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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Superstitions of Witchcraft, by Howard
+Williams
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Superstitions of Witchcraft
+
+
+Author: Howard Williams
+
+
+
+Release Date: October 1, 2007  [eBook #22822]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SUPERSTITIONS OF WITCHCRAFT***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Julie Barkley, Suzan Flanagan, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Transcriber's notes
+
+   The "oe" ligature is represented as [oe].
+
+   The footnotes have been moved and renumbered for easier reading.
+
+   A list of corrections is included at the end of the book.
+
+
+
+
+
+SUPERSTITIONS OF WITCHCRAFT.
+
+London
+Printed by Spottiswoode and Co.
+New-Street Square
+
+
+THE SUPERSTITIONS OF WITCHCRAFT.
+
+by
+
+HOWARD WILLIAMS, M.A.
+
+St. John's College, Cambridge.
+
+'Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas,
+ Nocturnos lemures, portentaque Thessala rides?'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London:
+Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green.
+1865.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+'THE SUPERSTITIONS OF WITCHCRAFT' is designed to exhibit a
+consecutive review of the characteristic forms and facts of a
+creed which (if at present apparently dead, or at least harmless,
+in Christendom) in the seventeenth century was a living and
+lively faith, and caused thousands of victims to be sent to the
+torture-chamber, to the stake, and to the scaffold. At this day,
+the remembrance of its superhuman art, in its different
+manifestations, is immortalised in the every-day language of the
+peoples of Europe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The belief in Witchcraft is, indeed, in its full development and
+most fearful results, modern still more than mediæval, Christian
+still more than Pagan, and Protestant not less than Catholic.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+PART I.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+     The Origin, Prevalence, and Variety of Superstition--The
+       Belief in Witchcraft the most horrid Form of
+       Superstition--Most flourishing in the Sixteenth and
+       Seventeenth Centuries--The Sentiments of Addison,
+       Blackstone, and the Lawyers of the Eighteenth Century
+       upon the Subject--Chaldean and Persian Magic--Jewish
+       Witchcraft--Its important Influence on Christian and
+       Modern Belief--Greek Pharmacy and Sorcery--Early Roman
+       Laws against Conjuration and Magic Charms--Crimes
+       perpetrated, under the Empire, in connection with
+       Sorceric Practices--The general Persecution for Magic
+       under Valentinian and Valens--German and Scandinavian
+       Sagæ--Essential Difference between Eastern and Western
+       Sorcery--The probable Origin of the general Belief in an
+       Evil Principle                                        PAGE 3
+
+
+PART II.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+     Compromise between the New and the Old Faiths--Witchcraft
+       under the Early Church--The Sentiments of the Fathers and
+       the Decrees of Councils--Platonic Influences--Historical,
+       Physiological, and Accidental Causes of the Attribution
+       of Witchcraft to the Female Sex--Opinions of the Fathers
+       and other Writers--The Witch-Compact                      47
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+     Charlemagne's Severity--Anglo-Saxon Superstition--Norman
+       and Arabic Magic--Influence of Arabic Science--Mohammedan
+       Belief in Magic--Rabbinical Learning--Roger Bacon--The
+       Persecution of the Templars--Alice Kyteler                63
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+     Witchcraft and Heresy purposely confounded by the
+       Church--Mediæval Science closely connected with Magic and
+       Sorcery--Ignorance of Physiology the Cause of many of the
+       Popular Prejudices--Jeanne d'Arc--Duchess of
+       Gloucester--Jane Shore--Persecution at Arras              84
+
+
+PART III.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+     The Bull of Innocent VIII.--A new Incentive to the vigorous
+       Prosecution of Witchcraft--The 'Malleus Maleficarum'--Its
+       Criminal Code--Numerous Executions at the Commencement of
+       the Sixteenth Century--Examination of Christian
+       Demonology--Various Opinions of the Nature of
+       Demons--General Belief in the Intercourse of Demons and
+       other non-human Beings with Mankind                      101
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+     Three Sorts of Witches--Various Modes of Witchcraft--Manner
+       of Witch-Travelling--The Sabbaths--Anathemas of the Popes
+       against the Crime--Bull of Adrian VI.--Cotemporary
+       Testimony to the Severity of the Persecutions--Necessary
+       Triumph of the Orthodox Party--Germany most subject to
+       the Superstition--Acts of Parliament of Henry VIII.
+       against Witchcraft--Elizabeth Barton--The Act of
+       1562--Executions under Queen Elizabeth's Government--Case
+       of Witchcraft narrated by Reginald Scot                  126
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+     The 'Discoverie of Witchcraft,' published 1584--Wier's 'De
+       Præstigiis Dæmonum,' &c.--Naudé--Jean Bodin--His 'De la
+       Démonomanie des Sorciers,' published at Paris, 1580--His
+       Authority--Nider--Witch-case at Warboys--Evidence adduced
+       at the Trial--Remarkable as being the Origin of the
+       Institution of an Annual Sermon at Huntingdon            144
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+     Astrology in Antiquity--Modern Astrology and
+       Alchymy--Torralvo--Adventures of Dr. Dee and Edward
+       Kelly--Prospero and Comus, Types respectively of the
+       Theurgic and Goetic Arts--Magicians on the Stage in the
+       Sixteenth Century--Occult Science in Southern
+       Europe--Causes of the inevitable Mistakes of the
+       pre-Scientific Ages                                      157
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+     Sorcery in Southern Europe--Cause of the Retention of the
+       Demonological Creed among the Protestant Sects--Calvinists
+       the most Fanatical of the Reformed Churches--Witch-Creed
+       sanctioned in the Authorised Version of the Sacred
+       Scriptures--The Witch-Act of 1604--James VI.'s
+       'Demonologie'--Lycanthropy and Executions in France--The
+       French Provincial Parliaments active in passing Laws
+       against the various Witch-practices--Witchcraft in the
+       Pyrenees--Commission of Inquiry appointed--Its
+       Results--Demonology in Spain                             168
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+     'Possession' in France in the Seventeenth Century--Urbain
+       Grandier and the Convent of Loudun--Exorcism at
+       Aix--Ecstatic Phenomena--Madeleine Bavent--Her cruel
+       Persecution--Catholic and Protestant Witchcraft in
+       Germany--Luther's Demonological Fears and
+       Experiences--Originated in his exceptional Position and
+       in the extraordinary Circumstances of his Life and
+       Times--Witch-burning at Bamburg and at Würzburg          186
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+     Scotland one of the most Superstitious Countries in
+       Europe--Scott's Relation of the Barbarities perpetrated in
+       the Witch-trials under the Auspices of James VI.--The Fate
+       of Agnes Sampson, Euphane MacCalzean, &c.--Irrational
+       Conduct of the Courts of Justice--Causes of Voluntary
+       Witch-Confessions--Testimony of Sir G. Mackenzie,
+       &c.--Trial and Execution of Margaret Barclay--Computation
+       of the Number of Witches who suffered Death in England and
+       Scotland in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
+       Centuries--Witches burned alive at Edinburgh in 1608--The
+       Lancashire Witches--Sir Thomas Overbury and Dr.
+       Forman--Margaret Flower and Lord Rosse                   203
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+     The Literature of Europe in the Seventeenth Century proves
+       the Universality and Horror of Witchcraft--The most
+       acute and most liberal Men of Learning convinced of
+       its Reality--Erasmus and Francis Bacon--Lawyers prejudiced
+       by Legislation--Matthew Hale's judicial Assertion--Sir
+       Thomas Browne's Testimony--John Selden--The English
+       Church least Ferocious of the Protestant Sects--Jewell
+       and Hooker--Independent Tolerance--Witchcraft under
+       the Presbyterian Government--Matthew Hopkins--Gaule's
+       'Select Cases of Conscience'--Judicial and Popular Methods
+       of Witch-discovery--Preventive Charms--Witchfinders a Legal
+       and Numerous Class in England and Scotland--Remission in the
+       Severity of the Persecution under the Protectorship      219
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+     Glanvil's Sadducismus Triumphatus--His Sentiments on
+       Witchcraft and Demonology--Baxter's 'Certainty of the
+       World of Spirits,' &c.--Witch Trial at Bury St. Edmund's
+       by Sir Matthew Hale, 1664--The Evidence adduced in
+       Court--Two Witches hanged--Three hanged at Exeter in
+       1682--The last Witches judicially executed in
+       England--Uniformity of the Evidence adduced at the
+       Trials--Webster's Attack upon the Witch-creed in
+       1677--Witch Trials in England at the end of the
+       Seventeenth Century--French Parliaments vindicate the
+       Diabolic Reality of the Crime--Witchcraft in Sweden      237
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+     Witchcraft in the English Colonies in North
+       America--Puritan Intolerance and Superstition--Cotton
+       Mather's 'Late Memorable Providences'--Demoniacal
+       Possession--Evidence given before the
+       Commission--Apologies issued by Authority--Sudden
+       Termination of the Proceedings--Reactionary Feeling
+       against the Agitators--The Salem Witchcraft the last
+       Instance of Judicial Prosecution on a large Scale in
+       Christendom--Philosophers begin to expose the
+       Superstition--Meritorious Labours of Webster, Becker,
+       and others--Their Arguments could reach only the
+       Educated and Wealthy Classes of Society--These only
+       partially enfranchised--The Superstition continues to
+       prevail among the Vulgar--Repeal of the Witch Act in
+       England in 1736--Judicial and Popular Persecutions in
+       England in the Eighteenth Century--Trial of Jane
+       Wenham in England in 1712--Maria Renata burned in
+       Germany in 1749--La Cadière in France--Last Witch
+       burned in Scotland in 1722--Recent Cases of
+       Witchcraft--Protestant Superstition--Witchcraft in the
+       Extra-Christian World                                    259
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+EARLIER FAITH.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+     The Origin, Prevalence, and Variety of Superstition--The
+     Belief in Witchcraft the most horrid Form of
+     Superstition--Most flourishing in the Sixteenth and
+     Seventeenth Centuries--The Sentiments of Addison,
+     Blackstone, and the Lawyers of the Eighteenth Century upon
+     the Subject--Chaldean and Persian Magic--Jewish
+     Witchcraft--Its important Influence on Christian and Modern
+     Belief--Greek Pharmacy and Sorcery--Early Roman Laws against
+     Conjuration and Magic Charms--Crimes perpetrated, under the
+     Empire, in connection with Sorceric Practices--The general
+     Persecution for Magic under Valentinian and Valens--German
+     and Scandinavian Sagæ--The probable Origin of the general
+     Belief in an Evil Principle.
+
+
+Superstition, the product of ignorance of causes, of the
+proneness to seek the solution of phenomena out of and beyond
+nature, and of the consequent natural but unreasoning dread of
+the Unknown and Invisible (ignorantly termed the supernatural),
+is at once universal in the extent, and various in the kinds,
+of its despotism. Experience and reason seem to prove that,
+inherent to and apparently coexistent with the human mind, it
+naturally originates in the constitution of humanity: in ignorance
+and uncertainty, in an instinctive doubt and fear of the
+_Unknown_. Accident may moderate its power among particular peoples
+and persons; and there are always exceptional minds whose
+natural temper and exercise of reason are able to free them from
+the servitude of a delusive imagination. For the mass of mankind,
+the germ of superstition, prepared to assume always a new shape
+and sometimes fresh vigour, is indestructible. The severest
+assaults are ineffectual to eradicate it: hydra-like, far from
+being destroyed by a seeming mortal stroke, it often raises its
+many-headed form with redoubled force.
+
+It will appear more philosophic to deplore the imperfection, than
+to deride the folly of human nature, when the fact that the
+superstitious sentiment is not only a result of mere barbarism or
+vulgar ignorance, to be expelled of course by civilisation and
+knowledge, but is indigenous in the life of every man, barbarous
+or civilised, pagan or Christian, is fully recognised. The
+enlightening influence of science, as far as it extends, is
+irresistible; and its progress within certain limits seems sure
+and almost omnipotent. But it is unfortunately limited in the
+extent of its influence, as well as uncertain in duration; while
+reason enjoys a feeble reign compared with ignorance and
+imagination.[1] If it is the great office of history to teach by
+experience, it is never useless to examine the causes and the
+facts of a mischievous creed that has its roots deep in the
+ignorant fears of mankind; but against the recurrence of the
+fatal effects of fanaticism apparent in the earliest and latest
+records of the world, there can be no sufficient security.
+
+  [1] That 'speculation has on every subject of human enquiry
+  three successive stages; in the first of which it tends to
+  explain the phenomena by supernatural agencies, in the
+  second by metaphysical abstractions, and in the third or
+  final state, confines itself to ascertaining their laws of
+  succession and similitude' (_System of Logic_, by J. S.
+  Mill), is a generalisation of Positive Philosophy, and a
+  theory of the Science of History, consistent probably with
+  the progress of knowledge among philosophers, but is
+  scarcely applicable to the mass of mankind.
+
+Dreams, magic terrors, miracles, witches, ghosts, portents, are
+some of the various forms superstition has invented and magnified
+to disturb the peace of society as well as of individuals. The
+most extravagant of these need not be sought in the remoter ages
+of the human race, or even in the 'dark ages' of European
+history: they are sufficiently evident in the legislation and
+theology, as well as in the popular prejudices of the seventeenth
+century.
+
+The belief in the _infernal_ art of witchcraft is perhaps the
+most horrid, as it certainly is the most absurd, phenomenon in
+the religious history of the world. Of the millions of victims
+sacrificed on the altars of religion this particular delusion can
+claim a considerable proportion. By a moderate computation, nine
+millions have been burned or hanged since the establishment of
+Christianity.[2] Prechristian antiquity experienced its
+tremendous power, and the primitive faith of Christianity easily
+accepted and soon developed it. It was reserved, however, for the
+triumphant Church to display it in its greatest horrors: and if
+we deplore the too credulous or accommodative faith of the early
+militant Church or the unilluminated ignorance of paganism, we
+may still more indignantly denounce the cruel policy of
+Catholicism and the barbarous folly of Protestant theology which
+could deliberately punish an impossible crime. It is the reproach
+of Protestantism that this persecution was most furiously raging
+in the age that produced Newton and Locke. Compared with its
+atrocities even the Marian burnings appear as nothing: and it may
+well be doubted whether the fanatic zeal of the 'bloody Queen,'
+is no less contemptible than the credulous barbarity of the
+judges of the seventeenth century. The period 1484 (the year in
+which Innocent VIII. published his famous 'Witch Hammer' signally
+ratified 120 years later by the Act of Parliament of James I. of
+England) to 1680 might be characterised not improperly as the era
+of devil-worship; and we are tempted almost to embrace the theory
+of Zerdusht and the Magi and conceive that Ahriman was then
+superior in the eternal strife; to imagine the _Evil One_, as in
+the days of the Man of Uz, 'going to and fro in the earth, and
+walking up and down in it.' It is come to that at the present
+day, according to a more rational observer of the seventeenth
+century, that it is regarded as a part of religion to ascribe
+great wonders to the devil; and those are taxed with infidelity
+and perverseness who hesitate to believe what thousands relate
+concerning his power. Whoever does not do so is accounted an
+atheist because he cannot persuade himself that there are two
+Gods, the one good and the other evil[3]--an assertion which is
+no mere hyperbole or exaggeration of a truth: there is the
+certain evidence of facts as well as the concurrent testimony of
+various writers.
+
+  [2] According to Dr. Sprenger (_Life of Mohammed_). Cicero's
+  observation that there was no people either so civilised or
+  learned, or so savage and barbarous, that had not a belief
+  that the future may be predicted by certain persons (De
+  Divinatione, i.), is justified by the faith of Christendom,
+  as well as by that of paganism; and is as true of witchcraft
+  as it is of prophecy or divination.
+
+  [3] Dr. Balthazar Becker, Amsterdam, 1691, quoted in
+  Mosheim's _Institutes of Ecclesiastical History_, ed. Reid.
+
+Those (comparatively few) whose reason and humanity alike
+revolted from a horrible dogma, loudly proclaim the prevailing
+prejudice. Such protests, however, were, for a long time at
+least, feeble and useless--helplessly overwhelmed by the
+irresistible torrent of public opinion. All classes of society
+were almost equally infected by a plague-spot that knew no
+distinction of class or rank. If theologians (like Bishop Jewell,
+one of the most esteemed divines in the Anglican Church,
+publicly asserting on a well known occasion at once his faith and
+his fears) or lawyers (like Sir Edward Coke and Judge Hale) are
+found unmistakably recording their undoubting conviction, they
+were bound, it is plain, the one class by theology, the other by
+legislation. Credulity of so extraordinary a kind is sufficiently
+surprising even in theologians; but what is to be thought of the
+deliberate opinion of unbiassed writers of a recent age
+maintaining the possibility, if not the actual occurrence, of the
+facts of the belief?
+
+The deliberate judgment of Addison, whose wit and preeminent
+graces of style were especially devoted to the extirpation of
+almost every sort of popular folly of the day, could declare:
+'When I hear the relations that are made from all parts of the
+world, not only from Norway and Lapland, from the East and West
+Indies, but from every particular nation in Europe, I cannot
+forbear thinking that there is such an intercourse and commerce
+with evil spirits as that which we express by the name of
+witchcraft.... In short, when I consider the question whether
+there are such persons in the world as those we call witches, my
+mind is divided between two opposite opinions; or rather, to
+speak my thoughts freely, I believe in general that there is and
+has been such a thing as witchcraft, but at the same time can
+give no credit to any particular modern instance of it.'[4]
+Evidence, if additional were wanted, how deference to authority
+and universal custom may subdue the reason and understanding. The
+language and decision of Addison are adopted by Sir W. Blackstone
+in 'Commentaries on the Laws of England,' who shelters himself
+behind that celebrated author's sentiment; and Gibbon informs us
+that 'French and English lawyers of the present age [the latter
+half of the last century] allow the _theory_ but deny the
+_practice_ of witchcraft'--influenced doubtless by the spirit of
+the past legislation of their respective countries. In England
+the famous enactment of the subservient parliament of James I.
+against the crimes of sorcery, &c., was repealed in the middle of
+the reign of George II., our laws sanctioning not 130 years since
+the popular persecution, if not the legal punishment.
+
+  [4] _Spectator_, No. 117. The sentiments of Addison on a
+  kindred subject are very similar. Writing about the vulgar
+  ghost creed, he adds these remarkable words: 'At the same
+  time I think a person who is thus terrified with the
+  imagination of ghosts and spectres much more reasonable than
+  one who, contrary to the reports of all historians, sacred
+  and profane, ancient and modern, and to the traditions of
+  all nations, thinks the appearance of spirits fabulous and
+  groundless. Could not I give myself up to the general
+  testimony of mankind, I should to the relations of
+  particular persons who are now living, and whom I cannot
+  distrust in other matters of fact.' Samuel Johnson (whose
+  prejudices were equalled only by his range of knowledge)
+  proved his faith in a well-known case, if afterwards he
+  advanced so far as to consider the question as to the
+  reality of 'ghosts' as _undecided_. Sir W. Scott, who wrote
+  when the profound metaphysical inquiries of Hume had gained
+  ground (it is observable), is quite sceptical.
+
+The origin of witchcraft and the vulgar diabolism is to be found
+in the rude beginnings of the religious or superstitious feeling
+which, known amongst the present savage nations as Fetishism,
+probably prevailed almost universally in the earliest ages; while
+that of the sublimer magic is discovered in the religious systems
+of the ancient Chaldeans and Persians. Chaldea and Egypt were the
+first, as far as is known, to cultivate the science of magic: the
+former people long gave the well-known name to the professional
+practisers of the art. Cicero (_de Divinatione_) celebrates, and
+the Jewish prophets frequently deride, their skill in divination
+and their modes of incantation. The story of Daniel evidences how
+highly honoured and lucrative was the magical or divining
+faculty. The Chazdim, or Chaldeans, a priestly caste inhabiting a
+wide and level country, must have soon applied themselves to the
+study, so useful to their interests, of their brilliant expanse
+of heavens. By a prolonged and 'daily observation,' considerable
+knowledge must have been attained; but in the infancy of the
+science astronomy necessarily took the form of an empirical art
+which, under the name of astrology, engaged the serious attention
+and perplexed the brains of the mediæval students of science or
+magic (nearly synonymous terms), and which still survives in
+England in the popular almanacks. The natural objects of
+veneration to the inhabitants of Assyria were the glorious
+luminaries of the sun and moon; and if their worship of the stars
+and planets degenerated into many absurd fancies, believing an
+intimate connection and subordination of human destiny to
+celestial influences, it may be admitted that a religious
+sentiment of this kind in its primitive simplicity was more
+rational, or at least sublime, than most other religious systems.
+
+It is not necessary to trace the oriental creeds of magic further
+than they affected modern beliefs; but in the divinities and
+genii of Persia are more immediately traced the spiritual
+existences of Jewish and Christian belief. From the Persian
+priests are derived both the name and the practice of magic. The
+Evil Principle of the Magian, of the later Jewish, and thence of
+the western world, originated in the system (claiming Zoroaster
+as its founder), which taught a duality of Gods. The philosophic
+lawgiver, unable to penetrate the mystery of the empire of evil
+and misery in the world, was convinced that there is an equal and
+antagonistic power to the representative of light and goodness.
+Hence the continued eternal contention between Ormuzd with the
+good spirits or genii, Amchaspands, on one side, and Ahriman with
+the Devs (who may represent the infernal crew of Christendom) on
+the other. Egypt, in the Mosaic and Homeric ages, seems to have
+attained considerable skill in magic, as well as in chymistry and
+astrology. As an abstruse and esoteric doctrine, it was strictly
+confined to the priests, or to the favoured few who were admitted
+to initiation. The magic excellence of the magicians, who
+successfully emulated the miracles of Moses, was apparently
+assisted by a legerdemain similar to that of the Hindu jugglers
+of the present day.[5]
+
+  [5] The names of two of these magicians, Jannes and Jambres,
+  have been preserved by revelation or tradition.
+
+In Persian theology, the shadowy idea of the devil of western
+Asia was wholly different from the grosser conception of
+Christendom. Neither the evil principle of Magianism nor the
+witch of Palestine has much in common with the Christian. 'No
+contract of subjection to a diabolic power, no infernal stamp or
+sign of such a fatal league, no revellings of Satan and his
+hags,'[6] no such materialistic notions could be conformable to
+the spirit of Judaism or at least of Magianism. It is not
+difficult to find the cause of this essential dissimilarity. A
+simple unity was severely inculcated by the religion and laws of
+Moses, which permitted little exercise of the imagination: while
+the Magi were equally severe against idolatrous forms. A
+monstrous idea, like that of 'Satan and his hags,' was impossible
+to them. Christianity, the religion of the West, has received
+its _corporeal_ ideas of demonology from the divinities and
+demons of heathenism. The Satyri and Fauni of Greece and Rome
+have suggested in part the form, and perhaps some of the
+characteristics, of the vulgar Christian devil. A knowledge of
+the arts of magic among the Jews was probably derived from their
+Egyptian life, while the Bedouins of Arabia and Syria (kindred
+peoples) may have instilled the less scientific rites of
+Fetishism. It is in the early accounts of that people that
+sorcery, whatever its character and profession, with the allied
+arts of divination, necromancy, incantations, &c., appears most
+flourishing. The Mosaic penalty, 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch
+to live,' and the comprehensive injunction, 'There shall not be
+found among you that maketh his son or his daughter to pass
+through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of
+times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter
+with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer,' indicate
+at once the extent and the horror of the practice. Balaam (that
+equivocal prophet), on the border-land of Arabia and Palestine,
+was courted and dreaded as a wizard who could perplex whole
+armies by means of spells. His fame extended far and wide; he was
+summoned from his home beyond the Euphrates in the mountains of
+Mesopotamia by the Syrian tribes to repel the invading enemy.
+This great magician was, it seems, universally regarded as 'the
+rival and the possible conqueror of Moses.'[7]
+
+  [6] Sir W. Scott, _Letters on Demonology_.
+
+  [7] Dean Stanley's _Lectures on the Jewish Church_.
+
+About the time when the priestly caste had to yield to a profane
+monarchy, the forbidden practices were so notorious and the evil
+was of such magnitude, that the newly-elected prince 'ejected'
+(as Josephus relates) 'the fortune-tellers, necromancers, and all
+such as exercised the like arts.' His interview with the witch
+has some resemblance to modern _diablerie_ in the circumstances.
+Reginald Scot's rationalistic interpretation of this scene may be
+recommended to the commentating critics who have been so much at
+a loss to explain it. He derides the received opinion of the
+woman of Endor being an agent of the devil, and ignoring any
+mystery, believes, 'This Pythonist being a _ventriloqua_, that
+is, speaking as it were from the bottom of her belly, did cast
+herself into a trance and so abused Saul, answering to Saul
+in Samuel's name in her counterfeit hollow voice.[8] An
+institution very popular with the Jews of the first temple,
+often commemorated in their scriptures--the schools of the
+prophets--was (it is not improbable) of the same kind as the
+schools of Salamanca and Salerno in the middle ages, where magic
+was publicly taught as an abstruse and useful science; and when
+Jehu justifies his conduct towards the queen-mother by bringing a
+charge of witchcraft, he only anticipates an expedient common and
+successful in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
+A Jewish prophet asserts of the Babylonian kings, that they were
+diligent cultivators of the arts, reproaching them with
+practising against the holy city.
+
+  [8] _Discoverie of Witchcraft_, lib. viii. chap. 12. The
+  contrivance of this illusion was possibly like that at
+  Delphi, where in the centre of the temple was a chasm, from
+  which arose an intoxicating smoke, when the priestess was to
+  announce divine revelations. Seated over the chasm upon the
+  tripod, the Pythia was inspired, it seems, by the soporific
+  and maddening drugs.
+
+Yet if we may credit the national historian (not to mention the
+common traditions), the Chaldean monarch might have justly
+envied, if he could scarcely hope to emulate, the excellence of a
+former prince of his now obscure province. Josephus says of
+Solomon that, amongst other attainments, 'God enabled him to
+learn that skill which expels demons, which is a science useful
+and sanative to men. He composed such incantations also by which
+distempers are alleviated, and he left behind him the manner of
+using exorcisms by which they drive away demons so that they
+never return.'[9] The story of Daniel is well known. In the
+captivity of the two tribes carried away into an honourable
+servitude he soon rose into the highest favour, because, as we
+are informed, he excelled in a divination that surpassed all the
+art of the Chaldeans, themselves so famous for it. The inspired
+Jew had divined a dream or vision which puzzled 'the magicians,
+and the astrologers, and the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans,'
+and immediately was rewarded with the greatest gift at the
+disposal of a capricious despot. Most of the apologetic writers
+on witchcraft, in particular the authors of the 'Malleus
+Maleficarum,' accept the assertion of the author of the history
+of Daniel that Nebuchadnezzar was 'driven from men, and did eat
+grass as oxen,' in its apparent sense, expounding it as plainly
+declaring that he was corporeally metamorphosed into an ox, just
+as the companions of Ulysses were transformed into swine by the
+Circean sorceries.
+
+  [9] _Antiquities_, book viii. 2. Whiston's transl.
+
+The Jewish ideas of good or at least evil spirits or angels were
+acquired during their forced residence in Babylon, whether under
+Assyrian or Persian government. At least 'Satan' is first
+discovered unmistakably in a personal form in the poem of Job, a
+work pronounced by critics to have been composed after the
+restoration. In the Mosaic cosmogony and legislation, the writer
+introduces not, expressly or impliedly, the existence of an evil
+principle, unless the serpent of the Paradisaic account, which
+has been rather arbitrarily so metamorphosed, represents it;[10]
+while the expressions in books vulgarly reputed before the
+conquest are at least doubtful. From this time forward (from the
+fifth century B.C.), says a German demonologist, as the Jews
+lived among the admirers of Zoroaster, and thus became acquainted
+with their doctrines, are found, partly in contradiction to the
+earlier views of their religion, many tenets prevailing amongst
+them the origin of which it is impossible to explain except by
+the operation of the doctrines of Zoroaster: to these belongs the
+general acceptance of the theory of Satan, as well as of good and
+bad angels.[11] Under Roman government or vassalage, sorceric
+practices, as they appear in the Christian scriptures, were much
+in vogue. Devils or demons, and the 'prince of the devils,'
+frequently appear; and the _demoniacs_ may represent the victims
+of witchcraft. The Talmud, if there is any truth in the
+assertions of the apologists of witchcraft, commemorates many of
+the most virtuous Jews accused of the crime and executed by the
+procurator of Judea.[12] Exorcism was a very popular and
+lucrative profession.[13] Simon Magus the magician (_par
+excellence_), the impious pretender to miraculous powers, who
+'bewitched the people of Samaria by his sorceries,' is celebrated
+by Eusebius and succeeding Christian writers as the fruitful
+parent of heresy and sorcery.
+
+  [10] Some ingenious remarks on the subject of the serpent,
+  &c., may be found in _Eastern Life_, part ii. 5, by H.
+  Martineau.
+
+  [11] Horst, quoted in Ennemoser's _History of Magic_. It has
+  been often remarked as a singular phenomenon, that the
+  'chosen people,' so prompt in earlier periods on every
+  occasion to idolatry and its cruel rites, after its
+  restoration under Persian auspices, has been ever since
+  uniformly opposed, even fiercely, to any sign contrary to the
+  unity of the Deity. But the Magian system was equally averse
+  to idolatry.
+
+  [12] Bishop Jewell (_Apology for the Church of England_)
+  states that Christ was accused by the malice of his
+  countrymen of being a juggler and wizard--_præstigiator et
+  maleficus_. In the apostolic narrative and epistles, sorcery,
+  witchcraft, &c., are crimes frequently described and
+  denounced. The Sadducean sect alone denied the existence of
+  demons.
+
+  [13] The common belief of the people of Palestine in the
+  transcendent power of exorcism is illustrated by a miracle
+  of this sort, gravely related by Josephus. It was exhibited
+  before Vespasian and his army. 'He [Eleazar, one of the
+  professional class] put a ring that had a root of one of
+  those sorts mentioned by Solomon to the nostrils of the
+  demoniac; after which he drew out the demon through his
+  nostrils: and when the man fell down immediately he adjured
+  him to return into him no more, making still mention of
+  Solomon, and reciting the incantations which he composed.
+  And when Eleazar would demonstrate to the spectators that he
+  had such power, he set a little way off a cup or basin full
+  of water, and commanded the demon as he went out of the man
+  to overturn it, and thereby to let the spectators know he
+  had left the man.' This performance was received with
+  contempt or credulity by the spectators according to their
+  faith: but the credulity of the believers could hardly
+  exceed that of a large number of educated people, who in our
+  own generation detect in the miracles of animal magnetism,
+  or the legerdemain of jugglers, an infernal or supernatural
+  agency.
+
+That witchcraft, or whatever term expresses the criminal
+practice, prevailed among the worshippers of Jehovah, is evident
+from the repeated anathemas both in their own and the Christian
+scriptures, not to speak of traditional legends; but the Hebrew
+and Greek expressions seem both to include at least the use of
+drugs and perhaps of poison.[14] The Jewish creed, as exposed in
+their scriptures, has deserved a fame it would not otherwise
+have, because upon it have been founded by theologians, Catholic
+and Protestant, the arguments and apology for the reality of
+witchcraft, derived from the sacred writings, with an ingenuity
+only too common and successful in supporting peculiar prejudices
+and interests even of the most monstrous kind.[15]
+
+  [14] _Chashaph_ and _Pharmakeia._ Biblical critics are
+  inclined, however, to accept in its strict sense the
+  translation of the Jacobian divines. 'Since in the LXX.,'
+  says Parkhurst, the lexicographer of the N.T., 'this noun
+  [pharmakeia] and its relatives always answer to some Hebrew
+  word that denotes some kind of their magical or conjuring
+  tricks; and since it is too notorious to be insisted upon,
+  that such infernal practices have always prevailed, and do
+  still prevail in idolatrous countries, I prefer the other
+  sense of incantation.'
+
+  [15] A sort of ingenuity much exercised of late by 'sober
+  brows approving with a text' the institution of slavery:
+  _divine_, according to them; _the greatest evil that afflicts
+  mankind_, according to Alexander von Humboldt. See _Personal
+  Narrative_.
+
+In examining the phenomenon as it existed among the Greeks and
+Romans, it will be remarked that, while the Greeks seem to have
+mainly adopted the ideas of the East, the Roman superstition was
+of Italian origin. Their respective expressions for the
+predictive or presentient faculty (_manteia_ and _divinatio_), as
+Cicero is careful to explain, appear to indicate its different
+character with those two peoples: the one being the product of a
+sort of madness, the other an elaborate and divine skill. Greek
+traditions made them believe that the magic science was brought
+from Egypt or Asia by their old philosophic and legislating
+sages. Some of the most eminent of the founders of philosophic
+schools were popularly accused of encouraging it. Pythagoras (it
+is the complaint of Plato) is said to have introduced to his
+countrymen an art derived from his foreign travels; a charge
+which recalls the names of Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Galileo,
+and others, who had to pay the penalty of a premature knowledge
+by the suspicion of their cotemporaries. Xenophanes is said
+to be the only one of the philosophers who admitted the existence
+or providence of the gods, and at the same time entirely
+discredited divination. Of the Stoics, Panætius was the only one
+who ventured even to doubt. Some gave credit to one or two
+particular modes only, as those of dreams and frenzy; but for the
+most part every form of this sort of divine revelation was
+implicitly received.[16]
+
+  [16] Cicero, in his second book _De Divinatione_, undertakes
+  to refute the arguments of the Stoics, 'the force of whose
+  mind, being all turned to the side of morals, unbent itself
+  in that of religion.' The divining faculty is divisible
+  generally into the artificial and the natural.
+
+The science of magic proper is developed in the later schools of
+philosophy, in which Oriental theology or demonology was largely
+mixed. Apollonius of Tyana, a modern Pythagorean, is the most
+famous magician of antiquity. This great miracle-worker of
+paganism was born at the commencement of the Christian era; and
+it has been observed that his miracles, though quite independent
+of them, curiously coincide both in time and kind with the
+Christian.[17] According to his biographer Philostratus, this
+extraordinary man (whose travels and researches extended, we are
+assured, over the whole East even into India, through Greece,
+Italy, Spain, northern Africa, Ethiopia, &c.) must have been in
+possession of a scientific knowledge which, compared with that of
+his cotemporaries, might be deemed almost supernatural.
+Extraordinary attainments suggested to him in later life to
+excite the awe of the vulgar by investing himself with magical
+powers. Apollonius is said to have assisted Vespasian in his
+struggle for the throne of the Cæsars; afterwards, when accused
+of raising an insurrection against Domitian, and when he had
+given himself up voluntarily to the imperial tribunal at Rome, he
+escaped impending destruction by the exertion of his superhuman
+art.
+
+  [17] The proclamation of the birth of Apollonius to his
+  mother by Proteus, and the incarnation of Proteus himself,
+  the chorus of swans which sang for joy on the occasion, the
+  casting out of devils, raising the dead, and healing the
+  sick, the sudden appearances and disappearances of
+  Apollonius, his adventures in the cave of Trophonius, and
+  the sacred voice which called him at his death, to which may
+  be added his claim as a teacher having authority to reform
+  the world, 'cannot fail to suggest,' says a writer in the
+  _Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography_, &c., ed. by Dr.
+  W. Smith, 'the parallel passages in the Gospel history.'
+
+Of the incantations, charms, and magic compounds in the practice
+of Greek witchcraft, numerous examples occur in the tragic and
+comic poetry of Greece; and the _philtres_, or love-charms, of
+Theocritus are well known. The names of Colchis, Chaldea,
+Assyria, Iberia, Thrace, may indicate the origin of a great part
+of the Hellenic sorceries. Yet, if the more honourable science
+may have been of foreign extraction, Hellas was not without
+something of the sorcery of modern Europe. The infernal goddess
+Hecate, of Greek celebrity, is the omnipotent patroness of her
+modern Christian slaves; and she presides at the witch meetings
+of Christendom with as much solemnity but with far greater
+malice. Originally of celestial rank, by a later metamorphosis
+connected, if not personally identical with, Persephone,
+the Queen of Hades, Hecate was invested with many of the
+characteristic attributes of a modern devil, or rather perhaps of
+a witch. The triple goddess, in her various shapes, wandered
+about at night with the souls of the dead, terrifying the
+trembling country people by apparitions of herself and infernal
+satellites, by the horrible whining and howls of her hellhounds
+which always announced her approach. She frequented cross-roads,
+tombs, and melancholy places, especially delighting in localities
+famous for deeds of blood and murder. The hobgoblins, the various
+malicious demons and spirits, who provoked the lively terrors of
+the mediæval peoples, had some prototypes in the fairy-land of
+Greece, in the Hecatean hobgoblins (like the Latin larvæ, &c.),
+Empusa, Mormo, and other products of an affrighted imagination
+familiar to the students of Greek literature in the comic pages
+of Aristophanes.[18] From the earliest literary records down to
+the latest times of paganism as the state religion, from the
+times of the Homeric Circe and Ulysses (the latter has been
+recognised by many as a genuine wizard) to the age of Apollonius
+or Apuleius, magic and sorcery, as a philosophical science or as
+a vulgar superstition, had apparently more or less distinctly a
+place in the popular mythology of old Greece. But in the pagan
+history of neither Greece nor Rome do we read of holocausts of
+victims, as in Christian Europe, immolated on the altars of a
+horrid superstition.[19] The occasion of the composition of the
+treatise by Apuleius 'On Magic' is somewhat romantic. On his way
+to Alexandria, the philosopher, being disabled from proceeding on
+the journey, was hospitably received into the mansion of one
+Sicinius Pontianus. Here, during the interesting period of his
+recovery, he captivated, or was captivated by, the love of his
+host's mother, a wealthy widow, and the lovers were soon united
+by marriage. Pudentilla's relatives, indignant at the loss of a
+much-coveted, and perhaps long-expected fortune, brought an
+action against Apuleius for having gained her affection by means
+of spells or charms. The cause was heard before the proconsul of
+Africa, and the apology of the accused labours to convince his
+judges that a widow's love might be provoked without superhuman
+means.[20]
+
+  [18] Particularly in the _Batrachoi_. The dread of the
+  infernal apparition of the fierce Gorgo in Hades blanched
+  the cheek of even much-daring Odysseus (Od. xi. 633). The
+  satellites of Hecate have been compared, not
+  disadvantageously, with the monstrous guardians of hell;
+  than whom
+
+       'Nor uglier follow the night-hag when, called
+        In secret, riding through the air she comes
+        Lured with the smell of infant blood to dance
+        With Lapland witches--.'
+
+  [19] An exceptional case, on the authority of Demosthenes,
+  is that of a woman condemned in the year, or within a year
+  or two, of the execution of Socrates.
+
+  [20] St. Augustin, in denouncing the Platonic theories of
+  Apuleius, of the mediation and intercession of demons
+  between gods and men, and exposing his magic heresies, takes
+  occasion to taunt him with having evaded his just fate by
+  not professing, like the Christian martyrs, his real faith
+  when delivering his 'very copious and eloquent' apology (_De
+  Civitate Dei_, lib. viii. 19). In the _Golden Ass_ of the
+  Greek romancist of the second century, who, in common with
+  his cotemporary the great rationalist Lucian, deserves the
+  praise of having exposed (with more wit perhaps than
+  success) some of the most absurd prejudices of the day, his
+  readers are entertained with stories that might pretty
+  nearly represent the sentiments of the seventeenth century.
+
+Gibbon observes of the Roman superstition on the authority of
+Petronius, that it may be inferred that it was of Italian rather
+than barbaric extraction. Etruria furnished the people of Romulus
+with the science of divination. Early in the history of the
+Republic the law is very explicit on the subject of witchcraft.
+In the decemviral code the extreme penalty is attached to the
+crime of witchcraft or conjuration: 'Let him be capitally
+punished who shall have bewitched the fruits of the earth, or by
+either kind of conjuration (_excantando neque incantando_) shall
+have conjured away his neighbour's corn into his own field,' &c.,
+an enactment sneered at in Justinian's _Institutes_ in Seneca's
+words. A rude and ignorant antiquity, repeat the lawyers of
+Justinian, had believed that rain and storms might be attracted
+or repelled by means of spells or charms, the impossibility of
+which has no need to be explained by any school of philosophy. A
+hundred and fifty years later than the legislation of the
+decemvirs was passed the _Lex Cornelia_, usually cited as
+directed against sorcery: but while involving possibly the more
+shadowy crime, it seems to have been levelled against the more
+'substantial poison.' The conviction and condemnation of 170
+Roman ladies for poisoning, under pretence of incantation, was
+the occasion and cause. Sulla, when dictator, revived this act
+_de veneficiis et malis sacrificiis_, for breach of which the
+penalty was 'interdiction of fire and water.' Senatorial
+anathemas, or even those of the prince, were ineffective to check
+the continually increasing abuses, which towards the end of the
+first century of the empire had reached an alarming height.[21]
+
+  [21] It will be observed that _veneficus and maleficus_ are
+  the significant terms among the Italians for the criminals.
+
+A general degradation of morals is often accompanied, it has been
+justly remarked, by a corresponding increase of the wildest
+credulity, and by an abject subservience to external religious
+rites in propitiation of an incensed deity. It was thus at Rome
+when the eloquence of Cicero, and afterwards the indignant satire
+of Juvenal or the calm ridicule of the philosophic Lucian,[22]
+attempted to assert the 'proper authority of reason.' To speak
+the truth, says Cicero, superstition has spread like a torrent
+over the entire globe, oppressing the minds and intellects of
+almost all men and seizing upon the weakness of human nature.[23]
+The historian of 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
+justifies and illustrates this lament of the philosopher of the
+Republic in the particular case of witchcraft. 'The nations and
+the sects of the Roman world admitted with equal credulity and
+similar abhorrence the reality of that infernal art which was
+able to control the eternal order of the planets, and the
+voluntary operations of the human mind. They dreaded the
+mysterious power of spells and incantations, of potent herbs and
+execrable rites, which could extinguish or recall life, influence
+the passions of the soul, blast the works of creation, and extort
+from the reluctant demons the secrets of Futurity. They believed
+with the wildest inconsistency that the preternatural dominion of
+the air, of earth, and of hell, was exercised from the vilest
+motives of malice or gain by some wrinkled hags or itinerant
+sorcerers who passed their obscure lives in penury and contempt.
+Such vain terrors disturbed the peace of society and the
+happiness of individuals; and the harmless flame which insensibly
+melted a waxen image might derive a powerful and pernicious
+energy from the affrighted fancy of the person whom it was
+maliciously designed to represent. From the infusion of those
+herbs which were supposed to possess a supernatural influence, it
+was an easy step to the case of more substantial poison; and the
+folly of mankind sometimes became the instrument and the mask of
+the most atrocious crimes.'[24]
+
+  [22] If the philosophical arguments of Menippus (_Nekrikoi
+  Dialogoi_) could have satisfied the interest of the priests
+  or the ignorance of the people of after times, the
+  _infernal_ fires of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
+  might not have burned.
+
+  [23] _De Divinatione_, lib. ii.
+
+  [24] _The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
+  Empire_, xxv. This description applies more to the Christian
+  and later empires.
+
+Latin poetry of the Augustan and succeeding period abounds with
+illustrations, and the witches of Horace, Ovid, and Lucan are the
+famous classical types.[25] Propertius has characterised the
+Striga as 'daring enough to impose laws upon the moon bewitched
+by her spells;' while Petronius makes his witch, as potent as
+Strepsiades' Thessalian sorceress, exclaim that the very form of
+the moon herself is compelled to descend from her position in the
+universe at her command. For the various compositions and
+incantations in common use, it must be sufficient to refer to the
+pages of the Roman poets. The forms of incantation and horrid
+rites of the Horatian Sagana Canidia (_Epod._ v. and _Sat._ i.
+8), or the scenes described by the pompous verses of the poet
+of the civil war (_De Bello Civili_, vi.), where all nature is
+subservient, are of a similar kind, but more familiar, in
+the dramatic writings of the Elizabethan age. The darker
+characteristics of the practice, however, are presented in the
+burning declamations of Juvenal, only too faithfully exhibiting
+the unnatural atrocities perpetrated in the form and under the
+disguise of love-potions and charms. Roman ladies in fact
+acquired considerable proficiency, worthy of a Borgia or
+Brinvilliers, in the art of poisoning and in the use of drugs.
+The reputed witch, both in ancient and modern times, very often
+belonged, like the Ovidian Dipsas, to the real and detestable
+class of panders: wrinkled hags were experienced in the arts of
+seduction, as well as in the employment of poison and drugs more
+familiar to the wealthier class (_Sat._ vi.). The great Satirist
+wrote in the latter half of the first century of Christianity;
+but even in the Augustan period such crimes were prevalent enough
+to make Ovid enumerate them among the universal evils introduced
+by the Iron age (_Metamorphoses_, i.). The despotic will of the
+princes themselves was exerted in vain; the mischief was too
+deep-rooted to succumb even to the decrees of the masters of the
+world. Nor did the _divi_ themselves disdain to be initiated in
+the infernal or celestial science. Nigidius Figulus and the two
+Thrasylli are magical or mathematical names closely connected
+with the destinies of the two first imperial princes. Nigidius
+predicted, and perhaps promoted, the future elevation of
+Octavianus; and the elder Thrasyllus, the famous Rhodian
+astrologer, skilfully identified his fate with the life of his
+credulous dupe but tyrannical pupil. Thrasyllus' art is stated to
+have been of service in preventing the superstitious tyrant from
+executing several intended victims of his hatred or caprice, by
+making _their_ safety the condition of _his_ existence. The
+historian of the early empire tells of the incantations which
+could 'affect the mind and increase the disease' of Germanicus,
+Tiberius' nephew. 'There were discovered,' says Tacitus, 'dug up
+from the ground and out of the walls of the house, the remains of
+human corpses, charms and spells, and the name of Germanicus
+inscribed on leaden tablets, ashes half consumed covered with
+decaying matter, and other practices by which it is believed that
+souls are devoted to the deities of hell.'[26]
+
+  [25] 'The Canidia of Horace,' Gibbon pronounces, 'is a
+  vulgar witch. The Erichtho of Lucan is tedious, disgusting,
+  but sometimes sublime.' The love-charms of Canidia and Medea
+  are chiefly indebted to the _Pharmakeutria_ of Theocritus.
+
+  [26] _Annales_, ii. 69. Writing of the mathematicians and
+  astrologers in the time of Galba, who urged the governor of
+  Lusitania on the perilous path to the supreme dignity, the
+  historian characterises them truly, in his inimitable
+  language and style, as 'a class of persons not to be trusted
+  by those in power, deceptive to the expectant; a class which
+  will always be proscribed and preserved in our state.'
+
+In the fourth century, the first Christian emperor limited the
+lawful exercise of magic to the beneficial use of preserving or
+restoring the fruits of the earth or the health of the human
+body, while the practice of the noxious charms is capitally
+punished. The science of those, proclaims the imperial convert,
+who, immersed in the arts of magic, are detected either in
+attempts against the life and health of their fellow-men, or in
+_charming_ the minds of modest persons to the practice of
+debauchery, is to be avenged and punished deservedly by severest
+penalties. But in no sorts of criminal charges are those remedies
+to be involved which are employed for the good of individuals, or
+are harmlessly employed in remote places to prevent premature
+rains, in the case of vineyards, or the injurious effects of
+winds and hailstorms, by which the health and good name of no one
+can be injured; but whose practices are of laudable use in
+preventing both the gifts of the Deity and the labours of men
+from being scattered and destroyed.[27]
+
+  [27] _Cod. Justinian_, lib. ix. tit. 18.
+
+Constantine, in distinguishing between good and bad magic,
+between the _theurgic_ and _goetic_, maintains a distinction made
+by the pagans--a distinction ignored in the later Christian
+Church, in whose system 'all demons are infernal spirits, and all
+commerce with them is idolatry and apostasy.' Christian zeal has
+accused the imperial philosopher and apostate Julian of having
+had recourse--not to much purpose--to many magical or necromantic
+rites; of cutting up the dead bodies of boys and virgins in the
+prescribed method; and of raising the dead to ascertain the event
+of his Eastern expedition against the Persians.
+
+Not many years after the death of Julian the Christian Empire
+witnessed a persecution for witchcraft that for its ferocity, if
+not for its folly, can be paralleled only by similar scenes in
+the fifteenth or seventeenth century. It began shortly after the
+final division of the East and West in the reigns of Valentinian
+and Valens, A.D. 373. The unfortunate accused were pursued with
+equal fury in the Eastern and Western Empires; and Rome and
+Antioch were the principal arenas on which the bloody tragedy was
+consummated. Gibbon informs us that it was occasioned by a
+criminal consultation, when the twenty-four letters of the
+alphabet were ranged round a magic tripod; a dancing ring placed
+in the centre pointed to the first four letters in the name of
+the future prince. 'The deadly and incoherent mixture of treason
+and magic, of poison and adultery, afforded infinite gradations
+of guilt and innocence, of excuse and aggravation, which in these
+proceedings appear to have been confounded by the angry or
+corrupt passions of the judges. They easily discovered that the
+degree of their industry and discernment was estimated by the
+imperial court according to the number of executions that were
+furnished from their respective tribunals. It was not without
+extreme reluctance that they pronounced a sentence of acquittal;
+but they eagerly admitted such evidence as was stained with
+perjury or procured by torture to prove the most improbable
+charges against the most respectable characters. The progress of
+the inquiry continually opened new subjects of criminal
+prosecution; the audacious informers whose falsehood was detected
+retired with impunity: but the wretched victim who discovered his
+real or pretended accomplices was seldom permitted to receive the
+price of his infamy. From the extremity of Italy and Asia the
+young and the aged were dragged in chains to the tribunals of
+Rome and Antioch. Senators, matrons, and philosophers expired in
+ignominious and cruel tortures. The soldiers who were appointed
+to guard the prisons declared, with a murmur of pity and
+indignation, that their numbers were insufficient to oppose the
+flight or resistance of the multitude of captives. The wealthiest
+families were ruined by fines and confiscations; the most
+innocent citizens trembled for their safety: and we may form some
+notion of the magnitude of the evil from the extravagant
+assertion of an ancient writer [Ammianus Marcellinus], that in
+the obnoxious provinces the prisoners, the exiles, and the
+fugitives formed the greatest part of the inhabitants. The
+philosopher Maximus,' it is added, 'with some justice was
+involved in the charge of magic; and young Chrysostom, who had
+accidentally found one of the proscribed books, gave himself up
+for lost.'[28]
+
+  [28] _The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
+  Empire_, xxv.
+
+The similarity of this to the horrible catastrophe of Arras,
+recorded by the chroniclers of the fifteenth century, excepting
+the grosser absurdities of the latter, is almost perfect.
+Valentinian and Valens, who seem to have emulated the atrocious
+fame of the Cæsarean family, with their ministers, concealed, it
+is probable, under the disguise of a simulated credulity the real
+motives of revenge and cupidity.
+
+The Roman world, Christian and pagan, was subject to the
+prevailing fear. That portion of the globe, however, comprehended
+but a small part of the human race. The records of history are
+incomplete and imperfect; nor are they more confined in point of
+time than of extent. History is little more at any period than an
+imperfect account of the life of a few particular peoples.
+Necessarily limited almost entirely to an acquaintance with the
+history of that portion of the globe included in the 'Roman
+Empire,' we almost forget our profound ignorance of that vastly
+larger proportion of the earth's surface, the extra-Roman world,
+embracing then, as now, civilised as well as barbarous nations.
+The Chinese empire (the most extraordinary, perhaps, and whose
+antiquity far surpasses that of any known), comprehending within
+its limits two-thirds of the population of the globe; the refined
+and ingenious people of Hindustan, an immense population, in the
+East: in the Western hemisphere nations in existence whose
+remains excited the admiration of the Spanish invaders; the
+various savage tribes of the African continent; the nomad
+populations of Northern Asia and Europe; nearly all these more or
+less, on the testimony of past and present observation,
+experienced the tremendous fears of the vulgar demonism.[29]
+
+  [29] It may be safely affirmed, according to a celebrated
+  modern philosopher, that popular religions are really, in
+  the conception of their more vulgar votaries, a species of
+  demonism. 'Primus in orbe deos fecit timor,' or, in the
+  fuller expression of a modern, 'Fear made the devils, and
+  weak Hope the gods.'
+
+With the tribes who, in the time of Cæsar or Tacitus, inhabited
+the forests of Germany, and, perhaps, amongst the Scandinavians,
+some more elevated ideas obtained, the germ, however, of a
+degenerated popular prejudice. By all the German tribes, on
+the testimony of cotemporary writers, women were held in
+high respect, and were believed to have something even divine
+in their mental or spiritual faculties. 'Very many of their
+women they regard in the light of prophetesses, and when
+superstitious fear is in the ascendant, even of goddesses.'
+History has preserved the names of some of these Teutonic
+_deities_. Veleda, by prophetic inspiration, or by superior genius,
+directed the councils of her nation, and for some years
+successfully resisted the progress of the imperial arms.[30]
+Momentous questions of state or religion were submitted to their
+_divine_ judgment, and it is not wonderful if, endowed with
+supernatural attributes, they, like other prophets, helped to
+fulfil their own predictions. The Britons and Gauls, of the Keltic
+race, seem to have resembled the Orientals, rather than the Teutons
+or Italians, in their religious systems. Long before the Romans came
+in contact with them the magic science is said to have been
+developed, and the priests, like those of India or Egypt,
+communicated the mysteries only to a privileged few, with
+circumstances of profound secrecy. Such was the excellence of the
+magic science of the British Druids, that Pliny (_Hist. Nat._
+xxx.) was induced to suppose that the Magi of Persia must have
+derived their system from Britain. For the most part the Kelts
+then, as in the present day, were peculiarly tenacious of a creed
+which it was the interest of a priestly caste to preserve. On the
+other hand, the looser religion of the Teuton nations, of the
+Scandinavians and Germans, could not find much difficulty in
+accepting the particular conceptions of the Southern conquerors;
+and the sorceric mythology of the Northern barbarians readily
+recognised the power of an Erichtho to control the operations of
+nature, to prevent or confound the course of the elements,
+interrupt the influence of the sun, avert or induce tempests, to
+affect the passions of the soul, to fascinate or charm a cruel
+mistress, &c., with all the usual necromantic rites. But if they
+could acknowledge the characteristics of the Italian Striga,
+those nations at the same time retained a proper respect for the
+venerated Saga--the German Hexe.
+
+  [30] Aurinia was the Latin name of another of these
+  venerable sagæ. Tacitus, _Histor._ iv. 61, and _Germania_,
+  viii.
+
+Of all the historic peoples of ancient Europe, the Scandinavians
+were perhaps most imbued with a persuasion of the efficacy of
+magic; a fact which their home and their habits sufficiently
+explain. In the Eddas, Odin, the leader of the immigration in the
+first century, and the great national lawgiver, is represented as
+well versed in the knowledge of that preternatural art; and the
+heroes of the Scandinavian legends of the tenth or twelfth
+century are especially ambitious of initiation. The Scalds,
+like the Brahmins or Druids, were possessed of tremendous
+secrets; their _runic_ characters were all powerful charms,
+whether against enemies, the injurious effects of an evil eye,
+or to soften the resentment of a lover.[31] The Northmen, with
+the exception of some nations of Central Europe, like the
+Lithuanians, who were not christianised until the thirteenth or
+fourteenth century, from their roving habits as well perhaps as
+from their remoteness, were among the last peoples of Europe to
+abandon their old creed. Urged by poverty and the hopes of
+plunder, the pirates of the Baltic long continued to be the
+terror of the European coasts; but, without a political status,
+they were the common outlaws of Christendom. They were the relics
+of a savage life now giving way in Europe to the somewhat more
+civilised forms of society, continuing their indiscriminate
+depredations with impunity only because of the want of union and
+organisation among their neighbours. But they were in a
+transitional state: the coasts and countries they had formerly
+been content to ravage, they were beginning to find it their
+interest to colonise and cultivate. In the new interests and
+pursuits of civilisation and commerce, a natural disgust might
+have been experienced for the savage traditions of a religion
+whose gods and heroes were mostly personifications of war and
+rapine, under whose banners they had suffered the hardships, if
+they had enjoyed the plunder, of a piratic life. The national
+deities from being disregarded, must have come soon to be treated
+with undisguised contempt at least by the leaders: while the
+common people, serfs, or slaves were still immersed (as much as
+in Christian Europe) in a stupid superstition.
+
+  [31] The following story exhibits the influence of
+  witchcraft among the followers of Odin. Towards the end of
+  the tenth century, the dreaded Jomsburg sea-rovers had set
+  out on one of their periodical expeditions, and were
+  devastating with fire and sword the coast of Norway. A
+  celebrated Norwegian Jarl, Hakon, collected all his forces,
+  and sailed with a fleet of 150 vessels to encounter the
+  pirates. Hakon, after trying in vain to break through the
+  hostile line, retired with his fleet to the coast, and
+  proceeded to consult a well-known sorceress in whom he had
+  implicit confidence for any emergency. With some pretended
+  reluctance the sorceress at length informed him that the
+  victory could be obtained only by the sacrifice of his son.
+  Hakon hesitated not to offer up his only son as a
+  propitiatory sacrifice; after which, returning to his fleet,
+  and his accustomed post in the front ranks of the battle, he
+  renewed the engagement. Towards evening the Jomsburg pirates
+  were overtaken and overwhelmed by a violent storm,
+  destroying or damaging their ships. They were convinced that
+  they saw the witch herself seated on the prow of the Jarl's
+  ships with clouds of missile weapons flying from the tips of
+  her fingers, each arrow carrying a death-wound. With such of
+  his followers as had escaped the sorceric encounter, the
+  pirate-chief made the best of his way from the scene of
+  destruction, declaring he had made a vow indeed to fight
+  against men, but not against witches. A narrative not
+  inconsistent with the reply of a warrior to an inquiry from
+  the Saint-king Olaf, 'I am neither Christian nor pagan; my
+  companions and I have no other religion than a just
+  confidence in our strength, and in the good success which
+  always attends us in war; and we are of opinion that it is
+  all that is necessary.'--Mallet's _Northern Antiquities_.
+
+When men's minds are thus universally unsettled and in want--a
+want both universal and necessary in states--of some new
+divine objects of worship more suited to advanced ideas and
+requirements, a system of religion more civilising and rational
+than the antiquated one, will be adopted without much difficulty,
+especially if it is not too exclusive. Yet the Scandinavians were
+unusually tenacious of the forms of their ancestral worship; for
+while the Icelanders are said to have received Christianity about
+the beginning of the eleventh century, the people of Norway were
+not wholly converted until somewhat later. The halls of Valhalla
+must have been relinquished with a sigh in exchange for the less
+intelligible joys of a tranquil and insensuous paradise. An
+ancient Norsk law enjoins that the king and bishop, with all
+possible care, make inquiry after those who exercise pagan
+practices, employ magic arts, adore the genii of particular
+places, of tombs or rivers, who transport themselves by a
+diabolical mode of travelling through the air from place to
+place. In the extremity of the northern peninsula (amongst
+the Laplanders), where the light of science, or indeed of
+civilisation, has scarcely yet penetrated, witchcraft remains as
+flourishing as in the days of Odin; and the Laplanders at present
+are possibly as credulous in this respect as the old Northmen or
+the present tribes of Africa and the South Pacific. Before the
+introduction of the new religion (it is a curious fact), the
+Germans and Scandinavians, as well as the Jews, were acquainted
+with the efficacy of the rite of infant baptism. A Norsk
+chronicle of the twelfth century, speaking of a Norwegian
+nobleman who lived in the reign of Harald Harfraga, relates that
+he poured water on the head of his new-born son, and called him
+Hakon, after the name of his father. Harald himself had been
+baptized in the same way; and it is noted of the infant pagan St.
+Olaf that his mother had him baptized as soon as he was born. The
+Livonians observed the same ceremony; and a letter sent expressly
+by Pope Gregory III. to St. Boniface, the great apostle of the
+Germans, directs him how to act in such cases. It is probable,
+Mallet conjectures, that all these people might intend by such a
+rite to preserve their children from the sorceries and evil
+charms which wicked spirits might employ against them at the
+instant of their birth. Several nations of Asia and America have
+attributed such a power to ablutions of this kind; nor were the
+Romans without the custom, though they did not wholly confine it
+to new-born infants. A curious magical use of an initiatory and
+sacramental rite, ignorantly anticipated, it seems, by the
+unilluminated faith of the pagan world.
+
+In reviewing the characteristics of sorcery which prevailed in
+the ancient world, it is obvious to compare the superstition as
+it existed in the nations of the East and West, of antiquity and
+of modern times. These natural or accidental differences are
+deducible apparently from the following causes:--(1) The
+essential distinction between the demonology of Orientalism--of
+Brahminism, Buddhism, Magianism, Judaism, Mohammedanism--and that
+of the West, of paganism and of Christianity, founded on their
+respective _idealistic_ and _realistic_ tendencies. (2) The
+divining or necromantic faculties have been generally regarded in
+the East as honourable properties; whereas in the West they have
+been degraded into the criminal follies of an infernal compact.
+The magical art is a noble cultivated science--a prerogative of
+the priestly caste: witchcraft, in its strict sense, was mostly
+abandoned to the lowest, and, as a rule, to the oldest and
+ugliest of the female sex. In the one case the proficient was the
+master, in the other the slave, of the demons. (3) The position
+of the female sex in the Western world has been always very
+opposite to their status in the East, where women are believed to
+be an inferior order of beings, and therefore incapable of an art
+reserved for the superior endowments of the male sex. The modern
+witchcraft may be traced to that perhaps oldest form of religious
+conception, Fetishism, which still prevails in its utmost
+horrors amongst the savage peoples in different parts of the
+world. The early practice of magic was not dishonourable in its
+origin, closely connected as it was with the study of natural
+science--with astronomy and chymistry.
+
+The magic system--interesting to us as having influenced the
+later Jewish creed and mediately the Christian--referred like
+most developed creeds to a particular founder, Zerdusht
+(Zarathustra of the Zend), may have thus originated. Mankind, in
+seeking a solution for that most interesting but unsatisfactory
+problem, the cause of the predominance of evil on the earth, were
+obliged by their ignorance and their fears to imagine, in
+addition to the idea of a single supreme existence, the author
+and source of good, antagonistic influence--the source and
+representative of evil. Physical phenomena of every day
+experience; the alternations of light and darkness, of sunshine
+and clouds; the changes and oppositions in the outer world, would
+readily supply an analogy to the moral world. Thus the dawn and
+the sun, darkness and storms, in the wondering mind of the
+earlier inhabitants of the globe, may have soon assumed the
+substantial forms of personal and contending deities.[32] Such
+seems to be the origin of the personifications in the Vedic hymns
+of Indra and Vritra with their subordinate ministers (the Ormuzd
+and Ahriman, &c., of the Zend-Avesta), and of the first religious
+conceptions of other peoples. After this attempt to reconcile the
+contradictions, the irregularities of nature, by establishing a
+duality of gods whose respective provinces are the happiness and
+unhappiness of the human race, the step was easy to the
+conviction of the superior activity of a malignant god. The
+benevolent but epicurean security of the first deity might seem
+to have little concern in defeating or preventing the malicious
+schemes of the other. All the infernal apparatus of later ages
+was easy to be supplied by a delusive and an unreasoning
+imagination.
+
+  [32] The despotism of language and its immense influence on
+  the destiny, as well as on the various opinions, of mankind,
+  is well shown by Professor Max Müller. 'From one point of
+  view,' he declares, 'the true history of religion would be
+  neither more nor less than an account of the various
+  attempts at expressing the Inexpressible' (_Lectures on the
+  Science of Language_, Second Series). The witch-creed may be
+  indirectly referred, like many other absurdities, to the
+  perversion of language.
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+MEDIÆVAL FAITH.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+     Compromise between the New and the Old Faiths--Witchcraft
+     under the Early Church--The Sentiments of the Fathers and
+     the Decrees of Councils--Platonic Influences--Historical,
+     Physiological, and Accidental Causes of the Attribution of
+     Witchcraft to the Female Sex--Opinions of the Fathers and
+     other Writers--The Witch-Compact.
+
+
+It might appear, in a casual or careless observation, surprising
+that Christianity, whose original spirit, if not universal
+practice, was to enlighten; whose professed mission was 'to
+destroy the works of the devil,' failed to disprove as well as to
+dispel some of the most pernicious beliefs of the pagan world:
+that its final triumph within the limits of the Roman empire, or
+as far as it extended without, was not attended by the extinction
+of at least the most revolting practices of superstition.
+Experience, and a more extended view of the progress of human
+ideas, will teach that the growth of religious perception is
+fitful and gradual: that the education of collective mankind
+proceeds in the same way as that of the individual man. And thus,
+in the expression of the biographer of Charles V., the barbarous
+nations when converted to Christianity changed the object, not
+the spirit, of their religious worship. Many of the ideas of the
+old religion were consciously tolerated by the first propagators
+of Christianity, who justly deemed that the new dogmas would be
+more readily insinuated into the rude and simple minds of their
+neophytes, if not too strictly uncompromising. Both past and
+present facts testify to this compromise. It was a maxim with
+some of the early promoters of the Christian cause, to do as
+little violence as possible to existing prejudices[33]--a
+judicious method still pursued by the Catholic, though condemned
+by the Protestant, missionaries of the present day.[34] It was
+not seldom that an entire nation was converted and christianised
+by baptism almost in a single day: the mass of the people
+accepting, or rather acquiescing in, the arguments of the
+missionaries in submission to the will or example of their
+prince, whose conduct they followed as they would have followed
+him into the field. Such was the case at the conversion of the
+Frankish chief Clovis, and of the Saxon Ethelbert. But if St.
+Augustin or St. Boniface, and the earlier missionaries, had more
+success in persuading the simple faith of the Germans, without a
+written revelation and miracles, than the modern emissaries have
+in inducing the Hindus to abandon their Vedas, it was easier to
+convince them of the facts, than of the reason, of their faith.
+Nor was it to be expected that such raw recruits (if the
+expression may be allowed) should lay aside altogether prejudices
+with which they were imbued from infancy.
+
+  [33] The remark of a late Professor of Divinity in the
+  University of Cambridge. 'The heathen temples,' says
+  Professor Blunt, 'became Christian churches; the altars of
+  the gods altars of the saints; the curtains, incense,
+  tapers, and votive-tablets remained the same; the
+  _aquaminarium_ was still the vessel for holy water; St.
+  Peter stood at the gate instead of Cardea; St. Rocque or St.
+  Sebastian in the bedroom instead of the Phrygian Penates;
+  St. Nicholas was the sign of the vessel instead of Castor
+  and Pollux; the Mater Deûm became the Madonna; alms pro
+  Matre Deûm became alms for the Madonna; the festival of the
+  Mater Deûm the festival of the Madonna, or _Lady Day_; the
+  Hostia or victim was now the Host; the "Lugentes Campi," or
+  dismal regions, Purgatory; the offerings to the Manes were
+  masses for the dead.' The parallel, he ventures to assert,
+  might be drawn out to a far greater extent, &c.
+
+  [34] Conformably to this plan, the first proselytisers in
+  Germany and the North were often reduced (we are told) to
+  substituting the name of Christ and the saints for those of
+  Odin and the gods in the toasts drunk at their bacchanalian
+  festivals.
+
+The extent of the credit and practice of witchcraft under the
+Church triumphant is evident from the numerous decrees and
+anathemas of the Church in council, which, while oftener treating
+it as a dread reality, has sometimes ventured to contemn or to
+affect to contemn it as imposture and delusion. Both the civil
+and ecclesiastical laws were exceptionally severe towards
+_goetic_ practices. 'In all those laws of the Christian
+emperors,' says Bingham, 'which granted indulgences to criminals
+at the Easter festival, the _venefici_ and the _malefici_, that
+is, magical practices against the lives of men, are always
+excepted as guilty of too heinous a crime to be comprised within
+the general pardon granted to other offenders.'[35] In earlier
+ecclesiastical history, successive councils or synods are much
+concerned in fulminating against them. The council of Ancyra
+(314) prohibits the art under the name of pharmacy: a few years'
+penance being appointed for anyone receiving a magician into his
+house. St. Basil's canons, more severe, appoint thirty years as
+the necessary atonement. Divination by lots or by consulting
+their sacred scriptures, just as afterwards they consulted
+Virgil, seems to have been a very favourite mode of discovering
+the future. The clergy encouraged and traded upon this kind of
+divination: in the Gallican church it was notorious. 'Some
+reckon,' the pious author of the 'Antiquities of the Christian
+Church' informs us, 'St. Augustin's conversion owing to such a
+sort of consultation; but the thought is a great mistake, and
+very injurious to him, for his conversion was owing to a
+providential call, like that of St. Paul, from heaven.' And that
+eminent saint's confessions are quoted to prove that his
+conversion from the depths of vice and licentiousness to the
+austere sobriety of his new faith, was indebted to a legitimate
+use of the scriptures. St. Chrysostom upbraids his cotemporaries
+for exposing the faith, by their illegitimate inquiries, to the
+scorn of the heathen, many of whom where wiser than to hearken to
+any such fond impostures.
+
+  [35] Bingham's _Origines Ecclesiasticæ_, xvi.
+
+St. Augustin complains that Satan's instruments, professing the
+exercise of these arts, were used to 'set the name of Christ
+before their ligatures, and enchantments, and other devices, to
+seduce Christians to take the venomous bait under the covert of a
+sweet and honey potion, that the bitter might be hid under the
+sweet, and make men drink it without discerning to their
+destruction.' The heretics of the primitive, as well as of the
+middle, ages were accused of working miracles, and propagating
+their accursed doctrines by magical or infernal art. Tertullian,
+and after him Eusebius, denounce the arch-heretic Simon Magus for
+performing his spurious miracles in that way: and Irenæus had
+declared of the heretic Marcus, that when he would consecrate the
+eucharist in a cup of wine and water, by one of his juggling
+tricks, he made it appear of a purple and red colour, as if by a
+long prayer of invocation, that it might be thought the grace
+from above distilled the blood into the cup by his invocation. A
+correspondent of Cyprian, the celebrated African bishop,
+describes a woman who pretended 'to be inspired by the Holy
+Ghost, but was really acted on by a diabolical spirit, by which
+she counterfeited ecstasies, and pretended to prophesy, and
+wrought many wonderful and strange things, and boasted she would
+cause the earth to move. Not that the devil [he is cautious to
+affirm] has so great a power either to move the earth or shake
+the elements by his command; but the wicked spirit, foreseeing
+and understanding that there will be an earthquake, pretends to
+do that which he foresees will shortly come to pass. And by these
+lies and boastings, the devil subdued the minds of many to obey
+and follow him whithersoever he would lead them. And he made that
+woman walk barefoot through the snow in the depth of winter, and
+feel no trouble nor harm by running about in that fashion. But at
+last, after having played many such pranks, one of the exorcists
+of the Church discovered her to be a cheat, and showed that to be
+a wicked spirit which before was thought to be the Holy
+Ghost.'[36]
+
+  [36] _Origines Ecclesiasticæ_, xvi. The exorcists were a
+  recognised and respectable order in the Church. See id. iii.
+  for an account of the _Energumenoi_ or demoniacs. The lawyer
+  Ulpian, in the time of Tertullian, mentions the Order of
+  Exorcists as well known. St. Augustin (_De Civit. Dei_,
+  xxii. 8) records some extraordinary cures on his own
+  testimony within his diocess of Hippo.
+
+Christian witchcraft was of a more tremendous nature than even
+that of older times, both in its origin and practice. The devils
+of Christianity were the metamorphosed deities of the old
+religions. The Christian convert was convinced, and the Fathers
+of the Church gravely insisted upon the fact, that the oracles of
+Delphi or Dodona had been inspired in the times of ignorance and
+idolatry by the great Enemy, who used the priest or priestess as
+the means of accomplishing his eternal schemes of malice and
+mischief. At the instant, however (so it was confidently
+affirmed), of the divine incarnation the oracular temples were
+closed for ever; and the demons were no longer permitted to
+delude mankind by impersonating pagan deities. They must now find
+some other means of effecting their fixed purpose. It was not far
+to seek. There were human beings who, by a preeminently wicked
+disposition, or in hope of some temporary profit, were prepared
+to risk their future prospects, willing to devote both soul and
+body to the service of hell. The 'Fathers' and great expounders
+of Christianity, by their sentiments, their writings, and
+their claims to the miraculous powers of exorcising, greatly
+assisted to advance the common opinions. Justin Martyr, Origen,
+Tertullian, Jerome, were convinced that they were in perpetual
+conflict with the disappointed demons of the old world, who had
+inspired the oracles and usurped the worship of the true God. Nor
+was the contest always merely spiritual: they engaged personally
+and corporeally. St. Jerome, like St. Dunstan in the tenth, or
+Luther in the sixteenth century, had to fight with an incarnate
+demon.
+
+Exorcism--the magical or miraculous ejection of evil spirits by a
+solemn form of adjuration--was a universal mode of asserting the
+superior authority of the orthodox Church against the spurious
+pretensions of heretics.[37]
+
+  [37] The art of expelling demons, indeed, has been preserved
+  in the Protestant section of the Christian Church until a
+  recent age. The _exorcising_ power, it is remarkable, is the
+  sole claim to miraculous privilege of the Protestants. The
+  formula _de Strumosis Attrectandis_, or the form of touching
+  for the king's evil (a similar claim), was one of the
+  recognised offices of the English Established Church in the
+  time of Queen Anne, or of George I.
+
+Christian theology in the first age even was considerably indebted
+to the Platonic doctrines as taught in the Alexandrian school; and
+demonology in the third century received considerable accessions
+from the speculations of Neo-Platonism, the reconciling medium
+between Greek and Oriental philosophy. Philo-Judæus (whose
+reconciling theories, displayed in his attempt to prove the
+derivation of Greek religious or philosophical ideas from those
+of Moses, have been ingeniously imitated by a crowd of modern
+followers) had been the first to undertake to adapt the Jewish
+theology to Greek philosophy. Plotinus and Porphyrius, the
+founders of the new school of Platonism, introduced a large number
+of angels or demons to the acquaintance of their Christian
+fellow-subjects in the third century.[38] It has been remarked that
+'such was the mild spirit of antiquity that the nations were less
+attentive to the difference than to the resemblance of their
+religious worship. The Greek, the Roman, and the barbarian, as
+they met before their respective altars, easily persuaded themselves
+that, under various names and with various ceremonies, they adored
+the same deities.'[39] Magianism and Judaism, however, were little
+imbued with the spirit of toleration; and the purer the form of
+religious worship, the fiercer, too often, seems to be the
+persecution of differing creeds. Christianity, with something of
+the spirit of Judaism from which it sprung, was forced to believe
+that the older religions must have sprung from a diabolic origin.
+The whole pagan world was inspired and dominated by wicked
+spirits. 'The pagans _deified_, the Christians _diabolised_,
+Nature.'[40] It is in this fact that the entirely opposite
+spirit of antique and mediæval thought, evident in the life,
+literature, in the common ideas of ancient and mediæval Europe,
+is discoverable.
+
+  [38] 'The knowledge that is suited to our situation and
+  powers, the whole compass of moral, natural, and
+  mathematical science, was neglected by the new Platonists;
+  whilst they exhausted their strength in the verbal disputes
+  of metaphysics, they attempted to explore the secrets of the
+  invisible world, and studied to reconcile Aristotle with
+  Plato on subjects of which both these philosophers were as
+  ignorant as the rest of mankind. Consuming their reason in
+  those deep but unsubstantial meditations, their minds were
+  exposed to illusions of fancy. They flattered themselves
+  that they possessed the secret of disengaging the soul from
+  its corporeal prison; claimed a familiar intercourse with
+  demons and spirits; and by a very singular revolution,
+  converted the study of philosophy into that of magic.'--_The
+  Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, chap. xiii.
+
+  [39] The Egyptians, almost the only exception to polytheistic
+  tolerance, seem to have been rendered intolerant by the
+  number of antagonistic animal-gods worshipped in different
+  parts of the country, enumerated by Juvenal, who describes
+  the effects of religious animosity displayed in a faction
+  fight between Ombi or Coptos and Tentyra.--_Sat._ xv.
+
+  [40] _Life of Goethe_, by G. H. Lewes.
+
+The female sex has been always most concerned in the crime of
+Christian witchcraft. What was the cause of this general
+addiction, in the popular belief, of that sex, it is interesting
+to inquire. In the East now, and in Greece of the age of
+Simonides or Euripides, or at least in the Ionic States, women
+are an inferior order of beings, not only on account of their
+weaker natural faculties and social position, but also in respect
+of their natural inclination to every sort of wickedness. And if
+they did not act the part of a Christian witch, they were skilled
+in the practice of toxicology. With the Latin race and many
+European peoples, the female sex held a better position; and
+it may appear inconsistent that in Christendom, where the
+Goddess-Mother was almost the highest object of veneration, woman
+should be degraded into a slave of Satan. By the northern nations
+they were supposed to be gifted with supernatural power; and the
+universal powers of the Italian hag have been already noticed.
+But the Church, which allowed no miracle to be legitimate out of
+the pale, and yet could not deny the fact of the miraculous
+without, was obliged to assert it to be of diabolic origin. Thus
+the _priestess_ of antiquity became a _witch_. This is the
+historical account. Physically, the cause seems discoverable in
+the fact that the natural constitution of women renders their
+_imaginative_ organs more excitable for the ecstatic conditions
+of the prophetic or necromantic arts. On all occasions of
+religious or other cerebral excitement, women (it is a matter of
+experience) are generally most easily reduced to the requisite
+state for the expected supernatural visitation. Their hysterical
+(_hystera_) natures are sufficiently indicative of the origin of
+such hallucinations. Their magical or pharmaceutical attributes
+might be derived from savage life, where the men are almost
+exclusively occupied either in war or in the chase: everything
+unconnected with these active or necessary pursuits is despised
+as unbecoming the superior nature of the male sex. To the female
+portion of the community are abandoned domestic employments,
+preparation of food, the selection and mixture of medicinal
+herbs, and all the mysteries of the medical art. How important
+occupations like these, by ignorance and interest, might be
+raised into something more than natural skill, is easy to be
+conjectured. That so extraordinary an attribute would often be
+abused is agreeable to experience.[41]
+
+  [41] Quintilian declared, '_Latrocinium_ facilius in viro,
+  _veneficium_ in feminâ credam.' To the same effect is an
+  observation of Pliny: 'Scientiam feminarum in _veneficiis_
+  prævalere.'
+
+According to the earlier Christian writers, the frailer sex is
+addicted to infernal practices by reason of their innate
+wickedness: and in the opinion of the 'old Fathers' they are
+fitted by a corrupt disposition to be the recipients and agents
+of the devil's will upon earth. The authors of the _Witch-Hammer_
+have supported their assertions of the proneness of women to evil
+in general, and to sorcery in particular, by the respectable
+names and authority of St. Chrysostom, Augustin, Dionysius
+Areopagiticus, Hilary, &c. &c.[42] The Golden-mouthed is adduced
+as especially hostile in his judgment of the sex; and his 'Homily
+on Herodias' takes its proper place with the satires of
+Aristophanes and Juvenal, of Boccaccio and Boileau.[43]
+
+  [42]                               'They style a wife
+       The dear-bought curse and lawful plague of life,
+       A bosom-serpent and a domestic evil.'
+
+  [43] The royal author of the _Demonologie_ finds no
+  difficulty in accounting for the vastly larger proportion of
+  the female sex devoted to the devil's service. 'The reason
+  is easy,' he declares; 'for as that sex is frailer than man
+  is, so is it easier to be entrapped in the gross snares of
+  the devil, as was over-well proved to be true by the
+  serpent's deceiving of Eva at the beginning, which makes him
+  the homelier with that sex sensine:' and it is profoundly
+  observed that witches cannot even shed tears, though women
+  in general are, like the crocodile, ready to weep on every
+  light occasion.
+
+Reginald Scot gives the reasons alleged by the apologists of
+witchcraft. 'This gift and natural influence of fascination
+may be increased in man according to his affections and
+perturbations, as through anger, fear, love, hate, &c. For by
+hate, saith Varius, entereth a fiery inflammation into the eye of
+man, which being violently sent out by beams and streams infect
+and bewitch those bodies against whom they are opposed. And
+therefore (he saith) that is the cause that women are oftener
+found to be witches than men. For they have such an unbridled
+force of fury and concupiscence naturally, that by no means is it
+possible for them to temper or moderate the same. So as upon
+every trifling occasion they, like unto the beasts, fix their
+furious eyes upon the party whom they bewitch.... Women also
+(saith he) are oftenlie filled full of superfluous humours, and
+with them the melancholike blood boileth, whereof spring vapours,
+and are carried up and conveyed through the nostrils and mouth,
+to the bewitching of whatsoever it meeteth. For they belch up a
+certain breath wherewith they bewitch whomsoever they list. And
+of all other women lean, hollow-eyed, old, beetle-browed women
+(saith he) are the most infectious.'[44] Why _old_ women are
+selected as the most proper means of doing the devil's will may
+be discovered in their peculiar characteristics. The repulsive
+features, moroseness, avarice, malice, garrulity of his hags are
+said to be appropriate instruments. Scot informs us, 'One sort of
+such as are said to be witches are women which be commonly old,
+lame, blear-eyed, pale, foul, and full of wrinkles, poor, sullen,
+superstitious, and _papists_, or such as know no religion, in
+whose drowsy minds the devil hath got a fine seat. They are lean
+and deformed, showing melancholy in their faces, to the horror of
+all that see them. They are doting, scolds, mad, devilish ...
+neither obtaining for their service and pains, nor yet by their
+art, nor yet at the devil's hands, with whom they are said to
+make a perfect visible bargain, either beauty, money, promotion,
+wealth, worship, pleasure, honour, knowledge, or any other
+benefit whatsoever.' As to the preternatural gifts of these hags,
+he sensibly argues: 'Alas! what an unapt instrument is a
+toothless, old, impotent, unwieldy woman to fly in the air;
+truly, the devil little needs such instruments to bring his
+purposes to pass.'[45]
+
+  [44] _Discoverie of Witchcraft_, book xii. 21.--We shall
+  have occasion hereafter to notice this great opponent of the
+  devil's regime in the sixteenth century. We may be inclined
+  to consider a more probable reason--that spirits, being in
+  the general belief (so Adam infers that God had 'peopled
+  highest heaven with spirits masculine') of the masculine
+  gender, the recipients of their inspiration are naturally of
+  the other sex: evil spirits could propagate their human or
+  half-human agents with least suspicion and in the most
+  natural way.
+
+  [45] _Discoverie_, i. 3, 6.--Old women, however, may be
+  negatively useful. One of the writers on the subject (John
+  Nider) recommends them to young men since '_Vetularum
+  aspectus et colloquia amorem excutiunt_.'
+
+Dr. Glanvil, who wrote in the latter half of the seventeenth
+century, and is bitterly opposed to the 'Witch-Advocate' and his
+followers, defends the capabilities of hags and the like for
+serving the demons. He conjectures, 'Peradventure 'tis one of
+the great designs, as 'tis certainly the interest, of those
+wicked agents and machinators industriously to hide from us their
+influences and ways of acting, and to work as near as 'tis
+possible _incognito_; upon which supposal it is easy to conceive
+a reason why they most commonly work by and upon the weak and the
+ignorant, who can make no cunning observations or tell credible
+tales to detect their artifice.'[46] The act of bewitching is
+defined to be 'a supernatural work contrived between a corporal
+old woman and a spiritual devil' ('Discoverie,' vi. 2). The
+method of initiation is, according to a writer on the subject, as
+follows: A decrepit, superannuated, old woman is tempted by a man
+in black to sign a contract to become his, both soul and body. On
+the conclusion of the agreement (about which there was much
+cheating and haggling), he gives her a piece of money, and causes
+her to write her name and make her mark on a slip of parchment
+with her own blood. Sometimes on this occasion also the witch
+uses the ceremony of putting one hand to the sole of her foot and
+the other to the crown of her head. On departing he delivers to
+her an imp or familiar. The familiar, in shape of a cat, a mole,
+miller-fly, or some other insect or animal, at stated times of
+the day sucks her blood through teats in different parts of her
+body.[47] If, however, the proper vulgar witch is an old woman,
+the younger and fairer of the sex were not by any means exempt
+from the crime. Young and beautiful women, children of tender
+years, have been committed to the rack and to the stake on the
+same accusation which condemned the old and the ugly.
+
+  [46] _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, part i. sect. 8.
+
+  [47] _Grose's Antiquities_, in Brand's _Popular Antiquities
+  of Great Britain_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+     Charlemagne's Severity--Anglo-Saxon Superstition--Norman and
+     Arabic Magic--Influence of Arabic Science--Mohammedan Belief
+     in Magic--Rabbinical Learning--Roger Bacon--The Persecution
+     of the Templars--Alice Kyteler.
+
+
+Tremendous as was the power of the witch in earlier Christendom,
+it was not yet degraded into the thoroughly diabolistic character
+of her more recent successors. Diabolism advanced in the same
+proportion with the authority of the Church and the ignorant
+submission of the people. In the civil law, the Emperor Leo, in
+the sixth century, abrogated the Constantinian edict as too
+indulgent or too credulous: from that time all sorts of charms,
+all use of them, beneficial or injurious, were declared worthy of
+punishment. The different states of Europe, founded on the ruins
+of the Western Empire, more or less were engaged in providing
+against the evil consequences of sorcery. Charlemagne pursued the
+criminals with great severity. He 'had several times given orders
+that all necromancers, astrologers, and witches should be driven
+from his states; but as the number of criminals augmented daily,
+he found it necessary at last to resort to severer measures. In
+consequence, he published several edicts, which may be found at
+length in the "Capitulaire de Baluse." By these every sort of
+magic, enchantment, and witchcraft was forbidden, and the
+punishment of death decreed against those who in any way evoked
+the devil, compounded love-philters, afflicted either man or
+woman with barrenness, troubled the atmosphere, excited tempests,
+destroyed the fruits of the earth, dried up the milk of cows, or
+tormented their fellow-creatures with sores and diseases. All
+persons found guilty of exercising these execrable arts were to
+be executed immediately upon conviction, that the earth might be
+rid of the curse and burden of their presence; and those who
+consulted them might also be punished with death.'[48]
+
+  [48] M. Garinet's _Histoire de la Magic en France_, quoted
+  in _Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions_.
+
+The Saxons, in the fifth century, imported into Britain the pagan
+forms of the Fatherland; and the Anglo-Saxon (Christian) laws are
+usually directed against practices connected with heathen
+worship, of which many reminiscences were long preserved. Their
+Hexe, or witch,[49] appears to be half-divine, half-diabolic, a
+witch-priestess who derived her inspiration as much from heavenly
+as from hellish sources; from some divinity or genius presiding
+at a sacred grove or fountain. King Athelstan is said to have
+made a law against witchcraft and similar acts which inflict
+death; that if one by them be made away, and the thing cannot be
+denied, such practicers shall be put to death; but if they
+endeavour to purge themselves, and be cast by the threefold
+ordeal, they shall be in prison 120 days; which ended, their
+kindred may redeem them by the payment [in the universal style of
+the English penalties] of 120 shillings to the king, and further
+pay to the kindred of the slain the full valuation of the party's
+head; and then the criminals shall also procure sureties for good
+behaviour for the time to come; and the Danish prince Knut
+denounces by an express doom the noxious acts of sorcery.[50]
+Some of the witches who appear under Saxon domination are almost
+as ferocious as those of the time of Bodin or of James; cutting
+up the bodies of the dead, especially of children, devouring
+their heart and liver in midnight revels. Fearful are the deeds
+of Saxon sorcery as related by the old Norman or Anglo-Norman
+writers. Roger of Wendover ('Flowers of History') records the
+terrible fate of a hag who lived in the village of Berkely, in
+the ninth century. The devil at the appointed hour (as in the
+case of Faust) punctually carries off the soul of his slave, in
+spite of the utmost watch and ward. These scenes are, perhaps,
+rather Norman than Saxon. It was a favourite belief of the
+ancients and mediævalists that the inhospitable regions of the
+remoter North were the abode of demons who held in those suitable
+localities their infernal revels, exciting storms and tempests:
+and the monk-chronicler Bede relates the northern parts of
+Britain were thus infested.[51]
+
+  [49] The Saxon 'witch' is derived, apparently, from the verb
+  'to weet,' to know, _be wise_. The Latin 'saga' is similarly
+  derived--'Sagire, sentire acute est: ex quo _sagæ_ anus,
+  quia malta _scire_ volunt.'--Cicero, _de Divinatione_.
+
+  [50] A curious collection of old English superstitions in
+  these and their allied forms, as exhibited in various
+  documents, appears in a recent work of authority, entitled
+  'Leechdoms, Wort-Cunning, and Starcraft of Early England.
+  Published by the authority of the Lords Commissioners of Her
+  Majesty's Treasury, under the direction of the Master of the
+  Rolls.' Diseases of all sorts are for the most part inflicted
+  upon mankind by evil demons, through the agency of spells and
+  incantations.
+
+  [51] Strutt derives the 'long-continued custom of swimming
+  people suspected of witchcraft' from the Anglo-Saxon mode of
+  judicial trial--the ordeal by water. Another 'method of
+  proving a witch,' by weighing against the Church Bible (a
+  formidable balance), is traced to some of their ancient
+  customs. James VI. (_Demonologie_) is convinced that 'God
+  hath appointed, for a supernatural sign of the monstrous
+  impiety of witches, that the water shall refuse to receive
+  them in her bosom that have shaken off them the sacred water
+  of baptism and wilfully refused the benefit thereof.'
+
+From Scandinavia the Normans must have brought a conviction of
+the truths of magic; and although they had been long settled,
+before the conquest of England, in Northern France and in
+Christianity, the traditional glories of the land from which were
+derived their name and renown could not be easily forgotten. Not
+long after the Conquest the Arabic learning of Spain made its way
+into this country, and it is possible that Christian magic, as
+well as science, may have been influenced by it. Magic,
+scientifically treated, flourished in Arabic Spain, being
+extensively cultivated, in connection with more real or practical
+learning, by the polite and scientific Arabs. The schools of
+Salamanca, Toledo, and other Saracenic cities were famous
+throughout Europe for eminence in medicine, chymistry, astronomy,
+and mathematics. Thither resorted the learned of the North to
+perfect themselves in the then cultivated branches of knowledge.
+The vast amount of scientific literature of the Moslems of Spain,
+evidenced in their public libraries, relieves Southern Europe,
+in part at least, from the stigma of a universal barbaric
+illiteracy.[52] Several volumes of Arabian philosophy are said to
+have been introduced to Northern Europe in the twelfth century;
+and it was in the school of Toledo that Gerbert--a conspicuous
+name in the annals of magic--acquired his preternatural
+knowledge.
+
+  [52] The royal library of the Fatimites consisted of 100,000
+  manuscripts, elegantly transcribed and splendidly bound,
+  which were lent, without avarice or jealousy, to the
+  students of Cairo. Yet this collection must appear moderate
+  if we believe that the Ommiades of Spain had formed a
+  library of 600,000 volumes, 44 of which were employed in the
+  mere catalogue. Their capital, Cordova, with the adjacent
+  towns of Malaga, Almeira, and Murcia, had given birth to
+  more than 300 writers; and above 70 public libraries were
+  opened in the cities of the Andalusian kingdom.--_Decline
+  and Fall of the Roman Empire_, lii.
+
+The few in any way acquainted with Greek literature were indebted
+to the Latin translations of the Arabs; while the Jewish
+rabbinical learning, whose more useful lore was encumbered with
+much mystical nonsense, enjoyed considerable reputation at this
+period. The most distinguished of the rabbis taught in the
+schools in London, York, Lincoln, Oxford, and Cambridge; and
+Christendom has to confess its obligations for its first
+acquaintance with science to the enemies of the Cross.[53] The
+later Jewish authorities had largely developed the demonology of
+the subjects of Persia; and the spiritual or demoniacal creations
+of the rabbinical works of the Middle Ages might be readily
+acceptable, if not coincident, to Christian faith. But the
+Western Europeans, before the philosophy of the Spanish Arabs was
+known, had come in contact with the Saracens and Turks of the
+East during frequent pilgrimages to the tomb of Christ; and the
+fanatical crusades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries
+facilitated and secured the hazardous journey. Mohammedans of the
+present day preserve the implicit faith of their ancestors in the
+efficacy of the 113th chapter of the Koran against evil spirits,
+the spells of witches and sorcerers--a chapter said to have been
+revealed to the Prophet of Islam on the occasion of his having
+been bewitched by the daughters of a Jew. The Genii or Ginn--a
+Preadamite race occupying an intermediate position between angels
+and men, who assume at pleasure the form of men, of the lower
+animals, or any monstrous shape, and propagate their species
+like, and sometimes with, human kind--appear in imposing
+proportions in 'The Thousand and One Nights'--that rich display
+of the fancy of the Oriental imagination.[54] Credulous and
+confused in critical perception, the crusading adventurers for
+religion or rapine could scarcely fail to confound with their own
+the peculiar tenets of an ill-understood mode of thought; and
+that the critical and discriminating faculties of the champions
+of the Cross were not of the highest order, is illustrated by
+their difficulty in distinguishing the eminently unitarian
+religion of Mohammed from paganism. By a strange perversion the
+Anglo-Norman and French chroniclers term the Moslems _Pagans_,
+while the Saxon heathen are dignified by the title of _Saracens_;
+and the names of Mahmoud, Termagaunt, Apollo, could be confounded
+without any sense of impropriety. However, or in whatever degree,
+Saracenic or rabbinical superstition tended to influence
+Christian demonology, from about the end of the thirteenth
+century a considerable development in the mythology of witchcraft
+is perceptible.[55]
+
+  [53] Chymistry and Algebra still attest our obligation by
+  their Arabic etymology.
+
+  [54] A common tradition is that Soliman, king of the Jews,
+  having finally subdued--a success which he owed chiefly to
+  his vast magical resources--the rebellious spirits, punished
+  their disobedience by incarcerating them in various kinds of
+  prisons, for longer or shorter periods of time, in proportion
+  to their demerits. For the belief of the followers of
+  Mohammed in the magic excellence of Solomon, see Sale's
+  _Koran_, xxi. and xxvii. According to the prophet, the devil
+  taught men magic and sorcery. The magic of the Moslems, or,
+  at least, of the Egyptians, is of two kinds--high and
+  low--which are termed respectively _rahmanee_ (divine) and
+  _sheytanee_ (Satanic). By a perfect knowledge of the former
+  it is possible to the adept to 'raise the dead to life, kill
+  the living, transport himself instantly wherever he pleases,
+  and perform any other miracle. The _low_ magic (_sooflee_ or
+  _sheytanee_) is believed to depend on the agency of the devil
+  and evil spirits, and unbelieving genii, and to be used for
+  bad purposes and by bad men.' The _divine_ is 'founded on the
+  agency of God and of His angels, &c., and employed always for
+  good purposes, and only to be practised by men of probity,
+  who, by tradition or from books, learn the names of those
+  superhuman agents, &c.'--Lane's _Modern Egyptians_, chap.
+  xii.
+
+  [55] Its effect was probably to enlarge more than to modify
+  appreciably the current ideas. A large proportion of the
+  importations from the East may have been indebted to the
+  invention, as much as to the credulity, of the adventurers;
+  and we might be disposed to believe with Hume, that 'men
+  returning from so great a distance used the liberty [a too
+  general one] of imposing every fiction upon their believing
+  audience.'
+
+Conspicuous in the vulgar prejudices is the suspicion attaching
+to the extraordinary discoveries of philosophy and science.
+Diabolic inspiration (as in our age infidelity and atheism are
+popular outcries) was a ready and successful accusation against
+ideas or discoveries in advance of the time. Roger Bacon, Robert
+Grostête, Albert the Great, Thomas of Ercildoun, Michael
+Scot--eminent names--were all more or less objects of a
+persecuting suspicion. Bacon may justly be considered the
+greatest name in the philosophy of the Middle Age. That anomaly
+of mediævalism was one of the few who could neglect a vain and
+senseless theology and system of metaphysics to apply his genius
+to the solid pursuits of truer philosophy; and if his influence
+has not been so great as it might have been, it is the fault of
+the age rather than of the man. Condemned by the fear or jealousy
+of his Franciscan brethren and Dominican rivals, Bacon was thrown
+into prison, where he was excluded from propagating 'certain
+suspected novelties' during fourteen years, a victim of his more
+liberal opinions and of theological hatred. One of the traditions
+of his diabolical compacts gives him credit at least for
+ingenuity in avoiding at once a troublesome bargain and a
+terrible fate. The philosopher's compact stipulated that after
+death his soul was to be the reward and possession of the devil,
+whether he died within the church's sacred walls or without them.
+Finding his end approaching, that sagacious magician caused a
+cell to be constructed in the walls of the consecrated edifice,
+giving directions, which were properly carried out, for his
+burial in a tomb that was thus neither within nor without the
+church--an evasion of a long-expected event, which lost the
+disappointed devil his prize, and probably his temper. 'Friar
+Bacon' became afterwards a well-known character in the vulgar
+fables: he was the type of the mediæval, as the poet Virgil was
+of the ancient, magician. A popular drama was founded on his
+reputed exploits and character in the sixteenth century, by
+Robert Greene, in 'Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay;' but the famous
+Dr. Faustus, the most popular magic hero of that time on the
+stage, was a formidable rival. While his cotemporaries denounced
+his rational method, preferring their theological jargon and
+scholastic metaphysics; how much the Aristotle of mediævalism has
+been neglected even latterly is a surprising fact.[56]
+
+  [56] The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge have not
+  exhibited the same impatience for a worthy edition of the
+  works of Bacon with which Clement IV. expected a copy of the
+  _Opus Majus_. His principal writings remained in MS. and
+  were not published to the world until the middle of last
+  century.
