers, solemnly deposed the Archbishops of Lyons and Narbonne.

In 1203 Peter of Castelnau and Raoul were acting at Toulouse on behalf

of Innocent III, seemingly with plenipotentiary authority. The next year

Arnauld Amaury, Abbot of Citeaux, was joined to them to form a triple

tribunal with absolute power to judge heretics in the provinces of Aix,

Arles, Narbonne, and the adjoining dioceses. At the death of Innocent III

(1216) there existed an organization to search out heretics; episcopal

tribunals at which often sat an assessor (the future inquisitor) to watch

the conduct of the case; and above all the legate to whom he might make a

report. The legate, from his position, was naturally a prelate occupied

with a vast number of urgent affairs—Arnauld Amaury, for example, was

absent for a considerable time to take part in the General Chapter

at Cluny—and gradually more and more authority was delegated to the

assessor, who insensibly developed into the Inquisitor, a special but

permanent judge acting in the name of the Pope, by whom he was invested

with the right and the duty to deal legally with offences against the

Faith. And as just at this time there came into being two new Orders, the

Dominicans and Franciscans, whose members by their theological training

and the very nature of their vows seemed eminently fitted to perform the

inquisitorial task with complete success, absolutely uninfluenced by any

worldly motive, it is natural that the new officials should have been

selected from these Orders, and, owing to the importance attached by the

Dominicans to the study of divinity, especially from their learned ranks.

It is very obvious why the Holy See so sagaciously preferred to assign

the prosecution of heretics, a matter of the first importance, to an

extraordinary tribunal rather than leave the trials in the hands of the

bishops. Without taking into consideration the fact that these new duties

would have seriously encroached upon, if not wholly absorbed, the time

and activities of a bishop, the prelates who ruled most dioceses were

the subject of some monarch with whom they might have come in conflict

on many a delicate point which could easily be conceived to arise, and

the result of such disagreement would have been fraught with endless

political difficulties and internal embarrassments. A court of religious,

responsible to the Pope alone, would act more fairly, more freely,

without fear or favour. The profligate Philip I of France, for example,

during his long, worthless, and dishonoured reign (1060-1108), by his

evil courses drew upon himself the censure of the Church, whereupon

he banished the Bishop of Beauvais and revoked the decisions of the

episcopal courts.[44] In a letter[45] to William, Count of Poitiers,

Pope S. Gregory VII energetically declares that if the King does not

cease from molesting the bishops and interfering with their judicature

a sentence of excommunication will be launched. In another letter the

same pontiff complains of the disrespect shown to the ecclesiastical

tribunals, and addressing the French bishops he cries: “Your king, who

sooth to say should be termed not a king but a cruel tyrant, inspired

by Satan, is the head and cause of these evils. For he has notoriously

passed all his days in foulest crimes, in seeking to do wickedness and to

ensue it.”[46] The conflict of the bishops of a realm with an unworthy

and evil monarch is a commonplace of history. These troubles could

scarcely arise in the case of courts forane.

The words “inquisition” and “inquisitors” began definitely to acquire

their accepted signification in the earlier half of the thirteenth

century. Thus in 1235 Gregory IX writes to the Archbishop of Sens: “Know

then that we have charged the Provincial of the Order of Preachers in

this same realm to nominate certain of his brethren, who are best fitted

for so weighty a business, as Inquisitors that they may proceed against

all notorious evildoers in the aforesaid realm ... and we also charge

thee, dear Brother, that thou shouldest be instant and zealous in this

matter of establishing an Inquisition by the appointment of those who

seem to be best fitted for such a work, and let thy loins be girded,

Brother, to fight boldly the battles of the Lord.”[47] In 1246 Innocent

IV wrote to the Superiors of the Franciscans giving them leave to recall

at will: “those brethren who have been sent abroad to preach the Mystery

of the Cross of Christ, or to seek out and take measure against the

plague sore of heresy.”[48]