+
+But in proof of the prevalence of the popular suspicion, not even
+the all-powerful spiritual Chief of Christendom was spared. Many
+of the pontiffs were charged with being addicted to the 'Black
+Art'--an odd imputation against the vicars of Christ and the
+successors of St. Peter. A charge, however, which we may be
+disposed to receive as evidence that in a long and disgusting
+list of ambitious priests and licentious despots there have been
+some popes who, by cultivating philosophy, may have in some
+sort partially redeemed the hateful character of Christian
+sacerdotalism. At a council held at Paris in the interest of
+Philip IV., Boniface VIII. was publicly accused of sorcery: it
+was affirmed that 'he had a familiar demon [the Socratic
+Genius?]; for he has said that if all mankind were on one side
+and he alone on the other, he could not be mistaken either in
+point of fact or of right, which presupposes a diabolical art'--a
+dogma of sacerdotalism sufficiently confident, but scarcely
+requiring a miraculous solution. This pope's death, it is said,
+was hastened by these and similar reports of his dealings with
+familiar spirits, invented in the interest of the French king to
+justify his hostility. Boniface VIII.'s esoteric opinions on
+Catholicism and Christianity, if correctly reported, did not show
+the orthodoxy to be expected from the supreme pontiff: but he
+would not be a singular example amongst the numerous occupants of
+the chair of St. Peter.[57]
+
+  [57] Leo X. (whose tastes were rather profane than pious)
+  instructed or amused himself by causing to be discussed the
+  question of the nature of the soul--himself adopting the
+  opinion 'redit in nihilum quod fuit ante nihil,' and the
+  decision of Aristotle and of Epicurus.
+
+John XXII., one of his more immediate successors, is said to be
+the pope who first formally condemned the crime of witchcraft,
+more systematically anathematised some hundred and fifty years
+afterwards by Innocent VIII. He complains of the universal
+infection of Christendom: that his own court even, and immediate
+attendants, were attached to the devil's service, applying to him
+on all occasions for help. The earliest judicial trial for the
+crime on record in England is said to have occurred in the reign
+of John. It is briefly stated in the 'Abbreviatio Placitorum'
+that 'Agnes, the wife of Odo the merchant, accused Gideon of
+sorcery; and he was acquitted by the judgment of iron.' The first
+account of which much information is given occurs in Edward II.'s
+reign, when the lives of the royal favourites, the De Spencers,
+and his own, were attempted by a supposed criminal, one John of
+Nottingham, with the assistance of his man, Robert Marshall, who
+became king's evidence, and charged his master with having
+conspired the king's death by the arts of sorcery.[58] Cupidity
+or malice was the cause of this informer's accusation. One of the
+distinguishing characteristics in its annals was the abuse of the
+common prejudice for political purposes, or for the gratification
+of private passion.
+
+  [58] _Narratives of Sorcery and Magic_, by Thomas Wright.
+
+At the commencement of the fourteenth century the persecution and
+final destruction of the Order of the Knights Templars in the
+different countries of Europe, but chiefly in France (an instance
+of the former abuse), is one of the most atrocious facts in
+the history of those times. The fate of the Knights of the
+Temple (whose original office it had been to protect their
+coreligionists during pilgrimages in the Holy City, and whose
+quarters were near the site of the Temple--whence the title of
+the Order) in France was determined by the jealousy or avarice of
+Philip IV. Founded in the first half of the twelfth century as a
+half-religious, half-military institution, that celebrated Order
+was, in its earlier career, in high repute for valour and success
+in fighting the battles of the Cross. With wealth and fame, pride
+and presumption increased to the highest pitch; and at the end of
+150 years the champions of Christendom were equally hated and
+feared. Their entire number was no more than 1,500; but they were
+all experienced warriors, in possession of a number of important
+fortresses, besides landed property to the amount, throughout
+their whole extent, of nine thousand manorial estates. When the
+Holy Land was hopelessly lost to the profane ambition or
+religious zeal of the West, its defenders returned to their homes
+loaded with riches and prestige if not with unstained honour, and
+without insinuations that they had betrayed the cause of Christ
+and the Crusades. Such was the condition of the Temple when
+Philip, after exhausting the coffers of Jews and Christians,
+found his treasury still unfilled. The opportunity was not to
+be neglected: it remained only to secure the consent of the
+Church, and to provoke the ready credulity of the people. Church
+and State united, supported by the popular superstition,
+were irresistible; and the destined victims expected their
+impending fate in silent terror. At length the signal was given.
+Prosecutions in 1307 were carried on simultaneously throughout
+the provinces; but in French territory they assumed the most
+formidable shape. In many places they were acquitted of the
+gravest indictments: the English king, from a feeling of justice
+or jealousy, expressed himself in their favour. As for Spain, 'it
+was not in presence of the Moors, and on the classic ground of
+Crusade, that the thought could be entertained of proscribing the
+old defenders of Christendom.' Paris, where was their principal
+temple, was the centre of the Order; their wealth and power were
+concentrated in France; and thus the spoils not of a single
+province, but almost of the entire body, were within the grasp of
+a single monarch. Hence he assumed the right of presiding as
+judge and executioner.[59] On October 12, 1307, Jacques Molay,
+with the heads of the Temple, was invited to Paris, where, loaded
+with favours, they were lulled into fatal security. The delusion
+was soon abruptly dispelled. Molay, together with 140 of his
+brethren, was arrested--the signal for a more general procedure
+throughout the kingdom.
+
+  [59] Dante seems to refer to this recent spoliation in the
+  following verses:--
+
+       'Lo! the new Pilate, of whose cruelty
+        Such violence cannot fill the measure up,
+        With no decree to sanction, pushes on
+        Into the Temple his yet eager sails.'
+
+                      _Purgat._ xx. Cary's Transl.
+
+The charges have been resolved under three heads: (1) The denial
+of Christ. (2) Treachery to the cause of Christianity. (3) The
+worship of the devil, and the practice of sorcery. The principal
+articles in the indictment were that the knights at initiation
+formally denied the divinity of Christ, pronouncing he was not
+truly a God--even going so far as to assert he was a false
+prophet, a man who had been punished for his crimes; that they
+had no hopes of salvation through him; that at the final
+reception they always spat on the Cross, trampling it under foot;
+that they worshipped the devil in the form of a cat, or some
+other familiar animal; that they adored him in the figure of an
+idol consecrated by anointing it with the fat of a new-born
+infant, the illegitimate offspring of a brother; that a demon
+appeared in the shape of a black or gray cat, &c. The idol is a
+mysterious object. According to some it was a head with a beard,
+or a head with three faces: by others it was said to be a skull,
+a cat. One witness testified that in a chapter of the Order one
+brother said to another, 'Worship this head; it is your God and
+your Mahomet.' Of this kind was the general evidence of the
+witnesses examined. Less incredible, perhaps, is the statement
+that they sometimes saw demons in the appearance of women; and a
+more credible allegation is that of a secret understanding with
+the Turks.
+
+Notoriously suspicious communication had been maintained with the
+enemy; they even went so far as to adopt their style of dress and
+living. Worse than all, by an amiable but unaccustomed tolerance,
+the followers of Mohammed had been allowed a free exercise of
+their religion, a sort of liberality little short of apostasy
+from the faith. Without recounting all the horrors of the
+persecution, it must be sufficient to repeat that fifty-four
+of the wretched condemned, having been degraded by the Bishop
+of Paris, were handed over to the flames. Four years afterwards
+the scene was consummated by the burning of Jacques Molay.
+Torture of the most dreadful sort had been applied to force
+necessary confessions; and the complaint of one of the criminals
+is significant--'I, single, as I am, cannot undertake to argue
+with the Pope and the King of France.'[60] In attempting to
+detect the mysterious facts of this dark transaction little
+assistance is given by the contradictory statements of cotemporary
+or later writers; some asserting the charges to be mere
+fabrications throughout; others their positive reality; and recent
+historians have attempted to substantiate or destroy them. Hallam
+truly remarks that the rapacious and unprincipled conduct of
+Philip, the submission of Clement V. to his will, the apparent
+incredibility of the charges from their monstrousness, the just
+prejudice against confessions obtained by torture and retracted
+afterwards; the other prejudice, not always so just, but in the
+case of those not convicted on fair evidence deserving a better
+name, in favour of assertions of innocence made on the scaffold
+and at the stake, created, as they still preserve, a strong
+willingness to disbelieve the accusations which come so
+suspiciously before us.[61] An approximation to the truth may
+be obtained if, rejecting as improbable the accusations of
+devil-worship and its concomitant rites which, invented to
+amuse the vulgar, characterise the proceedings, we admit the
+_probability_ of a secret understanding with the Turks, or the
+_possibility_ of infidelity to the religion of Christ. Their
+destruction had been predetermined; the slender element of truth
+might soon be exaggerated and confounded with every kind of
+fiction. Their pride, avarice, luxury, corrupt morals, would give
+colour to the most absurd inventions.[62]
+
+  [60] Michelet's _History of France_, book v. 4. M. Michelet
+  suggests an ingenious explanation of some of their supposed
+  secret practices. 'The principal charge, the denial of the
+  Saviour, rested on an equivocation. The Templars might
+  confess to the denial without being in reality apostates.
+  Many averred that it was a symbolical denial, in imitation
+  of St. Peter's--one of those pious comedies in which the
+  antique Church enveloped the most serious acts of religion,
+  but whose traditional meaning was beginning to be lost in
+  the fourteenth century.' The idol-head, believed to
+  represent Mohammed or the devil, he supposes to have been 'a
+  representation of the Paraclete, whose festival, that of
+  Pentecost, was the highest solemnity of the Temple.' Some
+  have identified them, like those of the Albigenses or
+  Waldenses, with the ceremonies of the Gnostics.
+
+  [61] _View of the Middle Ages_, chap. i. The judicial
+  impartiality (eulogised by Macaulay) and patient
+  investigation of truth (the first merits of a historian) of
+  the author of the _Constitutional History of England_, might
+  almost entitle him to rank with the first of historians,
+  Gibbon.
+
+  [62] The alliance of the Church--of the Dominican Order in
+  particular--with the secular power against its once foremost
+  champions, is paralleled and explained by the causes that led
+  to the dissolution of the Order of Jesus by Clement XIV. in
+  the eighteenth century--fear and jealousy.
+
+If the history of the extermination of the Templars exemplifies
+in an eminent manner the political uses made by the highest in
+office of a prevalent superstition, the story of Alice Kyteler
+illustrates equally the manner in which it was prostituted to the
+private purposes of designing impostors. The scene is in Ireland,
+the period the first half of the fourteenth century; Richard de
+Ledrede, Bishop of Ossory, being the principal prosecutor, and a
+lady, Alice Kyteler, the defendant. The details are too tedious
+to be repeated here;[63] but the articles upon which the
+conviction of Alice Kyteler and her accomplices was sought are
+not dissimilar to those just narrated. To give effect to their
+sorcery they were in the habit of denying the faith for a year,
+or shorter period, as the object to be attained was greater or
+less. Demons were propitiated with sacrifices of living animals,
+torn limb by limb and scattered (a Hecatean feast) about
+cross-roads. It was alleged that by sorceries they obtained help
+from the devil; that they impiously used the ceremonies of the
+Church in nightly conventicles, pronouncing with lighted candles
+of wax excommunication against the persons of their own husbands,
+naming expressly every member from the sole of the foot to the
+top of the head. Their compositions are of the Horatian and
+Shakspearian sort. With the intestines of cocks were sacrificed
+various herbs, the nails of dead men, hair, brains, and clothes
+of children dying unbaptized, with other equally efficacious
+ingredients, boiled in the skull of a certain famous robber
+recently beheaded: powders, ointments, and candles of fat boiled
+in the same skull were the intended instruments for exciting love
+or hatred, and in affecting the bodies of the faithful. An unholy
+connection existed between the Lady Alice and a demon in the form
+sometimes of a black dog, sometimes of a cat. She was possessed
+of a secret ointment for impregnating a piece of wood, upon
+which, with her companions, she was carried to any part of the
+world without hurt or hindrance: in her house was found a wafer
+of consecrated bread inscribed with the name of the devil. The
+event of this trial was the conviction and imprisonment of the
+criminals, with the important exception of the chief object of
+the bishop's persecution, who contrived an escape to England.
+Petronilla de Meath was the first to suffer the extreme penalty.
+This lady, by order of the bishop, had been six times flogged,
+when, to escape a repetition of that barbarous infliction, she
+made a public confession involving her fellow-prisoners. After
+which Petronilla was carried out into the city and burned before
+all the people--the first witch, it is said, ever burned in
+Ireland. Of the other accused all were treated with more or less
+severity; two were subsequently burned, some were publicly
+flogged in the market-place and through the city, others
+banished; a few, more fortunate, escaping altogether.
+
+  [63] They are given in full in _Narratives of Sorcery and
+  Magic from the most Authentic Sources_, by Thomas Wright. In
+  the _Annals of Ireland_, affixed to Camden's _Britannia_,
+  ed. 1695, sub anno 1325 A.D., the case of Dame Alice Ketyll
+  is briefly chronicled. Being cited and examined by the
+  Bishop of Ossory, it was discovered, among other things,
+  'That a certain spirit called Robin Artysson lay with her;
+  and that she offered him nine red cocks on a stone bridge
+  where the highway branches out into four several parts.
+  _Item_: That she swept the streets of Kilkenny with besoms
+  between Compline and Courefeu, and in sweeping the filth
+  towards the house of William Utlaw, her son, by way of
+  conjuring, wished that all the wealth of Kilkenny might flow
+  thither. The accomplices of this Alice in these devilish
+  practices were Pernil of Meth, and Basilia the daughter of
+  this Pernil. Alice, being found guilty, was fined by the
+  bishop, and forced to abjure her sorcery and witchcraft. But
+  being again convicted of the same practice, she made her
+  escape with Basilia, and was never found. But Pernil was
+  burnt at Kilkenny, and before her death declared that
+  William above-said deserved punishment as well as she--that
+  for a year and a day he wore the devil's girdle about his
+  bare body,' &c.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+     Witchcraft and Heresy purposely confounded by the
+     Church--Mediæval Science closely connected with Magic and
+     Sorcery--Ignorance of Physiology the Cause of many of the
+     Popular Prejudices--Jeanne d'Arc--Duchess of
+     Gloucester--Jane Shore--Persecution at Arras.
+
+
+What can hardly fail to be discerned in these prosecutions is the
+confusion of heresy and sorcery industriously created by the
+orthodox Church to secure the punishment of her offending
+dissentients. There are few proceedings against the pretended
+criminals in which it is not discoverable; the one crime being,
+as a matter of course, the necessary consequence of the other. In
+the interest of the Church as much as in the credulity of the
+people must be sought the main cause of so violent an epidemic,
+of so fearful a phenomenon in its continuance and atrocities, a
+fact demonstrated by the whole course of the superstition in the
+old times of Catholicism. Materials for exciting animosity and
+indignation against suspected heretics were near at hand. In
+the assurance of the pre-scientific world everything remote
+from ordinary knowledge or experience was inseparable from
+supernaturalism. What surpassed the limits of a very feeble
+understanding, what was beyond the commonest experience of
+every-day life, was with one accord relegated to the domain of
+the supernatural, or rather to that of the devil. For what was
+not done or taught by Holy Church must be of 'that wicked
+One'--the cunning imitator.
+
+In the twelfth century the Church was alarmed by the simultaneous
+springing up of various sects, which, if too hastily claimed by
+Protestantism as _Protestants_, in the modern sense, against
+Catholic theology, were yet sufficiently hostile or dangerous to
+engage the attention and to provoke the enmity of the pontiffs.
+The fate of the Stedingers and others in Germany, of the
+Paulicians in Northern France; of the Albigenses and Waldenses in
+Southern Europe, is in accordance with this successful sort of
+theological tactics. Many of the articles of indictment against
+those outlaws of the Church and of society are extracted from the
+primitive heresies, in particular from the doctrines of the
+anti-Judaic and _spiritualising_ Gnostics, and their more than
+fifty subdivided sects--Marcionites, Manicheans, &c. Gregory IV.
+issued a bull in 1232 against the Stedingers, revolted from the
+rule of the Archbishop of Bremen, where they are declared to be
+accustomed to scorn the sacraments, hold communion with devils,
+make representative images of wax, and consult with witches.[64]
+
+  [64] A second bull enters into details. On the reception of
+  a convert, a toad made its appearance, which was adored by
+  the assembled crowd. On sitting down to the banquet a black
+  cat comes upon the stage, double the size of an ordinary
+  dog, advancing backwards with up-turned tail. The neophytes,
+  one after another, kissed this feline demon, with due
+  solemnity, on the back. Walter Mapes has given an account of
+  the similar ceremonies of the _Publicans_ (Paulicians).
+  Heretical worship was of a most licentious as well as
+  disgusting kind. The religious meetings terminate always in
+  indiscriminate debauchery.
+
+Alchymy, astrology, and kindred arts were closely allied to the
+practice of witchcraft: the profession of medicine was little
+better than the mixing of magical ointments, love-potions,
+elixirs, not always of an innocent sort; and Sangrados were not
+wanting in those days to trade upon the ignorance of their
+patients.[65] Nor, unfortunately, are the genuine seekers after
+truth who honestly applied to the study of nature exempt from the
+charge of often an unconscious fraud. Monstrous notions mingled
+with the more real results of their meritorious labours. Science
+was in its infancy, or rather was still struggling to be freed
+from the oppressive weight of speculative and theological
+nonsense before emerging into existence. Many of the fancied
+phenomena of witch-cases, like other physical or mental
+eccentricities, have been explained by the progress of reason and
+knowledge. Lycanthropy (the transformation of human beings into
+wolves by sorcery), with the no less irrational belief in
+demoniacal possession, the product of a diseased imagination and
+brain, was one of the many results of mere ignorance of
+physiology. In the seventeenth century lycanthropy was gravely
+defended by doctors of medicine as well as of divinity, on the
+authority of the story of Nebuchadnezzar, which proved undeniably
+the possibility of such metamorphoses.
+
+  [65] Pliny (_Hist. Natur._ xxx.) 'observes,' as Gibbon
+  quotes him, 'that magic held mankind by the triple chain of
+  religion, of physic, and of astronomy.'
+
+Cotemporary annalists record the extraordinary frenzy aggravated,
+as it was, by the proceedings against the Templars, the signal of
+witch persecutions throughout France. The historian of France
+draws a frightful picture of the insecure condition of an
+ignorantly prejudiced society. Accusations poured in; poisonings,
+adulteries, forgeries, and, above all, charges of witchcraft,
+which, indeed, entered as an ingredient into all causes, forming
+their attraction and their horror. The judge shuddered on the
+judgment seat when the proofs were brought before him in the
+shape of philtres, amulets, frogs, black cats, and waxen images
+stuck full of needles. Violent curiosity was blended at these
+trials with the fierce joy of vengeance and a cast of fear. The
+public mind could not be satiated with them: the more there were
+burnt, the more there were brought to be burnt.[66] In 1398 the
+Sorbonne, at the chancellor's suggestion, published 27 articles
+against all sorts of sorcery, pictures of demons, and waxen
+figures. Six years later a synod was specially convened at
+Langres, and the pressing evil was anxiously deliberated at the
+Council of Constance.
+
+  [66] Michelet, whose poetic-prose may appear hardly suitable
+  to the philosophic dignity of history, relating the fate of
+  two knights accused with a monk of having 'sinned' with the
+  king's daughter-in-law 'even on the holiest days,' and who
+  were castrated and flayed alive, truly enough infers that
+  'the pious confidence of the middle age which did not
+  mistrust the immuring of a great lady along with her knights
+  in the precincts of a castle, of a narrow tower; the
+  vassalage which imposed on young men as a feudal duty the
+  sweetest cares, was a dangerous trial to human nature.'
+
+Conspicuous about this period, by their importance and iniquity,
+are the cases of the Pucelle d'Orléans and the catastrophe of
+Arras. Incited (it is a modern conviction) by a noble enthusiasm,
+by her own ardent imagination, the Pucelle divested herself of
+the natural modesty of her sex for the dress and arms of a
+warrior; and 'her inexperienced mind, working day and night on
+the favourite object, mistook the impulses of passion for
+heavenly inspiration.' Reviewing the last scenes in the life of
+that patriotic shepherdess, we hesitate whether to stigmatise
+more the unscrupulous policy of the English authorities or the
+base subservience of the Parliament of Paris. The English Regent
+and the Cardinal of Winchester, unable to allege against their
+prisoner (the saviour of her country, taken prisoner in a sally
+from a besieged town, had been handed over by her countrymen to
+the foreigner) any civil crime, were forced to disguise a
+violation of justice and humanity in the pretence of religion;
+and the Bishop of Beauvais presented a petition against her, as
+an ecclesiastical subject, demanding to have her tried by an
+ecclesiastical court for sorcery, impiety, idolatry, and magic.
+The University of Paris acquiesced. Before this tribunal the
+accused was brought, loaded with chains, and clothed in her
+military dress. It was alleged that she had carried about a
+standard consecrated by magical enchantments; that she had been
+in the habit of attending at the witches' sabbath at a fountain
+near the oak of Boulaincourt; that the demons had discovered to
+her a magical sword consecrated in the Church of St. Catherine,
+to which she owed her victories; that by means of sorcery she had
+gained the confidence of Charles VIII. Jeanne d'Arc was convicted
+of all these crimes, aggravated by _heresy_: her revelations were
+declared to be inventions of the devil to delude the people.[67]
+
+  [67] Shakspeare brings the fiends upon the stage: their work
+  is done, and they now abandon the enchantress. In vain La
+  Pucelle invokes in her extremity--
+
+              'Ye familiar spirits, that are cull'd
+        Out of the powerful regions under earth,
+        Help me this once, that France may get the field.
+        Oh, hold me not with silence over-long!
+
+       'Where I was wont to feed you with my blood,
+        I'll lop a member off, and give it you,
+        In earnest of a further benefit;
+        So you do condescend to help me now.
+
+        *       *       *       *       *
+
+        Cannot my body, nor blood-sacrifice,
+        Entreat you to your wonted furtherance?
+        Then take my soul; my body, soul, and all,
+        Before that England give the French the foil.
+        See! they forsake me.
+
+        *       *       *       *       *
+
+        My ancient incantations are too weak
+        And hell too strong for me to buckle with.'
+
+  But a worthier, if contradictory, origin is assigned for her
+  enthusiasm when she replies to the foul aspersion of her
+  taunting captors--
+
+       'Virtuous, and holy; chosen from above,
+        By inspiration of celestial grace,
+        To work exceeding miracles on earth,
+        I never had to do with wicked spirits.
+        But you--that are polluted with your lusts,
+        Stain'd with the guiltless blood of innocents,
+        Corrupt and tainted with a thousand vices--
+        Because you want the grace that others have,
+        You judge it straight a thing impossible
+        To compass wonders, but by help of devils.'
+
+Her ecclesiastical judges then consigned their prisoner to the
+civil power; and, finally, in the words of Hume, 'this admirable
+heroine--to whom the more generous superstition of the ancients
+would have erected altars--was, on pretence of heresy and magic,
+delivered over alive to the flames; and expiated by that dreadful
+punishment the signal services she had rendered to her prince and
+to her native country.'[68]
+
+  [68] _History of England_, XX. Shakspeare (_Henry VI._ part
+  ii. act i.) has furnished us with the charms and
+  incantations employed about the same time in the case of the
+  Duchess of Gloucester. Mother Jourdain is the representative
+  witch-hag.
+
+Without detracting from the real merit of the patriotic martyr,
+it might be suspected that, besides her inflamed imagination, a
+pious and pardonable collusion was resorted to as a last
+desperate effort to rouse the energy of the troops or the hopes
+of the people--a collusion similar to that of the celebrated
+Constantinian Cross, or of the Holy Lance of Antioch. Every
+reader is acquainted with the fate of the great personages who in
+England were accused, politically or popularly, of the crime; and
+the histories of the Duchess of Gloucester and of Jane Shore are
+immortalised by Shakspeare. In 1417, Joan, second wife of Henry
+IV., had been sentenced to prison, suspected of seeking the
+king's death by sorcery; a certain Friar Randolf being her
+accomplice and agent. The Duchess of Gloucester, wife of Humphry
+and daughter of Lord Cobham, was an accomplice in the witchcraft
+of a priest and an old woman. Her associates were Sir Roger
+Bolingbroke, priest; Margery Jordan or Guidemar, of Eye, in
+Suffolk; Thomas Southwell, and Roger Only. It was asserted 'there
+was found in their possession a waxen image of the king, which
+they melted in a magical manner before a slow fire, with the
+intention of making Henry's force and vigour waste away by like
+insensible degrees.' The duchess was sentenced to do penance and
+to perpetual imprisonment; Margery was burnt for a witch in
+Smithfield; the priest was hanged, declaring his employers had
+only desired to know of him how long the king would live; Thomas
+Southwell died the night before his execution; Roger Only was
+hanged, having first written a book to prove his own innocence,
+and against the opinion of the vulgar.[69] Jane Shore (whose
+story is familiar to all), the mistress of Edward IV., was
+sacrificed to the policy of Richard Duke of Gloucester, more than
+to any general suspicion of her guilt. Both the Archbishop of
+York and the Bishop of Ely were involved with the citizen's wife
+in demoniacal dealings, and imprisoned in the Tower. As for the
+'harlot, strumpet Shore,' not being convicted, or at least
+condemned, for the worse crime, she was found guilty of adultery,
+and sentenced (a milder fate) to do penance in a white sheet
+before the assembled populace at St. Paul's.[70]
+
+  [69] The historian of England justly reflects on this case
+  that the nature of the crime, so opposite to all common
+  sense, seems always to exempt the accusers from using the
+  rules of common sense in their evidence.
+
+  [70] This unfortunate woman was celebrated for her beauty
+  and, with one important exception, for her virtues; and, if
+  her vanity could not resist the fascination of a royal lover,
+  her power had been often, it is said, exerted in the cause of
+  humanity. Notwithstanding the neglect and ill-treatment
+  experienced from the ingratitude of former fawning courtiers
+  and people, she reached an advanced age, for she was living
+  in the time of Sir Thomas More, who relates that 'when the
+  Protector had awhile laid unto her, for the manner sake, that
+  she went about to bewitch him, and that she was of counsel
+  with the lord chamberlain to destroy him; in conclusion, when
+  no colour could fasten upon this matter, then he laid
+  heinously to her charge the thing that herself could not
+  deny, that all the world wist was true, and that natheless
+  every man laughed at to hear it then so suddenly so highly
+  taken--that she was naught of her body.'--_Reign of Richard
+  III._, quoted by Bishop Percy in _Reliques of Old English
+  Romance Poetry_. The deformed prince fiercely attributes his
+  proverbial misfortune to hostile witchcraft. He addresses his
+  trembling council:
+
+       'Look how I am bewitch'd; behold mine arm
+        Is, like a blasted sapling, wither'd up:
+        And this is Edward's wife, that monstrous witch,
+        Consorted with that harlot, strumpet Shore,
+        That by their witchcraft thus have marked me.'
+
+                      _Richard III._ act iii. sc. 4.
+
+More tremendous than any of the cases above narrated is that of
+Arras, where numbers of all classes suffered. So transparent were
+the secret but real motives of the chief agitators, that even the
+unbounded credulity of the public could penetrate the thin
+disguise. The affair commenced with the accusation of a woman of
+Douai, called Demiselle (une femme de folle vie). Put to the
+torture repeatedly, this wretched woman was forced to confess she
+had frequented a meeting of sorcerers where several persons were
+seen and recognised; amongst others Jehan Levite, a painter at
+Arras. The chronicler of the fifteenth century relates the
+diabolical catastrophe thus: 'A terrible and melancholy
+transaction took place this year (1459) in the town of Arras, the
+capital of the county of Artois, which said transaction was
+called, I know not why, _Vaudoisie_: but it was said that certain
+men and women transported themselves whither they pleased from
+the places where they were seen, by virtue of a compact with the
+devil. Suddenly they were carried to forests and deserts, where
+they found assembled great numbers of both sexes, and with them a
+devil in the form of a man, whose face they never saw. This devil
+read to them, or repeated his laws and commandments in what way
+they were to worship and serve him: then each person kissed his
+back, and he gave to them after this ceremony some little money.
+He then regaled them with great plenty of meats and wines, when
+the lights were extinguished, and each man selected a female for
+amorous dalliance; and suddenly they were transported back to the
+places they had come from. For such criminal and mad acts many of
+the principal persons of the town were imprisoned; and others of
+the lower ranks, with women, and such as were known to be of this
+sect, were so terribly tormented, that some confessed matters to
+have happened as has been related. They likewise confessed to
+have seen and known many persons of rank, prelates, nobles, and
+governors of districts, as having been present at these meetings;
+such, indeed, as, upon the rumour of common fame, their judges
+and examiners named, and, as it were, put into their mouths: so
+that through the pains of the torments they accused many, and
+declared they had seen them at these meetings. Such as had been
+thus accused were instantly arrested, and so long and grievously
+tormented that they were forced to confess just whatever their
+judges pleased, when those of the lower rank were inhumanly
+burnt. Some of the richer and more powerful ransomed themselves
+from this disgrace by dint of money; while others of the highest
+orders were remonstrated with, and seduced by their examiners
+into confession under a promise that if they would confess, they
+should not suffer either in person or property. Others, again,
+suffered the severest torments with the utmost patience and
+fortitude. The judges received very large sums of money from such
+as were able to pay them: others fled the country, or completely
+proved their innocence of the charges made against them, and
+remained unmolested. It must not be concealed (proceeds
+Monstrelet) that many persons of worth knew that these charges
+had been raked up by a set of wicked persons to harass and
+disgrace some of the principal inhabitants of Arras, whom they
+hated with the bitterest rancour, and from avarice were eager to
+possess themselves of their fortunes. They at first maliciously
+arrested some persons deserving of punishment for their crimes,
+whom they had so severely tormented, holding out promises of
+pardon, that they forced them to accuse whomsoever they were
+pleased to name. This matter was considered [it must have been an
+exceedingly ill-devised plot to provoke suspicion and even
+indignation in such a matter] by all men of sense and virtue as
+most abominable: and it was thought that those who had thus
+destroyed and disgraced so many persons of worth would put their
+souls in imminent danger at the last day.'[71]
+
+  [71] Enguerrand de Monstrelet's _Chronicles_, lib. iii. cap.
+  93, Johnes' Translation. _Vaudoisie_, which puzzles the
+  annalist, seems to disclose the pretence, if not the motive,
+  of the proceedings. Yet it is not easy to conceive so large
+  a number of all classes involved in the proscribed heresy of
+  the Vaudois in a single city in the north of France.
+
+Meanwhile the inquisitor, Jacques Dubois, doctor in theology,
+dean of Nôtre Dame at Arras, ordered the arrest of Levite the
+artist, and made him confess he had attended the 'Vauldine;' that
+he had seen there many people, men and women, burghers,
+ecclesiastics, whose names were specified. The bishops' vicars,
+overwhelmed by the number and quality of the involved, began to
+dread the consequence, and wished to stop the proceedings. But
+this did not satisfy the projects of two of the most active
+promoters, Jacques Dubois and the Bishop of Bayrut, who urged the
+Comte d'Estampes to use his authority with the vicars to proceed
+energetically against the prisoners. Soon afterwards the matter
+was brought to a crisis; the fate of the tortured convicts was
+decided, and amidst thousands of spectators from all parts, they
+were brought out, each with a mitre on his head, on which was
+painted the devil in the form in which he appeared at the general
+assemblies, and burned.
+
+They admitted (under the severest torture, promises, and threats)
+the truth of their meetings at the sabbaths. They used a sort of
+ointment well known in witch-pharmacy for rubbing a small wooden
+rod and the palms of their hands, and by a very common mode of
+conveyance were borne away suddenly to the appointed rendezvous.
+Here their lord and master was expecting them in the shape of a
+goat with the face of a man and the tail of an ape. Homage was
+first done by his new vassals offering up their soul or some part
+of the body; afterwards in adoration kissing him on the back--the
+accustomed salutation.[72] Next followed the different signs and
+ceremonies of the infernal vassalage, in particular treading and
+spitting upon the cross. Then to eating and drinking; after which
+the guests joined in acts of indescribable debauchery, when the
+devil took the form alternately of either sex. Dismissal was
+given by a mock sermon, forbidding to go to church, hear mass, or
+touch holy water. All these acts indicate schismatic offences
+which yet for the most part are the characteristics of the
+sabbaths in later Protestant witchcraft, excepting that the
+wicked apostates are there usually _papistical_ instead of
+_protestant_. During nearly two years Arras was subjected to the
+arbitrary examinations and tortures of the inquisitors; and
+an appeal to the Parliament of Paris could alone stop the
+proceedings, 1461. The chance of acquittal by the verdict of the
+public was little: it was still less by the sentence of judicial
+tribunals.
+
+  [72] The 'Osculum in tergo' seems to be an indispensable
+  part of the Homagium or _Diabolagium_.
+
+
+
+
+PART III.
+
+MODERN FAITH.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+     The Bull of Innocent VIII.--A new Incentive to the vigorous
+     Prosecution of Witchcraft--The 'Malleus Maleficarum'--Its
+     Criminal Code--Numerous Executions at the Commencement of
+     the Sixteenth Century--Examination of Christian
+     Demonology--Various Opinions of the Nature of
+     Demons--General Belief in the Intercourse of Demons and
+     other non-human Beings with Mankind.
+
+
+Perhaps the most memorable epoch in the annals of witchcraft is
+the date of the promulgation of the bull of Pope Innocent VIII.,
+when its prosecution was formally sanctioned, enforced, and
+developed in the most explicit manner by the highest authority in
+the Church. It was in the year 1484 that Innocent VIII. issued
+his famous bull directed especially against the crime in Germany,
+whose inquisitors were empowered to seek out and burn the
+malefactors _pro strigiatûs hæresi_. The bull was as follows:
+'Innocent, Bishop, servant of the servants of God, in order to
+the future memorial of the matter.... In truth it has come to our
+ears, not without immense trouble and grief to ourselves, that
+in some parts of Higher Germany ... very many persons of both
+sexes, deviating from the Catholic faith, abuse themselves with
+the demons, Incubus and Succubus; and by incantations, charms,
+conjurations, and other wicked _superstitions_, by criminal acts
+and offences have caused the offspring of women and of the lower
+animals, the fruits of the earth, the grape, and the products of
+various plants, men, women, and other animals of different kinds,
+vineyards, meadows, pasture land, corn, and other vegetables of
+the earth, to perish, be oppressed, and utterly destroyed; that
+they torture men and women with cruel pains and torments,
+internal as well as external; that they hinder the proper
+intercourse of the sexes, and the propagation of the human
+species. Moreover, they are in the habit of denying the very
+faith itself. We therefore, willing to provide by opportune
+remedies according as it falls to us by our office, by our
+apostolical authority, by the tenor of these presents do appoint
+and decree that they be convicted, imprisoned, punished, and
+mulcted according to their offences.... By the apostolic rescript
+given at Rome.'
+
+This, in brief, is an outline of the proclamation of Innocent
+VIII., the principles of which were developed in the more
+voluminous work of the 'Malleus Maleficarum,'[73] or Hammer of
+Witches, five years later. In the interval, the effect of so
+forcible an appeal from the Head of the Church was such as might
+be expected. Cumanus, one of the inquisitors in 1485, burned
+forty-one witches, first shaving them to search for 'marks.'
+Alciatus, a lawyer, tells us that another ecclesiastical officer
+burned one hundred witches in Piedmont, and was prevented in his
+plan of daily _autos-da-fé_ only by a general uprising of the
+people, who at length drove him out of the country, when the
+archbishop succeeded to the vacant office. In several provinces,
+even the servile credulity of the populace could not tolerate the
+excesses of the judges; and the inhabitants rose _en masse_
+against their inquisitorial oppressors, dreading the entire
+depopulation of their neighbourhood. As a sort of apology for the
+bull of 1484 was published the 'Malleus'--a significantly
+expressive title.[74] The authors appointed by the pope were
+Jacob Sprenger, of the Order of Preachers, and Professor of
+Theology in Cologne; John Gremper, priest, Master in Arts; and
+Henry Institor. The work is divisible, according to the title,
+into three parts--Things that pertain to Witchcraft; The Effects
+of Witchcraft; and The Remedies for Witchcraft.
+
+  [73] Ennemoser (_History of Magic_), a modern and milder
+  Protestant, excepts to the general denunciations of Pope
+  Innocent ('who assumed this name, undoubtedly, because he
+  wished it to indicate what he really desired to be') by
+  Protestant writers who have used such terms as 'a scandalous
+  hypocrite,' 'a cursed war-song of hell,' 'hangmen's slaves,'
+  'rabid jailers,' 'bloodthirsty monsters,' &c.; and thinks
+  that 'the accusation which was made against Innocent could
+  only have been justly founded if the pope had not
+  participated in the general belief, if he had been wiser
+  than his time, and really seen that the heretics were no
+  allies of the devil, and that the witches were no heretics.'
+
+  [74] The complete title is 'MALLEUS MALEFICARUM in tres
+  partes divisus, in quibus I. Concurrentia ad maleficia; II.
+  Maleficiorum effectus; III. Remedia adversus maleficia. Et
+  modus denique procedendi ac puniendi maleficas abunde
+  continetur, præcipue autem omnibus inquisitoribus et divini
+  verbi concionatoribus utilis et necessarius.' The original
+  edition of 1489 is the one quoted by Hauber, _Bibliotheca
+  Mag._, and referred to by Ennemoser, _History of Magic_.
+
+In this apology the editors are careful to affirm that they
+_collected_, rather than _furnished_, their materials originally,
+and give as their venerable authorities the names of Dionysius
+the Areopagite, Chrysostom, Hilary, Augustin, Gregory I.,
+Remigius, Thomas Aquinas, and others. The writers exult in the
+consciousness of security, in spite of the attempts of the
+demons, day and night, to deter them from completing their
+meritorious labours. Stratagems of every sort are employed in
+vain. In their judgment the worst species of human wickedness
+sink into nothing, compared with apostasy from the Church and, by
+consequence, alliance with hell. A genuine or pretended dread of
+sorcery, and an affected contempt for the female sex, with an
+extremely low estimate of its virtues (adopting the language of
+the Fathers), characterises the opinions of the compilers.
+
+Ennemoser has made an abstract from the 'Demonomagie' of Horst
+(founded on Hauber's original work), of the 'Hexenhammer,' under
+its three principal divisions. The third part, which contains the
+Criminal Code, and consists of thirty-five questions, is the most
+important section. It is difficult to decide which is the more
+astonishing, the perfect folly or the perfect iniquity of the
+Code: it is easier to understand how so many thousands of victims
+were helplessly sacrificed. The arrest might take place on the
+simple rumour of a witch being found somewhere, without any
+previous denunciation. The most abandoned and the most infamous
+persons may be witnesses: no criminal is too bad. Even a witch or
+heretic (the _worst_ criminal in the eye of ecclesiastical law)
+is capable of giving evidence. Husbands and wives may witness one
+against the other; and the testimony of children was received as
+good evidence.
+
+The ninth and tenth chapters consider the question 'whether a
+defence was to be allowed; if an advocate defended his client
+beyond what was requisite, whether it was not reasonable that he
+too should be considered guilty; for he is a patron of witches
+and heretics.... Thirteenth chapter: What the judge has to notice
+in the torture-chamber. Witches who have given themselves up for
+years, body and soul, to the devil, are made by him so insensible
+to pain on the rack, that they rather allow themselves to be torn
+to pieces than confess. Fourteenth chapter: Upon torture and the
+mode of racking. In order to bring the accused to voluntary
+confession, you may promise her her life; which promise, however,
+may afterwards be withdrawn. If the witch does not confess the
+first day, the torture to be continued the second and third days.
+But here the difference between continuing and repeating is
+important. The torture may not be _continued_ without fresh
+evidence, but it may be _repeated_ according to judgment.
+Fifteenth chapter: Continuance of the discovery of a witch by her
+marks. Amongst other signs, weeping is one. It is a damning thing
+if the accused, on being brought up, cannot shed tears. The
+clergy and judges lay their hands on the head of the accused, and
+adjure her by the hot tears of the Most Glorified Virgin that in
+case of her innocence, she shed abundant tears in the name of God
+the Father.'[75]
+
+  [75] Ennemoser's _History of Magic_. Translated by W.
+  Howitt. There are three kinds of men whom witchcraft cannot
+  touch--magistrates; clergymen exercising the pious rites of
+  the Church; and saints, who are under the immediate
+  protection of the angels.
+
+The 'Bull' and 'Malleus' were the code and textbook of Witchcraft
+amongst the Catholics, as the Act and 'Demonologie' of James VI.
+were of the Protestants. Perhaps the most important result of the
+former was to withdraw entirely the authorised prosecution and
+punishment of the criminals from the civil to the ecclesiastical
+tribunals. Formerly they had a divided jurisdiction. At the
+same time the fury of popular and judicial fanaticism was
+greatly inflamed by this new sanction. Immediately, and almost
+simultaneously, in different parts of Europe, heretical witches
+were hunted up, tortured, burned, or hanged; and those parts of
+the Continent most infected with the widening heresy suffered
+most. The greater number in Germany seems to show that the
+dissentients from Catholic dogma there were rapidly increasing,
+some time before Luther thundered out his denunciations. An
+unusual storm of thunder and lightning in the neighbourhood of
+Constance was the occasion of burning two old women, Ann Mindelen
+and one 'Agnes.'[76] One contemporary writer asserts that 1,000
+persons were put to death in one year in the district of Como;
+and Remigius, one of the authorised _inquisitores pravitatis
+hæreticæ_, boasts of having burned 900 in the course of fifteen
+years. Martin del Rio states 500 were executed in Geneva in
+the short space of three months in 1515; and during the next
+five years 40 were burned at Ravensburgh. Great numbers suffered
+in France at the same period. At Calahorra, in Spain, in 1507,
+a vast _auto-da-fé_ was exhibited, when 39 women, denounced
+as sorceresses, were committed to the flames--religious
+carnage attested by the unsuspected evidence of the judges and
+executioners themselves.
+
+  [76] Hutchinson's _Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft_,
+  chap ii.
+
+It is opportune here to examine the common beliefs of demonology
+and sorcery as they existed in Europe. Christian demonology is a
+confused mixture of pagan, Oriental, and Christian ideas. The
+Christian Scriptures have seemed to suggest and sanction a
+constant personal interference of the 'great adversary,' who is
+always traversing the earth 'seeking whom he may devour;' and his
+popular figure is represented as a union of the great dragon,
+the satyrs, and fauns. Nor does he often appear without one or
+other of his recognised marks--the cloven foot, the goat's
+horns, beard, and legs, or the dragon's tail. With young and
+good-looking witches he is careful to assume the recommendations
+of a young and handsome man, whilst it is not worth while to
+disguise so unprepossessing peculiarities in his incarnate
+manifestations to _old_ women, the enjoyment of whose souls is
+the great purpose of seduction.
+
+Sir Thomas Browne ('Vulgar Errors'), a man of much learning and
+still more superstitious fancy, speciously explains the
+phenomenon of the cloven foot. He suggests that 'the ground of
+this opinion at first might be his frequent appearing in the
+shape of a goat, which answers this description. This was the
+opinion of the ancient Christians concerning the apparitions of
+_panites_, fauns, and satyrs: and of this form we read of one
+that appeared to Anthony in the wilderness. The same is also
+confirmed from exposition of Holy Scripture. For whereas it is
+said "Thou shalt not offer unto devils," the original word is
+_Seghuirim_, i. e. rough and hairy goats; because in that shape
+the devil most often appeared, as is expounded by the rabbins, as
+Tremellius hath also explained; and as the word _Ascimah_, the
+God of Emath, is by some explained.' Dr. Joseph Mede, a pious and
+learned divine, author of the esteemed 'Key to the Apocalypse,'
+pronounces that 'the devil could not appear in human shape while
+man was in his integrity, because he was a spirit fallen from his
+first glorious perfection, and therefore must appear in such
+shape which might argue his imperfection and abasement, which was
+the shape of a beast; otherwise [he plausibly contends] no reason
+can be given why he should not rather have appeared to Eve in the
+shape of a woman than of a serpent. But since the fall of man the
+case is altered; now we know he can take upon him the shape of a
+man. He appears in the shape of man's imperfection rather for age
+or deformity, as like an old man (for so the witches say); and,
+perhaps, it is not altogether false, which is vulgarly affirmed,
+that the devil appearing in human shape has always a deformity
+of some uncouth member or other, as though he could not yet take
+upon him human shape entirely, for that man is not entirely and
+utterly fallen as he is.' Whatever form he may assume, the
+cloven foot must always be visible under every disguise; and
+Othello looks first for that fabulous but certain sign when he
+scrutinises his treacherous friend.
+
+Reginald Scot's reminiscences of what was instilled into him in
+the nursery may possibly occur to some even at this day. 'In our
+childhood,' he complains, 'our mothers' maids have so terrified
+us with an ugly devil having horns on his head, fire in his
+mouth, a tail in his breech, eyes like a bison, fangs like a dog,
+a skin like a _niger_, a voice roaring like a lion, whereby we
+start and are afraid when we hear one cry Boh!' Chaucer has
+expressed the belief of his age on the subject. It seems to have
+been a proper duty of a parish priest to bring to the notice of
+his ecclesiastical superior, with other crimes, those of sorcery.
+The Friar describes his 'Erchedeken' as one--
+
+    That boldely didde execucioun
+    In punyschying of fornicacioun,
+    Of wicchecraft....
+
+This ecclesiastic employed in his service a subordinate
+'sompnour,' who, in the course of his official duty, one day
+meets a devil, whose 'dwellynge is in Helle,' who condescends to
+enlighten the officer on the dark subject of demon-apparitions:--
+
+    When us liketh we can take us on
+    Or ellis make you seme that we ben schape
+    Som tyme like a man or like an ape;
+    Or like an aungel can I ryde or go:
+    It is no wonder thing though it be so,
+    A lowsy jogelour can deceyve the;
+    And, parfay, yet can I more craft than he.
+
+To the question why they are not satisfied with _one_ shape for
+all occasions, the devil answers at length:--
+
+    Som tyme we ben Goddis instrumentes
+    And menes to don his commandementes,
+    Whan that him liste, upon his creatures
+    In divers act and in divers figures.
+    Withouten him we have no might certayne
+    If that him liste to stonden ther agayne.
+    And som tyme at our prayer, have we leve
+    Only the body and not the soule greve;
+    Witnesse on Job, whom we didde ful wo.
+    And som tyme have we might on bothe two,
+    That is to say of body and soule eeke
+    And som tyme be we suffred for to seeke
+    Upon a man and don his soule unrest
+    And not his body, and al is for the best.
+    Whan he withstandeth our temptacioun
+    It is a cause of his savacioun.
+    Al be it so it was naught our entente
+    He schuld be sauf, but that we wolde him hente.
+    And som tyme we ben servaunt unto man
+    As to the Erchebisschop Saynt Dunstan;
+    And to the Apostolis servaunt was I.
+
+    *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Som tyme we fegn, and som tyme we ryse
+    With dede bodies, in ful wonder wyse,
+    And speke renably, and as fayre and wel
+    As to the Phitonissa dede Samuel:
+    And yit wil som men say, it was not he.
+    I do no fors of your divinitie.[77]
+
+  [77] _Canterbury Tales._ T. Wright's Text. Chaucer, the
+  English Boccaccio in verse, attacks alike with his sarcasms
+  the Church and the female sex.
+
+Jewish theology, expanded by their leading divines, includes a
+formidable array of various demons; and the whole of nature in
+Christian belief was peopled with every kind
+
+    'Of those demons that are found
+     In fire, air, flood, or under ground.'
+
+Various opinions have been held concerning the nature of devils
+and demons. Some have maintained, with Tertullian, that they are
+'the souls of baser men.' It is a disputed question whether they
+are mortal or immortal; subject to, or free from, pain. 'Psellus,
+a Christian, and sometime tutor to Michael Pompinatius, Emperor
+of Greece, a great observer of the nature of devils, holds they
+are corporeal, and live and die: ... that they feel pain if they
+be hurt (which Cardan confirms, and Scaliger justly laughs him to
+scorn for); and if their bodies be cut, with admirable celerity
+they come together again. Austin approves as much; so doth
+Hierome, Origen, Tertullian, Lactantius, and many eminent fathers
+of the Church; that in their fall their bodies were changed into
+a more aerial and gross substance.' The Platonists and some
+rabbis, Porphyrius, Plutarch, Zosimus, &c., hold this opinion,
+which is scornfully denied by some others, who assert that they
+only deceive the eyes of men, effecting no real change. Cardan
+believes 'they feed on men's souls, and so [a worthy origin]
+belike that we have so many battles fought in all ages,
+countries, is to make them a feast and their sole delight: but if
+displeased they fret and chafe (for they feed belike on the souls
+of beasts, as we do on their bodies) and send many plagues
+amongst us.'
+
+Their exact numbers and orders are differently estimated by
+different authorities. It is certain that they fill the air, the
+earth, the water, as well as the subterranean globe. The air,
+according to Paracelsus, is not so full of flies in summer as it
+is at all times of invisible devils. Some writers, professing to
+follow Socrates and Plato, determine nine sorts. Whatever or
+wherever the supralunary may be, our world is more interested in
+the sublunary tribes. These are variously divided and subdivided.
+One authority computes six distinct kinds--Fiery, Aerial,
+Terrestrial, Watery, Subterranean and Central: these last
+inhabiting the central regions of the interior of the earth. The
+Fiery are those that work 'by blazing stars, fire-drakes; they
+counterfeit suns and moons, stars oftentimes. The Aerial live,
+for the most part, in the air, cause many tempests, thunder and
+lightning, tear oaks, fire steeples, houses; strike men and
+beasts; make it rain stones, as in Livy's time, wool, frogs, &c.;
+counterfeit armies in the air, strange noises ... all which Guil.
+Postellus useth as an argument (as, indeed, it is) to persuade
+them that will not believe there be spirits or devils. They
+cause whirlwinds on a sudden and tempestuous storms, which,
+though our meteorologists generally refer to natural causes, yet
+I am of Bodine's mind, they are more often caused by those aerial
+devils in their several quarters; for they ride on the storms as
+when a desperate man makes away with himself, which, by hanging
+or drowning, they frequently do, as Kormannus observes,
+_tripudium agentes_, dancing and rejoicing at the death of a
+sinner. These can corrupt the air, and cause sickness, plagues,
+storms, shipwrecks, fires, inundations.... Nothing so familiar
+(if we may believe those relations of Saxo Grammaticus, Olaus
+Magnus, &c.) as for witches and sorcerers in Lapland, Lithuania,
+and all over Scandia to sell winds to mariners and cause
+tempests, which Marcus Paulus, the Venetian, relates likewise of
+the Tartars.[78]
+
+  [78] It is still the custom of the Tartar or Thibetian
+  Lamas, or at least of some of them, to scatter charms to the
+  winds for the benefit of travellers. M. Huc's _Travels in
+  Tartary, Thibet, &c._
+
+'These are they which Cardan thinks desire so much carnal
+copulation with witches (Incubi and Succubi), transform bodies,
+and are so very cold if they be touched, and that serve
+magicians.... Water devils are those naiads or water nymphs which
+have been heretofore conversant about waters and rivers. The
+water (as Paracelsus thinks) is their chaos, wherein they live
+... appearing most part (saith Trithemius) in women's shapes.
+Paracelsus hath several stories of them that have lived and been
+married to mortal men, and so continued for certain years with
+them, and after, upon some dislike, have forsaken them. Such an
+one was Egeria, with whom Numa was so familiar, Diana, Ceres,
+&c.... Terrestrial devils are Lares, Genii, Fauns, Satyrs,
+Wood-nymphs, Foliots, Fairies, Robin Goodfellows, Trulli; which,
+as they are most conversant with men, so they do them most harm.
+Some think it was they alone that kept the heathen people in awe
+of old.... Subterranean devils are as common as the rest, and do
+as much harm. Olaus Magnus makes six kinds of them, some bigger,
+some less, commonly seen about mines of metals, and are some of
+them noxious; some again do no harm (they are guardians of
+treasure in the earth, and cause earthquakes). The last (sort)
+are conversant about the centre of the earth, to torture the
+souls of damned men to the day of judgment; their egress and
+ingress some suppose to be about Ætna, Lipari, Hecla, Vesuvius,
+Terra del Fuego, because many shrieks and fearful cries are
+continually heard thereabouts, and familiar apparitions of dead
+men, ghosts, and goblins.'
+
+As for the particular offices and operations of those various
+tribes, 'Plato, in _Critias_, and after him his followers,
+gave out that they were men's governors and keepers, our
+lords and masters, as we are of our cattle. They govern
+provinces and kingdoms by oracles, auguries, dreams, rewards
+and punishments, prophecies, inspirations, sacrifices and
+religious _superstitions_, varied in as many forms as there be
+diversity of spirits; they send wars, plagues, peace, sickness,
+health, dearth, plenty, as appears by those histories of
+Thucydides, Livius, Dionysius Halicarnassensis, with many others,
+that are full of their wonderful stratagems.' They formerly devoted
+themselves, each one, to the service of particular individuals as
+familiar demons, 'private spirits.' Numa, Socrates, and many
+others were indebted to their _Genius_. The power of the devil is
+not limited to the body. 'Many think he can work upon the body,
+but not upon the mind. But experience pronounceth otherwise, that
+he can work both upon body and mind. Tertullian is of this
+opinion.'
+
+The causes and inducements of 'possession' are many. One writer
+affirms that 'the devil being a slender, incomprehensible spirit
+can easily insinuate and wind himself into human bodies, and
+cunningly couched in our bowels, vitiate our healths, terrify our
+souls with fearful dreams, and shake our minds with furies. They
+go in and out of our bodies as bees do in a hive, and so provoke
+and tempt us as they perceive our temperature inclined of itself
+and most apt to be deluded.... Agrippa and Lavater are persuaded
+that this humour [the melancholy] invites the devil into it,
+wheresoever it is in extremity, and, of all other, melancholy
+persons are most subject to diabolical temptations and illusions,
+and most apt to entertain them, and the devil best able to work
+upon them. 'But whether,' declares Burton, 'by obsession, or
+possession, or otherwise, I will not determine; 'tis a difficult
+question.'[79]
+
+  [79] _The Anatomy of Melancholy_, by Democritus junior;
+  edited by Democritus minor. Part i. sect. 2. An equally
+  copious and curious display of learning. Few authors,
+  probably, have been more plagiarised.
+
+The mediævalists believed themselves surrounded everywhere by
+spiritual beings; but unlike the ancients, they were convinced
+not so much that they were the peculiar care of heaven as that
+they were the miserable victims of hellish malice, ever seeking
+their temporal as well as eternal destruction; a fact apparent in
+the whole mediæval literature and art.[80]
+
+  [80] Sismondi (_Literature of the South of Europe_) has
+  observed of the greatest epic of the Middle Age, that
+  'Dante, in common with many fathers of the Church, under the
+  supposition that paganism, in the persons of the infernal
+  gods, represented the fallen angels, has made no scruple to
+  adopt its fables.' Tasso, at a later period, introduces the
+  deities of heathendom. In the _Gerusalemme Liberata_ they
+  sit in council to frustrate the plans and destroy the forces
+  of the Christian leaders before Jerusalem (iv). Ismeno, a
+  powerful magician in the ranks of the Turks, brings up a
+  host of diabolic allies to guard the wood which supplied the
+  infidels with materials for carrying on the siege of the
+  city (xiii.). And the masterpieces of art of Guido or
+  Raffaelle, which excite at once admiration and despair in
+  their modern disciples, consecrated and immortalised the
+  vulgar superstition.
+
+Glanvil's conjectures on the cause of the _comparative_ rarity of
+demoniac and other spiritual apparitions in general may interest
+the credulous or curious reader. ''Tis very probable,' reasons
+the Doctor, 'that the state wherein they are will not easily
+permit palpable intercourses between the bad genii and mankind:
+since 'tis like enough their own laws and government do not allow
+their frequent excursions into the world. Or it may with great
+probability be supposed that 'tis a very hard and painful thing
+for them to force their thin and _tenuious_ bodies into a visible
+consistence, and such shapes as are necessary for their designs
+in their correspondence with witches. For in this action their
+bodies must needs be exceedingly compressed, which cannot well be
+without a painful sense. And this is, perhaps, a reason why there
+are so few apparitions, and why appearing spirits are commonly in
+such a hurry to be gone, viz. that they may be delivered of the
+unnatural pressure of their tender vehicles,[81] which I confess
+holds more in the apparition of good than evil spirits ... the
+reason of which probably is the greater subtlety and tenuity of
+the former, which will require far greater degrees of compression
+and consequently of pain to make them visible; whereas the latter
+are feculent and gross, and so nearer allied to palpable
+existences, and more easily reducible to appearance and
+visibility.'[82]
+
+  [81] So specious a theory must have occurred to, and its
+  propriety will easily be recognised by, the spirit and ghost
+  advocates of the present day.
+
+  [82] _Sadducismus Triumphatus._ Considerations about
+  Witchcraft. Sect. xi.
+
+'Palpable intercourses between the bad genii and mankind' are
+more frequent than Dr. Glanvil was disposed to believe; and he
+must have been conversant with the acts of Incubus and Succubus.
+In the first age (orbe novo c[oe]loque recenti) under the
+Saturnian regime, 'while yet there was no fear of Jove,'[83]
+innocence prevailed undisturbed; but soon as the silver age was
+inaugurated by the usurpation of Jove, _liaisons_ between gods
+and mortals became frequent. Love affairs between good or bad
+'genii' and mankind are of common occurrence in the mythology of
+most peoples. In the romance-tales of the middle age lovers find
+themselves unexpectedly connected with some mysterious being of
+inhuman kind. The writers in defence of witchcraft quote Genesis
+vi. in proof of the reality of such intercourses; and Justin
+Martyr and Tertullian, the great apologists of Christianity, and
+others of the Fathers, interpret _Filios Dei_ to be angels or
+evil spirits who, enamoured with the beauty of the women, begot
+the primeval giants.[84]
+
+  [83] 'Jove nondum Barbato.'
+
+  [84] Milton indignantly exclaims, alluding to this common
+  fancy of the leaders of the Primitive Church, 'Who would
+  think him fit to write an apology for Christian faith to the
+  Roman Senate that could tell them "how of the angels"--of
+  which he must needs mean those in Genesis called the Sons of
+  God--"mixing with women were begotten the devils," as good
+  Justin Martyr in his Apology told them.' (_Reformation in
+  England_, book i.). And 'Clemens Alexandrinus, Sulpicius
+  Severus, Eusebius, &c., make a twofold fall of angels--one
+  from the beginning of the world; another a little before the
+  deluge, as Moses teacheth us, openly professing that these
+  _genii_ can beget and have carnal copulation with woman'
+  (_Anatomy of Melancholy_, part i.). Robert Burton gives in
+  his adhesion to the sentiments of Lactantius (xiv. 15). It
+  seems that the later Jewish devils owe their origin
+  (according to the Talmudists, as represented by Pererius in
+  the _Anatomy_) to a former wife of Adam, called Lilis, the
+  predecessor of Eve.
+
+Some tremendous results of diabolic connections appear in the
+metrical romances of the twelfth or thirteenth century, as well
+as in those early Anglo-Norman chroniclers or fabulists, who have
+been at the pains to inform us of the pre-historic events of
+their country. The author of the romance-poem of the well-known
+Merlin--so famous in British prophecy--in introducing his hero,
+enters upon a long dissertation on the origin of the infernal
+arts. He informs us on the authority of 'David the prophet, and
+of Moses,' that the greater part of the angels who rebelled under
+the leadership of Lucifer, lost their former power and beauty,
+and became 'fiendes black:' that instead of being precipitated
+into 'helle-pit,' many remained in mid-air, where they still
+retain the faculty of seducing mortals by assuming whatever
+shape they please. These had been much concerned at the
+miraculous birth of Christ; but it was hoped to counteract the
+salutary effects of that event, by producing from some virgin a
+semi-demon, whose office it should be to disseminate sorcerers
+and wicked men. For this purpose the devil[85] prepares to seduce
+three young sisters; and proceeds at once in proper disguise to
+an old woman, with whose avarice and cunning he was well
+acquainted. Her he engaged by liberal promises to be mediatrix in
+the seduction of the elder sister, whom he was prevented from
+attempting in person by the precautions of a holy hermit. Like
+'the first that fell of womankind,' the young lady at length
+consented; was betrayed by the _fictitious_ youth, and condemned
+by the law to be burnt alive.
+
+  [85] Probably,
+
+       'Belial, the dissolutest spirit that fell,
+        The sensualist; and after Asmodai
+        The fleshliest Incubus.'--_Par. Reg._
+
+The same fate, excepting the fearful penalty, awaited the second.
+And now, too late, the holy hermit became aware of his disastrous
+negligence. He strictly enjoined on the third and remaining
+sister a constant watch. Her security, however, was the cause of
+her betrayal. On one occasion, in a moment of remissness, she
+forgot her prayers and the sign of the cross, before retiring for
+the night. No longer excluded, the fiend, assuming human shape,
+effected his purpose. In due time a son was born, whose
+parentage was sufficiently evinced by an entire covering of black
+hair, although his limbs were well-formed, and his features fine.
+Fortunately, the careless guardian had exactly calculated the
+moment of the demon's birth; and no sooner was he informed of the
+event, than the new-born infant was borne off to the regenerating
+water, when he was christened by the name of Merlin; the fond
+hopes of the demons being for this time, at least, irretrievably
+disappointed. How Merlin, by superhuman prowess and knowledge,
+defeated the Saracens (Saxons) in many bloody battles; his
+magical achievements and favour at the court of King Vortigern
+and his successors, are fully exhibited by the author of the
+history.[86] Geoffrey of Monmouth recounts them as matters of
+fact; and they are repeated by Vergil in the History of Britain,
+composed under the auspices of Henry VIII.
+
+  [86] See _Early English Metrical Romances_, ed. by Sir H.
+  Ellis.
+
+By the ancients, whole peoples were sometimes said to be derived
+from these unholy connections. Jornandes, the historian of the
+Goths, is glad to be able to relate their hated rivals, the Huns
+(of whom the Kalmuck Tartars are commonly said to be the modern
+representatives), to have owed their origin to an intercourse of
+the Scythian witches with infernal spirits. The extraordinary
+form and features of those dreaded emigrants from the steppes of
+Tartary, had suggested to the fear and hatred of their European
+subjects, a fable which Gibbon supposes might have been derived
+from a more pleasing one of the Greeks.[87]
+
+  [87] A sufficiently large collection from ancient and modern
+  writers of the facts of _inhuman_ connections may be seen in
+  the _Anatomy of Melancholy_, part iii. sect. 2. Having
+  repeated the assertions of previous authors proving the fact
+  of intercourses of human with inferior species of animals,
+  Burton fortifies his own opinion of their reality by
+  numerous authorities. If those stories be true, he reasons,
+  that are written of Incubus and Succubus, of nymphs,
+  lascivious fauns, satyrs, and those heathen gods which were
+  devils, those lascivious Telchines of whom the Platonists
+  tell so many fables; or those familiar meetings in our day
+  [1624] and company of witches and devils, there is some
+  probability for it. I know that Biarmannus, Wierus, and some
+  others stoutly deny it ... but Austin (lib. xv. _de Civit.
+  Dei_) doth acknowledge it. And he refers to Plutarch, _Vita
+  Numæ; Wierus, de Præstigiis Dæmon., Giraldus Cambrensis,
+  Malleus Malef., Jacobus Reussus, Godelman, Erastus, John
+  Nider, Delrio, Lipsius, Bodin, Pererius, King James, &c_.
+  The learned and curious work of the melancholy Student of
+  Christ Church and Oxford Rector has been deservedly
+  commended by many eminent critics. That 'exact mathematician
+  and curious calculator of nativities' calculated exactly,
+  according to Anthony Wood (_Athenæ Oxon._), the period of
+  his own death--1639.
+
+The acts of Incubus assume an important part in witch-trials and
+confessions. Incubus is the visitor of females, Succubus of
+males. Chaucer satirises the gallantries of the vicarious Incubus
+by the mouth of the wife of Bath (that practical admirer of
+Solomon and the Samaritan woman),[88] who prefaces her tale with
+the assurance:--
+
+    That maketh that ther ben no fayeries,
+    For ther as wont was to walken an elf
+    Ther walketh noon but the _Lymitour_ himself.
+
+    *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Women may now go safely up and downe;
+    In every busch and under every tre
+    Ther is noon other _Incubus_ but he.
+
+  [88] The wife of Bath, who had buried only her fifth
+  husband, must appear modest by comparison. Not to mention
+  Seneca's or Martial's assertions or insinuations, St. Jerome
+  was acquainted with the case of a woman who had buried her
+  _twenty-second_ husband, whose conjugal capacity, however,
+  was exceeded by the Dutch wife who, on the testimony of
+  honest John Evelyn, had buried her _twenty-fifth_ husband!
+
+Reginald Scot has devoted several chapters of his work to a
+relation of the exploits of Incubus.[89] But he honestly warns
+his readers 'whose chaste ears cannot well endure to hear of such
+lecheries (gathered out of the books of divinity of great
+authority) to turn over a few leaves wherein I have, like a
+groom, thrust their stuff, even that which I myself loath, as
+into a stinking corner: howbeit none otherwise, I hope, but that
+the other parts of my writing shall remain sweet.' He repeats a
+story from the 'Vita Hieronymi,' which seems to insinuate some
+suspicion of the character of a certain Bishop Sylvanus. It
+relates that one night Incubus invaded a certain lady's bedroom.
+Indignant at so unusual, or at least disguised, an apparition,
+the lady cried out loudly until the guests of the house came and
+found it under the bed in the likeness of the bishop; 'which holy
+man,' adds Scot, 'was much defamed thereby.' Another tradition or
+legend seems to reflect upon the chastity of the greatest saint
+of the Middle Ages.[90] The superhuman oppression of Incubus is
+still remembered in the proverbial language of the present day.
+The horrors of the infernal compacts and leagues, as exhibited in
+the fates of wizards or magicians at the last hour, formed one of
+the most popular scenes on the theatrical stage. Christopher
+Marlow, in 'The Life and Death of Dr. Faustus,' and Robert
+Greene, in 'Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay,' in the Elizabethan
+age, dramatised the common, conception of the Compact.
+
+  [89] See the fourth book of the _Discoverie_.
+
+  [90] 'It is written in the legend of St. Bernard,' we are
+  told, 'that a pretty wench that had the use of Incubus his
+  body by the space of six or seven years in Aquitania (being
+  belike weary of him for that he waxed old), would needs go to
+  St. Bernard another while. But Incubus told her if she would
+  so forsake him, he would be revenged upon her. But befal what
+  would, she went to St. Bernard, who took her his staff and
+  bad her lay it in the bed beside her. And, indeed, the devil,
+  fearing the staff or that St. Bernard lay there himself,
+  durst not approach into her chamber that night. What he did
+  afterwards I am uncertain.' This story will not appear so
+  evidential to the reader as Scot seems to infer it to be. If
+  any credit is to be given to the strong insinuations of
+  Protestant divines of the sixteenth century, the 'holy bishop
+  Sylvanus' is not the only example among the earlier saints of
+  the frailty of human nature.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+     Three Sorts of Witches--Various Modes of Witchcraft--Manner
+     of Witch-Travelling--The Sabbaths--Anathemas of the Popes
+     against the Crime--Bull of Adrian VI.--Cotemporary Testimony
+     to the Severity of the Persecutions--Necessary Triumph of
+     the Orthodox Party--Germany most subject to the
+     Superstition--Acts of Parliament of Henry against
+     Witchcraft--Elizabeth Barton--The Act of 1562--Executions
+     under Queen Elizabeth's Government--Case of Witchcraft
+     narrated by Reginald Scot.
+
+
+The ceremonies of the compact by which a woman became a witch
+have been already referred to. It was almost an essential
+condition in the vulgar creed that she should be, as Gaule
+('Select Cases of Conscience touching Witches,' &c., 1646)
+represents, an old woman with a wrinkled face, a furred brow, a
+hairy lip, a gobber tooth, a squint eye, a squeaking voice, a
+scolding tongue, having a ragged coat on her back, a skull-cap on
+her head, a spindle in her hand, a dog or cat by her side. There
+are three sorts of the devil's agents on earth--the black, the
+gray, and the white witches. The first are omnipotent for evil,
+but powerless for good. The white have the power to help, but not
+to hurt.[91] As for the third species (a mixture of white and
+black), they are equally effective for good or evil.
+
+  [91] A writer at the beginning of the seventeenth century
+  (Cotta, _Tryall of Witchcraft_) says, 'This kind is not
+  obscure at this day, swarming in this kingdom, whereof no
+  man can be ignorant who lusteth to observe the uncontrouled
+  liberty and licence of open and ordinary resort in all
+  places unto _wise_ men and _wise_ women, so vulgarly termed
+  for their reputed knowledge concerning such diseased persons
+  as are supposed to be bewitched.' And (_Short Discoverie of
+  Unobserved Dangers, 1612_) 'the mention of witchecraft doth
+  now occasion the remembrance in the next place of a sort of
+  practitioners whom our custom and country doth call wise men
+  and wise women, reputed a kind of good and honest harmless
+  witches or wizards, who, by good words, by hallowed herbs
+  and salves, and other superstitious ceremonies, promise to
+  allay and calm devils, practices of other witches, and the
+  forces of many diseases.' Another writer of the same date
+  considers 'it were a thousand times better for the land if
+  all witches, but specially the _blessing witch_, might
+  suffer death. Men do commonly hate and spit at the
+  _damnifying_ sorcerer as unworthy to live among them,
+  whereas they fly unto the other in necessity; they depend
+  upon him as their God, and by this means thousands are
+  carried away, to their final confusion. Death, therefore, is
+  the just and deserved portion of the _good_
+  witch.'--_Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great
+  Britain_, by Brand, ed. by Sir H. Ellis.
+
+Equally various and contradictory are the motives and acts
+assigned to witches. Nothing is too great or too mean for their
+practice: they engage with equal pleasure in the overthrow of a
+kingdom or a religion, and in inflicting the most ordinary evils
+and mischiefs in life. Their mode of bewitching is various: by
+fascination or casting an evil eye ('Nescio,' says the Virgilian
+shepherd, 'quis teneros oculus mihi fascinat agnos'); by making
+representations of the person to be acted upon in wax or clay,
+roasting them before a fire; by mixing magical ointments or
+other compositions and ingredients revealed to us in the
+witch-songs of Shakspeare, Jonson, Middleton, Shadwell, and
+others; sometimes merely by muttering an imprecation.
+
+They ride in sieves on the sea, on brooms, spits magically
+prepared; and by these modes of conveyance are borne, without
+trouble or loss of time, to their destination. By these means
+they attend the periodical sabbaths, the great meetings of the
+witch-tribe, where they assemble at stated times to do homage, to
+recount their services, and to receive the commands of their
+lord. They are held on the night between Friday and Saturday; and
+every year a grand sabbath is ordered for celebration on the
+Blocksberg mountains, for the night before the first day of May.
+In those famous mountains the obedient vassals congregate from
+all parts of Christendom--from Italy, Spain, Germany, France,
+England, and Scotland. A place where four roads meet, a rugged
+mountain range, or perhaps the neighbourhood of a secluded lake
+or some dark forest, is usually the spot selected for the
+meeting.[92]
+
+  [92] 'When orders had once been issued for the meeting of
+  the sabbath, all the wizards and witches who failed to
+  attend it were lashed by demons with a rod made of serpents
+  or scorpions. In France and England the witches were
+  supposed to ride uniformly upon broom-sticks; but in Italy
+  and Spain, the devil himself, in the shape of a goat, used
+  to transport them on his back, which lengthened or shortened
+  according to the number of witches he was desirous of
+  accommodating. No witch, when proceeding to the sabbath,
+  could get out by a door or window were she to try ever so
+  much. Their general mode of ingress was by the key-hole, and
+  of egress by the chimney, up which they flew, broom and all,
+  with the greatest ease. To prevent the absence of the
+  witches being noticed by their neighbours, some inferior
+  demon was commanded to assume their shapes, and lie in their
+  beds, feigning illness, until the sabbath was over. When all
+  the wizards and witches had arrived at the place of
+  rendezvous, the infernal ceremonies began. Satan having
+  assumed his favourite shape of a large he-goat, with a face
+  in front and another in his haunches, took his seat upon a
+  throne; and all present in succession paid their respects to
+  him and kissed him in his face behind. This done, he
+  appointed a master of the ceremonies, in company with whom
+  he made a personal examination of all the witches, to see
+  whether they had the secret mark about them by which they
+  were stamped as the devil's own. This mark was always
+  insensible to pain. Those who had not yet been marked
+  received the mark from the master of the ceremonies, the
+  devil at the same time bestowing nick-names upon them. This
+  done, they all began to sing and dance in the most furious
+  manner until some one arrived who was anxious to be admitted
+  into their society. They were then silent for a while until
+  the new comer had denied his salvation, kissed the devil,
+  spat upon the Bible, and sworn obedience to him in all
+  things. They then began dancing again with all their might
+  and singing.... In the course of an hour or two they
+  generally became wearied of this violent exercise, and then
+  they all sat down and recounted their evil deeds since last
+  meeting. Those who had not been malicious and mischievous
+  enough towards their fellow-creatures received personal
+  chastisement from Satan himself, who flogged them with
+  thorns or scorpions until they were covered with blood and
+  unable to sit or stand. When this ceremony was concluded,
+  they were all amused by a dance of toads. Thousands of these
+  creatures sprang out of the earth, and standing on their
+  hind-legs, danced while the devil played the bagpipes or the
+  trumpet. These toads were all endowed with the faculty of
+  speech, and entreated the witches there to reward them with
+  the flesh of unbaptized infants for their exertions to give
+  them pleasure. The witches promised compliance. The devil
+  bade them remember to keep their word; and then stamping his
+  foot, caused all the toads to sink into the earth in an
+  instant. The place being thus cleared, preparations were
+  made for the banquet, where all manner of disgusting things
+  were served up and greedily devoured by the demons and
+  witches, although the latter were sometimes regaled with
+  choice meats and expensive wines, from golden plates and
+  crystal goblets; but they were never thus favoured unless
+  they had done an extraordinary number of evil deeds since
+  the last period of meeting. After the feast, they began
+  dancing again; but such as had no relish for any more
+  exercise in that way, amused themselves by mocking the holy
+  sacrament of baptism. For this purpose the toads were again
+  called up, and sprinkled with filthy water, the devil making
+  the sign of the cross, and all the witches calling
+  out--[some gibberish]. When the devil wished to be
+  particularly amused, he made the witches strip off their
+  clothes and dance before him, each with a cat tied round her
+  neck, and another dangling from her body in form of a tail.
+  When the cock crew they all disappeared, and the sabbath was
+  ended. This is a summary of the belief that prevailed for
+  many centuries nearly all over Europe, and which is far from
+  eradicated even at this day.'--_Memoirs of Extraordinary
+  Popular Delusions_, by C. Mackay.
+
+A mock sermon often concludes the night's proceedings, the
+ordinary salutation of the _osculum in tergo_ being first given.
+But these circumstances are innocent compared with the obscene
+practices when the lights are put out; indiscriminate debauchery
+being then the order of the night. A new rite of baptism
+initiated the neophyte into his new service: the candidate being
+signed with the sign of the devil on that part of the body least
+observable, and submitting at the same time to the first act of
+criminal compliance, to be often repeated. On these occasions the
+demon presents himself in the form of either sex, according to
+that of his slaves. It was elicited from a witch examined at a
+trial that, from the period of her servitude, the devil had had
+intercourse with her _ut viri cum f[oe]minis solent_, excepting
+only in one remarkable particular.
+
+During the pontificate of Julius II.--the first decade of the
+sixteenth century--a set of sorceresses was discovered in large
+numbers: a dispute between the civil and ecclesiastical
+authorities averted their otherwise certain destruction. The
+successors of Innocent VIII. repeated his anathemas. Alexander
+VI., Leo X., and Adrian VI. appointed special commissioners for
+hunting up sorcerers and heretics. In 1523, Adrian issued a bull
+against _Hæresis Strigiatûs_ with power to excommunicate all who
+opposed those engaged in the inquisition. He characterises the
+obnoxious class as a sect deviating from the Catholic faith,
+denying their baptism, showing contempt for the sacraments, in
+particular for that of the Eucharist, treading crosses under
+foot, and taking the devil as their lord.[93] How many suffered
+for the crime during the thirty or forty years following upon the
+bull of 1484, it is difficult exactly to ascertain: that some
+thousands perished is certain, on the testimony of the judges
+themselves. The often-quoted words of Florimond, author of a work
+'On Antichrist,' as given by Del Rio the Jesuit ('De Magiâ'), are
+not hyperbolical. 'All those,' says he, '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 enough. Our dungeons are gorged with them.
+No day passes that we do not render our tribunals bloody by the
+dooms 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.'
+
+  [93] Francis Hutchison's _Historical Essay concerning
+  Witchcraft_, chap. xiv.; the author quotes Barthol. de
+  Spina, _de Strigibus_.
+
+It is within neither the design nor the limits of these pages to
+repeat all the witch-cases, which might fill several volumes; it
+is sufficient for the purpose to sketch a few of the most
+notorious and prominent, and to notice the most remarkable
+characteristics of the creed.
+
+Maximilian I., Emperor of Germany, protected the inquisitorial
+executioners from the indignant vengeance of the inhabitants of
+the districts of Southern Germany, which would have been soon
+almost depopulated by an unsparing massacre and a ferocious zeal:
+while Sigismund, Prince of the Tyrol, is said to have been
+inclined to soften the severity of a persecution he was totally
+unable, if he had been disposed, to prevent. Ulric Molitor,
+under the auspices of this prince, however, published a treatise
+in Switzerland ('De Pythonicis Mulieribus') in the form of a
+dialogue, in which Sigismund, Molitor, and a citizen of Constance
+are the interlocutors. They argue as to the practice of
+witchcraft; and the argument is to establish that, although the
+practicers of the crime are worthy of death, much of the vulgar
+opinion on the subject is false. Even in the middle of the
+fifteenth century, and in Spain, could be found an assertor, in
+some degree, of common sense, whose sentiments might scandalise
+some Protestant divines. Alphonse de Spina was a native of
+Castile, of the order of St. Francis: his book was written
+against heretics and unbelievers, but there is a chapter in which
+some acts attributed to sorcerers, as transportation through the
+air, transformations, &c., are rejected as unreal.
+
+From that time two parties were in existence, one of which
+advocated the entire reality of all the acts commonly imputed to
+witches; while the other maintained that many of their supposed
+crimes were mere delusions suggested by the Great Enemy. The
+former, as the orthodox party, were, from the nature of the case,
+most successful in the argument--a seeming paradox explained by
+the nature and course of the controversy. Only the _received_
+method of demoniacal possession was questioned by the adverse
+side, accepting without doubt the possibility--and, indeed, the
+actual existence--of the phenomenon. Thus the liberals, or
+pseudo-liberals, in that important controversy were placed in an
+illogical position. For (as their opponents might triumphantly
+argue) if the devil's power and possession could be manifested in
+one way, why not by any other method. Nor was it for them to
+determine the appointed methods of his schemes, as permitted by
+Providence, for the injury and ruin of mankind. The diabolic
+economy, as evidently set forth in the work of man's destruction,
+might require certain modes of acting quite above our reason and
+understanding. To the sceptics (or to the _atheists_, as they
+were termed) the orthodox could allege, 'Will you not believe
+in witches? The Scriptures aver their existence: to the
+jurisconsults will you dispute the existence of a crime against
+which our statute-book and the code of almost all civilised
+countries have attested by laws upon which hundreds and thousands
+have been convicted; many, or even most, of whom have, by their
+judicial confessions, acknowledged their guilt and the justice of
+their punishment? It is a strange scepticism, they might add,
+that rejects the evidence of Scripture, of human legislature, and
+of the accused persons themselves.'[94] Reason was hopelessly
+oppressed by faith. In the presence of universal superstition, in
+the absence of the modern philosophy, escape seemed all but
+impossible.
+
+  [94] Sir W. Scott's _Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft_,
+  chap. vi.
+
+If preeminence in this particular prejudice can be assigned to
+any single region or people, perhaps Germany more than any other
+land was subject to the demonological fever. A fact to be
+explained as well by its being the great theatre for more than a
+hundred years of the grand religious struggle between the
+opposing Catholics and Protestants, as by its natural fitness.
+The gloomy mountain ranges--the Hartz mountains are especially
+famous in the national legend--and forests with which it abounds
+rendered the imaginative minds of its peoples peculiarly
+susceptible to impressions of supernaturalism.[95] France
+takes the next place in the fury of the persecution. Danæus
+('Dialogue') speaks of an innumerable number of witches. England,
+Scotland, Spain, Italy perhaps come next in order.
+
+  [95] How greatly the imagination of the Germans was
+  attracted by the supernatural and the marvellous is plainly
+  seen both in the old national poems and in the great work of
+  the national mythologist, Jacob Grimm (_Deutsche
+  Mythologie_).
+
+Spain, the dominion of the Arabs for seven centuries, was
+naturally the land of magic. During the government of Ferdinand
+I., or of Isabella, the inquisition was firmly established. That
+numbers were sent from the dungeons and torture-chambers to the
+stake, with the added stigma of dealing in the 'black art,' is
+certain; but in that priest-dominated, servilely orthodox
+southern land, the Church was not perhaps so much interested in
+confounding the crimes of heresy and sorcery. The first was
+simply sufficient for provoking horror and hatred of the
+condemned. The South of France is famous for being the very nest
+of sorcery: the witch-sabbaths were frequently held there. It was
+the country of the Albigenses, which had been devastated by De
+Montfort, the executioner of Catholic vengeance, in the twelfth
+century, and was, with something of the same sort of savageness,
+ravaged by De Lanere in the seventeenth century. Scotland, before
+the religious revolution, exhibits a few remarkable cases of
+witch-persecution, as that of the Earl of Mar, brother of James
+III. He had been suspected of calling in the aid of sorcery to
+ascertain the term of the king's life: the earl was bled to death
+without trial, and his death was followed by the burning of
+twelve witches, and four wizards, at Edinburgh. Lady Glammis,
+sister of the Earl of Angus, of the family of Douglas, accused of
+conspiring the king's death in a similar way, was put to death in
+1537. As in England, in the cases of the Duchess of Gloucester
+and others, the crime appears to be rather an adjunct than the
+principal charge itself; more political than popular. Protestant
+Scotland it is that has earned the reputation of being one of the
+most superstitious countries in Europe.
+
+In 1541 two Acts of Parliament were passed in England--the first
+interference of Parliament in this kingdom--against false
+prophecies, conjurations, witchcraft, sorcery, pulling down
+crosses; crimes made felony without benefit of clergy. Both the
+last article in the list and the period (a few years after the
+separation from the Catholic world) appear to indicate the causes
+in operation. Lord Hungerford had recently been beheaded by the
+suspicious tyranny of Henry VIII., for consulting his death by
+conjuration. The preamble to the statute has these words: 'The
+persons that had done these things, had dug up and pulled down an
+infinite number of crosses.'[96] The new head of the English
+Church, if he found his interest in assuming himself the
+spiritual supremacy, was, like a true despot, averse to any
+further revolution than was necessary to his purposes. Some
+superstitious regrets too for the old establishment which, by a
+fortunate caprice, he abandoned and afterwards plundered, may
+have urged the tyrant, who persecuted the Catholics for
+questioning his supremacy, to burn the enemies of
+transubstantiation. Shortly before this enactment, eight persons
+had been hanged at Tyburn, not so much for sorcery as for a
+disagreeable prophecy. Elizabeth Barton, the principal, had been
+instigated to pronounce as revelation, that if the king went on
+in the divorce and married another wife, he should not be king a
+month longer, and in the estimation of Almighty God not one hour
+longer, but should die a villain's death. The Maid of Kent, with
+her accomplices--Richard Martin, parson of the parish of
+Aldington; Dr. Bocking, canon of Christ Church, Canterbury;
+Deering; Henry Gold, a parson in London; Hugh Rich, a friar, and
+others--was brought before the Star Chamber, and adjudged to
+stand in St. Paul's during sermon-time; the majority being
+afterwards executed. In Cranmer's 'Articles of Visitation,' 1549,
+an injunction is addressed to his clergy, that 'you shall inquire
+whether you know of any that use charms, sorcery, enchantments,
+witchcrafts, soothsaying, or any like craft, invented by the
+devil.'
+
+  [96] Hutchison's _Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft_.
+  The author, chaplain in ordinary to George I., published his
+  book in 1718. It is worth while to note the colder
+  scepticism of the Hanoverian chaplain as compared with the
+  undoubting faith of his predecessor, Dr. Glanvil.
+
+During the brief reigns of Edward VI. and Mary I. in England, no
+conspicuous trials occur. As for the latter monarch, the queen
+and her bishops were too absorbed in the pressing business of
+burning for the real offence of heresy to be much concerned in
+discovering the concomitant crimes of devil-worship.[97] An
+impartial judgment may decide that superstition, whether engaged
+in vindicating the dogmas of Catholicism or those of witchcraft,
+is alike contemptible and pernicious.
+
+  [97] Agreeably to that common prejudice which selects
+  certain historical personages for popular and peculiar
+  esteem or execration, and attributes to them, as if they
+  were eccentricities rather than examples of the age, every
+  exceptional virtue or vice, the 'Bloody Queen' has been
+  stigmatised, and is still regarded, as an _extraordinary_
+  monster, capable of every inhuman crime--a prejudice more
+  popular than philosophical, since experience has taught that
+  despots, unchecked by fear, by reason, or conscience, are
+  but examples, in an eminent degree, of the character, and
+  personifications of the worst vices (if not of the best
+  virtues) of their time. Considered in this view, Mary I.
+  will but appear the example and personification of the
+  religious intolerance of Catholicism and of the age, just as
+  Cromwell was of the patriotic and Puritanic sentiment of the
+  first half, or Charles II. of the unblushing licentiousness
+  of the last half, of the seventeenth century.
+
+In the year of Elizabeth's accession, 1558, Strype ('Annals of
+the Reformation,' i. 8, and ii. 545) tells that Bishop Jewell,
+preaching before the queen, animadverted upon the dangerous and
+direful results of witchcraft. 'It may please your Grace,'
+proclaims publicly the courtly Anglican prelate, 'to understand
+that witches and sorcerers, within these last few years, are
+marvellously increased within your Grace's realm. Your Grace's
+subjects pine away even to the death, their colour fadeth, their
+flesh rotteth, their speech is benumbed, their senses are bereft.
+I pray God they never practise further than upon the subject.'
+For himself, the bishop declares, 'these eyes have seen most
+evident and manifest marks of their wickedness.' The annalist
+adds that this, no doubt, was the occasion of bringing in a bill
+the next Parliament, for making enchantments and witchcraft
+felony; and, under year 1578, we are informed that, whether it
+were the effect of magic, or proceeded from some natural cause,
+the queen was in some part of this year under excessive anguish
+_by pains of her teeth_, insomuch that she took no rest for
+divers nights, and endured very great torment night and day. The
+statute of 1562 includes 'fond and fantastic prophecies' (a very
+common sort of political offences in that age) in the category of
+forbidden arts. With unaccustomed lenity it punished a first
+conviction with the pillory only.
+
+Witch-persecutions (which needed not any legal enactment) sprung
+up in different parts of the country; but they were not carried
+out with either the frequency or the ferocity of the next age, or
+as in Scotland, under the superintendence of James VI. A number
+of pamphlets unnecessarily enforced the obligatory duty of
+unwearied zeal in the work of discovery and extermination.[98]
+Among the executions under Elizabeth's Government are specially
+noticed that of a woman hanged at Barking in 1575; of four at
+Abingdon; three at Chelmsford; two at Cambridge, 1579; of a
+number condemned at St. Osythes; of several in Derbyshire and
+Staffordshire. One of the best known is the case at Warboys, in
+Huntingdonshire, 1593.
+
+  [98] One of these productions, printed in London, bore the
+  sensational title, 'A very Wonderful and Strange Miracle of
+  God, shewed upon a Dutchman, of the age of 23 years, who was
+  possessed of ten devils, and was, by God's Mighty
+  Providence, dispossessed of them again the 27 January last
+  past, 1572.' Another, dedicated to Lord Darcy, by W. W.,
+  1582, sets forth that all those tortures in common use 'are
+  far too light, and their rigour too mild; and in this
+  respect he (the pamphleteer) impudently exclaimeth against
+  our magistrates who suffer them to be but hanged, when
+  _murtherers and such malefactors be so used, which deserve
+  not the hundredth part of their punishment_.'
+
+The author of the 'Discoverie' relates a fact that came under his
+personal observation: it is a fair example of the trivial origin
+and of the facility of this sort of charges. 'At the assizes
+holden at Rochester, anno 1581, one Margaret Simons, wife of John
+Simons, of Brenchly in Kent, was arraigned for witchcraft, at the
+instigation and complaint of divers fond and malicious persons,
+and especially by the means of one John Farral, vicar of that
+parish, with whom I talked about the matter, and found him both
+fondly assotted in the cause and enviously bent towards her: and,
+which is worse, as unable to make a good account of his faith as
+she whom he accused. That which he laid to the poor woman's
+charge was this. His son, being an ungracious boy, and 'prentice
+to one Robert Scotchford, clothier, dwelling in that parish of
+Brenchly, passed on a day by her house; at whom, by chance, her
+little dog barked, which thing the boy taking in evil part, drew
+his knife and pursued him therewith even to her door, whom
+she rebuked with such words as the boy disdained, and yet
+nevertheless would not be persuaded to depart in a long time. At
+the last he returned to his master's house, and within five or
+six days fell sick. Then was called to mind the fray betwixt the
+dog and the boy: insomuch as the vicar (who thought himself so
+privileged as he little mistrusted that God would visit his
+children with sickness) did so calculate as he found, partly
+through his own judgment and partly (as he himself told me) by
+the relation of other witches, that his said son was by her
+bewitched. Yea, he told me that his son being, as it were, past
+all cure, received perfect health at the hands of another witch.'
+Not satisfied with this accusation, the vicar 'proceeded yet
+further against her, affirming that always in his parish church,
+when he desired to read most plainly his voice so failed him that
+he could scant be heard at all: which he could impute, he said,
+to nothing else but to her enchantment. When I advertised the
+poor woman thereof, as being desirous to hear what she could say
+for herself, she told me that in very deed his voice did fail
+him, specially when he strained himself to speak loudest.
+Howbeit, she said, that at all times his voice was hoarse and
+low; which thing I perceived to be true. But sir, said she, you
+shall understand that this our vicar is diseased with such a kind
+of hoarseness as divers of our neighbours in this parish not
+long ago doubted ... and in that respect utterly refused to
+communicate with him until such time as (being thereunto enjoined
+by the ordinary) he had brought from London a certificate under
+the hands of two physicians that his hoarseness proceeded from a
+disease of the lungs; which certificate he published in the
+church, in the presence of the whole congregation: and by this
+means he was cured, or rather excused of the shame of the
+disease. And this,' certifies the narrator, 'I know to be true,
+by the relation of divers honest men of that parish. And truly if
+one of the jury had not been wiser than the others, she had been
+condemned thereupon, and upon other as ridiculous matters as
+this. For the name of witch is so odious, and her power so feared
+among the common people, that if the honestest body living
+chanced to be arraigned thereupon, she shall hardly escape
+condemnation.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+     The 'Discoverie of Witchcraft,' published 1584--Wier's 'De
+     Præstigiis Dæmonum, &c.'--Naudé--Jean Bodin--His 'De la
+     Démonomanie des Sorciers,' published at Paris, 1580--His
+     authority--Nider--Witch-case at Warboys--Evidence adduced at
+     the Trial--Remarkable as being the origin of the institution
+     of an Annual Sermon at Huntingdon.
+
+
+Three years after this affair, Dr. Reginald Scot published his
+'Discoverie of Witchcraft, proving that common opinions of
+witches contracting with devils, spirits, or their familiars, and
+their power to kill, torment, and consume the bodies of men,
+women, and children, or other creatures, by disease, or
+otherwise, their flying in the air, &c., to be but imaginary,
+erroneous conceptions and novelties: wherein also the lewd,
+unchristian, practices of witchmongers upon aged, melancholy,
+ignorant, and superstitious people, in extorting confessions by
+inhuman terrors and tortures, is notably detected.'[99]
+
+  [99] The edition referred to is that of 1654. The author is
+  commemorated by Hallam in terms of high praise--'A solid and
+  learned person, beyond almost all the English of that
+  age.'--_Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the
+  Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries._
+
+This work is divided into sixteen books, with a treatise affixed
+upon devils and spirits, in thirty-four chapters. It contains an
+infinity of quotations from or references to the writings of
+those whom the author terms _witch-mongers_; and several chapters
+are devoted to a descriptive catalogue of the charms in repute
+and diabolical rites of the most extravagant sort. On the
+accession of James I., whose 'Demonologie' was in direct
+opposition to the 'Discoverie,' it was condemned as monstrously
+heretical; as many copies as could be collected being solemnly
+committed to the flames. This meritorious and curious production
+is therefore now scarce.
+
+Prefixed is a dedicatory epistle, addressed to the Right
+Worshipful, his loving friend, Mr. Dr. Coldwell, Dean of
+Rochester, and Mr. Dr. Readman, Archdeacon of Canterbury, in
+which the author appealingly expostulates, 'O Master Archdeacon,
+is it not pity that that which is said to be done with the
+almighty power of the Most High God, and by our Saviour his only
+Son Jesus Christ our Lord, should be referred to a baggage old
+woman's nod or wish? Good sir, is it not one manifest kind of
+idolatry for them that labour and are laden to come unto witches
+to be refreshed? If witches could help whom they are said to have
+made sick, I see no reason but remedy might as well be required
+at their hands as a purse demanded of him that hath stolen it.
+But truly it is manifest idolatry to ask that of a creature
+which none can give but the Creator. The papist hath some colour
+of Scripture to maintain his idol of bread, but no Jesuitical
+distinction can cover the witchmongers' idolatry in this behalf.
+Alas! I am ashamed and sorry to see how many die that, being said
+to be bewitched, only seek for magical cures whom wholesome diet
+and good medicine would have recovered.'[100] An utterance of
+courage and common sense equally rare and useless. Reginald Scot,
+perhaps the boldest of the early impugners of witchcraft, was yet
+convinced apparently of the reality of ghostly apparitions.
+
+  [100] Writing in an age when the _magical_ powers of steam
+  and electricity were yet undiscovered, it might be a
+  forcible argument to put--'Good Mr. Dean, is it possible for
+  a man to break his fast with you at Rochester, and to dine
+  that day in Durham with Master Dr. Matthew?'
+
+Johannes Wierus, physician to the Duke of Cleves, and a disciple
+of the well-known Cornelius Agrippa (himself accused of devotion
+to the black art), in 1563 created considerable sensation by an
+attack upon the common opinions, without questioning however the
+principles, of the superstition in his 'De Præstigiis Dæmonum
+Incantationibus et Veneficiis.' His common sense is not so clear
+as that of the Englishman. Another name, memorable among the
+advocates of Reason and Humanity, is Gabriel Naudé. He was
+born at Paris in 1600; he practised as a physician of great
+reputation, and was librarian successively to Cardinals Richelieu
+and Mazarin, and to Queen Christina of Sweden. His book 'Apologie
+pour les Grands Hommes accusés de Magie,' published in Paris in
+1625, was received with great indignation by the Church. Some
+others, both on the Continent and in England, at intervals by
+their protests served to prove that a few sparks of reason, hard
+to be discovered in the thick darkness of superstition, remained
+unextinguished; but they availed not to stem the torrent of
+increasing violence and volume.
+
+A more copious list can be given of the champions of orthodoxy
+and demonolatry; of whom it is sufficient to enumerate the more
+notorious names--Sprenger, Nider, Bodin, Del Rio, James VI.,
+Glanvil, who compiled or composed elaborate treatises on the
+subject; besides whom a cloud of witnesses expressly or
+incidentally proclaimed the undoubted genuineness of all the
+acts, phenomena, and circumstances of the diabolic worship;
+loudly and fiercely denouncing the 'damnable infidelity' of the
+dissenters--a proof in itself of their own complicity. Jean
+Bodin, a French lawyer, and author of the esteemed treatise 'De
+la République,' was one of the greatest authorities on the
+orthodox side. His publication 'De la Démonomanie des Sorciers'
+appeared in Paris in the year 1580: an undertaking prompted by
+his having witnessed some of the daily occurring trials. Instead
+of being convinced of their folly, he was or affected to be,
+certain of their truth, setting himself gravely to the task of
+publishing to the world his own observations and convictions.
+
+One of the most surprising facts in the whole history of
+witchcraft is the insensibility or indifference of even men of
+science, and therefore observation, to the obvious origin of the
+greatest part of the confessions elicited; confession of such a
+kind as could be the product only of torture, madness, or some
+other equally obvious cause. Bodin himself, however, sufficiently
+explains the fact and exposes the secret. 'The trial of this
+offence,' he enunciates, 'must not be conducted like other
+crimes. Whoever adheres to the ordinary course of justice
+perverts the spirit of the law both divine and human. He who is
+accused of sorcery should _never_ be acquitted unless the malice
+of the prosecutor be clearer than the sun; for it is so difficult
+to bring full proof of this secret crime, that out of a million
+of witches _not one would be convicted if the usual course were
+followed_.'[101] He speaks of an old woman sentenced to the stake
+after confessing to having been transported to the sabbath in a
+state of insensibility. Her judges, anxious to know how this was
+effected, released her from her fetters, when she rubbed herself
+on the different parts of her body with a prepared unguent and
+soon became insensible, stiff, and apparently dead. Having
+remained in that condition for five hours, the witch as suddenly
+revived, relating to the trembling inquisitors a number of
+extraordinary things proving she must have been _spiritually_
+transported to distant places.[102] An earlier advocate of the
+orthodox cause was a Swiss friar, Nider, who wrote a work
+entitled 'Formicarium' (_Ant-Hill_) on the various sins against
+religion. One section is employed in the consideration of
+sorcery. Nider was one of the inquisitors who distinguished
+themselves by their successful zeal in the beginning of the
+century.
+
+  [101] Yet the lawyer who enunciated such a maxim as this has
+  been celebrated for an unusual liberality of sentiment in
+  religious and political matters, as well as for his
+  learning. Dugald Stewart commends 'the liberal and moderate
+  views of this philosophical politician,' as shown in the
+  treatise _De la République_, and states that he knows of 'no
+  political writer of the same date whose extensive, and
+  various, and discriminating reading appears to me to have
+  contributed more to facilitate and to guide the researches
+  of his successors, or whose references to ancient learning
+  have been more frequently transcribed without
+  acknowledgment.'--Bayle considered him 'one of the ablest
+  men that appeared in France during the sixteenth
+  century.'--_Dissertation First_ in the _Encyclopædia
+  Britannica_. Hallam (_Introduction to the Literature of
+  Europe_) occupies several of his pages in the review of
+  Bodin's writings. Jean Bodin, however, on the authority of
+  his friend De Thou, did not escape suspicion himself of
+  being heretical.
+
+  [102] In witchcraft (as in the sacramental mystery) it was a
+  subject for much doubt and dispute whether there might not be
+  simply a _spiritual_ (without a _real corporeal_) presence at
+  the sabbath. Each one decided according to the degree of his
+  orthodoxy.
+
+The Swiss witches, like the old Italian larvæ and most of the
+sisterhood, display extraordinary affection for the blood of
+new-born unbaptized infants; and it is a great desideratum to
+kill them before the preventive rite has been irrevocably
+administered; for the bodies of unbaptized children were almost
+indispensable in the witches' preparations. Soon as buried their
+corpses are dug out of their graves and carried away to the place
+of assembly, where they are boiled down for the fat for making
+the ointments.[103] The liquid in which they are boiled is
+carefully preserved; and the person who tastes it is immediately
+initiated into all the mysteries of sorcery. A witch, judicially
+examined by the papal commission which compiled the 'Malleus,'
+gives evidence of the prevalence of this practice: 'We lie in
+wait for children. These are often found dead by their parents;
+and the simple people believe that they have themselves overlain
+them, or that they died from natural causes; but it is we who
+have destroyed them. We steal them out of the grave, and boil
+them with lime till all the flesh is loosed from the bones and is
+reduced to one mass. We make of the firm part an ointment, and
+fill a bottle with the fluid; and whoever drinks with due
+ceremonies of this belongs to our league, and is already capable
+of bewitching.' 'Finger of birth-strangled babe' is one of the
+ingredients of that widely-collected composition of the Macbeth
+witches.
+
+  [103] A practice not entirely out of repute at the present
+  day if we may credit a statement in the _Courrier du Hâvre_
+  (as quoted in _The Times_ newspaper, Nov. 7, 1864), that
+  recently the corpse of an old woman was dug up for the
+  purpose of obtaining the fat, &c., as a preventive charm
+  against witchcraft, by a person living in the neighbourhood
+  of Hâvre.
+
+The case at Warboys, which, connected with a family of some
+distinction, occasioned unusual interest, was tried in the year
+1593. The village of Warboys, or Warbois, is situated in the
+neighbourhood of Huntingdon. One of the most influential of
+the inhabitants was a gentleman of respectability, Robert
+Throgmorton, who was on friendly terms with the Cromwells of
+Hitchinbrook, and the lord of the manor, Sir Henry Cromwell.
+Three criminals--old Samuel, his wife, and Agnes Samuel their
+daughter, were tried and condemned by Mr. Justice Fenner for
+bewitching Mr. Throgmorton's five children, seven servants, the
+Lady Cromwell, and others. The father and daughter maintained
+their innocence to the last; the old woman confessed. A fact
+which makes this affair more remarkable is, that with the forty
+pounds escheated to him, as lord of the manor, out of the
+property of the convicts, Sir Samuel Cromwell founded an annual
+sermon or lecture upon the sin of witchcraft, to be preached at
+their town every Lady-day, by a Doctor or Bachelor of Divinity of
+Queen's College, Cambridge; the sum of forty pounds being
+entrusted to the Mayor and Aldermen of Huntingdon, for a
+rent-charge of forty shillings yearly to be paid to the select
+preacher. This lecture, says Dr. Francis Hutchison, is continued
+to this day--1718.
+
+Four years previously to this important trial, Jane Throgmorton,
+a girl ten years of age, was first suddenly attacked with strange
+convulsive fits, which continued daily, and even several times in
+the day, without intermission. One day, soon after the first
+seizure, Mother Samuel coming into the Throgmortons' house,
+seated herself as customary in a chimney-corner near the child,
+who was just recovering from one of her fits. The girl no sooner
+noticed her than she began to cry out, pointing to the old woman,
+'Did you ever see one more like a witch than she is? Take off her
+black-thumbed cap, for I cannot abide to look at her.' The
+illness becoming worse, they sent to Cambridge to consult Dr.
+Barrow, an experienced physician in that town; but he could
+discover no natural disease. A month later, the other children
+were similarly seized, and persuaded of Mother Samuel's guilt.
+The parents' increasing suspicions, entertained by the doctors,
+were confirmed when the servants were also attacked. About the
+middle of March, 1590, Lady Cromwell arrived on a visit to the
+Throgmortons; and being much affected at the sufferings of the
+patients, sent for the suspected person, whom she charged with
+being the malicious cause. Finding all entreaty of no avail in
+extorting an admission of guilt, Lady Cromwell suddenly and
+unexpectedly cut off a lock of the witch's hair (a powerful
+counter-charm), at the same time secretly placing it in Mrs.
+Throgmorton's hands, desiring her to burn it. Indignant, the
+accused addressed the lady, 'Madam, why do you use me thus? I
+never did you any harm _as yet_'--words afterwards recollected.
+'That night,' says the narrative, 'my lady Cromwell was suddenly
+troubled in her sleep by a cat which Mother S. had sent her,
+which offered to pluck the skin and flesh off her bones and arms.
+The struggle betwixt the cat and the lady was so great in her bed
+that night, and she made so terrible a noise, that she waked her
+bedfellow Mrs. C.' Whether, 'as some sager' might think, it was a
+nightmare (a sort of incubus which terrified the disordered
+imagination of the ancients), or some more substantial object
+that disturbed the rest of the lady, it is not important to
+decide; but next day Lady Cromwell was laid up with an incurable
+illness. Holding out obstinately against all threats and
+promises, the reputed witch was at length induced to pronounce an
+exorcism, when the afflicted were immediately for the time
+dispossessed. 'Next day being Christmas-eve and the Sabbath, Dr.
+Donington [vicar of the parish] chose his text of repentance out
+of the _Psalms_, and communicating her confession to the
+assembly, directed his discourse chiefly to that purpose
+to comfort a penitent heart that it might affect her. All
+sermon-time Mother S. wept and lamented, and was frequently so
+loud in her passions, that she drew the eyes of the congregation
+upon her.' On the morrow, greatly to the disappointment of the
+neighbours, she contradicted her former confession, declaring it
+was extracted by surprise at finding her exorcism had relieved
+the child, unconscious of what she was saying.
+
+The case was afterwards carried before the Bishop of Lincoln. Now
+greatly alarmed, the old woman made a fresh announcement that she
+was really a witch; that she owned several spirits (of the nine
+may be enumerated the fantastic names of Pluck, Hardname, Catch,
+Smack, Blew), one of whom was used to appear in the shape of a
+chicken, and suck her chin. The mother and daughters were, upon
+this voluntary admission, committed to Huntingdon gaol. Of the
+possessed Jane Throgmorton seems to have been most familiar with
+the demons.[104]
+
+  [104] The following ravings of epilepsy, or of whatever was
+  the disorder of the girl, are part of the evidence of Dr.
+  Donington, clergyman in the town, and were narrated and
+  could be received as grave evidence in a court of justice.
+  They will serve as a specimen of the rest. The girl and the
+  spirit known as _Catch_ are engaged in the little by-play.
+  'After supper, as soon as her parents were risen, she fell
+  into the same fit again as before, and then became
+  senseless, and in a little time, opening her mouth, she
+  said, "Will this hold for ever? I hope it will be better one
+  day. From whence come you now, Catch, limping? I hope you
+  have met with your match." Catch answered that Smack and he
+  had been fighting, and that Smack had broken his leg. Said
+  she, "That Smack is a shrewd fellow; methinks I would I
+  could see him. Pluck came last night with his head broke,
+  and now you have broken your leg. I hope he will break both
+  your necks before he hath done with you." Catch answered
+  that he would be even with him before he had done. Then,
+  said she, "Put forth your other leg, and let me see if I can
+  break that," having a stick in her hand. The spirit told her
+  she could not hit him. "Can I not hit you?" said she; "let
+  me try." Then the spirit put forth his leg, and she lifted
+  up the stick easily, and suddenly struck the ground.... So
+  she seemed divers times to strike at the spirit; but he
+  leaped over the stick, as she said, like a Jackanapes. So
+  after many such tricks the spirit went away, and she came
+  out of her fit, continuing all that night and the next day
+  very sick and full of pain in her legs.'
+
+The sessions at Huntingdon began April 4, 1593, when the three
+Samuels were arraigned; and the above charges, with much more of
+the same sort, were repeated: the indictments specifying the
+particular offences against the children and servants of the
+Throgmortons, and the 'bewitching unto death' of the lady
+Cromwell. The grand jury found a true bill immediately, and they
+were put upon their trial in court. After a mass of nonsense had
+been gone through, 'the judge, justices, and jury said the case
+was apparent, and their consciences were well satisfied that the
+said witches were guilty, and deserved death.' When sentence of
+death was pronounced, the old woman, sixty years of age, pleaded,
+in arrest of judgment, that she was with child--a pleading which
+produced only a derisive shout of laughter in court. Husband and
+daughter asserted their innocence to the last. All three were
+hanged. From the moment of execution, we are assured, Robert
+Throgmorton's children were permanently freed from all their
+sufferings. Such, briefly, are the circumstances of a witch case
+that resulted in the sending to the gallows three harmless
+wretches, and in the founding an annual sermon which perpetuated
+the memory of an iniquitous act and of an impossible crime. The
+sermon, it may be presumed, like other similar surviving
+institutions, was preserved in the eighteenth century more for
+the benefit of the select preacher than for that of the people.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+     Astrology in Antiquity--Modern Astrology and
+     Alchymy--Torralvo--Adventures of Dr. Dee and Edward
+     Kelly--Prospero and Comus Types respectively of the Theurgic
+     and Goetic Arts--Magicians on the Stage in the 16th
+     century--Occult Science in Southern Europe--Causes of the
+     inevitable mistakes of the pre-Scientific Ages.
+
+
+The nobler arts of magic, astrology, alchymy, necromancy, &c.,
+were equally in vogue in this age with that of the infernal art
+proper. But they were more respected. Professors of those arts
+were habitually sought for with great eagerness by the highest
+personages, and often munificently rewarded. In antiquity
+astrology had been peculiarly Oriental in its origin and
+practice. The Egyptians, and especially the Chaldæans, introduced
+the foreign art to the West among the Greeks and Italians; the
+Arabs revived it in Western Europe in the Middle Age. Under the
+early Roman Empire the Chaldaic art exercised and enjoyed
+considerable influence and reputation, if it was often subject to
+sudden persecutions. Augustus was assisted to the throne, and
+Severus selected his wife, by its means. After it had once
+firmly established itself in the West,[105] the Oriental
+astrology was soon developed and reduced to a more regular
+system; and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Dee and
+Lilly enjoyed a greater reputation than even Figulus or
+Thrasyllus had obtained in the first century. Queen Elizabeth and
+Catherine di Medici (two of the astutest persons of their age)
+patronised them. Dr. Dee in England, and Nostradamus in France,
+were of this class. Dr. Caius, third founder of a college still
+bearing his name in the university of Cambridge, Kelly, Ashmole,
+and Lilly, are well-known names in the astrological history of
+this period. Torralvo, whose fame as an aerial voyager is
+immortalised by Cervantes in 'Don Quixote,' was as great a
+magician in Spain and Italy as Dee in England, although not so
+familiar to English readers as their countryman, the protégé of
+Elizabeth. Neither was his magical faculty so well rewarded. Dr.
+Torralvo, a physician, had studied medicine and philosophy with
+extraordinary success, and was high in the confidence of many
+of the eminent personages of Spain and Italy, for whom he
+fortunately predicted future success. A confirmed infidel or
+freethinker, he was denounced to the Inquisition by the treachery
+of an associate as denying or disputing the immortality of the
+soul, as well as the divinity of Christ. This was in 1529.
+Torralvo, put to the torture, admitted that his informing spirit,
+Zequiel, was a demon by whose assistance he performed his aerial
+journeys and all his extraordinary feats, both of prophecy and of
+actual power. Some part of the severity of the tortures was
+remitted by the demon's opportune reply to the curiosity of the
+presiding inquisitors, that Luther and the Reformers were bad and
+cunning men. Torralvo seems to have avoided the extreme penalty
+of fire by recanting his heresies, submitting to the superior
+judgment of his gaolers, and still more by the interest of his
+powerful employers; and he was liberated not long afterwards.
+
+  [105] The diffusion and progress of astrology in the last
+  two centuries before the Empire, in Greece and Italy, was
+  favoured chiefly by the four following causes: its
+  resemblance to the meteorological astrology of the Greeks;
+  the belief in the conversion of the souls of men into stars;
+  the cessation of the oracles; the belief in a tutelary
+  genius.--Sir G. C. Lewis's _Historical Survey of the
+  Astronomy of the Ancients_, chap. v.
+
+The life of Dr. Dee, an eminent Cambridge mathematician, and of
+his associate Edward Kelly, forms a curious biography. Dee was
+born in 1527. He studied at the English and foreign universities
+with great success and applause; and while the Princess Elizabeth
+was quite young he acquired her friendship, maintained by
+frequent correspondence, and on her succession to the throne the
+queen showed her good will in a conspicuous manner. John Dee left
+to posterity a diary in which he has inserted a regular account
+of his conjurations, prophetic intimations, and magical
+resources. Notwithstanding his mathematical acumen, he was the
+dupe of his cunning subordinate--more of a knave, probably, than
+his master. In 1583 a Polish prince, Albert Laski, visiting the
+English court, frequented the society of the renowned astrologer,
+by whom he was initiated in the secrets of the art; and predicted
+to be the future means of an important revolution in Europe. The
+astrologers wandered over all Germany, at one time favourably
+received by the credulity, at another time ignominiously ejected
+by the indignant disappointment, of a patron.[106] Dee returned
+to England in 1589, and was finally appointed to the wardenship
+of the college at Manchester. In James's reign he was well
+received at Court, his reputation as a magician increasing; and
+in 1604 he is found presenting a petition to the king, imploring
+his good offices in dispelling the injurious imputation of being
+'a conjuror, or caller, or invocator of devils.' Lilly, the most
+celebrated magician of the seventeenth century in England, was in
+the highest repute during the civil wars: his prophetic services
+were sought with equal anxiety by royalists and patriots, by king
+and parliament.[107] Sometimes the professor of the occult
+science may have been his own dupe: oftener he imposed and
+speculated upon the credulity of others.
+
+  [106] While traversing Bohemia, on a particular occasion, it
+  was revealed to be God's pleasure that the two friends
+  should have a community of wives; a little episode noted in
+  Dee's journal. 'On Sunday, May 3, 1587, I, John Dee, Edward
+  Kelly, and our two wives, covenanted with God, and
+  subscribed the same for indissoluble unities, charity, and
+  friendship keeping between us four, and all things between
+  us to be common, as God by sundry means willed us to do.' A
+  sort of inspiration of frequent occurrence in religious
+  revelations, from the times of the Arabian to those of the
+  American prophet.
+
+  [107] William Lilly wrote a History of his own life and
+  times. His adroitness in accommodating his prophecies to the
+  alternating chances of the war does him considerable credit
+  as a prophet.
+
+Prospero is the type of the Theurgic, as Comus is of the Goetic,
+magician. His spiritual minister belongs to the order of good, or
+at least middle spirits--
+
+    'Too black for heav'n, and yet too white for hell.'[108]
+
+  [108] Released by his new lord from the sorceric spell of
+  that 'damn'd witch Sycorax,' he comes gratefully, if
+  somewhat weariedly, to answer his 'blest pleasure; be't to
+  fly, to swim, to dive into the fire, to ride on the curl'd
+  clouds,' &c.
+
+Prospero, by an irresistible magic, subdued to his service the
+reluctant Caliban, a monster 'got by the devil himself upon his
+wicked dam:' but that semi-demon is degraded into a mere beast of
+burden, brutal and savage, with little of the spiritual essence
+of his male parent. Comus, as represented in that most beautiful
+drama by the genius of Milton, is of the classic rather than
+Christian sort: he is the true son of Circe, using his mother's
+method of enchantment, transforming his unwary victims into the
+various forms or faces of the bestial herd. Like the island
+magician without his magical garment, the wicked enchanter
+without his wand loses his sorceric power; and--
+
+    'Without his rod reversed,
+     And backward mutters of dissevering power,'
+
+it is not possible to disenchant his spell-bound prisoners.
+
+In the sixteenth century many wonderful stories obtained of the
+tremendous feats of the magic art. Those that related the lives
+of Bacon, and of Faust (of German origin), were best known in
+England; and, in the dramatic form, were represented on the
+stage. The comedy of 'Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay,' and the
+tragedy of 'The Life and Death of Dr. Faustus,' are perhaps the
+most esteemed of the dramatic writings of the age which preceded
+the appearance of Shakspeare. In the latter Faustus makes a
+compact with the devil, by which a familiar spirit and a
+preternatural art are granted him for twenty-four years. At
+the end of this period his soul is to be the reward of the
+demons.[109] From the 'Faustus' of Christopher Marlow, Goethe has
+derived the name and idea of the most celebrated tragedy of our
+day.
+
+  [109] Conscious of his approaching fate, the trembling
+  magician replies to the anxious inquiries of his surrounding
+  pupils--'"For the vain pleasure of four-and-twenty years
+  hath Faustus lost eternal joy and felicity. I writ them a
+  bill with my own blood; the date is expired; this is the
+  time, and he will fetch me." First Scholar--"Why did not
+  Faustus tell us of this before, that divines might have
+  prayed for thee?" Faust--"Oft have I thought to have done
+  so; but the devil threatened to tear me in pieces if I named
+  God; to fetch me body and soul if I once gave ear to
+  divinity. And now it is too late."' As the fearful moment
+  fast approaches, Dr. Faustus, orthodox on the subject of the
+  duration of future punishment, exclaims in agony--
+
+       'Oh! if my soul must suffer for my sin,
+        Impose some end to my incessant pain.
+        Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years--
+        A hundred thousand, and at the last be saved:
+        No end is limited to damned souls.
+        Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?
+        Oh, why is this immortal that thou hast?' &c.
+
+  Mephistopheles, it need hardly be added, was on this occasion
+  true to his reputation for punctuality. _Friar Bacon and
+  Friar Bungay_ is remarked for being one of the last dramatic
+  pieces in which the devil appears on the stage in his proper
+  person--1591. It is also noticeable that he is the only
+  Scripture character in the new form of the play retained from
+  the _miracles_ which delighted the spectators in the
+  fifteenth century, who were at once edified and gratified by
+  the corporal chastisement inflicted upon his vicarious back.
+
+Magic and necromantic prowess was equally recognised in Southern
+Europe. The Italian poets employed such imposing paraphernalia in
+the construction of an epic; and Cervantes has ridiculed the
+prevailing belief of his countrymen.[110]
+
+  [110] Benvenuto Cellini, the Florentine engraver, in his
+  amusing _Autobiography_, astonishes his readers with some
+  necromantic wonders of which he was an eyewitness. Cellini
+  had become acquainted and enamoured with a beautiful
+  Sicilian, from whom he was suddenly separated. He tells with
+  his accustomed candour and confidence, 'I was then indulging
+  myself in pleasures of all sorts, and engaged in another
+  amour to cancel the memory of my Sicilian mistress. It
+  happened, through a variety of odd accidents, that I made
+  acquaintance with a Sicilian priest, who was a man of
+  genius, and well versed in the Latin and Greek authors.
+  Happening one day to have some conversation with him upon
+  the art of necromancy, I, who had a great desire to know
+  something of the matter, told him I had all my life felt a
+  curiosity to be acquainted with the mysteries of this art.
+  The priest made answer that the man must be of a resolute
+  and steady temper who enters upon that study.' And so it
+  should seem from the event. One night, Cellini, with a
+  companion familiar with the Black Art, attended the priest
+  to the Colosseum, where the latter, 'according to the custom
+  of necromancy, began to draw marks upon the ground, with the
+  most impressive ceremonies imaginable; he likewise brought
+  thither _asaf[oe]tida, several precious perfumes and fire,
+  with some compositions which diffused noisome odours_.'
+  Although several legions of devils obeyed the summons of the
+  conjurations or compositions, the sorceric rites were not
+  attended with complete success. But on a succeeding night,
+  'the necromancer having begun to make his tremendous
+  invocations, called by their names a multitude of demons who
+  were the leaders of the several legions, and invoked them by
+  the virtue and power of the eternal uncreated God, who lives
+  for ever, insomuch that the amphitheatre was almost in an
+  instant filled with demons a hundred times more numerous
+  than at the former conjuration ... I, by the direction of
+  the necromancer, again desired to be in the company of my
+  Angelica. The former thereupon turning to me said, "Know
+  that they have declared that in the space of a month you
+  shall be in her company." He then requested me to stand
+  resolutely by him, because the legion were now above a
+  thousand more in number than he had designed; and besides,
+  these were the most dangerous, so that after they had
+  answered my question it behoved him to be civil to them and
+  dismiss them quietly.' The infernal legions were more easily
+  evoked than dismissed. He proceeds--'Though I was as much
+  terrified as any of them, I did my utmost to conceal the
+  terror I felt; so that I greatly contributed to inspire the
+  rest with resolution. But the truth is,' ingenuously
+  confesses the amorous artist, 'I gave myself over for a dead
+  man, seeing the horrid fright the necromancer was
+  in.'--_Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini_, chap. xiii.,
+  Roscoe's transl.--The information was verified, and
+  Benvenuto enjoyed the society of his mistress at the time
+  foretold.
+
+Alchymy, the science of the transformation of baser metals into
+gold, a pursuit which engaged the anxious thought and wasted the
+health, time, and fortunes of numbers of fanatical empirics, was
+one of the most prized of the abstruse _occult_ arts. Monarchs,
+princes, the great of all countries, eagerly vied among
+themselves in encouraging with promises and sometimes with more
+substantial incentives the zeal of their illusive search; and
+Henry IV. of France could see no reason why, if the bread and
+wine were transubstantiated so miraculously, a metal could not be
+transformed as well.[111]
+
+  [111] The class of horoscopists (the old Chaldaic
+  _genethliacs_), or those who predicted the fortunes of
+  individuals by an examination of the planet which presided
+  at the natal hour, was as much in vogue as that of any other
+  of the masters of the occult arts; and La Fontaine, towards
+  the end of the seventeenth century, apostrophises the class:
+
+       'Charlatans, faiseurs d'horoscope!
+        Quittez les cours des princes de l'Europe;
+        Emmenez avec vous les souffleurs tout d'un temps;
+        Vous ne méritez pas plus de foi.'....
+
+                      _Fables_, ii. 13.
+
+  But it is only necessary to recollect the name of Cagliostro
+  (Balsamo) and others who in the eighteenth century could
+  successfully speculate upon the credulity of people of rank
+  and education, to moderate our wonder at the success of
+  earlier empirics.
+
+Among the eminent names of self-styled or reputed masters of the
+nobler or white magic, some, like the celebrated Paracelsus, were
+men of extraordinary attainments and largely acquainted with the
+secrets of natural science. A necessarily imperfect knowledge, a
+natural desire to impose upon the ignorant wonder of the vulgar,
+and the vanity of a learning which was ambitious of exhibiting,
+in the most imposing if less intelligible way, their superior
+knowledge, were probably the mixed causes which led such
+distinguished scholars as Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, Cardan,
+and Campanella to oppress themselves and their readers with a
+mass of unintelligible rubbish and cabalistic mysticism.[112]
+Slow and gradual as are the successive advances in the knowledge
+and improvement of mankind, it would not be reasonable to be
+surprised that preceding generations could not at once attain to
+the knowledge of a maturer age; and the teachers of mankind
+groped their dark and uncertain way in ages destitute of the
+illumination of modern times.'[113]
+
+  [112]
+
+       'Cardan believed great states depend
+        Upon the tip o' th'
+        Bear's tail's end,'
+
+  correctly enough expresses both the persuasion of the public
+  and that of many of the soi-disant philosophers of the
+  intimate dependence of the fates of both states and
+  individuals of this globe upon other globes in the universe.
+
+  [113] It was not so much a want of sufficient observation of
+  known facts, as the want of a true method and of
+  verification, which rendered the investigations of the
+  earlier philosophers so vague and uncertain. And the same
+  causes which necessarily prevented Aristotle, the greatest
+  intellect perhaps that has ever illuminated the world, from
+  attaining to the greater perfection of the modern philosophy,
+  are applicable, in a greater degree, to the case of the
+  mediæval and later discoverers. The causes of the failure of
+  the pre-scientific world are well stated by a living writer.
+  'Men cannot, or at least they will not, await the tardy
+  results of discovery; they will not sit down in avowed
+  ignorance. Imagination supplies the deficiencies of
+  observation. A theoretic arch is thrown across the chasm,
+  because men are unwilling to wait till a solid bridge be
+  constructed.... The early thinkers, by reason of the very
+  splendour of their capacities, were not less incompetent to
+  follow the slow processes of scientific investigation, than a
+  tribe of martial savages to adopt the strategy and discipline
+  of modern armies. No accumulated laws, no well-tried methods
+  existed for their aid. The elementary laws in each department
+  were mostly undetected.' The guide of knowledge is
+  verification. 'The complexity of phenomena is that of a
+  labyrinth, the paths of which cross and recross each other;
+  one wrong turn causes the wanderer infinite perplexity.
+  Verification is the Ariadne-thread by which the real issues
+  may be found. Unhappily, the process of verification is slow,
+  tedious, often difficult and deceptive; and we are by nature
+  lazy and impatient, hating labour, eager to obtain. Hence
+  credulity. We accept facts without scrutiny, inductions
+  without proof; and we yield to our disposition to believe
+  that the order of phenomena must correspond with our
+  conceptions.' A profound truth is contained in the assertion
+  of Comte (_Cours de Philosophie Positive_) that 'men have
+  still more need of method than of doctrine, of education than
+  of instruction.'--_Aristotle_, by G. H. Lewes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+     Sorcery in Southern Europe--Cause of the Retention of the
+     Demonological Creed among the Protestant Sects--Calvinists
+     the most Fanatical of the Reformed Churches--Witch-Creed
+     sanctioned in the Authorised Version of the Sacred
+     Scriptures--The Witch-Act of 1604--James VI.'s
+     'Demonologie'--Lycanthropy and Executions in France--The
+     French Provincial Parliaments active in passing Laws against
+     the various Witch-practices--Witchcraft in the
+     Pyrenees--Commission of Inquiry appointed--Its
+     Results--Demonology in Spain.
+
+
+In the annals of black magic, the silent tribunals of the
+Inquisition in Southern Europe which has consigned so many
+thousands of heretics to the torture room and to the flames, do
+not reveal so many trials for the simple crime of witchcraft as
+the tribunals of the more northern peoples: there all dissent
+from Catholic and priestly dogma was believed to be inspired by
+the powers of hell, deserving a common punishment, whether in the
+form of denial of transubstantiation, infallibility, of skill in
+magic, or of the vulgar practice of sorcery. Throughout Europe
+penalties and prosecutions were being continually enacted. The
+popes in Italy fulminated abroad their decrees, and the
+parliaments of France were almost daily engaged in pronouncing
+sentence.
+
+Where the papal yoke had been thrown off in Northern Germany, in
+Scotland, and in England, the belief and the persecution remained
+in full force, indeed greatly increased; and it is obvious to
+inquire the cause of the retention, with many additions, of the
+doctrine of witchcraft by those who had at last finally rejected
+with scorn most of the grosser religious dogmas of the old
+Church, who were so loud in their just denunciation of Catholic
+tyranny and superstition. A general answer might be given that
+the Reformation of the sixteenth century, while it swept away in
+those countries in which it was effected the most injurious
+principles of ecclesiasticism, the principles of infallibility
+and authority in matters of faith, for the destruction of which
+gratitude is due to the independent minds of Luther, Zuinglius,
+and others, was yet far from complete in its negations. The
+leaders of that great revolution, with all their genius and
+boldness, could only partially free themselves from the
+prejudices of education and of the age. To develope the important
+principles they established, the rights of private judgment and
+religious freedom, was the legacy and duty of their successors; a
+duty which they failed to perform, to the incalculable misfortune
+of succeeding generations. The Sacred Scriptures, the common
+and only authority on faith among the different sections
+of Protestantism, unfortunately seemed to inculcate the dread
+power of the devil and his malicious purposes, and both the
+Jewish and Christian Scriptures apparently taught the reality
+of witchcraft. Theologians of all parties would have as easily
+dared to question the existence of God himself as to doubt the
+actual power of that other deity, and the unbelievers in his
+universal interference were not illogically stigmatised as
+atheists. With the Protestants some adventitious circumstances
+might make a particular church more fanatical and furious than
+another, and the Calvinists have deserved the palm for the
+bitterest persecution of witchcraft. But neither the Lutheran nor
+the Anglican section is exempt from the odious imputation.[114]
+
+  [114] Lord Peter, and his humbler brothers Martin and Jack,
+  in different degrees, are all of them obnoxious to the
+  accusation; and Bossuet (_Variations des Eglises
+  Protestantes_, xi. 201), who is assured that St. Paul
+  predicted the 'doctrines of devils' to be characteristic of
+  Manichæan and Albigensian heresy, might have more safely
+  interpreted the prophecy as applicable to the universal
+  Christian Church (at least of Western Europe) of the
+  sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
+
+The followers of Calvin were most deeply imbued with hatred and
+horror of Catholic practices, and, adopting the old prejudice or
+policy of their antagonists, they were willing to confound the
+superstitious rites of Catholicism with those of demonolatry. The
+Anglican Church party, whose principles were not so entirely
+opposite to the old religion, had far less antipathy: until the
+revolution of 1688 it was for the most part engaged in contending
+against liberty rather than against despotism of conscience;
+against Calvinism than against Catholicism. Yet the Church of
+England is exposed to the reproach of having sanctioned the
+common opinions in the most authoritative manner. In the
+authorised version of the Sacred Scriptures, in the translation
+of which into the English language forty-seven selected divines,
+eminent for position and learning, could concur in consecrating
+a vulgar superstition, the most imposing sanction was given.
+Had they possessed either common sense or courage, these Anglican
+divines might have expressed their disbelief or doubt of
+its truth by a more rational, and possibly more proper,
+interpretation of the Hebrew and Greek expressions; or if that
+was not possible, by an accompanying unequivocal protest. But the
+subservience as well as superstition of the English Church under
+the last of the Tudors and under the Stuarts is equally a matter
+of fact and of reprobation.
+
+It was in the first year of the first King of Great Britain that
+the English Parliament passed the Act which remained in force, or
+at least on the Statute Book, until towards the middle of last
+century.[115] After due consideration the bill passed both
+Houses; and by it, it was enacted that 'If any person shall use
+any invocation or conjuration of any evil or wicked spirit, or
+shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward
+any evil or cursed spirit to or for any intent or purpose, or
+take up any dead man, woman, or child out of the grave--or the
+skin, bone, or any part of the dead person, to be employed or
+used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment;
+or shall use, exercise, or practice any sort of witchcraft, &c.,
+whereby any person shall be destroyed, killed, wasted, consumed,
+pined or lamed in any part of the body; that every such person
+being convicted shall suffer death.' Twelve bishops sat in the
+Committee of the Upper House.[116]
+
+  [115] The 'Witch Act' of James I. was passed in the year
+  1604. The new translation, or the present authorised
+  version, of the Bible, was executed in 1607. The inference
+  seems plain. An ecclesiastical canon passed at the same
+  period, which prohibits the inferior clergy from exorcising
+  without episcopal licence, proves at the same time the
+  prevalence of 'possession' and the prevalence of exorcism in
+  the beginning of the seventeenth century.
+
+  [116] The parliament of James I. would have done wisely to
+  have embraced the philosophic sentiment of a Hungarian prince
+  (1095-1114) who is said to have dismissed the absurd
+  superstition with laconic brevity: 'De strigis vero, quæ non
+  sunt, nulla quæstio fiat.'
+
+The Scottish Parliament, during Queen Mary's reign, anathematised
+the _papistical_ practices; and from that time the annals of
+Scottish judicature are filled with records of trials and
+convictions. James was educated among the stern adherents of
+Calvin. In whatever matters of ecclesiastical faith and rule the
+countryman of Knox may have deviated from the teaching of his
+preceptors, he maintained with constant zeal his faith in the
+devil's omnipotence; and we may be disposed to concede the
+title of 'Defender of the Faith' (so confidently prefixed to
+successive editions of the Authorised Version) to his activity in
+the extermination of witches, rather than to his hatred of
+priestcraft. While monarch only of the Northern kingdom, he
+published a denunciation of the damnable infidelity of the 'Witch
+Advocates,' and his own unhesitating belief. James VI. and his
+clerical advisers were persuaded, or affected to be persuaded,
+that the devil, with all his hellish crew, was conspiring to
+frustrate the beneficial intentions of a pious Protestant prince.
+Infernal despair and rage reached the climax when the marriage
+with the Danish princess was to be effected. But, far from being
+terrified by so formidable a conspiracy, he gloried in the
+persuasion that he was the devil's greatest enemy; and the man
+who shuddered at the sight of a drawn sword was not afraid to
+enter the lists against the _invisible_ spiritual enemy.
+
+The 'Demonologie' was published at Edinburgh in 1597. The author
+introduces his book with these words: 'The fearful abounding at
+this time in this country of these detestable slaves of the
+devil, the witches or enchanters, hath moved me (beloved reader)
+to despatch in post this following treatise of mine, not in any
+wise (as I protest) to serve for a show of my learning and
+ingine, but only moved of conscience to press thereby so far as I
+can to resolve the doubting hearts of many; both that such
+assaults of Sathan are most certainly practised, and that the
+instruments thereof merits most severely to be punished: against
+the damnable opinions of two principally in our age, whereof the
+one called Scot, an Englishman, is not ashamed in public print to
+deny that there can be such a thing as witchcraft, and so
+maintains the old error of the Sadducees in denying of spirits.
+The other, called Wierus, a German physician, sets out a public
+apology for all these crafts-folks, whereby procuring for their
+impunity, he plainly bewrays himself to have been one of that
+profession. And for to make this treatise the more pleasant and
+facile, I have put it in form of a dialogue, which I have divided
+into three books: the first speaking of magic in general, and
+necromancy in special; the second, of sorcery and witchcraft; and
+the third contains a discourse of all those kinds of spirits and
+spectres that appears and troubles persons, together with a
+conclusion of the whole work. My intention in this labour is
+only to prove two things, as I have already said: the one, that
+such devilish arts have been and are; the other, what exact trial
+and severe punishment they merit; and therefore reason I what
+kind of things are possible to be performed in these arts, and
+by what natural causes they may be. Not that I touch every
+particular thing of the devil's power, for that were infinite;
+but only, to speak scholasticly (since this cannot be spoken in
+our language), I reason upon _genus_, leaving _species_ and
+_differentia_ to be comprehended therein.'[117]
+
+  [117] Speculating on the manner of witches' aerial travels,
+  he thinks, 'Another way is somewhat more strange, and yet it
+  is possible to be true: which is, by being carried by the
+  force of their spirit, which is their conductor, either
+  above the earth or above the sea swiftly to the place where
+  they are to meet: which I am persuaded to be likewise
+  possible, in respect that as Habakkuk was carried by the
+  angel in that form to the den where Daniel lay, so think I
+  the devil will be ready to imitate God as well in that as in
+  other things, which is much more possible to him to do,
+  being a spirit, than to a mighty wind, being but a natural
+  meteor to transport from one place to another a solid body,
+  as is commonly and daily seen in practice. But in this
+  violent form they cannot be carried but a short bounds,
+  agreeing with the space that they may retain their breath;
+  for if it were longer their breath could not remain
+  unextinguished, their body being carried in such a violent
+  and forcible manner.... And in this transporting they say
+  themselves that they are invisible to any other, except
+  amongst themselves. For if the devil may form what kind of
+  impressions he pleases in the air, as I have said before,
+  speaking of magic, why may he not far easier thicken and
+  obscure so the air that is next about them, by contracting
+  it straight together that the beams of any other man's eyes
+  cannot pierce through the same to see them?'
+  &c.--_Cyclopædia of English Literature_, edited by Robert
+  Chambers.
+
+The following injunction is characteristic of all persecuting
+maxims, and is worthy of the disciple of Bodin: 'Witches ought to
+be put to death according to the law of God, the civil and the
+imperial law, and the municipal law of all Christian nations.
+Yea, to spare the life and not to strike whom God bids strike,
+and so severely in so odious a treason against God, is not only
+unlawful but doubtless as great a sin in the magistrate as was
+Saul's sparing Agag.' It is insisted upon by this _sagacious_
+author (echoing the rules laid down in the 'Malleus'), that any
+and every evidence is good against an exceptional crime: that the
+testimony of the youngest children, and of persons of the most
+infamous character, not only may, but ought to be, received.
+
+This mischievous production is a curious collection of
+demonological learning and experience, exhibiting the reputed
+practices and ceremonies of witches, the mode of detecting them,
+&c.; but is useless even for the purpose of showing the popular
+Scottish or English notions, being chiefly a medley of classical
+or foreign ideas, inserted apparently (spite of the royal
+author's assurance to the contrary) to parade an array of
+abstruse and pedantic learning. That some of the excessive terror
+said to have been exhibited was simulated to promote his
+pretensions to the especial hostility of Satan, is probable: but
+that also he was impressed, in some degree, with a real and
+lively fear scarcely admits of doubt. The modern Solomon might
+well have blushed at the superior common sense of a barbaric
+chief; and the 'judges of the seventeenth century might have been
+instructed and confounded at the superior wisdom of Rotharis
+[a Lombardic prince], who derides the absurd superstition and
+protects the wretched victims of popular or judicial cruelty.'[118]
+
+  [118] _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, xlv. It would
+  have been well for his subjects if he could have
+  congratulated himself, like Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (the
+  model of philosophic princes, and a more practically
+  virtuous, if not wiser, philosopher than the proverbial
+  Solomon, and of whom Niebuhr, _History of Rome_, v.,
+  asserts, 'If there is any sublime human virtue, it is his'),
+  that he had learnt from his instructors to laugh at the
+  bugbears of witches and demons.--[Greek: Ta eis
+  heauton.]--_The Meditations of M. A. Antoninus._
+
+Previously to the 'Witch Act,' the charge of sorcery was, in most
+cases, a subordinate and subsidiary one, attached to various
+political or other indictments. Henceforward the practice of the
+peculiar offence might be entirely independent of any more
+substantial accusation. In England, compared with the other
+countries of Europe, folly more than ferocity, perhaps, generally
+characterises the proceedings of the tribunals. During the
+pre-Reformation ages, France, even more than her island
+neighbour, suffered from the crime. The fates of the Templars, of
+Jeanne d'Arc, of Arras, of those suspected of causing the mad
+king's, Charles VI., derangement (when many of the _white_
+witches, or wizards, 'mischievously good,' suffered for failing,
+by a pretended skill, to effect his promised cure) are some of
+the more conspicuous examples. But in France, as in the rest of
+Europe, it was in the post-feudal period that prosecutions became
+of almost daily occurrence.
+
+A prevalent kind of sorcery was that of lycanthropy, as it was
+called, a prejudice derived, it seems, in part from the
+Pythagorean metempsychosis. A few cases will illustrate the
+nature of this stupendous transformation. That it is mostly
+found to take place in France and in the southern districts, the
+country of wolves, that still make their ravages there, is a fact
+easily intelligible; and if the devil can enter into swine, he
+can also, in the opinion of the demonologists, as easily enter
+into wolves. At Dôle, in 1573, a loup-garou, or wehr-wolf
+(man-wolf), was accused of devastating the country and devouring
+little children. The indictment was read by Henri Camus, doctor
+of laws and counsellor of the king, to the effect that the
+accused, Gilles Garnier, had killed a girl twelve years of age,
+having torn her to pieces, partly with his teeth, and partly with
+his wolf's paws; that having dragged the body into the forest, he
+there devoured the larger portion, reserving the remainder for
+his wife; also that, by reason of injuries inflicted in a similar
+way on another young girl, the loup-garou had occasioned her
+death; also that he had devoured a boy of thirteen, tearing him
+limb by limb; that he displayed the same unnatural propensities
+even in his own proper shape. Fifty persons were found to bear
+witness; and he was put to the rack, which elicited an unreserved
+confession. He was then brought back into court, when Dr. Camus,
+in the name of the Parliament of Dôle, pronounced the following
+sentence: 'Seeing that Gilles Garnier has, by the testimony of
+credible witnesses and by his own spontaneous confession, been
+proved guilty of the abominable crimes of lycanthropy and
+witchcraft, this court condemns him, the said Grilles, to be
+this day taken in a cart from this spot to the place of
+execution, accompanied by the executioner, where he, by the said
+executioner, shall be tied to a stake and burned alive, and that
+his ashes be then scattered to the winds. The court further
+condemns him, the said Gilles, to the costs of this prosecution.
+Given at Dôle this 18th day of January, 1573.' Five years later a
+man named Jacques Rollet was burned alive in the Place de Grêve
+for the same crime, having been tried and condemned by the
+Parliament of Paris.[119]
+
+  [119] A still more sensational case happened at a village in
+  the mountains of Auvergne. A gentleman while hunting was
+  suddenly attacked by a savage wolf of monstrous size.
+  Impenetrable by his shot, the beast made a spring upon the
+  helpless huntsman, who in the struggle luckily, or unluckily
+  for the unfortunate lady, contrived to cut off one of its
+  fore-paws. This trophy he placed in his pocket, and made the
+  best of his way homewards in safety. On the road he met a
+  friend to whom he exhibited a bleeding paw, or rather a
+  woman's hand (so it was produced from the hunter's pocket)
+  upon which was a wedding ring. His wife's ring was at once
+  recognised by the other. His suspicions aroused, he
+  immediately went in search of his wife, who was found
+  sitting by the fire in the kitchen, her arm hidden beneath
+  her apron: when the husband seizing her by the arm found his
+  terrible suspicions verified. The bleeding stump was there,
+  evidently just fresh from the wound. She was given into
+  custody, and in the event was burned at Riom in presence of
+  thousands of spectators. Among some of the races of India,
+  among the Khonds of the mountains of Orissa, a superstition
+  obtains like that of the _loup-garou_ of France. In India
+  the tiger takes the place of the wolf, and the metamorphosed
+  witch is there known as the _Pulta-bag_.
+
+  A kindred prejudice, Vampirism, has still many adherents in
+  Eastern Europe. The vampire is a human being who in his tomb
+  maintains a posthumous existence by ascending in the night
+  and sucking the bodies of the living. His punishment was
+  necessarily less tremendous than that of the witch: the
+  _dead_ body only being burned to ashes. An official document,
+  quoted by Horst, narrates the particulars of the examination
+  and burning of a disinterred vampire.
+
+Several witches were burned in successive years throughout the
+kingdom. In 1564, three witches and a wizard were executed at
+Poictiers: on the rack they declared that they had destroyed
+numbers of sheep by magical preparations, attended the Sabbaths,
+&c. Trois Echelles, a celebrated sorcerer, examined in the
+presence of Charles IX. and his court, acknowledged his
+obligation to the devil, to whom he had sold himself, recounting
+the debaucheries of the Sabbath, the methods of bewitching, and
+the compositions of the unguents for blighting cattle. The
+astounding fact was also revealed that some twelve hundred
+accomplices were at large in different parts of the land. The
+provincial parliaments in the end of this and the greater part of
+the next century are unremittingly engaged in passing decrees and
+making provisions against the increasing offences.[120] 'The
+Parliament of Rouen decreed that the possession of a _grimoire_
+or book of spells was sufficient evidence of witchcraft; and that
+all persons on whom such books were found should be _burned
+alive_. Three councils were held in different parts of France in
+1583, all in relation to the same subject. The Parliament of
+Bordeaux issued strict injunctions to all curates and clergy
+whatever to use redoubled efforts to root out the crime of
+witchcraft. The Parliament of Tours was equally peremptory, and
+feared the judgments of an offended God if all these dealers with
+the devil were not swept from the face of the land. The
+Parliament of Rheims was particularly severe against the _noueurs
+d'aiguillettes_ or 'tiers of the knot'--people of both sexes who
+took pleasure in preventing the consummation of marriage that
+they might counteract the command of God to our first parents to
+increase and multiply. This parliament held it to be sinful to
+wear amulets to preserve from witchcraft; and that this practice
+might not be continued within its jurisdiction, drew up a form of
+exorcism 'which could more effectually defeat the agents of the
+devil and put them to flight.'[121]
+
+  [120] Montaigne, one of the few Frenchmen at this time who
+  seemed to discredit the universal creed, in one of his
+  essays ventures to think 'it is very probable that the
+  principal credit of visions, of enchantments, and of such
+  extraordinary effects, proceeds from the power of the
+  imagination acting principally upon the more impressible
+  minds of the vulgar.' He is inclined to assign the prevalent
+  'liaisons' (nouements d'aiguillettes) to the apprehensions
+  of a fear with which in his age the French world was so
+  perplexed (si entravé). _Essais_, liv. i. 20.
+
+  [121] _Extraordinary Popular Delusions_, by Mackay, whose
+  authorities are Tablier, Boguet (_Discours sur les
+  Sorciers_), and M. Jules Garinet (_Histoire de la Magie_).
+
+In France, and still more in Italy, there is reason for believing
+that many of the convicts were not without the real guilt of
+toxicological practices; and they might sometimes properly
+deserve the opprobrium of the old _venefici_. The formal trial
+and sentence to death of La Maréchale de l'Ancre in 1617 was
+perhaps more political than superstitious, but witchcraft was
+introduced as one of the gravest accusations. Her preponderance
+in the councils of Marie de Medici and of Louis XIII. originated
+in the natural _fascination_ of royal but inferior minds. Two
+years afterwards occurred a bonâ fide prosecution on a large
+scale. A commission was appointed by the Parliament of Bordeaux
+to inquire into the causes and circumstances of the prevalence of
+witchcraft in the Pyrenean districts. Espaignol, president of the
+local parliament, with the better known councillor, Pierre de
+l'Ancre, who has left a record ('Tableau de l'Inconstance des
+Mauvais Anges et Démons, où il est amplement traité des Sorciers
+et Démons: Paris'), was placed at the head of the commission. How
+the district of Labourt was so infested with the tribe, that of
+thirty thousand inhabitants hardly a family existed but was
+infected with sorcery, is explained by the barren, sterile,
+mountainous aspect of the neighbourhood of that part of the
+Pyrenees: the men were engaged in the business of fishermen, and
+the women left alone were exposed to the tempter. The priests too
+were as ignorant and wicked as the people; their relations with
+the lonely wives and daughters being more intimate than proper.
+Young and handsome women, some mere girls, form the greater
+proportion of the accused. As many as forty a day appeared at the
+bar of the commissioners, and at least two hundred were hanged or
+burned.
+
+Evidence of the appearance of the devil was various and
+contradictory. Some at the _Domdaniel_, the place of assemblage,
+had a vision of a hideous wild he-goat upon a large gilded
+throne; others of a man twisted and disfigured by Tartarean
+torture; of a gentleman in black with a sword, booted and
+spurred; to others he seemed as some shapeless indistinct object,
+as that of the trunk of a tree, or some huge rock or stone. They
+proceeded to their meetings riding on spits, pitchforks,
+broom-sticks: being entertained on their arrival in the approved
+style, and indulging in the usual licence. Deputies from witchdom
+attended from all parts, even from Scotland. When reproached by
+some of his slaves for failing to come to the rescue in the
+torture-chamber or at the stake, their lord replied by causing
+illusory fires to be lit, bidding the doubters walk through the
+harmless flames, promising not more inconvenience in the bonfires
+of their persecutors. Lycanthropic criminals were also brought up
+who had prowled about and devastated the sheepfolds. Espaignol
+and De l'Ancre were provided with two professional Matthew
+Hopkinses: one a surgeon for examining the 'marks' (generally
+here discovered in the left eye, like a frog's foot) in the men
+and older women; the other a girl of seventeen, for the younger
+of her sex. Many of the priests were executed; several made their
+escape from the country. Besides the work before mentioned, De
+l'Ancre published a treatise under the title of 'L'Incrédulité et
+Mescréance du Sortilége pleinement convaincue,' 1622. The
+expiration of the term of the Bordeaux commission brought the
+proceedings to a close, and fortunately saved a number of the
+condemned.
+
+In Spain, the land of Torquemada and Ximenes, which had long ago
+fanatically expelled the Jews and recently its old Moorish
+conquerors from its soil, the unceasing activity of the
+Inquisition during 140 years must have extorted innumerable
+confessions and proofs of diabolic conspiracies and heresy.
+Antonio Llorente, the historian of the Inquisition, to whose rare
+opportunities of obtaining information we are indebted for some
+instructive revelations, has exposed a large number of the
+previously silent and dark transactions of the Holy Office. But
+the demonological ideas of the Southern Church and people are
+profusely displayed in the copious dramatic literature of the
+Spaniards, whose theatre was at one time nearly as popular, if
+not as influential, as the Church.
+
+The dramas of the celebrated Lope de Vega and of Calderon in
+particular, are filled with demons as well as angels[122]--a
+sort of religious compensation to the Church for the moral
+deficiencies of a licentious stage, or rather licentious public.
+
+  [122] In the _Nacimiento de Christo_ of Lope de Vega the
+  devil appears in his popular figure of the dragon.
+  Calderon's _Wonder-Working Magician_, relating the
+  adventures of St. Cyprian and the various temptations and
+  seductions of the Evil Spirit, like Goethe's Faust,
+  introduces the devil in the disguise of a fashionable and
+  gallant gentleman.--Ticknor's _History of Spanish
+  Literature_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+     'Possession' in France in the Seventeenth Century--Urbain
+     Grandier and the Convent of Loudun--Exorcism at
+     Aix--Ecstatic Phenomena--Madeleine Bavent--Her cruel
+     Persecution--Catholic and Protestant Witchcraft in
+     Germany--Luther's Demonological Fears and
+     Experiences--Originated in his exceptional Position and in
+     the extraordinary Circumstances of his Life and
+     Times--Witch-burning at Bamburg and at Würzburg.
+
+
+Demoniacal possession was a phase of witchcraft which obtained
+extensively in France during the seventeenth century: the victims
+of this hallucination were chiefly the female inmates of
+religious houses, whose inflamed imaginations were prostituted by
+their priestly advisers to the most atrocious purposes. Urbain
+Grandier's fate was connected with that of an entire convent. The
+facts of this celebrated sorcerer's history are instructive. He
+was educated in a college of the Jesuits at Bordeaux, and
+presented by the fathers, with whom his abilities and address had
+gained much applause, to a benefice in Loudun. He provoked by his
+haughtiness the jealousy of his brother clergy, who regarded him
+as an intruder, and his pride and resentment increased in direct
+proportion to the activity of his enemies, who had conspired to
+effect his ruin. Mounier and Mignon, two priests whom he had
+mortally offended, were most active. Urbain Grandier was rash
+enough to oppose himself alone to the united counsels of
+unscrupulous and determined foes. Defeated singly in previous
+attempts to drive him from Loudun, the two priests combined with
+the leading authorities of the place. Their haughty and careless
+adversary had the advantage or disadvantage of a fine person and
+handsome face, which, with his other recommendations, gained him
+universal popularity with the women; and his success and
+familiarities with the fair sex were not likely to escape the
+vigilance of spies anxious to collect damaging proofs. What
+inflamed to the utmost the animosities of the two parties was the
+success of Canon Mignon in obtaining the coveted position of
+confessor to the convent of Ursulines in Loudun, to the exclusion
+of Grandier, himself an applicant. This convent was destined to
+assume a prominent part in the fate of the curé of the town. The
+younger nuns, it seems, to enliven the dull monotony of monastic
+life, adopted a plan of amusing their leisure by frightening the
+older ones in making the most of their knowledge of secret
+passages in the building, playing off ghost-tricks, and raising
+unearthly noises. When the newly appointed confessor was informed
+of the state of matters he at once perceived the possibility,
+and formed the design, of turning it to account. The offending
+nuns were promised forgiveness if they would continue their
+ghostly amusement, and also affect demoniacal possession; a fraud
+in which they were more readily induced to participate by an
+assurance that it might be the humble means of converting the
+heretics--Protestants being unusually numerous in that part of
+the country.
+
+As soon as they were sufficiently prepared to assume their parts,
+the magistrates were summoned to witness the phenomena of
+possession and exorcism. On the first occasion the Superior of
+the convent was the selected patient; and it was extracted from
+the demon in possession that he had been sent by Urbain Grandier,
+priest of the church of St. Peter. This was well so far; but the
+civil authorities generally, as it appears, were not disposed to
+accept even the irrefragable testimony of a demoniac; and the
+ecclesiastics, with the leading inhabitants, were in conflict
+with the civil power. Opportunely, however, for the plan of the
+conspirators, who were almost in despair, an all-powerful ally
+was enlisted on their side. A severe satire upon some acts of the
+minister of France, Cardinal Richelieu, or of some of his
+subordinates, had made its appearance. Urbain was suspected to be
+the author; his enemies were careful to improve the occasion; and
+the Cardinal-minister's cooperation was secured. A royal
+commission was ordered to inquire into the now notorious
+circumstances of the Loudun diabolism. Laubardemont, the head of
+the commission, arrived in December 1633, and no time was lost in
+bringing the matter to a crisis. The house of the suspected was
+searched for books of magic; he himself being thrown into a
+dungeon, where the surgeons examined him for the 'marks.' Five
+insensible spots were found--a certain proof. Meanwhile the nuns
+become more hysterical than ever; strong suspicion not being
+wanting that the priestly confessors to the convent availed
+themselves of their situation to abuse the bodies as well as the
+minds of the reputed demoniacs. To such an extent went the
+audacity of the exorcists, and the credulity of the people, that
+the _enceinte_ condition of one of the sisters, which at the end
+of five or six months disappeared, was explained by the malicious
+slander of the devil, who had caused that scandalous illusion.
+Crowds of persons of all ranks flocked from Paris and from the
+most distant parts to see and hear the wild ravings of these
+hysterical or drugged women, whose excitement was such that they
+spared not their own reputations; and some scandalous exposures
+were submitted to the amusement or curiosity of the surrounding
+spectators. Some few of them, aroused from the horrible delusion,
+or ashamed of their complicity, admitted that all their previous
+revelations were simple fiction. Means were found to effectually
+silence such dangerous announcements. The accusers pressed on the
+prosecution; the influence of his friends was overborne, and
+Grandier was finally sentenced to the stake. Fearing the result
+of a despair which might convincingly betray the facts of the
+case to the assembled multitude, they seem to have prevailed upon
+the condemned to keep silence up to the last moment, under
+promise of an easier death. But already fastened to the stake, he
+learned too late the treachery of his executioners; instead of
+being first strangled, he was committed alive to the flames. Nor
+were any 'last confessions' possible. The unfortunate victim of
+the malice of exasperated rivals, and of the animosity of the
+implacable Richelieu, has been variously represented.[123] It is
+noticeable that the scene of this affair was in the heart of the
+conquered Protestant region--Rochelle had fallen only six years
+before the execution; and the heretics, although politically
+subdued, were numerous and active. A fact which may account for
+the seeming indifference and even the opposition of a large
+number of the people in this case of diabolism which obtained
+comparatively little credit. It had been urged to the nuns that
+it would be for the good and glory of Catholicism that the
+heretics should be confounded by a few astounding miracles.
+Whether Grandier had any decided heretical inclinations is
+doubtful; but he wrote against the celibacy of the priesthood,
+and was suspected of liberal opinions in religion. A Capuchin
+named Tranquille (a contemporary) has furnished the materials for
+the 'History of the Devils of Loudun' by the Protestant Aubin,
+1716.
+
+  [123] Michelet apparently accepts the charge of immorality;
+  according to which the curé took advantage of his popularity
+  among the ladies of Loudun, by his insinuating manners, to
+  seduce the wives and daughters of the citizens. By another
+  writer (Alexandre Dumas, _Celebrated Crimes_) he is supposed
+  to have been of a proud and vindictive disposition, but
+  innocent of the alleged irregularities.
+
+Twenty-four years previously a still more scandalous affair--that
+of Louis Gauffridi and the Convent of Aix, in which Gauffridi, who
+had debauched several girls both in and out of the establishment,
+was the principal actor--was transacted with similar circumstances.
+Madeleine, one of the novices, soon after entering upon her
+noviciate, was seized with the ecstatic trances, which were
+speedily communicated to her companions.[124] These fits, in the
+judgment of the priests, were nothing but the effect of witchcraft.
+Exorcists elicited from the girls that Louis Gauffridi, a powerful
+magician having authority over demons throughout Europe, had
+bewitched them. The questions and answers were taken down, by
+order of the judges, by reporters, who, while the priests were
+exorcising, committed the results to writing, published afterwards
+by one of them, Michaelis, in 1613. Among the interesting facts
+acquired through these spirit-media, the inquisitors learned that
+Antichrist was already come; that printing, and the invention of
+it, were alike accursed, and similar information. Madeleine,
+tortured and imprisoned in the most loathsome dungeon, was reduced
+to such a condition of extreme horror and dread, that from this
+time she was the mere instrument of her atrocious judges. Having
+been intimate with the wizard, she could inform them of the
+position of the 'secret marks' on his person: these were
+ascertained in the usual way by pricking with needles. Gauffridi,
+by various torture, was induced to make the required confession,
+and was burned alive at Aix, April 30, 1611.
+
+  [124] M. Maury, in a philosophical and learned work (_La
+  Magie et l'Astrologie dans l'Antiquité et au Moyen Âge_),
+  has scientifically explored and exposed the mysteries of
+  these and the like ecstatic phenomena, of such frequent
+  occurrence in Protestant as well as in Catholic countries;
+  in the orphan-houses of Amsterdam and Horn, as well as in
+  the convents of France and Italy in the 17th century. And
+  the Protestant revivalists of the present age have in great
+  measure reproduced these curious results of religious
+  excitement.
+
+Demoniacal possession was a mania in France in the seventeenth
+century. The story of Madeleine Bavent, as reported, reveals the
+utmost licentiousness and fiendish cruelty.[125] Gibbon justly
+observes that ancient Rome supported with the greatest difficulty
+the institution of _six_ vestals, notwithstanding the certain fate
+of a living grave for those who could not preserve their
+chastity; and Christian Rome was filled with many thousands of
+both sexes bound by vows to perpetual virginity. Madeleine was
+seduced by her Franciscan confessor when only fourteen; and she
+entered a convent lately founded at Louviers. In this building,
+surrounded by a wood, and situated in a suitable spot, some
+strange practices were carried on. At the instigation of their
+director, a priest called David, the nuns, it is reported, were
+seized with an irresistible desire of imitating the primitive
+Adamite simplicity: the novices were compelled to return to the
+simple nudity of the days of innocence when taking exercise in
+the conventual gardens, and even at their devotions in the
+chapel. The novice Madeleine, on one occasion, was reprimanded
+for concealing her bosom with the altar-cloth at communion. She
+was originally of a pure and artless mind; and only gradually and
+stealthily she was corrupted by the pious arguments of her
+priest. This man, Picart by name--one of that extensive class the
+'tristes obsc[oe]ni,' of whom the Angelos and Tartuffes[126] are
+representatives--succeeded to the vacant office of directing
+confessor to the nuns of Louviers; and at once embraced the
+opportunities of the confessional. Without repeating all the
+disgusting scenes that followed, as given by Michelet, it is only
+necessary to add that the miserable nun became the mistress and
+helpless creature of her seducer. 'He employed her as a magical
+charm to gain over the rest of the nuns. A holy wafer steeped in
+Madeleine's blood and buried in the garden would be sure to
+disturb their senses and their minds. This was the very year in
+which Urban Grandier was burned. Throughout France men spoke of
+nothing but the devils of Loudun.... Madeleine fancied herself
+bewitched and knocked about by devils; followed about by a lewd
+cat with eyes of fire. By degrees other nuns caught the disorder,
+which showed itself in odd supernatural jerks and writhings.'
+
+  [125] It is but one instance of innumerable amours within
+  the secret penetralia of the privileged conventual
+  establishments. In the dark recesses of these vestal
+  institutions on a gigantic scale, where publicity, that sole
+  security, was never known, what vices or even crimes could
+  not be safely perpetrated? Luther, who proved in the most
+  practical way his contempt for the sanctity of monastic vows
+  by eloping with a nun, assures us, among other scandals
+  attaching to convent life, of the fact that when a fish-pond
+  adjoining one of these establishments in Rome was drained
+  off, six thousand infant skulls were exposed to view. A
+  story which may be fact or fiction. But while fully
+  admitting the probability of invention and exaggeration in
+  the relations of enemies, and the fact that undue prejudice
+  is likely to somewhat exaggerate the probable evils of the
+  mysterious and unknown, how could it be otherwise than that
+  during fourteen centuries many crimes should have been
+  committed in those silent and safe retreats? Nor, indeed, is
+  experience opposed to the possibility of the highest fervour
+  of an unnatural enthusiasm being compatible with more human
+  passions. The virgin who,
+
+       'Ut flos in septis secretus nascitur hortis
+        Ignotus pecori,'
+
+  as eulogised by the virgin-chorus in the beautiful
+  epithalamium of Catullus, might be recognised in the
+  youthful 'religieuse' if only human passion could be
+  excluded; but the story of Heloise and Abelard is not a
+  solitary proof of the superiority of human nature over an
+  impossible and artificial spirituality.
+
+  [126] As Tartuffe privately confesses,
+
+       'L'amour qui nous attache aux beautés éternelles
+        N'étouffe pas en nous l'amour des temporelles.
+
+        *       *       *       *       *
+
+        Pour être dévot, je n'en suis pas moins homme.'
+
+The Superior was not averse to the publication of these events,
+having the example and reputation of Loudun before her. Little is
+new in the possession and exorcism: for the most part they are a
+repetition of those of Aix and Loudun. During a brief interval
+the devils were less outrageous: for the Cardinal-minister was
+meditating a reform of the monastic establishments. Upon his
+death they commenced again with equal violence. Picart was now
+dead--but not so the persecution of his victim. The priests
+recommenced miracle-working with renewed vigour.[127] Saved from
+immediate death by a fortunate or, as it may be deemed,
+unfortunate sensitiveness to bodily pain, she was condemned for
+the rest of her life to solitary confinement in a fearful
+dungeon, in the language of her judges to an _in pace_. There
+lying tortured, powerless in a loathsome cell, their prisoner was
+alternately coaxed and threatened into admitting all sorts of
+crimes, and implicating whom they wished.[128] The further
+cruelties to which the lust, and afterwards the malignancy, of
+her gaolers submitted her were not brought to an end by the
+interference of parliament in August 1647, when the destruction
+of the Louviers establishment was decreed. The guilty escaped by
+securing, by intimidation, the silence of their prisoner, who
+remained a living corpse in the dungeons of the episcopal palace
+of Rouen. The bones of Picart were exhumed, and publicly burned;
+the curé Boullé, an accomplice, was dragged on a hurdle to the
+fish-market, and there burned at the stake. So terminated this
+last of the trilogical series. But the hysterical or demoniacal
+disease was as furious as ever in Germany in the middle of the
+eighteenth century; and was attended with as tremendous effects
+at Würzburg as at Louviers.
+
+  [127] To the diabolic visions of the other they opposed
+  those of 'a certain Anne of the Nativity, a girl of sanguine
+  hysterical temperament, frantic at need, and half mad--so
+  far at least as to believe in her own lies. A kind of
+  dog-fight was got up between the two. They besmeared each
+  other with false charges. Anne saw the devil quite naked by
+  Madeleine's side. Madeleine swore to seeing Anne at the
+  Sabbath with the Lady Superior, the Mother Assistant, and
+  the Mother of the novices.... Madeleine was condemned,
+  without a hearing, to be disgraced, to have her body
+  examined for the marks of the devil. They tore off her veil
+  and gown, and made her the wretched sport of a vile
+  curiosity that would have pierced till she bled again in
+  order to win the right of sending her to the stake. Leaving
+  to no one else the care of a scrutiny which was in itself a
+  torture, these virgins, acting as matrons, ascertained if
+  she were with child or no; shaved all her body, and dug
+  their needles into her quivering flesh to find out the
+  insensible spots.'--_La Sorcière._
+
+  [128] The horrified reader may see the fuller details of this
+  case in Michelet's _La Sorcière_, who takes occasion to state
+  that, than 'The History of Madeleine Bavent, a nun of
+  Louviers, with her examination, &c., 1652, Rouen,' he knows
+  of 'no book more important, more dreadful, or worthier of
+  being reprinted. It is the most powerful narrative of its
+  class. _Piety Afflicted_, by the Capuchin Esprit de Bosrager,
+  is a work immortal in the annals of tomfoolery. The two
+  excellent pamphlets by the doughty surgeon Yvelin, the
+  _Inquiry_ and the _Apology_, are in the Library of Ste.
+  Geneviève.'--_La Sorcière_, the Witch of the Middle Ages,
+  chap. viii. Whatever exaggeration there may possibly be in
+  any of the details of these and similar histories, there is
+  not any reasonable doubt of their general truth. It is much
+  to be wished, indeed, that writers should, in these cases,
+  always confine themselves to the simple facts, which need not
+  any imaginary or fictitious additions.
+
+In Germany during the seventeenth century witches felt the fury
+of both Catholic and Protestant zeal; but in the previous age
+prosecutions are directed against Protestant witches. They
+abounded in Upper Germany in the time of Innocent VIII., and
+what numbers were executed has been already seen. When the
+revolutionary party had acquired greater strength and its power
+was established, they vied with the conservatives in their
+vigorous attacks upon the empire of Satan.
+
+Luther had been sensible to the contagious fear that the great
+spiritual enemy was actually fighting in the ranks of his
+enemies. He had personal experience of his hostility. Immured for
+his safety in a voluntary but gloomy prison, occupied intensely
+in the plan of a mighty revolution against the most powerful
+hierarchy that has ever existed, engaged continuously in the
+laborious task of translating the Sacred Scriptures, only
+partially freed from the prejudices of education, it is little
+surprising that the antagonist of the Church should have
+experienced infernal hallucinations. This weakness of the
+champion of Protestantism is at least more excusable than the
+pedantic folly of the head of the English Church. When Luther,
+however, could seriously affirm that witchcraft 'is the devil's
+proper work wherewith, when God permits, he not only hurts people
+but makes away with them; for in this world we are as guests and
+strangers, body and soul, cast under the devil: that idiots, the
+lame, the blind, the dumb are men in whom ignorant devils have
+established themselves, and all the physicians who attempt to
+heal these infirmities as though they proceeded from natural
+causes, are ignorant blockheads who know nothing about the power
+of the demon,' we cannot be indignant at the blind credulity of
+the masses of the people. It appears inconsistent that Luther,
+averse generally to supernaturalism, should yet find no
+difficulty in entertaining these irrational diabolistic ideas.
+The circumstances of his life and times sufficiently explain the
+inconsistency.[129]
+
+  [129] The following sentence in his recorded conversation,
+  when the free thoughts of the Reformer were unrestrained in
+  the presence of his most intimate friends, is suggestive. 'I
+  know,' says he, 'the devil thoroughly well; he has over and
+  over pressed me so close that I scarcely knew whether I was
+  alive or dead. Sometimes he has thrown me into such despair
+  that I even knew not that there is a God, and had great
+  doubts about our dear Lord Christ. But the Word of God has
+  speedily restored me' (Luther's _Tischreden_ or _Table
+  Talk_, as cited in Howitt's _History of the Supernatural_).
+  The eloquent controversialist Bossuet and the Catholics have
+  been careful to avail themselves of the impetuosity and
+  incautiousness of the great German Reformer.
+
+  Of all the leaders of the religious revolution of the
+  sixteenth century, the Reformer of Zurich was probably the
+  most liberally inclined; and Zuinglius' unusual charity
+  towards those ancient sages and others who were ignorant of
+  Christianity, which induced him to place the names of
+  Aristides, Socrates, the Gracchi, &c., in the same list with
+  those of Moses, Isaiah, and St. Paul, who should meet in the
+  assembly of the virtuous and just in the future life, obliged
+  Luther openly to profess of his friend that 'he despaired of
+  his salvation,' and has provoked the indignation of the
+  bishop of Meaux.--_Variations des Eglises Protestantes_, ii.
+  19 and 20.
+
+On the eve of the prolonged and ferocious struggle on the
+continent between Catholicism and Protestantism a wholesale
+slaughter of witches and wizards was effected, a fitting prologue
+to the religious barbarities of the Thirty Years' War. Fires were
+kindled almost simultaneously in two different places, at Bamburg
+and Würzburg; and seldom, even in the annals of witchcraft, have
+they burned more tremendously. The prince-bishops of those
+territories had long been anxious to extirpate Lutheranism from
+their dioceses. Frederick Forner, Suffragan of Bamburg, a
+vigorous supporter of the Jesuits, was the chief agent of John
+George II. He waged war upon the heretical sorcerers in the
+'whole armour of God,' _Panoplia armaturæ Dei_. According to the
+statements of credible historians, nine hundred trials took
+place in the two courts of Bamburg and Zeil between 1625 and
+1630. Six hundred were burned by Bishop George II. No one was
+spared. The chancellor, his son, Dr. Horn, with his wife and
+daughters, many of the lords and councillors of the bishop's
+court, women and priests, suffered. After tortures of the most
+extravagant kind it was extorted that some twelve hundred of them
+were confederated to bewitch the entire land to the extent that
+'there would have been neither wine nor corn in the country, and
+that thereby man and beast would have perished with hunger, and
+men would be driven to eat one another. There were even some
+Catholic priests among them who had been led into practices too
+dreadful to be described, and they confessed among other things
+that they had baptized many children in the devil's name. It must
+be stated that these confessions were made under tortures of the
+most fearful kind, far more so than anything that was practised
+in France or other countries.... The number brought to trial in
+these terrible proceedings were so great, and they were treated
+with so little consideration, that it was usual not even to take
+the trouble of setting down their names; but they were cited as
+the accused Nos. 1, 2, 3, &c. The Jesuits took their confessions
+in private, and they made up the lists of those who were
+understood to have been denounced by them.'
+
+More destructive still were the burnings of Würzburg at the same
+period under the superintendence of Philip Adolph, who ascended
+the episcopal throne in 1623. In spite of the energy of his
+predecessors, a grand confederacy of sorcerers had been
+discovered, and were at once denounced.[130]
+
+  [130] 'A catalogue of nine and twenty _brände_ or burnings
+  during a very short period of time, previous to the February
+  of 1629, will give the best notion of the horrible character
+  of these proceedings; it is printed,' adds Mr. Wright, 'from
+  the original records in Hauber's _Bibliotheca Magica_.' E.g.
+  in the Fifth Brände are enumerated: (1) Latz, an eminent
+  shopkeeper. (2) Rutscher, a shopkeeper. (3) The housekeeper
+  of the Dean of the cathedral. (4) The old wife of the Court
+  ropemaker. (5) Jos. Sternbach's housekeeper. (6) The wife of
+  Baunach, a Senator. (7) A woman named Znickel Babel. (8) An
+  old woman. In the Sixteenth Burning: (1) A noble page of
+  Ratzenstein. (2) A boy of ten years of age. (3, 4, 5) The
+  two daughters of the Steward of the Senate and his maid. (6)
+  The fat ropemaker's wife. In the Twentieth Burning: (1)
+  Gobel's child, the most beautiful girl in Würzburg. (2) A
+  student on the fifth form, who knew many languages, and was
+  an excellent musician. (3, 4) Two boys from the New Minster,
+  each twelve years old. (5) Stepper's little daughter. (6)
+  The woman who kept the bridge gate. In the Twenty-sixth
+  Burning are specified: (1) David Hans, a Canon in the New
+  Minster. (2) Weydenbusch, a Senator. (3) The innkeeper's
+  wife of the Baumgarten. (4) An old woman. (5) The little
+  daughter of Valkenberger was privately executed and burned
+  on her bier. (6) The little son of the town council bailiff.
+  (7) Herr Wagner, vicar in the cathedral, was burned
+  alive.--_Narratives of Sorcery and Magic._ The facts are
+  taken from Dr. Soldan's _Geschichte der Hexenprocesse_,
+  whose materials are to be found in Horst's _Zauber
+  Bibliothek_ and Hauber's _Bibliotheca Magica_.
+
+Nine appears to have been the greatest number, and sometimes only
+two were sent to execution at once. Five are specially recorded
+as having been burned alive. The victims are of all professions
+and trades--vicars, canons, goldsmiths, butchers, &c. Besides the
+twenty-nine conflagrations recorded, many others were lighted
+about the same time: the names of whose prey are not written in
+the Book of Death. Frederick Spee, a Jesuit, formerly a violent
+enemy of the witches, but who had himself been incriminated by
+their extorted confessions at these holocausts, was converted to
+the opposite side, and wrote the 'Cautio Criminalis,' in which
+the necessity of caution in receiving evidence is insisted
+upon--a caution, without doubt, 'very necessary at that time for
+the magistracy throughout Germany.' All over Germany executions,
+if not everywhere so indiscriminately destructive as those in
+Franconia and at Würzburg, were incessant: and it is hardly the
+language of hyperbole to say that no province, no city, no
+village was without its condemned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+     Scotland one of the most Superstitious Countries in
+     Europe--Scott's Relation of the Barbarities perpetrated in
+     the Witch-trials under the auspices of James VI.--The Fate
+     of Agnes Sampson, Euphane MacCalzean, &c.--Irrational
+     Conduct of the Courts of Justice--Causes of voluntary
+     Witch-confessions--Testimony of Sir G. Mackenzie, &c.--Trial
+     and Execution of Margaret Barclay--Computation of the number
+     of Witches who suffered death in England and Scotland in the
+     sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--Witches burned alive at
+     Edinburgh in 1608--The Lancashire Witches--Sir Thomas
+     Overbury and Dr. Forman--Margaret Flower and Lord Rosse.
+
+
+Scotland, by the physical features of the country and by the
+character and habits of the people, is eminently apt for the
+reception of the magical and supernatural of any kind;[131] and
+during the century from 1563 it was almost entirely subject to
+the dominion of Satan. Sir Walter Scott has narrated some of the
+most prominent cases and trials in the northern part of the
+island. The series may be said to commence from the confederated
+conspiracy of hell to prevent the union of James VI. with the
+Princess Anne of Denmark. An overwhelming tempest at sea during
+the voyage of these anti-papal, anti-diabolic royal personages
+was the appointed means of their destruction.
+
+  [131] A late philosophic writer has ventured to institute a
+  comparison in point of superstition and religious
+  intolerance between Spain and Scotland. The latter country,
+  however, has denied to political what it conceded to
+  priestly government: hence its superior material progress
+  and prosperity.--Buckle's _History of Civilisation in
+  England_.
+
+The human agents were Agnes Sampson, the wise wife of Keith (one
+of the better sort, who cured diseases, &c.); Dame Euphane
+MacCalzean, widow of a senator of the College of Justice, and a
+Catholic; Dr. John Fian or Cunninghame, a man of some learning,
+and of much skill in poison as well as in magic; Barbara Napier
+or Douglas; Geillis Duncan; with about thirty other women of the
+lowest condition. 'When the monarch of Scotland sprung this
+strong covey of his favourite game, they afforded the Privy
+Council and himself sport for the greatest part of the remaining
+winter. He attended on the examinations himself.... Agnes
+Sampson, after being an hour tortured by the twisting of a cord
+around her head according to the custom of the buccaneers,
+confessed that she had consulted with one Richard Grahame
+concerning the probable length of the king's life and the means
+of shortening it. But Satan, to whom at length they resorted for
+advice, told them in French respecting King James, _Il est un
+homme de Dieu_. The poor woman also acknowledged that she had
+held a meeting with those of her sisterhood, who had charmed a
+cat by certain spells, having four joints of men knit to its
+feet, which they threw into the sea to excite a tempest: they
+embarked in sieves with much mirth and jollity, the fiend rolling
+himself before them upon the waves dimly seen, and resembling a
+huge haystack in size and appearance. They went on board of a
+foreign ship richly laden with wines, where, invisible to the
+crew, they feasted till the sport grew tiresome; and then Satan
+sunk the vessel and all on board. Fian or Cunninghame was also
+visited by the sharpest tortures, ordinary and extraordinary. The
+nails were torn from his fingers with smiths' pincers; pins were
+driven into the places which the nails usually defended; his
+knees were crushed in the _boots_; his finger-bones were
+splintered in the _pilniewincks_. At length his constancy,
+hitherto sustained, as the bystanders supposed, by the help of
+the devil, was fairly overcome; and he gave an account of a great
+witch-meeting at North Berwick, where they paced round the church
+_withershins_--i. e. in reverse of the motion of the sun. Fian
+then blew into the lock of the church door, whereupon the bolts
+gave way: the unhallowed crew entered, and their master the devil
+appeared to his servants in the shape of a black man occupying
+the pulpit. He was saluted with a "Hail, Master!" but the company
+were dissatisfied with his not having brought a picture of the
+king, repeatedly promised, which was to place his Majesty at the
+mercy of this infernal crew.... The devil, on this memorable
+occasion, forgot himself, and called Fian by his own name instead
+of the demoniacal sobriquet of Rob the Rowan, which had been
+assigned to him as Master of the Rows or Rolls. This was
+considered as bad taste; and the rule is still observed at every
+rendezvous of forgers, smugglers, or the like, where it is
+accounted very indifferent manners to name an individual by his
+own name in case of affording ground of evidence which may upon
+a day of trial be brought against him. Satan, something
+disconcerted, concluded the evening with a divertissement and
+a dance after his own manner. The former consisted in disinterring
+a new-buried corpse, and dividing it in fragments among
+the company; and the ball was maintained by well-nigh two
+hundred persons, who danced a ring dance.... Dr. Fian, muffled,
+led the ring, and was highly honoured, generally acting as
+clerk or recorder. King James was deeply interested in those
+mysterious meetings, and took great delight to be present at the
+examinations of the accused. He sent for Geillis Duncan, and
+caused her to play before him the same tune to which Satan and
+his companions led the brawl in North Berwick churchyard. His
+ears were gratified in another way: for at this meeting it was
+said the witches demanded of the devil why he did bear such
+enmity against the king, who returned the flattering answer,
+that the king was the greatest enemy whom he had in the world.
+Almost all these poor wretches were executed: nor did Euphane
+MacCalzean's station in life save her from the common doom, which
+was strangling to death and burning to ashes thereafter. The
+majority of the jury which tried Barbara Napier, having acquitted
+her of attendance at the North Berwick meeting, were themselves
+threatened with a trial for wilful error upon an assize, and
+could only escape from severe censure and punishment by pleading
+guilty, and submitting themselves to the king's pleasure. The
+alterations and trenching,' adds Scott, 'which lately took place
+on the Castle-hill at Edinburgh for the purpose of forming the
+new approach to the city from the west, displayed the ashes of
+the numbers who had perished in this manner, of whom a large
+proportion must have been executed between 1590--when the great
+discovery was made concerning Euphane MacCalzean and the wise
+wife of Keith and their accomplices--and the union of the
+crowns.'[132]
+
+  [132] Sir W. Scott's _Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft_,
+  ix.
+
+Euphane's exceptional doom was 'to be bound to the stake, and
+burned in ashes _quick_ to the death.' 'Burning quick' was not an
+uncommon sentence: if the less cruel one of hanging or strangling
+first and afterwards burning was more usual. Thirty warlocks and
+witches was the total number executed on June 25th, 1591. A few,
+like Dr. Cunninghame, may have been really experienced in the use
+of poison and poisonous drugs. The art of poisoning has been
+practised perhaps almost as extensively as (often coextensively
+with) that of sorcery; a tremendous and mostly inscrutable crime
+which science, in all ages, has been able more surely to conceal
+than to detect.
+
+Two facts eminently illustrate the barbarous iniquity of the
+Courts of Justice when dealing with their witch prisoners. An
+expressed malediction, or frequently an almost inaudible mutter,
+followed by the coincident fulfilment of the imprecation, was
+accepted eagerly by the judges as sufficient proof (an antecedent
+one, contrary to the boasted principle of English law at least,
+which assumes the innocence until the guilt has been proved, of
+the accused) of the crime of the person arraigned. And they
+complacently attributed to conscious guilt the ravings produced
+by an excruciating torture--that equally inhuman and irrational
+invention of judicial cruelty; confidently boasting that they
+were careful to sentence no person without previous confession
+duly made.
+
+But these confessions not seldom were partly extracted from a
+natural wish to be freed from the persecution of neighbours as
+well as from present bodily torture. Sir George Mackenzie, Lord
+Advocate of Scotland during the period of the greatest fury, and
+himself president at many of the trials, a believer, among other
+cases in his _Criminal Law_, 1678, relates that of a condemned
+witch who had confessed judicially to him and afterwards 'told me
+under secrecy, that she had not confessed because she was guilty;
+but being a poor creature who wrought for her meat, and being
+defamed for a witch she knew she should starve, for no person
+thereafter would either give her meat or lodging, and that all
+men would beat her and set dogs at her, and that therefore she
+desired to be out of the world. Whereupon she wept most bitterly,
+and upon her knees called God to witness to what she said.
+Another told me that she was afraid the devil would challenge a
+right to her after she was said to be his servant, and would
+haunt her, as the minister said when he was desiring her to
+confess, and therefore she desired to die. And really,' admits
+the learned judge, 'ministers are oft-times indiscreet in their
+zeal to have poor creatures to confess in this; and I recommend
+to judges that the wisest ministers should be sent to them; and
+that those who are sent should be cautious in this particular.'
+Another confession at the supreme moment of the same sort, as
+recorded by the Rev. G. Sinclair in 'Satan's Invisible World
+Discovered' is equally significant and genuine. What impression
+it left upon the pious clergyman will be seen in his concluding
+inference. The witch, 'being carried forth to the place of
+execution, remained silent during the first, second, and third
+prayer, and then, perceiving there remained no more but to rise
+up and go to the stake, she lifted up her body and with a loud
+voice cried out, "Now all you that see me this day know that I am
+now to die as a witch by my own confession, and I free all men,
+especially the ministers and magistrates, of the guilt of my
+blood. I take it wholly upon myself--my blood be upon my own
+head; and as I must make answer to the God of heaven presently, I
+declare I am as free of witchcraft as any child. But being
+delated by a malicious woman, and put in prison under the name of
+a witch; disowned by my husband and friends, and seeing no ground
+of hope of my coming out of prison or ever coming in credit
+again, through the temptation of the devil I made up that
+confession on purpose to destroy my own life, being weary of it,
+and choosing rather to die than live"--and so died; which
+lamentable story as it did then astonish all the spectators, none
+of which could restrain themselves from tears, so it may be to
+all a demonstration of Satan's subtlety, whose design is still to
+destroy all, partly by tempting many to presumption, and some
+others to despair.'
+
+The trial of Margaret Barclay took place in 1613. Her crime
+consisted in having caused by means of spells the loss of a ship
+at sea. She was said to have had a quarrel with the owner of the
+shipwrecked vessel, in the course of which she uttered a wish
+that all on board might sink to the bottom of the sea. Her
+imprecation was accomplished, and upon the testimony of an
+itinerant juggler, John Stewart, she was arraigned before a Court
+of Justice. With the help of the devil in the shape of a handsome
+black dog, she had moulded some figures of clay representing the
+doomed sailors, which with the prescribed rites were thrown into
+the deep. We are informed by the reporters of the proceedings at
+this examination, that 'after using this kind of gentle torture
+[viz. placing the legs in a pair of stocks and laying on
+gradually increasing weights of iron bars], the said Margaret
+began, according to the increase of the pain, to cry and crave
+for God's cause to take off her shin the foresaid irons, and she
+should declare truly the whole matter. Which being removed, she
+began at her formal denial; and being of new assayed in torture
+as before, she then uttered these words: "Take off, take off! and
+before God I shall show you the whole form." And the said irons
+being of new, upon her faithful promise, removed, she then
+desired my Lord of Eglinton, the said four justices, and the said
+Mr. David Dickson, minister of the burgh; Mr. George Dunbar,
+minister of Ayr; Mr. Mitchell Wallace, minister of Kilmarnock;
+Mr. John Cunninghame, minister of Dalry; and Hugh Kennedy,
+provost of Ayr, to come by themselves and to remove all others,
+and she should declare truly, as she should answer to God, the
+whole matter. Whose desire in that being fulfilled, she made her
+confession in this manner without any kind of demand, freely
+without interrogation: God's name by earnest prayer being called
+upon for opening of her lips and easing of her heart, that she by
+rendering of the truth might glorify and magnify His holy name
+and disappoint the enemy of her salvation.'
+
+One of those involved in the voluntary confession was Isabel
+Crawford, who was frightened into admitting the offences alleged.
+In court, when asked if she wished to be defended by counsel,
+Margaret Barclay, whose hopes and fears were revived at seeing
+her husband, answered, 'As you please; but all I have confessed
+was in agony of torture; and, before God, all I have spoken is
+false and untrue.' She was found guilty; sentenced to be
+strangled at the stake; her body to be burned to ashes. Isabel
+Crawford, after a short interval, was subjected to the same sort
+of examination: a new commission having been granted for the
+prosecution, and 'after the assistant-minister of Irvine, Mr.
+David Dickson, had made earnest prayers to God for opening her
+obdurate and closed heart, she was subjected to the torture of
+iron bars laid upon her bare shins, her feet being in the stocks.
+She endured this torture with incredible firmness, since she did
+"admirably, without any kind of din or exclamation, suffer above
+thirty stone of iron to be laid on her legs, never shrinking
+thereat in any sort, but remaining, as it were, steady." But in
+shifting the situation of the iron bars, and removing them to
+another part of her shins, her constancy gave way; she broke out
+into horrible cries of "Take off! take off!" On being relieved
+from the torture she made the usual confession of all that she
+was charged with, and of a connection with the devil which had
+subsisted for several years. Sentence was given against her
+accordingly. After this had been denounced she openly denied all
+her former confessions, and died without any sign of repentance;
+offering repeated interruptions to the minister in his prayers,
+and absolutely refusing to pardon the executioner.'[133] It might
+be possible to form an imperfect estimate of how many thousands
+were sacrificed in the Jacobian persecution in Scotland alone
+from existing historical records, which would express, however,
+but a small proportion of the actual number: and parish registers
+may still attest the quantity of fuel provided at a considerable
+expense, and the number of the fires. By a moderate computation
+an average number of two hundred annually, making a total of
+eight thousand, are reckoned to have been burned in the last
+forty years of the sixteenth century.[134]
+
+  [133] _Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft_, ix.
+
+  The Scotch trials and tortures, of which the above cases are
+  but one or two out of a hundred similar ones, are perhaps the
+  more extraordinary as being the result of _mere_
+  superstition: religious or political heresy being seldom an
+  excuse for the punishment and an aggravation of the offence.
+
+  [134] A larger proportion of victims than even those of the
+  Holy Office during an equal space of time. According to
+  Llorente (_Hist. de l'Inquisition_) from 1680 to 1781, the
+  latter period of its despotism (which flourished especially
+  under Charles II., himself, as he was convinced, a victim of
+  witch-malice), between 13,000 and 14,000 persons suffered by
+  various punishments: of which number, however, 1,578 were
+  burned alive.
+
+In England, from 1603 to 1680, seventy thousand persons are said
+to have been executed; and during the fifteen hundred years
+elapsed since the triumph of the Christian religion, millions are
+reckoned to have been sacrificed on the bloody altars of the
+Christian Moloch. An entry in the minutes of the proceedings in
+the Privy Council for 1608 reveals that even James's ministers
+began to experience some horror of the consequences of their
+instructions. And the following free testimony of one of them is
+truly 'an appalling record:'--'1608.--December 1.--The Earl of
+Mar declared to the council that some women were taken in
+Broughton [suburban Edinburgh] as witches, and being put to an
+assize and convicted, albeit they persevered constant in their
+denial to the end, yet they were burned _quick_ after such a
+cruel manner that some of them died in despair, renouncing and
+blaspheming God; and others half-burned broke out of the fire,
+and were cast _quick_ in it again till they were burned to the
+death.'[135]
+
+  [135] The terrestrial and _real_ Fiends seem to have striven
+  to realise on earth and to emulate the 'Tartarus horrificos
+  eructans faucibus æstus' described by the Epicurean
+  philosophic poet (Lucretius, _De Rerum Naturâ_, iii.).
+
+Equally monstrous and degrading were the disclosures in the
+torture-chambers; and many admitted that they had had children by
+the devil. The circumstances of the Sabbath, the various rites of
+the compact, the forms and method of bewitching, the manner of
+sexual intercourse with the demons--these were the principal
+staple of the judicial examinations.
+
+In the southern part of the island witch-hanging or burning
+proceeded with only less vehemence than in Scotland. One of the
+most celebrated cases in the earlier half of the seventeenth
+century (upon which Thomas Shadwell the poet laureate, who, under
+the name of MacFlecknoe, is immortalised by the satire of Dryden,
+founded a play) is the story of the Lancashire Witches. This
+persecution raged at two separate periods; first in 1613, when
+nineteen prisoners were brought before Sir James Altham and Sir
+Edward Bromley, Barons of Exchequer. Elizabeth Southern, known as
+'Mother Demdike' in the poet laureate's drama, is the leader of
+the criminals. In 1634 the proceedings were renewed wholly on the
+evidence of a boy who, it was afterwards ascertained, had been
+instructed in his part against an old woman named Mother
+Dickenson. The evidence was of the feeblest sort; nor are its
+monotonous details worth repetition. Out of some forty persons
+implicated on both occasions, fortunately the greater number
+escaped. 'Lancashire Witches,' a term so hateful in its origin,
+has been long transferred to celebrate the superior _charms_ (of
+another kind) of the ladies of Lancashire; and the witches'
+spells are those of natural youth and beauty.
+
+The social position of Sir Thomas Overbury has made his fate
+notorious. An infamous plot had been invented by the Earl of
+Rochester (Robert Kerr) and the Countess of Essex to destroy a
+troublesome obstacle to their contemplated marriage. The practice
+of 'hellish charms' is only incidental; an episode in the dark
+mystery. Overbury was too well acquainted with royal secrets
+(whose disgusting and unnatural kind has been probably correctly
+conjectured), too important for the keeping of even a private
+secretary. His ruin was determined by the revenge of the noble
+lovers and sealed by the fear of the king. At the end of six
+months he had been gradually destroyed by secret poison in his
+prison in the Tower (to which for an alleged offence he had been
+committed) by the agency of Dr. Forman, a famous 'pharmaceutic,'
+under the auspices of the Earl of Rochester. This Dr. Forman
+had been previously employed by Lady Essex, a notorious
+_dame d'honneur_ at James's Court, to bewitch the Earl to an
+irresistible love for her, an enchantment which required,
+apparently, no superhuman inducement. A Mrs. Turner, the
+countess's agent, was associated with this skilful conjuror. They
+were instructed also to bewitch Lord Essex, lately returned from
+abroad, in the opposite way--to divert his love from his
+wife.[136]
+
+  [136] The husband was impracticable; he could not be
+  _disenchanted_. Conjurations and charms failing, 'the
+  countess was instructed to bring against the Earl of Essex a
+  charge of conjugal incapacity: A commission of reverend
+  prelates of the church was appointed to sit in judgment,
+  over whom the king presided in person; and a jury of matrons
+  was found to give their opinion that the Lady Essex was a
+  maiden.' Divorce was accordingly pronounced, and with all
+  possible haste the king married his favourite to the
+  appellant with great pomp at Court. After the conspirators
+  had been arraigned by the public indignation, a curious
+  incident of the trial, according to a cotemporary report,
+  was, that there being 'showed in court certain pictures of a
+  man and a woman made in lead, and also a mould of brass
+  wherein they were cast; a black scarf also full of white
+  crosses which Mrs. Turner had in her custody; enchanted paps
+  and other pictures [as well as a list of some of the devil's
+  particular names used in conjuration], suddenly was heard a
+  crack from the scaffold, which carried a great fear, tumult,
+  and commotion amongst the spectators and through the hall;
+  every one fearing hurt as if the devil had been present and
+  grown angry to have his workmanship known by such as were
+  not his own scholars' (_Narratives of Sorcery and Magic_, by
+  Thomas Wright). Whatever may have been the crime or crimes
+  for the knowledge of which Sir Thomas Overbury was doomed,
+  it is significant that for his own safety the king was
+  compelled to break an oath (sworn upon his knees before the
+  judges he had purposely summoned, with an imprecation that
+  God's curse might light upon him and his posterity for ever
+  if he failed to bring the guilty to deserved punishment),
+  and to not only pardon but remunerate his former favourite
+  after he had been solemnly convicted and condemned to a
+  felon's death. The crime, the knowledge of which prevented
+  the appearance of Somerset at the gibbet or the scaffold,
+  has been supposed by some, with scarcely sufficient cause or
+  at least proof, to be the murder by the king of his son
+  Prince Henry. Doubt has been strongly expressed of the
+  implication at all of the favourite in the death of
+  Overbury: the evidence produced at the trial about the
+  poisoning being, it seems, made up to conceal or to mystify
+  the real facts.
+
+Two women were executed at Lincoln, in 1618, for bewitching Lord
+Rosse, eldest son of the Earl of Rutland, and others of the
+family--Lord Rosse being bewitched to death; also for preventing
+by diabolic arts the parents from having any more children.
+Before the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and one of the
+Barons of the Exchequer, it was proved that the witches had
+effected the death of the noble lord by burying his glove in the
+ground, and 'as that glove did rot and waste, so did the liver of
+the said lord rot and waste.' Margaret Flower confessed she had
+'two familiar spirits sucking on her, the one white, the other
+black spotted. The white sucked under her left breast,' &c.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+     The Literature of Europe in the Seventeenth Century proves
+     the Universality and Horror of Witchcraft--The most acute
+     and most liberal Men of Learning convinced of its
+     Reality--Erasmus and Francis Bacon--Lawyers prejudiced by
+     Legislation--Matthew Hale's judicial Assertion--Sir Thomas
+     Browne's Testimony--John Selden--The English Church least
+     Ferocious of the Protestant Sects--Jewell and
+     Hooker--Independent Tolerance--Witchcraft under the
+     Presbyterian Government--Matthew Hopkins--Gaule's 'Select
+     Cases of Conscience'--Judicial and Popular Methods of
+     Witch-discovery--Preventive Charms--Witchfinders a legal and
+     numerous Class in England and Scotland--Remission in the
+     Severity of the Persecution under the Protectorship.
+
+
+Had we not the practical proof of the prevalence of the credit of
+the black art in accomplished facts, the literature of the first
+half of the seventeenth century would be sufficient testimony to
+its horrid dominion. The works of the great dramatists, the
+writings of men of every class, continually suppose the universal
+power and horror of witchcraft. Internal evidence is abundant.
+The witches of Macbeth are no fanciful creation, and Shakspeare's
+representation of La Pucelle's fate is nothing more than a copy
+from life. What the vulgar superstition must have been may be
+easily conceived when men of the greatest genius or learning
+credited the possibility, and not only a theoretical but actual
+occurrence, of these infernal phenomena. Gibbon is at a loss to
+account for the fact that the acute understanding of the learned
+Erasmus, who could see through much more plausible fables,
+believed firmly in witchcraft.[137] Francis Bacon, the advocate
+and second founder of the inductive method and first apostle of
+the Utilitarian philosophy, opposed though he might have been to
+the vulgar persecution, was not able to get rid of the principles
+upon which the creed was based.[138] Sir Edward Coke, his
+contemporary, the most acute lawyer of the age, or (as it is
+said) of any time, ventured even to define the devil's agents in
+witchcraft. Sir Thomas Browne (author of 'Pseudodoxia Epidemica'
+or 'Vulgar Errors!'), a physician and writer of considerable
+merit, and Sir Matthew Hale, in 1664, proved their faith, the one
+by his solemn testimony in open court, the other by his still
+more solemn sentence.
+
+  [137] See _Miscellaneous Works: Abstract of my Readings_.
+
+  [138] 'Consorting with them [the unclean spirits who have
+  fallen from their first estate] and all use of their
+  assistance is unlawful; much more any worship or veneration
+  whatsoever. But a contemplation and knowledge of their
+  nature, power, illusions, not only from passages of sacred
+  scripture but _from reason or experience_, is not the least
+  part of spiritual wisdom. So truly the Apostle, "We are not
+  ignorant of his wiles." And it is not less permissible in
+  theology to investigate the nature of demons, than in physics
+  to investigate the nature of drugs, or in ethics the nature
+  of vice.'--_De Augmentis Scientiarum_, lib. iii. 2.
+
+If theologians were armed by the authority or their
+interpretation of Scripture, lawyers were no less so by that of
+the Statute Book. Judge Hale, in an address to the jury at Bury
+St. Edmund's, carefully weighing evidence, and, summing up,
+assures them he did 'not in the least doubt there are witches:
+first, because _the Scriptures affirmed it_; secondly, because
+the _wisdom of all nations_, particularly of our own, _had
+provided laws_ against witchcraft which implied their belief of
+such a crime.'[139] Sir Thomas Browne, who gave his professional
+experience at this trial, to the effect that the devil often acts
+upon human bodies by natural means, afflicting them in a more
+surprising manner through the diseases to which they are usually
+subject; and that in the particular case, the fits (of vomiting
+nails, needles, deposed by other witnesses) might be natural,
+only raised to a great degree by the subtlety of the devil
+cooperating with the malice of the witches, employs a well-known
+argument when he declares ('Religio Medici'), 'Those that to
+confute their incredulity desire to see apparitions shall
+questionless never behold any. The devil hath these already in a
+heresy as capital as witchcraft; and to appear to them were _but_
+to convert them.'