All the heresies, and the Secret Societies of heretics, which infested

Europe during the Middle Ages were Gnostic, and even more narrowly,

Manichæan in character. The Gnostics arose almost with the advent of

Christianity as a School or Schools who explained the teachings of Christ

by blending them with the doctrines of pagan fantasts, and thus they

claimed to have a Higher and a Wider Knowledge, the Γνῶσις the first

exponent of which was unquestionably Simon Magus. “Two problems borrowed

from heathen philosophy,” says Mansel,[49] “were intruded by Gnosticism

on the Christian revelation, the problem of absolute existence, and

the problem of the Origin of Evil.” The Gnostics denied the existence

of Free-will, and therefore Evil was not the result of Man’s voluntary

transgression, but must in some way have emanated from the Creator

Himself. Arguing on these lines the majority asserted that the Creator

must have been a malignant power, Lord of the Kingdom of Darkness,

opposed to the Supreme and Ineffable God. This doctrine was taught by

the Gnostic sects of Persia, which became deeply imbued with the religion

of Zoroaster, who assumed the existence of two original and independent

Powers of Good and of Evil. Each of these Powers is of equal strength,

and supreme in his own dominions, whilst constant war is waged between

the two. This doctrine was particularly held by the Syrian Gnostics, the

Ophites, the Naasseni, the Peratæ, the Sethians, amongst whom the serpent

was the principal symbol. As the Creator of the world was evil, the

Tempter, the Serpent, was the benefactor of man. In fact, in some creeds

he was identified with the Logos. The Cainites carried out the Ophite

doctrines to their fullest logical conclusion. Since the Creator, the

God of the Old Testament, is evil all that is commended by the Scripture

must be evil, and conversely all that is condemned therein is good. Cain,

Korah, the rebels, are to be imitated and admired. The one true Apostle

was Judas Iscariot. This cult is very plainly marked in the Middle Ages

among the Luciferians; and Cainite ceremonies have their place in the

witches’ Sabbat.[50]

All this Gnostic teaching was summed up in the gospel of the Persian

Mani, who, when but a young man of twenty-six, seems first to have

proclaimed in the streets and bazaars of Seleucia-Ctesiphon his supposed

message on Sunday, 20 March, 242, the coronation festival of Shapur I.

He did not meet with immediate success in his own country, but here

and there his ideas took deep root. In 276-277, however, he was seized

and crucified by the grandson of Shapur, Bahram I, his disciples being

relentlessly pursued. Whenever Manichees were discovered they were

brought to swift justice, executed, held up to universal hatred and

contempt. They were considered by Moslems as not merely Unbelievers,

the followers of a false impostor, but unnatural and unsocial, a menace

to the State. It was for no light cause that the Manichee was loathed

and abhorred both by faithful Christian and by those who proclaimed

Mohammed as the true prophet of Allah. But later Manichæism spread

in every direction to an extraordinary degree, which may perhaps be

accounted for by the fact that it is in some sense a synthesis of the

Gnostic philosophies, the theory of two eternal principles, good and

evil, being especially emphasized. Moreover, the historical Jesus,

“the Jewish Messias, whom the Jews crucified,” was “a devil, who was

justly punished for interfering in the work of the Æon Jesus,” who was

neither born nor suffered death. As time went on, the elaborate cosmogony

of Mani disappeared, but the idea that the Christ must be repudiated

remained. And logically, then, worship is due to the enemy of Christ,

and a sub-sect, the Messalians or Euchites, taught that divine honours

must be paid to Satan, who is further to be propitiated by means of every

possible outrage done to Christ. This, of course, is plain and simple

Satanism openly avowed. Carpocrates even went so far as to aggravate the

teaching of the Cainites, for he made the performance of every species

of sin forbidden in the Old Testament a solemn duty, since this was the

completest mode of showing defiance to the Evil Creator and Ruler of the

World. This doctrine was wholly that of mediæval witches, and is flaunted

by modern Satanists. Although the Manichees affected the greatest purity,

it is quite certain that not unchastity but the act of generation alone

was opposed to their views; secretly they practised the most hideous

obscenities.[51] The Messalians in particular, vaunted a treatise

_Asceticus_, which was condemned by the Third General Council of Ephesus

(431) as “that filthy book of this heresy,” and in Armenia, in the fifth

century, special edicts were passed to restrain their immoralities, so

that their very name became the equivalent for “lewdness.” The Messalians

survived unto the Middle Ages as Bogomiles.