+
+  [139] Unfortunately for the cause of truth and right, Sir
+  Matthew Hale's reasons are not an exceptional illustration
+  of the mischief according to Roger Bacon's experience of
+  'three very bad arguments we are always using--This has been
+  shown to be so; This is customary; This is universal:
+  Therefore it must be kept to.' Sir Thomas Browne, unable, as
+  a man of science, to accept in every particular alleged the
+  actual bonâ fide reality of the devil's power, makes a
+  compromise, and has 'recourse to a fraud of Satan,'
+  explaining that he is in reality but a clever juggler, a
+  transcendent physician who knows how to accomplish what is
+  in relation to us a prodigy, in knowing how to use natural
+  forces which our knowledge has not yet discovered. Such an
+  unworthy compromise was certainly not fitted to arouse men
+  from their 'cauchemar démonologique.'--See _Révue des Deux
+  Mondes_, Aug. 1, 1858.
+
+John Selden, a learned lawyer, but of a liberal mind, was gifted
+with a large amount of common sense, and it might be juster to
+attribute the _dictum_ which has been supposed to betray 'a
+lurking belief' to an excess of legal, rather than to a defect of
+intellectual, perception. Selden, inferring that 'the law against
+witches does not prove there be any, but it punishes the malice
+of those people that use such means to take away men's lives,'
+proceeds to assert that 'if one should profess that by turning
+his hat thrice and crying "Buz," he could take away a man's life
+(though in truth he could do no such thing), yet this were a just
+law made by the state, that whosoever shall turn his hat ... with
+an intention to take away a man's life, should be put to
+death.'[140]
+
+  [140] _Table Talk or Discourses_ of John Selden. Although it
+  must be excepted to the lawyer's summary mode of dealing
+  with an imaginary offence, we prefer to give that eminent
+  patriot at least the benefit of the doubt, as to his belief
+  in witchcraft.
+
+If men of more liberal sentiments were thus enslaved to old
+prejudices, it is not surprising that the Church, not leading but
+following, should firmly maintain them. Fortunately for the
+witches, without the motives actuating in different ways
+Catholics and Calvinists, and placed midway between both parties,
+the reformed English Church was not so much interested in
+identifying her crimes with sorcerers as in maintaining the less
+tremendous formulæ of Divine right, Apostolical succession, and
+similar pretensions. Yet if they did not so furiously engage
+themselves in actual witch-prosecutions, Anglican divines have
+not been slow in expressly or impliedly affirming the reality of
+diabolical interposition. Nor can the most favourable criticism
+exonerate them from the reproach at least of having witnessed
+without protestation the barbarous cruelties practised in the
+name of heaven; and the eminent names of Bishop Jewell, the great
+apologist of the English Church, and of the author of the
+'Ecclesiastical Polity,' among others less eminent, may be
+claimed by the advocates of witchcraft as respectable authorities
+in the Established Church. The 'judicious' Hooker affirms that
+the evil spirits are dispersed, some in the air, some on the
+earth, some in the waters, some among the minerals, in dens and
+caves that are under the earth, labouring to obstruct and, if
+possible, to destroy the works of God. They were the _dii
+inferi_ [the old persuasion] of the heathen worshipped in
+oracles, in idols, &c.[141] The privilege of 'casting out devils'
+was much cherished and long retained in the Established Church.
+
+  [141] Quoted in Howitt's _History of the Supernatural_. The
+  author has collected a mass of evidence 'demonstrating an
+  universal faith,' a curious collection of various
+  superstition. He is indignant at the colder faith of the
+  Anglican Church of later times.
+
+During the ascendency of the Presbyterian party from 1640 to the
+assumption of the Protectorship by Cromwell, witches and
+witch-trials increased more than ever; and they sensibly
+decreased only when the Independents obtained a superiority.
+The adherents of Cromwell, whatever may have been their own
+fanatical excesses, were at least exempt from the intolerant
+spirit which characterised alike their Anglican enemies and
+their old Presbyterian allies. The astute and vigorous intellect
+of the great revolutionary leader, the champion of the people
+in its struggles for civil and religious liberty, however
+much he might affect the forms of the prevailing religious
+sentiment, was too sagacious not to be able to penetrate,
+with the aid of the counsels of the author of the 'Treatise
+of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes,' who so triumphantly
+upheld the fundamental principle of Protestantism,[142]
+somewhat beneath the surface. In what manner the Presbyterian
+Parliament issued commissions for inquiring into the crimes
+of sorcery, how zealously they were supported by the clergy
+and people, how Matthew Hopkins--immortal in the annals of
+English witchcraft--exercised his talents as witchfinder-general,
+are facts well known.[143]
+
+  [142] 'Seeing therefore,' infers Milton, the greatest of
+  England's patriots as well as poets, 'that no man, no synod,
+  no session of men, though called the Church, can judge
+  definitively the sense of Scripture to another man's
+  conscience, which is well known to be a maxim of the
+  Protestant religion; it follows plainly, that he who holds
+  in religion that belief or those opinions which to his
+  conscience and utmost understanding appear with most
+  evidence or probability in the Scripture, though to others
+  he seem erroneous, can no more be justly censured for a
+  heretic than his censurers, who do but the same thing
+  themselves, while they censure him for so doing.... To
+  Protestants therefore, whose common rule and touchstone is
+  the Scripture, nothing can with more conscience, more
+  equity, nothing more Protestantly can be permitted than a
+  free and lawful debate at all times by writing, conference,
+  or disputation of what opinion soever disputable by
+  Scripture.... How many persecutions, then, imprisonments,
+  banishments, penalties, and stripes; how much bloodshed,
+  have the forcers of conscience to answer for--and
+  Protestants rather than Papists!' (_A Treatise of Civil
+  Power in Ecclesiastical Causes._) The reasons which induced
+  Milton to exclude the Catholics of his day from the general
+  toleration are more intelligible and more plausible, than
+  those of fifty or sixty years since, when the Rev. Sidney
+  Smith published the _Letters of Peter Plymley_.
+
+  [143] Displayed in the satire of _Hudibras_, particularly in
+  Part II. canto 3, Part III. 1, and the notes of Zachary Grey.
+  The author of this amusing political satire has exposed the
+  foibles of the great Puritan party with all the rancour of a
+  partisan.
+
+That the strenuous antagonists of despotic dogmas, by whom the
+principles of English liberty were first inaugurated, that they
+should so fanatically abandon their reason to a monstrous idea,
+is additional proof of the universality of superstitious
+prejudice. But the conviction, the result of a continual
+political religious persecution of their tenets, that if heaven
+was on their side Satan and the powers of darkness were still
+more inimical, cannot be fully understood unless by referring to
+those scenes of murder and torture. Hunted with relentless
+ferocity like wild beasts, holding conventicles and prayer
+meetings with the sword suspended over their heads, it is not
+surprising that at that period these English and Scotch
+Calvinists came to believe that they were the peculiar objects of
+diabolical as well as human malice. Their whole history during
+the first eighty years of the seventeenth century can alone
+explain this faith. Besides this genuine feeling, the clergy of
+the Presbyterian sect might be interested in maintaining a creed
+which must magnify their credit as miracle-workers.[144]
+
+  [144] The author of _Hudibras_, in the interview of the
+  Knight and Sidrophel (William Lilly), enumerates the various
+  practices and uses of astrology and witchcraft in vogue at
+  this time, and employed by Court and Parliament with equal
+  eagerness and emulation. Dr. Zachary Grey, the sympathetic
+  editor of _Hudibras_, supplies much curious information on
+  the subject in extracts from various old writers. 'The
+  Parliament,' as he states, 'took a sure way to secure all
+  prophecies, prodigies, and almanac-news from stars, &c., in
+  favour of their own side, by appointing a licenser thereof,
+  and strictly forbidding and punishing all such as were not
+  licensed. Their man for this purpose was the famous Booker,
+  an astrologer, fortune-teller, almanac-maker, &c. The words
+  of his license in Rushorth are very remarkable--for
+  mathematics, almanacs, and prognostications. If we may
+  believe Lilly, both he and Booker did conjure and
+  prognosticate well for their friends the Parliament. He
+  tells us, "When he applied for a license for his _Merlinus
+  Anglicus Junior_ (in Ap. 1644), Booker wondered at the book,
+  made many impertinent obliterations, framed many objections,
+  and swore it was not possible to distinguish between a king
+  and a parliament; and at last licensed it according to his
+  own fancy. Lilly delivered it to the printer, who, being an
+  arch-Presbyterian, had five of the ministers to inspect it,
+  who could make nothing of it, but said it might be printed;
+  for in that he meddled not with their Dagon." (_Lilly's
+  Life._) Which opposition to Lilly's book arose from a
+  jealousy that he was not then thoroughly in the Parliament's
+  interest--which was true; for he frankly confesses, "that
+  till the year 1645 he was more Cavalier than Roundhead, and
+  so taken notice of; but after that he engaged body and soul
+  in the cause of the Parliament."' (_Life._) Lilly was
+  succeeded successively by his assistant Henry Coley, and
+  John Partridge, the well-known object of Swift's satire.
+
+The years 1644 and 1645 are distinguished as especially abounding
+in witches and witchfinders. In the former year, at Manningtree,
+a village in Essex, during an outbreak in which several women
+were tried and hanged, Matthew Hopkins first displayed his
+peculiar talent. Associated with him in his recognised legal
+profession was one John Sterne. They proceeded regularly on their
+circuit, making a fixed charge for their services upon each
+town or village. Swimming and searching for secret marks were
+the infallible methods of discovery. Hopkins, encouraged
+by an unexpected success, arrogantly assumed the title of
+'Witchfinder-General.' His modest charges (as he has told us)
+were twenty shillings a town, which paid the expenses of
+travelling and living, and an additional twenty shillings a head
+for every criminal brought to trial, or at least to execution.
+
+The eastern counties of Huntingdon, Cambridge, Suffolk,
+Northampton, Bedford, were chiefly traversed; and some two or
+three hundred persons appear to have been sent to the gibbet or
+the stake by his active exertions. One of these specially
+remembered was the aged _parson_ of a village near Framlingham,
+Mr. Lowes, who was hanged at Bury St. Edmund's. The pious Baxter,
+an eyewitness, thus commemorates the event: 'The hanging of a
+great number of witches in 1645 and 1646 is famously known. Mr.
+Calamy went along with the judges on the circuit to hear their
+confessions and see that there was no fraud or wrong done them. I
+spoke with many understanding, pious, learned, and credible
+persons that lived in the counties, and some that went to them in
+the prison and heard their sad confessions. Among the rest, an
+old _reading_ parson named Lowes, not far from Framlingham, was
+one that was hanged, who confessed that he had two imps, and that
+one of them was always putting him upon doing mischief; and he
+being near the sea as he saw a ship under sail, it moved him to
+send it to sink the ship, and he consented and saw the ship sink
+before them.' Sterne, Hopkins's coadjutor, in an Apology
+published not long afterwards, asserts that Lowes had been
+indicted thirty years before for witchcraft; that he had made a
+covenant with the devil, sealing it with his blood, and had those
+familiars or spirits which sucked on the marks found on his body;
+that he had confessed that, besides the notable mischief of
+sinking the aforesaid vessel and making fourteen widows in one
+quarter of an hour, he had effected many other calamities; that
+far from repenting of his wickedness, he rejoiced in the power of
+his imps.
+
+The excessive destruction and cruelty perpetrated by the
+indiscriminate procedure of the Witchfinder-General incited a Mr.
+Gaule, vicar of Great Staughton in Huntingdonshire, to urge some
+objections to the inhuman character of his method. Gaule, like
+John Cotta before him and others of that class, was provoked to
+challenge the propriety of the ordinary prosecutions, not so much
+from incredulity as from humanity, which revolted at the
+extravagance of the judges' cruelty. In 'Select Cases of
+Conscience touching Witches and Witchcraft,' the minister of
+Great Staughton describes from personal knowledge one of the
+ordinary ways of detecting the guilt of the accused. 'Having
+taken the suspected witch, she is placed in the middle of a room
+upon a stool or table, cross-legged, or in some other uneasy
+position, to which, if she submits not, she is then bound with
+cords: there is she watched and kept without meat or sleep for
+the space of four-and-twenty hours (for they say within that
+time they shall see her imps come and suck); a little hole is
+likewise made in the door for the imps to come in at, and, lest
+they should come in some less discernible shape, they that watch
+are taught to be ever and anon sweeping the room, and if they see
+any spiders or flies to kill them; and if they cannot kill them,
+then they may be sure they are her imps.'
+
+'Swimming' and 'pricking' were the approved modes of discovery.
+By the former method the witch was stripped naked, securely bound
+(hands and feet being crossed), rolled up in a blanket or cloth,
+and carried to the nearest water, upon which she was laid on her
+back, with the alternative of floating or sinking. In case of the
+former event (the water not seldom refusing to receive the
+wretch, because--declares James I.--they had impiously thrown off
+the holy water of baptism) she was rescued for the fire or the
+gallows; while, in case of sinking to the bottom, she would be
+properly and clearly acquitted of the suspected guilt. Hopkins
+prided himself most on his ability for detecting special marks.
+Causing the suspected woman to be stripped naked, or as far as
+the waist (as the case might be), sometimes in public, this
+stigmatic professor began to search for the hidden signs with
+unsparing scrutiny. Upon finding a mole or wart or any similar
+mark, they tried the 'insensibleness thereof' by inserting
+needles, pins, awls, or any sharp-pointed instrument; and in an
+old and withered crone it might not be difficult to find
+somewhere a more insensitive spot.
+
+Such examinations were conducted with disregard equally for
+humanity and decency. All the disgusting circumstances must be
+sought for in the works of the writers upon the subject. Reginald
+Scot has collected many of the commonest. These marks were
+considered to be teats at which the demons or imps were used to
+be suckled. Many were the judicial and vulgar methods of
+detecting the guilty--by repeating the 'Lord's Prayer;' weighing
+against the church Bible; making them shed tears--for a witch can
+shed tears only with the left eye, and that only with difficulty
+and in limited quantity. The counteracting or preventive charms
+are as numerous as curious, not a few being in repute in some
+parts at this day. 'Drawing blood' was most effective. Nailing up
+a horse-shoe is one of the best-known preventives. That
+efficacious counter-charm used to be suspended over the
+entrance of churches and houses, and no wizard or witch could
+brave it.[145] 'Scoring above the breath' is omnipotent in
+Scotland, where the witch was cut or 'scotched' on the face and
+forehead. Cutting off secretly a lock of the hair of the accused,
+burning the thatch of her roof and the thing bewitched; these
+are a few of the least offensive or obscene practices in
+counter-charming.[146] In what degree or kind the Fetish-charms
+of the African savages are more ridiculous or disgusting than
+those popular in England 200 years ago, it would not be easy to
+determine.
+
+  [145] Gay's witch complains:
+
+       'Straws, laid across, my pace retard.
+        The horse-shoe's nailed, each threshold's guard.
+        The stunted broom the wenches hide
+        For fear that I should up and ride.
+        They stick with pins my bleeding seat,
+        And bid me show my secret teat.'
+
+  [146] The various love-charms, amulets, and spells in the
+  pharmacy of witchcraft are (like the waxen image known, both
+  to the ancient and modern art) equally monstrous and absurd.
+  Of a more natural and pleasing sort was the [Greek: himas
+  poikilos], the irresistible charm of Aphrodite. Here--
+
+       [Greek:               Thelktêria panta tetykto;
+       Enth' eni men philotês, en d' himeros, en d' oaristys,
+       Parphasis, hê t' eklepse noon pyka per phroneontôn.]
+
+Matthew Hopkins pursued a lucrative trade in witch-hunting for
+some years with much applause and success. His indiscriminating
+accusations at last excited either the alarm or the indignation
+of his townspeople, if we may believe the tradition suggested
+in the well-known verses of Butler, who has no authority,
+apparently, for his insinuation ('Hudibras,' ii. 3), that this
+eminent _Malleus_ did not die 'the common death of all men.'
+However it happened, his death is placed in the year 1647. An
+Apology shortly before had been published by him in refutation
+of an injurious report gaining ground that he was himself
+intimately allied with the devil, from whom he had obtained a
+memorandum book in which were entered the names of all the
+witches in England. It is entitled 'The Discovery of Witches; in
+Answer to several Queries lately delivered to the Judge of Assize
+for the County of Norfolk; and now published by Matthew Hopkins,
+Witchfinder, for the Benefit of the whole Kingdom. Printed for R.
+Royston, at the Angel in Inn Lane, 1647.'[147] It is, indeed,
+sufficiently probable that, confident of the increasing coolness,
+and perhaps of the wishes, of the magistrates, the mob, ever
+ready to wreak vengeance upon a disgraced favourite who has long
+abused the public patience, retaliated upon Hopkins a method of
+torture he had frequently inflicted upon others.[148]
+
+  [147] Quoted by Sir W. Scott from a copy of this 'very rare
+  tract' in his possession.
+
+  [148] Dr. Francis Hutchinson (Historical Essay), referring to
+  the verses of Samuel Butler, says that he had often heard
+  that some persons, 'out of indignation at the barbarity [of
+  the witchfinder], took him and tied his own thumbs and toes,
+  as he used to tie others; and when he was put into the water,
+  he himself swam as they did.' But whether the usual fate upon
+  that event awaited him does not appear. The verses in
+  question are the following:--
+
+       'has not he, within a year,
+        Hang'd threescore of 'em in one shire,
+
+        *       *       *       *       *
+
+        Who after prov'd himself a witch,
+        And made a rod for his own breech?'
+
+  The Knight's Squire on the same occasion reminds his master
+  of the more notorious of the devil's tricks of that and the
+  last age:--
+
+       'Did not the devil appear to Martin
+        Luther in Germany for certain,
+        And would have gull'd him with a trick
+        But Mart was too, too politic?
+        Did he not help the Dutch to purge
+        At Antwerp their cathedral church?
+        Sing catches to the saints at Mascon,
+        And tell them all they came to ask him?
+        Appear in divers shapes to Kelly,
+        And speak i' th' nun of Loudun's belly?
+        Meet with the Parliament's committee
+        At Woodstock on a pers'nal treaty?
+        ... &c. &c.'
+
+                      _Hudibras_, II. 3.
+
+Hopkins is the most famous of his class on account of his
+superior talent; but both in England and Scotland witchfinders,
+or _prickers_, as they were sometimes called, before and since
+his time abounded--of course most where the superstition raged
+fiercest. In Scotland they infested all parts of the country,
+practising their detestable but legal trade with entire impunity.
+The Scottish prickers enjoyed a great reputation for skill and
+success; and on a special occasion, about the time when
+Hopkins was practising in the South, the magistrates of
+Newcastle-upon-Tyne summoned from Scotland one of great
+professional experience to visit that town, then overrun with
+witches. The magistrates agreed to pay him all travelling
+expenses, and twenty shillings for every convicted criminal. A
+bellman was sent round the town to invite all complainants to
+prefer their charges. Some thirty women, having been brought to
+the town-hall, were publicly subjected to an examination. By the
+ordinary process, twenty-seven on this single occasion were
+ascertained to be guilty, of whom, at the ensuing assizes,
+fourteen women and one man were convicted by the jury and
+executed.
+
+Three thousand are said to have suffered for the crime in England
+under the supremacy of the Long Parliament. A respite followed on
+this bloody persecution when the Independents came into power,
+but it was renewed with almost as much violence upon the return
+of the Stuarts. The Protectorship had been fitly inaugurated by
+the rational protest of a gentleman, witness to the proceedings
+at one of the trials, Sir Robert Filmore, in a tract, 'An
+Advertizement to the Jurymen of England touching Witches.' This
+was followed two years later by a similar protest by one Thomas
+Ady, called, 'A Candle in the Dark; or, a Treatise concerning the
+Nature of Witches and Witchcraft: being Advice to Judges,
+Sheriffs, Justices of the Peace and Grand Jurymen, what to do
+before they pass Sentence on such as are arraigned for their
+Lives as Witches.' Notwithstanding the general toleration of the
+Commonwealth, in 1652, the year before Cromwell assumed the
+Dictatorship (1653-1658), there appeared to be a tendency to
+return to the old system, and several were executed in different
+parts of the country. Six were hanged at Maidstone. 'Some there
+were that wished rather they might be burned to ashes, alleging
+that it was a received opinion amongst many that the body of a
+witch being burned, her blood is thereby prevented from becoming
+hereafter hereditary to her progeny in the same evil, while by
+hanging it is not; but whether this opinion be erroneous or not,'
+the reporter adds, 'I am not to dispute.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+     Glanvil's Sadducismus Triumphatus--His Sentiments on
+     Witchcraft and Demonology--Baxter's 'Certainty of the World
+     of Spirits,' &c.--Witch Trial at Bury St. Edmund's by Sir
+     Matthew Hale, 1664--The Evidence adduced in Court--Two
+     Witches hanged--Three hanged at Exeter in 1682--The last
+     Witches judicially executed in England--Uniformity of the
+     Evidence adduced at the Trials--Webster's Attack upon the
+     Witch-Creed in 1677--Witch Trials in England at the end of
+     the Seventeenth Century--French Parliaments vindicate the
+     Diabolic Reality of the Crime--Witchcraft in Sweden.
+
+
+The bold licentiousness and ill-concealed scepticism of Charles
+II. and his Court, whose despotic prejudices, however, supported
+by the zeal of the Church, prosecuted dissenters from a form of
+religion which maintained 'the right divine of kings to govern
+wrong,' might be indifferent to the prejudice of witchcraft. But
+the princes and despots of former times have seldom been more
+careful of the lives than they have been of the liberties, of
+their subjects. The formal apology for the reality of that crime
+published by Charles II.'s chaplain-in-ordinary, the Rev.
+Dr. Joseph Glanvil, against the modern Sadducees (a very
+inconsiderable sect) who denied both ghosts and witches, their
+well-attested apparitions and acts, has been already noticed.
+His philosophic inquiry (so he terms it) into the nature and
+operations of witchcraft (_Sadducismus Triumphatus_, Sadduceeism
+Vanquished, or 'Considerations about Witchcraft'), was occasioned
+by a case that came under the author's personal observation--the
+'knockings' of the demon of Tedworth in the house of a Mr.
+Mompesson. The Tedworth demon must have been of that sort of
+active spirits which has been so obliging of late in enlightening
+the spiritual _séances_ of our time.
+
+Glanvil traces the steps by which a well-meaning student may
+unwarily be involved in _diablerie_. This philosophical inquirer
+observes:--'Those mystical students may, in their first address
+to the science [astrology], have no other design than the
+satisfaction of their curiosity to know remote and hidden things;
+yet that in the progress, being not satisfied within the bounds
+of their art, doth many times tempt the curious inquirer to use
+worse means of information; and no doubt those mischievous
+spirits, that are as vigilant as the beasts of prey, and watch
+all occasions to get us within their envious reach, are more
+constant attenders and careful spies upon the actions and
+inclinations of such whose genius and designs prepare them for
+their temptations. So that I look on judicial astrology as a fair
+introduction to sorcery and witchcraft; and who knows but it was
+first set on foot by the infernal hunters as a lure to draw the
+_curiosos_ into those snares that lie hid beyond it. And yet I
+believe it may be innocently enough studied.... I believe there
+are very few among those who have been addicted to those strange
+arts of wonder and prediction, but have found themselves attacked
+by some unknown solicitors, and enticed by them to the more
+dangerous actions and correspondencies. For as there are a sort
+of base and sordid spirits that attend the envy and malice of the
+ignorant and viler sort of persons, and betray them into compacts
+by promises of revenge; so, no doubt, there are a kind of more
+airy and speculative fiends, of a higher rank and order than
+those wretched imps, who apply themselves to the curious....
+Yea, and sometimes they are so cautious and wary in their
+conversations with more refined persons, that they never offer to
+make any _express_ covenant with them. And to this purpose, I
+have been informed by a very reverend and learned doctor that one
+Mr. Edwards, a Master of Arts of Trinity College, in Cambridge,
+being reclaimed from conjuration, declared in his repentance that
+the demon always appeared to him like a man of good fashion, and
+never required any compact from him: and no doubt they sort
+themselves agreeably to the rate, post, and genius of those with
+whom they converse.'[149]
+
+  [149] _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, section xvi.
+
+The sentiments of the royal chaplain on demonology are curious.
+'Since good men,' he argues, 'in their state of separation are
+said to be [Greek: isangeloi], why the wicked may not be supposed
+to be [Greek: isodaimones] (in the worst sense of the word), I
+know nothing to help me to imagine. And if it be supposed that
+the imps of witches are sometimes wicked spirits of our own kind
+and nature, and possibly the same that have been witches and
+sorcerers in this life: this supposal may give a fairer and more
+probable account of many of the actions of sorcery and witchcraft
+than the other hypothesis, that they are always devils. And to
+this conjecture I will venture to subjoin another, which hath
+also its probability, viz. that it is not improbable but the
+familiars of witches are a vile kind of spirits of a very
+inferior constitution and nature; and none of those that
+were once of the highest hierarchy now degenerated into the
+spirits we call devils.... And that all the superior--yea, and
+inferior--regions have their several kinds of spirits, differing
+in their natural perfections as well as in the kinds and degrees
+of their depravities; which being supposed, 'tis very probable
+that those of the basest and meanest sorts are they who submit to
+the servilities.'[150] It is a curious speculation how the old
+apologists of witchcraft would regard the modern 'curiosos'--the
+adventurous _spirit-media_ of the present day, and whether the
+consulted spirits are of 'base and sordid rank,' or are 'a kind
+of airy and more speculative fiends.' It is fair to infer,
+perhaps, that they are of the latter class.
+
+  [150] _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, Part I. sect. 4. Affixed to
+  this work is a _Collection of Relations_ of
+  well-authenticated instances. Glanvil was one of the first
+  Fellows of the recently established Royal Society. He is the
+  author of a philosophical treatise of great merit--the
+  _Scepsis Scientifica_--a review of which occupies several
+  pages of _The Introduction to the Literature of Europe_, and
+  which is favourably considered by Hallam. Not the least
+  unaccountable fact in the history and literature of
+  witchcraft is the absurd contradiction involved in the
+  unbounded credulity of writers (who were sceptical on almost
+  every other subject) on the one subject of demonology.
+
+The author of the 'Saints' Everlasting Rest,' the moderate and
+conscientious Baxter, was a contemporary of the Anglican divine.
+In another and later work this voluminous theological writer more
+fully developed his spiritualistic ideas. 'The Certainty of the
+World of Spirits fully evinced by unquestionable Histories of
+Apparitions, Witchcrafts, Operations, Voices, &c., proving the
+Immortality of Souls, the Malice and Misery of Devils and the
+Damned, and the Blessedness of the Justified. Written for the
+Conviction of Sadducees and Infidels,' was a formidable
+inscription which must have overawed, if it did not subdue, the
+infidelity of the modern Sadducees.[151]
+
+  [151] It would not be an uninteresting, but it would be a
+  melancholy, task to investigate the reasoning, or rather
+  unreasoning, process which involved such honest men as
+  Richard Baxter in a maze of credulity. While they rejected
+  the principle of the ever-recurring ecclesiastical miracles
+  of Catholicism (so sympathetic as well as useful to ardent
+  faith), their devout imagination yet required the aid of a
+  present supernaturalism to support their faith amidst the
+  perplexing doubts and difficulties of ordinary life, and
+  they gladly embraced the consoling belief that the present
+  evils are the work of the enmity of the devil, whose
+  temporary sovereignty, however, should be overthrown in the
+  world to come, when the faith and constancy of his victims
+  shall be eternally rewarded.
+
+The sentence and execution of two old women at Bury St. Edmund's,
+in 1664, has been already noticed. This trial was carried on with
+circumstances of great solemnity and with all the external forms
+of justice--Sir Matthew Hale presiding as Lord Chief Baron: and
+the following is a portion of the evidence which was received two
+hundred years ago in an English Court of Justice and under the
+presidency of one of the greatest ornaments of the English Bench.
+One of the witnesses, a woman named Dorothy Durent, deposed that
+she had quarrelled with one Amy Duny, immediately after which her
+infant child was seized with fits. 'And the said examinant
+further stated that she being troubled at her child's distemper
+did go to a certain person named Doctor Job Jacob, who lived at
+Yarmouth, who had the reputation in the country to help children
+that were bewitched; who advised her to hang up the child's
+blanket in the chimney-corner all day, and at night when she put
+the child to bed to put it into the said blanket; and if she
+found anything in it she should not be afraid, but throw it into
+the fire. And this deponent did according to his direction; and
+at night when she took down the blanket with an intent to put the
+child therein, there fell out of the same a great toad which ran
+up and down the hearth; and she, having a young youth only with
+her in the house, desired him to catch the toad and throw it into
+the fire, which the youth did accordingly, and held it there with
+the tongs; and as soon as it was in the fire it made a great and
+terrible noise; and after a space there was a flashing in the
+fire like gunpowder, making a noise like the discharge of a
+pistol, and thereupon the toad was no more seen nor heard. It was
+asked by the Court if that, after the noise and flashing, there
+was not the substance of the toad to be seen to consume in the
+fire; and it was answered by the said Dorothy Durent that after
+the flashing and noise there was no more seen than if there had
+been none there. The next day there came a young woman, a
+kinswoman of the said Amy, and a neighbour of this deponent, and
+told this deponent that her aunt (meaning the said Amy) was in a
+most lamentable condition, having her face all scorched with
+fire, and that she was sitting alone in her house in her smock
+without any fire. And therefore this deponent went into the house
+of the said Amy Duny to see her, and found her in the same
+condition as was related to her; for her face, her legs, and
+thighs, which this deponent saw, seemed very much scorched and
+burnt with fire; at which this deponent seemed much to wonder,
+and asked how she came in that sad condition. And the said Amy
+replied that she might thank her for it, for that she (deponent)
+was the cause thereof; but she should live to see some of her
+children dead, and she upon crutches. And this deponent further
+saith, that after the burning of the said toad her child
+recovered and was well again, and was living at the time of the
+Assizes.' The accused were next arraigned for having bewitched
+the family of Mr. Samuel Pacy, merchant, of Lowestoft. The witch
+turned away from their door had at once inflicted summary
+vengeance by sending some fearful fits and pains in the stomach,
+apparently caused by an internal pricking of pins; the children
+shrieking out violently, vomiting nails, pins, and needles, and
+exclaiming against several women of ill-repute in the town;
+especially against two of them, Amy Duny and Rose Cullender.
+
+A friend of the family appeared in court, and deposed: 'At some
+times the children would see things run up and down the house in
+the appearance of mice, and one of them suddenly snapt one with
+the tongs and threw it into the fire, and it screeched out like a
+bat. At another time the younger child, being out of her fits,
+went out of doors to take a little fresh air, and presently a
+little thing like a bee flew upon her face and would have gone
+into her mouth, whereupon the child ran in all haste to the door
+to get into the house again, shrieking out in a most terrible
+manner. Whereupon this deponent made haste to come to her; but
+before she could get to her the child fell into her swooning fit,
+and at last, with much pain and straining herself, she vomited up
+a twopenny nail with a broad head; and being demanded by this
+deponent how she came by this nail, she answered that the bee
+brought this nail and forced it into her mouth. And at other
+times the elder child declared unto this deponent that during the
+time of her fits she saw flies come unto her and bring with them
+in their mouths crooked pins; and after the child had thus
+declared the same she fell again into violent fits, and
+afterwards raised several pins. At another time the said elder
+child declared unto this deponent, and sitting by the fire
+suddenly started up and said she saw a mouse; and she crept under
+the table, looking after it; and at length she put something in
+her apron, saying she had caught it. And immediately she ran to
+the fire and threw it in; and there did appear upon it to this
+deponent like the flashing of gunpowder, though she confessed she
+saw nothing in the child's hands.' Another witness was the mother
+of a servant girl, Susanna Chandler, whose depositions are of
+much the same kind, but with the addition that her daughter was
+sometimes stricken with blindness and dumbness by demoniacal
+contrivance at the moment when her testimony was required in
+court. 'Being brought into court at the trial, she suddenly fell
+into her fits, and being carried out of the court again, within
+the space of half an hour she came to herself and recovered her
+speech; and thereupon was immediately brought into the court, and
+asked by the Court whether she was in condition to take an oath
+and to give evidence. She said she could. But when she was sworn
+and asked what she could say against either of the prisoners,
+before she could make any answer she fell into her fits,
+shrieking out in a miserable manner, crying "Burn her! burn her!"
+which was all the words she could speak.' Doubts having been
+hazarded by one or two of the less credulous of the origin of the
+fits and contortions, 'to avoid this scruple, it was privately
+desired by the judge that the Lord Cornwallis, Sir Edmund Bacon,
+and Mr. Serjeant Keeling and some other gentlemen there in court,
+would attend one of the distempered persons in the farthest part
+of the hall whilst she was in her fits, and then to send for one
+of the witches to try what would then happen, which they did
+accordingly.' Some of the possessed, having been put to the proof
+by having their eyes covered, and being touched upon the hand by
+one of those present, fell into contortions as if they had been
+touched by the witches.
+
+The suspicion of imposture thus raised was quickly silenced by
+fresh proof. Robert Sherringham, farmer, deposed that 'about two
+years since, passing along the street with his cart and horses,
+the axle-tree of his cart touched her house and broke down some
+part of it; at which she was very much displeased, threatening
+him that his horses should suffer for it. And so it happened; for
+all those horses, being four in number, died within a short time
+after. Since that time he hath had great losses by sudden dying
+of his other cattle. So soon as his sows pigged, the pigs would
+leap and caper, and immediately fall down and die. Also, not long
+after, he was taken with a lameness in his limbs that he could
+neither go nor stand for some days.'[152]
+
+  [152] This witness finished his evidence by informing the
+  Court that 'after all this, he was very much vexed with a
+  great number of lice, of extraordinary bigness; and although
+  he many times shifted himself, yet he was not anything the
+  better, but would swarm again with them. So that in the
+  conclusion he was forced to burn all his clothes, being two
+  suits of apparel, and then was clear from
+  them.'--_Narratives of Sorcery_, &c., from the most
+  authentic sources, by Thomas Wright.
+
+The extreme ridiculousness, even more than the iniquity, of the
+accusations may be deemed the principal characteristic of such
+procedures: these _childish_ indictments were received with
+eagerness by prosecutors, jury, and judge. After half an hour's
+deliberation the jury returned a unanimous verdict against the
+prisoners, who were hanged, protesting their innocence to the
+end. The year before, a woman named Julian Coxe was hanged at
+Taunton on the evidence of a hunter that a hare, which had taken
+refuge from his pursuit in a bush, was found on the opposite side
+in the likeness of a witch, who had assumed the form of the
+animal, and taken the opportunity of her hiding-place to resume
+her proper shape. In 1682 three women were executed at Exeter.
+Their witchcraft was of the same sort as that of the Bury
+witches. Little variety indeed appears in the English witchcraft
+as brought before the courts of law. They chiefly consist in
+hysterical, epileptic, or other fits, accompanied by vomiting of
+various witch-instruments of torture. The Exeter witches are
+memorable as the last executed judicially in England.
+
+Attacks upon the superstition of varying degrees of merit were
+not wanting during any period of the seventeenth century.
+Webster, who, differing in this respect from most of his
+predecessors, declared his opinion that the whole of witchcraft
+was founded on natural phenomena, credulity, torture, imposture,
+or delusion, has deserved to be especially commemorated among the
+advocates of common sense. He had been well acquainted in his
+youth with the celebrated Lancashire Witches' case, and enjoyed
+good opportunities of studying the absurd obscenities of the
+numerous examinations. His meritorious work was given to the
+world in 1677, under the title of 'The Displaying of Supposed
+Witchcraft.' Towards the close of the century witch-trials still
+occur; but the courts of justice were at length freed from the
+reproach of legal murders.
+
+The great revolution of 1688, which set the principles of
+Protestantism on a firmer basis, could not fail to effect an
+intellectual as well as a political change. A recognition of the
+claims of common sense (at least on the subject of diabolism)
+seemed to begin from that time; and in 1691, when some of the
+criminals were put upon their trial at Frome, in Somersetshire,
+they were acquitted, not without difficulty, by the exertion of
+the better reason of the presiding judge, Lord Chief Justice
+Holt. Fortunately for the accused, Lord Chief Justice Holt was a
+person of sense, as well as legal acuteness; for he sat as judge
+at a great number of the trials in different parts of the
+kingdom. Both prosecutors and juries were found who would
+willingly have sent the proscribed convicts to death. But the age
+was arrived when at last it was to be discovered that fire and
+torture can extinguish neither witchcraft nor any other heresy;
+and the princes and parliaments of Europe seemed to begin to
+recognise in part the philosophical maxim that, 'heresy and
+witchcraft are two crimes which commonly increase by punishment,
+and are never so effectually suppressed as by being totally
+neglected.'
+
+In France, until about the year 1670, there was little abatement
+in the fury or number of the prosecutions. In that year several
+women had been sentenced to death for frequenting the _Domdaniel_
+or Sabbath meeting by the provincial parliament of Normandy.
+Louis XIV. was induced to commute the sentence into banishment
+for life. The parliament remonstrated at so astonishing an
+interference with the due course of justice, and presented a
+petition to the king in which they insist upon the dread reality
+of a crime that 'tends to the destruction of religion and the
+ruin of nations.'[153]
+
+  [153] 'Your parliament,' protest these legislators, 'have
+  thought it their duty on occasion of these crimes, the
+  greatest which men can commit, to make you acquainted with
+  the general and uniform feelings of the people of this
+  province with regard to them; it being moreover a question
+  in which are concerned the glory of God and the relief of
+  your suffering subjects, who groan under their fears from
+  the threats and menaces of this sort of persons, and who
+  feel the effects of them every day in the mortal and
+  extraordinary maladies which attack them, and the surprising
+  damage and loss of their possessions.' They then review the
+  various laws and decrees of Church and State from the
+  earliest times in support of their convictions: they cite
+  the authority of the Church in council and in its most
+  famous individual teachers. Particularly do they insist upon
+  the opinions of St. Augustin, in his _City of God_, as
+  irrefragable. 'After so many authorities and punishments
+  ordained by human and divine laws, we humbly supplicate your
+  Majesty to reflect once more upon the extraordinary results
+  which proceed from the malevolence of this sort of people;
+  on the deaths from unknown diseases which are often the
+  consequence of their menaces; on the loss of the goods and
+  chattels of your subjects; on the proofs of guilt
+  continually afforded by the insensibility of the marks upon
+  the accused; on the sudden transportation of bodies from one
+  place to another; on the sacrifices and nocturnal
+  assemblies, and other facts, corroborated by the testimony
+  of ancient and modern authors, and verified by so many
+  eyewitnesses, composed partly of accomplices and partly of
+  people who had no interest in the trials beyond the love of
+  truth, and confirmed moreover by the confessions of the
+  accused parties themselves, and that, Sire, with so much
+  agreement and conformity between the different cases, that
+  the most ignorant persons convicted of this crime have
+  spoken to the same circumstances and in nearly the same
+  words as the most celebrated authors who have written about
+  it; all of which may be easily proved to your Majesty's
+  satisfaction by the records of various trials before your
+  parliaments.'--Given in _Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular
+  Delusions_. Louis XIV., with an unaccustomed care for human
+  life, resisting these forcible arguments, remained firm, and
+  the condemned were saved from the stake.
+
+While most of the Governments of Europe were now content to leave
+sorcerers and witches to the irregular persecutions of the
+people, tacitly abandoning to the mob the right of proceeding
+against them as they pleased, without the interference of the
+law, in a remote kingdom of Europe a witch-persecution commenced
+with the ordinary fury, under express sanction of the Government.
+It is curious that at the last moments of its existence as a
+legal crime, one of the last fires of witchcraft should have been
+lighted in Sweden, a country which, remote from continental
+Europe, seems to have been up to that period exempt from the
+judicial excesses of England, France, or Germany. The story of
+the Mohra witches is inserted in an appendix to Glanvil's
+'Collection of Relations,' by Dr. Anthony Horneck. The epidemic
+broke out in 1669, in the village of Mohra, in the mountainous
+districts of Central Sweden. A number of children became
+affected with an imaginative or mischievous disease, which
+carried them off to a place called Blockula, where they held
+communion and festival with the devil. These, numbering a large
+proportion of the youth of the neighbourhood, were incited, it
+seems, by the imposture or credulity of the ministers of Mohra
+and Elfdale, to report the various transactions at their
+spiritual _séances_. To such a height increased the terrified
+excitement of the people, that a commission was appointed by the
+king, consisting of both clergy and laity, to enquire into the
+origin and circumstances of the matter. It commenced proceedings
+in August 1670. Days for humiliation and prayer were ordered, and
+a solemn service inaugurated the judicial examinations. Agreeably
+to the dogma of the most approved foreign authorities, which
+allowed the evidence of the greatest criminals and of the
+youngest age, the commission began by examining the children,
+three hundred in number, claiming to be bewitched, confronting
+them with the witches who had, according to the indictment,
+been the means of the devil's seduction. They were strictly
+interrogated whether they were certain of the fact of having been
+actually carried away by the devil in his proper person. Being
+answered in the affirmative, the royal commissioners proceeded to
+demand of the accused themselves, 'Whether the confessions of
+those children were true, and admonished them to confess the
+truth, that they might turn away from the devil unto the living
+God. At first most of them did very stiffly, and without shedding
+the least tear, deny it, though much against their will and
+inclination. After this the children were examined every one by
+themselves, to see whether their confessions did agree or no; and
+the commissioners found that all of them, except some very little
+ones, which could not tell all the circumstances, did punctually
+agree in their confessions of particulars. In the meanwhile, the
+commissioners that were of the clergy examined the witches, but
+could not bring them to any confession, all continuing steadfast
+in their denials, till at last some of them burst out into tears,
+and their confession agreed with what the children said; and
+these expressed their abhorrence of the fact, and begged pardon,
+adding that the devil, whom they called _Locyta_, had stopped the
+mouths of some of them, so loath was he to part with his prey,
+and had stopped the ears of others. And being now gone from them,
+they could no longer conceal it, for they had now perceived his
+treachery.' The Elfdale witches were induced to announce--'We of
+the province of Elfdale do confess that we used to go to a
+gravel-pit which lies hard by a cross-way, and there we put on a
+vest over our heads, and then danced round; and after this ran to
+the cross-way and called the devil thrice, first with a still
+voice, the second time somewhat louder, and the third time very
+loud, with these words, "Antecessor, come and carry us to
+Blockula." Whereupon immediately he used to appear, but in
+different habits; but for the most part we saw him in a grey
+coat and red and blue stockings.[154] He had a red beard, a
+high-crowned hat with linen of divers colours wrapt about it, and
+long garters about upon his stockings. Then he asked us whether
+we would serve him with soul and body. If we were content to do
+so, he set us on a beast which he had there ready, and carried us
+over churches and high walls, and after all he came to a green
+meadow where Blockula lies [the Brockenberg in the Hartz forest,
+as Scott conjectures]. We procured some scrapings of altars and
+filings of church clocks, and then he gave us a horn with a salve
+in it, wherewith we do anoint ourselves, and a saddle, with a
+hammer and a wooden nail thereby to fix the saddle. Whereupon we
+call upon the devil, and away we go.'
+
+  [154] Accommodating himself to modern refinement, the devil
+  usually discards the antiquated horns, hoofs, and tail; and
+  if, as Dr. Mede supposed, 'appearing in human shape, he has
+  always a deformity of some uncouth member or other,' such
+  inconvenient appendages are disguised as much as possible.
+  As Goethe's Mephistopheles explains to his witch:
+
+       'Culture, which renders man less like an ape,
+        Has also licked the devil into shape.'
+
+Many interrogatories were put. Amongst others, how it was
+contrived that they could pass up and down chimneys and through
+unbroken panes of glass (to which it was replied that the devil
+removes all obstacles); how they were enabled to transport so
+many children at one time? &c. They acknowledged that 'till of
+late they had never power to carry away children; but only this
+year and the last: and the devil did at that time force them to
+it: that heretofore it was sufficient to carry but one of their
+own children or a stranger's child with them, which happened
+seldom: but now he did plague them and whip them if they did not
+procure him many children, insomuch that they had no peace or
+quiet for him. And whereas that formerly one journey a week would
+serve their turn from their own town to the place aforesaid, now
+they were forced to run to other towns and places for children,
+and that they brought with them some fifteen, some sixteen
+children every night.' As to their means of conveyance, they were
+sometimes men; at other times, beasts, spits, and posts: but a
+preferable mode was the riding upon goats, whose backs were made
+more commodious by the use of a magical ointment whenever a
+larger freight than usual was to be transported. Arrived at
+Blockula, their diabolical initiation commenced. First they were
+made to deny their baptism and take an oath of fealty to their
+new master, to whom they devoted soul and body to serve
+faithfully. Their new baptism was a baptism of blood: for their
+lord cut their fingers and wrote their names in blood in his
+book. After other ceremonies they sit down to a table, and are
+regaled with not the choicest viands (for such an occasion and
+from such a host)--broth, bacon, cheese, oatmeal. Dancing and
+fighting (the latter a peculiarity of the Northern Sabbath) ensue
+alternately. They indulge, too, in the debauchery of the South:
+the witches having offspring from their intercourse with the
+demons, who intermarry and produce a mongrel breed of toads and
+serpents. As interludes, it may be supposed, to the serious part
+of the entertainment the fiend would contrive various jokes,
+affecting to be dead; and, a graver joke, he would bid them to
+erect a huge building of stone, in which they were to be saved
+upon the approaching day of judgment. While engaged at this work
+he threw down the unfinished house about their ears, to the
+consternation, and sometimes injury, of his vassals.[155] Some of
+the witnesses spoke of a great dragon encircled with flames, and
+an iron chair; of a vision of a burning pit. The minister of the
+district gave his evidence that, having been suffering from a
+painful headache, he could account for the unusual severity of
+the attack only by supposing that the witches had celebrated one
+of their infernal dances upon his head while asleep in bed: and
+one of them, in accordance with this conjecture, acknowledged
+that the devil had sent her with a sledge-hammer to drive a nail
+into the temples of the obnoxious clergyman. The solidity of his
+skull saved him; and the only result was, as stated, a severe
+pain in his head.
+
+  [155] Le Sage's _Diable Boiteux_, who so obligingly
+  introduces the Spanish student to the secret realities of
+  human life, is, it may be observed, of both a more rational
+  and more instructive temperament than the ordinary demons
+  who appear at the witches' revels to practise their
+  senseless and fantastic rites.
+
+All the persuasive arguments of the examiners could not induce
+the witches to repeat before them their well-known tricks:
+because, as they affirmed, 'since they had confessed all they
+found all their witchcraft was gone: and the devil at this time
+appeared very terrible with claws on his hands and feet, with
+horns on his head and a long tail behind, and showed them a pit
+burning with a hand out; but the devil did thrust the person down
+again with an iron fork, and suggested to the witches that if
+they continued in their confession he would deal with them in the
+same manner.' These are some of the interesting particulars of
+this judicial commission as reported by contemporaries. Seventy
+persons were condemned to death. One woman pleaded (a frequent
+plea) in arrest of judgment that she was with child; the rest
+perseveringly denying their guilt. Twenty-three were burned in a
+single fire at the village of Mohra. Fifteen children were also
+executed; while fifty-six others, convicted of witchcraft in a
+minor degree, were sentenced to various punishments: to be
+scourged on every Sunday during a whole year being a sentence of
+less severity. The proceedings were brought to an end, it seems,
+by the fear of the upper classes for their own safety. An edict
+of the king who had authorised the enquiry now ordered it to be
+terminated, and the history of the commission was attempted to be
+involved in silent obscurity. Prayers were ordered in all the
+churches throughout Sweden for deliverance from the malice of
+Satan, who was believed to be let loose for the punishment of the
+land.[156] It is remarkable that the incidents of the Swedish
+trials are chiefly reproductions of the evidence extracted in the
+courts of France and Germany.
+
+  [156] _Narratives of Sorcery, &c._, by Thomas Wright, who
+  quotes the authorised reports. Sir Walter Scott refers to
+  'An account of what happened in the kingdom of Sweden in the
+  years 1669, 1670, and afterwards translated out of High
+  Dutch into English by Dr. Anthony Horneck, attached to
+  Glanvil's _Sadducismus Triumphatus_. The translation refers
+  to the evidence of Baron Sparr, ambassador from the court of
+  Sweden to the court of England in 1672, and that of Baron
+  Lyonberg, envoy-extraordinary of the same power, both of
+  whom attest the confessions and execution of the witches.
+  The King of Sweden himself answered the express inquiries of
+  the Duke of Holstein with marked reserve. "His judges and
+  commissioners," he said, "had caused divers men, women, and
+  children to be burnt and executed on such pregnant evidence
+  as was brought before them; but whether the actions
+  confessed and proved against them were real, or only the
+  effect of a strong imagination, he was not as yet able to
+  determine."'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+     Witchcraft in the English Colonies in North America--Puritan
+     Intolerance and Superstition--Cotton Mather's 'Late
+     Memorable Providences'--Demoniacal Possession--Evidence
+     given before the Commission--Apologies issued by
+     Authority--Sudden Termination of the
+     Proceedings--Reactionary Feeling against the Agitators--The
+     Salem Witchcraft the last Instance of Judicial Prosecution
+     on a large Scale in Christendom--Philosophers begin to
+     expose the Superstition--Meritorious Labours of Webster,
+     Becker, and others--Their Arguments could reach only the
+     Educated and Wealthy Classes of Society--These only
+     partially Enfranchised--The Superstition continues to
+     prevail among the Vulgar--Repeal of the Witch Act in England
+     in 1736--Judicial and Popular Persecutions in England in the
+     Eighteenth Century--Trial of Jane Wenham in England in
+     1712--Maria Renata burned in Germany in 1749--La Cadière in
+     France--Last Witch burned in Scotland in 1722--Recent Cases
+     of Witchcraft--Protestant Superstition--Witchcraft in the
+     Extra-Christian World.
+
+
+A review of the superstitions of witchcraft would be incomplete
+without some notice of the Salem witches in New England.
+An equally melancholy and mischievous access of fanatic
+credulity, during the years 1688-1692, overwhelmed the colony of
+Massachusetts with a multitude of demons and their human
+accomplices; and the circumstances of the period were favourable
+to the vigour of the delusion. In the beginning of their
+colonisation the New Englanders were generally a united
+community; they were little disturbed by heresy; and if they had
+been thus infected they were too busily engaged in contending
+against the difficulties and dangers of a perilous position to be
+able to give much attention to differences in religious belief.
+But soon the _purity_ of their faith was in danger of being
+corrupted by heretical immigrants. The Puritans were the most
+numerous and powerful of the fugitives from political and
+religious tyranny in England, and the dominant sect in North
+America almost as severely oppressed Anabaptists and Quakers
+in the colonies as they themselves, religious exiles from
+ecclesiastical despotism, had suffered in the old world. They
+proved themselves worthy followers of the persecutors of
+Servetus. Other enemies from without also were active in seeking
+the destruction of the true believers. Fierce wars and struggles
+were continuously being waged with the surrounding savages, who
+regarded the increasing prosperity and number of the intruders
+with just fear and resentment.
+
+Imbued as the colonists were with demoniacal prepossessions, it
+is not so surprising that they deemed their rising State beset by
+spiritual enemies; and it is fortunate, perhaps, that the wilds
+of North America were not still more productive of fiends and
+witches, and more destructive massacres than that of 1690-92 did
+not disgrace their colonial history. From the pen of Dr. Cotton
+Mather, Fellow of Harvard College, and his father (who was the
+Principal), we have received the facts of the history. These two
+divines and their opinions obtained great respect throughout the
+colony. They devoutly received the orthodox creed as expounded in
+the writings of the ancient authorities on demonology, firmly
+convinced of the reality of the present wanderings of Satan 'up
+and down' in the earth; and Dr. Cotton Mather was at the same
+time the chief supporter and the historian of the demoniacal war
+now commenced. It was significantly initiated by the execution of
+a papist, an Irishman named Glover, who was accused of having
+bewitched the daughters of a mason of Boston, by name Goodwin.
+These girls, of infantile age, suffered from convulsive fits, the
+ordinary symptom of 'possession.' Mather received one of them
+into his house for the purpose of making experiments, and, if
+possible, to exorcise the evil spirits. She would suddenly, in
+presence of a number of spectators, fall into a trance, rise up,
+place herself in a riding attitude as if setting out for the
+Sabbath, and hold conversation with invisible beings. A peculiar
+phase of this patient's case was that when under the influence of
+'hellish charms' she took great pleasure in reading or hearing
+'bad' books, which she was permitted to do with perfect freedom.
+Those books included the Prayer Book of the English Episcopal
+Church, Quakers' writings, and popish productions. Whenever the
+Bible was taken up, the devil threw her into the most fearful
+convulsions.
+
+As a result of this _diagnosis_ appeared the publication of 'Late
+Memorable Providences relating to Witchcraft and Possession,'
+which, together with Baxter's 'Certainty of the World of
+Spirits,' a work Mather was careful to distribute and recommend
+to the people, increased the fever of fear and fanaticism to the
+highest pitch. The above incidents were the prelude only to the
+proper drama of the Salem witches. In 1692, two girls, the
+daughter and niece of Mr. Parvis, minister, suffering from a
+disease similar to that of the Goodwins, were pronounced to be
+preternaturally afflicted. Two miserable Indians, man and wife,
+servants in the family, who indiscreetly attempted to cure the
+witch-patients by means of some charm or drug, were suspected
+themselves as the guilty agents, and sent to execution. The
+physicians, who seem to have been entirely ignorant of the origin
+of these attacks, and as credulous as the unprofessional world,
+added fresh testimony to the reality of 'possession.'[157] At
+first, persons of the lower classes and those who, on account of
+their ill-repute, would be easily recognised to be diabolic
+agents, were alone incriminated. But as the excitement increased
+others of higher rank were pointed out. A _black_ man was
+introduced on the stage in the form of an Indian of terrible
+aspect and portentous dimensions, who had threatened the
+christianising colonists with extermination for intruding their
+faith upon the reluctant heathen. In May 1692, a new governor,
+Sir William Phipps, arrived with a new charter (the old one
+had been suspended) from England; this official, far from
+discouraging the existing prejudices, urged the local authorities
+on to greater extravagance. The examinations were conducted in
+the ordinary and most approved manner, the Lord's Prayer and the
+secret marks being the infallible tests. Towards the end of May
+two women, Bridget Bishop and Susannah Martin, were hanged.
+
+  [157] A phenomenon of apparently the same sort as that which
+  was of such frequent occurrence in the Middle Age and in the
+  seventeenth century, is said to have been lately occupying
+  considerable attention in the South of France. The _Courrier
+  des Alpes_ narrates an extraordinary scene in one of the
+  churches in the _Commune_ of Morzine, among the women, on
+  occasion of the visitation of the bishop of the district. It
+  seems that the malady in question attacks, for the most
+  part, the female population, and the patients are
+  confidently styled, and asserted to be, _possessed_. It
+  'produces all the effects of madness, without having its
+  character,' and is said to baffle all the resources of
+  medical science, which is ignorant of its nature. There had
+  been an intermission of the convulsions for some time, but
+  they have now reappeared with greater violence than
+  ever.--_The Times_ newspaper, June 6, 1864.
+
+On June 2, a formal commission sat, before which the most
+ridiculous evidence was gravely given and as gravely received.
+John Louder deposed against Bridget Bishop, 'that upon some
+little controversy with Bishop about her fowls going well to bed,
+he did awake in the night by moonlight, and did see clearly the
+likeness of this woman grievously oppressing him, in which
+miserable condition she held him unable to help himself till next
+day. He told Bishop of this, but she denied it, and threatened
+him very much. Quickly after this, being at home on a Lord's day
+with the doors shut about him, he saw a black pig approach him,
+at which he going to kick, it vanished away. Immediately after
+sitting down he saw a black thing jump in at the window and come
+and stand before him. The body was like that of a monkey, the
+feet like a cock's, but the face much like that of a man.[158] He
+being so extremely affrighted that he could not speak, this
+monster spoke to him and said, "I am a messenger sent unto you,
+for I understand that you are in some trouble of mind, and if you
+will be ruled by me you shall want for nothing in this world."
+Whereupon he endeavoured to clap his hands upon it, but he could
+feel no substance; and it jumped out of window again, but
+immediately came in by the porch (though the doors were shut) and
+said, "You had better take my counsel." He then struck at it with
+a stick, and struck only the ground and broke the stick. The arm
+with which he struck was presently disabled, and it vanished
+away. He presently went out at the back door, and spied this
+Bishop in her orchard going towards her house, but he had no
+power to set one foot forward to her; whereupon, returning into
+the house, he was immediately accosted by the monster he had seen
+before, which goblin was now going to fly at him; whereat he
+cried out, "The whole armour of God be between me and you!" so it
+sprung back and flew over the apple-tree, shaking many apples off
+the tree in its flying over. At its leap, it flung dirt with its
+feet against the stomach of the man, whereupon he was then struck
+dumb, and so continued for three days together.' Another witness
+declared in court; that, 'being in bed on the Lord's day, at
+night he heard a scrambling at the window; whereat he then saw
+Susanna Martin come in and jump down upon the floor. She took
+hold of this deponent's foot, and, drawing his body into a heap,
+she lay upon him nearly two hours, in all which time he could
+neither speak nor stir. At length, when he could begin to move,
+he laid hold on her hand, and, pulling it up to his mouth, he bit
+some of her fingers, as he judged into the bone; whereupon she
+went from the chamber down stairs out at the door,' &c.
+
+  [158] 'Rara avis in terris.' A mongrel and anomalous species
+  like the German _Meerkatzen_--monkey-cats.
+
+On July 19 five women, and on August 19, six persons, were sent
+to the gallows, among whom was Mr. George Burroughs, minister,
+who had provoked his judges by questioning the very existence of
+witchcraft. At the last moments he so favourably impressed the
+assembled spectators by an eloquent address, that Dr. Mather, who
+was present, found it necessary to prevent the progress of a
+reactionary feeling by asserting that the criminal was no
+regularly ordained minister, and the devil has often been
+transformed into an angel of light. So transparently iniquitous
+and absurd had their mode of procedure become, that one of the
+subordinates in the service of the authorities, whose office it
+was to arrest the accused, refused to perform any longer his
+hateful office, and being himself denounced as an accomplice, he
+sought safety in flight. He was captured and executed as a
+recusant and wizard. Eight sorcerers suffered the extreme penalty
+of the law on September 22. Giles Gory, a few days before,
+indignantly refusing to plead, was 'pressed to death,' an
+accustomed mode of punishing obstinate prisoners; and in the
+course of this torture, it is said, when the tongue of the victim
+was forced from his mouth in the agony of pain, the presiding
+sheriff forced it back with his cane with much _sang froid_. At
+this stage in the proceedings, the magistrates considered that a
+justificatory memoir ought to be published for the destruction of
+twenty persons of both sexes, and, at the express desire of the
+governor, Cotton Mather drew up an Apology in the form of a
+treatise, 'More Wonders of the Invisible World,' in which the
+Salem, executions are justified by the precedent of similar and
+notorious instances in the mother-country, as well as by the
+universally accepted doctrines of various eminent authors of all
+ages and countries. Increase Mather, Principal of Harvard
+College, was also directed to solve the question whether the
+devil could sometimes assume the shape of a saint to effect his
+particular design. The reverend author resolved it affirmatively
+in a learned treatise, which he called (a seeming plagiarism)
+'Cases of Conscience concerning Witchcraft and Evil Spirits
+personating Men,' an undertaking prompted by an unforeseen and
+disagreeable circumstance. The wife of a minister, one of the
+most active promoters of the prosecution, was involved in the
+indiscriminate charges of the informers, who were beginning to
+aim at more exalted prey. The minister, alarmed at the unexpected
+result of his own agitation, was now convinced of the falseness
+of the whole proceeding. It was a fortunate occurrence. From that
+time the executions ceased.[159]
+
+  [159] If, however, individuals of the human species were at
+  length exempt from the penalty of death, those of the canine
+  species were sacrificed, perhaps vicariously. Two dogs,
+  convicted, as it is reported, of being accessories, were
+  solemnly hanged!
+
+The dangerously increasing class of informers who, like the
+'delatores' of the early Roman Empire, made a lucrative
+profession by their baseness, and spared not even reluctant or
+recusant magistrates themselves, more than anything else, was the
+cause of the termination of the trials. If they would preserve
+their own lives, or at least their reputations, the authorities
+and judges found it was necessary at once to check the progress
+of the infection. About one hundred and fifty witches or wizards
+were still under arrest (two hundred more being about to be
+arrested), when Governor Phipps having been recalled by the Home
+Government, was induced by a feeling of interest or justice to
+release the prisoners, to the wonder and horror of the people.
+From this period a reaction commenced. Those who four years
+before originated the trials suddenly became objects of hatred or
+contempt. Even the clergy, who had taken a leading part in them,
+became unpopular. In spite of the strenuous attempts of Dr.
+Cotton Mather and his disciples to revive the agitation, the tide
+of public opinion or feeling had set the other way, and people
+began to acknowledge the insufficiency of the evidence and the
+possible innocence of the condemned. Public fasts and prayers
+were decreed throughout the colony. Judges and juries emulated
+one another in admitting a misgiving 'that we were sadly deluded
+and mistaken.' Dr. Mather was less fickle and less repentant. In
+one of his treatises on the subject, recounting some of the
+signs and proofs of the actual crime, he declares: 'Nor are these
+the tenth part of the prodigies that fell out among the
+inhabitants of New England. _Fleshy_ people may burlesque these
+things: but when hundreds of the most solemn people, in a country
+where they have as much mother-wit certainly as the rest of
+mankind, know them to be true, nothing but the froward spirit of
+Sadduceeism can question them. I have not yet (he confidently
+asserts) mentioned so much as one thing that will not be
+justified, if it be required, by the oaths of more considerate
+persons than any that can ridicule these odd phenomena.'[160]
+
+  [160] _Narratives of Sorcery and Magic_, chap. xxxi. The
+  faith of the Fellow of Harvard College, we may be inclined
+  to suppose, was quickened in proportion to his doubts. To do
+  him justice, he admitted that _some_ of the circumstances
+  alleged might be exaggerated or even imaginary.
+
+So ended the last of public and judicial persecutions of
+considerable extent for witchcraft in Christendom. As far as the
+superior intellects were concerned, philosophy could now dare to
+reaffirm that reason 'must be our last judge and guide in
+everything.' Yet Folly, like Dulness, 'born a goddess, never
+dies;' and many of the higher classes must have experienced some
+silent regrets for an exploded creed which held the reality of
+the constant personal interference of the demons in human
+affairs. The fact that the great body of the people of every
+country in Europe remained almost as firm believers as their
+ancestors down to the present age, hardly needs to be insisted
+on; that theirs was a _living_ faith is evidenced in the
+ever-recurring popular outbreaks of superstitious ignorance,
+resulting both in this country and on the Continent often in the
+deaths of the objects of their diabolic fear.
+
+Such arguments as those of Webster in England, of Becker and
+Thomasius in Germany, on the special subject of witchcraft, and
+the general arguments of Locke or of Bayle, could be addressed
+only to the few.[161] Nor indeed would it be philosophical to
+expect that the vulgar should be able to penetrate an inveterate
+superstition that recently had been universally credited by the
+learned world.
+
+  [161] Dr. Balthazar Becker, theological professor at
+  Amsterdam, published his heretical work in Dutch, under the
+  title of 'The World Bewitched, or a Critical Investigation
+  of the commonly-received Opinion respecting Spirits, their
+  Nature, Power, and Acts, and all those extraordinary Feats
+  which Men are said to perform through their Aid;' 1691. 'He
+  founds his arguments on two grand principles--that from
+  their very nature spirits cannot act upon material beings,
+  and that the Scriptures represent the devil and his
+  satellites as shut up in the prison of hell. To explain away
+  the texts which militate against his system, evidently cost
+  him much labour and perplexity. His interpretations, for the
+  most part, are similar to those still relied on by the
+  believers in his doctrine' (Note by Murdock in Mosheim's
+  _Institutes of Ecclesiastical History_). The usually candid
+  Mosheim notices, apparently with contempt, '"The World
+  Bewitched," a prolix and copious work, in which he perverts
+  and explains away, with no little ingenuity indeed, but with
+  no less audacity, whatever the sacred volume relates of
+  persons possessed by evil spirits, and of the power of
+  demons, and maintains that the miserable being whom the
+  sacred writers call Satan and the devil, together with his
+  ministers, is bound with everlasting chains in hell, so that
+  he cannot thence go forth to terrify mortals and to plot
+  against the righteous.' Balthazar Becker, one of the most
+  meritorious of the opponents of diabolism, was deposed from
+  his ministerial office by an ecclesiastical synod, and
+  denounced as an atheist. His position, and the boldness of
+  his arguments, excited extraordinary attention and
+  animosity, and 'vast numbers' of Lutheran divines arose to
+  confute his atheistical heresy. The impunity which he
+  enjoyed from the vengeance of the devil (he had boldly
+  challenged the deity of hell to avenge his overturned
+  altars) was explained by the orthodox divines to be owing to
+  the superior cunning of Satan, who was certain that he would
+  be in the end the greatest gainer by unbelief. Christ.
+  Thomasius, professor of jurisprudence, was the author of
+  several works against the popular prejudice between the
+  years 1701 and 1720. He is considered by Ennemoser to have
+  been able to effect more from his professional position than
+  the humanely-minded Becker. But, after all, the overthrow of
+  the diabolic altars was caused much more by the discoveries
+  of science than by all the writings of literary
+  philosophers. Even in Southern Europe and in Spain (as far
+  as was possible in that intolerant land) reason began to
+  exhibit some faint signs of existence; and Benito Feyjoó,
+  whose Addisonian labours in the eighteenth century in the
+  land of the Inquisition deserve the gratitude of his
+  countrymen (in his _Téatro Critico_), dared to raise his
+  voice, however feeble, in its behalf.
+
+The cessation of legal procedure against witches was negative
+rather than positive: the enactments in the statute-books were
+left unrepealed, and so seemed not to altogether discountenance a
+still somewhat doubtful prejudice. It was so late as in the ninth
+year of the reign of George II., 1736, that the Witch Act of 1604
+was formally and finally repealed. By a tardy exertion of sense
+and justice the Legislature then enacted that, for the future, no
+prosecutions should be instituted on account of witchcraft,
+sorcery, conjuration, enchantment, &c., against any person or
+persons. Unfortunately for the credit of civilisation, it would
+be easy to enumerate a long list of _illegal_ murders both before
+and since 1736. One or two of the most remarkable cases plainly
+evincing, as Scott thinks, that the witch-creed 'is only asleep,
+and might in remote corners be again awakened to deeds of blood,'
+are too significant not to be briefly referred to. In 1712 Jane
+Wenham, a poor woman belonging to the village of Walkern, in the
+county of Hertford, was solemnly found guilty by the jury on the
+evidence of sixteen witnesses, of whom three were clergymen;
+Judge Powell presiding. She was condemned to death as a witch in
+the usual manner; but was reprieved on the representation of the
+judge. She had been commonly known in the neighbourhood of her
+home as a malicious witch, who took great pleasure in afflicting
+farmers' cattle and in effecting similar mischief. The incumbent
+of Walkern, the Rev. Mr. Gardiner, fully shared the prejudice of
+his parishioners; and, far from attempting to dispel, he entirely
+concurred with, their suspicions. A warrant was obtained from the
+magistrate, Sir Henry Chauncy, for the arrest of the accused: and
+she was brought before that local official; depositions were
+taken, and she was searched for 'marks.' The vicar of Ardley, a
+neighbouring village, tested her guilt or innocence with the
+Lord's Prayer, which was repeated incorrectly: by threats and
+other means he forced the confession that she was indeed an agent
+of the devil, and had had intercourse with him.
+
+But, even in the middle of the eighteenth century, witches were
+occasionally tried and condemned by judicial tribunals. In the
+year 1749, Maria or Emma Renata, a nun in the convent of
+Unterzell, near Würzburg, was condemned by the spiritual, and
+executed by the civil, power. By the clemency of the prince, the
+proper death by burning alive was remitted to the milder sentence
+of beheading, and afterwards burning the corpse to ashes: for no
+vestige of such an accursed criminal should be permitted to
+remain after death. When a young girl Maria Renata had been
+seduced to witchcraft by a military officer, and was accustomed
+to attend the witch-assemblies. In the convent she practised her
+infernal arts in bewitching her sister-nuns.[162] About the same
+time a nun in the south of France was subjected to the barbarous
+imputation and treatment of a witch: Father Girard, discovering
+that his mistress had some extraordinary scrofulous marks,
+conceived the idea of proclaiming to the world that she was
+possessed of the _stigmata_--impressions of the marks of the
+nails and spear on the crucified Lord, believed to be reproduced
+on the persons of those who, like the celebrated St. Francis,
+most nearly assimilated their lives to His. The Jesuits eagerly
+embraced an opportunity of producing a miracle which might
+confound their Jansenist rivals, whose sensational miracles were
+threatening to eclipse their own.[163] Sir Walter Scott states
+that the last judicial sentence of death for witchcraft in
+Scotland was executed in 1722, when Captain David Ross, sheriff
+of Sutherland, condemned a woman to the stake. As for illegal
+persecution, M. Garinet ('Histoire de la Magie en France') gives
+a list of upwards of twenty instances occurring in France between
+the years 1805 and 1818. In the latter year three tribunals were
+occupied with the trials of the murderers.
+
+  [162] Ennemoser relates the history of this witch from 'The
+  Christian address at the burning of Maria Renata, of the
+  convent of Unterzell, who was burnt on June 21, 1749, which
+  address was delivered to a numerous multitude, and
+  afterwards printed by command of the authorities.' The
+  preacher earnestly insisted upon the divine sanction and
+  obligation of the Mosaic law, 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch
+  to live,' which was taken as the text; and upon the fact
+  that, so far from being abolished by Christianity, it was
+  made more imperative by the Christian Church.
+
+  [163] The victim of the pleasure, and afterwards of the
+  ambition, of Father Girard, is known as La Cadière. She was a
+  native of Toulon, and when young had witnessed the
+  destructive effects of the plague which devastated that city
+  in 1720. Amidst the confusion of society she was
+  distinguished by her purity and benevolence. The story of La
+  Cadière and Father Girard is eloquently narrated by M.
+  Michelet in _La Sorcière_. The convulsions of the Flagellants
+  of the thirteenth century, and of the Protestant Revivalists
+  of the present day, exhibit on a large scale the paroxysms of
+  the French convents and the Dutch orphan-houses of the
+  seventeenth century. Nor is diabolical 'possession' yet
+  extinct in Christendom, if the reports received from time to
+  time from the Continent are to be credited. Recently, a
+  convent of Augustinian nuns at Loretto, on the authority of
+  the _Corriere delle Marche_ of Ancona, was attacked in a
+  similar way to that of Loudun. A vomiting of needles and
+  pins, the old diabolical torture, and a strict examination of
+  the accused, followed.
+
+If a belief should be entertained that the now 'vulgar' ideas of
+witchcraft have been long obsolete in England, it would be
+destroyed by a perusal of a few of the newspapers and periodicals
+of the last hundred years; and a sufficiently voluminous work
+might be occupied with the achievements of modern Sidrophels, and
+the records of murders or mutilations perpetrated by an ignorant
+mob.[164]
+
+  [164] Without noticing other equally notorious instances of
+  recent years, it may be enough (to dispel any such possible
+  illusion) to transcribe a paragraph from an account in _The
+  Times_ newspaper of Sept. 24, 1863. 'It is a somewhat
+  singular fact,' says the writer, describing a late notorious
+  witch-persecution in the county of Essex, 'that nearly all
+  the sixty or seventy persons concerned in the outrage which
+  resulted in the death of the deceased _were of the small
+  tradesmen class_, and that none of the agricultural
+  labourers were mixed up in the affair. It is also stated
+  that none of those engaged were in any way under the
+  influence of liquor. The whole disgraceful transaction arose
+  out of a deep belief in witchcraft, which possesses to a
+  lamentable extent the tradespeople and the lower orders of
+  the district.' Nor does it appear that the village of
+  Hedingham (the scene of the witch-murder) claims a
+  superiority in credulity over other villages in Essex or in
+  England. The instigator and chief agent in the Hedingham
+  case was the wife of an innkeeper, who was convinced that
+  she had been bewitched by an old wizard of reputation in the
+  neighbourhood: and the mode of punishment was the popular
+  one of drowning or suffocating in the nearest pond. Scraps
+  of written papers found in the hovel of the murdered wizard
+  revealed the numerous applications by lovers, wives, and
+  other anxious inquirers. Amongst other recent revivals of
+  the 'Black Art' in Southern Europe already referred to, the
+  inquisition at Rome upon a well-known English or American
+  'spiritualist,' when, as we learn from himself, he was
+  compelled to make a solemn abjuration that he had not
+  surrendered his soul to the devil, is significant.
+
+Nor would it be safe to assume, with some writers, that
+diabolism, as a vulgar prejudice, is now entirely extirpated from
+Protestant Christendom, and survives only in the most orthodox
+countries of Catholicism or in the remoter parts of northern or
+eastern Europe. Superstition, however mitigated, exists even in
+the freer Protestant lands of Europe and America; and if
+Protestants are able to smile at the religious creeds or
+observances of other sects, they may have, it is probable,
+something less pernicious, but perhaps almost as absurd, in their
+own creed.[165] But, after a despotism of fifteen centuries,
+Christendom has at length thrown off the hellish yoke, whose
+horrid tyranny was satiated with innumerable holocausts. The once
+tremendous power of the infernal arts is remembered by the higher
+classes of society of the present age only in their proverbial
+language, but it is indelibly graven in the common literature of
+Europe. With the savage peoples of the African continent and of
+the barbarous regions of the globe, witchcraft or sorcery, under
+the name of Fetishism, flourishes with as much vigour and with as
+destructive effects as in Europe in the sixteenth century; and
+every traveller returning from Eastern or Western Africa, or from
+the South Pacific, testifies to the prevalence of the practice of
+horrid and bloody rites of a religious observance consisting of
+charms and incantations. With those peoples that have no further
+conception of the religious sentiment there obtains for the most
+part, at least, the magical use of sorcery.[166] Superstition,
+ever varying, at some future date may assume, even in Europe, a
+form as pernicious or irrational as any of a past or of the
+present age; for in every age 'religion, which should most
+distinguish us from beasts, and ought most peculiarly to elevate
+us as rational creatures above brutes, is that wherein men
+often appear most irrational and more senseless than beasts
+themselves.'[167]
+
+  [165] A modern philosopher has well illustrated this obvious
+  truth (_Natural History of Religion_, sect. xii.). 'The age
+  of superstition,' says an essayist of some notoriety, with
+  perfect truth, 'is not past; nor,' he adds, a more
+  questionable thesis, 'ought we to wish it past.' Some of the
+  most eminent writers (e.g. Plutarch, Francis Bacon, Bayle,
+  Addison) have rightly or wrongly agreed to consider
+  fanatical superstition more pernicious than atheism. When it
+  is considered that the scientific philosophy of Aristotle,
+  of more than 2,000 years ago, was revived at a comparatively
+  recent date, it may be difficult not to believe in a
+  _cyclic_ rather than really progressive course of human
+  ideas, at least in metaphysics. The fact, remarked by
+  Macaulay, that the two principal sections of Christendom in
+  Europe remain very nearly in the limits in which they were
+  in the sixteenth, or in the middle of the seventeenth
+  century, is incontestable. Nor, indeed, are present facts
+  and symptoms so adverse, as is generally supposed, to the
+  probability of an ultimate reaction in favour of Catholic
+  doctrine and rule, even among the Teutonic peoples, in the
+  revolutions to which human ideas are continually subject.
+
+  [166] Among the numerous evidences of recent travellers may
+  be specially mentioned that of the well-known traveller R. F.
+  Burton (_The Lake Regions of Central Africa_) for the
+  practices of the Eastern Africans. On the African continent
+  and elsewhere, as was the case amongst the ancient Jews, the
+  demons are propitiated by human sacrifices. To what extent
+  witch-superstition obtains among the Hindus, the historian of
+  British India bears witness. 'The belief of witchcraft and
+  sorcery,' says Mr. Mill, 'continues universally prevalent,
+  and is every day the cause of the greatest enormities. It not
+  unfrequently happens that Brahmins tried for murder before
+  the English judges assign as their motive to the crime that
+  the murdered individual had enchanted them. No fewer than
+  five unhappy persons in one district were tried and executed
+  for witchcraft so late as the year 1792. The villagers
+  themselves assume the right of sitting in judgment on this
+  imaginary offence, and their sole instruments of proof are
+  the most wretched of all incantations (_History of British
+  India_, book ii. 7). A certain instinctive or traditional
+  dread of evil spirits excites the terrors of those peoples
+  who have no firm belief in the providence or existence of a
+  benevolent Divinity. Even among the Chinese--the least
+  religious nation in the world, and whose trite formula of
+  scepticism, 'Religions are many: Reason is one,' expresses
+  their indifferentism to every form of religion--there exists
+  a sort of demoniacal fear (Huc's _Chinese Empire_, xix.). The
+  diabolic and magic superstitions of the Moslem are displayed
+  in Sale's _Korân_ and Lane's _Modern Egyptians_.
+
+  [167] _Essay concerning the Human Understanding_, book iv.
+  18.
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+Transcriber's notes
+
+   Page 27: Deleted extra "the"
+
+   Page 39: Removed comma after "Scandinavians."
+
+   Page 90: Added missing quotation mark.
+
+   Page 107: Corrected typo "Hutchison's."
+
+   Page 165: Corrected typo "transsubstantiated."
+
+   Page 278: Added period after "xix."
+
+
+
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Superstitions of Witchcraft, by Howard
+Williams</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Superstitions of Witchcraft</p>
+<p>Author: Howard Williams</p>
+<p>Release Date: October 1, 2007  [eBook #22822]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SUPERSTITIONS OF WITCHCRAFT***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Julie Barkley, Suzan Flanagan,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class='center'>
+<p><br /></p>
+<table border="1" cellpadding="8" class="bbox" cellspacing="0" summary="Transcriber's Note">
+<tr><td align='left'>TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
+<p>
+This e-text includes accented Greek letters. If any of these characters do not display properly&mdash;in particular,
+if the diacritic does not appear directly above or below the
+letter&mdash;you may have an incompatible browser or unavailable fonts.
+If the problem cannot be resolved, use the plain-text file instead.</p>
+<p>
+Transliterations and corrections are shown with <ins title="like this">popups</ins> underlined in red. Additional
+changes are noted in the <a href="#TRANSCRIBERS_NOTES">Transcriber's Notes</a> at the end of the e-text.<br />
+</p></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="pad">
+<p class="fm14">SUPERSTITIONS OF WITCHCRAFT.</p>
+</div>
+<hr />
+
+<div class="pad">
+<p class="copy">LONDON<br />
+
+PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO.<br />
+
+NEW-STREET SQUARE
+</p>
+</div>
+<hr />
+
+<p class="fm10">THE</p>
+
+<p class="fm22">SUPERSTITIONS OF WITCHCRAFT.</p>
+
+<p class="fm8">BY</p>
+
+<p class="fm12">HOWARD WILLIAMS, M.A.</p>
+
+<p class="copy8">ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.</p>
+<div class="pad">
+<p class="copy8">'Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas,<br />
+ Nocturnos lemures, portentaque Thessala rides?'</p>
+</div>
+<div class="pad2">
+<p class="fm12">LONDON:<br />
+LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, ROBERTS, &amp; GREEN.<br />
+1865.
+</p>
+</div>
+<hr />
+
+<h2>PREFACE.</h2>
+
+<hr class="title" />
+<p>'<span class="chap">The Superstitions of Witchcraft</span>' is designed
+to exhibit a consecutive review of the characteristic
+forms and facts of a creed which (if at
+present apparently dead, or at least harmless,
+in Christendom) in the seventeenth century
+was a living and lively faith, and caused thousands
+of victims to be sent to the torture-chamber,
+to the stake, and to the scaffold. At
+this day, the remembrance of its superhuman
+art, in its different manifestations, is immortalised
+in the every-day language of the peoples
+of Europe.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">The belief in Witchcraft is, indeed, in its full
+development and most fearful results, modern
+still more than medi&aelig;val, Christian still more
+than Pagan, and Protestant not less than
+Catholic.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii" href="#Page_vii">[vii]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+<hr class="toc" />
+
+<div class="toc">
+<p class="ch">Part I.</p>
+<p class="ch2">CHAPTER I.</p>
+
+   <p class="chapdesc">The Origin, Prevalence, and Variety of Superstition&mdash;The
+    Belief in Witchcraft the most horrid Form of
+    Superstition&mdash;Most flourishing in the Sixteenth and
+    Seventeenth Centuries&mdash;The Sentiments of Addison,
+    Blackstone, and the Lawyers of the Eighteenth Century
+    upon the Subject&mdash;Chaldean and Persian Magic&mdash;Jewish
+    Witchcraft&mdash;Its important Influence on Christian and
+    Modern Belief&mdash;Greek Pharmacy and Sorcery&mdash;Early Roman
+    Laws against Conjuration and Magic Charms&mdash;Crimes
+    perpetrated, under the Empire, in connection with
+    Sorceric Practices&mdash;The general Persecution for Magic
+    under Valentinian and Valens&mdash;German and Scandinavian
+    Sag&aelig;&mdash;Essential Difference between Eastern and Western
+    Sorcery&mdash;The probable Origin of the general Belief in an
+    Evil <span class="chapword">Principle</span>     <span class="chappg"><a href="#Page_3" class="smcap">page 3</a></span></p>
+
+    <hr class="tb" />
+
+<p class="ch">PART II.</p>
+<p class="ch2">CHAPTER I.</p>
+    <p class="chapdesc">Compromise between the New and the Old Faiths&mdash;Witchcraft
+    under the Early Church&mdash;The Sentiments of the Fathers and the
+    Decrees of Councils&mdash;Platonic Influences&mdash;Historical, Physiological,
+    and Accidental Causes of the Attribution of Witchcraft to
+    the Female Sex&mdash;Opinions of the Fathers and other Writers&mdash;The
+    <span class="chapword">Witch-Compact</span> <span class="chappg"><a href="#Page_47">47</a></span></p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii" href="#Page_viii">[viii]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="toc">
+<p class="ch2">CHAPTER II.</p>
+    <p class="chapdesc">Charlemagne's Severity&mdash;Anglo-Saxon Superstition&mdash;Norman and
+    Arabic Magic&mdash;Influence of Arabic Science&mdash;Mohammedan Belief
+    in Magic&mdash;Rabbinical Learning&mdash;Roger Bacon&mdash;The Persecution
+    of the Templars&mdash;Alice <span class="chapword">Kyteler</span> <span class="chappg"><a href="#Page_63">63</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="ch2">CHAPTER III.</p>
+    <p class="chapdesc">Witchcraft and Heresy purposely confounded by the Church&mdash;Medi&aelig;val
+    Science closely connected with Magic and Sorcery&mdash;Ignorance
+    of Physiology the Cause of many of the Popular Prejudices&mdash;Jeanne
+    d'Arc&mdash;Duchess of Gloucester&mdash;Jane Shore&mdash;Persecution
+    at <span class="chapword">Arras</span> <span class="chappg"><a href="#Page_84">84</a></span></p>
+    <hr class="tb" />
+
+<p class="ch">PART III.</p>
+<p class="ch2">CHAPTER I.</p>
+    <p class="chapdesc">The Bull of Innocent VIII.&mdash;A new Incentive to the vigorous Prosecution
+    of Witchcraft&mdash;The 'Malleus Maleficarum'&mdash;Its Criminal
+    Code&mdash;Numerous Executions at the Commencement of the Sixteenth
+    Century&mdash;Examination of Christian Demonology&mdash;Various
+    Opinions of the Nature of Demons&mdash;General Belief in the Intercourse
+    of Demons and other non-human Beings with <span class="chapword">Mankind</span> <span class="chappg"><a href="#Page_101">101</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="ch2">CHAPTER II.</p>
+    <p class="chapdesc">Three Sorts of Witches&mdash;Various Modes of Witchcraft&mdash;Manner of
+    Witch-Travelling&mdash;The Sabbaths&mdash;Anathemas of the Popes against
+    the Crime&mdash;Bull of Adrian VI.&mdash;Cotemporary Testimony to the
+    Severity of the Persecutions&mdash;Necessary Triumph of the Orthodox
+    Party&mdash;Germany most subject to the Superstition&mdash;Acts of Parliament
+    of Henry VIII. against Witchcraft&mdash;Elizabeth Barton&mdash;The
+    Act of 1562&mdash;Executions under Queen Elizabeth's Government&mdash;Case
+    of Witchcraft narrated by Reginald <span class="chapword">Scot</span> <span class="chappg"><a href="#Page_126">126</a></span></p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix" href="#Page_ix">[ix]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="toc">
+<p class="ch2">CHAPTER III.</p>
+    <p class="chapdesc">The 'Discoverie of Witchcraft,' published 1584&mdash;Wier's 'De Pr&aelig;stigiis
+    D&aelig;monum,' &amp;c.&mdash;Naud&eacute;&mdash;Jean Bodin&mdash;His 'De la D&eacute;monomanie
+    des Sorciers,' published at Paris, 1580&mdash;His Authority&mdash;Nider&mdash;Witch-case
+    at Warboys&mdash;Evidence adduced at the Trial&mdash;Remarkable
+    as being the Origin of the Institution of an Annual
+    Sermon at <span class="chapword">Huntingdon</span> <span class="chappg"><a href="#Page_144">144</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="ch2">CHAPTER IV.</p>
+    <p class="chapdesc">Astrology in Antiquity&mdash;Modern Astrology and Alchymy&mdash;Torralvo&mdash;Adventures
+    of Dr. Dee and Edward Kelly&mdash;Prospero and Comus,
+    Types respectively of the Theurgic and Goetic Arts&mdash;Magicians
+    on the Stage in the Sixteenth Century&mdash;Occult Science in Southern
+    Europe&mdash;Causes of the inevitable Mistakes of the pre-Scientific
+    <span class="chapword">Ages</span> <span class="chappg"><a href="#Page_157">157</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="ch2">CHAPTER V.</p>
+    <p class="chapdesc">Sorcery in Southern Europe&mdash;Cause of the Retention of the Demonological
+    Creed among the Protestant Sects&mdash;Calvinists the most
+    Fanatical of the Reformed Churches&mdash;Witch-Creed sanctioned in
+    the Authorised Version of the Sacred Scriptures&mdash;The Witch-Act
+    of 1604&mdash;James VI.'s 'Demonologie'&mdash;Lycanthropy and Executions
+    in France&mdash;The French Provincial Parliaments active in
+    passing Laws against the various Witch-practices&mdash;Witchcraft in
+    the Pyrenees&mdash;Commission of Inquiry appointed&mdash;Its Results&mdash;Demonology
+    in <span class="chapword">Spain</span> <span class="chappg"><a href="#Page_168">168</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="ch2">CHAPTER VI.</p>
+    <p class="chapdesc">'Possession' in France in the Seventeenth Century&mdash;Urbain Grandier
+    and the Convent of Loudun&mdash;Exorcism at Aix&mdash;Ecstatic
+    Phenomena&mdash;Madeleine Bavent&mdash;Her cruel Persecution&mdash;Catholic
+    and Protestant Witchcraft in Germany&mdash;Luther's Demonological
+    Fears and Experiences&mdash;Originated in his exceptional Position
+    and in the extraordinary Circumstances of his Life and Times&mdash;Witch-burning
+    at Bamburg and at <span class="chapword">W&uuml;rzburg</span> <span class="chappg"><a href="#Page_186">186</a></span></p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x" href="#Page_x">[x]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="toc">
+<p class="ch2">CHAPTER VII.</p>
+    <p class="chapdesc">Scotland one of the most Superstitious Countries in Europe&mdash;Scott's
+    Relation of the Barbarities perpetrated in the Witch-trials under
+    the Auspices of James VI.&mdash;The Fate of Agnes Sampson, Euphane
+    MacCalzean, &amp;c.&mdash;Irrational Conduct of the Courts of Justice&mdash;Causes
+    of Voluntary Witch-Confessions&mdash;Testimony of Sir G.
+    Mackenzie, &amp;c.&mdash;Trial and Execution of Margaret Barclay&mdash;Computation
+    of the Number of Witches who suffered Death in England
+    and Scotland in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries&mdash;Witches
+    burned alive at Edinburgh in 1608&mdash;The Lancashire Witches&mdash;Sir
+    Thomas Overbury and Dr. Forman&mdash;Margaret Flower and
+    Lord <span class="chapword">Rosse</span> <span class="chappg"><a href="#Page_203">203</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="ch2">CHAPTER VIII.</p>
+    <p class="chapdesc">The Literature of Europe in the Seventeenth Century proves the
+    Universality and Horror of Witchcraft&mdash;The most acute and most
+    liberal Men of Learning convinced of its Reality&mdash;Erasmus and
+    Francis Bacon&mdash;Lawyers prejudiced by Legislation&mdash;Matthew
+    Hale's judicial Assertion&mdash;Sir Thomas Browne's Testimony&mdash;John
+    Selden&mdash;The English Church least Ferocious of the Protestant
+    Sects&mdash;Jewell and Hooker&mdash;Independent Tolerance&mdash;Witchcraft
+    under the Presbyterian Government&mdash;Matthew Hopkins&mdash;Gaule's
+    'Select Cases of Conscience'&mdash;Judicial and Popular
+    Methods of Witch-discovery&mdash;Preventive Charms&mdash;Witchfinders a
+    Legal and Numerous Class in England and Scotland&mdash;Remission
+    in the Severity of the Persecution under the <span class="chapword">Protectorship</span> <span class="chappg"><a href="#Page_219">219</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="ch2">CHAPTER IX.</p>
+    <p class="chapdesc">Glanvil's Sadducismus Triumphatus&mdash;His Sentiments on Witchcraft
+    and Demonology&mdash;Baxter's 'Certainty of the World of Spirits,'
+    &amp;c.&mdash;Witch Trial at Bury St. Edmund's by Sir Matthew Hale,
+    1664&mdash;The Evidence adduced in Court&mdash;Two Witches hanged&mdash;Three
+    hanged at Exeter in 1682&mdash;The last Witches judicially executed
+    in England&mdash;Uniformity of the Evidence adduced at the
+    Trials&mdash;Webster's Attack upon the Witch-creed in 1677&mdash;Witch
+    Trials in England at the end of the Seventeenth Century&mdash;French
+    Parliaments vindicate the Diabolic Reality of the Crime&mdash;Witchcraft
+    in <span class="chapword">Sweden</span> <span class="chappg"><a href="#Page_237">237</a></span></p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi" href="#Page_xi">[xi]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="toc">
+<p class="ch2">CHAPTER X.</p>
+    <p class="chapdesc">Witchcraft in the English Colonies in North America&mdash;Puritan Intolerance
+    and Superstition&mdash;Cotton Mather's 'Late Memorable Providences'&mdash;Demoniacal
+    Possession&mdash;Evidence given before the
+    Commission&mdash;Apologies issued by Authority&mdash;Sudden Termination
+    of the Proceedings&mdash;Reactionary Feeling against the Agitators&mdash;The
+    Salem Witchcraft the last Instance of Judicial Prosecution
+    on a large Scale in Christendom&mdash;Philosophers begin to expose
+    the Superstition&mdash;Meritorious Labours of Webster, Becker, and
+    others&mdash;Their Arguments could reach only the Educated and
+    Wealthy Classes of Society&mdash;These only partially enfranchised&mdash;The
+    Superstition continues to prevail among the Vulgar&mdash;Repeal
+    of the Witch Act in England in 1736&mdash;Judicial and Popular Persecutions
+    in England in the Eighteenth Century&mdash;Trial of Jane
+    Wenham in England in 1712&mdash;Maria Renata burned in Germany
+    in 1749&mdash;La Cadi&egrave;re in France&mdash;Last Witch burned in Scotland
+    in 1722&mdash;Recent Cases of Witchcraft&mdash;Protestant Superstition&mdash;Witchcraft
+    in the Extra-Christian <span class="chapword">World</span> <span class="chappg"><a href="#Page_259">259</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<div class="pad"><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1" href="#Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+<p class="fm14">PART I.</p>
+
+<h2>EARLIER FAITH.</h2><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2" href="#Page_2">[2]</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3" href="#Page_3">[3]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The Origin, Prevalence, and Variety of Superstition&mdash;The
+Belief in Witchcraft the most horrid Form of Superstition&mdash;Most
+flourishing in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries&mdash;The
+Sentiments of Addison, Blackstone, and the Lawyers of the
+Eighteenth Century upon the Subject&mdash;Chaldean and Persian
+Magic&mdash;Jewish Witchcraft&mdash;Its important Influence on Christian
+and Modern Belief&mdash;Greek Pharmacy and Sorcery&mdash;Early
+Roman Laws against Conjuration and Magic Charms&mdash;Crimes
+perpetrated, under the Empire, in connection with Sorceric
+Practices&mdash;The general Persecution for Magic under Valentinian
+and Valens&mdash;German and Scandinavian Sag&aelig;&mdash;The probable
+Origin of the general Belief in an Evil Principle.</p></div>
+
+
+<p><span class="chap">Superstition</span>, the product of ignorance of causes, of
+the proneness to seek the solution of phenomena out
+of and beyond nature, and of the consequent natural
+but unreasoning dread of the Unknown and Invisible
+(ignorantly termed the supernatural), is at once universal
+in the extent, and various in the kinds, of its
+despotism. Experience and reason seem to prove that,
+inherent to and apparently coexistent with the human
+mind, it naturally originates in the constitution of
+humanity: in ignorance and uncertainty, in an instinctive
+doubt and fear of the <i>Unknown</i>. Accident may
+moderate its power among particular peoples and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4" href="#Page_4">[4]</a></span>
+persons; and there are always exceptional minds
+whose natural temper and exercise of reason are able
+to free them from the servitude of a delusive imagination.
+For the mass of mankind, the germ of superstition,
+prepared to assume always a new shape
+and sometimes fresh vigour, is indestructible. The
+severest assaults are ineffectual to eradicate it:
+hydra-like, far from being destroyed by a seeming
+mortal stroke, it often raises its many-headed form
+with redoubled force.</p>
+
+<p>It will appear more philosophic to deplore the
+imperfection, than to deride the folly of human
+nature, when the fact that the superstitious sentiment
+is not only a result of mere barbarism or vulgar
+ignorance, to be expelled of course by civilisation
+and knowledge, but is indigenous in the life of every
+man, barbarous or civilised, pagan or Christian, is
+fully recognised. The enlightening influence of
+science, as far as it extends, is irresistible; and its
+progress within certain limits seems sure and almost
+omnipotent. But it is unfortunately limited in the
+extent of its influence, as well as uncertain in duration;
+while reason enjoys a feeble reign compared
+with ignorance and imagination.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">1</a> If it is the great
+office of history to teach by experience, it is never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5" href="#Page_5">[5]</a></span>
+useless to examine the causes and the facts of a mischievous
+creed that has its roots deep in the ignorant
+fears of mankind; but against the recurrence of the
+fatal effects of fanaticism apparent in the earliest
+and latest records of the world, there can be no sufficient
+security.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">1</span></a> That 'speculation has on every subject of human enquiry three
+successive stages; in the first of which it tends to explain the phenomena
+by supernatural agencies, in the second by metaphysical
+abstractions, and in the third or final state, confines itself to ascertaining
+their laws of succession and similitude' (<i>System of Logic</i>, by J. S. Mill), is a generalisation of Positive Philosophy, and a theory
+of the Science of History, consistent probably with the progress of
+knowledge among philosophers, but is scarcely applicable to the mass
+of mankind.</p></div>
+
+<p>Dreams, magic terrors, miracles, witches, ghosts,
+portents, are some of the various forms superstition
+has invented and magnified to disturb the peace of
+society as well as of individuals. The most extravagant
+of these need not be sought in the remoter ages
+of the human race, or even in the 'dark ages' of
+European history: they are sufficiently evident in
+the legislation and theology, as well as in the popular
+prejudices of the seventeenth century.</p>
+
+<p>The belief in the <i>infernal</i> art of witchcraft is perhaps
+the most horrid, as it certainly is the most
+absurd, phenomenon in the religious history of the
+world. Of the millions of victims sacrificed on the
+altars of religion this particular delusion can claim a
+considerable proportion. By a moderate computation,
+nine millions have been burned or hanged since the
+establishment of Christianity.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">2</a> Prechristian antiquity
+experienced its tremendous power, and the primitive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6" href="#Page_6">[6]</a></span>
+faith of Christianity easily accepted and soon developed
+it. It was reserved, however, for the triumphant
+Church to display it in its greatest horrors:
+and if we deplore the too credulous or accommodative
+faith of the early militant Church or the unilluminated
+ignorance of paganism, we may still more
+indignantly denounce the cruel policy of Catholicism
+and the barbarous folly of Protestant theology which
+could deliberately punish an impossible crime. It is
+the reproach of Protestantism that this persecution
+was most furiously raging in the age that produced
+Newton and Locke. Compared with its atrocities
+even the Marian burnings appear as nothing: and
+it may well be doubted whether the fanatic zeal of
+the 'bloody Queen,' is no less contemptible than the
+credulous barbarity of the judges of the seventeenth
+century. The period 1484 (the year in which Innocent
+VIII. published his famous 'Witch Hammer'
+signally ratified 120 years later by the Act of Parliament
+of James I. of England) to 1680 might be
+characterised not improperly as the era of devil-worship;
+and we are tempted almost to embrace the
+theory of Zerdusht and the Magi and conceive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7" href="#Page_7">[7]</a></span>
+that Ahriman was then superior in the eternal strife;
+to imagine the <i>Evil One</i>, as in the days of the Man
+of Uz, 'going to and fro in the earth, and walking up
+and down in it.' It is come to that at the present
+day, according to a more rational observer of the
+seventeenth century, that it is regarded as a part of
+religion to ascribe great wonders to the devil; and
+those are taxed with infidelity and perverseness who
+hesitate to believe what thousands relate concerning
+his power. Whoever does not do so is accounted an
+atheist because he cannot persuade himself that there
+are two Gods, the one good and the other evil<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">3</a>&mdash;an
+assertion which is no mere hyperbole or exaggeration
+of a truth: there is the certain evidence of facts as
+well as the concurrent testimony of various writers.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">2</span></a> According to Dr. Sprenger (<i>Life of Mohammed</i>). Cicero's observation that there was no people either so civilised or learned, or so
+savage and barbarous, that had not a belief that the future may be
+predicted by certain persons (De Divinatione, i.), is justified by the
+faith of Christendom, as well as by that of paganism; and is as
+true of witchcraft as it is of prophecy or divination.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">3</span></a> Dr. Balthazar Becker, Amsterdam, 1691, quoted in Mosheim's
+<i>Institutes of Ecclesiastical History</i>, ed. Reid.</p></div>
+
+<p>Those (comparatively few) whose reason and humanity
+alike revolted from a horrible dogma, loudly
+proclaim the prevailing prejudice. Such protests,
+however, were, for a long time at least, feeble and
+useless&mdash;helplessly overwhelmed by the irresistible
+torrent of public opinion. All classes of society were
+almost equally infected by a plague-spot that knew
+no distinction of class or rank. If theologians (like
+Bishop Jewell, one of the most esteemed divines in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8" href="#Page_8">[8]</a></span>
+the Anglican Church, publicly asserting on a well
+known occasion at once his faith and his fears) or
+lawyers (like Sir Edward Coke and Judge Hale) are
+found unmistakably recording their undoubting
+conviction, they were bound, it is plain, the one class
+by theology, the other by legislation. Credulity of
+so extraordinary a kind is sufficiently surprising even
+in theologians; but what is to be thought of the deliberate
+opinion of unbiassed writers of a recent age
+maintaining the possibility, if not the actual occurrence,
+of the facts of the belief?</p>
+
+<p>The deliberate judgment of Addison, whose wit
+and preeminent graces of style were especially devoted
+to the extirpation of almost every sort of
+popular folly of the day, could declare: 'When I
+hear the relations that are made from all parts of
+the world, not only from Norway and Lapland, from
+the East and West Indies, but from every particular
+nation in Europe, I cannot forbear thinking that
+there is such an intercourse and commerce with evil
+spirits as that which we express by the name of
+witchcraft.... In short, when I consider the question
+whether there are such persons in the world as
+those we call witches, my mind is divided between
+two opposite opinions; or rather, to speak my
+thoughts freely, I believe in general that there is
+and has been such a thing as witchcraft, but at the
+same time can give no credit to any particular<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9" href="#Page_9">[9]</a></span>
+modern instance of it.'<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">4</a> Evidence, if additional
+were wanted, how deference to authority and universal
+custom may subdue the reason and understanding.