Attention has already been drawn to the striking fact that even

Diocletian legislated with no small vigour against the Manichees, and

when we find Valentinian I and his son Gratian, although tolerant of

other bodies, passing laws of equal severity in this regard (372), we

feel that such interdiction is especially significant. Theodosius I, by

a statute of 381, declared Manichees to be without civil rights, and

incapable of inheriting; in the following year he condemned them to

death, and in 389 he sternly directed the rigorous enforcement to the

letter of these penalties.

Valentinian II confiscated their goods, annulled their wills, and sent

them into exile. Honorius in 399 renewed the draconian measures of his

predecessors; in 405 he heavily fined all governors of provinces or

civil magistrates who were slack in carrying out his orders; in 407 he

pronounced the sect outlaws and public criminals having no legal status

whatsoever, and in 408 he reiterated the former enactments in meticulous

detail to afford no loophole of escape. Theodosius II (423), again,

repeated this legislation, whilst Valentinian III passed fresh laws in

425 and 445. Anastasius once more decreed the penalty of death, which

was even extended by Justin and Justinian to convert from Manichæism who

did not at once denounce their former coreligionists to the authorities.

This catena of laws which aims at nothing less than extermination is of

singular moment.

About 660 arose the Paulicians, a Manichæan sect, who rejected the Old

Testament, the Sacraments, and the Priesthood. In 835 it was realized

that the government of this body was political and aimed at revolution

and red anarchy. In 970 John Zimisces fixed their headquarters in

Thrace. In 1115 Alexis Comnenus established himself during the winter

at Philippopolis, and avowed his intention of converting them, the only

result being that the heretics were driven westward and spread rapidly in

France and Italy.

The Bogomiles were also Manichees. They openly worshipped Satan,

repudiating Holy Mass and the Passion, rejecting Holy Baptism for some

foul ceremony of their own, and possessing a peculiar version of the

Gospel of S. John. As Cathari these wretches had their Centre for France

at Toulouse; for Germany at Cologne; whilst in Italy, Milan, Florence,

Orvieto, and Viterbo were their rallying-points. Their meetings were

often held in the open air, on mountains, or in the depths of some lone

valley; the ritual was very secret, but we know that at night they

celebrated their Eucharist of Consolamentum, when all stood in a circle

round a table covered with a white cloth and numerous torches were

kindled, the service being closed by the reading of the first seventeen

verses of their transfigured gospel. Bread was broken, but there is a

tradition that the words of consecration were not pronounced according to

the Christian formula; in some instances they were altogether omitted.

During the eleventh century, then, there began to spread throughout

Europe a number of mysterious organizations whose adherents, in a

secrecy that was all but absolute, practiced obscure rites embodying

their beliefs, the central feature of which was the adoration of the

evil principle, the demon. But what is this save Satanism, or in other

words Witchcraft? It is true that when these heresies came into sharp

conflict with the Catholic Church they developed on lines which lost

various non-essential accretions and Eastern subtleties of extravagant

thought, but the motive of the Manichæan doctrines and of Witchcraft is

one and the same, and the punishment of Manichees and of witches was the

same death at the stake. The fact that these heretics were recognized

as sorcerers will explain, as nothing else can, the severity of the

statutes against them, evidence of no ordinary depravity, and early in

the eleventh century Manichee and warlock are recognized as synonymous.

The sorcery of the Middle Ages, says Carl Haas, a learned and impartial

authority, was born from the heresies of earlier epochs, and just as

Christian authority had dealt with heresy, so did it deal with the spawn

witchcraft. Both alike are the result of doubts, of faithlessness, a

disordered imagination, pride and presumption, intellectual arrogance;

sick phantasy both, they grow and flourish apace in shadow and sin, until

right reasoning, and sometimes salutary force, are definitely opposed to

them. The authors of the _Malleus Maleficarum_ clearly identify heresy

and Witchcraft. When the Prince Bishop of Bamberg, John George II Fuchs

von Bornheim, (1623-33), built a strong prison especially for sorcerers,

the _Drudenhaus_, he set over the great door a figure of Justice, and

inscribed above Vergil’s words: _Discite iustitiam moniti et non temnere

Diuos_ (_Æneid_, VI, 620),

(Behold, and learn to practise right,

Nor do the blessed Gods despite).