+The language and decision of Addison
+are adopted by Sir W. Blackstone in 'Commentaries
+on the Laws of England,' who shelters himself behind
+that celebrated author's sentiment; and Gibbon
+informs us that 'French and English lawyers of the
+present age [the latter half of the last century]
+allow the <i>theory</i> but deny the <i>practice</i> of witchcraft'&mdash;influenced
+doubtless by the spirit of the past
+legislation of their respective countries. In England
+the famous enactment of the subservient parliament
+of James I. against the crimes of sorcery,
+&amp;c., was repealed in the middle of the reign of
+George II., our laws sanctioning not 130 years since
+the popular persecution, if not the legal punishment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10" href="#Page_10">[10]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">4</span></a> <i>Spectator</i>, No. 117. The sentiments of Addison on a kindred
+subject are very similar. Writing about the vulgar ghost creed, he
+adds these remarkable words: 'At the same time I think a person
+who is thus terrified with the imagination of ghosts and spectres much
+more reasonable than one who, contrary to the reports of all historians,
+sacred and profane, ancient and modern, and to the traditions
+of all nations, thinks the appearance of spirits fabulous and groundless.
+Could not I give myself up to the general testimony of mankind,
+I should to the relations of particular persons who are now living,
+and whom I cannot distrust in other matters of fact.' Samuel Johnson
+(whose prejudices were equalled only by his range of knowledge)
+proved his faith in a well-known case, if afterwards he advanced so
+far as to consider the question as to the reality of 'ghosts' as <i>undecided</i>.
+Sir W. Scott, who wrote when the profound metaphysical
+inquiries of Hume had gained ground (it is observable), is quite
+sceptical.</p></div>
+
+<p>The origin of witchcraft and the vulgar diabolism
+is to be found in the rude beginnings of the religious
+or superstitious feeling which, known amongst the
+present savage nations as Fetishism, probably prevailed
+almost universally in the earliest ages; while
+that of the sublimer magic is discovered in the religious
+systems of the ancient Chaldeans and Persians.
+Chaldea and Egypt were the first, as far as is known,
+to cultivate the science of magic: the former people
+long gave the well-known name to the professional
+practisers of the art. Cicero (<i>de Divinatione</i>) celebrates,
+and the Jewish prophets frequently deride,
+their skill in divination and their modes of incantation.
+The story of Daniel evidences how highly
+honoured and lucrative was the magical or divining
+faculty. The Chazdim, or Chaldeans, a priestly
+caste inhabiting a wide and level country, must have
+soon applied themselves to the study, so useful to
+their interests, of their brilliant expanse of heavens.
+By a prolonged and 'daily observation,' considerable
+knowledge must have been attained; but in the infancy
+of the science astronomy necessarily took the
+form of an empirical art which, under the name of
+astrology, engaged the serious attention and perplexed
+the brains of the medi&aelig;val students of science
+or magic (nearly synonymous terms), and which still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11" href="#Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+survives in England in the popular almanacks. The
+natural objects of veneration to the inhabitants of
+Assyria were the glorious luminaries of the sun and
+moon; and if their worship of the stars and planets
+degenerated into many absurd fancies, believing an
+intimate connection and subordination of human
+destiny to celestial influences, it may be admitted
+that a religious sentiment of this kind in its primitive
+simplicity was more rational, or at least sublime,
+than most other religious systems.</p>
+
+<p>It is not necessary to trace the oriental creeds of
+magic further than they affected modern beliefs; but
+in the divinities and genii of Persia are more immediately
+traced the spiritual existences of Jewish and
+Christian belief. From the Persian priests are derived
+both the name and the practice of magic. The
+Evil Principle of the Magian, of the later Jewish,
+and thence of the western world, originated in the
+system (claiming Zoroaster as its founder), which
+taught a duality of Gods. The philosophic lawgiver,
+unable to penetrate the mystery of the empire of
+evil and misery in the world, was convinced that
+there is an equal and antagonistic power to the representative
+of light and goodness. Hence the continued
+eternal contention between Ormuzd with the
+good spirits or genii, Amchaspands, on one side, and
+Ahriman with the Devs (who may represent the infernal
+crew of Christendom) on the other. Egypt,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12" href="#Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+in the Mosaic and Homeric ages, seems to have
+attained considerable skill in magic, as well as in
+chymistry and astrology. As an abstruse and esoteric
+doctrine, it was strictly confined to the priests, or to
+the favoured few who were admitted to initiation.
+The magic excellence of the magicians, who successfully
+emulated the miracles of Moses, was apparently
+assisted by a legerdemain similar to that of the
+Hindu jugglers of the present day.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">5</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">5</span></a> The names of two of these magicians, Jannes and Jambres, have
+been preserved by revelation or tradition.</p></div>
+
+<p>In Persian theology, the shadowy idea of the devil
+of western Asia was wholly different from the grosser
+conception of Christendom. Neither the evil principle
+of Magianism nor the witch of Palestine has
+much in common with the Christian. 'No contract
+of subjection to a diabolic power, no infernal stamp
+or sign of such a fatal league, no revellings of Satan
+and his hags,'<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">6</a> no such materialistic notions could be
+conformable to the spirit of Judaism or at least of
+Magianism. It is not difficult to find the cause
+of this essential dissimilarity. A simple unity was
+severely inculcated by the religion and laws of Moses,
+which permitted little exercise of the imagination:
+while the Magi were equally severe against idolatrous
+forms. A monstrous idea, like that of 'Satan and
+his hags,' was impossible to them. Christianity, the
+religion of the West, has received its <i>corporeal</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13" href="#Page_13">[13]</a></span>
+ideas of demonology from the divinities and demons
+of heathenism. The Satyri and Fauni of
+Greece and Rome have suggested in part the form,
+and perhaps some of the characteristics, of the vulgar
+Christian devil. A knowledge of the arts of magic
+among the Jews was probably derived from their
+Egyptian life, while the Bedouins of Arabia and Syria
+(kindred peoples) may have instilled the less scientific
+rites of Fetishism. It is in the early accounts of that
+people that sorcery, whatever its character and profession,
+with the allied arts of divination, necromancy,
+incantations, &amp;c., appears most flourishing. The
+Mosaic penalty, 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,'
+and the comprehensive injunction, 'There shall not
+be found among you that maketh his son or his
+daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination,
+or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a
+witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar
+spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer,' indicate at
+once the extent and the horror of the practice.
+Balaam (that equivocal prophet), on the border-land
+of Arabia and Palestine, was courted and dreaded as
+a wizard who could perplex whole armies by means
+of spells. His fame extended far and wide; he was
+summoned from his home beyond the Euphrates in
+the mountains of Mesopotamia by the Syrian tribes
+to repel the invading enemy. This great magician
+was, it seems, universally regarded as 'the rival and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14" href="#Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+the possible conqueror of Moses.'<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">7</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">6</span></a> Sir W. Scott, <i>Letters on Demonology</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">7</span></a> Dean Stanley's <i>Lectures on the Jewish Church</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p>About the time when the priestly caste had to
+yield to a profane monarchy, the forbidden practices
+were so notorious and the evil was of such magnitude,
+that the newly-elected prince 'ejected' (as Josephus
+relates) 'the fortune-tellers, necromancers, and all
+such as exercised the like arts.' His interview with
+the witch has some resemblance to modern <i>diablerie</i>
+in the circumstances. Reginald Scot's rationalistic
+interpretation of this scene may be recommended to
+the commentating critics who have been so much at
+a loss to explain it. He derides the received opinion
+of the woman of Endor being an agent of the devil,
+and ignoring any mystery, believes, 'This Pythonist
+being a <i>ventriloqua</i>, that is, speaking as it were from
+the bottom of her belly, did cast herself into a trance
+and so abused Saul, answering to Saul in Samuel's
+name in her counterfeit hollow voice.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">8</a> An institution
+very popular with the Jews of the first temple, often
+commemorated in their scriptures&mdash;the schools of the
+prophets&mdash;was (it is not improbable) of the same kind
+as the schools of Salamanca and Salerno in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15" href="#Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+middle ages, where magic was publicly taught as an
+abstruse and useful science; and when Jehu justifies
+his conduct towards the queen-mother by bringing a
+charge of witchcraft, he only anticipates an expedient
+common and successful in Europe in the sixteenth and
+seventeenth centuries. A Jewish prophet asserts of
+the Babylonian kings, that they were diligent cultivators
+of the arts, reproaching them with practising
+against the holy city.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">8</span></a> <i>Discoverie of Witchcraft</i>, lib. viii. chap. 12. The contrivance of
+this illusion was possibly like that at Delphi, where in the centre of
+the temple was a chasm, from which arose an intoxicating smoke,
+when the priestess was to announce divine revelations. Seated over
+the chasm upon the tripod, the Pythia was inspired, it seems, by the
+soporific and maddening drugs.</p></div>
+
+<p>Yet if we may credit the national historian (not
+to mention the common traditions), the Chaldean
+monarch might have justly envied, if he could scarcely
+hope to emulate, the excellence of a former prince
+of his now obscure province. Josephus says of
+Solomon that, amongst other attainments, 'God
+enabled him to learn that skill which expels
+demons, which is a science useful and sanative to
+men. He composed such incantations also by which
+distempers are alleviated, and he left behind him
+the manner of using exorcisms by which they drive
+away demons so that they never return.'<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">9</a> The
+story of Daniel is well known. In the captivity
+of the two tribes carried away into an honourable servitude
+he soon rose into the highest favour, because,
+as we are informed, he excelled in a divination that
+surpassed all the art of the Chaldeans, themselves
+so famous for it. The inspired Jew had divined a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16" href="#Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+dream or vision which puzzled 'the magicians, and
+the astrologers, and the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans,'
+and immediately was rewarded with the greatest gift
+at the disposal of a capricious despot. Most of the
+apologetic writers on witchcraft, in particular the
+authors of the 'Malleus Maleficarum,' accept the assertion
+of the author of the history of Daniel that Nebuchadnezzar
+was 'driven from men, and did eat grass
+as oxen,' in its apparent sense, expounding it as
+plainly declaring that he was corporeally metamorphosed
+into an ox, just as the companions of Ulysses
+were transformed into swine by the Circean sorceries.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">9</span></a> <i>Antiquities</i>, book viii. 2. Whiston's transl.</p></div>
+
+<p>The Jewish ideas of good or at least evil spirits or
+angels were acquired during their forced residence
+in Babylon, whether under Assyrian or Persian
+government. At least 'Satan' is first discovered
+unmistakably in a personal form in the poem of
+Job, a work pronounced by critics to have been
+composed after the restoration. In the Mosaic
+cosmogony and legislation, the writer introduces not,
+expressly or impliedly, the existence of an evil
+principle, unless the serpent of the Paradisaic account,
+which has been rather arbitrarily so metamorphosed,
+represents it;<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">10</a> while the expressions in
+books vulgarly reputed before the conquest are at
+least doubtful. From this time forward (from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17" href="#Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+fifth century <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>), says a German demonologist, as
+the Jews lived among the admirers of Zoroaster, and
+thus became acquainted with their doctrines, are
+found, partly in contradiction to the earlier views of
+their religion, many tenets prevailing amongst them
+the origin of which it is impossible to explain except
+by the operation of the doctrines of Zoroaster: to
+these belongs the general acceptance of the theory
+of Satan, as well as of good and bad angels.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">11</a> Under
+Roman government or vassalage, sorceric practices,
+as they appear in the Christian scriptures, were
+much in vogue. Devils or demons, and the 'prince
+of the devils,' frequently appear; and the <i>demoniacs</i>
+may represent the victims of witchcraft.
+The Talmud, if there is any truth in the assertions
+of the apologists of witchcraft, commemorates many
+of the most virtuous Jews accused of the crime and
+executed by the procurator of Judea.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">12</a> Exorcism
+was a very popular and lucrative profession.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18" href="#Page_18">[18]</a></span><a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">13</a> Simon
+Magus the magician (<i>par excellence</i>), the impious
+pretender to miraculous powers, who 'bewitched the
+people of Samaria by his sorceries,' is celebrated by
+Eusebius and succeeding Christian writers as the
+fruitful parent of heresy and sorcery.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">10</span></a> Some ingenious remarks on the subject of the serpent, &amp;c., may
+be found in <i>Eastern Life</i>, part ii. 5, by H. Martineau.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">11</span></a> Horst, quoted in Ennemoser's <i>History of Magic</i>. It has been
+often remarked as a singular phenomenon, that the 'chosen people,'
+so prompt in earlier periods on every occasion to idolatry and its
+cruel rites, after its restoration under Persian auspices, has been ever
+since uniformly opposed, even fiercely, to any sign contrary to the
+unity of the Deity. But the Magian system was equally averse to
+idolatry.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">12</span></a> Bishop Jewell (<i>Apology for the Church of England</i>) states that
+Christ was accused by the malice of his countrymen of being a juggler
+and wizard&mdash;<i>pr&aelig;stigiator et maleficus</i>. In the apostolic narrative and
+epistles, sorcery, witchcraft, &amp;c., are crimes frequently described and
+denounced. The Sadducean sect alone denied the existence of demons.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">13</span></a> The common belief of the people of Palestine in the transcendent
+power of exorcism is illustrated by a miracle of this sort, gravely
+related by Josephus. It was exhibited before Vespasian and his
+army. 'He [Eleazar, one of the professional class] put a ring that had
+a root of one of those sorts mentioned by Solomon to the nostrils of
+the demoniac; after which he drew out the demon through his
+nostrils: and when the man fell down immediately he adjured him
+to return into him no more, making still mention of Solomon, and
+reciting the incantations which he composed. And when Eleazar
+would demonstrate to the spectators that he had such power, he set
+a little way off a cup or basin full of water, and commanded the
+demon as he went out of the man to overturn it, and thereby to let
+the spectators know he had left the man.' This performance was
+received with contempt or credulity by the spectators according to
+their faith: but the credulity of the believers could hardly exceed
+that of a large number of educated people, who in our own generation
+detect in the miracles of animal magnetism, or the legerdemain of
+jugglers, an infernal or supernatural agency.</p></div>
+
+<p>That witchcraft, or whatever term expresses the
+criminal practice, prevailed among the worshippers
+of Jehovah, is evident from the repeated anathemas
+both in their own and the Christian scriptures, not
+to speak of traditional legends; but the Hebrew and
+Greek expressions seem both to include at least the
+use of drugs and perhaps of poison.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">14</a> The Jewish
+creed, as exposed in their scriptures, has deserved a
+fame it would not otherwise have, because upon it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19" href="#Page_19">[19]</a></span>
+have been founded by theologians, Catholic and Protestant,
+the arguments and apology for the reality of
+witchcraft, derived from the sacred writings, with an
+ingenuity only too common and successful in supporting
+peculiar prejudices and interests even of the
+most monstrous kind.<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">15</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">14</span></a> <i>Chashaph</i> and <i>Pharmakeia</i>. Biblical critics are inclined, however,
+to accept in its strict sense the translation of the Jacobian divines.
+'Since in the LXX.,' says Parkhurst, the lexicographer of the N.T.,
+'this noun [pharmakeia] and its relatives always answer to some
+Hebrew word that denotes some kind of their magical or conjuring
+tricks; and since it is too notorious to be insisted upon, that such
+infernal practices have always prevailed, and do still prevail in idolatrous
+countries, I prefer the other sense of incantation.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">15</span></a> A sort of ingenuity much exercised of late by 'sober brows
+approving with a text' the institution of slavery: <i>divine</i>, according to
+them; <i>the greatest evil that afflicts mankind</i>, according to Alexander
+von Humboldt. See <i>Personal Narrative</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p>In examining the phenomenon as it existed among
+the Greeks and Romans, it will be remarked that,
+while the Greeks seem to have mainly adopted the
+ideas of the East, the Roman superstition was of
+Italian origin. Their respective expressions for the
+predictive or presentient faculty (<i>manteia</i> and <i>divinatio</i>),
+as Cicero is careful to explain, appear to
+indicate its different character with those two peoples:
+the one being the product of a sort of madness, the
+other an elaborate and divine skill. Greek traditions
+made them believe that the magic science was brought
+from Egypt or Asia by their old philosophic and
+legislating sages. Some of the most eminent of the
+founders of philosophic schools were popularly accused<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20" href="#Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+of encouraging it. Pythagoras (it is the
+complaint of Plato) is said to have introduced to his
+countrymen an art derived from his foreign travels;
+a charge which recalls the names of Roger Bacon,
+Albertus Magnus, Galileo, and others, who had to pay
+the penalty of a premature knowledge by the suspicion
+of their cotemporaries. Xenophanes is said
+to be the only one of the philosophers who admitted
+the existence or providence of the gods, and at the
+same time entirely discredited divination. Of the
+Stoics, Pan&aelig;tius was the only one who ventured even
+to doubt. Some gave credit to one or two particular
+modes only, as those of dreams and frenzy; but
+for the most part every form of this sort of divine
+revelation was implicitly received.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">16</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">16</span></a> Cicero, in his second book <i>De Divinatione</i>, undertakes to refute
+the arguments of the Stoics, 'the force of whose mind, being all
+turned to the side of morals, unbent itself in that of religion.' The
+divining faculty is divisible generally into the artificial and the
+natural.</p></div>
+
+<p>The science of magic proper is developed in the
+later schools of philosophy, in which Oriental theology
+or demonology was largely mixed. Apollonius of
+Tyana, a modern Pythagorean, is the most famous
+magician of antiquity. This great miracle-worker
+of paganism was born at the commencement of
+the Christian era; and it has been observed that
+his miracles, though quite independent of them,
+curiously coincide both in time and kind with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21" href="#Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+Christian.<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">17</a> According to his biographer Philostratus,
+this extraordinary man (whose travels and researches
+extended, we are assured, over the whole East even
+into India, through Greece, Italy, Spain, northern
+Africa, Ethiopia, &amp;c.) must have been in possession
+of a scientific knowledge which, compared with that
+of his cotemporaries, might be deemed almost supernatural.
+Extraordinary attainments suggested to
+him in later life to excite the awe of the vulgar by
+investing himself with magical powers. Apollonius
+is said to have assisted Vespasian in his struggle for
+the throne of the C&aelig;sars; afterwards, when accused
+of raising an insurrection against Domitian, and
+when he had given himself up voluntarily to the
+imperial tribunal at Rome, he escaped impending
+destruction by the exertion of his superhuman art.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">17</span></a> The proclamation of the birth of Apollonius to his mother by
+Proteus, and the incarnation of Proteus himself, the chorus of swans
+which sang for joy on the occasion, the casting out of devils, raising
+the dead, and healing the sick, the sudden appearances and disappearances
+of Apollonius, his adventures in the cave of Trophonius,
+and the sacred voice which called him at his death, to which may be
+added his claim as a teacher having authority to reform the world,
+'cannot fail to suggest,' says a writer in the <i>Dictionary of Greek and
+Roman Biography</i>, &amp;c., ed. by Dr. W. Smith, 'the parallel passages
+in the Gospel history.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Of the incantations, charms, and magic compounds
+in the practice of Greek witchcraft, numerous examples
+occur in the tragic and comic poetry of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22" href="#Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+Greece; and the <i>philtres</i>, or love-charms, of Theocritus
+are well known. The names of Colchis,
+Chaldea, Assyria, Iberia, Thrace, may indicate the
+origin of a great part of the Hellenic sorceries. Yet,
+if the more honourable science may have been of
+foreign extraction, Hellas was not without something
+of the sorcery of modern Europe. The infernal
+goddess Hecate, of Greek celebrity, is the omnipotent
+patroness of her modern Christian slaves; and she
+presides at the witch meetings of Christendom
+with as much solemnity but with far greater malice.
+Originally of celestial rank, by a later metamorphosis
+connected, if not personally identical with, Persephone,
+the Queen of Hades, Hecate was invested with many
+of the characteristic attributes of a modern devil, or
+rather perhaps of a witch. The triple goddess, in
+her various shapes, wandered about at night with the
+souls of the dead, terrifying the trembling country
+people by apparitions of herself and infernal satellites,
+by the horrible whining and howls of her hellhounds
+which always announced her approach. She
+frequented cross-roads, tombs, and melancholy places,
+especially delighting in localities famous for deeds of
+blood and murder. The hobgoblins, the various malicious
+demons and spirits, who provoked the lively
+terrors of the medi&aelig;val peoples, had some prototypes
+in the fairy-land of Greece, in the Hecatean
+hobgoblins (like the Latin larv&aelig;, &amp;c.), Empusa,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23" href="#Page_23">[23]</a></span>
+Mormo, and other products of an affrighted imagination
+familiar to the students of Greek literature in
+the comic pages of Aristophanes.<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">18</a> From the earliest
+literary records down to the latest times of paganism
+as the state religion, from the times of the Homeric
+Circe and Ulysses (the latter has been recognised by
+many as a genuine wizard) to the age of Apollonius
+or Apuleius, magic and sorcery, as a philosophical
+science or as a vulgar superstition, had apparently
+more or less distinctly a place in the popular
+mythology of old Greece. But in the pagan history
+of neither Greece nor Rome do we read of holocausts
+of victims, as in Christian Europe, immolated on the
+altars of a horrid superstition.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">19</a> The occasion of the
+composition of the treatise by Apuleius 'On Magic' is
+somewhat romantic. On his way to Alexandria, the
+philosopher, being disabled from proceeding on the
+journey, was hospitably received into the mansion of
+one Sicinius Pontianus. Here, during the interesting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24" href="#Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+period of his recovery, he captivated, or was
+captivated by, the love of his host's mother, a wealthy
+widow, and the lovers were soon united by marriage.
+Pudentilla's relatives, indignant at the loss of a
+much-coveted, and perhaps long-expected fortune,
+brought an action against Apuleius for having gained
+her affection by means of spells or charms. The
+cause was heard before the proconsul of Africa,
+and the apology of the accused labours to convince
+his judges that a widow's love might be provoked
+without superhuman means.<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">20</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">18</span></a> Particularly in the <i>Batrachoi</i>. The dread of the infernal apparition
+of the fierce Gorgo in Hades blanched the cheek of even much-daring
+Odysseus (Od. xi. 633). The satellites of Hecate have been
+compared, not disadvantageously, with the monstrous guardians of
+hell; than whom
+</p>
+
+<p class="footpoem">'Nor uglier follow the night-hag when, called<br />
+In secret, riding through the air she comes<br />
+Lured with the smell of infant blood to dance<br />
+With Lapland witches&mdash;.'<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">19</span></a> An exceptional case, on the authority of Demosthenes, is that of
+a woman condemned in the year, or within a year or two, of the execution
+of Socrates.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">20</span></a> St. Augustin, in denouncing the Platonic theories of Apuleius,
+of the mediation and intercession of demons between gods and men,
+and exposing his magic heresies, takes occasion to taunt him with
+having evaded his just fate by not professing, like the Christian
+martyrs, his real faith when delivering his 'very copious and eloquent'
+apology (<i>De Civitate Dei</i>, lib. viii. 19). In the <i>Golden Ass</i> of
+the Greek romancist of the second century, who, in common with his
+cotemporary the great rationalist Lucian, deserves the praise of
+having exposed (with more wit perhaps than success) some of the
+most absurd prejudices of the day, his readers are entertained with
+stories that might pretty nearly represent the sentiments of the
+seventeenth century.</p></div>
+
+<p>Gibbon observes of the Roman superstition on the
+authority of Petronius, that it may be inferred that it
+was of Italian rather than barbaric extraction. Etruria
+furnished the people of Romulus with the science of
+divination. Early in the history of the Republic the
+law is very explicit on the subject of witchcraft. In
+the decemviral code the extreme penalty is attached<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25" href="#Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+to the crime of witchcraft or conjuration: 'Let
+him be capitally punished who shall have bewitched
+the fruits of the earth, or by either kind of conjuration
+(<i>excantando neque incantando</i>) shall have conjured
+away his neighbour's corn into his own field,'
+&amp;c., an enactment sneered at in Justinian's <i>Institutes</i>
+in Seneca's words. A rude and ignorant antiquity,
+repeat the lawyers of Justinian, had believed that rain
+and storms might be attracted or repelled by means
+of spells or charms, the impossibility of which has
+no need to be explained by any school of philosophy.
+A hundred and fifty years later than the legislation
+of the decemvirs was passed the <i>Lex Cornelia</i>,
+usually cited as directed against sorcery: but while
+involving possibly the more shadowy crime, it seems
+to have been levelled against the more 'substantial
+poison.' The conviction and condemnation of 170
+Roman ladies for poisoning, under pretence of incantation,
+was the occasion and cause. Sulla, when dictator,
+revived this act <i>de veneficiis et malis sacrificiis</i>,
+for breach of which the penalty was 'interdiction
+of fire and water.' Senatorial anathemas, or even
+those of the prince, were ineffective to check the
+continually increasing abuses, which towards the end
+of the first century of the empire had reached an
+alarming height.<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">21</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">21</span></a> It will be observed that <i>veneficus and maleficus</i> are the significant
+terms among the Italians for the criminals.</p></div>
+
+<p>A general degradation of morals is often accompanied,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26" href="#Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+it has been justly remarked, by a corresponding
+increase of the wildest credulity, and by an
+abject subservience to external religious rites in propitiation
+of an incensed deity. It was thus at Rome
+when the eloquence of Cicero, and afterwards the
+indignant satire of Juvenal or the calm ridicule of
+the philosophic Lucian,<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">22</a> attempted to assert the
+'proper authority of reason.' To speak the truth,
+says Cicero, superstition has spread like a torrent over
+the entire globe, oppressing the minds and intellects
+of almost all men and seizing upon the weakness of
+human nature.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">23</a> The historian of 'The Decline and
+Fall of the Roman Empire' justifies and illustrates
+this lament of the philosopher of the Republic in the
+particular case of witchcraft. 'The nations and the
+sects of the Roman world admitted with equal credulity
+and similar abhorrence the reality of that
+infernal art which was able to control the eternal
+order of the planets, and the voluntary operations of
+the human mind. They dreaded the mysterious
+power of spells and incantations, of potent herbs and
+execrable rites, which could extinguish or recall life,
+influence the passions of the soul, blast the works of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27" href="#Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+creation, and extort from the reluctant demons the
+secrets of Futurity. They believed with the wildest
+inconsistency that the preternatural dominion of the
+the air, of earth, and of hell, was exercised from the
+vilest motives of malice or gain by some wrinkled
+hags or itinerant sorcerers who passed their obscure
+lives in penury and contempt. Such vain terrors
+disturbed the peace of society and the happiness of
+individuals; and the harmless flame which insensibly
+melted a waxen image might derive a powerful and
+pernicious energy from the affrighted fancy of the
+person whom it was maliciously designed to represent.
+From the infusion of those herbs which were supposed
+to possess a supernatural influence, it was an
+easy step to the case of more substantial poison;
+and the folly of mankind sometimes became the
+instrument and the mask of the most atrocious
+crimes.'<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">24</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">22</span></a> If the philosophical arguments of Menippus (<i>Nekrikoi Dialogoi</i>)
+could have satisfied the interest of the priests or the ignorance of the
+people of after times, the <i>infernal</i> fires of the sixteenth and seventeenth
+centuries might not have burned.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">23</span></a> <i>De Divinatione</i>, lib. ii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">24</span></a> <i>The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</i>, xxv.
+This description applies more to the Christian and later empires.</p></div>
+
+<p>Latin poetry of the Augustan and succeeding period
+abounds with illustrations, and the witches of Horace,
+Ovid, and Lucan are the famous classical types.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">25</a>
+Propertius has characterised the Striga as 'daring
+enough to impose laws upon the moon bewitched by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28" href="#Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+her spells;' while Petronius makes his witch, as potent
+as Strepsiades' Thessalian sorceress, exclaim that the
+very form of the moon herself is compelled to descend
+from her position in the universe at her command. For
+the various compositions and incantations in common
+use, it must be sufficient to refer to the pages of the
+Roman poets. The forms of incantation and horrid
+rites of the Horatian Sagana Canidia (<i>Epod.</i> v. and
+<i>Sat.</i> i. 8), or the scenes described by the pompous
+verses of the poet of the civil war (<i>De Bello Civili</i>,
+vi.), where all nature is subservient, are of a similar
+kind, but more familiar, in the dramatic writings
+of the Elizabethan age. The darker characteristics
+of the practice, however, are presented in the burning
+declamations of Juvenal, only too faithfully exhibiting
+the unnatural atrocities perpetrated in the form
+and under the disguise of love-potions and charms.
+Roman ladies in fact acquired considerable proficiency,
+worthy of a Borgia or Brinvilliers, in the art of
+poisoning and in the use of drugs. The reputed
+witch, both in ancient and modern times, very
+often belonged, like the Ovidian Dipsas, to the real
+and detestable class of panders: wrinkled hags were
+experienced in the arts of seduction, as well as in the
+employment of poison and drugs more familiar
+to the wealthier class (<i>Sat.</i> vi.). The great Satirist
+wrote in the latter half of the first century of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29" href="#Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+Christianity; but even in the Augustan period such
+crimes were prevalent enough to make Ovid enumerate
+them among the universal evils introduced by the
+Iron age (<i>Metamorphoses</i>, i.). The despotic will of
+the princes themselves was exerted in vain; the mischief
+was too deep-rooted to succumb even to the
+decrees of the masters of the world. Nor did the
+<i>divi</i> themselves disdain to be initiated in the infernal
+or celestial science. Nigidius Figulus and the
+two Thrasylli are magical or mathematical names
+closely connected with the destinies of the two first
+imperial princes. Nigidius predicted, and perhaps
+promoted, the future elevation of Octavianus; and
+the elder Thrasyllus, the famous Rhodian astrologer,
+skilfully identified his fate with the life of his credulous
+dupe but tyrannical pupil. Thrasyllus' art is
+stated to have been of service in preventing the superstitious
+tyrant from executing several intended victims
+of his hatred or caprice, by making <i>their</i> safety the
+condition of <i>his</i> existence. The historian of the early
+empire tells of the incantations which could 'affect
+the mind and increase the disease' of Germanicus,
+Tiberius' nephew. 'There were discovered,' says
+Tacitus, 'dug up from the ground and out of the walls
+of the house, the remains of human corpses, charms
+and spells, and the name of Germanicus inscribed
+on leaden tablets, ashes half consumed covered with
+decaying matter, and other practices by which it is
+believed that souls are devoted to the deities of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30" href="#Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+hell.'<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">26</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">25</span></a> 'The Canidia of Horace,' Gibbon pronounces, 'is a vulgar witch.
+The Erichtho of Lucan is tedious, disgusting, but sometimes sublime.'
+The love-charms of Canidia and Medea are chiefly indebted to the
+<i>Pharmakeutria</i> of Theocritus.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">26</span></a> <i>Annales</i>, ii. 69. Writing of the mathematicians and astrologers
+in the time of Galba, who urged the governor of Lusitania on the
+perilous path to the supreme dignity, the historian characterises
+them truly, in his inimitable language and style, as 'a class of persons
+not to be trusted by those in power, deceptive to the expectant; a
+class which will always be proscribed and preserved in our state.'</p></div>
+
+<p>In the fourth century, the first Christian emperor
+limited the lawful exercise of magic to the beneficial
+use of preserving or restoring the fruits of the earth
+or the health of the human body, while the practice
+of the noxious charms is capitally punished. The
+science of those, proclaims the imperial convert, who,
+immersed in the arts of magic, are detected either in
+attempts against the life and health of their fellow-men,
+or in <i>charming</i> the minds of modest persons to
+the practice of debauchery, is to be avenged and
+punished deservedly by severest penalties. But in no
+sorts of criminal charges are those remedies to be
+involved which are employed for the good of individuals,
+or are harmlessly employed in remote
+places to prevent premature rains, in the case of
+vineyards, or the injurious effects of winds and hailstorms,
+by which the health and good name of no one
+can be injured; but whose practices are of laudable
+use in preventing both the gifts of the Deity and
+the labours of men from being scattered and
+destroyed.<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">27</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">27</span></a> <i>Cod. Justinian</i>, lib. ix. tit. 18.</p></div>
+
+<p>Constantine, in distinguishing between good and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31" href="#Page_31">[31]</a></span>
+bad magic, between the <i>theurgic</i> and <i>goetic</i>, maintains
+a distinction made by the pagans&mdash;a distinction ignored
+in the later Christian Church, in whose system
+'all demons are infernal spirits, and all commerce with
+them is idolatry and apostasy.' Christian zeal has
+accused the imperial philosopher and apostate Julian
+of having had recourse&mdash;not to much purpose&mdash;to
+many magical or necromantic rites; of cutting up the
+dead bodies of boys and virgins in the prescribed
+method; and of raising the dead to ascertain the event
+of his Eastern expedition against the Persians.</p>
+
+<p>Not many years after the death of Julian the
+Christian Empire witnessed a persecution for witchcraft
+that for its ferocity, if not for its folly, can be
+paralleled only by similar scenes in the fifteenth or
+seventeenth century. It began shortly after the
+final division of the East and West in the reigns of
+Valentinian and Valens, <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 373. The unfortunate
+accused were pursued with equal fury in the Eastern
+and Western Empires; and Rome and Antioch were
+the principal arenas on which the bloody tragedy was
+consummated. Gibbon informs us that it was occasioned
+by a criminal consultation, when the twenty-four
+letters of the alphabet were ranged round a
+magic tripod; a dancing ring placed in the centre
+pointed to the first four letters in the name of the
+future prince. 'The deadly and incoherent mixture
+of treason and magic, of poison and adultery, afforded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32" href="#Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+infinite gradations of guilt and innocence, of excuse
+and aggravation, which in these proceedings appear
+to have been confounded by the angry or corrupt
+passions of the judges. They easily discovered that
+the degree of their industry and discernment was
+estimated by the imperial court according to the
+number of executions that were furnished from their
+respective tribunals. It was not without extreme
+reluctance that they pronounced a sentence of acquittal;
+but they eagerly admitted such evidence as
+was stained with perjury or procured by torture to
+prove the most improbable charges against the most
+respectable characters. The progress of the inquiry
+continually opened new subjects of criminal prosecution;
+the audacious informers whose falsehood was
+detected retired with impunity: but the wretched
+victim who discovered his real or pretended accomplices
+was seldom permitted to receive the price of
+his infamy. From the extremity of Italy and Asia
+the young and the aged were dragged in chains to
+the tribunals of Rome and Antioch. Senators,
+matrons, and philosophers expired in ignominious
+and cruel tortures. The soldiers who were appointed
+to guard the prisons declared, with a murmur of pity
+and indignation, that their numbers were insufficient
+to oppose the flight or resistance of the multitude of
+captives. The wealthiest families were ruined by
+fines and confiscations; the most innocent citizens<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33" href="#Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+trembled for their safety: and we may form some
+notion of the magnitude of the evil from the extravagant
+assertion of an ancient writer [Ammianus
+Marcellinus], that in the obnoxious provinces the
+prisoners, the exiles, and the fugitives formed the
+greatest part of the inhabitants. The philosopher
+Maximus,' it is added, 'with some justice was involved
+in the charge of magic; and young Chrysostom, who
+had accidentally found one of the proscribed books,
+gave himself up for lost.'<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">28</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">28</span></a> <i>The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</i>,
+xxv.</p></div>
+
+<p>The similarity of this to the horrible catastrophe
+of Arras, recorded by the chroniclers of the fifteenth
+century, excepting the grosser absurdities of the
+latter, is almost perfect. Valentinian and Valens,
+who seem to have emulated the atrocious fame of
+the C&aelig;sarean family, with their ministers, concealed,
+it is probable, under the disguise of a simulated
+credulity the real motives of revenge and cupidity.</p>
+
+<p>The Roman world, Christian and pagan, was
+subject to the prevailing fear. That portion of the
+globe, however, comprehended but a small part of
+the human race. The records of history are incomplete
+and imperfect; nor are they more confined in
+point of time than of extent. History is little more
+at any period than an imperfect account of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34" href="#Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+life of a few particular peoples. Necessarily limited
+almost entirely to an acquaintance with the history
+of that portion of the globe included in the 'Roman
+Empire,' we almost forget our profound ignorance of
+that vastly larger proportion of the earth's surface,
+the extra-Roman world, embracing then, as now,
+civilised as well as barbarous nations. The Chinese
+empire (the most extraordinary, perhaps, and whose
+antiquity far surpasses that of any known), comprehending
+within its limits two-thirds of the population
+of the globe; the refined and ingenious people of
+Hindustan, an immense population, in the East: in
+the Western hemisphere nations in existence whose
+remains excited the admiration of the Spanish
+invaders; the various savage tribes of the African
+continent; the nomad populations of Northern Asia
+and Europe; nearly all these more or less, on
+the testimony of past and present observation,
+experienced the tremendous fears of the vulgar demonism.<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">29</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">29</span></a> It may be safely affirmed, according to a celebrated modern philosopher,
+that popular religions are really, in the conception of their
+more vulgar votaries, a species of demonism. 'Primus in orbe deos
+fecit timor,' or, in the fuller expression of a modern, 'Fear made the
+devils, and weak Hope the gods.'</p></div>
+
+<p>With the tribes who, in the time of C&aelig;sar or
+Tacitus, inhabited the forests of Germany, and,
+perhaps, amongst the Scandinavians, some more
+elevated ideas obtained, the germ, however, of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35" href="#Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+degenerated popular prejudice. By all the German
+tribes, on the testimony of cotemporary writers,
+women were held in high respect, and were believed
+to have something even divine in their mental or
+spiritual faculties. 'Very many of their women they
+regard in the light of prophetesses, and when superstitious
+fear is in the ascendant, even of goddesses.'
+History has preserved the names of some of these
+Teutonic <i>deities</i>. Veleda, by prophetic inspiration,
+or by superior genius, directed the councils of her
+nation, and for some years successfully resisted the
+progress of the imperial arms.<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">30</a> Momentous questions
+of state or religion were submitted to their
+<i>divine</i> judgment, and it is not wonderful if, endowed
+with supernatural attributes, they, like other prophets,
+helped to fulfil their own predictions. The Britons
+and Gauls, of the Keltic race, seem to have resembled
+the Orientals, rather than the Teutons or Italians, in
+their religious systems. Long before the Romans
+came in contact with them the magic science is said
+to have been developed, and the priests, like those of
+India or Egypt, communicated the mysteries only to
+a privileged few, with circumstances of profound
+secrecy. Such was the excellence of the magic
+science of the British Druids, that Pliny (<i>Hist.
+Nat.</i> xxx.) was induced to suppose that the Magi
+of Persia must have derived their system from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36" href="#Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+Britain. For the most part the Kelts then, as in
+the present day, were peculiarly tenacious of a creed
+which it was the interest of a priestly caste to
+preserve. On the other hand, the looser religion of
+the Teuton nations, of the Scandinavians and Germans,
+could not find much difficulty in accepting the
+particular conceptions of the Southern conquerors;
+and the sorceric mythology of the Northern barbarians
+readily recognised the power of an Erichtho to
+control the operations of nature, to prevent or confound
+the course of the elements, interrupt the
+influence of the sun, avert or induce tempests, to
+affect the passions of the soul, to fascinate or charm
+a cruel mistress, &amp;c., with all the usual necromantic
+rites. But if they could acknowledge the characteristics
+of the Italian Striga, those nations at the
+same time retained a proper respect for the venerated
+Saga&mdash;the German Hexe.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">30</span></a> Aurinia was the Latin name of another of these venerable sag&aelig;.
+Tacitus, <i>Histor.</i> iv. 61, and <i>Germania</i>, viii.</p></div>
+
+<p>Of all the historic peoples of ancient Europe, the
+Scandinavians were perhaps most imbued with a
+persuasion of the efficacy of magic; a fact which
+their home and their habits sufficiently explain. In the
+Eddas, Odin, the leader of the immigration in the
+first century, and the great national lawgiver, is represented
+as well versed in the knowledge of that preternatural
+art; and the heroes of the Scandinavian legends
+of the tenth or twelfth century are especially am<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37" href="#Page_37">[37]</a></span>bitious
+of initiation. The Scalds, like the Brahmins
+or Druids, were possessed of tremendous secrets;
+their <i>runic</i> characters were all powerful charms,
+whether against enemies, the injurious effects of an
+evil eye, or to soften the resentment of a lover.<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">31</a>
+The Northmen, with the exception of some nations of
+Central Europe, like the Lithuanians, who were not
+christianised until the thirteenth or fourteenth century,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38" href="#Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+from their roving habits as well perhaps as from
+their remoteness, were among the last peoples of
+Europe to abandon their old creed. Urged by poverty
+and the hopes of plunder, the pirates of the Baltic
+long continued to be the terror of the European
+coasts; but, without a political status, they were the
+common outlaws of Christendom. They were the
+relics of a savage life now giving way in Europe to
+the somewhat more civilised forms of society, continuing
+their indiscriminate depredations with impunity
+only because of the want of union and
+organisation among their neighbours. But they
+were in a transitional state: the coasts and countries
+they had formerly been content to ravage, they were
+beginning to find it their interest to colonise and
+cultivate. In the new interests and pursuits of civilisation
+and commerce, a natural disgust might
+have been experienced for the savage traditions of a
+religion whose gods and heroes were mostly personifications
+of war and rapine, under whose banners
+they had suffered the hardships, if they had enjoyed
+the plunder, of a piratic life. The national deities
+from being disregarded, must have come soon to be
+treated with undisguised contempt at least by the
+leaders: while the common people, serfs, or slaves
+were still immersed (as much as in Christian Europe)
+in a stupid superstition.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">31</span></a> The following story exhibits the influence of witchcraft among
+the followers of Odin. Towards the end of the tenth century, the
+dreaded Jomsburg sea-rovers had set out on one of their periodical
+expeditions, and were devastating with fire and sword the coast of
+Norway. A celebrated Norwegian Jarl, Hakon, collected all his
+forces, and sailed with a fleet of 150 vessels to encounter the pirates.
+Hakon, after trying in vain to break through the hostile line, retired
+with his fleet to the coast, and proceeded to consult a well-known
+sorceress in whom he had implicit confidence for any emergency.
+With some pretended reluctance the sorceress at length informed
+him that the victory could be obtained only by the sacrifice of his
+son. Hakon hesitated not to offer up his only son as a propitiatory
+sacrifice; after which, returning to his fleet, and his accustomed post
+in the front ranks of the battle, he renewed the engagement. Towards
+evening the Jomsburg pirates were overtaken and overwhelmed by
+a violent storm, destroying or damaging their ships. They were
+convinced that they saw the witch herself seated on the prow of the
+Jarl's ships with clouds of missile weapons flying from the tips of her
+fingers, each arrow carrying a death-wound. With such of his followers
+as had escaped the sorceric encounter, the pirate-chief made
+the best of his way from the scene of destruction, declaring he had
+made a vow indeed to fight against men, but not against witches. A
+narrative not inconsistent with the reply of a warrior to an inquiry
+from the Saint-king Olaf, 'I am neither Christian nor pagan; my
+companions and I have no other religion than a just confidence in
+our strength, and in the good success which always attends us in
+war; and we are of opinion that it is all that is necessary.'&mdash;Mallet's
+<i>Northern Antiquities</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p>When men's minds are thus universally unsettled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39" href="#Page_39">[39]</a></span>
+and in want&mdash;a want both universal and necessary in
+states&mdash;of some new divine objects of worship more
+suited to advanced ideas and requirements, a system of
+religion more civilising and rational than the antiquated
+one, will be adopted without much difficulty,
+especially if it is not too exclusive. Yet the <ins title="removed comma">Scandinavians</ins>
+were unusually tenacious of the forms of their
+ancestral worship; for while the Icelanders are said to
+have received Christianity about the beginning of
+the eleventh century, the people of Norway were not
+wholly converted until somewhat later. The halls of
+Valhalla must have been relinquished with a sigh in
+exchange for the less intelligible joys of a tranquil
+and insensuous paradise. An ancient Norsk law
+enjoins that the king and bishop, with all possible
+care, make inquiry after those who exercise pagan
+practices, employ magic arts, adore the genii of
+particular places, of tombs or rivers, who transport
+themselves by a diabolical mode of travelling through
+the air from place to place. In the extremity of
+the northern peninsula (amongst the Laplanders),
+where the light of science, or indeed of civilisation,
+has scarcely yet penetrated, witchcraft remains as
+flourishing as in the days of Odin; and the Laplanders
+at present are possibly as credulous in this
+respect as the old Northmen or the present tribes
+of Africa and the South Pacific. Before the introduction
+of the new religion (it is a curious fact), the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40" href="#Page_40">[40]</a></span>
+Germans and Scandinavians, as well as the Jews, were
+acquainted with the efficacy of the rite of infant
+baptism. A Norsk chronicle of the twelfth century,
+speaking of a Norwegian nobleman who lived in the
+reign of Harald Harfraga, relates that he poured
+water on the head of his new-born son, and called
+him Hakon, after the name of his father. Harald
+himself had been baptized in the same way; and it
+is noted of the infant pagan St. Olaf that his mother
+had him baptized as soon as he was born. The
+Livonians observed the same ceremony; and a letter
+sent expressly by Pope Gregory III. to St. Boniface,
+the great apostle of the Germans, directs him how
+to act in such cases. It is probable, Mallet conjectures,
+that all these people might intend by such a rite to
+preserve their children from the sorceries and evil
+charms which wicked spirits might employ against
+them at the instant of their birth. Several nations
+of Asia and America have attributed such a power to
+ablutions of this kind; nor were the Romans without
+the custom, though they did not wholly confine it to
+new-born infants. A curious magical use of an
+initiatory and sacramental rite, ignorantly anticipated,
+it seems, by the unilluminated faith of the
+pagan world.</p>
+
+<p>In reviewing the characteristics of sorcery which
+prevailed in the ancient world, it is obvious to com<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41" href="#Page_41">[41]</a></span>pare
+the superstition as it existed in the nations of
+the East and West, of antiquity and of modern times.
+These natural or accidental differences are deducible
+apparently from the following causes:&mdash;(1) The essential
+distinction between the demonology of Orientalism&mdash;of
+Brahminism, Buddhism, Magianism,
+Judaism, Mohammedanism&mdash;and that of the West,
+of paganism and of Christianity, founded on their
+respective <i>idealistic</i> and <i>realistic</i> tendencies. (2) The
+divining or necromantic faculties have been generally
+regarded in the East as honourable properties; whereas
+in the West they have been degraded into the
+criminal follies of an infernal compact. The magical
+art is a noble cultivated science&mdash;a prerogative of the
+priestly caste: witchcraft, in its strict sense, was
+mostly abandoned to the lowest, and, as a rule, to the
+oldest and ugliest of the female sex. In the one case
+the proficient was the master, in the other the slave,
+of the demons. (3) The position of the female sex
+in the Western world has been always very opposite
+to their status in the East, where women are believed
+to be an inferior order of beings, and therefore
+incapable of an art reserved for the superior endowments
+of the male sex. The modern witchcraft may
+be traced to that perhaps oldest form of religious
+conception, Fetishism, which still prevails in its utmost
+horrors amongst the savage peoples in different
+parts of the world. The early practice of magic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42" href="#Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+was not dishonourable in its origin, closely connected
+as it was with the study of natural science&mdash;with
+astronomy and chymistry.</p>
+
+<p>The magic system&mdash;interesting to us as having
+influenced the later Jewish creed and mediately the
+Christian&mdash;referred like most developed creeds to a
+particular founder, Zerdusht (Zarathustra of the
+Zend), may have thus originated. Mankind, in
+seeking a solution for that most interesting but
+unsatisfactory problem, the cause of the predominance
+of evil on the earth, were obliged by their
+ignorance and their fears to imagine, in addition
+to the idea of a single supreme existence, the
+author and source of good, antagonistic influence&mdash;the
+source and representative of evil. Physical
+phenomena of every day experience; the alternations
+of light and darkness, of sunshine and clouds; the
+changes and oppositions in the outer world, would
+readily supply an analogy to the moral world. Thus
+the dawn and the sun, darkness and storms, in the
+wondering mind of the earlier inhabitants of the
+globe, may have soon assumed the substantial forms
+of personal and contending deities.<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">32</a> Such seems to
+be the origin of the personifications in the Vedic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43" href="#Page_43">[43]</a></span>
+hymns of Indra and Vritra with their subordinate
+ministers (the Ormuzd and Ahriman, &amp;c., of the
+Zend-Avesta), and of the first religious conceptions
+of other peoples. After this attempt to
+reconcile the contradictions, the irregularities of
+nature, by establishing a duality of gods whose
+respective provinces are the happiness and unhappiness
+of the human race, the step was easy to
+the conviction of the superior activity of a malignant
+god. The benevolent but epicurean security of the
+first deity might seem to have little concern in
+defeating or preventing the malicious schemes of the
+other. All the infernal apparatus of later ages was
+easy to be supplied by a delusive and an unreasoning
+imagination.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">32</span></a> The despotism of language and its immense influence on the
+destiny, as well as on the various opinions, of mankind, is well shown
+by Professor Max M&uuml;ller. 'From one point of view,' he declares,
+'the true history of religion would be neither more nor less than an
+account of the various attempts at expressing the Inexpressible'
+(<i>Lectures on the Science of Language</i>, Second Series). The witch-creed
+may be indirectly referred, like many other absurdities, to the
+perversion of language.</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44" href="#Page_44">[44]</a></span></p>
+<div class="pad"><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45" href="#Page_45">[45]</a></span></p>
+<p class="fm14">PART II.</p>
+
+<h2>MEDI&AElig;VAL FAITH.</h2><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46" href="#Page_46">[46]</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47" href="#Page_47">[47]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Compromise between the New and the Old Faiths&mdash;Witchcraft
+under the Early Church&mdash;The Sentiments of the Fathers and
+the Decrees of Councils&mdash;Platonic Influences&mdash;Historical,
+Physiological, and Accidental Causes of the Attribution of
+Witchcraft to the Female Sex&mdash;Opinions of the Fathers and
+other Writers&mdash;The Witch-Compact.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="chap">It</span> might appear, in a casual or careless observation,
+surprising that Christianity, whose original spirit, if
+not universal practice, was to enlighten; whose professed
+mission was 'to destroy the works of the devil,'
+failed to disprove as well as to dispel some of the most
+pernicious beliefs of the pagan world: that its final
+triumph within the limits of the Roman empire, or
+as far as it extended without, was not attended by the
+extinction of at least the most revolting practices of
+superstition. Experience, and a more extended
+view of the progress of human ideas, will teach that
+the growth of religious perception is fitful and
+gradual: that the education of collective mankind
+proceeds in the same way as that of the individual
+man. And thus, in the expression of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48" href="#Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+biographer of Charles V., the barbarous nations when
+converted to Christianity changed the object, not the
+spirit, of their religious worship. Many of the ideas
+of the old religion were consciously tolerated by the
+first propagators of Christianity, who justly deemed
+that the new dogmas would be more readily insinuated
+into the rude and simple minds of their
+neophytes, if not too strictly uncompromising. Both
+past and present facts testify to this compromise. It
+was a maxim with some of the early promoters of
+the Christian cause, to do as little violence as possible
+to existing prejudices<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">33</a>&mdash;a judicious method still
+pursued by the Catholic, though condemned by the
+Protestant, missionaries of the present day.<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">34</a> It was
+not seldom that an entire nation was converted and
+christianised by baptism almost in a single day: the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49" href="#Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+mass of the people accepting, or rather acquiescing
+in, the arguments of the missionaries in submission
+to the will or example of their prince, whose conduct
+they followed as they would have followed him into
+the field. Such was the case at the conversion of the
+Frankish chief Clovis, and of the Saxon Ethelbert.
+But if St. Augustin or St. Boniface, and the earlier
+missionaries, had more success in persuading the
+simple faith of the Germans, without a written revelation
+and miracles, than the modern emissaries have
+in inducing the Hindus to abandon their Vedas, it
+was easier to convince them of the facts, than of
+the reason, of their faith. Nor was it to be expected
+that such raw recruits (if the expression may
+be allowed) should lay aside altogether prejudices
+with which they were imbued from infancy.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">33</span></a> The remark of a late Professor of Divinity in the University of
+Cambridge. 'The heathen temples,' says Professor Blunt, 'became
+Christian churches; the altars of the gods altars of the saints; the
+curtains, incense, tapers, and votive-tablets remained the same; the
+<i>aquaminarium</i> was still the vessel for holy water; St. Peter stood at
+the gate instead of Cardea; St. Rocque or St. Sebastian in the bedroom
+instead of the Phrygian Penates; St. Nicholas was the sign of
+the vessel instead of Castor and Pollux; the Mater De&ucirc;m became
+the Madonna; alms pro Matre De&ucirc;m became alms for the Madonna;
+the festival of the Mater De&ucirc;m the festival of the Madonna, or
+<i>Lady Day</i>; the Hostia or victim was now the Host; the "Lugentes
+Campi," or dismal regions, Purgatory; the offerings to the Manes
+were masses for the dead.' The parallel, he ventures to assert, might
+be drawn out to a far greater extent, &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">34</span></a> Conformably to this plan, the first proselytisers in Germany and
+the North were often reduced (we are told) to substituting the name
+of Christ and the saints for those of Odin and the gods in the
+toasts drunk at their bacchanalian festivals.</p></div>
+
+<p>The extent of the credit and practice of witchcraft
+under the Church triumphant is evident from
+the numerous decrees and anathemas of the Church
+in council, which, while oftener treating it as a dread
+reality, has sometimes ventured to contemn or to
+affect to contemn it as imposture and delusion. Both
+the civil and ecclesiastical laws were exceptionally
+severe towards <i>goetic</i> practices. 'In all those laws
+of the Christian emperors,' says Bingham, 'which
+granted indulgences to criminals at the Easter festival,
+the <i>venefici</i> and the <i>malefici</i>, that is, magical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50" href="#Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+practices against the lives of men, are always excepted
+as guilty of too heinous a crime to be comprised
+within the general pardon granted to other offenders.'<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">35</a>
+In earlier ecclesiastical history, successive councils
+or synods are much concerned in fulminating
+against them. The council of Ancyra (314) prohibits
+the art under the name of pharmacy: a few years'
+penance being appointed for anyone receiving a
+magician into his house. St. Basil's canons, more
+severe, appoint thirty years as the necessary atonement.
+Divination by lots or by consulting their
+sacred scriptures, just as afterwards they consulted
+Virgil, seems to have been a very favourite mode of
+discovering the future. The clergy encouraged and
+traded upon this kind of divination: in the Gallican
+church it was notorious. 'Some reckon,' the pious
+author of the 'Antiquities of the Christian Church'
+informs us, 'St. Augustin's conversion owing to such
+a sort of consultation; but the thought is a great
+mistake, and very injurious to him, for his conversion
+was owing to a providential call, like that of St.
+Paul, from heaven.' And that eminent saint's confessions
+are quoted to prove that his conversion from
+the depths of vice and licentiousness to the austere
+sobriety of his new faith, was indebted to a legitimate
+use of the scriptures. St. Chrysostom upbraids his
+cotemporaries for exposing the faith, by their illegitimate
+inquiries, to the scorn of the heathen, many of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51" href="#Page_51">[51]</a></span>
+whom where wiser than to hearken to any such fond
+impostures.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">35</span></a> Bingham's <i>Origines Ecclesiastic&aelig;</i>, xvi.</p></div>
+
+<p>St. Augustin complains that Satan's instruments,
+professing the exercise of these arts, were used to 'set
+the name of Christ before their ligatures, and enchantments,
+and other devices, to seduce Christians
+to take the venomous bait under the covert of a sweet
+and honey potion, that the bitter might be hid
+under the sweet, and make men drink it without discerning
+to their destruction.' The heretics of the
+primitive, as well as of the middle, ages were accused
+of working miracles, and propagating their accursed
+doctrines by magical or infernal art. Tertullian,
+and after him Eusebius, denounce the arch-heretic
+Simon Magus for performing his spurious miracles
+in that way: and Iren&aelig;us had declared of the heretic
+Marcus, that when he would consecrate the eucharist
+in a cup of wine and water, by one of his juggling
+tricks, he made it appear of a purple and red colour,
+as if by a long prayer of invocation, that it might be
+thought the grace from above distilled the blood
+into the cup by his invocation. A correspondent of
+Cyprian, the celebrated African bishop, describes a
+woman who pretended 'to be inspired by the Holy
+Ghost, but was really acted on by a diabolical spirit,
+by which she counterfeited ecstasies, and pretended
+to prophesy, and wrought many wonderful and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52" href="#Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+strange things, and boasted she would cause the
+earth to move. Not that the devil [he is cautious
+to affirm] has so great a power either to move the
+earth or shake the elements by his command; but
+the wicked spirit, foreseeing and understanding that
+there will be an earthquake, pretends to do that
+which he foresees will shortly come to pass. And by
+these lies and boastings, the devil subdued the minds
+of many to obey and follow him whithersoever he
+would lead them. And he made that woman walk
+barefoot through the snow in the depth of winter,
+and feel no trouble nor harm by running about in
+that fashion. But at last, after having played many
+such pranks, one of the exorcists of the Church discovered
+her to be a cheat, and showed that to be a
+wicked spirit which before was thought to be the
+Holy Ghost.'<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">36</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">36</span></a> <i>Origines Ecclesiastic&aelig;</i>, xvi. The exorcists were a recognised and
+respectable order in the Church. See id. iii. for an account of the
+<i>Energumenoi</i> or demoniacs. The lawyer Ulpian, in the time of
+Tertullian, mentions the Order of Exorcists as well known. St.
+Augustin (<i>De Civit. Dei</i>, xxii. 8) records some extraordinary cures
+on his own testimony within his diocess of Hippo.</p></div>
+
+<p>Christian witchcraft was of a more tremendous
+nature than even that of older times, both in its
+origin and practice. The devils of Christianity were
+the metamorphosed deities of the old religions. The
+Christian convert was convinced, and the Fathers of
+the Church gravely insisted upon the fact, that the
+oracles of Delphi or Dodona had been inspired in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53" href="#Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+times of ignorance and idolatry by the great Enemy,
+who used the priest or priestess as the means of accomplishing
+his eternal schemes of malice and mischief.
+At the instant, however (so it was confidently
+affirmed), of the divine incarnation the oracular temples
+were closed for ever; and the demons were no
+longer permitted to delude mankind by impersonating
+pagan deities. They must now find some other
+means of effecting their fixed purpose. It was not
+far to seek. There were human beings who, by a
+preeminently wicked disposition, or in hope of some
+temporary profit, were prepared to risk their future
+prospects, willing to devote both soul and body to
+the service of hell. The 'Fathers' and great expounders
+of Christianity, by their sentiments, their
+writings, and their claims to the miraculous powers
+of exorcising, greatly assisted to advance the common
+opinions. Justin Martyr, Origen, Tertullian,
+Jerome, were convinced that they were in perpetual
+conflict with the disappointed demons of the old
+world, who had inspired the oracles and usurped the
+worship of the true God. Nor was the contest always
+merely spiritual: they engaged personally and corporeally.
+St. Jerome, like St. Dunstan in the tenth,
+or Luther in the sixteenth century, had to fight with
+an incarnate demon.</p>
+
+<p>Exorcism&mdash;the magical or miraculous ejection of
+evil spirits by a solemn form of adjuration&mdash;was a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54" href="#Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+universal mode of asserting the superior authority of
+the orthodox Church against the spurious pretensions
+of heretics.<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">37</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">37</span></a> The art of expelling demons, indeed, has been preserved in the
+Protestant section of the Christian Church until a recent age. The
+<i>exorcising</i> power, it is remarkable, is the sole claim to miraculous
+privilege of the Protestants. The formula <i>de Strumosis Attrectandis</i>,
+or the form of touching for the king's evil (a similar claim), was one
+of the recognised offices of the English Established Church in the
+time of Queen Anne, or of George I.</p></div>
+
+<p>Christian theology in the first age even was considerably
+indebted to the Platonic doctrines as taught
+in the Alexandrian school; and demonology in the
+third century received considerable accessions from the
+speculations of Neo-Platonism, the reconciling medium
+between Greek and Oriental philosophy. Philo-Jud&aelig;us
+(whose reconciling theories, displayed in his
+attempt to prove the derivation of Greek religious
+or philosophical ideas from those of Moses, have been
+ingeniously imitated by a crowd of modern followers)
+had been the first to undertake to adapt the Jewish
+theology to Greek philosophy. Plotinus and Porphyrius,
+the founders of the new school of Platonism,
+introduced a large number of angels or demons to
+the acquaintance of their Christian fellow-subjects in
+the third century.<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">38</a> It has been remarked that 'such
+was the mild spirit of antiquity that the nations were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55" href="#Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+less attentive to the difference than to the resemblance
+of their religious worship. The Greek, the
+Roman, and the barbarian, as they met before their
+respective altars, easily persuaded themselves that,
+under various names and with various ceremonies,
+they adored the same deities.'<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">39</a> Magianism and
+Judaism, however, were little imbued with the spirit
+of toleration; and the purer the form of religious
+worship, the fiercer, too often, seems to be the persecution
+of differing creeds. Christianity, with something
+of the spirit of Judaism from which it sprung,
+was forced to believe that the older religions must have
+sprung from a diabolic origin. The whole pagan
+world was inspired and dominated by wicked spirits.
+'The pagans <i>deified</i>, the Christians <i>diabolised</i>, Nature.'<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">40</a>
+It is in this fact that the entirely opposite
+spirit of antique and medi&aelig;val thought, evident in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56" href="#Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+the life, literature, in the common ideas of ancient and
+medi&aelig;val Europe, is discoverable.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">38</span></a> 'The knowledge that is suited to our situation and powers, the
+whole compass of moral, natural, and mathematical science, was neglected
+by the new Platonists; whilst they exhausted their strength
+in the verbal disputes of metaphysics, they attempted to explore the
+secrets of the invisible world, and studied to reconcile Aristotle with
+Plato on subjects of which both these philosophers were as ignorant
+as the rest of mankind. Consuming their reason in those deep but unsubstantial
+meditations, their minds were exposed to illusions of fancy.
+They flattered themselves that they possessed the secret of disengaging
+the soul from its corporeal prison; claimed a familiar intercourse
+with demons and spirits; and by a very singular revolution,
+converted the study of philosophy into that of magic.'&mdash;<i>The Decline
+and Fall of the Roman Empire</i>, chap. xiii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">39</span></a> The Egyptians, almost the only exception to polytheistic tolerance,
+seem to have been rendered intolerant by the number of antagonistic
+animal-gods worshipped in different parts of the country, enumerated
+by Juvenal, who describes the effects of religious animosity displayed
+in a faction fight between Ombi or Coptos and Tentyra.&mdash;<i>Sat.</i> xv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">40</span></a> <i>Life of Goethe</i>, by G. H. Lewes.</p></div>
+
+<p>The female sex has been always most concerned
+in the crime of Christian witchcraft. What was the
+cause of this general addiction, in the popular belief,
+of that sex, it is interesting to inquire. In the East
+now, and in Greece of the age of Simonides or
+Euripides, or at least in the Ionic States, women are
+an inferior order of beings, not only on account of
+their weaker natural faculties and social position,
+but also in respect of their natural inclination to every
+sort of wickedness. And if they did not act the part
+of a Christian witch, they were skilled in the practice
+of toxicology. With the Latin race and many European
+peoples, the female sex held a better position;
+and it may appear inconsistent that in Christendom,
+where the Goddess-Mother was almost the highest
+object of veneration, woman should be degraded into
+a slave of Satan. By the northern nations they were
+supposed to be gifted with supernatural power; and the
+universal powers of the Italian hag have been already
+noticed. But the Church, which allowed no miracle
+to be legitimate out of the pale, and yet could not
+deny the fact of the miraculous without, was obliged
+to assert it to be of diabolic origin. Thus the <i>priestess</i>
+of antiquity became a <i>witch</i>. This is the historical
+account. Physically, the cause seems discoverable in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57" href="#Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+the fact that the natural constitution of women
+renders their <i>imaginative</i> organs more excitable for
+the ecstatic conditions of the prophetic or necromantic
+arts. On all occasions of religious or other cerebral
+excitement, women (it is a matter of experience) are
+generally most easily reduced to the requisite state
+for the expected supernatural visitation. Their hysterical
+(<i>hystera</i>) natures are sufficiently indicative of
+the origin of such hallucinations. Their magical or
+pharmaceutical attributes might be derived from
+savage life, where the men are almost exclusively
+occupied either in war or in the chase: everything
+unconnected with these active or necessary pursuits is
+despised as unbecoming the superior nature of the
+male sex. To the female portion of the community
+are abandoned domestic employments, preparation
+of food, the selection and mixture of medicinal
+herbs, and all the mysteries of the medical art.
+How important occupations like these, by ignorance
+and interest, might be raised into something more
+than natural skill, is easy to be conjectured. That
+so extraordinary an attribute would often be abused
+is agreeable to experience.<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">41</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">41</span></a> Quintilian declared, '<i>Latrocinium</i> facilius in viro, <i>veneficium</i> in
+femin&acirc; credam.' To the same effect is an observation of Pliny:
+'Scientiam feminarum in <i>veneficiis</i> pr&aelig;valere.'</p></div>
+
+<p>According to the earlier Christian writers, the
+frailer sex is addicted to infernal practices by reason<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58" href="#Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+of their innate wickedness: and in the opinion of the
+'old Fathers' they are fitted by a corrupt disposition
+to be the recipients and agents of the devil's will
+upon earth. The authors of the <i>Witch-Hammer</i> have
+supported their assertions of the proneness of women
+to evil in general, and to sorcery in particular, by the
+respectable names and authority of St. Chrysostom,
+Augustin, Dionysius Areopagiticus, Hilary, &amp;c. &amp;c.<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">42</a>
+The Golden-mouthed is adduced as especially hostile
+in his judgment of the sex; and his 'Homily on Herodias'
+takes its proper place with the satires of Aristophanes
+and Juvenal, of Boccaccio and Boileau.<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">43</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">42</span></a>
+</p><p class="footpoem">
+<span class="footpoem12">'They style a wife<br /></span>
+The dear-bought curse and lawful plague of life,<br />
+A bosom-serpent and a domestic evil.'<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">43</span></a> The royal author of the <i>Demonologie</i> finds no difficulty in accounting
+for the vastly larger proportion of the female sex devoted to
+the devil's service. 'The reason is easy,' he declares; 'for as that sex
+is frailer than man is, so is it easier to be entrapped in the gross
+snares of the devil, as was over-well proved to be true by the serpent's
+deceiving of Eva at the beginning, which makes him the homelier
+with that sex sensine:' and it is profoundly observed that witches
+cannot even shed tears, though women in general are, like the crocodile,
+ready to weep on every light occasion.</p></div>
+
+<p>Reginald Scot gives the reasons alleged by the
+apologists of witchcraft. 'This gift and natural
+influence of fascination may be increased in man
+according to his affections and perturbations, as
+through anger, fear, love, hate, &amp;c. For by hate,
+saith Varius, entereth a fiery inflammation into the
+eye of man, which being violently sent out by beams<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59" href="#Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+and streams infect and bewitch those bodies against
+whom they are opposed. And therefore (he saith)
+that is the cause that women are oftener found to be
+witches than men. For they have such an unbridled
+force of fury and concupiscence naturally, that by
+no means is it possible for them to temper or
+moderate the same. So as upon every trifling
+occasion they, like unto the beasts, fix their furious
+eyes upon the party whom they bewitch....
+Women also (saith he) are oftenlie filled full of
+superfluous humours, and with them the melancholike
+blood boileth, whereof spring vapours, and are carried
+up and conveyed through the nostrils and mouth, to
+the bewitching of whatsoever it meeteth. For they
+belch up a certain breath wherewith they bewitch
+whomsoever they list. And of all other women
+lean, hollow-eyed, old, beetle-browed women (saith
+he) are the most infectious.'<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">44</a> Why <i>old</i> women are
+selected as the most proper means of doing the
+devil's will may be discovered in their peculiar
+characteristics. The repulsive features, moroseness,
+avarice, malice, garrulity of his hags are said to be
+appropriate instruments. Scot informs us, 'One sort<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60" href="#Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+of such as are said to be witches are women which be
+commonly old, lame, blear-eyed, pale, foul, and full
+of wrinkles, poor, sullen, superstitious, and <i>papists</i>,
+or such as know no religion, in whose drowsy minds
+the devil hath got a fine seat. They are lean and
+deformed, showing melancholy in their faces, to the
+horror of all that see them. They are doting, scolds,
+mad, devilish ... neither obtaining for their
+service and pains, nor yet by their art, nor yet at the
+devil's hands, with whom they are said to make a
+perfect visible bargain, either beauty, money, promotion,
+wealth, worship, pleasure, honour, knowledge,
+or any other benefit whatsoever.' As to the preternatural
+gifts of these hags, he sensibly argues: 'Alas!
+what an unapt instrument is a toothless, old, impotent,
+unwieldy woman to fly in the air; truly, the
+devil little needs such instruments to bring his
+purposes to pass.'<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">45</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">44</span></a> <i>Discoverie of Witchcraft</i>, book xii. 21.&mdash;We shall have occasion
+hereafter to notice this great opponent of the devil's regime in the
+sixteenth century. We may be inclined to consider a more probable
+reason&mdash;that spirits, being in the general belief (so Adam infers that
+God had 'peopled highest heaven with spirits masculine') of the
+masculine gender, the recipients of their inspiration are naturally of
+the other sex: evil spirits could propagate their human or half-human
+agents with least suspicion and in the most natural way.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">45</span></a> <i>Discoverie</i>, i. 3, 6.&mdash;Old women, however, may be negatively useful.
+One of the writers on the subject (John Nider) recommends
+them to young men since '<i>Vetularum aspectus et colloquia amorem
+excutiunt</i>.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Dr. Glanvil, who wrote in the latter half of the
+seventeenth century, and is bitterly opposed to the
+'Witch-Advocate' and his followers, defends the
+capabilities of hags and the like for serving the
+demons. He conjectures, 'Peradventure 'tis one of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61" href="#Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+the great designs, as 'tis certainly the interest, of those
+wicked agents and machinators industriously to hide
+from us their influences and ways of acting, and to
+work as near as 'tis possible <i>incognito</i>; upon which
+supposal it is easy to conceive a reason why they
+most commonly work by and upon the weak and the
+ignorant, who can make no cunning observations or
+tell credible tales to detect their artifice.'<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">46</a> The act
+of bewitching is defined to be 'a supernatural work
+contrived between a corporal old woman and a
+spiritual devil' ('Discoverie,' vi. 2). The method of
+initiation is, according to a writer on the subject, as
+follows: A decrepit, superannuated, old woman is
+tempted by a man in black to sign a contract to
+become his, both soul and body. On the conclusion
+of the agreement (about which there was much
+cheating and haggling), he gives her a piece of
+money, and causes her to write her name and make
+her mark on a slip of parchment with her own blood.
+Sometimes on this occasion also the witch uses the
+ceremony of putting one hand to the sole of her foot
+and the other to the crown of her head. On departing
+he delivers to her an imp or familiar. The
+familiar, in shape of a cat, a mole, miller-fly, or some
+other insect or animal, at stated times of the day
+sucks her blood through teats in different parts of
+her body.<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">47</a> If, however, the proper vulgar witch is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62" href="#Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+an old woman, the younger and fairer of the sex were
+not by any means exempt from the crime. Young
+and beautiful women, children of tender years, have
+been committed to the rack and to the stake on the
+same accusation which condemned the old and the
+ugly.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">46</span></a> <i>Sadducismus Triumphatus</i>, part i. sect. 8.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">47</span></a> <i>Grose's Antiquities</i>, in Brand's <i>Popular Antiquities of Great
+Britain</i>.</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63" href="#Page_63">[63]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Charlemagne's Severity&mdash;Anglo-Saxon Superstition&mdash;Norman
+and Arabic Magic&mdash;Influence of Arabic Science&mdash;Mohammedan
+Belief in Magic&mdash;Rabbinical Learning&mdash;Roger Bacon&mdash;The
+Persecution of the Templars&mdash;Alice Kyteler.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="chap">Tremendous</span> as was the power of the witch in earlier
+Christendom, it was not yet degraded into the
+thoroughly diabolistic character of her more recent
+successors. Diabolism advanced in the same proportion
+with the authority of the Church and the
+ignorant submission of the people. In the civil law,
+the Emperor Leo, in the sixth century, abrogated the
+Constantinian edict as too indulgent or too credulous:
+from that time all sorts of charms, all use of them,
+beneficial or injurious, were declared worthy of
+punishment. The different states of Europe, founded
+on the ruins of the Western Empire, more or less
+were engaged in providing against the evil consequences
+of sorcery. Charlemagne pursued the
+criminals with great severity. He 'had several times
+given orders that all necromancers, astrologers, and
+witches should be driven from his states; but as the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64" href="#Page_64">[64]</a></span>
+number of criminals augmented daily, he found it
+necessary at last to resort to severer measures. In
+consequence, he published several edicts, which may
+be found at length in the "Capitulaire de Baluse."
+By these every sort of magic, enchantment, and
+witchcraft was forbidden, and the punishment of
+death decreed against those who in any way evoked
+the devil, compounded love-philters, afflicted either
+man or woman with barrenness, troubled the atmosphere,
+excited tempests, destroyed the fruits of the
+earth, dried up the milk of cows, or tormented their
+fellow-creatures with sores and diseases. All persons
+found guilty of exercising these execrable arts were
+to be executed immediately upon conviction, that the
+earth might be rid of the curse and burden of their
+presence; and those who consulted them might also
+be punished with death.'<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">48</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">48</span></a> M. Garinet's <i>Histoire de la Magic en France</i>, quoted in <i>Memoirs
+of Extraordinary Popular Delusions</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p>The Saxons, in the fifth century, imported into
+Britain the pagan forms of the Fatherland; and the
+Anglo-Saxon (Christian) laws are usually directed
+against practices connected with heathen worship, of
+which many reminiscences were long preserved.
+Their Hexe, or witch,<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">49</a> appears to be half-divine,
+half-diabolic, a witch-priestess who derived her inspiration<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65" href="#Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+as much from heavenly as from hellish
+sources; from some divinity or genius presiding at a
+sacred grove or fountain. King Athelstan is said
+to have made a law against witchcraft and similar
+acts which inflict death; that if one by them be made
+away, and the thing cannot be denied, such practicers
+shall be put to death; but if they endeavour to purge
+themselves, and be cast by the threefold ordeal, they
+shall be in prison 120 days; which ended, their
+kindred may redeem them by the payment [in the
+universal style of the English penalties] of 120
+shillings to the king, and further pay to the kindred
+of the slain the full valuation of the party's head;
+and then the criminals shall also procure sureties for
+good behaviour for the time to come; and the
+Danish prince Knut denounces by an express doom
+the noxious acts of sorcery.<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">50</a> Some of the witches
+who appear under Saxon domination are almost as
+ferocious as those of the time of Bodin or of James;
+cutting up the bodies of the dead, especially of
+children, devouring their heart and liver in midnight
+revels. Fearful are the deeds of Saxon sorcery as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66" href="#Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+related by the old Norman or Anglo-Norman writers.
+Roger of Wendover ('Flowers of History') records the
+terrible fate of a hag who lived in the village of
+Berkely, in the ninth century. The devil at the
+appointed hour (as in the case of Faust) punctually
+carries off the soul of his slave, in spite of the utmost
+watch and ward. These scenes are, perhaps, rather
+Norman than Saxon. It was a favourite belief of
+the ancients and medi&aelig;valists that the inhospitable
+regions of the remoter North were the abode of
+demons who held in those suitable localities their
+infernal revels, exciting storms and tempests: and
+the monk-chronicler Bede relates the northern parts
+of Britain were thus infested.<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">51</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">49</span></a> The Saxon 'witch' is derived, apparently, from the verb 'to
+weet,' to know, <i>be wise</i>. The Latin 'saga' is similarly derived&mdash;'Sagire,
+sentire acute est: ex quo <i>sag&aelig;</i> anus, quia malta <i>scire</i>
+volunt.'&mdash;Cicero, <i>de Divinatione</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">50</span></a> A curious collection of old English superstitions in these and their
+allied forms, as exhibited in various documents, appears in a recent
+work of authority, entitled 'Leechdoms, Wort-Cunning, and Starcraft
+of Early England. Published by the authority of the Lords
+Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, under the direction of
+the Master of the Rolls.' Diseases of all sorts are for the most part
+inflicted upon mankind by evil demons, through the agency of spells
+and incantations.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">51</span></a> Strutt derives the 'long-continued custom of swimming people
+suspected of witchcraft' from the Anglo-Saxon mode of judicial trial&mdash;the
+ordeal by water. Another 'method of proving a witch,' by
+weighing against the Church Bible (a formidable balance), is traced
+to some of their ancient customs. James VI. (<i>Demonologie</i>) is convinced
+that 'God hath appointed, for a supernatural sign of the
+monstrous impiety of witches, that the water shall refuse to receive
+them in her bosom that have shaken off them the sacred water of
+baptism and wilfully refused the benefit thereof.'</p></div>
+
+<p>From Scandinavia the Normans must have brought
+a conviction of the truths of magic; and although
+they had been long settled, before the conquest of
+England, in Northern France and in Christianity, the
+traditional glories of the land from which were de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67" href="#Page_67">[67]</a></span>rived
+their name and renown could not be easily
+forgotten. Not long after the Conquest the Arabic
+learning of Spain made its way into this country, and
+it is possible that Christian magic, as well as science,
+may have been influenced by it. Magic, scientifically
+treated, flourished in Arabic Spain, being extensively
+cultivated, in connection with more real or practical
+learning, by the polite and scientific Arabs. The
+schools of Salamanca, Toledo, and other Saracenic
+cities were famous throughout Europe for eminence
+in medicine, chymistry, astronomy, and mathematics.
+Thither resorted the learned of the North to perfect
+themselves in the then cultivated branches of knowledge.
+The vast amount of scientific literature of the
+Moslems of Spain, evidenced in their public libraries,
+relieves Southern Europe, in part at least, from the
+stigma of a universal barbaric illiteracy.<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">52</a> Several
+volumes of Arabian philosophy are said to have been
+introduced to Northern Europe in the twelfth century;
+and it was in the school of Toledo that Gerbert&mdash;a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68" href="#Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+conspicuous name in the annals of magic&mdash;acquired
+his preternatural knowledge.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">52</span></a> The royal library of the Fatimites consisted of 100,000 manuscripts,
+elegantly transcribed and splendidly bound, which were lent,
+without avarice or jealousy, to the students of Cairo. Yet this collection
+must appear moderate if we believe that the Ommiades of
+Spain had formed a library of 600,000 volumes, 44 of which were
+employed in the mere catalogue. Their capital, Cordova, with the
+adjacent towns of Malaga, Almeira, and Murcia, had given birth to
+more than 300 writers; and above 70 public libraries were opened in
+the cities of the Andalusian kingdom.&mdash;<i>Decline and Fall of the Roman
+Empire</i>, lii.</p></div>
+
+<p>The few in any way acquainted with Greek literature
+were indebted to the Latin translations of the
+Arabs; while the Jewish rabbinical learning, whose
+more useful lore was encumbered with much mystical
+nonsense, enjoyed considerable reputation at this
+period. The most distinguished of the rabbis taught
+in the schools in London, York, Lincoln, Oxford, and
+Cambridge; and Christendom has to confess its obligations
+for its first acquaintance with science to the
+enemies of the Cross.<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">53</a> The later Jewish authorities
+had largely developed the demonology of the subjects
+of Persia; and the spiritual or demoniacal creations
+of the rabbinical works of the Middle Ages might be
+readily acceptable, if not coincident, to Christian
+faith. But the Western Europeans, before the philosophy
+of the Spanish Arabs was known, had come
+in contact with the Saracens and Turks of the East
+during frequent pilgrimages to the tomb of Christ; and
+the fanatical crusades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries
+facilitated and secured the hazardous journey.
+Mohammedans of the present day preserve the implicit
+faith of their ancestors in the efficacy of the
+113th chapter of the Koran against evil spirits, the
+spells of witches and sorcerers&mdash;a chapter said to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69" href="#Page_69">[69]</a></span>
+have been revealed to the Prophet of Islam on the
+occasion of his having been bewitched by the
+daughters of a Jew. The Genii or Ginn&mdash;a Preadamite
+race occupying an intermediate position between
+angels and men, who assume at pleasure the form of
+men, of the lower animals, or any monstrous shape,
+and propagate their species like, and sometimes with,
+human kind&mdash;appear in imposing proportions in
+'The Thousand and One Nights'&mdash;that rich display
+of the fancy of the Oriental imagination.<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">54</a> Credulous
+and confused in critical perception, the crusading
+adventurers for religion or rapine could scarcely fail
+to confound with their own the peculiar tenets of an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70" href="#Page_70">[70]</a></span>
+ill-understood mode of thought; and that the critical
+and discriminating faculties of the champions of the
+Cross were not of the highest order, is illustrated by
+their difficulty in distinguishing the eminently unitarian
+religion of Mohammed from paganism. By a
+strange perversion the Anglo-Norman and French
+chroniclers term the Moslems <i>Pagans</i>, while the
+Saxon heathen are dignified by the title of <i>Saracens</i>;
+and the names of Mahmoud, Termagaunt, Apollo,
+could be confounded without any sense of impropriety.
+However, or in whatever degree, Saracenic
+or rabbinical superstition tended to influence Christian
+demonology, from about the end of the thirteenth
+century a considerable development in the mythology
+of witchcraft is perceptible.<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">55</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">53</span></a> Chymistry and Algebra still attest our obligation by their Arabic
+etymology.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">54</span></a> A common tradition is that Soliman, king of the Jews, having
+finally subdued&mdash;a success which he owed chiefly to his vast magical
+resources&mdash;the rebellious spirits, punished their disobedience by incarcerating
+them in various kinds of prisons, for longer or shorter
+periods of time, in proportion to their demerits. For the belief of
+the followers of Mohammed in the magic excellence of Solomon, see
+Sale's <i>Koran</i>, xxi. and xxvii. According to the prophet, the devil
+taught men magic and sorcery. The magic of the Moslems, or, at
+least, of the Egyptians, is of two kinds&mdash;high and low&mdash;which are
+termed respectively <i>rahmanee</i> (divine) and <i>sheytanee</i> (Satanic). By
+a perfect knowledge of the former it is possible to the adept to 'raise
+the dead to life, kill the living, transport himself instantly wherever
+he pleases, and perform any other miracle. The <i>low</i> magic (<i>sooflee</i>
+or <i>sheytanee</i>) is believed to depend on the agency of the devil and
+evil spirits, and unbelieving genii, and to be used for bad purposes
+and by bad men.' The <i>divine</i> is 'founded on the agency of God
+and of His angels, &amp;c., and employed always for good purposes, and
+only to be practised by men of probity, who, by tradition or from
+books, learn the names of those superhuman agents, &amp;c.'&mdash;Lane's
+<i>Modern Egyptians</i>, chap. xii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">55</span></a> Its effect was probably to enlarge more than to modify appreciably
+the current ideas. A large proportion of the importations from
+the East may have been indebted to the invention, as much as to the
+credulity, of the adventurers; and we might be disposed to believe
+with Hume, that 'men returning from so great a distance used the
+liberty [a too general one] of imposing every fiction upon their believing
+audience.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Conspicuous in the vulgar prejudices is the suspicion
+attaching to the extraordinary discoveries of
+philosophy and science. Diabolic inspiration (as in
+our age infidelity and atheism are popular outcries)
+was a ready and successful accusation against ideas
+or discoveries in advance of the time. Roger Bacon,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71" href="#Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+Robert Grost&ecirc;te, Albert the Great, Thomas of Ercildoun,
+Michael Scot&mdash;eminent names&mdash;were all more
+or less objects of a persecuting suspicion. Bacon
+may justly be considered the greatest name in the
+philosophy of the Middle Age. That anomaly of
+medi&aelig;valism was one of the few who could neglect
+a vain and senseless theology and system of metaphysics
+to apply his genius to the solid pursuits of
+truer philosophy; and if his influence has not been
+so great as it might have been, it is the fault of the
+age rather than of the man. Condemned by the fear
+or jealousy of his Franciscan brethren and Dominican
+rivals, Bacon was thrown into prison, where he was
+excluded from propagating 'certain suspected novelties'
+during fourteen years, a victim of his more
+liberal opinions and of theological hatred. One of
+the traditions of his diabolical compacts gives him
+credit at least for ingenuity in avoiding at once a
+troublesome bargain and a terrible fate. The philosopher's
+compact stipulated that after death his soul
+was to be the reward and possession of the devil,
+whether he died within the church's sacred walls or
+without them. Finding his end approaching, that
+sagacious magician caused a cell to be constructed in
+the walls of the consecrated edifice, giving directions,
+which were properly carried out, for his burial in a
+tomb that was thus neither within nor without the
+church&mdash;an evasion of a long-expected event, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72" href="#Page_72">[72]</a></span>
+lost the disappointed devil his prize, and probably
+his temper. 'Friar Bacon' became afterwards a
+well-known character in the vulgar fables: he was
+the type of the medi&aelig;val, as the poet Virgil was of
+the ancient, magician. A popular drama was founded
+on his reputed exploits and character in the sixteenth
+century, by Robert Greene, in 'Friar Bacon and Friar
+Bungay;' but the famous Dr. Faustus, the most
+popular magic hero of that time on the stage, was a
+formidable rival. While his cotemporaries denounced
+his rational method, preferring their theological
+jargon and scholastic metaphysics; how much the
+Aristotle of medi&aelig;valism has been neglected even
+latterly is a surprising fact.<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">56</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">56</span></a> The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge have not exhibited
+the same impatience for a worthy edition of the works of Bacon with
+which Clement IV. expected a copy of the <i>Opus Majus</i>. His principal
+writings remained in MS. and were not published to the world
+until the middle of last century.</p></div>
+
+<p>But in proof of the prevalence of the popular suspicion,
+not even the all-powerful spiritual Chief of
+Christendom was spared. Many of the pontiffs were
+charged with being addicted to the 'Black Art'&mdash;an
+odd imputation against the vicars of Christ and the
+successors of St. Peter. A charge, however, which
+we may be disposed to receive as evidence that in a
+long and disgusting list of ambitious priests and
+licentious despots there have been some popes who,
+by cultivating philosophy, may have in some sort<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73" href="#Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+partially redeemed the hateful character of Christian
+sacerdotalism. At a council held at Paris in the
+interest of Philip IV., Boniface VIII. was publicly
+accused of sorcery: it was affirmed that 'he had a
+familiar demon [the Socratic Genius?]; for he has
+said that if all mankind were on one side and he
+alone on the other, he could not be mistaken either
+in point of fact or of right, which presupposes a
+diabolical art'&mdash;a dogma of sacerdotalism sufficiently
+confident, but scarcely requiring a miraculous solution.
+This pope's death, it is said, was hastened by
+these and similar reports of his dealings with familiar
+spirits, invented in the interest of the French king
+to justify his hostility. Boniface VIII.'s esoteric
+opinions on Catholicism and Christianity, if correctly
+reported, did not show the orthodoxy to be expected
+from the supreme pontiff: but he would not be a
+singular example amongst the numerous occupants
+of the chair of St. Peter.<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">57</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">57</span></a> Leo X. (whose tastes were rather profane than pious) instructed
+or amused himself by causing to be discussed the question of the
+nature of the soul&mdash;himself adopting the opinion 'redit in nihilum
+quod fuit ante nihil,' and the decision of Aristotle and of Epicurus.</p></div>
+
+<p>John XXII., one of his more immediate successors,
+is said to be the pope who first formally condemned
+the crime of witchcraft, more systematically anathematised
+some hundred and fifty years afterwards by
+Innocent VIII. He complains of the universal in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74" href="#Page_74">[74]</a></span>fection
+of Christendom: that his own court even,
+and immediate attendants, were attached to the
+devil's service, applying to him on all occasions for
+help. The earliest judicial trial for the crime on
+record in England is said to have occurred in the
+reign of John. It is briefly stated in the 'Abbreviatio
+Placitorum' that 'Agnes, the wife of Odo the merchant,
+accused Gideon of sorcery; and he was
+acquitted by the judgment of iron.' The first account
+of which much information is given occurs in
+Edward II.'s reign, when the lives of the royal favourites,
+the De Spencers, and his own, were attempted
+by a supposed criminal, one John of Nottingham,
+with the assistance of his man, Robert Marshall, who
+became king's evidence, and charged his master with
+having conspired the king's death by the arts of
+sorcery.<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">58</a> Cupidity or malice was the cause of this
+informer's accusation. One of the distinguishing
+characteristics in its annals was the abuse of the
+common prejudice for political purposes, or for the
+gratification of private passion.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">58</span></a> <i>Narratives of Sorcery and Magic</i>, by Thomas Wright.</p></div>
+
+<p>At the commencement of the fourteenth century
+the persecution and final destruction of the Order of
+the Knights Templars in the different countries of
+Europe, but chiefly in France (an instance of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75" href="#Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+former abuse), is one of the most atrocious facts in
+the history of those times. The fate of the Knights
+of the Temple (whose original office it had been to
+protect their coreligionists during pilgrimages in the
+Holy City, and whose quarters were near the site of
+the Temple&mdash;whence the title of the Order) in
+France was determined by the jealousy or avarice of
+Philip IV. Founded in the first half of the twelfth
+century as a half-religious, half-military institution,
+that celebrated Order was, in its earlier career, in
+high repute for valour and success in fighting the
+battles of the Cross. With wealth and fame, pride
+and presumption increased to the highest pitch; and
+at the end of 150 years the champions of Christendom
+were equally hated and feared. Their entire
+number was no more than 1,500; but they were all
+experienced warriors, in possession of a number of
+important fortresses, besides landed property to the
+amount, throughout their whole extent, of nine
+thousand manorial estates. When the Holy Land
+was hopelessly lost to the profane ambition or religious
+zeal of the West, its defenders returned to
+their homes loaded with riches and prestige if not
+with unstained honour, and without insinuations that
+they had betrayed the cause of Christ and the Crusades.
+Such was the condition of the Temple when
+Philip, after exhausting the coffers of Jews and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76" href="#Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+Christians, found his treasury still unfilled. The
+opportunity was not to be neglected: it remained
+only to secure the consent of the Church, and to
+provoke the ready credulity of the people. Church
+and State united, supported by the popular superstition,
+were irresistible; and the destined victims
+expected their impending fate in silent terror. At
+length the signal was given. Prosecutions in 1307
+were carried on simultaneously throughout the provinces;
+but in French territory they assumed the
+most formidable shape. In many places they were
+acquitted of the gravest indictments: the English
+king, from a feeling of justice or jealousy, expressed
+himself in their favour. As for Spain, 'it was not in
+presence of the Moors, and on the classic ground of
+Crusade, that the thought could be entertained of
+proscribing the old defenders of Christendom.' Paris,
+where was their principal temple, was the centre of
+the Order; their wealth and power were concentrated
+in France; and thus the spoils not of a single province,
+but almost of the entire body, were within the
+grasp of a single monarch. Hence he assumed the
+right of presiding as judge and executioner.<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">59</a> On
+October 12, 1307, Jacques Molay, with the heads<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77" href="#Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+of the Temple, was invited to Paris, where, loaded
+with favours, they were lulled into fatal security.
+The delusion was soon abruptly dispelled. Molay,
+together with 140 of his brethren, was arrested&mdash;the
+signal for a more general procedure throughout the
+kingdom.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">59</span></a> Dante seems to refer to this recent spoliation in the following
+verses:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p class="footpoem">'Lo! the new Pilate, of whose cruelty<br />
+Such violence cannot fill the measure up,<br />
+With no decree to sanction, pushes on<br />
+Into the Temple his yet eager sails.'<br />
+</p><p class="cite3">
+<i>Purgat.</i> xx. Cary's Transl.</p></div>
+
+<p>The charges have been resolved under three heads:
+(1) The denial of Christ. (2) Treachery to the
+cause of Christianity. (3) The worship of the devil,
+and the practice of sorcery. The principal articles in
+the indictment were that the knights at initiation
+formally denied the divinity of Christ, pronouncing
+he was not truly a God&mdash;even going so far as to
+assert he was a false prophet, a man who had been
+punished for his crimes; that they had no hopes of
+salvation through him; that at the final reception
+they always spat on the Cross, trampling it under
+foot; that they worshipped the devil in the form of a
+cat, or some other familiar animal; that they adored
+him in the figure of an idol consecrated by anointing
+it with the fat of a new-born infant, the illegitimate
+offspring of a brother; that a demon appeared in the
+shape of a black or gray cat, &amp;c. The idol is a
+mysterious object. According to some it was a head
+with a beard, or a head with three faces: by others
+it was said to be a skull, a cat. One witness testified
+that in a chapter of the Order one brother said to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78" href="#Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+another, 'Worship this head; it is your God and
+your Mahomet.' Of this kind was the general evidence
+of the witnesses examined. Less incredible,
+perhaps, is the statement that they sometimes saw
+demons in the appearance of women; and a more
+credible allegation is that of a secret understanding
+with the Turks.</p>
+
+<p>Notoriously suspicious communication had been
+maintained with the enemy; they even went so far
+as to adopt their style of dress and living. Worse
+than all, by an amiable but unaccustomed tolerance,
+the followers of Mohammed had been allowed a free
+exercise of their religion, a sort of liberality little
+short of apostasy from the faith. Without recounting
+all the horrors of the persecution, it must be
+sufficient to repeat that fifty-four of the wretched
+condemned, having been degraded by the Bishop of
+Paris, were handed over to the flames. Four years
+afterwards the scene was consummated by the burning
+of Jacques Molay. Torture of the most dreadful
+sort had been applied to force necessary confessions;
+and the complaint of one of the criminals is significant&mdash;'I,
+single, as I am, cannot undertake to argue
+with the Pope and the King of France.'<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">60</a> In attempting
+to detect the mysterious facts of this dark<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79" href="#Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+transaction little assistance is given by the contradictory
+statements of cotemporary or later writers;
+some asserting the charges to be mere fabrications
+throughout; others their positive reality; and recent
+historians have attempted to substantiate or
+destroy them. Hallam truly remarks that the rapacious
+and unprincipled conduct of Philip, the
+submission of Clement V. to his will, the apparent
+incredibility of the charges from their monstrousness,
+the just prejudice against confessions obtained by
+torture and retracted afterwards; the other prejudice,
+not always so just, but in the case of those not convicted
+on fair evidence deserving a better name, in
+favour of assertions of innocence made on the scaffold
+and at the stake, created, as they still preserve, a
+strong willingness to disbelieve the accusations which
+come so suspiciously before us.<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">61</a> An approximation
+to the truth may be obtained if, rejecting as improbable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80" href="#Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+the accusations of devil-worship and its concomitant
+rites which, invented to amuse the vulgar,
+characterise the proceedings, we admit the <i>probability</i>
+of a secret understanding with the Turks, or
+the <i>possibility</i> of infidelity to the religion of Christ.
+Their destruction had been predetermined; the
+slender element of truth might soon be exaggerated
+and confounded with every kind of fiction. Their
+pride, avarice, luxury, corrupt morals, would give
+colour to the most absurd inventions.<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">62</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">60</span></a> Michelet's <i>History of France</i>, book v. 4. M. Michelet suggests
+an ingenious explanation of some of their supposed secret practices.