To the right and the left were engraved upon two panels, the one Latin,

the other German, two verses from the Bible, 3 Kings ix. 8, 9; which are

Englished as follows: “This house shall be made an example of: every

one that shall pass by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss, and say:

Why hath the Lord done thus to this land, and to this house? And they

shall answer: Because they forsook the Lord their God, who brought their

fathers out of the land of Egypt, and followed strange gods, and adored

them, and worshipped them: therefore hath the Lord brought upon them

all this evil.” This is a concise summary of the basic reason for the

prosecution of witches, the standpoint of Christian authority, whose

professors justly and logically regarded sorcery as being in essence

heresy, to be suppressed by the same measures, to be punished with the

same penalties.

In connexion with the close correlation between Witchcraft and heresy

there is a very remarkable fact, the significance of which has—so far

as I am aware—never been noted. The full fury of prosecution burst over

England during the first half of the seventeenth century, that is to

say, shortly after the era of a great religious upheaval, when the work

of rehabilitation and recovery so nobly initiated by Queen Mary I had

been wrecked owing to the pride, lust, and baseness of her sister. In

Scotland, envenomed to the core with the poison of Calvin and Knox,

fire and cord were seldom at rest. It is clear that heresy had brought

Witchcraft swiftly in its train. Ireland has ever been singularly free

from Witchcraft prosecutions, and with the rarest exceptions—chiefly, if

not solely, the famous Dame Alice Kyteler case of 1324—the few trials

recorded are of the seventeenth century and engineered by the Protestant

party. The reason for this exemption is plain. Until the stranger forced

his way into Ireland, heresy had no foothold there. That the Irish firmly

believed in witches, we know, but the Devil’s claws were finely clipped.

In 1022 a number of Manichees were burned alive by order of Robert I.

They had been condemned by a Synod at Orleans and refused to recant

their errors.[52] A contemporary document clearly identifies them with

witches, worshippers of the Demon, who appeared to them under the form

of an animal. Other abominable rites are fully set forth, comparable to

the pages of Sprenger, Bodin, Boguet, De Lancre, Guazzo, and the rest.

The account runs as follows: “Before we proceed to other details I will

at some length inform those who are as yet ignorant of these matters,

how that food which they call Food from Heaven is made and provided. On

certain nights of the year they all meet together in an appointed house,

each one of them carrying a lantern in his hand. They then begin to sing

the names of various demons, as though they were chanting a litany,

until suddenly they perceive that the Devil has appeared in the midst

of them in the shape of some animal or other. As he would seem to be

visible to them all in some mysterious way they immediately extinguish

the lights, and each one of them as quickly as he can seizes upon the

woman, who chances to be nearest at hand.... When a child happens to

be born ... on the eighth day they all meet together and light a large

fire in their midst, and then the child is passed through the fire,

ceremonially, according to the sacrifices of the old heathen, and

finally is burnt in the flames. The ashes are collected and reserved,

with the same veneration as Christians are wont to reserve the Blessed

Sacrament, and they give those who are on the point of death a portion

of these ashes as if it were the Viaticum. There appears to be such

power infused by the Devil into the said ashes that a man who belongs

to these heretics and happens to have tasted even the smallest quantity

of these ashes can scarcely ever be persuaded to abandon his heresies

and to turn his thoughts towards the true path. It must suffice to give

only these details, as a warning to all Christians to take no part in

these abominations, and God forbid that curiosity should lead anybody to

explore them.”[53]

At Forfar, in 1661, Helen Guthrie and four other witches exhumed the

body of an unbaptised infant, which was buried in the churchyard near

the south-east door of the church, “and took severall peices thereof,

as the feet, hands, a pairt of the head, and a pairt of the buttock,

and they made a py thereof, that they might eat of it, that by this

meanes they might never make a confession (as they thought) of their

witchcraftis.”[54]

The belief of 1022 and 1661 is the same, because it is the same

organization. The very name of the Vaudois, stout heretics, survives in

Voodoo worship, which is, in effect, African fetishism or Witchcraft

transplanted to America soil.