+'The principal charge, the denial of the Saviour, rested on an equivocation.
+The Templars might confess to the denial without being
+in reality apostates. Many averred that it was a symbolical denial,
+in imitation of St. Peter's&mdash;one of those pious comedies in which the
+antique Church enveloped the most serious acts of religion, but
+whose traditional meaning was beginning to be lost in the fourteenth
+century.' The idol-head, believed to represent Mohammed or the devil,
+he supposes to have been 'a representation of the Paraclete, whose
+festival, that of Pentecost, was the highest solemnity of the Temple.'
+Some have identified them, like those of the Albigenses or Waldenses,
+with the ceremonies of the Gnostics.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">61</span></a> <i>View of the Middle Ages</i>, chap. i. The judicial impartiality
+(eulogised by Macaulay) and patient investigation of truth (the first
+merits of a historian) of the author of the <i>Constitutional History of
+England</i>, might almost entitle him to rank with the first of historians,
+Gibbon.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">62</span></a> The alliance of the Church&mdash;of the Dominican Order in particular&mdash;with
+the secular power against its once foremost champions, is
+paralleled and explained by the causes that led to the dissolution of
+the Order of Jesus by Clement XIV. in the eighteenth century&mdash;fear
+and jealousy.</p></div>
+
+<p>If the history of the extermination of the Templars
+exemplifies in an eminent manner the political uses
+made by the highest in office of a prevalent superstition,
+the story of Alice Kyteler illustrates equally
+the manner in which it was prostituted to the private
+purposes of designing impostors. The scene is in
+Ireland, the period the first half of the fourteenth
+century; Richard de Ledrede, Bishop of Ossory, being
+the principal prosecutor, and a lady, Alice Kyteler,
+the defendant. The details are too tedious to be repeated
+here;<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">63</a> but the articles upon which the conviction
+of Alice Kyteler and her accomplices was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81" href="#Page_81">[81]</a></span>
+sought are not dissimilar to those just narrated. To
+give effect to their sorcery they were in the habit of
+denying the faith for a year, or shorter period, as the
+object to be attained was greater or less. Demons
+were propitiated with sacrifices of living animals,
+torn limb by limb and scattered (a Hecatean feast)
+about cross-roads. It was alleged that by sorceries
+they obtained help from the devil; that they impiously
+used the ceremonies of the Church in nightly
+conventicles, pronouncing with lighted candles of
+wax excommunication against the persons of their own
+husbands, naming expressly every member from the
+sole of the foot to the top of the head. Their compositions
+are of the Horatian and Shakspearian sort.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82" href="#Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+With the intestines of cocks were sacrificed various
+herbs, the nails of dead men, hair, brains, and
+clothes of children dying unbaptized, with other
+equally efficacious ingredients, boiled in the skull of
+a certain famous robber recently beheaded: powders,
+ointments, and candles of fat boiled in the same
+skull were the intended instruments for exciting
+love or hatred, and in affecting the bodies of the
+faithful. An unholy connection existed between
+the Lady Alice and a demon in the form sometimes
+of a black dog, sometimes of a cat. She was possessed
+of a secret ointment for impregnating a piece
+of wood, upon which, with her companions, she was
+carried to any part of the world without hurt or hindrance:
+in her house was found a wafer of consecrated
+bread inscribed with the name of the devil.
+The event of this trial was the conviction and imprisonment
+of the criminals, with the important
+exception of the chief object of the bishop's persecution,
+who contrived an escape to England. Petronilla
+de Meath was the first to suffer the extreme penalty.
+This lady, by order of the bishop, had been six times
+flogged, when, to escape a repetition of that barbarous
+infliction, she made a public confession involving
+her fellow-prisoners. After which Petronilla was
+carried out into the city and burned before all the
+people&mdash;the first witch, it is said, ever burned in
+Ireland. Of the other accused all were treated with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83" href="#Page_83">[83]</a></span>
+more or less severity; two were subsequently burned,
+some were publicly flogged in the market-place and
+through the city, others banished; a few, more fortunate,
+escaping altogether.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">63</span></a> They are given in full in <i>Narratives of Sorcery and Magic from
+the most Authentic Sources</i>, by Thomas Wright. In the <i>Annals of
+Ireland</i>, affixed to Camden's <i>Britannia</i>, ed. 1695, sub anno 1325
+<span class="smcap">a.d.</span>, the case of Dame Alice Ketyll is briefly chronicled. Being
+cited and examined by the Bishop of Ossory, it was discovered, among
+other things, 'That a certain spirit called Robin Artysson lay with
+her; and that she offered him nine red cocks on a stone bridge where
+the highway branches out into four several parts. <i>Item</i>: That she
+swept the streets of Kilkenny with besoms between Compline and
+Courefeu, and in sweeping the filth towards the house of William
+Utlaw, her son, by way of conjuring, wished that all the wealth of
+Kilkenny might flow thither. The accomplices of this Alice in these
+devilish practices were Pernil of Meth, and Basilia the daughter of
+this Pernil. Alice, being found guilty, was fined by the bishop, and
+forced to abjure her sorcery and witchcraft. But being again convicted
+of the same practice, she made her escape with Basilia, and
+was never found. But Pernil was burnt at Kilkenny, and before her
+death declared that William above-said deserved punishment as well
+as she&mdash;that for a year and a day he wore the devil's girdle about
+his bare body,' &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84" href="#Page_84">[84]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Witchcraft and Heresy purposely confounded by the Church&mdash;Medi&aelig;val
+Science closely connected with Magic and Sorcery&mdash;Ignorance
+of Physiology the Cause of many of the Popular
+Prejudices&mdash;Jeanne d'Arc&mdash;Duchess of Gloucester&mdash;Jane Shore&mdash;Persecution
+at Arras.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="chap">What</span> can hardly fail to be discerned in these prosecutions
+is the confusion of heresy and sorcery industriously
+created by the orthodox Church to secure
+the punishment of her offending dissentients. There
+are few proceedings against the pretended criminals
+in which it is not discoverable; the one crime being,
+as a matter of course, the necessary consequence of
+the other. In the interest of the Church as much
+as in the credulity of the people must be sought
+the main cause of so violent an epidemic, of so fearful
+a phenomenon in its continuance and atrocities, a
+fact demonstrated by the whole course of the superstition
+in the old times of Catholicism. Materials for
+exciting animosity and indignation against suspected
+heretics were near at hand. In the assurance of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85" href="#Page_85">[85]</a></span>
+pre-scientific world everything remote from ordinary
+knowledge or experience was inseparable from
+supernaturalism. What surpassed the limits of a
+very feeble understanding, what was beyond the
+commonest experience of every-day life, was with
+one accord relegated to the domain of the supernatural,
+or rather to that of the devil. For what
+was not done or taught by Holy Church must be of
+'that wicked One'&mdash;the cunning imitator.</p>
+
+<p>In the twelfth century the Church was alarmed by
+the simultaneous springing up of various sects, which,
+if too hastily claimed by Protestantism as <i>Protestants</i>,
+in the modern sense, against Catholic theology, were
+yet sufficiently hostile or dangerous to engage the
+attention and to provoke the enmity of the pontiffs.
+The fate of the Stedingers and others in Germany,
+of the Paulicians in Northern France; of the Albigenses
+and Waldenses in Southern Europe, is in
+accordance with this successful sort of theological
+tactics. Many of the articles of indictment against
+those outlaws of the Church and of society are extracted
+from the primitive heresies, in particular from
+the doctrines of the anti-Judaic and <i>spiritualising</i>
+Gnostics, and their more than fifty subdivided sects&mdash;Marcionites,
+Manicheans, &amp;c. Gregory IV. issued
+a bull in 1232 against the Stedingers, revolted from
+the rule of the Archbishop of Bremen, where they are
+declared to be accustomed to scorn the sacraments,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86" href="#Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+hold communion with devils, make representative
+images of wax, and consult with witches.<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">64</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">64</span></a> A second bull enters into details. On the reception of a convert,
+a toad made its appearance, which was adored by the assembled
+crowd. On sitting down to the banquet a black cat comes upon the
+stage, double the size of an ordinary dog, advancing backwards with
+up-turned tail. The neophytes, one after another, kissed this feline
+demon, with due solemnity, on the back. Walter Mapes has given
+an account of the similar ceremonies of the <i>Publicans</i> (Paulicians).
+Heretical worship was of a most licentious as well as disgusting
+kind. The religious meetings terminate always in indiscriminate
+debauchery.</p></div>
+
+<p>Alchymy, astrology, and kindred arts were closely
+allied to the practice of witchcraft: the profession of
+medicine was little better than the mixing of magical
+ointments, love-potions, elixirs, not always of an innocent
+sort; and Sangrados were not wanting in those
+days to trade upon the ignorance of their patients.<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">65</a>
+Nor, unfortunately, are the genuine seekers after truth
+who honestly applied to the study of nature exempt
+from the charge of often an unconscious fraud.
+Monstrous notions mingled with the more real results
+of their meritorious labours. Science was in its infancy,
+or rather was still struggling to be freed from
+the oppressive weight of speculative and theological
+nonsense before emerging into existence. Many of
+the fancied phenomena of witch-cases, like other
+physical or mental eccentricities, have been explained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87" href="#Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+by the progress of reason and knowledge. Lycanthropy
+(the transformation of human beings into
+wolves by sorcery), with the no less irrational belief
+in demoniacal possession, the product of a diseased
+imagination and brain, was one of the many results
+of mere ignorance of physiology. In the seventeenth
+century lycanthropy was gravely defended by doctors
+of medicine as well as of divinity, on the authority of
+the story of Nebuchadnezzar, which proved undeniably
+the possibility of such metamorphoses.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">65</span></a> Pliny (<i>Hist. Natur.</i> xxx.) 'observes,' as Gibbon quotes him, 'that
+magic held mankind by the triple chain of religion, of physic, and of
+astronomy.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Cotemporary annalists record the extraordinary
+frenzy aggravated, as it was, by the proceedings
+against the Templars, the signal of witch persecutions
+throughout France. The historian of France draws
+a frightful picture of the insecure condition of an
+ignorantly prejudiced society. Accusations poured
+in; poisonings, adulteries, forgeries, and, above all,
+charges of witchcraft, which, indeed, entered as an ingredient
+into all causes, forming their attraction and
+their horror. The judge shuddered on the judgment
+seat when the proofs were brought before him in the
+shape of philtres, amulets, frogs, black cats, and waxen
+images stuck full of needles. Violent curiosity was
+blended at these trials with the fierce joy of vengeance
+and a cast of fear. The public mind could not be
+satiated with them: the more there were burnt, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88" href="#Page_88">[88]</a></span>
+more there were brought to be burnt.<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">66</a> In 1398 the
+Sorbonne, at the chancellor's suggestion, published 27
+articles against all sorts of sorcery, pictures of demons,
+and waxen figures. Six years later a synod was
+specially convened at Langres, and the pressing evil
+was anxiously deliberated at the Council of Constance.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">66</span></a> Michelet, whose poetic-prose may appear hardly suitable to the
+philosophic dignity of history, relating the fate of two knights accused
+with a monk of having 'sinned' with the king's daughter-in-law
+'even on the holiest days,' and who were castrated and flayed alive,
+truly enough infers that 'the pious confidence of the middle age which
+did not mistrust the immuring of a great lady along with her knights
+in the precincts of a castle, of a narrow tower; the vassalage which
+imposed on young men as a feudal duty the sweetest cares, was a
+dangerous trial to human nature.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Conspicuous about this period, by their importance
+and iniquity, are the cases of the Pucelle d'Orl&eacute;ans
+and the catastrophe of Arras. Incited (it is a modern
+conviction) by a noble enthusiasm, by her own ardent
+imagination, the Pucelle divested herself of the
+natural modesty of her sex for the dress and arms of
+a warrior; and 'her inexperienced mind, working
+day and night on the favourite object, mistook the
+impulses of passion for heavenly inspiration.' Reviewing
+the last scenes in the life of that patriotic
+shepherdess, we hesitate whether to stigmatise more
+the unscrupulous policy of the English authorities or
+the base subservience of the Parliament of Paris.
+The English Regent and the Cardinal of Winchester,
+unable to allege against their prisoner (the saviour of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89" href="#Page_89">[89]</a></span>
+her country, taken prisoner in a sally from a besieged
+town, had been handed over by her countrymen to the
+foreigner) any civil crime, were forced to disguise a
+violation of justice and humanity in the pretence of
+religion; and the Bishop of Beauvais presented a
+petition against her, as an ecclesiastical subject, demanding
+to have her tried by an ecclesiastical court
+for sorcery, impiety, idolatry, and magic. The University
+of Paris acquiesced. Before this tribunal the
+accused was brought, loaded with chains, and clothed
+in her military dress. It was alleged that she had
+carried about a standard consecrated by magical enchantments;
+that she had been in the habit of
+attending at the witches' sabbath at a fountain near
+the oak of Boulaincourt; that the demons had discovered
+to her a magical sword consecrated in the
+Church of St. Catherine, to which she owed her
+victories; that by means of sorcery she had gained
+the confidence of Charles VIII. Jeanne d'Arc was
+convicted of all these crimes, aggravated by <i>heresy</i>:
+her revelations were declared to be inventions of the
+devil to delude the people.<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">67</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">67</span></a> Shakspeare brings the fiends upon the stage: their work is done,
+and they now abandon the enchantress. In vain La Pucelle invokes
+in her extremity&mdash;
+</p>
+<p class="footpoem">'Ye familiar spirits, that are cull'd<br />
+Out of the powerful regions under earth,<br />
+Help me this once, that France may get the field.<br />
+Oh, hold me not with silence over-long!<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>Her ecclesiastical judges then consigned their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90" href="#Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+prisoner to the civil power; and, finally, in the
+words of Hume, 'this admirable heroine&mdash;to whom
+the more generous superstition of the ancients would
+have erected altars&mdash;was, on pretence of heresy and
+magic, delivered over alive to the flames; and expiated
+by that dreadful punishment the signal services she
+had rendered to her prince and to her native country.'<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">68</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">68</span></a> <i>History of England</i>, <span class="smcap">xx</span>. Shakspeare (<i>Henry VI.</i> part ii. act i.)
+has furnished us with the charms and incantations employed about
+the same time in the case of the Duchess of Gloucester. Mother
+Jourdain is the representative witch-hag.</p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><ins title="added missing quotation mark">'Where</ins> I was wont to feed you with my blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll lop a member off, and give it you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In earnest of a further benefit;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So you do condescend to help me now.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza"><div class="i0">
+<span class="sp">*     *     *     *     *<br /></span></div>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Cannot my body, nor blood-sacrifice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Entreat you to your wonted furtherance?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then take my soul; my body, soul, and all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before that England give the French the foil.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See! they forsake me.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza"><div class="i0">
+<span class="sp">*     *     *     *     *<br /></span></div>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My ancient incantations are too weak<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hell too strong for me to buckle with.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But a worthier, if contradictory, origin is assigned for her enthusiasm
+when she replies to the foul aspersion of her taunting captors&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Virtuous, and holy; chosen from above,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By inspiration of celestial grace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To work exceeding miracles on earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I never had to do with wicked spirits.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But you&mdash;that are polluted with your lusts,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stain'd with the guiltless blood of innocents,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Corrupt and tainted with a thousand vices&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Because you want the grace that others have,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You judge it straight a thing impossible<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To compass wonders, but by help of devils.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91" href="#Page_91">[91]</a></span></p>
+<p>Without detracting from the real merit of the patriotic
+martyr, it might be suspected that, besides her inflamed
+imagination, a pious and pardonable collusion
+was resorted to as a last desperate effort to rouse the
+energy of the troops or the hopes of the people&mdash;a
+collusion similar to that of the celebrated Constantinian
+Cross, or of the Holy Lance of Antioch. Every
+reader is acquainted with the fate of the great personages
+who in England were accused, politically or
+popularly, of the crime; and the histories of the
+Duchess of Gloucester and of Jane Shore are immortalised
+by Shakspeare. In 1417, Joan, second
+wife of Henry IV., had been sentenced to prison,
+suspected of seeking the king's death by sorcery; a
+certain Friar Randolf being her accomplice and
+agent. The Duchess of Gloucester, wife of Humphry
+and daughter of Lord Cobham, was an accomplice in
+the witchcraft of a priest and an old woman. Her associates
+were Sir Roger Bolingbroke, priest; Margery
+Jordan or Guidemar, of Eye, in Suffolk; Thomas
+Southwell, and Roger Only. It was asserted 'there
+was found in their possession a waxen image of the
+king, which they melted in a magical manner before a
+slow fire, with the intention of making Henry's force
+and vigour waste away by like insensible degrees.'
+The duchess was sentenced to do penance and to per<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92" href="#Page_92">[92]</a></span>petual
+imprisonment; Margery was burnt for a witch
+in Smithfield; the priest was hanged, declaring his
+employers had only desired to know of him how long
+the king would live; Thomas Southwell died the
+night before his execution; Roger Only was hanged,
+having first written a book to prove his own innocence,
+and against the opinion of the vulgar.<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">69</a> Jane
+Shore (whose story is familiar to all), the mistress of
+Edward IV., was sacrificed to the policy of Richard
+Duke of Gloucester, more than to any general suspicion
+of her guilt. Both the Archbishop of York
+and the Bishop of Ely were involved with the citizen's
+wife in demoniacal dealings, and imprisoned in
+the Tower. As for the 'harlot, strumpet Shore,' not
+being convicted, or at least condemned, for the
+worse crime, she was found guilty of adultery, and
+sentenced (a milder fate) to do penance in a white
+sheet before the assembled populace at St. Paul's.<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">70</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">69</span></a> The historian of England justly reflects on this case that the
+nature of the crime, so opposite to all common sense, seems always to
+exempt the accusers from using the rules of common sense in their
+evidence.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">70</span></a> This unfortunate woman was celebrated for her beauty and, with
+one important exception, for her virtues; and, if her vanity could not
+resist the fascination of a royal lover, her power had been often, it is
+said, exerted in the cause of humanity. Notwithstanding the neglect
+and ill-treatment experienced from the ingratitude of former fawning
+courtiers and people, she reached an advanced age, for she was living
+in the time of Sir Thomas More, who relates that 'when the Protector
+had awhile laid unto her, for the manner sake, that she went about to
+bewitch him, and that she was of counsel with the lord chamberlain
+to destroy him; in conclusion, when no colour could fasten upon this
+matter, then he laid heinously to her charge the thing that herself
+could not deny, that all the world wist was true, and that natheless
+every man laughed at to hear it then so suddenly so highly taken&mdash;that
+she was naught of her body.'&mdash;<i>Reign of Richard III.</i>, quoted by
+Bishop Percy in <i>Reliques of Old English Romance Poetry</i>. The deformed
+prince fiercely attributes his proverbial misfortune to hostile
+witchcraft. He addresses his trembling council:
+</p>
+<p class="footpoem">'Look how I am bewitch'd; behold mine arm<br />
+Is, like a blasted sapling, wither'd up:<br />
+And this is Edward's wife, that monstrous witch,<br />
+Consorted with that harlot, strumpet Shore,<br />
+That by their witchcraft thus have marked me.'<br />
+</p><p class="cite3">
+<i>Richard III.</i> act iii. sc. 4.<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>More tremendous than any of the cases above<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93" href="#Page_93">[93]</a></span>
+narrated is that of Arras, where numbers of all classes
+suffered. So transparent were the secret but real
+motives of the chief agitators, that even the unbounded
+credulity of the public could penetrate the
+thin disguise. The affair commenced with the
+accusation of a woman of Douai, called Demiselle
+(une femme de folle vie). Put to the torture repeatedly,
+this wretched woman was forced to confess
+she had frequented a meeting of sorcerers where
+several persons were seen and recognised; amongst
+others Jehan Levite, a painter at Arras. The chronicler
+of the fifteenth century relates the diabolical catastrophe
+thus: 'A terrible and melancholy transaction
+took place this year (1459) in the town of Arras, the
+capital of the county of Artois, which said transaction
+was called, I know not why, <i>Vaudoisie</i>: but it was
+said that certain men and women transported themselves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94" href="#Page_94">[94]</a></span>
+whither they pleased from the places where
+they were seen, by virtue of a compact with the
+devil. Suddenly they were carried to forests and
+deserts, where they found assembled great numbers
+of both sexes, and with them a devil in the form of a
+man, whose face they never saw. This devil read to
+them, or repeated his laws and commandments in
+what way they were to worship and serve him: then
+each person kissed his back, and he gave to them
+after this ceremony some little money. He then regaled
+them with great plenty of meats and wines,
+when the lights were extinguished, and each man
+selected a female for amorous dalliance; and suddenly
+they were transported back to the places they
+had come from. For such criminal and mad acts
+many of the principal persons of the town were imprisoned;
+and others of the lower ranks, with women,
+and such as were known to be of this sect, were so
+terribly tormented, that some confessed matters to
+have happened as has been related. They likewise
+confessed to have seen and known many persons of
+rank, prelates, nobles, and governors of districts, as
+having been present at these meetings; such, indeed,
+as, upon the rumour of common fame, their judges
+and examiners named, and, as it were, put into their
+mouths: so that through the pains of the torments
+they accused many, and declared they had seen them
+at these meetings. Such as had been thus accused<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95" href="#Page_95">[95]</a></span>
+were instantly arrested, and so long and grievously
+tormented that they were forced to confess just whatever
+their judges pleased, when those of the lower
+rank were inhumanly burnt. Some of the richer and
+more powerful ransomed themselves from this disgrace
+by dint of money; while others of the highest
+orders were remonstrated with, and seduced by their
+examiners into confession under a promise that if
+they would confess, they should not suffer either in
+person or property. Others, again, suffered the
+severest torments with the utmost patience and fortitude.
+The judges received very large sums of money
+from such as were able to pay them: others fled the
+country, or completely proved their innocence of the
+charges made against them, and remained unmolested.
+It must not be concealed (proceeds Monstrelet) that
+many persons of worth knew that these charges had
+been raked up by a set of wicked persons to harass
+and disgrace some of the principal inhabitants of
+Arras, whom they hated with the bitterest rancour,
+and from avarice were eager to possess themselves of
+their fortunes. They at first maliciously arrested
+some persons deserving of punishment for their
+crimes, whom they had so severely tormented, holding
+out promises of pardon, that they forced them to
+accuse whomsoever they were pleased to name. This
+matter was considered [it must have been an exceedingly
+ill-devised plot to provoke suspicion and even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96" href="#Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+indignation in such a matter] by all men of sense
+and virtue as most abominable: and it was thought
+that those who had thus destroyed and disgraced so
+many persons of worth would put their souls in imminent
+danger at the last day.'<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">71</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">71</span></a> Enguerrand de Monstrelet's <i>Chronicles</i>, lib. iii. cap. 93, Johnes'
+Translation. <i>Vaudoisie</i>, which puzzles the annalist, seems to disclose
+the pretence, if not the motive, of the proceedings. Yet it is not easy
+to conceive so large a number of all classes involved in the proscribed
+heresy of the Vaudois in a single city in the north of France.</p></div>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the inquisitor, Jacques Dubois, doctor
+in theology, dean of N&ocirc;tre Dame at Arras, ordered
+the arrest of Levite the artist, and made him confess he
+had attended the 'Vauldine;' that he had seen there
+many people, men and women, burghers, ecclesiastics,
+whose names were specified. The bishops' vicars,
+overwhelmed by the number and quality of the involved,
+began to dread the consequence, and wished
+to stop the proceedings. But this did not satisfy the
+projects of two of the most active promoters, Jacques
+Dubois and the Bishop of Bayrut, who urged the
+Comte d'Estampes to use his authority with the vicars
+to proceed energetically against the prisoners. Soon
+afterwards the matter was brought to a crisis; the
+fate of the tortured convicts was decided, and amidst
+thousands of spectators from all parts, they were
+brought out, each with a mitre on his head, on which
+was painted the devil in the form in which he appeared
+at the general assemblies, and burned.</p>
+
+<p>They admitted (under the severest torture, promises,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97" href="#Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+and threats) the truth of their meetings at the
+sabbaths. They used a sort of ointment well known
+in witch-pharmacy for rubbing a small wooden rod
+and the palms of their hands, and by a very common
+mode of conveyance were borne away suddenly to
+the appointed rendezvous. Here their lord and
+master was expecting them in the shape of a goat
+with the face of a man and the tail of an ape.
+Homage was first done by his new vassals offering up
+their soul or some part of the body; afterwards
+in adoration kissing him on the back&mdash;the accustomed
+salutation.<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">72</a> Next followed the different signs
+and ceremonies of the infernal vassalage, in particular
+treading and spitting upon the cross. Then to
+eating and drinking; after which the guests joined
+in acts of indescribable debauchery, when the devil
+took the form alternately of either sex. Dismissal
+was given by a mock sermon, forbidding to go to
+church, hear mass, or touch holy water. All these
+acts indicate schismatic offences which yet for the
+most part are the characteristics of the sabbaths
+in later Protestant witchcraft, excepting that the
+wicked apostates are there usually <i>papistical</i> instead
+of <i>protestant</i>. During nearly two years Arras was subjected
+to the arbitrary examinations and tortures of
+the inquisitors; and an appeal to the Parliament of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98" href="#Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+Paris could alone stop the proceedings, 1461. The
+chance of acquittal by the verdict of the public was
+little: it was still less by the sentence of judicial
+tribunals.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">72</span></a> The 'Osculum in tergo' seems to be an indispensable part of the
+Homagium or <i>Diabolagium</i>.</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<div class="pad"><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99" href="#Page_99">[99]</a></span></p>
+<p class="fm14">PART III.</p>
+
+<h2>MODERN FAITH.</h2><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100" href="#Page_100">[100]</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101" href="#Page_101">[101]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The Bull of Innocent VIII.&mdash;A new Incentive to the vigorous
+Prosecution of Witchcraft&mdash;The 'Malleus Maleficarum'&mdash;Its
+Criminal Code&mdash;Numerous Executions at the Commencement
+of the Sixteenth Century&mdash;Examination of Christian Demonology&mdash;Various
+Opinions of the Nature of Demons&mdash;General
+Belief in the Intercourse of Demons and other non-human
+Beings with Mankind.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="chap">Perhaps</span> the most memorable epoch in the annals of
+witchcraft is the date of the promulgation of the bull
+of Pope Innocent VIII., when its prosecution was
+formally sanctioned, enforced, and developed in the
+most explicit manner by the highest authority in the
+Church. It was in the year 1484 that Innocent
+VIII. issued his famous bull directed especially
+against the crime in Germany, whose inquisitors
+were empowered to seek out and burn the malefactors
+<i>pro strigiat&ucirc;s h&aelig;resi</i>. The bull was as
+follows: 'Innocent, Bishop, servant of the servants
+of God, in order to the future memorial of the
+matter.... In truth it has come to our ears, not
+without immense trouble and grief to ourselves, that
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102" href="#Page_102">[102]</a></span>in some parts of Higher Germany ... very many
+persons of both sexes, deviating from the Catholic
+faith, abuse themselves with the demons, Incubus and
+Succubus; and by incantations, charms, conjurations,
+and other wicked <i>superstitions</i>, by criminal acts and
+offences have caused the offspring of women and of
+the lower animals, the fruits of the earth, the grape,
+and the products of various plants, men, women, and
+other animals of different kinds, vineyards, meadows,
+pasture land, corn, and other vegetables of the earth,
+to perish, be oppressed, and utterly destroyed; that
+they torture men and women with cruel pains and
+torments, internal as well as external; that they
+hinder the proper intercourse of the sexes, and the
+propagation of the human species. Moreover, they
+are in the habit of denying the very faith itself. We
+therefore, willing to provide by opportune remedies
+according as it falls to us by our office, by our
+apostolical authority, by the tenor of these presents
+do appoint and decree that they be convicted, imprisoned,
+punished, and mulcted according to their
+offences.... By the apostolic rescript given at
+Rome.'</p>
+
+<p>This, in brief, is an outline of the proclamation
+of Innocent VIII., the principles of which were developed
+in the more voluminous work of the 'Malleus
+Maleficarum,'<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">73</a> or Hammer of Witches, five years
+later. In the interval, the effect of so forcible an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103" href="#Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+appeal from the Head of the Church was such as
+might be expected. Cumanus, one of the inquisitors
+in 1485, burned forty-one witches, first shaving them
+to search for 'marks.' Alciatus, a lawyer, tells us
+that another ecclesiastical officer burned one hundred
+witches in Piedmont, and was prevented in his plan
+of daily <i>autos-da-f&eacute;</i> only by a general uprising of the
+people, who at length drove him out of the country,
+when the archbishop succeeded to the vacant office.
+In several provinces, even the servile credulity of
+the populace could not tolerate the excesses of the
+judges; and the inhabitants rose <i>en masse</i> against
+their inquisitorial oppressors, dreading the entire
+depopulation of their neighbourhood. As a sort of
+apology for the bull of 1484 was published the
+'Malleus'&mdash;a significantly expressive title.<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">74</a> The
+authors appointed by the pope were Jacob Sprenger,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104" href="#Page_104">[104]</a></span>
+of the Order of Preachers, and Professor of Theology
+in Cologne; John Gremper, priest, Master in Arts;
+and Henry Institor. The work is divisible, according
+to the title, into three parts&mdash;Things that pertain
+to Witchcraft; The Effects of Witchcraft; and The
+Remedies for Witchcraft.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">73</span></a> Ennemoser (<i>History of Magic</i>), a modern and milder Protestant,
+excepts to the general denunciations of Pope Innocent ('who assumed
+this name, undoubtedly, because he wished it to indicate what he
+really desired to be') by Protestant writers who have used such terms
+as 'a scandalous hypocrite,' 'a cursed war-song of hell,' 'hangmen's
+slaves,' 'rabid jailers,' 'bloodthirsty monsters,' &amp;c.; and thinks that
+'the accusation which was made against Innocent could only have
+been justly founded if the pope had not participated in the general
+belief, if he had been wiser than his time, and really seen that the
+heretics were no allies of the devil, and that the witches were no
+heretics.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">74</span></a> The complete title is 'MALLEUS MALEFICARUM in tres
+partes divisus, in quibus I. Concurrentia ad maleficia; II. Maleficiorum
+effectus; III. Remedia adversus maleficia. Et modus denique
+procedendi ac puniendi maleficas abunde continetur, pr&aelig;cipue
+autem omnibus inquisitoribus et divini verbi concionatoribus utilis et
+necessarius.' The original edition of 1489 is the one quoted by
+Hauber, <i>Bibliotheca Mag.</i>, and referred to by Ennemoser, <i>History
+of Magic</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p>In this apology the editors are careful to affirm
+that they <i>collected</i>, rather than <i>furnished</i>, their
+materials originally, and give as their venerable
+authorities the names of Dionysius the Areopagite,
+Chrysostom, Hilary, Augustin, Gregory I., Remigius,
+Thomas Aquinas, and others. The writers exult in the
+consciousness of security, in spite of the attempts of
+the demons, day and night, to deter them from completing
+their meritorious labours. Stratagems of every
+sort are employed in vain. In their judgment the
+worst species of human wickedness sink into nothing,
+compared with apostasy from the Church and, by
+consequence, alliance with hell. A genuine or pretended
+dread of sorcery, and an affected contempt
+for the female sex, with an extremely low estimate
+of its virtues (adopting the language of the Fathers),
+characterises the opinions of the compilers.</p>
+
+<p>Ennemoser has made an abstract from the 'Demonomagie'
+of Horst (founded on Hauber's original work),
+of the 'Hexenhammer,' under its three principal divisions.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105" href="#Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+The third part, which contains the Criminal
+Code, and consists of thirty-five questions, is the
+most important section. It is difficult to decide
+which is the more astonishing, the perfect folly or
+the perfect iniquity of the Code: it is easier to
+understand how so many thousands of victims were
+helplessly sacrificed. The arrest might take place
+on the simple rumour of a witch being found somewhere,
+without any previous denunciation. The
+most abandoned and the most infamous persons may
+be witnesses: no criminal is too bad. Even a witch
+or heretic (the <i>worst</i> criminal in the eye of ecclesiastical
+law) is capable of giving evidence. Husbands
+and wives may witness one against the other; and the
+testimony of children was received as good evidence.</p>
+
+<p>The ninth and tenth chapters consider the question
+'whether a defence was to be allowed; if
+an advocate defended his client beyond what was
+requisite, whether it was not reasonable that he too
+should be considered guilty; for he is a patron of
+witches and heretics.... Thirteenth chapter:
+What the judge has to notice in the torture-chamber.
+Witches who have given themselves up for years,
+body and soul, to the devil, are made by him so insensible
+to pain on the rack, that they rather allow
+themselves to be torn to pieces than confess. Fourteenth
+chapter: Upon torture and the mode of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106" href="#Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+racking. In order to bring the accused to voluntary
+confession, you may promise her her life; which
+promise, however, may afterwards be withdrawn. If
+the witch does not confess the first day, the torture
+to be continued the second and third days. But
+here the difference between continuing and repeating
+is important. The torture may not be <i>continued</i>
+without fresh evidence, but it may be <i>repeated</i>
+according to judgment. Fifteenth chapter: Continuance
+of the discovery of a witch by her marks.
+Amongst other signs, weeping is one. It is a damning
+thing if the accused, on being brought up, cannot
+shed tears. The clergy and judges lay their hands
+on the head of the accused, and adjure her by the
+hot tears of the Most Glorified Virgin that in case
+of her innocence, she shed abundant tears in the
+name of God the Father.'<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">75</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">75</span></a> Ennemoser's <i>History of Magic</i>. Translated by W. Howitt.
+There are three kinds of men whom witchcraft cannot touch&mdash;magistrates;
+clergymen exercising the pious rites of the Church; and
+saints, who are under the immediate protection of the angels.</p></div>
+
+<p>The 'Bull' and 'Malleus' were the code and textbook
+of Witchcraft amongst the Catholics, as the Act
+and 'Demonologie' of James VI. were of the Protestants.
+Perhaps the most important result of the
+former was to withdraw entirely the authorised prosecution
+and punishment of the criminals from the
+civil to the ecclesiastical tribunals. Formerly they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107" href="#Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+had a divided jurisdiction. At the same time the
+fury of popular and judicial fanaticism was greatly
+inflamed by this new sanction. Immediately, and
+almost simultaneously, in different parts of Europe,
+heretical witches were hunted up, tortured, burned,
+or hanged; and those parts of the Continent most
+infected with the widening heresy suffered most.
+The greater number in Germany seems to show that
+the dissentients from Catholic dogma there were
+rapidly increasing, some time before Luther thundered
+out his denunciations. An unusual storm of
+thunder and lightning in the neighbourhood of Constance
+was the occasion of burning two old women,
+Ann Mindelen and one 'Agnes.'<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">76</a> One contemporary
+writer asserts that 1,000 persons were put to
+death in one year in the district of Como; and
+Remigius, one of the authorised <i>inquisitores pravitatis
+h&aelig;retic&aelig;</i>, boasts of having burned 900 in the
+course of fifteen years. Martin del Rio states 500
+were executed in Geneva in the short space of three
+months in 1515; and during the next five years 40
+were burned at Ravensburgh. Great numbers suffered
+in France at the same period. At Calahorra,
+in Spain, in 1507, a vast <i>auto-da-f&eacute;</i> was exhibited,
+when 39 women, denounced as sorceresses, were
+committed to the flames&mdash;religious carnage attested
+by the unsuspected evidence of the judges and executioners<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108" href="#Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+themselves.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">76</span></a> <ins title="corrected typo Hutchison's">Hutchinson's</ins> <i>Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft</i>, chap ii.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>It is opportune here to examine the common
+beliefs of demonology and sorcery as they existed in
+Europe. Christian demonology is a confused mixture
+of pagan, Oriental, and Christian ideas. The Christian
+Scriptures have seemed to suggest and sanction
+a constant personal interference of the 'great
+adversary,' who is always traversing the earth
+'seeking whom he may devour;' and his popular
+figure is represented as a union of the great dragon,
+the satyrs, and fauns. Nor does he often appear
+without one or other of his recognised marks&mdash;the
+cloven foot, the goat's horns, beard, and legs, or the
+dragon's tail. With young and good-looking witches
+he is careful to assume the recommendations of a
+young and handsome man, whilst it is not worth
+while to disguise so unprepossessing peculiarities in
+his incarnate manifestations to <i>old</i> women, the
+enjoyment of whose souls is the great purpose of
+seduction.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Thomas Browne ('Vulgar Errors'), a man of
+much learning and still more superstitious fancy,
+speciously explains the phenomenon of the cloven
+foot. He suggests that 'the ground of this opinion
+at first might be his frequent appearing in the shape
+of a goat, which answers this description. This was
+the opinion of the ancient Christians concerning the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109" href="#Page_109">[109]</a></span>
+apparitions of <i>panites</i>, fauns, and satyrs: and of
+this form we read of one that appeared to Anthony
+in the wilderness. The same is also confirmed from
+exposition of Holy Scripture. For whereas it is said
+"Thou shalt not offer unto devils," the original word
+is <i>Seghuirim</i>, i. e. rough and hairy goats; because
+in that shape the devil most often appeared, as is
+expounded by the rabbins, as Tremellius hath also
+explained; and as the word <i>Ascimah</i>, the God of
+Emath, is by some explained.' Dr. Joseph Mede, a
+pious and learned divine, author of the esteemed
+'Key to the Apocalypse,' pronounces that 'the devil
+could not appear in human shape while man was in
+his integrity, because he was a spirit fallen from his
+first glorious perfection, and therefore must appear
+in such shape which might argue his imperfection
+and abasement, which was the shape of a beast;
+otherwise [he plausibly contends] no reason can be
+given why he should not rather have appeared to
+Eve in the shape of a woman than of a serpent.
+But since the fall of man the case is altered; now we
+know he can take upon him the shape of a man.
+He appears in the shape of man's imperfection rather
+for age or deformity, as like an old man (for so
+the witches say); and, perhaps, it is not altogether
+false, which is vulgarly affirmed, that the devil
+appearing in human shape has always a deformity of
+some uncouth member or other, as though he could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110" href="#Page_110">[110]</a></span>
+not yet take upon him human shape entirely, for
+that man is not entirely and utterly fallen as he is.'
+Whatever form he may assume, the cloven foot must
+always be visible under every disguise; and Othello
+looks first for that fabulous but certain sign when he
+scrutinises his treacherous friend.</p>
+
+<p>Reginald Scot's reminiscences of what was instilled
+into him in the nursery may possibly occur to some
+even at this day. 'In our childhood,' he complains,
+'our mothers' maids have so terrified us with an ugly
+devil having horns on his head, fire in his mouth, a
+tail in his breech, eyes like a bison, fangs like a dog,
+a skin like a <i>niger</i>, a voice roaring like a lion, whereby
+we start and are afraid when we hear one cry Boh!'
+Chaucer has expressed the belief of his age on the
+subject. It seems to have been a proper duty of a
+parish priest to bring to the notice of his ecclesiastical
+superior, with other crimes, those of sorcery.
+The Friar describes his 'Erchedeken' as one&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That boldely didde execucioun<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In punyschying of fornicacioun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of wicchecraft....<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This ecclesiastic employed in his service a subordinate
+'sompnour,' who, in the course of his official
+duty, one day meets a devil, whose 'dwellynge is in
+Helle,' who condescends to enlighten the officer on
+the dark subject of demon-apparitions:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When us liketh we can take us on<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or ellis make you seme that we ben schape<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Som tyme like a man or like an ape;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111" href="#Page_111">[111]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or like an aungel can I ryde or go:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is no wonder thing though it be so,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A lowsy jogelour can deceyve the;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, parfay, yet can I more craft than he.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>To the question why they are not satisfied with <i>one</i>
+shape for all occasions, the devil answers at length:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Som tyme we ben Goddis instrumentes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And menes to don his commandementes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whan that him liste, upon his creatures<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In divers act and in divers figures.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Withouten him we have no might certayne<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If that him liste to stonden ther agayne.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And som tyme at our prayer, have we leve<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only the body and not the soule greve;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Witnesse on Job, whom we didde ful wo.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And som tyme have we might on bothe two,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That is to say of body and soule eeke<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And som tyme be we suffred for to seeke<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon a man and don his soule unrest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And not his body, and al is for the best.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whan he withstandeth our temptacioun<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is a cause of his savacioun.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Al be it so it was naught our entente<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He schuld be sauf, but that we wolde him hente.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And som tyme we ben servaunt unto man<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As to the Erchebisschop Saynt Dunstan;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And to the Apostolis servaunt was I.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza"><div class="i0">
+<span class="sp">*     *     *     *     *<br /></span></div>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Som tyme we fegn, and som tyme we ryse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With dede bodies, in ful wonder wyse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And speke renably, and as fayre and wel<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As to the Phitonissa dede Samuel:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And yit wil som men say, it was not he.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I do no fors of your divinitie.<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">77</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">77</span></a> <i>Canterbury Tales.</i> T. Wright's Text. Chaucer, the English
+Boccaccio in verse, attacks alike with his sarcasms the Church and the
+female sex.</p></div>
+
+<p>Jewish theology, expanded by their leading divines,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112" href="#Page_112">[112]</a></span>
+includes a formidable array of various demons; and
+the whole of nature in Christian belief was peopled
+with every kind</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Of those demons that are found<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In fire, air, flood, or under ground.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Various opinions have been held concerning the
+nature of devils and demons. Some have maintained,
+with Tertullian, that they are 'the souls of baser
+men.' It is a disputed question whether they are
+mortal or immortal; subject to, or free from, pain.
+'Psellus, a Christian, and sometime tutor to Michael
+Pompinatius, Emperor of Greece, a great observer of
+the nature of devils, holds they are corporeal, and
+live and die: ... that they feel pain if they be hurt
+(which Cardan confirms, and Scaliger justly laughs
+him to scorn for); and if their bodies be cut, with
+admirable celerity they come together again. Austin
+approves as much; so doth Hierome, Origen, Tertullian,
+Lactantius, and many eminent fathers of the
+Church; that in their fall their bodies were changed
+into a more aerial and gross substance.' The Platonists
+and some rabbis, Porphyrius, Plutarch, Zosimus,
+&amp;c., hold this opinion, which is scornfully denied
+by some others, who assert that they only deceive the
+eyes of men, effecting no real change. Cardan believes
+'they feed on men's souls, and so [a worthy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113" href="#Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+origin] belike that we have so many battles fought
+in all ages, countries, is to make them a feast and
+their sole delight: but if displeased they fret and
+chafe (for they feed belike on the souls of beasts, as
+we do on their bodies) and send many plagues
+amongst us.'</p>
+
+<p>Their exact numbers and orders are differently
+estimated by different authorities. It is certain that
+they fill the air, the earth, the water, as well as the
+subterranean globe. The air, according to Paracelsus,
+is not so full of flies in summer as it is at all times of
+invisible devils. Some writers, professing to follow
+Socrates and Plato, determine nine sorts. Whatever
+or wherever the supralunary may be, our world is
+more interested in the sublunary tribes. These are
+variously divided and subdivided. One authority
+computes six distinct kinds&mdash;Fiery, Aerial, Terrestrial,
+Watery, Subterranean and Central: these last
+inhabiting the central regions of the interior of the
+earth. The Fiery are those that work 'by blazing
+stars, fire-drakes; they counterfeit suns and moons,
+stars oftentimes. The Aerial live, for the most part,
+in the air, cause many tempests, thunder and lightning,
+tear oaks, fire steeples, houses; strike men and
+beasts; make it rain stones, as in Livy's time, wool,
+frogs, &amp;c.; counterfeit armies in the air, strange
+noises ... all which Guil. Postellus useth as
+an argument (as, indeed, it is) to persuade them that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114" href="#Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+will not believe there be spirits or devils. They
+cause whirlwinds on a sudden and tempestuous
+storms, which, though our meteorologists generally
+refer to natural causes, yet I am of Bodine's mind,
+they are more often caused by those aerial devils in
+their several quarters; for they ride on the storms
+as when a desperate man makes away with himself,
+which, by hanging or drowning, they frequently do,
+as Kormannus observes, <i>tripudium agentes</i>, dancing
+and rejoicing at the death of a sinner. These can
+corrupt the air, and cause sickness, plagues, storms,
+shipwrecks, fires, inundations.... Nothing so
+familiar (if we may believe those relations of Saxo
+Grammaticus, Olaus Magnus, &amp;c.) as for witches and
+sorcerers in Lapland, Lithuania, and all over Scandia
+to sell winds to mariners and cause tempests, which
+Marcus Paulus, the Venetian, relates likewise of the
+Tartars.<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">78</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">78</span></a> It is still the custom of the Tartar or Thibetian Lamas, or at least
+of some of them, to scatter charms to the winds for the benefit of travellers.
+M. Huc's <i>Travels in Tartary, Thibet, &amp;c.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>'These are they which Cardan thinks desire so much
+carnal copulation with witches (Incubi and Succubi),
+transform bodies, and are so very cold if they be
+touched, and that serve magicians.... Water
+devils are those naiads or water nymphs which have
+been heretofore conversant about waters and rivers.
+The water (as Paracelsus thinks) is their chaos,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115" href="#Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+wherein they live ... appearing most part
+(saith Trithemius) in women's shapes. Paracelsus
+hath several stories of them that have lived and been
+married to mortal men, and so continued for certain
+years with them, and after, upon some dislike, have
+forsaken them. Such an one was Egeria, with whom
+Numa was so familiar, Diana, Ceres, &amp;c....
+Terrestrial devils are Lares, Genii, Fauns, Satyrs,
+Wood-nymphs, Foliots, Fairies, Robin Goodfellows,
+Trulli; which, as they are most conversant with
+men, so they do them most harm. Some think it
+was they alone that kept the heathen people in awe
+of old.... Subterranean devils are as common
+as the rest, and do as much harm. Olaus Magnus
+makes six kinds of them, some bigger, some less,
+commonly seen about mines of metals, and are some
+of them noxious; some again do no harm (they are
+guardians of treasure in the earth, and cause earthquakes).
+The last (sort) are conversant about the
+centre of the earth, to torture the souls of damned
+men to the day of judgment; their egress and
+ingress some suppose to be about &AElig;tna, Lipari,
+Hecla, Vesuvius, Terra del Fuego, because many
+shrieks and fearful cries are continually heard thereabouts,
+and familiar apparitions of dead men, ghosts,
+and goblins.'</p>
+
+<p>As for the particular offices and operations of those
+various tribes, 'Plato, in <i>Critias</i>, and after him his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116" href="#Page_116">[116]</a></span>
+followers, gave out that they were men's governors
+and keepers, our lords and masters, as we are of our
+cattle. They govern provinces and kingdoms by
+oracles, auguries, dreams, rewards and punishments,
+prophecies, inspirations, sacrifices and religious <i>superstitions</i>,
+varied in as many forms as there be diversity
+of spirits; they send wars, plagues, peace, sickness,
+health, dearth, plenty, as appears by those histories
+of Thucydides, Livius, Dionysius Halicarnassensis,
+with many others, that are full of their wonderful
+stratagems.' They formerly devoted themselves,
+each one, to the service of particular individuals as
+familiar demons, 'private spirits.' Numa, Socrates,
+and many others were indebted to their <i>Genius</i>.
+The power of the devil is not limited to the body.
+'Many think he can work upon the body, but not
+upon the mind. But experience pronounceth otherwise,
+that he can work both upon body and mind.
+Tertullian is of this opinion.'</p>
+
+<p>The causes and inducements of 'possession' are
+many. One writer affirms that 'the devil being a
+slender, incomprehensible spirit can easily insinuate
+and wind himself into human bodies, and cunningly
+couched in our bowels, vitiate our healths, terrify our
+souls with fearful dreams, and shake our minds with
+furies. They go in and out of our bodies as bees do
+in a hive, and so provoke and tempt us as they
+perceive our temperature inclined of itself and most
+apt to be deluded.... Agrippa and Lavater are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117" href="#Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+persuaded that this humour [the melancholy] invites
+the devil into it, wheresoever it is in extremity, and,
+of all other, melancholy persons are most subject to
+diabolical temptations and illusions, and most apt to
+entertain them, and the devil best able to work
+upon them. 'But whether,' declares Burton, 'by
+obsession, or possession, or otherwise, I will not
+determine; 'tis a difficult question.'<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">79</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">79</span></a> <i>The Anatomy of Melancholy</i>, by Democritus junior; edited by
+Democritus minor. Part i. sect. 2. An equally copious and curious
+display of learning. Few authors, probably, have been more
+plagiarised.</p></div>
+
+<p>The medi&aelig;valists believed themselves surrounded
+everywhere by spiritual beings; but unlike the ancients,
+they were convinced not so much that they
+were the peculiar care of heaven as that they were
+the miserable victims of hellish malice, ever seeking
+their temporal as well as eternal destruction; a
+fact apparent in the whole medi&aelig;val literature
+and art.<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">80</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">80</span></a> Sismondi (<i>Literature of the South of Europe</i>) has observed of
+the greatest epic of the Middle Age, that 'Dante, in common with
+many fathers of the Church, under the supposition that paganism,
+in the persons of the infernal gods, represented the fallen angels, has
+made no scruple to adopt its fables.' Tasso, at a later period, introduces
+the deities of heathendom. In the <i>Gerusalemme Liberata</i> they
+sit in council to frustrate the plans and destroy the forces of the
+Christian leaders before Jerusalem (iv). Ismeno, a powerful magician
+in the ranks of the Turks, brings up a host of diabolic allies
+to guard the wood which supplied the infidels with materials for
+carrying on the siege of the city (xiii.). And the masterpieces of
+art of Guido or Raffaelle, which excite at once admiration and despair
+in their modern disciples, consecrated and immortalised the
+vulgar superstition.</p></div>
+
+<p>Glanvil's conjectures on the cause of the <i>comparative</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118" href="#Page_118">[118]</a></span>
+rarity of demoniac and other spiritual apparitions
+in general may interest the credulous or curious reader.
+''Tis very probable,' reasons the Doctor, 'that the state
+wherein they are will not easily permit palpable intercourses
+between the bad genii and mankind: since
+'tis like enough their own laws and government do
+not allow their frequent excursions into the world.
+Or it may with great probability be supposed that
+'tis a very hard and painful thing for them to force
+their thin and <i>tenuious</i> bodies into a visible consistence,
+and such shapes as are necessary for their
+designs in their correspondence with witches. For
+in this action their bodies must needs be exceedingly
+compressed, which cannot well be without a painful
+sense. And this is, perhaps, a reason why there are
+so few apparitions, and why appearing spirits are
+commonly in such a hurry to be gone, viz. that they
+may be delivered of the unnatural pressure of their
+tender vehicles,<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">81</a> which I confess holds more in the
+apparition of good than evil spirits ... the reason
+of which probably is the greater subtlety and tenuity
+of the former, which will require far greater degrees
+of compression and consequently of pain to make
+them visible; whereas the latter are feculent and
+gross, and so nearer allied to palpable existences,
+and more easily reducible to appearance and visibility.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119" href="#Page_119">[119]</a></span><a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">82</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">81</span></a> So specious a theory must have occurred to, and its propriety
+will easily be recognised by, the spirit and ghost advocates of the
+present day.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">82</span></a> <i>Sadducismus Triumphatus.</i> Considerations about Witchcraft.
+Sect. xi.</p></div>
+
+<p>'Palpable intercourses between the bad genii and
+mankind' are more frequent than Dr. Glanvil was
+disposed to believe; and he must have been conversant
+with the acts of Incubus and Succubus. In the
+first age (orbe novo c&#339;loque recenti) under the
+Saturnian regime, 'while yet there was no fear of
+Jove,'<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">83</a> innocence prevailed undisturbed; but soon as
+the silver age was inaugurated by the usurpation of
+Jove, <i>liaisons</i> between gods and mortals became frequent.
+Love affairs between good or bad 'genii'
+and mankind are of common occurrence in the
+mythology of most peoples. In the romance-tales of
+the middle age lovers find themselves unexpectedly
+connected with some mysterious being of inhuman
+kind. The writers in defence of witchcraft quote
+Genesis vi. in proof of the reality of such intercourses;
+and Justin Martyr and Tertullian, the great apologists
+of Christianity, and others of the Fathers, interpret
+<i>Filios Dei</i> to be angels or evil spirits who, enamoured
+with the beauty of the women, begot the primeval
+giants.<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">84</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">83</span></a> 'Jove nondum Barbato.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">84</span></a> Milton indignantly exclaims, alluding to this common fancy of
+the leaders of the Primitive Church, 'Who would think him fit to
+write an apology for Christian faith to the Roman Senate that could
+tell them "how of the angels"&mdash;of which he must needs mean those
+in Genesis called the Sons of God&mdash;"mixing with women were begotten
+the devils," as good Justin Martyr in his Apology told them.'
+(<i>Reformation in England</i>, book i.). And 'Clemens Alexandrinus,
+Sulpicius Severus, Eusebius, &amp;c., make a twofold fall of angels&mdash;one
+from the beginning of the world; another a little before the deluge,
+as Moses teacheth us, openly professing that these <i>genii</i> can beget
+and have carnal copulation with woman' (<i>Anatomy of Melancholy</i>,
+part i.). Robert Burton gives in his adhesion to the sentiments of
+Lactantius (xiv. 15). It seems that the later Jewish devils owe their
+origin (according to the Talmudists, as represented by Pererius in
+the <i>Anatomy</i>) to a former wife of Adam, called Lilis, the predecessor
+of Eve.</p></div>
+
+<p>Some tremendous results of diabolic connections<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120" href="#Page_120">[120]</a></span>
+appear in the metrical romances of the twelfth or
+thirteenth century, as well as in those early Anglo-Norman
+chroniclers or fabulists, who have been at
+the pains to inform us of the pre-historic events of
+their country. The author of the romance-poem of
+the well-known Merlin&mdash;so famous in British prophecy&mdash;in
+introducing his hero, enters upon a long
+dissertation on the origin of the infernal arts. He
+informs us on the authority of 'David the prophet,
+and of Moses,' that the greater part of the angels
+who rebelled under the leadership of Lucifer, lost
+their former power and beauty, and became 'fiendes
+black:' that instead of being precipitated into 'helle-pit,'
+many remained in mid-air, where they still
+retain the faculty of seducing mortals by assuming
+whatever shape they please. These had been much<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121" href="#Page_121">[121]</a></span>
+concerned at the miraculous birth of Christ; but it
+was hoped to counteract the salutary effects of that
+event, by producing from some virgin a semi-demon,
+whose office it should be to disseminate sorcerers and
+wicked men. For this purpose the devil<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">85</a> prepares
+to seduce three young sisters; and proceeds at once
+in proper disguise to an old woman, with whose
+avarice and cunning he was well acquainted. Her
+he engaged by liberal promises to be mediatrix in
+the seduction of the elder sister, whom he was prevented
+from attempting in person by the precautions
+of a holy hermit. Like 'the first that fell of womankind,'
+the young lady at length consented; was
+betrayed by the <i>fictitious</i> youth, and condemned by
+the law to be burnt alive.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">85</span></a> Probably,
+</p>
+<p class="footpoem">'Belial, the dissolutest spirit that fell,<br />
+The sensualist; and after Asmodai<br />
+The fleshliest Incubus.'&mdash;<i>Par. Reg.</i><br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>The same fate, excepting the fearful penalty,
+awaited the second. And now, too late, the holy
+hermit became aware of his disastrous negligence.
+He strictly enjoined on the third and remaining
+sister a constant watch. Her security, however, was
+the cause of her betrayal. On one occasion, in a
+moment of remissness, she forgot her prayers and the
+sign of the cross, before retiring for the night. No
+longer excluded, the fiend, assuming human shape,
+effected his purpose. In due time a son was born,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122" href="#Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+whose parentage was sufficiently evinced by an entire
+covering of black hair, although his limbs were well-formed,
+and his features fine. Fortunately, the careless
+guardian had exactly calculated the moment of
+the demon's birth; and no sooner was he informed
+of the event, than the new-born infant was borne off
+to the regenerating water, when he was christened
+by the name of Merlin; the fond hopes of the demons
+being for this time, at least, irretrievably disappointed.
+How Merlin, by superhuman prowess and
+knowledge, defeated the Saracens (Saxons) in many
+bloody battles; his magical achievements and favour at
+the court of King Vortigern and his successors, are
+fully exhibited by the author of the history.<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">86</a> Geoffrey
+of Monmouth recounts them as matters of fact; and
+they are repeated by Vergil in the History of Britain,
+composed under the auspices of Henry VIII.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">86</span></a> See <i>Early English Metrical Romances</i>, ed. by Sir H. Ellis.</p></div>
+
+<p>By the ancients, whole peoples were sometimes
+said to be derived from these unholy connections.
+Jornandes, the historian of the Goths, is glad to be
+able to relate their hated rivals, the Huns (of whom
+the Kalmuck Tartars are commonly said to be the
+modern representatives), to have owed their origin to
+an intercourse of the Scythian witches with infernal
+spirits. The extraordinary form and features of those
+dreaded emigrants from the steppes of Tartary, had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123" href="#Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+suggested to the fear and hatred of their European
+subjects, a fable which Gibbon supposes might have
+been derived from a more pleasing one of the
+Greeks.<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">87</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">87</span></a> A sufficiently large collection from ancient and modern writers
+of the facts of <i>inhuman</i> connections may be seen in the <i>Anatomy of
+Melancholy</i>, part iii. sect. 2. Having repeated the assertions of
+previous authors proving the fact of intercourses of human with inferior
+species of animals, Burton fortifies his own opinion of their
+reality by numerous authorities. If those stories be true, he reasons,
+that are written of Incubus and Succubus, of nymphs, lascivious
+fauns, satyrs, and those heathen gods which were devils, those lascivious
+Telchines of whom the Platonists tell so many fables; or those
+familiar meetings in our day [1624] and company of witches and
+devils, there is some probability for it. I know that Biarmannus,
+Wierus, and some others stoutly deny it ... but Austin (lib. xv. <i>de
+Civit. Dei</i>) doth acknowledge it. And he refers to Plutarch, <i>Vita
+Num&aelig;; Wierus, de Pr&aelig;stigiis D&aelig;mon., Giraldus Cambrensis, Malleus
+Malef., Jacobus Reussus, Godelman, Erastus, John Nider, Delrio,
+Lipsius, Bodin, Pererius, King James, &amp;c</i>. The learned and curious
+work of the melancholy Student of Christ Church and Oxford Rector
+has been deservedly commended by many eminent critics. That
+'exact mathematician and curious calculator of nativities' calculated
+exactly, according to Anthony Wood (<i>Athen&aelig; Oxon</i>.), the period of
+his own death&mdash;1639.</p></div>
+
+<p>The acts of Incubus assume an important part in
+witch-trials and confessions. Incubus is the visitor
+of females, Succubus of males. Chaucer satirises the
+gallantries of the vicarious Incubus by the mouth of
+the wife of Bath (that practical admirer of Solomon
+and the Samaritan woman),<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">88</a> who prefaces her tale
+with the assurance:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That maketh that ther ben no fayeries,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124" href="#Page_124">[124]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For ther as wont was to walken an elf<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ther walketh noon but the <i>Lymitour</i> himself.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza"><div class="i0">
+<span class="sp">*     *     *     *     *<br /></span></div>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Women may now go safely up and downe;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In every busch and under every tre<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ther is noon other <i>Incubus</i> but he.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">88</span></a> The wife of Bath, who had buried only her fifth husband, must
+appear modest by comparison. Not to mention Seneca's or Martial's
+assertions or insinuations, St. Jerome was acquainted with the case
+of a woman who had buried her <i>twenty-second</i> husband, whose conjugal
+capacity, however, was exceeded by the Dutch wife who, on the
+testimony of honest John Evelyn, had buried her <i>twenty-fifth</i>
+husband!</p></div>
+
+<p>Reginald Scot has devoted several chapters of his
+work to a relation of the exploits of Incubus.<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">89</a> But
+he honestly warns his readers 'whose chaste ears
+cannot well endure to hear of such lecheries (gathered
+out of the books of divinity of great authority) to
+turn over a few leaves wherein I have, like a groom,
+thrust their stuff, even that which I myself loath, as
+into a stinking corner: howbeit none otherwise, I
+hope, but that the other parts of my writing shall
+remain sweet.' He repeats a story from the 'Vita
+Hieronymi,' which seems to insinuate some suspicion
+of the character of a certain Bishop Sylvanus. It
+relates that one night Incubus invaded a certain
+lady's bedroom. Indignant at so unusual, or at least
+disguised, an apparition, the lady cried out loudly
+until the guests of the house came and found it
+under the bed in the likeness of the bishop; 'which
+holy man,' adds Scot, 'was much defamed thereby.'
+Another tradition or legend seems to reflect upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125" href="#Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+the chastity of the greatest saint of the Middle Ages.<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">90</a>
+The superhuman oppression of Incubus is still remembered
+in the proverbial language of the present
+day. The horrors of the infernal compacts and
+leagues, as exhibited in the fates of wizards or
+magicians at the last hour, formed one of the most
+popular scenes on the theatrical stage. Christopher
+Marlow, in 'The Life and Death of Dr. Faustus,' and
+Robert Greene, in 'Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay,'
+in the Elizabethan age, dramatised the common,
+conception of the Compact.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">89</span></a> See the fourth book of the <i>Discoverie</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">90</span></a> 'It is written in the legend of St. Bernard,' we are told, 'that a
+pretty wench that had the use of Incubus his body by the space of
+six or seven years in Aquitania (being belike weary of him for that
+he waxed old), would needs go to St. Bernard another while. But
+Incubus told her if she would so forsake him, he would be revenged
+upon her. But befal what would, she went to St. Bernard, who took
+her his staff and bad her lay it in the bed beside her. And, indeed,
+the devil, fearing the staff or that St. Bernard lay there himself,
+durst not approach into her chamber that night. What he did afterwards
+I am uncertain.' This story will not appear so evidential to
+the reader as Scot seems to infer it to be. If any credit is to be
+given to the strong insinuations of Protestant divines of the sixteenth
+century, the 'holy bishop Sylvanus' is not the only example
+among the earlier saints of the frailty of human nature.</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126" href="#Page_126">[126]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Three Sorts of Witches&mdash;Various Modes of Witchcraft&mdash;Manner
+of Witch-Travelling&mdash;The Sabbaths&mdash;Anathemas of the
+Popes against the Crime&mdash;Bull of Adrian VI.&mdash;Cotemporary
+Testimony to the Severity of the Persecutions&mdash;Necessary
+Triumph of the Orthodox Party&mdash;Germany most subject to
+the Superstition&mdash;Acts of Parliament of Henry against Witchcraft&mdash;Elizabeth
+Barton&mdash;The Act of 1562&mdash;Executions under
+Queen Elizabeth's Government&mdash;Case of Witchcraft narrated
+by Reginald Scot.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="chap">The</span> ceremonies of the compact by which a woman
+became a witch have been already referred to. It
+was almost an essential condition in the vulgar creed
+that she should be, as Gaule ('Select Cases of Conscience
+touching Witches,' &amp;c., 1646) represents, an
+old woman with a wrinkled face, a furred brow, a
+hairy lip, a gobber tooth, a squint eye, a squeaking
+voice, a scolding tongue, having a ragged coat on
+her back, a skull-cap on her head, a spindle in her
+hand, a dog or cat by her side. There are three sorts
+of the devil's agents on earth&mdash;the black, the gray,
+and the white witches. The first are omnipotent for
+evil, but powerless for good. The white have the
+power to help, but not to hurt.<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">91</a> As for the third
+species (a mixture of white and black), they are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127" href="#Page_127">[127]</a></span>
+equally effective for good or evil.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">91</span></a> A writer at the beginning of the seventeenth century (Cotta, <i>Tryall
+of Witchcraft</i>) says, 'This kind is not obscure at this day, swarming in
+this kingdom, whereof no man can be ignorant who lusteth to observe
+the uncontrouled liberty and licence of open and ordinary resort in
+all places unto <i>wise</i> men and <i>wise</i> women, so vulgarly termed for their
+reputed knowledge concerning such diseased persons as are supposed
+to be bewitched.' And (<i>Short Discoverie of Unobserved Dangers,
+1612</i>) 'the mention of witchecraft doth now occasion the remembrance
+in the next place of a sort of practitioners whom our custom and
+country doth call wise men and wise women, reputed a kind of good
+and honest harmless witches or wizards, who, by good words, by hallowed
+herbs and salves, and other superstitious ceremonies, promise
+to allay and calm devils, practices of other witches, and the forces of
+many diseases.' Another writer of the same date considers 'it were
+a thousand times better for the land if all witches, but specially the
+<i>blessing witch</i>, might suffer death. Men do commonly hate and spit
+at the <i>damnifying</i> sorcerer as unworthy to live among them, whereas
+they fly unto the other in necessity; they depend upon him as their
+God, and by this means thousands are carried away, to their final
+confusion. Death, therefore, is the just and deserved portion of the
+<i>good</i> witch.'&mdash;<i>Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great
+Britain</i>, by Brand, ed. by Sir H. Ellis.</p></div>
+
+<p>Equally various and contradictory are the motives
+and acts assigned to witches. Nothing is too great
+or too mean for their practice: they engage with
+equal pleasure in the overthrow of a kingdom or a
+religion, and in inflicting the most ordinary evils
+and mischiefs in life. Their mode of bewitching
+is various: by fascination or casting an evil eye
+('Nescio,' says the Virgilian shepherd, 'quis teneros
+oculus mihi fascinat agnos'); by making
+representations of the person to be acted upon in
+wax or clay, roasting them before a fire; by mixing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128" href="#Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+magical ointments or other compositions and ingredients
+revealed to us in the witch-songs of Shakspeare,
+Jonson, Middleton, Shadwell, and others; sometimes
+merely by muttering an imprecation.</p>
+
+<p>They ride in sieves on the sea, on brooms, spits
+magically prepared; and by these modes of conveyance
+are borne, without trouble or loss of time, to
+their destination. By these means they attend the
+periodical sabbaths, the great meetings of the witch-tribe,
+where they assemble at stated times to do
+homage, to recount their services, and to receive the
+commands of their lord. They are held on the
+night between Friday and Saturday; and every year
+a grand sabbath is ordered for celebration on the
+Blocksberg mountains, for the night before the first
+day of May. In those famous mountains the obedient
+vassals congregate from all parts of Christendom&mdash;from
+Italy, Spain, Germany, France, England,
+and Scotland. A place where four roads meet, a
+rugged mountain range, or perhaps the neighbourhood
+of a secluded lake or some dark forest, is
+usually the spot selected for the meeting.<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">92</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">92</span></a> 'When orders had once been issued for the meeting of the sabbath,
+all the wizards and witches who failed to attend it were lashed
+by demons with a rod made of serpents or scorpions. In France and
+England the witches were supposed to ride uniformly upon broom-sticks;
+but in Italy and Spain, the devil himself, in the shape of a
+goat, used to transport them on his back, which lengthened or shortened
+according to the number of witches he was desirous of accommodating.
+No witch, when proceeding to the sabbath, could get out
+by a door or window were she to try ever so much. Their general
+mode of ingress was by the key-hole, and of egress by the chimney,
+up which they flew, broom and all, with the greatest ease. To prevent
+the absence of the witches being noticed by their neighbours,
+some inferior demon was commanded to assume their shapes, and lie
+in their beds, feigning illness, until the sabbath was over. When
+all the wizards and witches had arrived at the place of rendezvous,
+the infernal ceremonies began. Satan having assumed his favourite
+shape of a large he-goat, with a face in front and another in his
+haunches, took his seat upon a throne; and all present in succession
+paid their respects to him and kissed him in his face behind. This
+done, he appointed a master of the ceremonies, in company with
+whom he made a personal examination of all the witches, to see
+whether they had the secret mark about them by which they were
+stamped as the devil's own. This mark was always insensible to
+pain. Those who had not yet been marked received the mark from
+the master of the ceremonies, the devil at the same time bestowing
+nick-names upon them. This done, they all began to sing and dance
+in the most furious manner until some one arrived who was anxious
+to be admitted into their society. They were then silent for a while
+until the new comer had denied his salvation, kissed the devil, spat
+upon the Bible, and sworn obedience to him in all things. They then
+began dancing again with all their might and singing.... In the
+course of an hour or two they generally became wearied of this violent
+exercise, and then they all sat down and recounted their evil deeds
+since last meeting. Those who had not been malicious and mischievous
+enough towards their fellow-creatures received personal chastisement
+from Satan himself, who flogged them with thorns or scorpions
+until they were covered with blood and unable to sit or stand. When
+this ceremony was concluded, they were all amused by a dance of
+toads. Thousands of these creatures sprang out of the earth, and
+standing on their hind-legs, danced while the devil played the bagpipes
+or the trumpet. These toads were all endowed with the
+faculty of speech, and entreated the witches there to reward them
+with the flesh of unbaptized infants for their exertions to give them
+pleasure. The witches promised compliance. The devil bade them
+remember to keep their word; and then stamping his foot, caused all
+the toads to sink into the earth in an instant. The place being thus
+cleared, preparations were made for the banquet, where all manner
+of disgusting things were served up and greedily devoured by the
+demons and witches, although the latter were sometimes regaled with
+choice meats and expensive wines, from golden plates and crystal
+goblets; but they were never thus favoured unless they had done an
+extraordinary number of evil deeds since the last period of meeting.
+After the feast, they began dancing again; but such as had no relish
+for any more exercise in that way, amused themselves by mocking
+the holy sacrament of baptism. For this purpose the toads were
+again called up, and sprinkled with filthy water, the devil making the
+sign of the cross, and all the witches calling out&mdash;[some gibberish].
+When the devil wished to be particularly amused, he made the
+witches strip off their clothes and dance before him, each with a cat
+tied round her neck, and another dangling from her body in form of
+a tail. When the cock crew they all disappeared, and the sabbath
+was ended. This is a summary of the belief that prevailed for many
+centuries nearly all over Europe, and which is far from eradicated
+even at this day.'&mdash;<i>Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions</i>, by
+C. Mackay.</p></div>
+
+<p>A mock sermon often concludes the night's proceedings,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129" href="#Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+the ordinary salutation of the <i>osculum in
+tergo</i> being first given. But these circumstances are
+innocent compared with the obscene practices when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130" href="#Page_130">[130]</a></span>
+the lights are put out; indiscriminate debauchery
+being then the order of the night. A new rite of
+baptism initiated the neophyte into his new service:
+the candidate being signed with the sign of the devil
+on that part of the body least observable, and submitting
+at the same time to the first act of criminal
+compliance, to be often repeated. On these occasions
+the demon presents himself in the form of
+either sex, according to that of his slaves. It was
+elicited from a witch examined at a trial that, from
+the period of her servitude, the devil had had inter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131" href="#Page_131">[131]</a></span>course
+with her <i>ut viri cum f&#339;minis solent</i>, excepting
+only in one remarkable particular.</p>
+
+<p>During the pontificate of Julius II.&mdash;the first decade
+of the sixteenth century&mdash;a set of sorceresses
+was discovered in large numbers: a dispute between
+the civil and ecclesiastical authorities averted their
+otherwise certain destruction. The successors of
+Innocent VIII. repeated his anathemas. Alexander
+VI., Leo X., and Adrian VI. appointed special commissioners
+for hunting up sorcerers and heretics. In
+1523, Adrian issued a bull against <i>H&aelig;resis Strigiat&ucirc;s</i>
+with power to excommunicate all who opposed those
+engaged in the inquisition. He characterises the
+obnoxious class as a sect deviating from the Catholic
+faith, denying their baptism, showing contempt for
+the sacraments, in particular for that of the Eucharist,
+treading crosses under foot, and taking the devil as
+their lord.<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">93</a> How many suffered for the crime during
+the thirty or forty years following upon the bull of
+1484, it is difficult exactly to ascertain: that some
+thousands perished is certain, on the testimony of the
+judges themselves. The often-quoted words of Florimond,
+author of a work 'On Antichrist,' as given by
+Del Rio the Jesuit ('De Magi&acirc;'), are not hyperbolical.
+'All those,' says he, 'who have afforded us some signs
+of the approach of antichrist agree that the increase
+of sorcery and witchcraft is to distinguish the melancholy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132" href="#Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+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 enough. Our dungeons are gorged
+with them. No day passes that we do not render
+our tribunals bloody by the dooms 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.'</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">93</span></a> Francis Hutchison's <i>Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft</i>,
+chap. xiv.; the author quotes Barthol. de Spina, <i>de Strigibus</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p>It is within neither the design nor the limits of
+these pages to repeat all the witch-cases, which might
+fill several volumes; it is sufficient for the purpose
+to sketch a few of the most notorious and prominent,
+and to notice the most remarkable characteristics of
+the creed.</p>
+
+<p>Maximilian I., Emperor of Germany, protected
+the inquisitorial executioners from the indignant
+vengeance of the inhabitants of the districts of
+Southern Germany, which would have been soon
+almost depopulated by an unsparing massacre and a
+ferocious zeal: while Sigismund, Prince of the Tyrol,
+is said to have been inclined to soften the severity of
+a persecution he was totally unable, if he had been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133" href="#Page_133">[133]</a></span>
+disposed, to prevent. Ulric Molitor, under the auspices
+of this prince, however, published a treatise in
+Switzerland ('De Pythonicis Mulieribus') in the form
+of a dialogue, in which Sigismund, Molitor, and a
+citizen of Constance are the interlocutors. They argue
+as to the practice of witchcraft; and the argument is
+to establish that, although the practicers of the crime
+are worthy of death, much of the vulgar opinion
+on the subject is false. Even in the middle of the
+fifteenth century, and in Spain, could be found an
+assertor, in some degree, of common sense, whose
+sentiments might scandalise some Protestant divines.
+Alphonse de Spina was a native of Castile, of the
+order of St. Francis: his book was written against
+heretics and unbelievers, but there is a chapter in
+which some acts attributed to sorcerers, as transportation
+through the air, transformations, &amp;c., are rejected
+as unreal.</p>
+
+<p>From that time two parties were in existence, one
+of which advocated the entire reality of all the acts
+commonly imputed to witches; while the other
+maintained that many of their supposed crimes were
+mere delusions suggested by the Great Enemy. The
+former, as the orthodox party, were, from the nature
+of the case, most successful in the argument&mdash;a
+seeming paradox explained by the nature and course
+of the controversy. Only the <i>received</i> method of
+demoniacal possession was questioned by the adverse
+side, accepting without doubt the possibility&mdash;and,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134" href="#Page_134">[134]</a></span>
+indeed, the actual existence&mdash;of the phenomenon.
+Thus the liberals, or pseudo-liberals, in that important
+controversy were placed in an illogical position.
+For (as their opponents might triumphantly argue)
+if the devil's power and possession could be manifested
+in one way, why not by any other method.
+Nor was it for them to determine the appointed
+methods of his schemes, as permitted by Providence,
+for the injury and ruin of mankind. The diabolic
+economy, as evidently set forth in the work of man's
+destruction, might require certain modes of acting
+quite above our reason and understanding. To the
+sceptics (or to the <i>atheists</i>, as they were termed) the
+orthodox could allege, 'Will you not believe in
+witches? The Scriptures aver their existence: to
+the jurisconsults will you dispute the existence of a
+crime against which our statute-book and the code
+of almost all civilised countries have attested by laws
+upon which hundreds and thousands have been convicted;
+many, or even most, of whom have, by their
+judicial confessions, acknowledged their guilt and
+the justice of their punishment? It is a strange
+scepticism, they might add, that rejects the evidence
+of Scripture, of human legislature, and of the accused
+persons themselves.'<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor">94</a> Reason was hopelessly oppressed
+by faith. In the presence of universal superstition,
+in the absence of the modern philosophy,
+escape seemed all but impossible.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">94</span></a> Sir W. Scott's <i>Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft</i>, chap. vi.</p></div>
+
+<p>If preeminence in this particular prejudice can be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135" href="#Page_135">[135]</a></span>
+assigned to any single region or people, perhaps
+Germany more than any other land was subject to
+the demonological fever. A fact to be explained as
+well by its being the great theatre for more than a
+hundred years of the grand religious struggle between
+the opposing Catholics and Protestants, as by
+its natural fitness. The gloomy mountain ranges&mdash;the
+Hartz mountains are especially famous in the
+national legend&mdash;and forests with which it abounds
+rendered the imaginative minds of its peoples peculiarly
+susceptible to impressions of supernaturalism.<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor">95</a>
+France takes the next place in the fury of the persecution.
+Dan&aelig;us ('Dialogue') speaks of an innumerable
+number of witches. England, Scotland, Spain,
+Italy perhaps come next in order.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">95</span></a> How greatly the imagination of the Germans was attracted by
+the supernatural and the marvellous is plainly seen both in the old
+national poems and in the great work of the national mythologist,
+Jacob Grimm (<i>Deutsche Mythologie</i>).</p></div>
+
+<p>Spain, the dominion of the Arabs for seven centuries,
+was naturally the land of magic. During the
+government of Ferdinand I., or of Isabella, the inquisition
+was firmly established. That numbers were
+sent from the dungeons and torture-chambers to the
+stake, with the added stigma of dealing in the 'black
+art,' is certain; but in that priest-dominated, servilely
+orthodox southern land, the Church was not perhaps
+so much interested in confounding the crimes of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136" href="#Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+heresy and sorcery. The first was simply sufficient
+for provoking horror and hatred of the condemned.
+The South of France is famous for being the very
+nest of sorcery: the witch-sabbaths were frequently
+held there. It was the country of the Albigenses,
+which had been devastated by De Montfort, the
+executioner of Catholic vengeance, in the twelfth century,
+and was, with something of the same sort of
+savageness, ravaged by De Lanere in the seventeenth
+century. Scotland, before the religious revolution,
+exhibits a few remarkable cases of witch-persecution,
+as that of the Earl of Mar, brother of James III.
+He had been suspected of calling in the aid of sorcery
+to ascertain the term of the king's life: the earl was
+bled to death without trial, and his death was followed
+by the burning of twelve witches, and four
+wizards, at Edinburgh. Lady Glammis, sister of the
+Earl of Angus, of the family of Douglas, accused of
+conspiring the king's death in a similar way, was
+put to death in 1537. As in England, in the cases
+of the Duchess of Gloucester and others, the crime
+appears to be rather an adjunct than the principal
+charge itself; more political than popular. Protestant
+Scotland it is that has earned the reputation
+of being one of the most superstitious countries in
+Europe.</p>
+
+<p>In 1541 two Acts of Parliament were passed in
+England&mdash;the first interference of Parliament in this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137" href="#Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+kingdom&mdash;against false prophecies, conjurations,
+witchcraft, sorcery, pulling down crosses; crimes
+made felony without benefit of clergy. Both the
+last article in the list and the period (a few years
+after the separation from the Catholic world) appear
+to indicate the causes in operation. Lord Hungerford
+had recently been beheaded by the suspicious tyranny
+of Henry VIII., for consulting his death by conjuration.
+The preamble to the statute has these words:
+'The persons that had done these things, had dug up
+and pulled down an infinite number of crosses.'<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">96</a> The
+new head of the English Church, if he found his interest
+in assuming himself the spiritual supremacy,
+was, like a true despot, averse to any further revolution
+than was necessary to his purposes. Some superstitious
+regrets too for the old establishment which,
+by a fortunate caprice, he abandoned and afterwards
+plundered, may have urged the tyrant, who persecuted
+the Catholics for questioning his supremacy,
+to burn the enemies of transubstantiation. Shortly
+before this enactment, eight persons had been hanged
+at Tyburn, not so much for sorcery as for a disagreeable
+prophecy. Elizabeth Barton, the principal, had
+been instigated to pronounce as revelation, that if the
+king went on in the divorce and married another<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138" href="#Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+wife, he should not be king a month longer, and in
+the estimation of Almighty God not one hour longer,
+but should die a villain's death. The Maid of Kent,
+with her accomplices&mdash;Richard Martin, parson of the
+parish of Aldington; Dr. Bocking, canon of Christ
+Church, Canterbury; Deering; Henry Gold, a parson
+in London; Hugh Rich, a friar, and others&mdash;was
+brought before the Star Chamber, and adjudged to
+stand in St. Paul's during sermon-time; the majority
+being afterwards executed. In Cranmer's 'Articles of
+Visitation,' 1549, an injunction is addressed to his
+clergy, that 'you shall inquire whether you know of
+any that use charms, sorcery, enchantments, witchcrafts,
+soothsaying, or any like craft, invented by the
+devil.'</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">96</span></a> Hutchison's <i>Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft</i>. The author,
+chaplain in ordinary to George I., published his book in 1718. It is
+worth while to note the colder scepticism of the Hanoverian chaplain
+as compared with the undoubting faith of his predecessor, Dr.
+Glanvil.</p></div>
+
+<p>During the brief reigns of Edward VI. and Mary I.
+in England, no conspicuous trials occur. As for the
+latter monarch, the queen and her bishops were too
+absorbed in the pressing business of burning for the
+real offence of heresy to be much concerned in discovering
+the concomitant crimes of devil-worship.<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">97</a>
+An impartial judgment may decide that superstition,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139" href="#Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+whether engaged in vindicating the dogmas of
+Catholicism or those of witchcraft, is alike contemptible
+and pernicious.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">97</span></a> Agreeably to that common prejudice which selects certain historical
+personages for popular and peculiar esteem or execration, and
+attributes to them, as if they were eccentricities rather than examples
+of the age, every exceptional virtue or vice, the 'Bloody Queen' has
+been stigmatised, and is still regarded, as an <i>extraordinary</i> monster,
+capable of every inhuman crime&mdash;a prejudice more popular than
+philosophical, since experience has taught that despots, unchecked by
+fear, by reason, or conscience, are but examples, in an eminent degree,
+of the character, and personifications of the worst vices (if not
+of the best virtues) of their time. Considered in this view, Mary I.
+will but appear the example and personification of the religious intolerance
+of Catholicism and of the age, just as Cromwell was of the
+patriotic and Puritanic sentiment of the first half, or Charles II. of
+the unblushing licentiousness of the last half, of the seventeenth
+century.</p></div>
+
+<p>In the year of Elizabeth's accession, 1558, Strype
+('Annals of the Reformation,' i. 8, and ii. 545)
+tells that Bishop Jewell, preaching before the
+queen, animadverted upon the dangerous and direful
+results of witchcraft. 'It may please your
+Grace,' proclaims publicly the courtly Anglican
+prelate, 'to understand that witches and sorcerers,
+within these last few years, are marvellously increased
+within your Grace's realm. Your Grace's subjects
+pine away even to the death, their colour fadeth,
+their flesh rotteth, their speech is benumbed, their
+senses are bereft. I pray God they never practise
+further than upon the subject.' For himself, the
+bishop declares, 'these eyes have seen most evident
+and manifest marks of their wickedness.' The annalist
+adds that this, no doubt, was the occasion of
+bringing in a bill the next Parliament, for making
+enchantments and witchcraft felony; and, under
+year 1578, we are informed that, whether it were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140" href="#Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+the effect of magic, or proceeded from some natural
+cause, the queen was in some part of this year under
+excessive anguish <i>by pains of her teeth</i>, insomuch
+that she took no rest for divers nights, and endured
+very great torment night and day. The statute of
+1562 includes 'fond and fantastic prophecies' (a
+very common sort of political offences in that age)
+in the category of forbidden arts. With unaccustomed
+lenity it punished a first conviction with the
+pillory only.</p>
+
+<p>Witch-persecutions (which needed not any legal
+enactment) sprung up in different parts of the
+country; but they were not carried out with either
+the frequency or the ferocity of the next age, or as
+in Scotland, under the superintendence of James VI.
+A number of pamphlets unnecessarily enforced the
+obligatory duty of unwearied zeal in the work of
+discovery and extermination.<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class="fnanchor">98</a> Among the executions
+under Elizabeth's Government are specially
+noticed that of a woman hanged at Barking in 1575;
+of four at Abingdon; three at Chelmsford; two at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141" href="#Page_141">[141]</a></span>
+Cambridge, 1579; of a number condemned at St.
+Osythes; of several in Derbyshire and Staffordshire.
+One of the best known is the case at Warboys, in
+Huntingdonshire, 1593.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">98</span></a> One of these productions, printed in London, bore the sensational
+title, 'A very Wonderful and Strange Miracle of God, shewed upon
+a Dutchman, of the age of 23 years, who was possessed of ten devils,
+and was, by God's Mighty Providence, dispossessed of them again the
+27 January last past, 1572.' Another, dedicated to Lord Darcy, by
+W. W., 1582, sets forth that all those tortures in common use 'are
+far too light, and their rigour too mild; and in this respect he (the
+pamphleteer) impudently exclaimeth against our magistrates who
+suffer them to be but hanged, when <i>murtherers and such malefactors
+be so used, which deserve not the hundredth part of their punishment</i>.'</p></div>
+
+<p>The author of the 'Discoverie' relates a fact that
+came under his personal observation: it is a fair
+example of the trivial origin and of the facility of
+this sort of charges. 'At the assizes holden at
+Rochester, anno 1581, one Margaret Simons, wife of
+John Simons, of Brenchly in Kent, was arraigned
+for witchcraft, at the instigation and complaint of
+divers fond and malicious persons, and especially by
+the means of one John Farral, vicar of that parish,
+with whom I talked about the matter, and found
+him both fondly assotted in the cause and enviously
+bent towards her: and, which is worse, as unable to
+make a good account of his faith as she whom he
+accused. That which he laid to the poor woman's
+charge was this. His son, being an ungracious boy,
+and 'prentice to one Robert Scotchford, clothier,
+dwelling in that parish of Brenchly, passed on a day
+by her house; at whom, by chance, her little dog
+barked, which thing the boy taking in evil part,
+drew his knife and pursued him therewith even to
+her door, whom she rebuked with such words as the
+boy disdained, and yet nevertheless would not be
+persuaded to depart in a long time. At the last he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142" href="#Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+returned to his master's house, and within five or six
+days fell sick. Then was called to mind the fray
+betwixt the dog and the boy: insomuch as the vicar
+(who thought himself so privileged as he little mistrusted
+that God would visit his children with sickness)
+did so calculate as he found, partly through
+his own judgment and partly (as he himself told me)
+by the relation of other witches, that his said son
+was by her bewitched. Yea, he told me that his son
+being, as it were, past all cure, received perfect
+health at the hands of another witch.' Not satisfied
+with this accusation, the vicar 'proceeded yet further
+against her, affirming that always in his parish church,
+when he desired to read most plainly his voice so failed
+him that he could scant be heard at all: which he
+could impute, he said, to nothing else but to her enchantment.
+When I advertised the poor woman
+thereof, as being desirous to hear what she could say
+for herself, she told me that in very deed his voice did
+fail him, specially when he strained himself to speak
+loudest. Howbeit, she said, that at all times his
+voice was hoarse and low; which thing I perceived
+to be true. But sir, said she, you shall understand
+that this our vicar is diseased with such a kind of
+hoarseness as divers of our neighbours in this parish
+not long ago doubted ... and in that respect
+utterly refused to communicate with him until such
+time as (being thereunto enjoined by the ordinary)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143" href="#Page_143">[143]</a></span>
+he had brought from London a certificate under the
+hands of two physicians that his hoarseness proceeded
+from a disease of the lungs; which certificate
+he published in the church, in the presence of the
+whole congregation: and by this means he was cured,
+or rather excused of the shame of the disease. And
+this,' certifies the narrator, 'I know to be true, by
+the relation of divers honest men of that parish.
+And truly if one of the jury had not been wiser than
+the others, she had been condemned thereupon, and
+upon other as ridiculous matters as this. For the
+name of witch is so odious, and her power so feared
+among the common people, that if the honestest
+body living chanced to be arraigned thereupon, she
+shall hardly escape condemnation.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144" href="#Page_144">[144]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The 'Discoverie of Witchcraft,' published 1584&mdash;Wier's 'De
+Pr&aelig;stigiis D&aelig;monum, &amp;c.'&mdash;Naud&eacute;&mdash;Jean Bodin&mdash;His 'De la
+D&eacute;monomanie des Sorciers,' published at Paris, 1580&mdash;His
+authority&mdash;Nider&mdash;Witch-case at Warboys&mdash;Evidence adduced
+at the Trial&mdash;Remarkable as being the origin of the institution
+of an Annual Sermon at Huntingdon.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="chap">Three</span> years after this affair, Dr. Reginald Scot
+published his 'Discoverie of Witchcraft, proving
+that common opinions of witches contracting with
+devils, spirits, or their familiars, and their power to
+kill, torment, and consume the bodies of men,
+women, and children, or other creatures, by disease,
+or otherwise, their flying in the air, &amp;c., to be but
+imaginary, erroneous conceptions and novelties:
+wherein also the lewd, unchristian, practices of
+witchmongers upon aged, melancholy, ignorant, and
+superstitious people, in extorting confessions by
+inhuman terrors and tortures, is notably detected.'<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">99</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">99</span></a> The edition referred to is that of 1654. The author is commemorated
+by Hallam in terms of high praise&mdash;'A solid and learned person,
+beyond almost all the English of that age.'&mdash;<i>Introduction to the
+Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth
+Centuries.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>This work is divided into sixteen books, with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145" href="#Page_145">[145]</a></span>
+treatise affixed upon devils and spirits, in thirty-four
+chapters. It contains an infinity of quotations from
+or references to the writings of those whom the author
+terms <i>witch-mongers</i>; and several chapters are devoted
+to a descriptive catalogue of the charms in
+repute and diabolical rites of the most extravagant
+sort. On the accession of James I., whose 'Demonologie'
+was in direct opposition to the 'Discoverie,'
+it was condemned as monstrously heretical; as many
+copies as could be collected being solemnly committed
+to the flames. This meritorious and curious
+production is therefore now scarce.</p>
+
+<p>Prefixed is a dedicatory epistle, addressed to the
+Right Worshipful, his loving friend, Mr. Dr. Coldwell,
+Dean of Rochester, and Mr. Dr. Readman,
+Archdeacon of Canterbury, in which the author appealingly
+expostulates, 'O Master Archdeacon, is it
+not pity that that which is said to be done with the
+almighty power of the Most High God, and by our
+Saviour his only Son Jesus Christ our Lord, should
+be referred to a baggage old woman's nod or wish?
+Good sir, is it not one manifest kind of idolatry for
+them that labour and are laden to come unto witches
+to be refreshed? If witches could help whom they
+are said to have made sick, I see no reason but
+remedy might as well be required at their hands as a
+purse demanded of him that hath stolen it. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146" href="#Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+truly it is manifest idolatry to ask that of a creature
+which none can give but the Creator. The papist
+hath some colour of Scripture to maintain his idol of
+bread, but no Jesuitical distinction can cover the
+witchmongers' idolatry in this behalf. Alas! I am
+ashamed and sorry to see how many die that, being
+said to be bewitched, only seek for magical cures whom
+wholesome diet and good medicine would have recovered.'<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor">100</a>
+An utterance of courage and common
+sense equally rare and useless. Reginald Scot, perhaps
+the boldest of the early impugners of witchcraft,
+was yet convinced apparently of the reality of ghostly
+apparitions.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">100</span></a> Writing in an age when the <i>magical</i> powers of steam and electricity
+were yet undiscovered, it might be a forcible argument to put&mdash;'Good
+Mr. Dean, is it possible for a man to break his fast with
+you at Rochester, and to dine that day in Durham with Master Dr.
+Matthew?'</p></div>
+
+<p>Johannes Wierus, physician to the Duke of Cleves,
+and a disciple of the well-known Cornelius Agrippa
+(himself accused of devotion to the black art), in 1563
+created considerable sensation by an attack upon the
+common opinions, without questioning however the
+principles, of the superstition in his 'De Pr&aelig;stigiis
+D&aelig;monum Incantationibus et Veneficiis.' His common
+sense is not so clear as that of the Englishman.
+Another name, memorable among the advocates of
+Reason and Humanity, is Gabriel Naud&eacute;. He was
+born at Paris in 1600; he practised as a physician of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147" href="#Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+great reputation, and was librarian successively to Cardinals
+Richelieu and Mazarin, and to Queen Christina
+of Sweden. His book 'Apologie pour les Grands
+Hommes accus&eacute;s de Magie,' published in Paris in
+1625, was received with great indignation by the
+Church. Some others, both on the Continent and in
+England, at intervals by their protests served to prove
+that a few sparks of reason, hard to be discovered in
+the thick darkness of superstition, remained unextinguished;
+but they availed not to stem the torrent
+of increasing violence and volume.</p>
+
+<p>A more copious list can be given of the champions
+of orthodoxy and demonolatry; of whom it is sufficient
+to enumerate the more notorious names&mdash;Sprenger,
+Nider, Bodin, Del Rio, James VI., Glanvil, who compiled
+or composed elaborate treatises on the subject;
+besides whom a cloud of witnesses expressly or incidentally
+proclaimed the undoubted genuineness of all the
+acts, phenomena, and circumstances of the diabolic
+worship; loudly and fiercely denouncing the 'damnable
+infidelity' of the dissenters&mdash;a proof in itself of
+their own complicity. Jean Bodin, a French lawyer,
+and author of the esteemed treatise 'De la R&eacute;publique,'
+was one of the greatest authorities on the orthodox
+side. His publication 'De la D&eacute;monomanie des
+Sorciers' appeared in Paris in the year 1580: an undertaking
+prompted by his having witnessed some of the
+daily occurring trials. Instead of being convinced of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148" href="#Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+their folly, he was or affected to be, certain of their
+truth, setting himself gravely to the task of publishing
+to the world his own observations and convictions.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most surprising facts in the whole history
+of witchcraft is the insensibility or indifference
+of even men of science, and therefore observation, to
+the obvious origin of the greatest part of the confessions
+elicited; confession of such a kind as could be
+the product only of torture, madness, or some other
+equally obvious cause. Bodin himself, however,
+sufficiently explains the fact and exposes the secret.
+'The trial of this offence,' he enunciates, 'must not be
+conducted like other crimes. Whoever adheres to
+the ordinary course of justice perverts the spirit of
+the law both divine and human. He who is accused
+of sorcery should <i>never</i> be acquitted unless the malice
+of the prosecutor be clearer than the sun; for it is
+so difficult to bring full proof of this secret crime,
+that out of a million of witches <i>not one would be convicted
+if the usual course were followed</i>.'<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id="FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class="fnanchor">101</a> He speaks
+of an old woman sentenced to the stake after confessing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149" href="#Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+to having been transported to the sabbath in
+a state of insensibility. Her judges, anxious to know
+how this was effected, released her from her fetters,
+when she rubbed herself on the different parts of her
+body with a prepared unguent and soon became insensible,
+stiff, and apparently dead. Having remained
+in that condition for five hours, the witch as suddenly
+revived, relating to the trembling inquisitors a number
+of extraordinary things proving she must have
+been <i>spiritually</i> transported to distant places.<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">102</a> An
+earlier advocate of the orthodox cause was a Swiss
+friar, Nider, who wrote a work entitled 'Formicarium'
+(<i>Ant-Hill</i>) on the various sins against religion. One
+section is employed in the consideration of sorcery.
+Nider was one of the inquisitors who distinguished
+themselves by their successful zeal in the beginning
+of the century.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">101</span></a> Yet the lawyer who enunciated such a maxim as this has been
+celebrated for an unusual liberality of sentiment in religious and
+political matters, as well as for his learning. Dugald Stewart commends
+'the liberal and moderate views of this philosophical politician,'
+as shown in the treatise <i>De la R&eacute;publique</i>, and states that he knows
+of 'no political writer of the same date whose extensive, and various,
+and discriminating reading appears to me to have contributed more
+to facilitate and to guide the researches of his successors, or whose
+references to ancient learning have been more frequently transcribed
+without acknowledgment.'&mdash;Bayle considered him 'one of the ablest
+men that appeared in France during the sixteenth century.'&mdash;<i>Dissertation
+First</i> in the <i>Encyclop&aelig;dia Britannica</i>. Hallam (<i>Introduction
+to the Literature of Europe</i>) occupies several of his pages in the review
+of Bodin's writings. Jean Bodin, however, on the authority of his
+friend De Thou, did not escape suspicion himself of being heretical.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">102</span></a> In witchcraft (as in the sacramental mystery) it was a subject
+for much doubt and dispute whether there might not be simply a
+<i>spiritual</i> (without a <i>real corporeal</i>) presence at the sabbath. Each
+one decided according to the degree of his orthodoxy.</p></div>
+
+<p>The Swiss witches, like the old Italian larv&aelig; and
+most of the sisterhood, display extraordinary affection
+for the blood of new-born unbaptized infants; and it
+is a great desideratum to kill them before the pre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150" href="#Page_150">[150]</a></span>ventive
+rite has been irrevocably administered; for
+the bodies of unbaptized children were almost indispensable
+in the witches' preparations. Soon as buried
+their corpses are dug out of their graves and carried
+away to the place of assembly, where they are boiled
+down for the fat for making the ointments.<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">103</a> The
+liquid in which they are boiled is carefully preserved;
+and the person who tastes it is immediately initiated
+into all the mysteries of sorcery. A witch, judicially
+examined by the papal commission which compiled
+the 'Malleus,' gives evidence of the prevalence of this
+practice: 'We lie in wait for children. These are
+often found dead by their parents; and the simple
+people believe that they have themselves overlain
+them, or that they died from natural causes; but it
+is we who have destroyed them. We steal them out
+of the grave, and boil them with lime till all the
+flesh is loosed from the bones and is reduced to one
+mass. We make of the firm part an ointment, and
+fill a bottle with the fluid; and whoever drinks
+with due ceremonies of this belongs to our league,
+and is already capable of bewitching.' 'Finger of
+birth-strangled babe' is one of the ingredients of
+that widely-collected composition of the Macbeth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151" href="#Page_151">[151]</a></span>
+witches.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">103</span></a> A practice not entirely out of repute at the present day if we
+may credit a statement in the <i>Courrier du H&acirc;vre</i> (as quoted in <i>The
+Times</i> newspaper, Nov. 7, 1864), that recently the corpse of an old
+woman was dug up for the purpose of obtaining the fat, &amp;c., as a
+preventive charm against witchcraft, by a person living in the neighbourhood
+of H&acirc;vre.</p></div>
+
+<p>The case at Warboys, which, connected with a
+family of some distinction, occasioned unusual interest,
+was tried in the year 1593. The village of Warboys,
+or Warbois, is situated in the neighbourhood of
+Huntingdon. One of the most influential of the inhabitants
+was a gentleman of respectability, Robert
+Throgmorton, who was on friendly terms with the
+Cromwells of Hitchinbrook, and the lord of the
+manor, Sir Henry Cromwell. Three criminals&mdash;old
+Samuel, his wife, and Agnes Samuel their daughter,
+were tried and condemned by Mr. Justice Fenner
+for bewitching Mr. Throgmorton's five children,
+seven servants, the Lady Cromwell, and others. The
+father and daughter maintained their innocence to
+the last; the old woman confessed. A fact which
+makes this affair more remarkable is, that with the
+forty pounds escheated to him, as lord of the manor,
+out of the property of the convicts, Sir Samuel Cromwell
+founded an annual sermon or lecture upon the
+sin of witchcraft, to be preached at their town every
+Lady-day, by a Doctor or Bachelor of Divinity of
+Queen's College, Cambridge; the sum of forty pounds
+being entrusted to the Mayor and Aldermen of Huntingdon,
+for a rent-charge of forty shillings yearly to
+be paid to the select preacher. This lecture, says Dr.
+Francis Hutchison, is continued to this day&mdash;1718.</p>
+
+<p>Four years previously to this important trial, Jane<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152" href="#Page_152">[152]</a></span>
+Throgmorton, a girl ten years of age, was first suddenly
+attacked with strange convulsive fits, which
+continued daily, and even several times in the day,
+without intermission. One day, soon after the first
+seizure, Mother Samuel coming into the Throgmortons'
+house, seated herself as customary in a chimney-corner
+near the child, who was just recovering from
+one of her fits. The girl no sooner noticed her than
+she began to cry out, pointing to the old woman,
+'Did you ever see one more like a witch than she is?
+Take off her black-thumbed cap, for I cannot abide
+to look at her.' The illness becoming worse, they
+sent to Cambridge to consult Dr. Barrow, an experienced
+physician in that town; but he could discover
+no natural disease. A month later, the other
+children were similarly seized, and persuaded of
+Mother Samuel's guilt. The parents' increasing
+suspicions, entertained by the doctors, were confirmed
+when the servants were also attacked. About the
+middle of March, 1590, Lady Cromwell arrived on a
+visit to the Throgmortons; and being much affected
+at the sufferings of the patients, sent for the suspected
+person, whom she charged with being the malicious
+cause. Finding all entreaty of no avail in extorting
+an admission of guilt, Lady Cromwell suddenly and
+unexpectedly cut off a lock of the witch's hair (a
+powerful counter-charm), at the same time secretly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153" href="#Page_153">[153]</a></span>
+placing it in Mrs. Throgmorton's hands, desiring her
+to burn it. Indignant, the accused addressed the
+lady, 'Madam, why do you use me thus? I never
+did you any harm <i>as yet</i>'&mdash;words afterwards recollected.
+'That night,' says the narrative, 'my lady
+Cromwell was suddenly troubled in her sleep by a
+cat which Mother S. had sent her, which offered to
+pluck the skin and flesh off her bones and arms. The
+struggle betwixt the cat and the lady was so great in
+her bed that night, and she made so terrible a noise,
+that she waked her bedfellow Mrs. C.' Whether, 'as
+some sager' might think, it was a nightmare (a sort
+of incubus which terrified the disordered imagination
+of the ancients), or some more substantial object that
+disturbed the rest of the lady, it is not important to
+decide; but next day Lady Cromwell was laid up
+with an incurable illness. Holding out obstinately
+against all threats and promises, the reputed witch
+was at length induced to pronounce an exorcism, when
+the afflicted were immediately for the time dispossessed.
+'Next day being Christmas-eve and the Sabbath,
+Dr. Donington [vicar of the parish] chose his text
+of repentance out of the <i>Psalms</i>, and communicating
+her confession to the assembly, directed his discourse
+chiefly to that purpose to comfort a penitent heart
+that it might affect her. All sermon-time Mother
+S. wept and lamented, and was frequently so loud in
+her passions, that she drew the eyes of the congrega<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154" href="#Page_154">[154]</a></span>tion
+upon her.' On the morrow, greatly to the disappointment
+of the neighbours, she contradicted her
+former confession, declaring it was extracted by
+surprise at finding her exorcism had relieved the
+child, unconscious of what she was saying.</p>
+
+<p>The case was afterwards carried before the Bishop
+of Lincoln. Now greatly alarmed, the old woman
+made a fresh announcement that she was really a
+witch; that she owned several spirits (of the nine may
+be enumerated the fantastic names of Pluck, Hardname,
+Catch, Smack, Blew), one of whom was used
+to appear in the shape of a chicken, and suck her
+chin. The mother and daughters were, upon this
+voluntary admission, committed to Huntingdon gaol.
+Of the possessed Jane Throgmorton seems to have
+been most familiar with the demons.<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor">104</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">104</span></a> The following ravings of epilepsy, or of whatever was the disorder
+of the girl, are part of the evidence of Dr. Donington, clergyman
+in the town, and were narrated and could be received as grave
+evidence in a court of justice. They will serve as a specimen of the
+rest. The girl and the spirit known as <i>Catch</i> are engaged in the little
+by-play. 'After supper, as soon as her parents were risen, she fell
+into the same fit again as before, and then became senseless, and in
+a little time, opening her mouth, she said, "Will this hold for ever?
+I hope it will be better one day. From whence come you now, Catch,
+limping? I hope you have met with your match." Catch answered
+that Smack and he had been fighting, and that Smack had broken
+his leg. Said she, "That Smack is a shrewd fellow; methinks I
+would I could see him. Pluck came last night with his head broke,
+and now you have broken your leg. I hope he will break both your
+necks before he hath done with you." Catch answered that he would
+be even with him before he had done. Then, said she, "Put forth
+your other leg, and let me see if I can break that," having a stick in
+her hand. The spirit told her she could not hit him. "Can I not
+hit you?" said she; "let me try." Then the spirit put forth his
+leg, and she lifted up the stick easily, and suddenly struck the
+ground.... So she seemed divers times to strike at the spirit; but
+he leaped over the stick, as she said, like a Jackanapes. So after
+many such tricks the spirit went away, and she came out of her fit,
+continuing all that night and the next day very sick and full of pain
+in her legs.'</p></div>
+
+<p>The sessions at Huntingdon began April 4, 1593,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155" href="#Page_155">[155]</a></span>
+when the three Samuels were arraigned; and the
+above charges, with much more of the same sort,
+were repeated: the indictments specifying the particular
+offences against the children and servants of
+the Throgmortons, and the 'bewitching unto death'
+of the lady Cromwell. The grand jury found a true
+bill immediately, and they were put upon their trial
+in court. After a mass of nonsense had been gone
+through, 'the judge, justices, and jury said the case
+was apparent, and their consciences were well satisfied
+that the said witches were guilty, and deserved
+death.' When sentence of death was pronounced, the
+old woman, sixty years of age, pleaded, in arrest of
+judgment, that she was with child&mdash;a pleading which
+produced only a derisive shout of laughter in court.
+Husband and daughter asserted their innocence to
+the last. All three were hanged. From the moment
+of execution, we are assured, Robert Throgmorton's
+children were permanently freed from all their sufferings.
+Such, briefly, are the circumstances of a witch<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156" href="#Page_156">[156]</a></span>
+case that resulted in the sending to the gallows three
+harmless wretches, and in the founding an annual
+sermon which perpetuated the memory of an iniquitous
+act and of an impossible crime. The sermon, it
+may be presumed, like other similar surviving institutions,
+was preserved in the eighteenth century
+more for the benefit of the select preacher than for
+that of the people.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157" href="#Page_157">[157]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Astrology in Antiquity&mdash;Modern Astrology and Alchymy&mdash;Torralvo&mdash;Adventures
+of Dr. Dee and Edward Kelly&mdash;Prospero
+and Comus Types respectively of the Theurgic and Goetic Arts&mdash;Magicians
+on the Stage in the 16th century&mdash;Occult Science
+in Southern Europe&mdash;Causes of the inevitable mistakes of the
+pre-Scientific Ages.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="chap">The</span> nobler arts of magic, astrology, alchymy, necromancy,
+&amp;c., were equally in vogue in this age with
+that of the infernal art proper. But they were more
+respected. Professors of those arts were habitually
+sought for with great eagerness by the highest personages,
+and often munificently rewarded. In antiquity
+astrology had been peculiarly Oriental in its
+origin and practice. The Egyptians, and especially
+the Chald&aelig;ans, introduced the foreign art to the
+West among the Greeks and Italians; the Arabs
+revived it in Western Europe in the Middle Age.
+Under the early Roman Empire the Chaldaic art
+exercised and enjoyed considerable influence and
+reputation, if it was often subject to sudden persecutions.
+Augustus was assisted to the throne, and
+Severus selected his wife, by its means. After it had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158" href="#Page_158">[158]</a></span>
+once firmly established itself in the West,<a name="FNanchor_105_105" id="FNanchor_105_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105_105" class="fnanchor">105</a> the Oriental
+astrology was soon developed and reduced to
+a more regular system; and in the sixteenth and
+seventeenth centuries Dee and Lilly enjoyed a
+greater reputation than even Figulus or Thrasyllus
+had obtained in the first century. Queen Elizabeth
+and Catherine di Medici (two of the astutest persons
+of their age) patronised them. Dr. Dee in
+England, and Nostradamus in France, were of
+this class. Dr. Caius, third founder of a college still
+bearing his name in the university of Cambridge,
+Kelly, Ashmole, and Lilly, are well-known names in
+the astrological history of this period. Torralvo,p
+whose fame as an aerial voyager is immortalised by
+Cervantes in 'Don Quixote,' was as great a magician
+in Spain and Italy as Dee in England, although not
+so familiar to English readers as their countryman,
+the prot&eacute;g&eacute; of Elizabeth. Neither was his magical
+faculty so well rewarded. Dr. Torralvo, a physician,
+had studied medicine and philosophy with extraordinary
+success, and was high in the confidence of
+many of the eminent personages of Spain and Italy,
+for whom he fortunately predicted future success. A
+confirmed infidel or freethinker, he was denounced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159" href="#Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+to the Inquisition by the treachery of an associate as
+denying or disputing the immortality of the soul, as
+well as the divinity of Christ. This was in 1529.
+Torralvo, put to the torture, admitted that his informing
+spirit, Zequiel, was a demon by whose
+assistance he performed his aerial journeys and all
+his extraordinary feats, both of prophecy and of
+actual power. Some part of the severity of the
+tortures was remitted by the demon's opportune
+reply to the curiosity of the presiding inquisitors, that
+Luther and the Reformers were bad and cunning
+men. Torralvo seems to have avoided the extreme
+penalty of fire by recanting his heresies, submitting
+to the superior judgment of his gaolers, and still
+more by the interest of his powerful employers; and
+he was liberated not long afterwards.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105_105" id="Footnote_105_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105_105"><span class="label">105</span></a> The diffusion and progress of astrology in the last two centuries
+before the Empire, in Greece and Italy, was favoured chiefly by the
+four following causes: its resemblance to the meteorological astrology
+of the Greeks; the belief in the conversion of the souls of men
+into stars; the cessation of the oracles; the belief in a tutelary
+genius.&mdash;Sir G. C. Lewis's <i>Historical Survey of the Astronomy of the
+Ancients</i>, chap. v.</p></div>
+
+<p>The life of Dr. Dee, an eminent Cambridge mathematician,
+and of his associate Edward Kelly,
+forms a curious biography. Dee was born in 1527.
+He studied at the English and foreign universities
+with great success and applause; and while the
+Princess Elizabeth was quite young he acquired her
+friendship, maintained by frequent correspondence,
+and on her succession to the throne the queen
+showed her good will in a conspicuous manner. John
+Dee left to posterity a diary in which he has inserted
+a regular account of his conjurations, prophetic intimations,
+and magical resources. Notwithstanding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160" href="#Page_160">[160]</a></span>
+his mathematical acumen, he was the dupe of his
+cunning subordinate&mdash;more of a knave, probably,
+than his master. In 1583 a Polish prince, Albert
+Laski, visiting the English court, frequented the
+society of the renowned astrologer, by whom he was
+initiated in the secrets of the art; and predicted to
+be the future means of an important revolution in
+Europe. The astrologers wandered over all Germany,
+at one time favourably received by the credulity, at
+another time ignominiously ejected by the indignant
+disappointment, of a patron.<a name="FNanchor_106_106" id="FNanchor_106_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106_106" class="fnanchor">106</a> Dee returned to England
+in 1589, and was finally appointed to the wardenship
+of the college at Manchester. In James's
+reign he was well received at Court, his reputation as
+a magician increasing; and in 1604 he is found presenting
+a petition to the king, imploring his good
+offices in dispelling the injurious imputation of being
+'a conjuror, or caller, or invocator of devils.' Lilly,
+the most celebrated magician of the seventeenth
+century in England, was in the highest repute during
+the civil wars: his prophetic services were sought
+with equal anxiety by royalists and patriots, by king<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161" href="#Page_161">[161]</a></span>
+and parliament.<a name="FNanchor_107_107" id="FNanchor_107_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107_107" class="fnanchor">107</a> Sometimes the professor of the
+occult science may have been his own dupe: oftener
+he imposed and speculated upon the credulity of
+others.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_106_106" id="Footnote_106_106"></a><a href="#FNanchor_106_106"><span class="label">106</span></a> While traversing Bohemia, on a particular occasion, it was revealed
+to be God's pleasure that the two friends should have a community
+of wives; a little episode noted in Dee's journal. 'On Sunday,
+May 3, 1587, I, John Dee, Edward Kelly, and our two wives,
+covenanted with God, and subscribed the same for indissoluble
+unities, charity, and friendship keeping between us four, and all things
+between us to be common, as God by sundry means willed us to do.'
+A sort of inspiration of frequent occurrence in religious revelations,
+from the times of the Arabian to those of the American prophet.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_107_107" id="Footnote_107_107"></a><a href="#FNanchor_107_107"><span class="label">107</span></a> William Lilly wrote a History of his own life and times. His
+adroitness in accommodating his prophecies to the alternating chances
+of the war does him considerable credit as a prophet.</p></div>
+
+<p>Prospero is the type of the Theurgic, as Comus is
+of the Goetic, magician. His spiritual minister
+belongs to the order of good, or at least middle
+spirits&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Too black for heav'n, and yet too white for hell.'<a name="FNanchor_108_108" id="FNanchor_108_108"></a><a href="#Footnote_108_108" class="fnanchor">108</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_108_108" id="Footnote_108_108"></a><a href="#FNanchor_108_108"><span class="label">108</span></a> Released by his new lord from the sorceric spell of that 'damn'd
+witch Sycorax,' he comes gratefully, if somewhat weariedly, to answer
+his 'blest pleasure; be't to fly, to swim, to dive into the fire, to ride
+on the curl'd clouds,' &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<p>Prospero, by an irresistible magic, subdued to his
+service the reluctant Caliban, a monster 'got by the
+devil himself upon his wicked dam:' but that semi-demon
+is degraded into a mere beast of burden,
+brutal and savage, with little of the spiritual essence
+of his male parent. Comus, as represented in that
+most beautiful drama by the genius of Milton, is of
+the classic rather than Christian sort: he is the
+true son of Circe, using his mother's method of
+enchantment, transforming his unwary victims into
+the various forms or faces of the bestial herd. Like
+the island magician without his magical garment,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162" href="#Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+the wicked enchanter without his wand loses his sorceric
+power; and&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Without his rod reversed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And backward mutters of dissevering power,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>it is not possible to disenchant his spell-bound prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>In the sixteenth century many wonderful stories
+obtained of the tremendous feats of the magic art.
+Those that related the lives of Bacon, and of Faust
+(of German origin), were best known in England;
+and, in the dramatic form, were represented on the
+stage. The comedy of 'Friar Bacon and Friar
+Bungay,' and the tragedy of 'The Life and Death of
+Dr. Faustus,' are perhaps the most esteemed of the
+dramatic writings of the age which preceded the
+appearance of Shakspeare. In the latter Faustus
+makes a compact with the devil, by which a familiar
+spirit and a preternatural art are granted him for
+twenty-four years. At the end of this period his
+soul is to be the reward of the demons.<a name="FNanchor_109_109" id="FNanchor_109_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109_109" class="fnanchor">109</a> From the
+'Faustus' of Christopher Marlow, Goethe has derived<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163" href="#Page_163">[163]</a></span>
+the name and idea of the most celebrated tragedy of
+our day.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_109_109" id="Footnote_109_109"></a><a href="#FNanchor_109_109"><span class="label">109</span></a> Conscious of his approaching fate, the trembling magician replies
+to the anxious inquiries of his surrounding pupils&mdash;'"For the vain
+pleasure of four-and-twenty years hath Faustus lost eternal joy and
+felicity. I writ them a bill with my own blood; the date is expired;
+this is the time, and he will fetch me." First Scholar&mdash;"Why did not
+Faustus tell us of this before, that divines might have prayed for
+thee?" Faust&mdash;"Oft have I thought to have done so; but the devil
+threatened to tear me in pieces if I named God; to fetch me body
+and soul if I once gave ear to divinity. And now it is too late."' As
+the fearful moment fast approaches, Dr. Faustus, orthodox on the
+subject of the duration of future punishment, exclaims in agony&mdash;
+</p>
+<p class="footpoem">'Oh! if my soul must suffer for my sin,<br />
+Impose some end to my incessant pain.<br />
+Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years&mdash;<br />
+A hundred thousand, and at the last be saved:<br />
+No end is limited to damned souls.<br />
+Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?<br />
+Oh, why is this immortal that thou hast?' &amp;c.<br />
+</p>
+<p>Mephistopheles, it need hardly be added, was on this occasion true
+to his reputation for punctuality. <i>Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay</i>
+is remarked for being one of the last dramatic pieces in which the
+devil appears on the stage in his proper person&mdash;1591. It is also
+noticeable that he is the only Scripture character in the new form of
+the play retained from the <i>miracles</i> which delighted the spectators
+in the fifteenth century, who were at once edified and gratified by
+the corporal chastisement inflicted upon his vicarious back.</p></div>
+
+<p>Magic and necromantic prowess was equally recognised
+in Southern Europe. The Italian poets
+employed such imposing paraphernalia in the construction
+of an epic; and Cervantes has ridiculed
+the prevailing belief of his countrymen.<a name="FNanchor_110_110" id="FNanchor_110_110"></a><a href="#Footnote_110_110" class="fnanchor">110</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_110_110" id="Footnote_110_110"></a><a href="#FNanchor_110_110"><span class="label">110</span></a> Benvenuto Cellini, the Florentine engraver, in his amusing <i>Autobiography</i>,
+astonishes his readers with some necromantic wonders of
+which he was an eyewitness. Cellini had become acquainted and
+enamoured with a beautiful Sicilian, from whom he was suddenly
+separated. He tells with his accustomed candour and confidence,
+'I was then indulging myself in pleasures of all sorts, and engaged
+in another amour to cancel the memory of my Sicilian mistress. It
+happened, through a variety of odd accidents, that I made acquaintance
+with a Sicilian priest, who was a man of genius, and well versed
+in the Latin and Greek authors. Happening one day to have some
+conversation with him upon the art of necromancy, I, who had a great
+desire to know something of the matter, told him I had all my life
+felt a curiosity to be acquainted with the mysteries of this art. The
+priest made answer that the man must be of a resolute and steady
+temper who enters upon that study.' And so it should seem from
+the event. One night, Cellini, with a companion familiar with the
+Black Art, attended the priest to the Colosseum, where the latter,
+'according to the custom of necromancy, began to draw marks upon
+the ground, with the most impressive ceremonies imaginable; he
+likewise brought thither <i>asaf&#339;tida, several precious perfumes and
+fire, with some compositions which diffused noisome odours</i>.' Although
+several legions of devils obeyed the summons of the conjurations or
+compositions, the sorceric rites were not attended with complete success.
+But on a succeeding night, 'the necromancer having begun to
+make his tremendous invocations, called by their names a multitude
+of demons who were the leaders of the several legions, and invoked
+them by the virtue and power of the eternal uncreated God, who lives
+for ever, insomuch that the amphitheatre was almost in an instant
+filled with demons a hundred times more numerous than at the former
+conjuration ... I, by the direction of the necromancer, again
+desired to be in the company of my Angelica. The former thereupon
+turning to me said, "Know that they have declared that in the space
+of a month you shall be in her company." He then requested me to
+stand resolutely by him, because the legion were now above a thousand
+more in number than he had designed; and besides, these were
+the most dangerous, so that after they had answered my question it
+behoved him to be civil to them and dismiss them quietly.' The infernal
+legions were more easily evoked than dismissed. He proceeds&mdash;'Though
+I was as much terrified as any of them, I did my utmost
+to conceal the terror I felt; so that I greatly contributed to inspire
+the rest with resolution. But the truth is,' ingenuously confesses the
+amorous artist, 'I gave myself over for a dead man, seeing the horrid
+fright the necromancer was in.'&mdash;<i>Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini</i>,
+chap. xiii., Roscoe's transl.&mdash;The information was verified, and Benvenuto
+enjoyed the society of his mistress at the time foretold.</p></div>
+
+<p>Alchymy, the science of the transformation of baser<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164" href="#Page_164">[164]</a></span>
+metals into gold, a pursuit which engaged the anxious
+thought and wasted the health, time, and fortunes of
+numbers of fanatical empirics, was one of the most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165" href="#Page_165">[165]</a></span>
+prized of the abstruse <i>occult</i> arts. Monarchs, princes,
+the great of all countries, eagerly vied among themselves
+in encouraging with promises and sometimes
+with more substantial incentives the zeal of their
+illusive search; and Henry IV. of France could see
+no reason why, if the bread and wine were <ins title="corrected typo transsubstantiated">transubstantiated</ins>
+so miraculously, a metal could not be transformed
+as well.<a name="FNanchor_111_111" id="FNanchor_111_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111_111" class="fnanchor">111</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_111_111" id="Footnote_111_111"></a><a href="#FNanchor_111_111"><span class="label">111</span></a> The class of horoscopists (the old Chaldaic <i>genethliacs</i>), or those
+who predicted the fortunes of individuals by an examination of the
+planet which presided at the natal hour, was as much in vogue as that
+of any other of the masters of the occult arts; and La Fontaine,
+towards the end of the seventeenth century, apostrophises the class:
+</p>
+<p class="footpoem">'Charlatans, faiseurs d'horoscope!<br />
+Quittez les cours des princes de l'Europe;<br />
+Emmenez avec vous les souffleurs tout d'un temps;<br />
+Vous ne m&eacute;ritez pas plus de foi.'....<br />
+</p>
+<p class="cite3"><i>Fables</i>, ii. 13.</p>
+<p>
+But it is only necessary to recollect the name of Cagliostro (Balsamo)
+and others who in the eighteenth century could successfully speculate
+upon the credulity of people of rank and education, to moderate our
+wonder at the success of earlier empirics.</p></div>
+
+<p>Among the eminent names of self-styled or reputed
+masters of the nobler or white magic, some, like the
+celebrated Paracelsus, were men of extraordinary attainments
+and largely acquainted with the secrets of
+natural science. A necessarily imperfect knowledge,
+a natural desire to impose upon the ignorant wonder
+of the vulgar, and the vanity of a learning which was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166" href="#Page_166">[166]</a></span>
+ambitious of exhibiting, in the most imposing if less
+intelligible way, their superior knowledge, were probably
+the mixed causes which led such distinguished
+scholars as Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, Cardan,
+and Campanella to oppress themselves and their
+readers with a mass of unintelligible rubbish and
+cabalistic mysticism.<a name="FNanchor_112_112" id="FNanchor_112_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112_112" class="fnanchor">112</a> Slow and gradual as are the
+successive advances in the knowledge and improvement
+of mankind, it would not be reasonable to be
+surprised that preceding generations could not at
+once attain to the knowledge of a maturer age; and
+the teachers of mankind groped their dark and uncertain
+way in ages destitute of the illumination of
+modern times.'<a name="FNanchor_113_113" id="FNanchor_113_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113_113" class="fnanchor">113</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_112_112" id="Footnote_112_112"></a><a href="#FNanchor_112_112"><span class="label">112</span></a>
+</p>
+<p class="footpoem">'Cardan believed great states depend<br />
+Upon the tip o' th' Bear's tail's end,'<br />
+</p>
+<p>correctly enough expresses both the persuasion of the public and
+that of many of the soi-disant philosophers of the intimate dependence
+of the fates of both states and individuals of this globe upon
+other globes in the universe.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_113_113" id="Footnote_113_113"></a><a href="#FNanchor_113_113"><span class="label">113</span></a> It was not so much a want of sufficient observation of known
+facts, as the want of a true method and of verification, which rendered
+the investigations of the earlier philosophers so vague and uncertain.
+And the same causes which necessarily prevented Aristotle,
+the greatest intellect perhaps that has ever illuminated the world,
+from attaining to the greater perfection of the modern philosophy,
+are applicable, in a greater degree, to the case of the medi&aelig;val and
+later discoverers. The causes of the failure of the pre-scientific
+world are well stated by a living writer. 'Men cannot, or at least
+they will not, await the tardy results of discovery; they will not sit
+down in avowed ignorance. Imagination supplies the deficiencies of
+observation. A theoretic arch is thrown across the chasm, because
+men are unwilling to wait till a solid bridge be constructed.... The
+early thinkers, by reason of the very splendour of their capacities,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167" href="#Page_167">[167]</a></span>
+were not less incompetent to follow the slow processes of scientific
+investigation, than a tribe of martial savages to adopt the strategy
+and discipline of modern armies. No accumulated laws, no well-tried
+methods existed for their aid. The elementary laws in each department
+were mostly undetected.' The guide of knowledge is verification.
+'The complexity of phenomena is that of a labyrinth, the
+paths of which cross and recross each other; one wrong turn causes
+the wanderer infinite perplexity. Verification is the Ariadne-thread
+by which the real issues may be found. Unhappily, the process of
+verification is slow, tedious, often difficult and deceptive; and we are
+by nature lazy and impatient, hating labour, eager to obtain. Hence
+credulity. We accept facts without scrutiny, inductions without
+proof; and we yield to our disposition to believe that the order of
+phenomena must correspond with our conceptions.' A profound truth
+is contained in the assertion of Comte (<i>Cours de Philosophie Positive</i>)
+that 'men have still more need of method than of doctrine, of education
+than of instruction.'&mdash;<i>Aristotle</i>, by G. H. Lewes.</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168" href="#Page_168">[168]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Sorcery in Southern Europe&mdash;Cause of the Retention of the
+Demonological Creed among the Protestant Sects&mdash;Calvinists
+the most Fanatical of the Reformed Churches&mdash;Witch-Creed
+sanctioned in the Authorised Version of the Sacred Scriptures&mdash;The
+Witch-Act of 1604&mdash;James VI.'s 'Demonologie'&mdash;Lycanthropy
+and Executions in France&mdash;The French Provincial
+Parliaments active in passing Laws against the various Witch-practices&mdash;Witchcraft
+in the Pyrenees&mdash;Commission of Inquiry
+appointed&mdash;Its Results&mdash;Demonology in Spain.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="chap">In</span> the annals of black magic, the silent tribunals of
+the Inquisition in Southern Europe which has consigned
+so many thousands of heretics to the torture
+room and to the flames, do not reveal so many trials
+for the simple crime of witchcraft as the tribunals of
+the more northern peoples: there all dissent from
+Catholic and priestly dogma was believed to be inspired
+by the powers of hell, deserving a common
+punishment, whether in the form of denial of transubstantiation,
+infallibility, of skill in magic, or of
+the vulgar practice of sorcery. Throughout Europe
+penalties and prosecutions were being continually
+enacted. The popes in Italy fulminated abroad their
+decrees, and the parliaments of France were almost
+daily engaged in pronouncing sentence.</p>
+
+<p>Where the papal yoke had been thrown off in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169" href="#Page_169">[169]</a></span>
+Northern Germany, in Scotland, and in England,
+the belief and the persecution remained in full force,
+indeed greatly increased; and it is obvious to inquire
+the cause of the retention, with many additions, of
+the doctrine of witchcraft by those who had at last
+finally rejected with scorn most of the grosser religious
+dogmas of the old Church, who were so loud
+in their just denunciation of Catholic tyranny and
+superstition. A general answer might be given that
+the Reformation of the sixteenth century, while it
+swept away in those countries in which it was effected
+the most injurious principles of ecclesiasticism, the
+principles of infallibility and authority in matters of
+faith, for the destruction of which gratitude is due to
+the independent minds of Luther, Zuinglius, and
+others, was yet far from complete in its negations.
+The leaders of that great revolution, with all their
+genius and boldness, could only partially free themselves
+from the prejudices of education and of the age.
+To develope the important principles they established,
+the rights of private judgment and religious
+freedom, was the legacy and duty of their successors;
+a duty which they failed to perform, to the incalculable
+misfortune of succeeding generations. The
+Sacred Scriptures, the common and only authority on
+faith among the different sections of Protestantism,
+unfortunately seemed to inculcate the dread power<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170" href="#Page_170">[170]</a></span>
+of the devil and his malicious purposes, and both the
+Jewish and Christian Scriptures apparently taught
+the reality of witchcraft. Theologians of all parties
+would have as easily dared to question the existence
+of God himself as to doubt the actual power of
+that other deity, and the unbelievers in his universal
+interference were not illogically stigmatised as
+atheists. With the Protestants some adventitious
+circumstances might make a particular church more
+fanatical and furious than another, and the Calvinists
+have deserved the palm for the bitterest persecution of
+witchcraft. But neither the Lutheran nor the Anglican
+section is exempt from the odious imputation.<a name="FNanchor_114_114" id="FNanchor_114_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114_114" class="fnanchor">114</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_114_114" id="Footnote_114_114"></a><a href="#FNanchor_114_114"><span class="label">114</span></a> Lord Peter, and his humbler brothers Martin and Jack, in different
+degrees, are all of them obnoxious to the accusation; and
+Bossuet (<i>Variations des Eglises Protestantes</i>, xi. 201), who is assured
+that St. Paul predicted the 'doctrines of devils' to be characteristic
+of Manich&aelig;an and Albigensian heresy, might have more safely interpreted
+the prophecy as applicable to the universal Christian Church (at
+least of Western Europe) of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.</p></div>
+
+<p>The followers of Calvin were most deeply imbued
+with hatred and horror of Catholic practices, and,
+adopting the old prejudice or policy of their antagonists,
+they were willing to confound the superstitious
+rites of Catholicism with those of demonolatry. The
+Anglican Church party, whose principles were not so
+entirely opposite to the old religion, had far less
+antipathy: until the revolution of 1688 it was for
+the most part engaged in contending against liberty
+rather than against despotism of conscience; against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171" href="#Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+Calvinism than against Catholicism. Yet the Church
+of England is exposed to the reproach of having
+sanctioned the common opinions in the most authoritative
+manner. In the authorised version of the
+Sacred Scriptures, in the translation of which into
+the English language forty-seven selected divines,
+eminent for position and learning, could concur in
+consecrating a vulgar superstition, the most imposing
+sanction was given. Had they possessed either common
+sense or courage, these Anglican divines might
+have expressed their disbelief or doubt of its truth
+by a more rational, and possibly more proper, interpretation
+of the Hebrew and Greek expressions;
+or if that was not possible, by an accompanying
+unequivocal protest. But the subservience as well as
+superstition of the English Church under the last of
+the Tudors and under the Stuarts is equally a matter
+of fact and of reprobation.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the first year of the first King of Great
+Britain that the English Parliament passed the Act
+which remained in force, or at least on the Statute
+Book, until towards the middle of last century.<a name="FNanchor_115_115" id="FNanchor_115_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115_115" class="fnanchor">115</a>
+After due consideration the bill passed both Houses;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172" href="#Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+and by it, it was enacted that 'If any person shall
+use any invocation or conjuration of any evil or wicked
+spirit, or shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ,
+feed, or reward any evil or cursed spirit to or
+for any intent or purpose, or take up any dead man,
+woman, or child out of the grave&mdash;or the skin, bone,
+or any part of the dead person, to be employed or
+used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or
+enchantment; or shall use, exercise, or practice any
+sort of witchcraft, &amp;c., whereby any person shall be
+destroyed, killed, wasted, consumed, pined or lamed
+in any part of the body; that every such person
+being convicted shall suffer death.' Twelve bishops
+sat in the Committee of the Upper House.<a name="FNanchor_116_116" id="FNanchor_116_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_116_116" class="fnanchor">116</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_115_115" id="Footnote_115_115"></a><a href="#FNanchor_115_115"><span class="label">115</span></a> The 'Witch Act' of James I. was passed in the year 1604. The
+new translation, or the present authorised version, of the Bible, was
+executed in 1607. The inference seems plain. An ecclesiastical
+canon passed at the same period, which prohibits the inferior
+clergy from exorcising without episcopal licence, proves at the same
+time the prevalence of 'possession' and the prevalence of exorcism
+in the beginning of the seventeenth century.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_116_116" id="Footnote_116_116"></a><a href="#FNanchor_116_116"><span class="label">116</span></a> The parliament of James I. would have done wisely to have embraced
+the philosophic sentiment of a Hungarian prince (1095-1114)
+who is said to have dismissed the absurd superstition with laconic
+brevity: 'De strigis vero, qu&aelig; non sunt, nulla qu&aelig;stio fiat.'</p></div>
+
+<p>The Scottish Parliament, during Queen Mary's
+reign, anathematised the <i>papistical</i> practices; and
+from that time the annals of Scottish judicature are
+filled with records of trials and convictions. James
+was educated among the stern adherents of Calvin.
+In whatever matters of ecclesiastical faith and rule
+the countryman of Knox may have deviated from the
+teaching of his preceptors, he maintained with constant
+zeal his faith in the devil's omnipotence; and
+we may be disposed to concede the title of 'Defender<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173" href="#Page_173">[173]</a></span>
+of the Faith' (so confidently prefixed to successive
+editions of the Authorised Version) to his activity
+in the extermination of witches, rather than to his
+hatred of priestcraft. While monarch only of the
+Northern kingdom, he published a denunciation of
+the damnable infidelity of the 'Witch Advocates,'
+and his own unhesitating belief. James VI. and his
+clerical advisers were persuaded, or affected to be
+persuaded, that the devil, with all his hellish crew,
+was conspiring to frustrate the beneficial intentions
+of a pious Protestant prince. Infernal despair and
+rage reached the climax when the marriage with the
+Danish princess was to be effected. But, far from
+being terrified by so formidable a conspiracy, he
+gloried in the persuasion that he was the devil's
+greatest enemy; and the man who shuddered at the
+sight of a drawn sword was not afraid to enter the
+lists against the <i>invisible</i> spiritual enemy.</p>
+
+<p>The 'Demonologie' was published at Edinburgh
+in 1597. The author introduces his book with these
+words: 'The fearful abounding at this time in this
+country of these detestable slaves of the devil, the
+witches or enchanters, hath moved me (beloved
+reader) to despatch in post this following treatise
+of mine, not in any wise (as I protest) to serve for a
+show of my learning and ingine, but only moved of
+conscience to press thereby so far as I can to resolve
+the doubting hearts of many; both that such assaults<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174" href="#Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+of Sathan are most certainly practised, and that the
+instruments thereof merits most severely to be
+punished: against the damnable opinions of two
+principally in our age, whereof the one called
+Scot, an Englishman, is not ashamed in public print
+to deny that there can be such a thing as witchcraft,
+and so maintains the old error of the Sadducees in
+denying of spirits. The other, called Wierus, a German
+physician, sets out a public apology for all these
+crafts-folks, whereby procuring for their impunity,
+he plainly bewrays himself to have been one of that
+profession. And for to make this treatise the more
+pleasant and facile, I have put it in form of a dialogue,
+which I have divided into three books: the first
+speaking of magic in general, and necromancy in
+special; the second, of sorcery and witchcraft; and
+the third contains a discourse of all those kinds of
+spirits and spectres that appears and troubles persons,
+together with a conclusion of the whole work. My
+intention in this labour is only to prove two things,
+as I have already said: the one, that such devilish
+arts have been and are; the other, what exact trial
+and severe punishment they merit; and therefore
+reason I what kind of things are possible to be performed
+in these arts, and by what natural causes
+they may be. Not that I touch every particular
+thing of the devil's power, for that were infinite; but
+only, to speak scholasticly (since this cannot be spoken<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175" href="#Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+in our language), I reason upon <i>genus</i>, leaving <i>species</i>
+and <i>differentia</i> to be comprehended therein.'<a name="FNanchor_117_117" id="FNanchor_117_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_117_117" class="fnanchor">117</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_117_117" id="Footnote_117_117"></a><a href="#FNanchor_117_117"><span class="label">117</span></a> Speculating on the manner of witches' aerial travels, he thinks,
+'Another way is somewhat more strange, and yet it is possible to be
+true: which is, by being carried by the force of their spirit, which is
+their conductor, either above the earth or above the sea swiftly to the
+place where they are to meet: which I am persuaded to be likewise
+possible, in respect that as Habakkuk was carried by the angel in that
+form to the den where Daniel lay, so think I the devil will be ready
+to imitate God as well in that as in other things, which is much more
+possible to him to do, being a spirit, than to a mighty wind, being
+but a natural meteor to transport from one place to another a solid
+body, as is commonly and daily seen in practice. But in this violent
+form they cannot be carried but a short bounds, agreeing with the
+space that they may retain their breath; for if it were longer their
+breath could not remain unextinguished, their body being carried in
+such a violent and forcible manner.... And in this transporting
+they say themselves that they are invisible to any other, except
+amongst themselves. For if the devil may form what kind of impressions
+he pleases in the air, as I have said before, speaking of magic,
+why may he not far easier thicken and obscure so the air that is next
+about them, by contracting it straight together that the beams of any
+other man's eyes cannot pierce through the same to see them?' &amp;c.&mdash;<i>Cyclop&aelig;dia
+of English Literature</i>, edited by Robert Chambers.</p></div>
+
+<p>The following injunction is characteristic of all persecuting
+maxims, and is worthy of the disciple of
+Bodin: 'Witches ought to be put to death according
+to the law of God, the civil and the imperial law, and
+the municipal law of all Christian nations. Yea, to
+spare the life and not to strike whom God bids strike,
+and so severely in so odious a treason against God,
+is not only unlawful but doubtless as great a sin in
+the magistrate as was Saul's sparing Agag.' It is
+insisted upon by this <i>sagacious</i> author (echoing the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176" href="#Page_176">[176]</a></span>
+rules laid down in the 'Malleus'), that any and every
+evidence is good against an exceptional crime: that
+the testimony of the youngest children, and of persons
+of the most infamous character, not only may, but
+ought to be, received.</p>
+
+<p>This mischievous production is a curious collection
+of demonological learning and experience, exhibiting
+the reputed practices and ceremonies of witches, the
+mode of detecting them, &amp;c.; but is useless even
+for the purpose of showing the popular Scottish or
+English notions, being chiefly a medley of classical
+or foreign ideas, inserted apparently (spite of the
+royal author's assurance to the contrary) to parade
+an array of abstruse and pedantic learning. That
+some of the excessive terror said to have been
+exhibited was simulated to promote his pretensions
+to the especial hostility of Satan, is probable: but
+that also he was impressed, in some degree, with a
+real and lively fear scarcely admits of doubt. The
+modern Solomon might well have blushed at the
+superior common sense of a barbaric chief; and the
+'judges of the seventeenth century might have been
+instructed and confounded at the superior wisdom of
+Rotharis [a Lombardic prince], who derides the
+absurd superstition and protects the wretched victims
+of popular or judicial cruelty.'<a name="FNanchor_118_118" id="FNanchor_118_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118_118" class="fnanchor">118</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_118_118" id="Footnote_118_118"></a><a href="#FNanchor_118_118"><span class="label">118</span></a> <i>Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</i>, xlv. It would have
+been well for his subjects if he could have congratulated himself, like
+Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (the model of philosophic princes, and a
+more practically virtuous, if not wiser, philosopher than the proverbial
+Solomon, and of whom Niebuhr, <i>History of Rome</i>, v., asserts, 'If
+there is any sublime human virtue, it is his'), that he had learnt
+from his instructors to laugh at the bugbears of witches and demons.&mdash;<ins title="Greek: Ta eis heauton.">&#932;&#8048; &#949;&#7984;&#962; &#7953;&#945;&#965;&#964;&#8057;&#957;.</ins>&mdash;<i>The Meditations of M. A. Antoninus</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p>Previously to the 'Witch Act,' the charge of sorcery<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177" href="#Page_177">[177]</a></span>
+was, in most cases, a subordinate and subsidiary
+one, attached to various political or other indictments.
+Henceforward the practice of the peculiar
+offence might be entirely independent of any more
+substantial accusation. In England, compared with
+the other countries of Europe, folly more than ferocity,
+perhaps, generally characterises the proceedings
+of the tribunals. During the pre-Reformation
+ages, France, even more than her island neighbour,
+suffered from the crime. The fates of the Templars,
+of Jeanne d'Arc, of Arras, of those suspected of causing
+the mad king's, Charles VI., derangement (when
+many of the <i>white</i> witches, or wizards, 'mischievously
+good,' suffered for failing, by a pretended skill,
+to effect his promised cure) are some of the more
+conspicuous examples. But in France, as in the
+rest of Europe, it was in the post-feudal period that
+prosecutions became of almost daily occurrence.</p>
+
+<p>A prevalent kind of sorcery was that of lycanthropy,
+as it was called, a prejudice derived, it seems,
+in part from the Pythagorean metempsychosis. A
+few cases will illustrate the nature of this stupendous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178" href="#Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+transformation. That it is mostly found to take
+place in France and in the southern districts, the
+country of wolves, that still make their ravages
+there, is a fact easily intelligible; and if the devil
+can enter into swine, he can also, in the opinion of the
+demonologists, as easily enter into wolves. At D&ocirc;le,
+in 1573, a loup-garou, or wehr-wolf (man-wolf), was
+accused of devastating the country and devouring
+little children. The indictment was read by Henri
+Camus, doctor of laws and counsellor of the king, to
+the effect that the accused, Gilles Garnier, had killed
+a girl twelve years of age, having torn her to pieces,
+partly with his teeth, and partly with his wolf's
+paws; that having dragged the body into the forest,
+he there devoured the larger portion, reserving the
+remainder for his wife; also that, by reason of injuries
+inflicted in a similar way on another young girl,
+the loup-garou had occasioned her death; also that
+he had devoured a boy of thirteen, tearing him limb
+by limb; that he displayed the same unnatural
+propensities even in his own proper shape. Fifty
+persons were found to bear witness; and he was
+put to the rack, which elicited an unreserved confession.
+He was then brought back into court, when
+Dr. Camus, in the name of the Parliament of D&ocirc;le,
+pronounced the following sentence: 'Seeing that
+Gilles Garnier has, by the testimony of credible
+witnesses and by his own spontaneous confession,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179" href="#Page_179">[179]</a></span>
+been proved guilty of the abominable crimes of
+lycanthropy and witchcraft, this court condemns
+him, the said Grilles, to be this day taken in a cart
+from this spot to the place of execution, accompanied
+by the executioner, where he, by the said
+executioner, shall be tied to a stake and burned
+alive, and that his ashes be then scattered to the
+winds. The court further condemns him, the said
+Gilles, to the costs of this prosecution. Given at
+D&ocirc;le this 18th day of January, 1573.' Five years
+later a man named Jacques Rollet was burned alive in
+the Place de Gr&ecirc;ve for the same crime, having been
+tried and condemned by the Parliament of Paris.<a name="FNanchor_119_119" id="FNanchor_119_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_119_119" class="fnanchor">119</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_119_119" id="Footnote_119_119"></a><a href="#FNanchor_119_119"><span class="label">119</span></a> A still more sensational case happened at a village in the mountains
+of Auvergne. A gentleman while hunting was suddenly attacked
+by a savage wolf of monstrous size. Impenetrable by his shot, the
+beast made a spring upon the helpless huntsman, who in the struggle
+luckily, or unluckily for the unfortunate lady, contrived to cut off one
+of its fore-paws. This trophy he placed in his pocket, and made the
+best of his way homewards in safety. On the road he met a friend
+to whom he exhibited a bleeding paw, or rather a woman's hand (so it
+was produced from the hunter's pocket) upon which was a wedding
+ring. His wife's ring was at once recognised by the other. His
+suspicions aroused, he immediately went in search of his wife, who
+was found sitting by the fire in the kitchen, her arm hidden beneath
+her apron: when the husband seizing her by the arm found
+his terrible suspicions verified. The bleeding stump was there,
+evidently just fresh from the wound. She was given into custody,
+and in the event was burned at Riom in presence of thousands of
+spectators. Among some of the races of India, among the Khonds
+of the mountains of Orissa, a superstition obtains like that of the
+<i>loup-garou</i> of France. In India the tiger takes the place of the wolf,
+and the metamorphosed witch is there known as the <i>Pulta-bag</i>.
+</p><p>
+A kindred prejudice, Vampirism, has still many adherents in
+Eastern Europe. The vampire is a human being who in his tomb
+maintains a posthumous existence by ascending in the night and
+sucking the bodies of the living. His punishment was necessarily
+less tremendous than that of the witch: the <i>dead</i> body only being
+burned to ashes. An official document, quoted by Horst, narrates the
+particulars of the examination and burning of a disinterred vampire.</p></div>
+
+<p>Several witches were burned in successive years<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180" href="#Page_180">[180]</a></span>
+throughout the kingdom. In 1564, three witches
+and a wizard were executed at Poictiers: on the rack
+they declared that they had destroyed numbers of
+sheep by magical preparations, attended the Sabbaths,
+&amp;c. Trois Echelles, a celebrated sorcerer, examined
+in the presence of Charles IX. and his court, acknowledged
+his obligation to the devil, to whom he had
+sold himself, recounting the debaucheries of the Sabbath,
+the methods of bewitching, and the compositions
+of the unguents for blighting cattle. The astounding
+fact was also revealed that some twelve hundred
+accomplices were at large in different parts of the
+land. The provincial parliaments in the end of this
+and the greater part of the next century are unremittingly
+engaged in passing decrees and making
+provisions against the increasing offences.<a name="FNanchor_120_120" id="FNanchor_120_120"></a><a href="#Footnote_120_120" class="fnanchor">120</a> 'The
+Parliament of Rouen decreed that the possession of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181" href="#Page_181">[181]</a></span>
+a <i>grimoire</i> or book of spells was sufficient evidence
+of witchcraft; and that all persons on whom such
+books were found should be <i>burned alive</i>. Three councils
+were held in different parts of France in 1583,
+all in relation to the same subject. The Parliament
+of Bordeaux issued strict injunctions to all curates
+and clergy whatever to use redoubled efforts to
+root out the crime of witchcraft. The Parliament of
+Tours was equally peremptory, and feared the judgments
+of an offended God if all these dealers with
+the devil were not swept from the face of the land.
+The Parliament of Rheims was particularly severe
+against the <i>noueurs d'aiguillettes</i> or 'tiers of the
+knot'&mdash;people of both sexes who took pleasure in
+preventing the consummation of marriage that they
+might counteract the command of God to our first
+parents to increase and multiply. This parliament
+held it to be sinful to wear amulets to preserve from
+witchcraft; and that this practice might not be continued
+within its jurisdiction, drew up a form of exorcism
+'which could more effectually defeat the agents
+of the devil and put them to flight.'<a name="FNanchor_121_121" id="FNanchor_121_121"></a><a href="#Footnote_121_121" class="fnanchor">121</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_120_120" id="Footnote_120_120"></a><a href="#FNanchor_120_120"><span class="label">120</span></a> Montaigne, one of the few Frenchmen at this time who seemed
+to discredit the universal creed, in one of his essays ventures to
+think 'it is very probable that the principal credit of visions, of enchantments,
+and of such extraordinary effects, proceeds from the
+power of the imagination acting principally upon the more impressible
+minds of the vulgar.' He is inclined to assign the prevalent
+'liaisons' (nouements d'aiguillettes) to the apprehensions of a fear
+with which in his age the French world was so perplexed (si entrav&eacute;).
+<i>Essais</i>, liv. i. 20.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_121_121" id="Footnote_121_121"></a><a href="#FNanchor_121_121"><span class="label">121</span></a> <i>Extraordinary Popular Delusions</i>, by Mackay, whose authorities
+are Tablier, Boguet (<i>Discours sur les Sorciers</i>), and M. Jules Garinet
+(<i>Histoire de la Magie</i>).</p></div>
+
+<p>In France, and still more in Italy, there is reason
+for believing that many of the convicts were not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182" href="#Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+without the real guilt of toxicological practices; and
+they might sometimes properly deserve the opprobrium
+of the old <i>venefici</i>. The formal trial and sentence
+to death of La Mar&eacute;chale de l'Ancre in 1617 was
+perhaps more political than superstitious, but witchcraft
+was introduced as one of the gravest accusations.
+Her preponderance in the councils of Marie de
+Medici and of Louis XIII. originated in the natural
+<i>fascination</i> of royal but inferior minds. Two years
+afterwards occurred a bon&acirc; fide prosecution on a large
+scale. A commission was appointed by the Parliament
+of Bordeaux to inquire into the causes and
+circumstances of the prevalence of witchcraft in the
+Pyrenean districts. Espaignol, president of the local
+parliament, with the better known councillor, Pierre
+de l'Ancre, who has left a record ('Tableau de l'Inconstance
+des Mauvais Anges et D&eacute;mons, o&ugrave; il est
+amplement trait&eacute; des Sorciers et D&eacute;mons: Paris'),
+was placed at the head of the commission. How the
+district of Labourt was so infested with the tribe, that
+of thirty thousand inhabitants hardly a family existed
+but was infected with sorcery, is explained by
+the barren, sterile, mountainous aspect of the neighbourhood
+of that part of the Pyrenees: the men
+were engaged in the business of fishermen, and
+the women left alone were exposed to the tempter.
+The priests too were as ignorant and wicked as the
+people; their relations with the lonely wives and
+daughters being more intimate than proper. Young<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183" href="#Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+and handsome women, some mere girls, form the
+greater proportion of the accused. As many as
+forty a day appeared at the bar of the commissioners,
+and at least two hundred were hanged or
+burned.</p>
+
+<p>Evidence of the appearance of the devil was various
+and contradictory. Some at the <i>Domdaniel</i>, the
+place of assemblage, had a vision of a hideous wild
+he-goat upon a large gilded throne; others of a man
+twisted and disfigured by Tartarean torture; of a
+gentleman in black with a sword, booted and spurred;
+to others he seemed as some shapeless indistinct object,
+as that of the trunk of a tree, or some huge rock or
+stone. They proceeded to their meetings riding on
+spits, pitchforks, broom-sticks: being entertained on
+their arrival in the approved style, and indulging in
+the usual licence. Deputies from witchdom attended
+from all parts, even from Scotland. When reproached
+by some of his slaves for failing to come to the rescue
+in the torture-chamber or at the stake, their lord
+replied by causing illusory fires to be lit, bidding the
+doubters walk through the harmless flames, promising
+not more inconvenience in the bonfires of their persecutors.
+Lycanthropic criminals were also brought up
+who had prowled about and devastated the sheepfolds.
+Espaignol and De l'Ancre were provided
+with two professional Matthew Hopkinses: one a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184" href="#Page_184">[184]</a></span>
+surgeon for examining the 'marks' (generally here
+discovered in the left eye, like a frog's foot) in the
+men and older women; the other a girl of seventeen,
+for the younger of her sex. Many of the priests
+were executed; several made their escape from the
+country. Besides the work before mentioned, De
+l'Ancre published a treatise under the title of 'L'Incr&eacute;dulit&eacute;
+et Mescr&eacute;ance du Sortil&eacute;ge pleinement
+convaincue,' 1622. The expiration of the term of
+the Bordeaux commission brought the proceedings
+to a close, and fortunately saved a number of the
+condemned.</p>
+
+<p>In Spain, the land of Torquemada and Ximenes,
+which had long ago fanatically expelled the Jews
+and recently its old Moorish conquerors from its
+soil, the unceasing activity of the Inquisition during
+140 years must have extorted innumerable confessions
+and proofs of diabolic conspiracies and heresy.
+Antonio Llorente, the historian of the Inquisition, to
+whose rare opportunities of obtaining information we
+are indebted for some instructive revelations, has
+exposed a large number of the previously silent and
+dark transactions of the Holy Office. But the demonological
+ideas of the Southern Church and people
+are profusely displayed in the copious dramatic literature
+of the Spaniards, whose theatre was at one
+time nearly as popular, if not as influential, as the
+Church.</p>
+
+<p>The dramas of the celebrated Lope de Vega and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185" href="#Page_185">[185]</a></span>
+of Calderon in particular, are filled with demons as
+well as angels<a name="FNanchor_122_122" id="FNanchor_122_122"></a><a href="#Footnote_122_122" class="fnanchor">122</a>&mdash;a sort of religious compensation
+to the Church for the moral deficiencies of a licentious
+stage, or rather licentious public.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_122_122" id="Footnote_122_122"></a><a href="#FNanchor_122_122"><span class="label">122</span></a> In the <i>Nacimiento de Christo</i> of Lope de Vega the devil appears
+in his popular figure of the dragon. Calderon's <i>Wonder-Working
+Magician</i>, relating the adventures of St. Cyprian and the various
+temptations and seductions of the Evil Spirit, like Goethe's Faust,
+introduces the devil in the disguise of a fashionable and gallant
+gentleman.&mdash;Ticknor's <i>History of Spanish Literature</i>.</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186" href="#Page_186">[186]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Possession' in France in the Seventeenth Century&mdash;Urbain
+Grandier and the Convent of Loudun&mdash;Exorcism at Aix&mdash;Ecstatic
+Phenomena&mdash;Madeleine Bavent&mdash;Her cruel Persecution&mdash;Catholic
+and Protestant Witchcraft in Germany&mdash;Luther's
+Demonological Fears and Experiences&mdash;Originated in
+his exceptional Position and in the extraordinary Circumstances
+of his Life and Times&mdash;Witch-burning at Bamburg and at
+W&uuml;rzburg.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="chap">Demoniacal</span> possession was a phase of witchcraft
+which obtained extensively in France during the
+seventeenth century: the victims of this hallucination
+were chiefly the female inmates of religious
+houses, whose inflamed imaginations were prostituted
+by their priestly advisers to the most atrocious purposes.
+Urbain Grandier's fate was connected with
+that of an entire convent. The facts of this celebrated
+sorcerer's history are instructive. He was
+educated in a college of the Jesuits at Bordeaux,
+and presented by the fathers, with whom his abilities
+and address had gained much applause, to a benefice
+in Loudun. He provoked by his haughtiness the
+jealousy of his brother clergy, who regarded him as
+an intruder, and his pride and resentment increased<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187" href="#Page_187">[187]</a></span>
+in direct proportion to the activity of his enemies,
+who had conspired to effect his ruin. Mounier and
+Mignon, two priests whom he had mortally offended,
+were most active. Urbain Grandier was rash enough
+to oppose himself alone to the united counsels of unscrupulous
+and determined foes. Defeated singly
+in previous attempts to drive him from Loudun, the
+two priests combined with the leading authorities of
+the place. Their haughty and careless adversary had
+the advantage or disadvantage of a fine person and
+handsome face, which, with his other recommendations,
+gained him universal popularity with the
+women; and his success and familiarities with the
+fair sex were not likely to escape the vigilance of
+spies anxious to collect damaging proofs. What
+inflamed to the utmost the animosities of the
+two parties was the success of Canon Mignon in obtaining
+the coveted position of confessor to the convent
+of Ursulines in Loudun, to the exclusion of
+Grandier, himself an applicant. This convent was
+destined to assume a prominent part in the fate of
+the cur&eacute; of the town. The younger nuns, it seems,
+to enliven the dull monotony of monastic life, adopted
+a plan of amusing their leisure by frightening the
+older ones in making the most of their knowledge of
+secret passages in the building, playing off ghost-tricks,
+and raising unearthly noises. When the newly
+appointed confessor was informed of the state of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188" href="#Page_188">[188]</a></span>
+matters he at once perceived the possibility, and
+formed the design, of turning it to account. The
+offending nuns were promised forgiveness if they
+would continue their ghostly amusement, and also
+affect demoniacal possession; a fraud in which they
+were more readily induced to participate by an assurance
+that it might be the humble means of converting
+the heretics&mdash;Protestants being unusually
+numerous in that part of the country.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as they were sufficiently prepared to assume
+their parts, the magistrates were summoned to witness
+the phenomena of possession and exorcism. On
+the first occasion the Superior of the convent was
+the selected patient; and it was extracted from the
+demon in possession that he had been sent by Urbain
+Grandier, priest of the church of St. Peter. This
+was well so far; but the civil authorities generally,
+as it appears, were not disposed to accept even the
+irrefragable testimony of a demoniac; and the
+ecclesiastics, with the leading inhabitants, were in
+conflict with the civil power. Opportunely, however,
+for the plan of the conspirators, who were almost in
+despair, an all-powerful ally was enlisted on their
+side. A severe satire upon some acts of the
+minister of France, Cardinal Richelieu, or of some of
+his subordinates, had made its appearance. Urbain
+was suspected to be the author; his enemies were
+careful to improve the occasion; and the Cardinal-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189" href="#Page_189">[189]</a></span>minister's
+cooperation was secured. A royal commission
+was ordered to inquire into the now notorious
+circumstances of the Loudun diabolism. Laubardemont,
+the head of the commission, arrived in December
+1633, and no time was lost in bringing the matter to
+a crisis. The house of the suspected was searched
+for books of magic; he himself being thrown into a
+dungeon, where the surgeons examined him for the
+'marks.' Five insensible spots were found&mdash;a
+certain proof. Meanwhile the nuns become more
+hysterical than ever; strong suspicion not being
+wanting that the priestly confessors to the convent
+availed themselves of their situation to abuse the
+bodies as well as the minds of the reputed demoniacs.
+To such an extent went the audacity of the exorcists,
+and the credulity of the people, that the <i>enceinte</i> condition
+of one of the sisters, which at the end of five
+or six months disappeared, was explained by the
+malicious slander of the devil, who had caused that
+scandalous illusion. Crowds of persons of all ranks
+flocked from Paris and from the most distant parts to
+see and hear the wild ravings of these hysterical or
+drugged women, whose excitement was such that they
+spared not their own reputations; and some scandalous
+exposures were submitted to the amusement or
+curiosity of the surrounding spectators. Some few of
+them, aroused from the horrible delusion, or ashamed
+of their complicity, admitted that all their previous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190" href="#Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+revelations were simple fiction. Means were found
+to effectually silence such dangerous announcements.
+The accusers pressed on the prosecution; the influence
+of his friends was overborne, and Grandier
+was finally sentenced to the stake. Fearing the
+result of a despair which might convincingly betray
+the facts of the case to the assembled multitude, they
+seem to have prevailed upon the condemned to keep
+silence up to the last moment, under promise of an
+easier death. But already fastened to the stake, he
+learned too late the treachery of his executioners; instead
+of being first strangled, he was committed alive
+to the flames. Nor were any 'last confessions' possible.
+The unfortunate victim of the malice of exasperated
+rivals, and of the animosity of the implacable
+Richelieu, has been variously represented.<a name="FNanchor_123_123" id="FNanchor_123_123"></a><a href="#Footnote_123_123" class="fnanchor">123</a> It
+is noticeable that the scene of this affair was in the
+heart of the conquered Protestant region&mdash;Rochelle
+had fallen only six years before the execution; and
+the heretics, although politically subdued, were
+numerous and active. A fact which may account
+for the seeming indifference and even the opposition
+of a large number of the people in this case of diabolism
+which obtained comparatively little credit.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191" href="#Page_191">[191]</a></span>
+It had been urged to the nuns that it would be for the
+good and glory of Catholicism that the heretics should
+be confounded by a few astounding miracles. Whether
+Grandier had any decided heretical inclinations is
+doubtful; but he wrote against the celibacy of the
+priesthood, and was suspected of liberal opinions in
+religion. A Capuchin named Tranquille (a contemporary)
+has furnished the materials for the 'History
+of the Devils of Loudun' by the Protestant Aubin,
+1716.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_123_123" id="Footnote_123_123"></a><a href="#FNanchor_123_123"><span class="label">123</span></a> Michelet apparently accepts the charge of immorality; according
+to which the cur&eacute; took advantage of his popularity among the ladies
+of Loudun, by his insinuating manners, to seduce the wives and
+daughters of the citizens. By another writer (Alexandre Dumas,
+<i>Celebrated Crimes</i>) he is supposed to have been of a proud and vindictive
+disposition, but innocent of the alleged irregularities.</p></div>
+
+<p>Twenty-four years previously a still more scandalous
+affair&mdash;that of Louis Gauffridi and the Convent
+of Aix, in which Gauffridi, who had debauched
+several girls both in and out of the establishment,
+was the principal actor&mdash;was transacted with similar
+circumstances. Madeleine, one of the novices, soon
+after entering upon her noviciate, was seized with
+the ecstatic trances, which were speedily communicated
+to her companions.<a name="FNanchor_124_124" id="FNanchor_124_124"></a><a href="#Footnote_124_124" class="fnanchor">124</a> These fits, in the judgment
+of the priests, were nothing but the effect of
+witchcraft. Exorcists elicited from the girls that
+Louis Gauffridi, a powerful magician having authority<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192" href="#Page_192">[192]</a></span>
+over demons throughout Europe, had bewitched
+them. The questions and answers were taken down,
+by order of the judges, by reporters, who, while
+the priests were exorcising, committed the results
+to writing, published afterwards by one of them,
+Michaelis, in 1613. Among the interesting facts
+acquired through these spirit-media, the inquisitors
+learned that Antichrist was already come; that
+printing, and the invention of it, were alike accursed,
+and similar information. Madeleine, tortured and
+imprisoned in the most loathsome dungeon, was reduced
+to such a condition of extreme horror and
+dread, that from this time she was the mere instrument
+of her atrocious judges. Having been intimate
+with the wizard, she could inform them of the position
+of the 'secret marks' on his person: these
+were ascertained in the usual way by pricking with
+needles. Gauffridi, by various torture, was induced
+to make the required confession, and was burned
+alive at Aix, April 30, 1611.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_124_124" id="Footnote_124_124"></a><a href="#FNanchor_124_124"><span class="label">124</span></a> M. Maury, in a philosophical and learned work (<i>La Magie et
+l'Astrologie dans l'Antiquit&eacute; et au Moyen &Acirc;ge</i>), has scientifically explored
+and exposed the mysteries of these and the like ecstatic phenomena,
+of such frequent occurrence in Protestant as well as in Catholic
+countries; in the orphan-houses of Amsterdam and Horn, as well as
+in the convents of France and Italy in the 17th century. And the
+Protestant revivalists of the present age have in great measure reproduced
+these curious results of religious excitement.</p></div>
+
+<p>Demoniacal possession was a mania in France
+in the seventeenth century. The story of Madeleine
+Bavent, as reported, reveals the utmost licentiousness
+and fiendish cruelty.<a name="FNanchor_125_125" id="FNanchor_125_125"></a><a href="#Footnote_125_125" class="fnanchor">125</a> Gibbon justly observes
+that ancient Rome supported with the greatest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193" href="#Page_193">[193]</a></span>
+difficulty the institution of <i>six</i> vestals, notwithstanding
+the certain fate of a living grave for
+those who could not preserve their chastity; and
+Christian Rome was filled with many thousands of
+both sexes bound by vows to perpetual virginity.
+Madeleine was seduced by her Franciscan confessor
+when only fourteen; and she entered a convent
+lately founded at Louviers. In this building, surrounded
+by a wood, and situated in a suitable spot,
+some strange practices were carried on. At the instigation
+of their director, a priest called David, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194" href="#Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+nuns, it is reported, were seized with an irresistible
+desire of imitating the primitive Adamite simplicity:
+the novices were compelled to return to the simple
+nudity of the days of innocence when taking exercise
+in the conventual gardens, and even at their devotions
+in the chapel. The novice Madeleine, on one occasion,
+was reprimanded for concealing her bosom with
+the altar-cloth at communion. She was originally of
+a pure and artless mind; and only gradually and
+stealthily she was corrupted by the pious arguments
+of her priest. This man, Picart by name&mdash;one of
+that extensive class the 'tristes obsc&#339;ni,' of whom
+the Angelos and Tartuffes<a name="FNanchor_126_126" id="FNanchor_126_126"></a><a href="#Footnote_126_126" class="fnanchor">126</a> are representatives&mdash;succeeded
+to the vacant office of directing confessor to
+the nuns of Louviers; and at once embraced the
+opportunities of the confessional. Without repeating
+all the disgusting scenes that followed, as given by
+Michelet, it is only necessary to add that the
+miserable nun became the mistress and helpless
+creature of her seducer. 'He employed her as a
+magical charm to gain over the rest of the nuns. A
+holy wafer steeped in Madeleine's blood and buried
+in the garden would be sure to disturb their senses
+and their minds. This was the very year in which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195" href="#Page_195">[195]</a></span>
+Urban Grandier was burned. Throughout France
+men spoke of nothing but the devils of Loudun....
+Madeleine fancied herself bewitched and knocked
+about by devils; followed about by a lewd cat with
+eyes of fire. By degrees other nuns caught the disorder,
+which showed itself in odd supernatural jerks
+and writhings.'</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_125_125" id="Footnote_125_125"></a><a href="#FNanchor_125_125"><span class="label">125</span></a> It is but one instance of innumerable amours within the secret
+penetralia of the privileged conventual establishments. In the
+dark recesses of these vestal institutions on a gigantic scale, where
+publicity, that sole security, was never known, what vices or even
+crimes could not be safely perpetrated? Luther, who proved in the
+most practical way his contempt for the sanctity of monastic vows by
+eloping with a nun, assures us, among other scandals attaching to
+convent life, of the fact that when a fish-pond adjoining one of these
+establishments in Rome was drained off, six thousand infant skulls
+were exposed to view. A story which may be fact or fiction. But
+while fully admitting the probability of invention and exaggeration
+in the relations of enemies, and the fact that undue prejudice is likely
+to somewhat exaggerate the probable evils of the mysterious and unknown,
+how could it be otherwise than that during fourteen centuries
+many crimes should have been committed in those silent and safe retreats?
+Nor, indeed, is experience opposed to the possibility of the
+highest fervour of an unnatural enthusiasm being compatible with
+more human passions. The virgin who,
+</p>
+<p class="footpoem">'Ut flos in septis secretus nascitur hortis<br />
+Ignotus pecori,'<br />
+</p>
+<p>as eulogised by the virgin-chorus in the beautiful epithalamium of Catullus,
+might be recognised in the youthful 'religieuse' if only human
+passion could be excluded; but the story of Heloise and Abelard is
+not a solitary proof of the superiority of human nature over an impossible
+and artificial spirituality.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_126_126" id="Footnote_126_126"></a><a href="#FNanchor_126_126"><span class="label">126</span></a> As Tartuffe privately confesses,
+</p>
+<p class="footpoem">'L'amour qui nous attache aux beaut&eacute;s &eacute;ternelles<br />
+N'&eacute;touffe pas en nous l'amour des temporelles.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="sp">*     *     *     *     *</span>
+<br /><br />
+Pour &ecirc;tre d&eacute;vot, je n'en suis pas moins homme.'<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>The Superior was not averse to the publication of
+these events, having the example and reputation of
+Loudun before her. Little is new in the possession
+and exorcism: for the most part they are a repetition
+of those of Aix and Loudun. During a brief
+interval the devils were less outrageous: for the
+Cardinal-minister was meditating a reform of the
+monastic establishments. Upon his death they commenced
+again with equal violence. Picart was now
+dead&mdash;but not so the persecution of his victim. The
+priests recommenced miracle-working with renewed
+vigour.<a name="FNanchor_127_127" id="FNanchor_127_127"></a><a href="#Footnote_127_127" class="fnanchor">127</a> Saved from immediate death by a fortunate
+or, as it may be deemed, unfortunate sensitiveness to
+bodily pain, she was condemned for the rest of her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196" href="#Page_196">[196]</a></span>
+life to solitary confinement in a fearful dungeon, in
+the language of her judges to an <i>in pace</i>. There
+lying tortured, powerless in a loathsome cell, their
+prisoner was alternately coaxed and threatened into
+admitting all sorts of crimes, and implicating whom
+they wished.<a name="FNanchor_128_128" id="FNanchor_128_128"></a><a href="#Footnote_128_128" class="fnanchor">128</a> The further cruelties to which the
+lust, and afterwards the malignancy, of her gaolers
+submitted her were not brought to an end by the interference
+of parliament in August 1647, when the
+destruction of the Louviers establishment was decreed.
+The guilty escaped by securing, by intimidation, the
+silence of their prisoner, who remained a living corpse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197" href="#Page_197">[197]</a></span>
+in the dungeons of the episcopal palace of Rouen.
+The bones of Picart were exhumed, and publicly
+burned; the cur&eacute; Boull&eacute;, an accomplice, was dragged
+on a hurdle to the fish-market, and there burned at
+the stake. So terminated this last of the trilogical
+series. But the hysterical or demoniacal disease was
+as furious as ever in Germany in the middle of the
+eighteenth century; and was attended with as tremendous
+effects at W&uuml;rzburg as at Louviers.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_127_127" id="Footnote_127_127"></a><a href="#FNanchor_127_127"><span class="label">127</span></a> To the diabolic visions of the other they opposed those of 'a certain
+Anne of the Nativity, a girl of sanguine hysterical temperament,
+frantic at need, and half mad&mdash;so far at least as to believe in her own
+lies. A kind of dog-fight was got up between the two. They besmeared
+each other with false charges. Anne saw the devil quite
+naked by Madeleine's side. Madeleine swore to seeing Anne at the
+Sabbath with the Lady Superior, the Mother Assistant, and the
+Mother of the novices.... Madeleine was condemned, without a
+hearing, to be disgraced, to have her body examined for the marks
+of the devil. They tore off her veil and gown, and made her the
+wretched sport of a vile curiosity that would have pierced till she
+bled again in order to win the right of sending her to the stake.
+Leaving to no one else the care of a scrutiny which was in itself a
+torture, these virgins, acting as matrons, ascertained if she were with
+child or no; shaved all her body, and dug their needles into her
+quivering flesh to find out the insensible spots.'&mdash;<i>La Sorci&egrave;re</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_128_128" id="Footnote_128_128"></a><a href="#FNanchor_128_128"><span class="label">128</span></a> The horrified reader may see the fuller details of this case in
+Michelet's <i>La Sorci&egrave;re</i>, who takes occasion to state that, than 'The
+History of Madeleine Bavent, a nun of Louviers, with her examination,
+&amp;c., 1652, Rouen,' he knows of 'no book more important, more
+dreadful, or worthier of being reprinted. It is the most powerful
+narrative of its class. <i>Piety Afflicted</i>, by the Capuchin Esprit de
+Bosrager, is a work immortal in the annals of tomfoolery. The two
+excellent pamphlets by the doughty surgeon Yvelin, the <i>Inquiry</i> and
+the <i>Apology</i>, are in the Library of Ste. Genevi&egrave;ve.'&mdash;<i>La Sorci&egrave;re</i>, the
+Witch of the Middle Ages, chap. viii. Whatever exaggeration there
+may possibly be in any of the details of these and similar histories,
+there is not any reasonable doubt of their general truth. It is much
+to be wished, indeed, that writers should, in these cases, always confine
+themselves to the simple facts, which need not any imaginary
+or fictitious additions.</p></div>
+
+<p>In Germany during the seventeenth century witches
+felt the fury of both Catholic and Protestant zeal;
+but in the previous age prosecutions are directed
+against Protestant witches. They abounded in
+Upper Germany in the time of Innocent VIII., and
+what numbers were executed has been already seen.
+When the revolutionary party had acquired greater
+strength and its power was established, they vied with
+the conservatives in their vigorous attacks upon the
+empire of Satan.</p>
+
+<p>Luther had been sensible to the contagious fear
+that the great spiritual enemy was actually fighting
+in the ranks of his enemies. He had personal experience
+of his hostility. Immured for his safety in
+a voluntary but gloomy prison, occupied intensely
+in the plan of a mighty revolution against the most
+powerful hierarchy that has ever existed, engaged
+continuously in the laborious task of translating the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198" href="#Page_198">[198]</a></span>
+Sacred Scriptures, only partially freed from the prejudices
+of education, it is little surprising that the
+antagonist of the Church should have experienced
+infernal hallucinations. This weakness of the champion
+of Protestantism is at least more excusable than
+the pedantic folly of the head of the English Church.
+When Luther, however, could seriously affirm that
+witchcraft 'is the devil's proper work wherewith,
+when God permits, he not only hurts people but
+makes away with them; for in this world we are as
+guests and strangers, body and soul, cast under the
+devil: that idiots, the lame, the blind, the dumb are
+men in whom ignorant devils have established themselves,
+and all the physicians who attempt to heal
+these infirmities as though they proceeded from
+natural causes, are ignorant blockheads who know
+nothing about the power of the demon,' we cannot
+be indignant at the blind credulity of the masses of
+the people. It appears inconsistent that Luther,
+averse generally to supernaturalism, should yet find
+no difficulty in entertaining these irrational diabolistic
+ideas. The circumstances of his life and times sufficiently
+explain the inconsistency.<a name="FNanchor_129_129" id="FNanchor_129_129"></a><a href="#Footnote_129_129" class="fnanchor">129</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_129_129" id="Footnote_129_129"></a><a href="#FNanchor_129_129"><span class="label">129</span></a> The following sentence in his recorded conversation, when the
+free thoughts of the Reformer were unrestrained in the presence of
+his most intimate friends, is suggestive. 'I know,' says he, 'the
+devil thoroughly well; he has over and over pressed me so close that
+I scarcely knew whether I was alive or dead. Sometimes he has
+thrown me into such despair that I even knew not that there is a
+God, and had great doubts about our dear Lord Christ. But the
+Word of God has speedily restored me' (Luther's <i>Tischreden</i> or <i>Table
+Talk</i>, as cited in Howitt's <i>History of the Supernatural</i>). The eloquent
+controversialist Bossuet and the Catholics have been careful to avail
+themselves of the impetuosity and incautiousness of the great German
+Reformer.
+</p><p>
+Of all the leaders of the religious revolution of the sixteenth
+century, the Reformer of Zurich was probably the most liberally
+inclined; and Zuinglius' unusual charity towards those ancient
+sages and others who were ignorant of Christianity, which induced
+him to place the names of Aristides, Socrates, the Gracchi, &amp;c., in the
+same list with those of Moses, Isaiah, and St. Paul, who should meet
+in the assembly of the virtuous and just in the future life, obliged
+Luther openly to profess of his friend that 'he despaired of his salvation,'
+and has provoked the indignation of the bishop of Meaux.&mdash;<i>Variations
+des Eglises Protestantes</i>, ii. 19 and 20.</p></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199" href="#Page_199">[199]</a></span></p>
+<p>On the eve of the prolonged and ferocious struggle
+on the continent between Catholicism and Protestantism
+a wholesale slaughter of witches and wizards
+was effected, a fitting prologue to the religious barbarities
+of the Thirty Years' War. Fires were kindled
+almost simultaneously in two different places, at
+Bamburg and W&uuml;rzburg; and seldom, even in the
+annals of witchcraft, have they burned more tremendously.
+The prince-bishops of those territories had
+long been anxious to extirpate Lutheranism from
+their dioceses. Frederick Forner, Suffragan of Bamburg,
+a vigorous supporter of the Jesuits, was the
+chief agent of John George II. He waged war upon
+the heretical sorcerers in the 'whole armour of God,'
+<i>Panoplia armatur&aelig; Dei</i>. According to the statements
+of credible historians, nine hundred trials took<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200" href="#Page_200">[200]</a></span>
+place in the two courts of Bamburg and Zeil between
+1625 and 1630. Six hundred were burned by
+Bishop George II. No one was spared. The chancellor,
+his son, Dr. Horn, with his wife and daughters,
+many of the lords and councillors of the bishop's
+court, women and priests, suffered. After tortures
+of the most extravagant kind it was extorted that
+some twelve hundred of them were confederated to
+bewitch the entire land to the extent that 'there
+would have been neither wine nor corn in the country,
+and that thereby man and beast would have
+perished with hunger, and men would be driven to
+eat one another. There were even some Catholic
+priests among them who had been led into practices
+too dreadful to be described, and they confessed
+among other things that they had baptized many
+children in the devil's name. It must be stated that
+these confessions were made under tortures of the
+most fearful kind, far more so than anything that
+was practised in France or other countries....
+The number brought to trial in these terrible proceedings
+were so great, and they were treated with
+so little consideration, that it was usual not even to
+take the trouble of setting down their names; but
+they were cited as the accused Nos. 1, 2, 3, &amp;c. The
+Jesuits took their confessions in private, and they
+made up the lists of those who were understood to
+have been denounced by them.'</p>
+
+<p>More destructive still were the burnings of W&uuml;rzburg<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201" href="#Page_201">[201]</a></span>
+at the same period under the superintendence
+of Philip Adolph, who ascended the episcopal throne
+in 1623. In spite of the energy of his predecessors,
+a grand confederacy of sorcerers had been discovered,
+and were at once denounced.<a name="FNanchor_130_130" id="FNanchor_130_130"></a><a href="#Footnote_130_130" class="fnanchor">130</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_130_130" id="Footnote_130_130"></a><a href="#FNanchor_130_130"><span class="label">130</span></a> 'A catalogue of nine and twenty <i>br&auml;nde</i> or burnings during a
+very short period of time, previous to the February of 1629, will give
+the best notion of the horrible character of these proceedings; it is
+printed,' adds Mr. Wright, 'from the original records in Hauber's
+<i>Bibliotheca Magica</i>.' E.g. in the Fifth Br&auml;nde are enumerated: (1)
+Latz, an eminent shopkeeper. (2) Rutscher, a shopkeeper. (3) The
+housekeeper of the Dean of the cathedral. (4) The old wife of the
+Court ropemaker. (5) Jos. Sternbach's housekeeper. (6) The wife
+of Baunach, a Senator. (7) A woman named Znickel Babel. (8) An
+old woman. In the Sixteenth Burning: (1) A noble page of Ratzenstein.
+(2) A boy of ten years of age. (3, 4, 5) The two daughters
+of the Steward of the Senate and his maid. (6) The fat ropemaker's
+wife. In the Twentieth Burning: (1) Gobel's child, the most beautiful
+girl in W&uuml;rzburg. (2) A student on the fifth form, who knew
+many languages, and was an excellent musician. (3, 4) Two boys
+from the New Minster, each twelve years old. (5) Stepper's little
+daughter. (6) The woman who kept the bridge gate. In the Twenty-sixth
+Burning are specified: (1) David Hans, a Canon in the New
+Minster. (2) Weydenbusch, a Senator. (3) The innkeeper's wife
+of the Baumgarten. (4) An old woman. (5) The little daughter of
+Valkenberger was privately executed and burned on her bier. (6)
+The little son of the town council bailiff. (7) Herr Wagner, vicar in
+the cathedral, was burned alive.&mdash;<i>Narratives of Sorcery and Magic</i>.
+The facts are taken from Dr. Soldan's <i>Geschichte der Hexenprocesse</i>,
+whose materials are to be found in Horst's <i>Zauber Bibliothek</i> and
+Hauber's <i>Bibliotheca Magica</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p>Nine appears to have been the greatest number,
+and sometimes only two were sent to execution at
+once. Five are specially recorded as having been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202" href="#Page_202">[202]</a></span>
+burned alive. The victims are of all professions
+and trades&mdash;vicars, canons, goldsmiths, butchers,
+&amp;c. Besides the twenty-nine conflagrations recorded,
+many others were lighted about the same time: the
+names of whose prey are not written in the Book of
+Death. Frederick Spee, a Jesuit, formerly a violent
+enemy of the witches, but who had himself been
+incriminated by their extorted confessions at these
+holocausts, was converted to the opposite side, and
+wrote the 'Cautio Criminalis,' in which the necessity
+of caution in receiving evidence is insisted upon&mdash;a
+caution, without doubt, 'very necessary at that time
+for the magistracy throughout Germany.' All over
+Germany executions, if not everywhere so indiscriminately
+destructive as those in Franconia and at W&uuml;rzburg,
+were incessant: and it is hardly the language of
+hyperbole to say that no province, no city, no village
+was without its condemned.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203" href="#Page_203">[203]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Scotland one of the most Superstitious Countries in Europe&mdash;Scott's
+Relation of the Barbarities perpetrated in the Witch-trials
+under the auspices of James VI.&mdash;The Fate of Agnes Sampson,
+Euphane MacCalzean, &amp;c.&mdash;Irrational Conduct of the Courts of
+Justice&mdash;Causes of voluntary Witch-confessions&mdash;Testimony of
+Sir G. Mackenzie, &amp;c.&mdash;Trial and Execution of Margaret
+Barclay&mdash;Computation of the number of Witches who suffered
+death in England and Scotland in the sixteenth and seventeenth
+centuries&mdash;Witches burned alive at Edinburgh in 1608&mdash;The
+Lancashire Witches&mdash;Sir Thomas Overbury and Dr. Forman&mdash;Margaret
+Flower and Lord Rosse.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="chap">Scotland</span>, by the physical features of the country and
+by the character and habits of the people, is eminently
+apt for the reception of the magical and
+supernatural of any kind;<a name="FNanchor_131_131" id="FNanchor_131_131"></a><a href="#Footnote_131_131" class="fnanchor">131</a> and during the century
+from 1563 it was almost entirely subject to the
+dominion of Satan. Sir Walter Scott has narrated
+some of the most prominent cases and trials in the
+northern part of the island. The series may be said
+to commence from the confederated conspiracy of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204" href="#Page_204">[204]</a></span>
+hell to prevent the union of James VI. with the
+Princess Anne of Denmark. An overwhelming tempest
+at sea during the voyage of these anti-papal,
+anti-diabolic royal personages was the appointed
+means of their destruction.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_131_131" id="Footnote_131_131"></a><a href="#FNanchor_131_131"><span class="label">131</span></a> A late philosophic writer has ventured to institute a comparison
+in point of superstition and religious intolerance between Spain and
+Scotland. The latter country, however, has denied to political what
+it conceded to priestly government: hence its superior material progress
+and prosperity.&mdash;Buckle's <i>History of Civilisation in England</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p>The human agents were Agnes Sampson, the wise
+wife of Keith (one of the better sort, who cured diseases,
+&amp;c.); Dame Euphane MacCalzean, widow of a
+senator of the College of Justice, and a Catholic; Dr.
+John Fian or Cunninghame, a man of some learning,
+and of much skill in poison as well as in magic;
+Barbara Napier or Douglas; Geillis Duncan; with
+about thirty other women of the lowest condition.
+'When the monarch of Scotland sprung this strong
+covey of his favourite game, they afforded the Privy
+Council and himself sport for the greatest part of the
+remaining winter. He attended on the examinations
+himself.... Agnes Sampson, after being an
+hour tortured by the twisting of a cord around her
+head according to the custom of the buccaneers, confessed
+that she had consulted with one Richard Grahame
+concerning the probable length of the king's
+life and the means of shortening it. But Satan, to
+whom at length they resorted for advice, told them
+in French respecting King James, <i>Il est un homme
+de Dieu</i>. The poor woman also acknowledged that
+she had held a meeting with those of her sisterhood,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205" href="#Page_205">[205]</a></span>
+who had charmed a cat by certain spells, having four
+joints of men knit to its feet, which they threw into
+the sea to excite a tempest: they embarked in sieves
+with much mirth and jollity, the fiend rolling himself
+before them upon the waves dimly seen, and resembling
+a huge haystack in size and appearance.
+They went on board of a foreign ship richly laden
+with wines, where, invisible to the crew, they feasted
+till the sport grew tiresome; and then Satan sunk
+the vessel and all on board. Fian or Cunninghame
+was also visited by the sharpest tortures, ordinary
+and extraordinary. The nails were torn from his
+fingers with smiths' pincers; pins were driven into
+the places which the nails usually defended; his
+knees were crushed in the <i>boots</i>; his finger-bones
+were splintered in the <i>pilniewincks</i>. At length his
+constancy, hitherto sustained, as the bystanders supposed,
+by the help of the devil, was fairly overcome;
+and he gave an account of a great witch-meeting at
+North Berwick, where they paced round the church
+<i>withershins</i>&mdash;i. e. in reverse of the motion of the
+sun. Fian then blew into the lock of the church
+door, whereupon the bolts gave way: the unhallowed
+crew entered, and their master the devil appeared to
+his servants in the shape of a black man occupying
+the pulpit. He was saluted with a "Hail, Master!"
+but the company were dissatisfied with his not having
+brought a picture of the king, repeatedly promised,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206" href="#Page_206">[206]</a></span>
+which was to place his Majesty at the mercy of this
+infernal crew.... The devil, on this memorable
+occasion, forgot himself, and called Fian by his
+own name instead of the demoniacal sobriquet of
+Rob the Rowan, which had been assigned to him as
+Master of the Rows or Rolls. This was considered as
+bad taste; and the rule is still observed at every rendezvous
+of forgers, smugglers, or the like, where it is
+accounted very indifferent manners to name an individual
+by his own name in case of affording ground
+of evidence which may upon a day of trial be brought
+against him. Satan, something disconcerted, concluded
+the evening with a divertissement and a
+dance after his own manner. The former consisted
+in disinterring a new-buried corpse, and dividing it
+in fragments among the company; and the ball was
+maintained by well-nigh two hundred persons, who
+danced a ring dance.... Dr. Fian, muffled,
+led the ring, and was highly honoured, generally
+acting as clerk or recorder. King James was deeply
+interested in those mysterious meetings, and took
+great delight to be present at the examinations of
+the accused. He sent for Geillis Duncan, and caused
+her to play before him the same tune to which Satan
+and his companions led the brawl in North Berwick
+churchyard. His ears were gratified in another way:
+for at this meeting it was said the witches demanded
+of the devil why he did bear such enmity against the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207" href="#Page_207">[207]</a></span>
+king, who returned the flattering answer, that the
+king was the greatest enemy whom he had in the
+world. Almost all these poor wretches were executed:
+nor did Euphane MacCalzean's station in life save
+her from the common doom, which was strangling to
+death and burning to ashes thereafter. The majority
+of the jury which tried Barbara Napier, having
+acquitted her of attendance at the North Berwick
+meeting, were themselves threatened with a trial for
+wilful error upon an assize, and could only escape
+from severe censure and punishment by pleading
+guilty, and submitting themselves to the king's pleasure.
+The alterations and trenching,' adds Scott,
+'which lately took place on the Castle-hill at Edinburgh
+for the purpose of forming the new approach
+to the city from the west, displayed the ashes of the
+numbers who had perished in this manner, of whom
+a large proportion must have been executed between
+1590&mdash;when the great discovery was made concerning
+Euphane MacCalzean and the wise wife of Keith and
+their accomplices&mdash;and the union of the crowns.'<a name="FNanchor_132_132" id="FNanchor_132_132"></a><a href="#Footnote_132_132" class="fnanchor">132</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_132_132" id="Footnote_132_132"></a><a href="#FNanchor_132_132"><span class="label">132</span></a> Sir W. Scott's <i>Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft</i>, ix.</p></div>
+
+<p>Euphane's exceptional doom was 'to be bound to
+the stake, and burned in ashes <i>quick</i> to the death.'
+'Burning quick' was not an uncommon sentence: if
+the less cruel one of hanging or strangling first and
+afterwards burning was more usual. Thirty warlocks<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208" href="#Page_208">[208]</a></span>
+and witches was the total number executed on June
+25th, 1591. A few, like Dr. Cunninghame, may
+have been really experienced in the use of poison
+and poisonous drugs. The art of poisoning has been
+practised perhaps almost as extensively as (often
+coextensively with) that of sorcery; a tremendous
+and mostly inscrutable crime which science, in all
+ages, has been able more surely to conceal than to
+detect.</p>
+
+<p>Two facts eminently illustrate the barbarous
+iniquity of the Courts of Justice when dealing with
+their witch prisoners. An expressed malediction, or
+frequently an almost inaudible mutter, followed by
+the coincident fulfilment of the imprecation, was
+accepted eagerly by the judges as sufficient proof
+(an antecedent one, contrary to the boasted principle
+of English law at least, which assumes the innocence
+until the guilt has been proved, of the accused) of
+the crime of the person arraigned. And they complacently
+attributed to conscious guilt the ravings
+produced by an excruciating torture&mdash;that equally
+inhuman and irrational invention of judicial cruelty;
+confidently boasting that they were careful to sentence
+no person without previous confession duly made.</p>
+
+<p>But these confessions not seldom were partly extracted
+from a natural wish to be freed from the
+persecution of neighbours as well as from present
+bodily torture. Sir George Mackenzie, Lord Advocate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209" href="#Page_209">[209]</a></span>
+of Scotland during the period of the greatest fury,
+and himself president at many of the trials, a believer,
+among other cases in his <i>Criminal Law</i>, 1678, relates
+that of a condemned witch who had confessed
+judicially to him and afterwards 'told me under
+secrecy, that she had not confessed because she was
+guilty; but being a poor creature who wrought for
+her meat, and being defamed for a witch she knew
+she should starve, for no person thereafter would
+either give her meat or lodging, and that all men
+would beat her and set dogs at her, and that therefore
+she desired to be out of the world. Whereupon
+she wept most bitterly, and upon her knees called
+God to witness to what she said. Another told me
+that she was afraid the devil would challenge a right
+to her after she was said to be his servant, and would
+haunt her, as the minister said when he was desiring
+her to confess, and therefore she desired to die. And
+really,' admits the learned judge, 'ministers are oft-times
+indiscreet in their zeal to have poor creatures
+to confess in this; and I recommend to judges that
+the wisest ministers should be sent to them; and
+that those who are sent should be cautious in this
+particular.' Another confession at the supreme
+moment of the same sort, as recorded by the Rev. G.
+Sinclair in 'Satan's Invisible World Discovered' is
+equally significant and genuine. What impression it
+left upon the pious clergyman will be seen in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210" href="#Page_210">[210]</a></span>
+concluding inference. The witch, 'being carried forth
+to the place of execution, remained silent during the
+first, second, and third prayer, and then, perceiving
+there remained no more but to rise up and go to the
+stake, she lifted up her body and with a loud voice
+cried out, "Now all you that see me this day know
+that I am now to die as a witch by my own confession,
+and I free all men, especially the ministers and magistrates,
+of the guilt of my blood. I take it wholly
+upon myself&mdash;my blood be upon my own head; and
+as I must make answer to the God of heaven presently,
+I declare I am as free of witchcraft as any
+child. But being delated by a malicious woman,
+and put in prison under the name of a witch; disowned
+by my husband and friends, and seeing no
+ground of hope of my coming out of prison or ever
+coming in credit again, through the temptation of the
+devil I made up that confession on purpose to destroy
+my own life, being weary of it, and choosing rather
+to die than live"&mdash;and so died; which lamentable
+story as it did then astonish all the spectators, none
+of which could restrain themselves from tears, so it
+may be to all a demonstration of Satan's subtlety,
+whose design is still to destroy all, partly by tempting
+many to presumption, and some others to despair.'</p>
+
+<p>The trial of Margaret Barclay took place in 1613.
+Her crime consisted in having caused by means of
+spells the loss of a ship at sea. She was said to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211" href="#Page_211">[211]</a></span>
+have had a quarrel with the owner of the shipwrecked
+vessel, in the course of which she uttered a wish that
+all on board might sink to the bottom of the sea.
+Her imprecation was accomplished, and upon the
+testimony of an itinerant juggler, John Stewart, she
+was arraigned before a Court of Justice. With the
+help of the devil in the shape of a handsome black
+dog, she had moulded some figures of clay representing
+the doomed sailors, which with the prescribed
+rites were thrown into the deep. We are informed
+by the reporters of the proceedings at this examination,
+that 'after using this kind of gentle torture
+[viz. placing the legs in a pair of stocks and laying
+on gradually increasing weights of iron bars], the
+said Margaret began, according to the increase of the
+pain, to cry and crave for God's cause to take off her
+shin the foresaid irons, and she should declare truly
+the whole matter. Which being removed, she began
+at her formal denial; and being of new assayed in
+torture as before, she then uttered these words:
+"Take off, take off! and before God I shall show you
+the whole form." And the said irons being of new,
+upon her faithful promise, removed, she then desired
+my Lord of Eglinton, the said four justices, and
+the said Mr. David Dickson, minister of the burgh;
+Mr. George Dunbar, minister of Ayr; Mr. Mitchell
+Wallace, minister of Kilmarnock; Mr. John Cunninghame,
+minister of Dalry; and Hugh Kennedy, provost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212" href="#Page_212">[212]</a></span>
+of Ayr, to come by themselves and to remove all
+others, and she should declare truly, as she should
+answer to God, the whole matter. Whose desire in
+that being fulfilled, she made her confession in this
+manner without any kind of demand, freely without
+interrogation: God's name by earnest prayer being
+called upon for opening of her lips and easing of
+her heart, that she by rendering of the truth might
+glorify and magnify His holy name and disappoint
+the enemy of her salvation.'</p>
+
+<p>One of those involved in the voluntary confession
+was Isabel Crawford, who was frightened into admitting
+the offences alleged. In court, when asked
+if she wished to be defended by counsel, Margaret
+Barclay, whose hopes and fears were revived at seeing
+her husband, answered, 'As you please; but all I
+have confessed was in agony of torture; and, before
+God, all I have spoken is false and untrue.' She was
+found guilty; sentenced to be strangled at the stake;
+her body to be burned to ashes. Isabel Crawford,
+after a short interval, was subjected to the same sort
+of examination: a new commission having been
+granted for the prosecution, and 'after the assistant-minister
+of Irvine, Mr. David Dickson, had made
+earnest prayers to God for opening her obdurate and
+closed heart, she was subjected to the torture of iron
+bars laid upon her bare shins, her feet being in the
+stocks. She endured this torture with incredible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213" href="#Page_213">[213]</a></span>
+firmness, since she did "admirably, without any kind
+of din or exclamation, suffer above thirty stone of
+iron to be laid on her legs, never shrinking thereat in
+any sort, but remaining, as it were, steady." But in
+shifting the situation of the iron bars, and removing
+them to another part of her shins, her constancy
+gave way; she broke out into horrible cries of "Take
+off! take off!" On being relieved from the torture
+she made the usual confession of all that she was
+charged with, and of a connection with the devil
+which had subsisted for several years. Sentence was
+given against her accordingly. After this had been
+denounced she openly denied all her former confessions,
+and died without any sign of repentance; offering
+repeated interruptions to the minister in his
+prayers, and absolutely refusing to pardon the executioner.'<a name="FNanchor_133_133" id="FNanchor_133_133"></a><a href="#Footnote_133_133" class="fnanchor">133</a>
+It might be possible to form an imperfect
+estimate of how many thousands were sacrificed
+in the Jacobian persecution in Scotland alone from
+existing historical records, which would express, however,
+but a small proportion of the actual number:
+and parish registers may still attest the quantity of
+fuel provided at a considerable expense, and the
+number of the fires. By a moderate computation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214" href="#Page_214">[214]</a></span>
+an average number of two hundred annually, making
+a total of eight thousand, are reckoned to have been
+burned in the last forty years of the sixteenth century.<a name="FNanchor_134_134" id="FNanchor_134_134"></a><a href="#Footnote_134_134" class="fnanchor">134</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_133_133" id="Footnote_133_133"></a><a href="#FNanchor_133_133"><span class="label">133</span></a> <i>Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft</i>, ix.
+</p><p>
+The Scotch trials and tortures, of which the above cases are but
+one or two out of a hundred similar ones, are perhaps the more
+extraordinary as being the result of <i>mere</i> superstition: religious or
+political heresy being seldom an excuse for the punishment and an
+aggravation of the offence.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_134_134" id="Footnote_134_134"></a><a href="#FNanchor_134_134"><span class="label">134</span></a> A larger proportion of victims than even those of the Holy Office
+during an equal space of time. According to Llorente (<i>Hist. de
+l'Inquisition</i>) from 1680 to 1781, the latter period of its despotism
+(which flourished especially under Charles II., himself, as he was
+convinced, a victim of witch-malice), between 13,000 and 14,000 persons
+suffered by various punishments: of which number, however,
+1,578 were burned alive.</p></div>
+
+<p>In England, from 1603 to 1680, seventy thousand
+persons are said to have been executed; and during
+the fifteen hundred years elapsed since the triumph
+of the Christian religion, millions are reckoned to
+have been sacrificed on the bloody altars of the
+Christian Moloch. An entry in the minutes of the
+proceedings in the Privy Council for 1608 reveals
+that even James's ministers began to experience
+some horror of the consequences of their instructions.
+And the following free testimony of one of them is
+truly 'an appalling record:'&mdash;'1608.&mdash;December 1.&mdash;The
+Earl of Mar declared to the council that some
+women were taken in Broughton [suburban Edinburgh]
+as witches, and being put to an assize and
+convicted, albeit they persevered constant in their
+denial to the end, yet they were burned <i>quick</i> after
+such a cruel manner that some of them died in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215" href="#Page_215">[215]</a></span>
+despair, renouncing and blaspheming God; and others
+half-burned broke out of the fire, and were cast <i>quick</i>
+in it again till they were burned to the death.'<a name="FNanchor_135_135" id="FNanchor_135_135"></a><a href="#Footnote_135_135" class="fnanchor">135</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_135_135" id="Footnote_135_135"></a><a href="#FNanchor_135_135"><span class="label">135</span></a> The terrestrial and <i>real</i> Fiends seem to have striven to realise on
+earth and to emulate the 'Tartarus horrificos eructans faucibus &aelig;stus'
+described by the Epicurean philosophic poet (Lucretius, <i>De Rerum
+Natur&acirc;</i>, iii.).</p></div>
+
+<p>Equally monstrous and degrading were the disclosures
+in the torture-chambers; and many admitted
+that they had had children by the devil. The circumstances
+of the Sabbath, the various rites of the
+compact, the forms and method of bewitching, the
+manner of sexual intercourse with the demons&mdash;these
+were the principal staple of the judicial examinations.</p>
+
+<p>In the southern part of the island witch-hanging
+or burning proceeded with only less vehemence than
+in Scotland. One of the most celebrated cases in
+the earlier half of the seventeenth century (upon
+which Thomas Shadwell the poet laureate, who, under
+the name of MacFlecknoe, is immortalised by the
+satire of Dryden, founded a play) is the story of the
+Lancashire Witches. This persecution raged at two
+separate periods; first in 1613, when nineteen
+prisoners were brought before Sir James Altham
+and Sir Edward Bromley, Barons of Exchequer.