In 1028 Count Alduin burned a number of Manichees at Angoulême, and the

chronicle runs: “Interea iussu Alduini flammis exustæ sunt mulieres

maleficæ extra urbem.”[55] (About this time certain evil women, heretics,

were burned without the city by the command of Alduin.) The Templars,

whose Order was suppressed and the members thereof executed on account

of their sorceries, were clearly a Society of Gnostic heretics, active

propagandists, closely connected with the Bogomiles and the Mandæans or

Johannites.[56]

It is true that in his recent study _The Religion of the Manichees_,[57]

Dr. F. G. Buskitt, with a wealth of interesting detail and research, has

endeavoured to show that the Bogomiles, the Cathari, the Albigenses,

and other unclean bodies only derived fragments of their teaching from

Manichæan sources, and he definitely states “I think it misleading to

call these sects, even the Albigensians, by the name of Manichees.” But

in spite of his adroit special pleading the historical fact remains;

although we may concede that the abominable beliefs of these various

Gnostics were perhaps a deduction from, or a development of, the actual

teaching of Mani. Yet none the less their evil was contained in his

heresy and a logical consequence of it.

In the early years of this century important discoveries of Manichæan

MSS. have been made. Three or four scientific expeditions to Chinese

Turkestan brought back some thousands of fragments, especially from the

neighbourhood of a town called Turfan. Many of these screeds are written

in the peculiar script of the Manichees, some of which can be deciphered,

although unfortunately the newly found documents are mere scraps, bits of

torn books and rolls, and written in languages as yet imperfectly known.

Much of the new doctrine is of the wildest and most fantastic theosophy,

and the initiate were, as we know, sufficiently cunning not to commit

the esoteric and true teachings to writing, but preferred that there

should be an oral tradition. One important piece, the _Khuastuanift_,

i.e. “Confession,” has been recovered almost in its entirety. It is

in the old Turkestan Turkish language, and seems full of the most

astounding contradictions or paradoxes, a consensus of double meanings

and subtleties.

The question is asked whether we ought to consider Manichæism as an

independent religion or a Christian heresy? Eznih of Kolb, the Armenian

writer of the fifth century, when attacking Zoroastrianism, obviously

treats Manichæism as a variety of Persian religion. The orthodox

documents, however, from Mark the Deacon onwards treat Manichæism as in

the main a Christian heresy and this is assuredly the correct view. There

is in existence a polemical fragment, a single ill-preserved pair of

leaves, in which the Manichæan writer pours forth horrid blasphemies and

vilely attacks those who call Mary’s Son (_Bar Maryam_) the Son of Adonay.

It may be worth while here to say just a word correcting a curious

old-fashioned misapprehension which once prevailed in certain quarters

concerning the Albigenses, an error of which we occasionally yet catch

the echoes, as when Mrs. Grenside wrote that the Albigenses were “a sect

of the 14th century which, owing to their secret doctrine, endured much

ecclesiastical persecution.”[58] The impression left, and it is one

which was not altogether uncommon some seventy years ago, is that the

Albigensian was a stern old Protestant father, Bible and sword in hand,

who defended his hearth and home against the lawless brigands spurred

on to attack him by priestly machinations. Nothing, of course, could be

further from the truth. The Albigensian was a Satanist, a worshipper of

the powers of evil, and he would have found short shrift indeed, fire

and the stake, in Puritan England under Cromwell, or in Calvinistic

Scotland had his practices been even dimly guessed at by the Kirk. As Dr.

Arendzen well says[59]: “Albigensianism was not really a heresy against

Christianity and the Catholic Church, it was a revolt against nature, a

pestilential perversion of human instinct.”