+Elizabeth Southern, known as 'Mother Demdike' in
+the poet laureate's drama, is the leader of the
+criminals. In 1634 the proceedings were renewed
+wholly on the evidence of a boy who, it was after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216" href="#Page_216">[216]</a></span>wards
+ascertained, had been instructed in his part
+against an old woman named Mother Dickenson.
+The evidence was of the feeblest sort; nor are its
+monotonous details worth repetition. Out of some
+forty persons implicated on both occasions, fortunately
+the greater number escaped. 'Lancashire
+Witches,' a term so hateful in its origin, has been
+long transferred to celebrate the superior <i>charms</i> (of
+another kind) of the ladies of Lancashire; and
+the witches' spells are those of natural youth and
+beauty.</p>
+
+<p>The social position of Sir Thomas Overbury has
+made his fate notorious. An infamous plot had been
+invented by the Earl of Rochester (Robert Kerr)
+and the Countess of Essex to destroy a troublesome
+obstacle to their contemplated marriage. The practice
+of 'hellish charms' is only incidental; an
+episode in the dark mystery. Overbury was too well
+acquainted with royal secrets (whose disgusting and
+unnatural kind has been probably correctly conjectured),
+too important for the keeping of even a
+private secretary. His ruin was determined by the
+revenge of the noble lovers and sealed by the fear of
+the king. At the end of six months he had been
+gradually destroyed by secret poison in his prison in
+the Tower (to which for an alleged offence he had
+been committed) by the agency of Dr. Forman, a
+famous 'pharmaceutic,' under the auspices of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217" href="#Page_217">[217]</a></span>
+Earl of Rochester. This Dr. Forman had been previously
+employed by Lady Essex, a notorious <i>dame
+d'honneur</i> at James's Court, to bewitch the Earl to
+an irresistible love for her, an enchantment which
+required, apparently, no superhuman inducement.
+A Mrs. Turner, the countess's agent, was associated
+with this skilful conjuror. They were instructed also
+to bewitch Lord Essex, lately returned from abroad,
+in the opposite way&mdash;to divert his love from his
+wife.<a name="FNanchor_136_136" id="FNanchor_136_136"></a><a href="#Footnote_136_136" class="fnanchor">136</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_136_136" id="Footnote_136_136"></a><a href="#FNanchor_136_136"><span class="label">136</span></a> The husband was impracticable; he could not be <i>disenchanted</i>.
+Conjurations and charms failing, 'the countess was instructed to
+bring against the Earl of Essex a charge of conjugal incapacity: A
+commission of reverend prelates of the church was appointed to sit
+in judgment, over whom the king presided in person; and a jury of
+matrons was found to give their opinion that the Lady Essex was a
+maiden.' Divorce was accordingly pronounced, and with all possible
+haste the king married his favourite to the appellant with great pomp
+at Court. After the conspirators had been arraigned by the public
+indignation, a curious incident of the trial, according to a cotemporary
+report, was, that there being 'showed in court certain pictures
+of a man and a woman made in lead, and also a mould of brass wherein
+they were cast; a black scarf also full of white crosses which Mrs.
+Turner had in her custody; enchanted paps and other pictures [as
+well as a list of some of the devil's particular names used in conjuration],
+suddenly was heard a crack from the scaffold, which carried
+a great fear, tumult, and commotion amongst the spectators and
+through the hall; every one fearing hurt as if the devil had been
+present and grown angry to have his workmanship known by such as
+were not his own scholars' (<i>Narratives of Sorcery and Magic</i>, by
+Thomas Wright). Whatever may have been the crime or crimes for
+the knowledge of which Sir Thomas Overbury was doomed, it is significant
+that for his own safety the king was compelled to break an
+oath (sworn upon his knees before the judges he had purposely summoned,
+with an imprecation that God's curse might light upon him
+and his posterity for ever if he failed to bring the guilty to deserved
+punishment), and to not only pardon but remunerate his former favourite
+after he had been solemnly convicted and condemned to a
+felon's death. The crime, the knowledge of which prevented the appearance
+of Somerset at the gibbet or the scaffold, has been supposed
+by some, with scarcely sufficient cause or at least proof, to be the
+murder by the king of his son Prince Henry. Doubt has been strongly
+expressed of the implication at all of the favourite in the death of
+Overbury: the evidence produced at the trial about the poisoning
+being, it seems, made up to conceal or to mystify the real facts.</p></div>
+
+<p>Two women were executed at Lincoln, in 1618, for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218" href="#Page_218">[218]</a></span>
+bewitching Lord Rosse, eldest son of the Earl of
+Rutland, and others of the family&mdash;Lord Rosse being
+bewitched to death; also for preventing by diabolic
+arts the parents from having any more children.
+Before the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas
+and one of the Barons of the Exchequer, it was
+proved that the witches had effected the death of
+the noble lord by burying his glove in the ground,
+and 'as that glove did rot and waste, so did the liver
+of the said lord rot and waste.' Margaret Flower
+confessed she had 'two familiar spirits sucking on her,
+the one white, the other black spotted. The white
+sucked under her left breast,' &amp;c.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219" href="#Page_219">[219]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The Literature of Europe in the Seventeenth Century proves the
+Universality and Horror of Witchcraft&mdash;The most acute and most
+liberal Men of Learning convinced of its Reality&mdash;Erasmus and
+Francis Bacon&mdash;Lawyers prejudiced by Legislation&mdash;Matthew
+Hale's judicial Assertion&mdash;Sir Thomas Browne's Testimony&mdash;John
+Selden&mdash;The English Church least Ferocious of the Protestant
+Sects&mdash;Jewell and Hooker&mdash;Independent Tolerance&mdash;Witchcraft
+under the Presbyterian Government&mdash;Matthew
+Hopkins&mdash;Gaule's 'Select Cases of Conscience'&mdash;Judicial and
+Popular Methods of Witch-discovery&mdash;Preventive Charms&mdash;Witchfinders
+a legal and numerous Class in England and
+Scotland&mdash;Remission in the Severity of the Persecution under
+the Protectorship.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="chap">Had</span> we not the practical proof of the prevalence of
+the credit of the black art in accomplished facts, the
+literature of the first half of the seventeenth century
+would be sufficient testimony to its horrid dominion.
+The works of the great dramatists, the writings of
+men of every class, continually suppose the universal
+power and horror of witchcraft. Internal evidence
+is abundant. The witches of Macbeth are no fanciful
+creation, and Shakspeare's representation of La
+Pucelle's fate is nothing more than a copy from life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220" href="#Page_220">[220]</a></span>
+What the vulgar superstition must have been may
+be easily conceived when men of the greatest genius
+or learning credited the possibility, and not only a
+theoretical but actual occurrence, of these infernal
+phenomena. Gibbon is at a loss to account for the fact
+that the acute understanding of the learned Erasmus,
+who could see through much more plausible fables,
+believed firmly in witchcraft.<a name="FNanchor_137_137" id="FNanchor_137_137"></a><a href="#Footnote_137_137" class="fnanchor">137</a> Francis Bacon, the
+advocate and second founder of the inductive method
+and first apostle of the Utilitarian philosophy, opposed
+though he might have been to the vulgar persecution,
+was not able to get rid of the principles upon which
+the creed was based.<a name="FNanchor_138_138" id="FNanchor_138_138"></a><a href="#Footnote_138_138" class="fnanchor">138</a> Sir Edward Coke, his contemporary,
+the most acute lawyer of the age, or (as it is
+said) of any time, ventured even to define the devil's
+agents in witchcraft. Sir Thomas Browne (author of
+'Pseudodoxia Epidemica' or 'Vulgar Errors!'), a
+physician and writer of considerable merit, and Sir
+Matthew Hale, in 1664, proved their faith, the one
+by his solemn testimony in open court, the other by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221" href="#Page_221">[221]</a></span>
+his still more solemn sentence.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_137_137" id="Footnote_137_137"></a><a href="#FNanchor_137_137"><span class="label">137</span></a> See <i>Miscellaneous Works: Abstract of my Readings</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_138_138" id="Footnote_138_138"></a><a href="#FNanchor_138_138"><span class="label">138</span></a> 'Consorting with them [the unclean spirits who have fallen
+from their first estate] and all use of their assistance is unlawful;
+much more any worship or veneration whatsoever. But a contemplation
+and knowledge of their nature, power, illusions, not only from
+passages of sacred scripture but <i>from reason or experience</i>, is not the
+least part of spiritual wisdom. So truly the Apostle, "We are not
+ignorant of his wiles." And it is not less permissible in theology
+to investigate the nature of demons, than in physics to investigate
+the nature of drugs, or in ethics the nature of vice.'&mdash;<i>De Augmentis
+Scientiarum</i>, lib. iii. 2.</p></div>
+
+<p>If theologians were armed by the authority or
+their interpretation of Scripture, lawyers were no less
+so by that of the Statute Book. Judge Hale, in an
+address to the jury at Bury St. Edmund's, carefully
+weighing evidence, and, summing up, assures them
+he did 'not in the least doubt there are witches:
+first, because <i>the Scriptures affirmed it</i>; secondly,
+because the <i>wisdom of all nations</i>, particularly of our
+own, <i>had provided laws</i> against witchcraft which
+implied their belief of such a crime.'<a name="FNanchor_139_139" id="FNanchor_139_139"></a><a href="#Footnote_139_139" class="fnanchor">139</a> Sir Thomas
+Browne, who gave his professional experience at
+this trial, to the effect that the devil often acts upon
+human bodies by natural means, afflicting them in a
+more surprising manner through the diseases to which
+they are usually subject; and that in the particular
+case, the fits (of vomiting nails, needles, deposed by
+other witnesses) might be natural, only raised to a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222" href="#Page_222">[222]</a></span>
+great degree by the subtlety of the devil cooperating
+with the malice of the witches, employs a well-known
+argument when he declares ('Religio Medici'),
+'Those that to confute their incredulity desire to see
+apparitions shall questionless never behold any. The
+devil hath these already in a heresy as capital as
+witchcraft; and to appear to them were <i>but</i> to convert
+them.'</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_139_139" id="Footnote_139_139"></a><a href="#FNanchor_139_139"><span class="label">139</span></a> Unfortunately for the cause of truth and right, Sir Matthew
+Hale's reasons are not an exceptional illustration of the mischief according
+to Roger Bacon's experience of 'three very bad arguments
+we are always using&mdash;This has been shown to be so; This is customary;
+This is universal: Therefore it must be kept to.' Sir Thomas
+Browne, unable, as a man of science, to accept in every particular
+alleged the actual bon&acirc; fide reality of the devil's power, makes a
+compromise, and has 'recourse to a fraud of Satan,' explaining that
+he is in reality but a clever juggler, a transcendent physician who
+knows how to accomplish what is in relation to us a prodigy, in
+knowing how to use natural forces which our knowledge has not yet
+discovered. Such an unworthy compromise was certainly not fitted
+to arouse men from their 'cauchemar d&eacute;monologique.'&mdash;See <i>R&eacute;vue
+des Deux Mondes</i>, Aug. 1, 1858.</p></div>
+
+<p>John Selden, a learned lawyer, but of a liberal
+mind, was gifted with a large amount of common
+sense, and it might be juster to attribute the <i>dictum</i>
+which has been supposed to betray 'a lurking belief'
+to an excess of legal, rather than to a defect of intellectual,
+perception. Selden, inferring that 'the
+law against witches does not prove there be any,
+but it punishes the malice of those people that
+use such means to take away men's lives,' proceeds
+to assert that 'if one should profess that by turning
+his hat thrice and crying "Buz," he could take away
+a man's life (though in truth he could do no such
+thing), yet this were a just law made by the state,
+that whosoever shall turn his hat ... with an intention
+to take away a man's life, should be put to
+death.'<a name="FNanchor_140_140" id="FNanchor_140_140"></a><a href="#Footnote_140_140" class="fnanchor">140</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_140_140" id="Footnote_140_140"></a><a href="#FNanchor_140_140"><span class="label">140</span></a> <i>Table Talk or Discourses</i> of John Selden. Although it must be
+excepted to the lawyer's summary mode of dealing with an imaginary
+offence, we prefer to give that eminent patriot at least the benefit of
+the doubt, as to his belief in witchcraft.</p></div>
+
+<p>If men of more liberal sentiments were thus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223" href="#Page_223">[223]</a></span>
+enslaved to old prejudices, it is not surprising that
+the Church, not leading but following, should firmly
+maintain them. Fortunately for the witches, without
+the motives actuating in different ways Catholics
+and Calvinists, and placed midway between both
+parties, the reformed English Church was not so
+much interested in identifying her crimes with
+sorcerers as in maintaining the less tremendous
+formul&aelig; of Divine right, Apostolical succession, and
+similar pretensions. Yet if they did not so furiously
+engage themselves in actual witch-prosecutions,
+Anglican divines have not been slow in expressly
+or impliedly affirming the reality of diabolical interposition.
+Nor can the most favourable criticism
+exonerate them from the reproach at least of having
+witnessed without protestation the barbarous cruelties
+practised in the name of heaven; and the eminent
+names of Bishop Jewell, the great apologist of the
+English Church, and of the author of the 'Ecclesiastical
+Polity,' among others less eminent, may be
+claimed by the advocates of witchcraft as respectable
+authorities in the Established Church. The 'judicious'
+Hooker affirms that the evil spirits are dispersed,
+some in the air, some on the earth, some in
+the waters, some among the minerals, in dens and
+caves that are under the earth, labouring to obstruct
+and, if possible, to destroy the works of God. They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224" href="#Page_224">[224]</a></span>
+were the <i>dii inferi</i> [the old persuasion] of the
+heathen worshipped in oracles, in idols, &amp;c.<a name="FNanchor_141_141" id="FNanchor_141_141"></a><a href="#Footnote_141_141" class="fnanchor">141</a> The
+privilege of 'casting out devils' was much cherished
+and long retained in the Established Church.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_141_141" id="Footnote_141_141"></a><a href="#FNanchor_141_141"><span class="label">141</span></a> Quoted in Howitt's <i>History of the Supernatural</i>. The author
+has collected a mass of evidence 'demonstrating an universal faith,'
+a curious collection of various superstition. He is indignant at the
+colder faith of the Anglican Church of later times.</p></div>
+
+<p>During the ascendency of the Presbyterian party
+from 1640 to the assumption of the Protectorship
+by Cromwell, witches and witch-trials increased more
+than ever; and they sensibly decreased only when
+the Independents obtained a superiority. The
+adherents of Cromwell, whatever may have been
+their own fanatical excesses, were at least exempt
+from the intolerant spirit which characterised alike
+their Anglican enemies and their old Presbyterian
+allies. The astute and vigorous intellect of the
+great revolutionary leader, the champion of the
+people in its struggles for civil and religious liberty,
+however much he might affect the forms of the
+prevailing religious sentiment, was too sagacious not
+to be able to penetrate, with the aid of the counsels
+of the author of the 'Treatise of Civil Power in
+Ecclesiastical Causes,' who so triumphantly upheld the
+fundamental principle of Protestantism,<a name="FNanchor_142_142" id="FNanchor_142_142"></a><a href="#Footnote_142_142" class="fnanchor">142</a> somewhat
+beneath the surface. In what manner the Presbyterian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225" href="#Page_225">[225]</a></span>
+Parliament issued commissions for inquiring
+into the crimes of sorcery, how zealously they were
+supported by the clergy and people, how Matthew
+Hopkins&mdash;immortal in the annals of English witchcraft&mdash;exercised
+his talents as witchfinder-general,
+are facts well known.<a name="FNanchor_143_143" id="FNanchor_143_143"></a><a href="#Footnote_143_143" class="fnanchor">143</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_142_142" id="Footnote_142_142"></a><a href="#FNanchor_142_142"><span class="label">142</span></a> 'Seeing therefore,' infers Milton, the greatest of England's
+patriots as well as poets, 'that no man, no synod, no session of
+men, though called the Church, can judge definitively the sense of
+Scripture to another man's conscience, which is well known to be a
+maxim of the Protestant religion; it follows plainly, that he who
+holds in religion that belief or those opinions which to his conscience
+and utmost understanding appear with most evidence or probability
+in the Scripture, though to others he seem erroneous, can no
+more be justly censured for a heretic than his censurers, who do but
+the same thing themselves, while they censure him for so doing....
+To Protestants therefore, whose common rule and
+touchstone is the Scripture, nothing can with more conscience, more
+equity, nothing more Protestantly can be permitted than a free and
+lawful debate at all times by writing, conference, or disputation of
+what opinion soever disputable by Scripture.... How many
+persecutions, then, imprisonments, banishments, penalties, and stripes;
+how much bloodshed, have the forcers of conscience to answer for&mdash;and
+Protestants rather than Papists!' (<i>A Treatise of Civil Power
+in Ecclesiastical Causes</i>.) The reasons which induced Milton to exclude
+the Catholics of his day from the general toleration are more
+intelligible and more plausible, than those of fifty or sixty years
+since, when the Rev. Sidney Smith published the <i>Letters of Peter
+Plymley</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_143_143" id="Footnote_143_143"></a><a href="#FNanchor_143_143"><span class="label">143</span></a> Displayed in the satire of <i>Hudibras</i>, particularly in Part II. canto
+3, Part III. 1, and the notes of Zachary Grey. The author of this
+amusing political satire has exposed the foibles of the great Puritan
+party with all the rancour of a partisan.</p></div>
+
+<p>That the strenuous antagonists of despotic dogmas,
+by whom the principles of English liberty were first
+inaugurated, that they should so fanatically abandon
+their reason to a monstrous idea, is additional proof<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226" href="#Page_226">[226]</a></span>
+of the universality of superstitious prejudice. But
+the conviction, the result of a continual political
+religious persecution of their tenets, that if heaven
+was on their side Satan and the powers of darkness
+were still more inimical, cannot be fully understood
+unless by referring to those scenes of murder and
+torture. Hunted with relentless ferocity like wild
+beasts, holding conventicles and prayer meetings
+with the sword suspended over their heads, it is not
+surprising that at that period these English and
+Scotch Calvinists came to believe that they were the
+peculiar objects of diabolical as well as human
+malice. Their whole history during the first eighty
+years of the seventeenth century can alone explain
+this faith. Besides this genuine feeling, the clergy of
+the Presbyterian sect might be interested in maintaining
+a creed which must magnify their credit as
+miracle-workers.<a name="FNanchor_144_144" id="FNanchor_144_144"></a><a href="#Footnote_144_144" class="fnanchor">144</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_144_144" id="Footnote_144_144"></a><a href="#FNanchor_144_144"><span class="label">144</span></a> The author of <i>Hudibras</i>, in the interview of the Knight and
+Sidrophel (William Lilly), enumerates the various practices and uses
+of astrology and witchcraft in vogue at this time, and employed by
+Court and Parliament with equal eagerness and emulation. Dr.
+Zachary Grey, the sympathetic editor of <i>Hudibras</i>, supplies much
+curious information on the subject in extracts from various old
+writers. 'The Parliament,' as he states, 'took a sure way to secure
+all prophecies, prodigies, and almanac-news from stars, &amp;c., in favour
+of their own side, by appointing a licenser thereof, and strictly
+forbidding and punishing all such as were not licensed. Their man
+for this purpose was the famous Booker, an astrologer, fortune-teller,
+almanac-maker, &amp;c. The words of his license in Rushorth
+are very remarkable&mdash;for mathematics, almanacs, and prognostications.
+If we may believe Lilly, both he and Booker did conjure
+and prognosticate well for their friends the Parliament. He tells
+us, "When he applied for a license for his <i>Merlinus Anglicus Junior</i>
+(in Ap. 1644), Booker wondered at the book, made many impertinent
+obliterations, framed many objections, and swore it was not possible
+to distinguish between a king and a parliament; and at last licensed
+it according to his own fancy. Lilly delivered it to the printer, who,
+being an arch-Presbyterian, had five of the ministers to inspect it,
+who could make nothing of it, but said it might be printed; for in
+that he meddled not with their Dagon." (<i>Lilly's Life</i>.) Which
+opposition to Lilly's book arose from a jealousy that he was not then
+thoroughly in the Parliament's interest&mdash;which was true; for he
+frankly confesses, "that till the year 1645 he was more Cavalier
+than Roundhead, and so taken notice of; but after that he engaged
+body and soul in the cause of the Parliament."' (<i>Life</i>.) Lilly was
+succeeded successively by his assistant Henry Coley, and John
+Partridge, the well-known object of Swift's satire.</p></div>
+
+<p>The years 1644 and 1645 are distinguished as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227" href="#Page_227">[227]</a></span>
+especially abounding in witches and witchfinders.
+In the former year, at Manningtree, a village in
+Essex, during an outbreak in which several women
+were tried and hanged, Matthew Hopkins first displayed
+his peculiar talent. Associated with him in
+his recognised legal profession was one John Sterne.
+They proceeded regularly on their circuit, making a
+fixed charge for their services upon each town or
+village. Swimming and searching for secret marks
+were the infallible methods of discovery. Hopkins,
+encouraged by an unexpected success, arrogantly
+assumed the title of 'Witchfinder-General.' His
+modest charges (as he has told us) were twenty
+shillings a town, which paid the expenses of travelling
+and living, and an additional twenty shillings a head<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228" href="#Page_228">[228]</a></span>
+for every criminal brought to trial, or at least to
+execution.</p>
+
+<p>The eastern counties of Huntingdon, Cambridge,
+Suffolk, Northampton, Bedford, were chiefly traversed;
+and some two or three hundred persons appear to
+have been sent to the gibbet or the stake by his
+active exertions. One of these specially remembered
+was the aged <i>parson</i> of a village near Framlingham,
+Mr. Lowes, who was hanged at Bury St. Edmund's.
+The pious Baxter, an eyewitness, thus commemorates
+the event: 'The hanging of a great number of
+witches in 1645 and 1646 is famously known. Mr.
+Calamy went along with the judges on the circuit to
+hear their confessions and see that there was no
+fraud or wrong done them. I spoke with many
+understanding, pious, learned, and credible persons
+that lived in the counties, and some that went to
+them in the prison and heard their sad confessions.
+Among the rest, an old <i>reading</i> parson named Lowes,
+not far from Framlingham, was one that was hanged,
+who confessed that he had two imps, and that one of
+them was always putting him upon doing mischief;
+and he being near the sea as he saw a ship under
+sail, it moved him to send it to sink the ship, and
+he consented and saw the ship sink before them.'
+Sterne, Hopkins's coadjutor, in an Apology published
+not long afterwards, asserts that Lowes had been
+indicted thirty years before for witchcraft; that he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229" href="#Page_229">[229]</a></span>
+had made a covenant with the devil, sealing it with
+his blood, and had those familiars or spirits which
+sucked on the marks found on his body; that he
+had confessed that, besides the notable mischief of
+sinking the aforesaid vessel and making fourteen
+widows in one quarter of an hour, he had effected
+many other calamities; that far from repenting of
+his wickedness, he rejoiced in the power of his
+imps.</p>
+
+<p>The excessive destruction and cruelty perpetrated
+by the indiscriminate procedure of the
+Witchfinder-General incited a Mr. Gaule, vicar of
+Great Staughton in Huntingdonshire, to urge some
+objections to the inhuman character of his method.
+Gaule, like John Cotta before him and others of that
+class, was provoked to challenge the propriety of the
+ordinary prosecutions, not so much from incredulity
+as from humanity, which revolted at the extravagance
+of the judges' cruelty. In 'Select Cases of
+Conscience touching Witches and Witchcraft,' the
+minister of Great Staughton describes from personal
+knowledge one of the ordinary ways of detecting
+the guilt of the accused. 'Having taken the
+suspected witch, she is placed in the middle of a
+room upon a stool or table, cross-legged, or in some
+other uneasy position, to which, if she submits not,
+she is then bound with cords: there is she watched
+and kept without meat or sleep for the space of four-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230" href="#Page_230">[230]</a></span>and-twenty
+hours (for they say within that time they
+shall see her imps come and suck); a little hole is
+likewise made in the door for the imps to come in at,
+and, lest they should come in some less discernible
+shape, they that watch are taught to be ever and
+anon sweeping the room, and if they see any spiders
+or flies to kill them; and if they cannot kill them,
+then they may be sure they are her imps.'</p>
+
+<p>'Swimming' and 'pricking' were the approved
+modes of discovery. By the former method the
+witch was stripped naked, securely bound (hands
+and feet being crossed), rolled up in a blanket or
+cloth, and carried to the nearest water, upon which
+she was laid on her back, with the alternative of
+floating or sinking. In case of the former event (the
+water not seldom refusing to receive the wretch,
+because&mdash;declares James I.&mdash;they had impiously
+thrown off the holy water of baptism) she was rescued
+for the fire or the gallows; while, in case of
+sinking to the bottom, she would be properly and
+clearly acquitted of the suspected guilt. Hopkins
+prided himself most on his ability for detecting
+special marks. Causing the suspected woman to be
+stripped naked, or as far as the waist (as the case
+might be), sometimes in public, this stigmatic professor
+began to search for the hidden signs with unsparing
+scrutiny. Upon finding a mole or wart or
+any similar mark, they tried the 'insensibleness there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231" href="#Page_231">[231]</a></span>of'
+by inserting needles, pins, awls, or any sharp-pointed
+instrument; and in an old and withered
+crone it might not be difficult to find somewhere a
+more insensitive spot.</p>
+
+<p>Such examinations were conducted with disregard
+equally for humanity and decency. All the disgusting
+circumstances must be sought for in the works
+of the writers upon the subject. Reginald Scot has
+collected many of the commonest. These marks
+were considered to be teats at which the demons or
+imps were used to be suckled. Many were the
+judicial and vulgar methods of detecting the guilty&mdash;by
+repeating the 'Lord's Prayer;' weighing against
+the church Bible; making them shed tears&mdash;for a
+witch can shed tears only with the left eye, and that
+only with difficulty and in limited quantity. The
+counteracting or preventive charms are as numerous
+as curious, not a few being in repute in some parts
+at this day. 'Drawing blood' was most effective.
+Nailing up a horse-shoe is one of the best-known preventives.
+That efficacious counter-charm used to be
+suspended over the entrance of churches and houses,
+and no wizard or witch could brave it.<a name="FNanchor_145_145" id="FNanchor_145_145"></a><a href="#Footnote_145_145" class="fnanchor">145</a> 'Scoring
+above the breath' is omnipotent in Scotland, where<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232" href="#Page_232">[232]</a></span>
+the witch was cut or 'scotched' on the face and forehead.
+Cutting off secretly a lock of the hair of the
+accused, burning the thatch of her roof and the
+thing bewitched; these are a few of the least offensive
+or obscene practices in counter-charming.<a name="FNanchor_146_146" id="FNanchor_146_146"></a><a href="#Footnote_146_146" class="fnanchor">146</a> In
+what degree or kind the Fetish-charms of the African
+savages are more ridiculous or disgusting than those
+popular in England 200 years ago, it would not be
+easy to determine.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_145_145" id="Footnote_145_145"></a><a href="#FNanchor_145_145"><span class="label">145</span></a> Gay's witch complains:
+</p>
+<p class="footpoem">'Straws, laid across, my pace retard.<br />
+The horse-shoe's nailed, each threshold's guard.<br />
+The stunted broom the wenches hide<br />
+For fear that I should up and ride.<br />
+They stick with pins my bleeding seat,<br />
+And bid me show my secret teat.'<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_146_146" id="Footnote_146_146"></a><a href="#FNanchor_146_146"><span class="label">146</span></a> The various love-charms, amulets, and spells in the pharmacy of
+witchcraft are (like the waxen image known, both to the ancient and
+modern art) equally monstrous and absurd. Of a more natural and
+pleasing sort was the <ins title="Greek: himas poikilos">&#7985;&#956;&#8048;&#962; &#960;&#959;&#953;&#954;&#8055;&#955;&#959;&#962;</ins>, the irresistible charm of Aphrodite. Here&mdash;</p>
+<p class="footpoem">
+<span class="footpoem8"><ins title="Greek: Thelktêria panta tetykto;">&#952;&#949;&#955;&#954;&#964;&#8053;&#961;&#953;&#945; &#960;&#8049;&#957;&#964;&#945; &#964;&#8051;&#964;&#965;&#954;&#964;&#959;&#8231;</ins><br /></span>
+<ins title="Greek: Enth' eni men philotês, en d' himeros, en d' oaristys,">&#7964;&#957;&#952;&#8125; &#7956;&#957;&#953; &#956;&#8050;&#957; &#966;&#953;&#955;&#8057;&#964;&#951;&#962;, &#7952;&#957; &#948;&#8125; &#7989;&#956;&#949;&#961;&#959;&#962;, &#7952;&#957; &#948;&#8125; &#8000;&#945;&#961;&#953;&#963;&#964;&#8058;&#962;,</ins><br />
+<ins title="Greek: Parphasis, hê t' eklepse noon pyka per phroneontôn.">&#928;&#8049;&#961;&#966;&#945;&#963;&#953;&#962;, &#7973; &#964;&#8125; &#7956;&#954;&#955;&#949;&#968;&#949; &#957;&#8057;&#959;&#957; &#960;&#8059;&#954;&#945; &#960;&#949;&#961; &#966;&#961;&#959;&#957;&#949;&#8057;&#957;&#964;&#969;&#957;.</ins>
+</p></div>
+
+<p>Matthew Hopkins pursued a lucrative trade in
+witch-hunting for some years with much applause
+and success. His indiscriminating accusations at
+last excited either the alarm or the indignation of
+his townspeople, if we may believe the tradition suggested
+in the well-known verses of Butler, who has no
+authority, apparently, for his insinuation ('Hudibras,'
+ii. 3), that this eminent <i>Malleus</i> did not die 'the
+common death of all men.' However it happened,
+his death is placed in the year 1647. An Apology
+shortly before had been published by him in refutation
+of an injurious report gaining ground that he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233" href="#Page_233">[233]</a></span>
+was himself intimately allied with the devil, from
+whom he had obtained a memorandum book in which
+were entered the names of all the witches in England.
+It is entitled 'The Discovery of Witches; in
+Answer to several Queries lately delivered to the
+Judge of Assize for the County of Norfolk; and
+now published by Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder,
+for the Benefit of the whole Kingdom. Printed
+for R. Royston, at the Angel in Inn Lane, 1647.'<a name="FNanchor_147_147" id="FNanchor_147_147"></a><a href="#Footnote_147_147" class="fnanchor">147</a>
+It is, indeed, sufficiently probable that, confident
+of the increasing coolness, and perhaps of the wishes,
+of the magistrates, the mob, ever ready to wreak
+vengeance upon a disgraced favourite who has long
+abused the public patience, retaliated upon Hopkins
+a method of torture he had frequently inflicted upon
+others.<a name="FNanchor_148_148" id="FNanchor_148_148"></a><a href="#Footnote_148_148" class="fnanchor">148</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_147_147" id="Footnote_147_147"></a><a href="#FNanchor_147_147"><span class="label">147</span></a> Quoted by Sir W. Scott from a copy of this 'very rare tract' in
+his possession.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_148_148" id="Footnote_148_148"></a><a href="#FNanchor_148_148"><span class="label">148</span></a> Dr. Francis Hutchinson (Historical Essay), referring to the
+verses of Samuel Butler, says that he had often heard that some
+persons, 'out of indignation at the barbarity [of the witchfinder],
+took him and tied his own thumbs and toes, as he used to tie
+others; and when he was put into the water, he himself swam as
+they did.' But whether the usual fate upon that event awaited him
+does not appear. The verses in question are the following:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p class="footpoem">'has not he, within a year,<br />
+Hang'd threescore of 'em in one shire,<br />
+<br />
+<span class="sp">*     *     *     *     *</span>
+<br /><br />
+Who after prov'd himself a witch,<br />
+And made a rod for his own breech?'<br />
+</p>
+<p>The Knight's Squire on the same occasion reminds his master of the
+more notorious of the devil's tricks of that and the last age:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p class="footpoem">'Did not the devil appear to Martin<br />
+Luther in Germany for certain,<br />
+And would have gull'd him with a trick<br />
+But Mart was too, too politic?<br />
+Did he not help the Dutch to purge<br />
+At Antwerp their cathedral church?<br />
+Sing catches to the saints at Mascon,<br />
+And tell them all they came to ask him?<br />
+Appear in divers shapes to Kelly,<br />
+And speak i' th' nun of Loudun's belly?<br />
+Meet with the Parliament's committee<br />
+At Woodstock on a pers'nal treaty?<br />
+... &amp;c. &amp;c.'<br />
+</p>
+<p class="cite3"><i>Hudibras</i>, <span class="smcap">ii</span>. 3.
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Hopkins is the most famous of his class on account<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234" href="#Page_234">[234]</a></span>
+of his superior talent; but both in England and
+Scotland witchfinders, or <i>prickers</i>, as they were sometimes
+called, before and since his time abounded&mdash;of
+course most where the superstition raged fiercest.
+In Scotland they infested all parts of the country,
+practising their detestable but legal trade with entire
+impunity. The Scottish prickers enjoyed a great
+reputation for skill and success; and on a special
+occasion, about the time when Hopkins was practising
+in the South, the magistrates of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
+summoned from Scotland one of great professional
+experience to visit that town, then overrun
+with witches. The magistrates agreed to pay him
+all travelling expenses, and twenty shillings for every
+convicted criminal. A bellman was sent round
+the town to invite all complainants to prefer their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235" href="#Page_235">[235]</a></span>
+charges. Some thirty women, having been brought
+to the town-hall, were publicly subjected to an examination.
+By the ordinary process, twenty-seven on
+this single occasion were ascertained to be guilty, of
+whom, at the ensuing assizes, fourteen women and
+one man were convicted by the jury and executed.</p>
+
+<p>Three thousand are said to have suffered for the
+crime in England under the supremacy of the Long
+Parliament. A respite followed on this bloody persecution
+when the Independents came into power,
+but it was renewed with almost as much violence
+upon the return of the Stuarts. The Protectorship
+had been fitly inaugurated by the rational protest of
+a gentleman, witness to the proceedings at one of the
+trials, Sir Robert Filmore, in a tract, 'An Advertizement
+to the Jurymen of England touching Witches.'
+This was followed two years later by a similar protest
+by one Thomas Ady, called, 'A Candle in the
+Dark; or, a Treatise concerning the Nature of
+Witches and Witchcraft: being Advice to Judges,
+Sheriffs, Justices of the Peace and Grand Jurymen,
+what to do before they pass Sentence on such as are
+arraigned for their Lives as Witches.' Notwithstanding
+the general toleration of the Commonwealth, in
+1652, the year before Cromwell assumed the Dictatorship
+(1653-1658), there appeared to be a tendency
+to return to the old system, and several were
+executed in different parts of the country. Six were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236" href="#Page_236">[236]</a></span>
+hanged at Maidstone. 'Some there were that wished
+rather they might be burned to ashes, alleging that
+it was a received opinion amongst many that the
+body of a witch being burned, her blood is thereby
+prevented from becoming hereafter hereditary to her
+progeny in the same evil, while by hanging it is not;
+but whether this opinion be erroneous or not,' the
+reporter adds, 'I am not to dispute.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237" href="#Page_237">[237]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Glanvil's Sadducismus Triumphatus&mdash;His Sentiments on Witchcraft
+and Demonology&mdash;Baxter's 'Certainty of the World of
+Spirits,' &amp;c.&mdash;Witch Trial at Bury St. Edmund's by Sir Matthew
+Hale, 1664&mdash;The Evidence adduced in Court&mdash;Two Witches
+hanged&mdash;Three hanged at Exeter in 1682&mdash;The last Witches
+judicially executed in England&mdash;Uniformity of the Evidence
+adduced at the Trials&mdash;Webster's Attack upon the Witch-Creed
+in 1677&mdash;Witch Trials in England at the end of the Seventeenth
+Century&mdash;French Parliaments vindicate the Diabolic Reality of
+the Crime&mdash;Witchcraft in Sweden.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="chap">The</span> bold licentiousness and ill-concealed scepticism
+of Charles II. and his Court, whose despotic prejudices,
+however, supported by the zeal of the Church,
+prosecuted dissenters from a form of religion which
+maintained 'the right divine of kings to govern
+wrong,' might be indifferent to the prejudice of
+witchcraft. But the princes and despots of former
+times have seldom been more careful of the lives
+than they have been of the liberties, of their subjects.
+The formal apology for the reality of that
+crime published by Charles II.'s chaplain-in-ordinary,
+the Rev. Dr. Joseph Glanvil, against the
+modern Sadducees (a very inconsiderable sect) who
+denied both ghosts and witches, their well-attested<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238" href="#Page_238">[238]</a></span>
+apparitions and acts, has been already noticed. His
+philosophic inquiry (so he terms it) into the nature
+and operations of witchcraft (<i>Sadducismus Triumphatus</i>,
+Sadduceeism Vanquished, or 'Considerations
+about Witchcraft'), was occasioned by a case that
+came under the author's personal observation&mdash;the
+'knockings' of the demon of Tedworth in the house
+of a Mr. Mompesson. The Tedworth demon must
+have been of that sort of active spirits which has
+been so obliging of late in enlightening the spiritual
+<i>s&eacute;ances</i> of our time.</p>
+
+<p>Glanvil traces the steps by which a well-meaning
+student may unwarily be involved in <i>diablerie</i>. This
+philosophical inquirer observes:&mdash;'Those mystical
+students may, in their first address to the science
+[astrology], have no other design than the satisfaction
+of their curiosity to know remote and hidden things;
+yet that in the progress, being not satisfied within
+the bounds of their art, doth many times tempt the
+curious inquirer to use worse means of information;
+and no doubt those mischievous spirits, that are as
+vigilant as the beasts of prey, and watch all occasions
+to get us within their envious reach, are more constant
+attenders and careful spies upon the actions
+and inclinations of such whose genius and designs
+prepare them for their temptations. So that I look
+on judicial astrology as a fair introduction to sorcery
+and witchcraft; and who knows but it was first set<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239" href="#Page_239">[239]</a></span>
+on foot by the infernal hunters as a lure to draw the
+<i>curiosos</i> into those snares that lie hid beyond it. And
+yet I believe it may be innocently enough studied....
+I believe there are very few among those
+who have been addicted to those strange arts of
+wonder and prediction, but have found themselves
+attacked by some unknown solicitors, and enticed by
+them to the more dangerous actions and correspondencies.
+For as there are a sort of base and sordid
+spirits that attend the envy and malice of the ignorant
+and viler sort of persons, and betray them into
+compacts by promises of revenge; so, no doubt, there
+are a kind of more airy and speculative fiends, of a
+higher rank and order than those wretched imps,
+who apply themselves to the curious.... Yea,
+and sometimes they are so cautious and wary in their
+conversations with more refined persons, that they
+never offer to make any <i>express</i> covenant with them.
+And to this purpose, I have been informed by a very
+reverend and learned doctor that one Mr. Edwards,
+a Master of Arts of Trinity College, in Cambridge,
+being reclaimed from conjuration, declared in his
+repentance that the demon always appeared to him
+like a man of good fashion, and never required any
+compact from him: and no doubt they sort themselves
+agreeably to the rate, post, and genius of those
+with whom they converse.'<a name="FNanchor_149_149" id="FNanchor_149_149"></a><a href="#Footnote_149_149" class="fnanchor">149</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_149_149" id="Footnote_149_149"></a><a href="#FNanchor_149_149"><span class="label">149</span></a> <i>Sadducismus Triumphatus</i>, section xvi.X</p></div>
+
+<p>The sentiments of the royal chaplain on demonology<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240" href="#Page_240">[240]</a></span>
+are curious. 'Since good men,' he argues, 'in
+their state of separation are said to be <ins title="Greek: isangeloi">&#7984;&#963;&#8049;&#947;&#947;&#949;&#955;&#959;&#953;</ins>,
+why the wicked may not be supposed to be <ins title="Greek: isodaimones">&#7984;&#963;&#959;&#948;&#945;&#8055;&#956;&#959;&#957;&#949;&#962;</ins>
+(in the worst sense of the word), I know nothing
+to help me to imagine. And if it be supposed
+that the imps of witches are sometimes wicked
+spirits of our own kind and nature, and possibly the
+same that have been witches and sorcerers in this
+life: this supposal may give a fairer and more probable
+account of many of the actions of sorcery and
+witchcraft than the other hypothesis, that they are
+always devils. And to this conjecture I will venture
+to subjoin another, which hath also its probability,
+viz. that it is not improbable but the familiars of
+witches are a vile kind of spirits of a very inferior
+constitution and nature; and none of those that were
+once of the highest hierarchy now degenerated into
+the spirits we call devils.... And that all
+the superior&mdash;yea, and inferior&mdash;regions have their
+several kinds of spirits, differing in their natural
+perfections as well as in the kinds and degrees of
+their depravities; which being supposed, 'tis very
+probable that those of the basest and meanest sorts
+are they who submit to the servilities.'<a name="FNanchor_150_150" id="FNanchor_150_150"></a><a href="#Footnote_150_150" class="fnanchor">150</a> It is a
+curious speculation how the old apologists of witchcraft<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241" href="#Page_241">[241]</a></span>
+would regard the modern 'curiosos'&mdash;the adventurous
+<i>spirit-media</i> of the present day, and
+whether the consulted spirits are of 'base and sordid
+rank,' or are 'a kind of airy and more speculative
+fiends.' It is fair to infer, perhaps, that they are of
+the latter class.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_150_150" id="Footnote_150_150"></a><a href="#FNanchor_150_150"><span class="label">150</span></a> <i>Sadducismus Triumphatus</i>, Part I. sect. 4. Affixed to this work
+is a <i>Collection of Relations</i> of well-authenticated instances. Glanvil
+was one of the first Fellows of the recently established Royal Society.
+He is the author of a philosophical treatise of great merit&mdash;the
+<i>Scepsis Scientifica</i>&mdash;a review of which occupies several pages of <i>The
+Introduction to the Literature of Europe</i>, and which is favourably
+considered by Hallam. Not the least unaccountable fact in the history
+and literature of witchcraft is the absurd contradiction involved
+in the unbounded credulity of writers (who were sceptical on almost</p></div>
+
+<p>The author of the 'Saints' Everlasting Rest,' the
+moderate and conscientious Baxter, was a contemporary
+of the Anglican divine. In another and later
+work this voluminous theological writer more fully
+developed his spiritualistic ideas. 'The Certainty of
+the World of Spirits fully evinced by unquestionable
+Histories of Apparitions, Witchcrafts, Operations,
+Voices, &amp;c., proving the Immortality of Souls, the
+Malice and Misery of Devils and the Damned, and the
+Blessedness of the Justified. Written for the Conviction
+of Sadducees and Infidels,' was a formidable
+inscription which must have overawed, if it did not
+subdue, the infidelity of the modern Sadducees.<a name="FNanchor_151_151" id="FNanchor_151_151"></a><a href="#Footnote_151_151" class="fnanchor">151</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_151_151" id="Footnote_151_151"></a><a href="#FNanchor_151_151"><span class="label">151</span></a> It would not be an uninteresting, but it would be a melancholy,
+task to investigate the reasoning, or rather unreasoning, process
+which involved such honest men as Richard Baxter in a maze of
+credulity. While they rejected the principle of the ever-recurring
+ecclesiastical miracles of Catholicism (so sympathetic as well as useful
+to ardent faith), their devout imagination yet required the aid of a
+present supernaturalism to support their faith amidst the perplexing
+doubts and difficulties of ordinary life, and they gladly embraced the
+consoling belief that the present evils are the work of the enmity of
+the devil, whose temporary sovereignty, however, should be overthrown
+in the world to come, when the faith and constancy of his
+victims shall be eternally rewarded.</p></div>
+
+<p>The sentence and execution of two old women at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242" href="#Page_242">[242]</a></span>
+Bury St. Edmund's, in 1664, has been already noticed.
+This trial was carried on with circumstances of great
+solemnity and with all the external forms of justice&mdash;Sir
+Matthew Hale presiding as Lord Chief Baron:
+and the following is a portion of the evidence which
+was received two hundred years ago in an English
+Court of Justice and under the presidency of one of
+the greatest ornaments of the English Bench. One
+of the witnesses, a woman named Dorothy Durent,
+deposed that she had quarrelled with one Amy Duny,
+immediately after which her infant child was seized
+with fits. 'And the said examinant further stated that
+she being troubled at her child's distemper did go
+to a certain person named Doctor Job Jacob, who
+lived at Yarmouth, who had the reputation in the
+country to help children that were bewitched; who
+advised her to hang up the child's blanket in the
+chimney-corner all day, and at night when she put
+the child to bed to put it into the said blanket;
+and if she found anything in it she should not be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243" href="#Page_243">[243]</a></span>
+afraid, but throw it into the fire. And this deponent
+did according to his direction; and at night when she
+took down the blanket with an intent to put the
+child therein, there fell out of the same a great toad
+which ran up and down the hearth; and she, having
+a young youth only with her in the house, desired
+him to catch the toad and throw it into the fire, which
+the youth did accordingly, and held it there with the
+tongs; and as soon as it was in the fire it made a
+great and terrible noise; and after a space there was
+a flashing in the fire like gunpowder, making a noise
+like the discharge of a pistol, and thereupon the toad
+was no more seen nor heard. It was asked by the
+Court if that, after the noise and flashing, there was
+not the substance of the toad to be seen to consume
+in the fire; and it was answered by the said Dorothy
+Durent that after the flashing and noise there was
+no more seen than if there had been none there.
+The next day there came a young woman, a kinswoman
+of the said Amy, and a neighbour of this deponent,
+and told this deponent that her aunt (meaning the
+said Amy) was in a most lamentable condition, having
+her face all scorched with fire, and that she was sitting
+alone in her house in her smock without any fire.
+And therefore this deponent went into the house of
+the said Amy Duny to see her, and found her in the
+same condition as was related to her; for her face,
+her legs, and thighs, which this deponent saw, seemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244" href="#Page_244">[244]</a></span>
+very much scorched and burnt with fire; at which
+this deponent seemed much to wonder, and asked
+how she came in that sad condition. And the said
+Amy replied that she might thank her for it, for that
+she (deponent) was the cause thereof; but she should
+live to see some of her children dead, and she upon
+crutches. And this deponent further saith, that after
+the burning of the said toad her child recovered and
+was well again, and was living at the time of the
+Assizes.' The accused were next arraigned for having
+bewitched the family of Mr. Samuel Pacy, merchant,
+of Lowestoft. The witch turned away from their door
+had at once inflicted summary vengeance by sending
+some fearful fits and pains in the stomach, apparently
+caused by an internal pricking of pins; the children
+shrieking out violently, vomiting nails, pins, and
+needles, and exclaiming against several women of ill-repute
+in the town; especially against two of them,
+Amy Duny and Rose Cullender.</p>
+
+<p>A friend of the family appeared in court, and
+deposed: 'At some times the children would see
+things run up and down the house in the appearance
+of mice, and one of them suddenly snapt one with
+the tongs and threw it into the fire, and it screeched
+out like a bat. At another time the younger child,
+being out of her fits, went out of doors to take a
+little fresh air, and presently a little thing like a bee
+flew upon her face and would have gone into her
+mouth, whereupon the child ran in all haste to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245" href="#Page_245">[245]</a></span>
+door to get into the house again, shrieking out in a
+most terrible manner. Whereupon this deponent
+made haste to come to her; but before she could
+get to her the child fell into her swooning fit, and
+at last, with much pain and straining herself, she
+vomited up a twopenny nail with a broad head; and
+being demanded by this deponent how she came by
+this nail, she answered that the bee brought this
+nail and forced it into her mouth. And at other
+times the elder child declared unto this deponent
+that during the time of her fits she saw flies come
+unto her and bring with them in their mouths crooked
+pins; and after the child had thus declared the same
+she fell again into violent fits, and afterwards raised
+several pins. At another time the said elder child
+declared unto this deponent, and sitting by the fire
+suddenly started up and said she saw a mouse; and
+she crept under the table, looking after it; and at
+length she put something in her apron, saying she
+had caught it. And immediately she ran to the fire
+and threw it in; and there did appear upon it to this
+deponent like the flashing of gunpowder, though she
+confessed she saw nothing in the child's hands.'
+Another witness was the mother of a servant girl,
+Susanna Chandler, whose depositions are of much the
+same kind, but with the addition that her daughter was
+sometimes stricken with blindness and dumbness by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246" href="#Page_246">[246]</a></span>
+demoniacal contrivance at the moment when her
+testimony was required in court. 'Being brought
+into court at the trial, she suddenly fell into her fits,
+and being carried out of the court again, within the
+space of half an hour she came to herself and recovered
+her speech; and thereupon was immediately
+brought into the court, and asked by the Court
+whether she was in condition to take an oath and
+to give evidence. She said she could. But when
+she was sworn and asked what she could say against
+either of the prisoners, before she could make any
+answer she fell into her fits, shrieking out in a miserable
+manner, crying "Burn her! burn her!" which
+was all the words she could speak.' Doubts having
+been hazarded by one or two of the less credulous of
+the origin of the fits and contortions, 'to avoid this
+scruple, it was privately desired by the judge that
+the Lord Cornwallis, Sir Edmund Bacon, and Mr.
+Serjeant Keeling and some other gentlemen there in
+court, would attend one of the distempered persons
+in the farthest part of the hall whilst she was in her
+fits, and then to send for one of the witches to try
+what would then happen, which they did accordingly.'
+Some of the possessed, having been put to the proof
+by having their eyes covered, and being touched upon
+the hand by one of those present, fell into contortions
+as if they had been touched by the witches.</p>
+
+<p>The suspicion of imposture thus raised was quickly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247" href="#Page_247">[247]</a></span>
+silenced by fresh proof. Robert Sherringham, farmer,
+deposed that 'about two years since, passing along
+the street with his cart and horses, the axle-tree of
+his cart touched her house and broke down some
+part of it; at which she was very much displeased,
+threatening him that his horses should suffer for it.
+And so it happened; for all those horses, being four
+in number, died within a short time after. Since
+that time he hath had great losses by sudden dying
+of his other cattle. So soon as his sows pigged, the
+pigs would leap and caper, and immediately fall down
+and die. Also, not long after, he was taken with a
+lameness in his limbs that he could neither go nor
+stand for some days.'<a name="FNanchor_152_152" id="FNanchor_152_152"></a><a href="#Footnote_152_152" class="fnanchor">152</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_152_152" id="Footnote_152_152"></a><a href="#FNanchor_152_152"><span class="label">152</span></a> This witness finished his evidence by informing the Court that
+'after all this, he was very much vexed with a great number of lice,
+of extraordinary bigness; and although he many times shifted himself,
+yet he was not anything the better, but would swarm again with
+them. So that in the conclusion he was forced to burn all his clothes,
+being two suits of apparel, and then was clear from them.'&mdash;<i>Narratives
+of Sorcery</i>, &amp;c., from the most authentic sources, by Thomas
+Wright.</p></div>
+
+<p>The extreme ridiculousness, even more than the
+iniquity, of the accusations may be deemed the principal
+characteristic of such procedures: these <i>childish</i>
+indictments were received with eagerness by prosecutors,
+jury, and judge. After half an hour's deliberation
+the jury returned a unanimous verdict
+against the prisoners, who were hanged, protesting
+their innocence to the end. The year before, a woman<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248" href="#Page_248">[248]</a></span>
+named Julian Coxe was hanged at Taunton on the
+evidence of a hunter that a hare, which had taken
+refuge from his pursuit in a bush, was found on the
+opposite side in the likeness of a witch, who had
+assumed the form of the animal, and taken the opportunity
+of her hiding-place to resume her proper
+shape. In 1682 three women were executed at
+Exeter. Their witchcraft was of the same sort as
+that of the Bury witches. Little variety indeed
+appears in the English witchcraft as brought before
+the courts of law. They chiefly consist in hysterical,
+epileptic, or other fits, accompanied by vomiting of
+various witch-instruments of torture. The Exeter
+witches are memorable as the last executed judicially
+in England.</p>
+
+<p>Attacks upon the superstition of varying degrees
+of merit were not wanting during any period of the
+seventeenth century. Webster, who, differing in
+this respect from most of his predecessors, declared
+his opinion that the whole of witchcraft was founded
+on natural phenomena, credulity, torture, imposture,
+or delusion, has deserved to be especially commemorated
+among the advocates of common sense. He had
+been well acquainted in his youth with the celebrated
+Lancashire Witches' case, and enjoyed good opportunities
+of studying the absurd obscenities of the
+numerous examinations. His meritorious work was
+given to the world in 1677, under the title of 'The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249" href="#Page_249">[249]</a></span>
+Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft.' Towards the
+close of the century witch-trials still occur; but the
+courts of justice were at length freed from the reproach
+of legal murders.</p>
+
+<p>The great revolution of 1688, which set the principles
+of Protestantism on a firmer basis, could not fail
+to effect an intellectual as well as a political change.
+A recognition of the claims of common sense (at
+least on the subject of diabolism) seemed to begin
+from that time; and in 1691, when some of the
+criminals were put upon their trial at Frome, in
+Somersetshire, they were acquitted, not without difficulty,
+by the exertion of the better reason of the presiding
+judge, Lord Chief Justice Holt. Fortunately
+for the accused, Lord Chief Justice Holt was a person
+of sense, as well as legal acuteness; for he sat as
+judge at a great number of the trials in different parts
+of the kingdom. Both prosecutors and juries were
+found who would willingly have sent the proscribed
+convicts to death. But the age was arrived when at
+last it was to be discovered that fire and torture can
+extinguish neither witchcraft nor any other heresy;
+and the princes and parliaments of Europe seemed to
+begin to recognise in part the philosophical maxim
+that, 'heresy and witchcraft are two crimes which
+commonly increase by punishment, and are never so
+effectually suppressed as by being totally neglected.'</p>
+
+<p>In France, until about the year 1670, there was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250" href="#Page_250">[250]</a></span>
+little abatement in the fury or number of the prosecutions.
+In that year several women had been
+sentenced to death for frequenting the <i>Domdaniel</i>
+or Sabbath meeting by the provincial parliament of
+Normandy. Louis XIV. was induced to commute
+the sentence into banishment for life. The parliament
+remonstrated at so astonishing an interference
+with the due course of justice, and presented a
+petition to the king in which they insist upon the
+dread reality of a crime that 'tends to the destruction
+of religion and the ruin of nations.'<a name="FNanchor_153_153" id="FNanchor_153_153"></a><a href="#Footnote_153_153" class="fnanchor">153</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_153_153" id="Footnote_153_153"></a><a href="#FNanchor_153_153"><span class="label">153</span></a> 'Your parliament,' protest these legislators, 'have thought it
+their duty on occasion of these crimes, the greatest which men can
+commit, to make you acquainted with the general and uniform feelings
+of the people of this province with regard to them; it being
+moreover a question in which are concerned the glory of God and the
+relief of your suffering subjects, who groan under their fears from the
+threats and menaces of this sort of persons, and who feel the effects
+of them every day in the mortal and extraordinary maladies which
+attack them, and the surprising damage and loss of their possessions.'
+They then review the various laws and decrees of Church
+and State from the earliest times in support of their convictions:
+they cite the authority of the Church in council and in its most
+famous individual teachers. Particularly do they insist upon the
+opinions of St. Augustin, in his <i>City of God</i>, as irrefragable. 'After
+so many authorities and punishments ordained by human and divine
+laws, we humbly supplicate your Majesty to reflect once more upon
+the extraordinary results which proceed from the malevolence of this
+sort of people; on the deaths from unknown diseases which are often
+the consequence of their menaces; on the loss of the goods and
+chattels of your subjects; on the proofs of guilt continually afforded
+by the insensibility of the marks upon the accused; on the sudden
+transportation of bodies from one place to another; on the sacrifices
+and nocturnal assemblies, and other facts, corroborated by the testimony
+of ancient and modern authors, and verified by so many eyewitnesses,
+composed partly of accomplices and partly of people who
+had no interest in the trials beyond the love of truth, and confirmed
+moreover by the confessions of the accused parties themselves, and
+that, Sire, with so much agreement and conformity between the different
+cases, that the most ignorant persons convicted of this crime
+have spoken to the same circumstances and in nearly the same words
+as the most celebrated authors who have written about it; all of
+which may be easily proved to your Majesty's satisfaction by the records
+of various trials before your parliaments.'&mdash;Given in <i>Memoirs
+of Extraordinary Popular Delusions</i>. Louis XIV., with an unaccustomed
+care for human life, resisting these forcible arguments,
+remained firm, and the condemned were saved from the stake.</p></div>
+
+<p>While most of the Governments of Europe were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251" href="#Page_251">[251]</a></span>
+now content to leave sorcerers and witches to the
+irregular persecutions of the people, tacitly abandoning
+to the mob the right of proceeding against them
+as they pleased, without the interference of the law,
+in a remote kingdom of Europe a witch-persecution
+commenced with the ordinary fury, under express
+sanction of the Government. It is curious that at the
+last moments of its existence as a legal crime, one of
+the last fires of witchcraft should have been lighted
+in Sweden, a country which, remote from continental
+Europe, seems to have been up to that period exempt
+from the judicial excesses of England, France, or
+Germany. The story of the Mohra witches is inserted
+in an appendix to Glanvil's 'Collection of Relations,'
+by Dr. Anthony Horneck. The epidemic broke out
+in 1669, in the village of Mohra, in the mountainous
+districts of Central Sweden. A number of children<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252" href="#Page_252">[252]</a></span>
+became affected with an imaginative or mischievous
+disease, which carried them off to a place called
+Blockula, where they held communion and festival
+with the devil. These, numbering a large proportion
+of the youth of the neighbourhood, were incited,
+it seems, by the imposture or credulity of the ministers
+of Mohra and Elfdale, to report the various
+transactions at their spiritual <i>s&eacute;ances</i>. To such a
+height increased the terrified excitement of the people,
+that a commission was appointed by the king,
+consisting of both clergy and laity, to enquire into
+the origin and circumstances of the matter. It commenced
+proceedings in August 1670. Days for humiliation
+and prayer were ordered, and a solemn service
+inaugurated the judicial examinations. Agreeably to
+the dogma of the most approved foreign authorities,
+which allowed the evidence of the greatest criminals
+and of the youngest age, the commission began by
+examining the children, three hundred in number,
+claiming to be bewitched, confronting them with the
+witches who had, according to the indictment, been
+the means of the devil's seduction. They were strictly
+interrogated whether they were certain of the fact of
+having been actually carried away by the devil in his
+proper person. Being answered in the affirmative,
+the royal commissioners proceeded to demand of the
+accused themselves, 'Whether the confessions of those
+children were true, and admonished them to confess<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253" href="#Page_253">[253]</a></span>
+the truth, that they might turn away from the devil
+unto the living God. At first most of them did very
+stiffly, and without shedding the least tear, deny it,
+though much against their will and inclination. After
+this the children were examined every one by themselves,
+to see whether their confessions did agree or
+no; and the commissioners found that all of them,
+except some very little ones, which could not tell all
+the circumstances, did punctually agree in their confessions
+of particulars. In the meanwhile, the commissioners
+that were of the clergy examined the
+witches, but could not bring them to any confession,
+all continuing steadfast in their denials, till at last
+some of them burst out into tears, and their confession
+agreed with what the children said; and these
+expressed their abhorrence of the fact, and begged
+pardon, adding that the devil, whom they called
+<i>Locyta</i>, had stopped the mouths of some of them, so
+loath was he to part with his prey, and had stopped
+the ears of others. And being now gone from them,
+they could no longer conceal it, for they had now
+perceived his treachery.' The Elfdale witches were
+induced to announce&mdash;'We of the province of Elfdale
+do confess that we used to go to a gravel-pit which
+lies hard by a cross-way, and there we put on a vest
+over our heads, and then danced round; and after
+this ran to the cross-way and called the devil thrice,
+first with a still voice, the second time somewhat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254" href="#Page_254">[254]</a></span>
+louder, and the third time very loud, with these
+words, "Antecessor, come and carry us to Blockula."
+Whereupon immediately he used to appear, but in
+different habits; but for the most part we saw him
+in a grey coat and red and blue stockings.<a name="FNanchor_154_154" id="FNanchor_154_154"></a><a href="#Footnote_154_154" class="fnanchor">154</a> He had
+a red beard, a high-crowned hat with linen of divers
+colours wrapt about it, and long garters about upon
+his stockings. Then he asked us whether we would
+serve him with soul and body. If we were content
+to do so, he set us on a beast which he had there
+ready, and carried us over churches and high walls,
+and after all he came to a green meadow where
+Blockula lies [the Brockenberg in the Hartz forest,
+as Scott conjectures]. We procured some scrapings
+of altars and filings of church clocks, and then he
+gave us a horn with a salve in it, wherewith we do
+anoint ourselves, and a saddle, with a hammer and a
+wooden nail thereby to fix the saddle. Whereupon
+we call upon the devil, and away we go.'</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_154_154" id="Footnote_154_154"></a><a href="#FNanchor_154_154"><span class="label">154</span></a> Accommodating himself to modern refinement, the devil usually
+discards the antiquated horns, hoofs, and tail; and if, as Dr. Mede
+supposed, 'appearing in human shape, he has always a deformity of
+some uncouth member or other,' such inconvenient appendages are
+disguised as much as possible. As Goethe's Mephistopheles explains
+to his witch:
+</p>
+<p class="footpoem">'Culture, which renders man less like an ape,<br />
+Has also licked the devil into shape.'<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>Many interrogatories were put. Amongst others,
+how it was contrived that they could pass up and
+down chimneys and through unbroken panes of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255" href="#Page_255">[255]</a></span>
+glass (to which it was replied that the devil removes
+all obstacles); how they were enabled to
+transport so many children at one time? &amp;c. They
+acknowledged that 'till of late they had never power
+to carry away children; but only this year and the
+last: and the devil did at that time force them to it:
+that heretofore it was sufficient to carry but one of
+their own children or a stranger's child with them,
+which happened seldom: but now he did plague
+them and whip them if they did not procure him
+many children, insomuch that they had no peace or
+quiet for him. And whereas that formerly one
+journey a week would serve their turn from their
+own town to the place aforesaid, now they were forced
+to run to other towns and places for children, and
+that they brought with them some fifteen, some sixteen
+children every night.' As to their means of
+conveyance, they were sometimes men; at other
+times, beasts, spits, and posts: but a preferable mode
+was the riding upon goats, whose backs were made
+more commodious by the use of a magical ointment
+whenever a larger freight than usual was to be transported.
+Arrived at Blockula, their diabolical initiation
+commenced. First they were made to deny
+their baptism and take an oath of fealty to their new
+master, to whom they devoted soul and body to serve
+faithfully. Their new baptism was a baptism of
+blood: for their lord cut their fingers and wrote their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256" href="#Page_256">[256]</a></span>
+names in blood in his book. After other ceremonies
+they sit down to a table, and are regaled with not
+the choicest viands (for such an occasion and from
+such a host)&mdash;broth, bacon, cheese, oatmeal. Dancing
+and fighting (the latter a peculiarity of the Northern
+Sabbath) ensue alternately. They indulge, too, in
+the debauchery of the South: the witches having
+offspring from their intercourse with the demons, who
+intermarry and produce a mongrel breed of toads
+and serpents. As interludes, it may be supposed, to
+the serious part of the entertainment the fiend would
+contrive various jokes, affecting to be dead; and,
+a graver joke, he would bid them to erect a huge
+building of stone, in which they were to be saved
+upon the approaching day of judgment. While engaged
+at this work he threw down the unfinished
+house about their ears, to the consternation, and
+sometimes injury, of his vassals.<a name="FNanchor_155_155" id="FNanchor_155_155"></a><a href="#Footnote_155_155" class="fnanchor">155</a> Some of the witnesses
+spoke of a great dragon encircled with flames,
+and an iron chair; of a vision of a burning pit. The
+minister of the district gave his evidence that, having
+been suffering from a painful headache, he could
+account for the unusual severity of the attack only
+by supposing that the witches had celebrated one of
+their infernal dances upon his head while asleep in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257" href="#Page_257">[257]</a></span>
+bed: and one of them, in accordance with this conjecture,
+acknowledged that the devil had sent her
+with a sledge-hammer to drive a nail into the
+temples of the obnoxious clergyman. The solidity of
+his skull saved him; and the only result was, as stated,
+a severe pain in his head.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_155_155" id="Footnote_155_155"></a><a href="#FNanchor_155_155"><span class="label">155</span></a> Le Sage's <i>Diable Boiteux</i>, who so obligingly introduces the
+Spanish student to the secret realities of human life, is, it may be
+observed, of both a more rational and more instructive temperament
+than the ordinary demons who appear at the witches' revels to practise
+their senseless and fantastic rites.</p></div>
+
+<p>All the persuasive arguments of the examiners
+could not induce the witches to repeat before them
+their well-known tricks: because, as they affirmed,
+'since they had confessed all they found all their
+witchcraft was gone: and the devil at this time
+appeared very terrible with claws on his hands and
+feet, with horns on his head and a long tail behind,
+and showed them a pit burning with a hand out; but
+the devil did thrust the person down again with an
+iron fork, and suggested to the witches that if they
+continued in their confession he would deal with them
+in the same manner.' These are some of the interesting
+particulars of this judicial commission as reported
+by contemporaries. Seventy persons were condemned
+to death. One woman pleaded (a frequent plea) in
+arrest of judgment that she was with child; the
+rest perseveringly denying their guilt. Twenty-three
+were burned in a single fire at the village of Mohra.
+Fifteen children were also executed; while fifty-six
+others, convicted of witchcraft in a minor degree,
+were sentenced to various punishments: to be scourged<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258" href="#Page_258">[258]</a></span>
+on every Sunday during a whole year being a sentence
+of less severity. The proceedings were brought
+to an end, it seems, by the fear of the upper classes
+for their own safety. An edict of the king who
+had authorised the enquiry now ordered it to be
+terminated, and the history of the commission was
+attempted to be involved in silent obscurity. Prayers
+were ordered in all the churches throughout Sweden
+for deliverance from the malice of Satan, who was
+believed to be let loose for the punishment of the
+land.<a name="FNanchor_156_156" id="FNanchor_156_156"></a><a href="#Footnote_156_156" class="fnanchor">156</a> It is remarkable that the incidents of the
+Swedish trials are chiefly reproductions of the
+evidence extracted in the courts of France and
+Germany.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_156_156" id="Footnote_156_156"></a><a href="#FNanchor_156_156"><span class="label">156</span></a> <i>Narratives of Sorcery, &amp;c.</i>, by Thomas Wright, who quotes the
+authorised reports. Sir Walter Scott refers to 'An account of what
+happened in the kingdom of Sweden in the years 1669, 1670, and
+afterwards translated out of High Dutch into English by Dr. Anthony
+Horneck, attached to Glanvil's <i>Sadducismus Triumphatus</i>. The
+translation refers to the evidence of Baron Sparr, ambassador from
+the court of Sweden to the court of England in 1672, and that of
+Baron Lyonberg, envoy-extraordinary of the same power, both of
+whom attest the confessions and execution of the witches. The
+King of Sweden himself answered the express inquiries of the Duke
+of Holstein with marked reserve. "His judges and commissioners,"
+he said, "had caused divers men, women, and children to be burnt
+and executed on such pregnant evidence as was brought before them;
+but whether the actions confessed and proved against them were
+real, or only the effect of a strong imagination, he was not as yet
+able to determine."'</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259" href="#Page_259">[259]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Witchcraft in the English Colonies in North America&mdash;Puritan
+Intolerance and Superstition&mdash;Cotton Mather's 'Late Memorable
+Providences'&mdash;Demoniacal Possession&mdash;Evidence given before
+the Commission&mdash;Apologies issued by Authority&mdash;Sudden Termination
+of the Proceedings&mdash;Reactionary Feeling against the
+Agitators&mdash;The Salem Witchcraft the last Instance of Judicial
+Prosecution on a large Scale in Christendom&mdash;Philosophers
+begin to expose the Superstition&mdash;Meritorious Labours of
+Webster, Becker, and others&mdash;Their Arguments could reach
+only the Educated and Wealthy Classes of Society&mdash;These only
+partially Enfranchised&mdash;The Superstition continues to prevail
+among the Vulgar&mdash;Repeal of the Witch Act in England in
+1736&mdash;Judicial and Popular Persecutions in England in the
+Eighteenth Century&mdash;Trial of Jane Wenham in England in 1712&mdash;Maria
+Renata burned in Germany in 1749&mdash;La Cadi&egrave;re in
+France&mdash;Last Witch burned in Scotland in 1722&mdash;Recent Cases
+of Witchcraft&mdash;Protestant Superstition&mdash;Witchcraft in the
+Extra-Christian World.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="chap">A review</span> of the superstitions of witchcraft would
+be incomplete without some notice of the Salem
+witches in New England. An equally melancholy
+and mischievous access of fanatic credulity, during
+the years 1688-1692, overwhelmed the colony of
+Massachusetts with a multitude of demons and their
+human accomplices; and the circumstances of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260" href="#Page_260">[260]</a></span>
+period were favourable to the vigour of the delusion.
+In the beginning of their colonisation the New Englanders
+were generally a united community; they
+were little disturbed by heresy; and if they had
+been thus infected they were too busily engaged in
+contending against the difficulties and dangers of a
+perilous position to be able to give much attention
+to differences in religious belief. But soon the <i>purity</i>
+of their faith was in danger of being corrupted by
+heretical immigrants. The Puritans were the most
+numerous and powerful of the fugitives from political
+and religious tyranny in England, and the dominant
+sect in North America almost as severely oppressed
+Anabaptists and Quakers in the colonies as they themselves,
+religious exiles from ecclesiastical despotism,
+had suffered in the old world. They proved themselves
+worthy followers of the persecutors of Servetus.
+Other enemies from without also were active in
+seeking the destruction of the true believers. Fierce
+wars and struggles were continuously being waged
+with the surrounding savages, who regarded the increasing
+prosperity and number of the intruders with
+just fear and resentment.</p>
+
+<p>Imbued as the colonists were with demoniacal
+prepossessions, it is not so surprising that they deemed
+their rising State beset by spiritual enemies; and it
+is fortunate, perhaps, that the wilds of North America
+were not still more productive of fiends and witches,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261" href="#Page_261">[261]</a></span>
+and more destructive massacres than that of 1690-92
+did not disgrace their colonial history. From the pen
+of Dr. Cotton Mather, Fellow of Harvard College, and
+his father (who was the Principal), we have received
+the facts of the history. These two divines and their
+opinions obtained great respect throughout the colony.
+They devoutly received the orthodox creed as expounded
+in the writings of the ancient authorities
+on demonology, firmly convinced of the reality of
+the present wanderings of Satan 'up and down' in
+the earth; and Dr. Cotton Mather was at the same
+time the chief supporter and the historian of the
+demoniacal war now commenced. It was significantly
+initiated by the execution of a papist, an Irishman
+named Glover, who was accused of having bewitched
+the daughters of a mason of Boston, by name Goodwin.
+These girls, of infantile age, suffered from
+convulsive fits, the ordinary symptom of 'possession.'
+Mather received one of them into his house for the
+purpose of making experiments, and, if possible, to
+exorcise the evil spirits. She would suddenly, in
+presence of a number of spectators, fall into a trance,
+rise up, place herself in a riding attitude as if setting
+out for the Sabbath, and hold conversation with invisible
+beings. A peculiar phase of this patient's case was
+that when under the influence of 'hellish charms'
+she took great pleasure in reading or hearing 'bad'
+books, which she was permitted to do with perfect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262" href="#Page_262">[262]</a></span>
+freedom. Those books included the Prayer Book of
+the English Episcopal Church, Quakers' writings, and
+popish productions. Whenever the Bible was taken
+up, the devil threw her into the most fearful convulsions.</p>
+
+<p>As a result of this <i>diagnosis</i> appeared the publication
+of 'Late Memorable Providences relating to
+Witchcraft and Possession,' which, together with
+Baxter's 'Certainty of the World of Spirits,' a work
+Mather was careful to distribute and recommend to
+the people, increased the fever of fear and fanaticism
+to the highest pitch. The above incidents were the
+prelude only to the proper drama of the Salem
+witches. In 1692, two girls, the daughter and niece
+of Mr. Parvis, minister, suffering from a disease
+similar to that of the Goodwins, were pronounced to
+be preternaturally afflicted. Two miserable Indians,
+man and wife, servants in the family, who indiscreetly
+attempted to cure the witch-patients by means of
+some charm or drug, were suspected themselves as
+the guilty agents, and sent to execution. The physicians,
+who seem to have been entirely ignorant of
+the origin of these attacks, and as credulous as the
+unprofessional world, added fresh testimony to the
+reality of 'possession.'<a name="FNanchor_157_157" id="FNanchor_157_157"></a><a href="#Footnote_157_157" class="fnanchor">157</a> At first, persons of the
+lower classes and those who, on account of their ill-repute,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263" href="#Page_263">[263]</a></span>
+would be easily recognised to be diabolic
+agents, were alone incriminated. But as the excitement
+increased others of higher rank were pointed
+out. A <i>black</i> man was introduced on the stage in the
+form of an Indian of terrible aspect and portentous
+dimensions, who had threatened the christianising
+colonists with extermination for intruding their faith
+upon the reluctant heathen. In May 1692, a new
+governor, Sir William Phipps, arrived with a new
+charter (the old one had been suspended) from England;
+this official, far from discouraging the existing
+prejudices, urged the local authorities on to greater
+extravagance. The examinations were conducted in
+the ordinary and most approved manner, the Lord's
+Prayer and the secret marks being the infallible
+tests. Towards the end of May two women, Bridget
+Bishop and Susannah Martin, were hanged.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_157_157" id="Footnote_157_157"></a><a href="#FNanchor_157_157"><span class="label">157</span></a> A phenomenon of apparently the same sort as that which was
+of such frequent occurrence in the Middle Age and in the seventeenth
+century, is said to have been lately occupying considerable attention
+in the South of France. The <i>Courrier des Alpes</i> narrates an extraordinary
+scene in one of the churches in the <i>Commune</i> of Morzine,
+among the women, on occasion of the visitation of the bishop of the
+district. It seems that the malady in question attacks, for the most
+part, the female population, and the patients are confidently styled,
+and asserted to be, <i>possessed</i>. It 'produces all the effects of madness,
+without having its character,' and is said to baffle all the resources
+of medical science, which is ignorant of its nature. There
+had been an intermission of the convulsions for some time, but they
+have now reappeared with greater violence than ever.&mdash;<i>The Times</i>
+newspaper, June 6, 1864.</p></div>
+
+<p>On June 2, a formal commission sat, before which
+the most ridiculous evidence was gravely given and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264" href="#Page_264">[264]</a></span>
+as gravely received. John Louder deposed against
+Bridget Bishop, 'that upon some little controversy
+with Bishop about her fowls going well to bed, he
+did awake in the night by moonlight, and did see
+clearly the likeness of this woman grievously oppressing
+him, in which miserable condition she held
+him unable to help himself till next day. He told
+Bishop of this, but she denied it, and threatened
+him very much. Quickly after this, being at home
+on a Lord's day with the doors shut about him, he
+saw a black pig approach him, at which he going to
+kick, it vanished away. Immediately after sitting
+down he saw a black thing jump in at the window
+and come and stand before him. The body was like
+that of a monkey, the feet like a cock's, but the face
+much like that of a man.<a name="FNanchor_158_158" id="FNanchor_158_158"></a><a href="#Footnote_158_158" class="fnanchor">158</a> He being so extremely
+affrighted that he could not speak, this monster spoke
+to him and said, "I am a messenger sent unto you,
+for I understand that you are in some trouble of mind,
+and if you will be ruled by me you shall want for
+nothing in this world." Whereupon he endeavoured
+to clap his hands upon it, but he could feel no substance;
+and it jumped out of window again, but immediately
+came in by the porch (though the doors
+were shut) and said, "You had better take my counsel."
+He then struck at it with a stick, and struck
+only the ground and broke the stick. The arm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265" href="#Page_265">[265]</a></span>
+with which he struck was presently disabled, and it
+vanished away. He presently went out at the back
+door, and spied this Bishop in her orchard going
+towards her house, but he had no power to set one
+foot forward to her; whereupon, returning into the
+house, he was immediately accosted by the monster
+he had seen before, which goblin was now going to
+fly at him; whereat he cried out, "The whole armour
+of God be between me and you!" so it sprung back
+and flew over the apple-tree, shaking many apples
+off the tree in its flying over. At its leap, it flung
+dirt with its feet against the stomach of the man,
+whereupon he was then struck dumb, and so continued
+for three days together.' Another witness
+declared in court; that, 'being in bed on the Lord's
+day, at night he heard a scrambling at the window;
+whereat he then saw Susanna Martin come in and
+jump down upon the floor. She took hold of this
+deponent's foot, and, drawing his body into a heap,
+she lay upon him nearly two hours, in all which time
+he could neither speak nor stir. At length, when he
+could begin to move, he laid hold on her hand, and,
+pulling it up to his mouth, he bit some of her fingers,
+as he judged into the bone; whereupon she went
+from the chamber down stairs out at the door,' &amp;c.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_158_158" id="Footnote_158_158"></a><a href="#FNanchor_158_158"><span class="label">158</span></a> 'Rara avis in terris.' A mongrel and anomalous species like the
+German <i>Meerkatzen</i>&mdash;monkey-cats.</p></div>
+
+<p>On July 19 five women, and on August 19, six
+persons, were sent to the gallows, among whom was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266" href="#Page_266">[266]</a></span>
+Mr. George Burroughs, minister, who had provoked
+his judges by questioning the very existence of
+witchcraft. At the last moments he so favourably
+impressed the assembled spectators by an eloquent
+address, that Dr. Mather, who was present, found it
+necessary to prevent the progress of a reactionary
+feeling by asserting that the criminal was no regularly
+ordained minister, and the devil has often been
+transformed into an angel of light. So transparently
+iniquitous and absurd had their mode of procedure
+become, that one of the subordinates in the service
+of the authorities, whose office it was to arrest the
+accused, refused to perform any longer his hateful
+office, and being himself denounced as an accomplice,
+he sought safety in flight. He was captured and
+executed as a recusant and wizard. Eight sorcerers
+suffered the extreme penalty of the law on September
+22. Giles Gory, a few days before, indignantly refusing
+to plead, was 'pressed to death,' an accustomed
+mode of punishing obstinate prisoners; and
+in the course of this torture, it is said, when the
+tongue of the victim was forced from his mouth in
+the agony of pain, the presiding sheriff forced it back
+with his cane with much <i>sang froid</i>. At this stage
+in the proceedings, the magistrates considered that a
+justificatory memoir ought to be published for the
+destruction of twenty persons of both sexes, and, at
+the express desire of the governor, Cotton Mather<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267" href="#Page_267">[267]</a></span>
+drew up an Apology in the form of a treatise, 'More
+Wonders of the Invisible World,' in which the Salem,
+executions are justified by the precedent of similar
+and notorious instances in the mother-country, as well
+as by the universally accepted doctrines of various
+eminent authors of all ages and countries. Increase
+Mather, Principal of Harvard College, was also directed
+to solve the question whether the devil could sometimes
+assume the shape of a saint to effect his particular
+design. The reverend author resolved it
+affirmatively in a learned treatise, which he called (a
+seeming plagiarism) 'Cases of Conscience concerning
+Witchcraft and Evil Spirits personating Men,' an
+undertaking prompted by an unforeseen and disagreeable
+circumstance. The wife of a minister, one
+of the most active promoters of the prosecution, was
+involved in the indiscriminate charges of the informers,
+who were beginning to aim at more exalted
+prey. The minister, alarmed at the unexpected
+result of his own agitation, was now convinced of the
+falseness of the whole proceeding. It was a fortunate
+occurrence. From that time the executions
+ceased.<a name="FNanchor_159_159" id="FNanchor_159_159"></a><a href="#Footnote_159_159" class="fnanchor">159</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_159_159" id="Footnote_159_159"></a><a href="#FNanchor_159_159"><span class="label">159</span></a> If, however, individuals of the human species were at length exempt
+from the penalty of death, those of the canine species were
+sacrificed, perhaps vicariously. Two dogs, convicted, as it is reported,
+of being accessories, were solemnly hanged!</p></div>
+
+<p>The dangerously increasing class of informers who,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268" href="#Page_268">[268]</a></span>
+like the 'delatores' of the early Roman Empire,
+made a lucrative profession by their baseness, and
+spared not even reluctant or recusant magistrates
+themselves, more than anything else, was the cause
+of the termination of the trials. If they would preserve
+their own lives, or at least their reputations,
+the authorities and judges found it was necessary at
+once to check the progress of the infection. About
+one hundred and fifty witches or wizards were still
+under arrest (two hundred more being about to be
+arrested), when Governor Phipps having been recalled
+by the Home Government, was induced by a feeling
+of interest or justice to release the prisoners, to the
+wonder and horror of the people. From this period
+a reaction commenced. Those who four years before
+originated the trials suddenly became objects of
+hatred or contempt. Even the clergy, who had taken
+a leading part in them, became unpopular. In spite
+of the strenuous attempts of Dr. Cotton Mather and
+his disciples to revive the agitation, the tide of
+public opinion or feeling had set the other way, and
+people began to acknowledge the insufficiency of the
+evidence and the possible innocence of the condemned.
+Public fasts and prayers were decreed
+throughout the colony. Judges and juries emulated
+one another in admitting a misgiving 'that we were
+sadly deluded and mistaken.' Dr. Mather was less
+fickle and less repentant. In one of his treatises on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269" href="#Page_269">[269]</a></span>
+the subject, recounting some of the signs and proofs
+of the actual crime, he declares: 'Nor are these the
+tenth part of the prodigies that fell out among the
+inhabitants of New England. <i>Fleshy</i> people may
+burlesque these things: but when hundreds of the
+most solemn people, in a country where they have
+as much mother-wit certainly as the rest of mankind,
+know them to be true, nothing but the froward spirit
+of Sadduceeism can question them. I have not yet
+(he confidently asserts) mentioned so much as one
+thing that will not be justified, if it be required, by
+the oaths of more considerate persons than any that
+can ridicule these odd phenomena.'<a name="FNanchor_160_160" id="FNanchor_160_160"></a><a href="#Footnote_160_160" class="fnanchor">160</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_160_160" id="Footnote_160_160"></a><a href="#FNanchor_160_160"><span class="label">160</span></a> <i>Narratives of Sorcery and Magic</i>, chap. xxxi. The faith of the
+Fellow of Harvard College, we may be inclined to suppose, was
+quickened in proportion to his doubts. To do him justice, he admitted
+that <i>some</i> of the circumstances alleged might be exaggerated
+or even imaginary.</p></div>
+
+<p>So ended the last of public and judicial persecutions
+of considerable extent for witchcraft in Christendom.
+As far as the superior intellects were concerned,
+philosophy could now dare to reaffirm that reason
+'must be our last judge and guide in everything.'
+Yet Folly, like Dulness, 'born a goddess, never dies;'
+and many of the higher classes must have experienced
+some silent regrets for an exploded creed which held
+the reality of the constant personal interference of
+the demons in human affairs. The fact that the
+great body of the people of every country in Europe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270" href="#Page_270">[270]</a></span>
+remained almost as firm believers as their ancestors
+down to the present age, hardly needs to be insisted
+on; that theirs was a <i>living</i> faith is evidenced in
+the ever-recurring popular outbreaks of superstitious
+ignorance, resulting both in this country and on the
+Continent often in the deaths of the objects of their
+diabolic fear.</p>
+
+<p>Such arguments as those of Webster in England,
+of Becker and Thomasius in Germany, on the
+special subject of witchcraft, and the general arguments
+of Locke or of Bayle, could be addressed
+only to the few.<a name="FNanchor_161_161" id="FNanchor_161_161"></a><a href="#Footnote_161_161" class="fnanchor">161</a> Nor indeed would it be philosophical
+to expect that the vulgar should be able
+to penetrate an inveterate superstition that recently<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271" href="#Page_271">[271]</a></span>
+had been universally credited by the learned world.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_161_161" id="Footnote_161_161"></a><a href="#FNanchor_161_161"><span class="label">161</span></a> Dr. Balthazar Becker, theological professor at Amsterdam, published
+his heretical work in Dutch, under the title of 'The World
+Bewitched, or a Critical Investigation of the commonly-received
+Opinion respecting Spirits, their Nature, Power, and Acts, and all
+those extraordinary Feats which Men are said to perform through
+their Aid;' 1691. 'He founds his arguments on two grand principles&mdash;that
+from their very nature spirits cannot act upon material
+beings, and that the Scriptures represent the devil and his satellites
+as shut up in the prison of hell. To explain away the texts which
+militate against his system, evidently cost him much labour and
+perplexity. His interpretations, for the most part, are similar to
+those still relied on by the believers in his doctrine' (Note by Murdock
+in Mosheim's <i>Institutes of <ins title="corrected typo Eccclesiastical">Ecclesiastical</ins> History</i>). The usually
+candid Mosheim notices, apparently with contempt, '"The World
+Bewitched," a prolix and copious work, in which he perverts and
+explains away, with no little ingenuity indeed, but with no less audacity,
+whatever the sacred volume relates of persons possessed by evil
+spirits, and of the power of demons, and maintains that the miserable
+being whom the sacred writers call Satan and the devil, together
+with his ministers, is bound with everlasting chains in hell, so that
+he cannot thence go forth to terrify mortals and to plot against the
+righteous.' Balthazar Becker, one of the most meritorious of the
+opponents of diabolism, was deposed from his ministerial office by
+an ecclesiastical synod, and denounced as an atheist. His position,
+and the boldness of his arguments, excited extraordinary attention
+and animosity, and 'vast numbers' of Lutheran divines arose to
+confute his atheistical heresy. The impunity which he enjoyed
+from the vengeance of the devil (he had boldly challenged the deity
+of hell to avenge his overturned altars) was explained by the orthodox
+divines to be owing to the superior cunning of Satan, who was
+certain that he would be in the end the greatest gainer by unbelief.
+Christ. Thomasius, professor of jurisprudence, was the author of
+several works against the popular prejudice between the years 1701
+and 1720. He is considered by Ennemoser to have been able to
+effect more from his professional position than the humanely-minded
+Becker. But, after all, the overthrow of the diabolic altars was
+caused much more by the discoveries of science than by all the writings
+of literary philosophers. Even in Southern Europe and in Spain
+(as far as was possible in that intolerant land) reason began to exhibit
+some faint signs of existence; and Benito Feyjo&oacute;, whose Addisonian
+labours in the eighteenth century in the land of the Inquisition
+deserve the gratitude of his countrymen (in his <i>T&eacute;atro Critico</i>),
+dared to raise his voice, however feeble, in its behalf.</p></div>
+
+<p>The cessation of legal procedure against witches
+was negative rather than positive: the enactments in
+the statute-books were left unrepealed, and so seemed
+not to altogether discountenance a still somewhat
+doubtful prejudice. It was so late as in the ninth
+year of the reign of George II., 1736, that the Witch
+Act of 1604 was formally and finally repealed. By a
+tardy exertion of sense and justice the Legislature
+then enacted that, for the future, no prosecutions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272" href="#Page_272">[272]</a></span>
+should be instituted on account of witchcraft, sorcery,
+conjuration, enchantment, &amp;c., against any person or
+persons. Unfortunately for the credit of civilisation,
+it would be easy to enumerate a long list of <i>illegal</i>
+murders both before and since 1736. One or two of
+the most remarkable cases plainly evincing, as Scott
+thinks, that the witch-creed 'is only asleep, and
+might in remote corners be again awakened to deeds of
+blood,' are too significant not to be briefly referred
+to. In 1712 Jane Wenham, a poor woman belonging
+to the village of Walkern, in the county of Hertford,
+was solemnly found guilty by the jury on the evidence
+of sixteen witnesses, of whom three were
+clergymen; Judge Powell presiding. She was condemned
+to death as a witch in the usual manner;
+but was reprieved on the representation of the judge.
+She had been commonly known in the neighbourhood
+of her home as a malicious witch, who took great
+pleasure in afflicting farmers' cattle and in effecting
+similar mischief. The incumbent of Walkern,
+the Rev. Mr. Gardiner, fully shared the prejudice of
+his parishioners; and, far from attempting to dispel,
+he entirely concurred with, their suspicions. A warrant
+was obtained from the magistrate, Sir Henry
+Chauncy, for the arrest of the accused: and she was
+brought before that local official; depositions were
+taken, and she was searched for 'marks.' The vicar
+of Ardley, a neighbouring village, tested her guilt or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273" href="#Page_273">[273]</a></span>
+innocence with the Lord's Prayer, which was repeated
+incorrectly: by threats and other means he forced
+the confession that she was indeed an agent of the
+devil, and had had intercourse with him.</p>
+
+<p>But, even in the middle of the eighteenth century,
+witches were occasionally tried and condemned
+by judicial tribunals. In the year 1749, Maria or
+Emma Renata, a nun in the convent of Unterzell,
+near W&uuml;rzburg, was condemned by the spiritual, and
+executed by the civil, power. By the clemency of
+the prince, the proper death by burning alive was
+remitted to the milder sentence of beheading, and
+afterwards burning the corpse to ashes: for no vestige
+of such an accursed criminal should be permitted
+to remain after death. When a young girl Maria
+Renata had been seduced to witchcraft by a military
+officer, and was accustomed to attend the witch-assemblies.
+In the convent she practised her infernal
+arts in bewitching her sister-nuns.<a name="FNanchor_162_162" id="FNanchor_162_162"></a><a href="#Footnote_162_162" class="fnanchor">162</a> About the same
+time a nun in the south of France was subjected to
+the barbarous imputation and treatment of a witch:
+Father Girard, discovering that his mistress had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274" href="#Page_274">[274]</a></span>
+some extraordinary scrofulous marks, conceived the
+idea of proclaiming to the world that she was possessed
+of the <i>stigmata</i>&mdash;impressions of the marks of
+the nails and spear on the crucified Lord, believed to
+be reproduced on the persons of those who, like the
+celebrated St. Francis, most nearly assimilated their
+lives to His. The Jesuits eagerly embraced an opportunity
+of producing a miracle which might confound
+their Jansenist rivals, whose sensational miracles
+were threatening to eclipse their own.<a name="FNanchor_163_163" id="FNanchor_163_163"></a><a href="#Footnote_163_163" class="fnanchor">163</a> Sir Walter
+Scott states that the last judicial sentence of death
+for witchcraft in Scotland was executed in 1722, when
+Captain David Ross, sheriff of Sutherland, condemned
+a woman to the stake. As for illegal persecution,
+M. Garinet ('Histoire de la Magie en France') gives
+a list of upwards of twenty instances occurring in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275" href="#Page_275">[275]</a></span>
+France between the years 1805 and 1818. In the
+latter year three tribunals were occupied with the
+trials of the murderers.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_162_162" id="Footnote_162_162"></a><a href="#FNanchor_162_162"><span class="label">162</span></a> Ennemoser relates the history of this witch from 'The Christian
+address at the burning of Maria Renata, of the convent of Unterzell,
+who was burnt on June 21, 1749, which address was delivered
+to a numerous multitude, and afterwards printed by command
+of the authorities.' The preacher earnestly insisted upon the divine
+sanction and obligation of the Mosaic law, 'Thou shalt not suffer a
+witch to live,' which was taken as the text; and upon the fact that,
+so far from being abolished by Christianity, it was made more imperative
+by the Christian Church.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_163_163" id="Footnote_163_163"></a><a href="#FNanchor_163_163"><span class="label">163</span></a> The victim of the pleasure, and afterwards of the ambition, of
+Father Girard, is known as La Cadi&egrave;re. She was a native of Toulon,
+and when young had witnessed the destructive effects of the plague
+which devastated that city in 1720. Amidst the confusion of society
+she was distinguished by her purity and benevolence. The story of
+La Cadi&egrave;re and Father Girard is eloquently narrated by M. Michelet
+in <i>La Sorci&egrave;re</i>. The convulsions of the Flagellants of the thirteenth
+century, and of the Protestant Revivalists of the present day, exhibit
+on a large scale the paroxysms of the French convents and the Dutch
+orphan-houses of the seventeenth century. Nor is diabolical 'possession'
+yet extinct in Christendom, if the reports received from time to
+time from the Continent are to be credited. Recently, a convent of
+Augustinian nuns at Loretto, on the authority of the <i>Corriere delle
+Marche</i> of Ancona, was attacked in a similar way to that of Loudun.
+A vomiting of needles and pins, the old diabolical torture, and a
+strict examination of the accused, followed.</p></div>
+
+<p>If a belief should be entertained that the now
+'vulgar' ideas of witchcraft have been long obsolete
+in England, it would be destroyed by a perusal of a
+few of the newspapers and periodicals of the last
+hundred years; and a sufficiently voluminous work
+might be occupied with the achievements of modern
+Sidrophels, and the records of murders or mutilations
+perpetrated by an ignorant mob.<a name="FNanchor_164_164" id="FNanchor_164_164"></a><a href="#Footnote_164_164" class="fnanchor">164</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_164_164" id="Footnote_164_164"></a><a href="#FNanchor_164_164"><span class="label">164</span></a> Without noticing other equally notorious instances of recent
+years, it may be enough (to dispel any such possible illusion) to
+transcribe a paragraph from an account in <i>The Times</i> newspaper of
+Sept. 24, 1863. 'It is a somewhat singular fact,' says the writer,
+describing a late notorious witch-persecution in the county of Essex,
+'that nearly all the sixty or seventy persons concerned in the outrage
+which resulted in the death of the deceased <i>were of the small tradesmen
+class</i>, and that none of the agricultural labourers were mixed up
+in the affair. It is also stated that none of those engaged were in any
+way under the influence of liquor. The whole disgraceful transaction
+arose out of a deep belief in witchcraft, which possesses to a lamentable
+extent the tradespeople and the lower orders of the district.'
+Nor does it appear that the village of Hedingham (the scene of the
+witch-murder) claims a superiority in credulity over other villages in
+Essex or in England. The instigator and chief agent in the Hedingham
+case was the wife of an innkeeper, who was convinced that she
+had been bewitched by an old wizard of reputation in the neighbourhood:
+and the mode of punishment was the popular one of drowning
+or suffocating in the nearest pond. Scraps of written papers found
+in the hovel of the murdered wizard revealed the numerous applications
+by lovers, wives, and other anxious inquirers. Amongst other
+recent revivals of the 'Black Art' in Southern Europe already referred
+to, the inquisition at Rome upon a well-known English or American
+'spiritualist,' when, as we learn from himself, he was compelled to
+make a solemn abjuration that he had not surrendered his soul to the
+devil, is significant.</p></div>
+
+<p>Nor would it be safe to assume, with some writers,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276" href="#Page_276">[276]</a></span>
+that diabolism, as a vulgar prejudice, is now entirely
+extirpated from Protestant Christendom, and survives
+only in the most orthodox countries of Catholicism
+or in the remoter parts of northern or eastern Europe.
+Superstition, however mitigated, exists even in the
+freer Protestant lands of Europe and America; and
+if Protestants are able to smile at the religious creeds
+or observances of other sects, they may have, it is
+probable, something less pernicious, but perhaps
+almost as absurd, in their own creed.<a name="FNanchor_165_165" id="FNanchor_165_165"></a><a href="#Footnote_165_165" class="fnanchor">165</a> But, after a
+despotism of fifteen centuries, Christendom has at
+length thrown off the hellish yoke, whose horrid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277" href="#Page_277">[277]</a></span>
+tyranny was satiated with innumerable holocausts.
+The once tremendous power of the infernal arts is
+remembered by the higher classes of society of the
+present age only in their proverbial language, but it is
+indelibly graven in the common literature of Europe.
+With the savage peoples of the African continent and
+of the barbarous regions of the globe, witchcraft or
+sorcery, under the name of Fetishism, flourishes
+with as much vigour and with as destructive effects
+as in Europe in the sixteenth century; and every
+traveller returning from Eastern or Western Africa,
+or from the South Pacific, testifies to the prevalence
+of the practice of horrid and bloody rites of a religious
+observance consisting of charms and incantations.
+With those peoples that have no further conception
+of the religious sentiment there obtains for
+the most part, at least, the magical use of sorcery.<a name="FNanchor_166_166" id="FNanchor_166_166"></a><a href="#Footnote_166_166" class="fnanchor">166</a>
+Superstition, ever varying, at some future date may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278" href="#Page_278">[278]</a></span>
+assume, even in Europe, a form as pernicious or
+irrational as any of a past or of the present age;
+for in every age 'religion, which should most distinguish
+us from beasts, and ought most peculiarly
+to elevate us as rational creatures above brutes, is
+that wherein men often appear most irrational and
+more senseless than beasts themselves.'<a name="FNanchor_167_167" id="FNanchor_167_167"></a><a href="#Footnote_167_167" class="fnanchor">167</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_165_165" id="Footnote_165_165"></a><a href="#FNanchor_165_165"><span class="label">165</span></a> A modern philosopher has well illustrated this obvious truth
+(<i>Natural History of Religion</i>, sect. xii.). 'The age of superstition,'
+says an essayist of some notoriety, with perfect truth, 'is not past;
+nor,' he adds, a more questionable thesis, 'ought we to wish it past.'
+Some of the most eminent writers (e.g. Plutarch, Francis Bacon,
+Bayle, Addison) have rightly or wrongly agreed to consider fanatical
+superstition more pernicious than atheism. When it is considered
+that the scientific philosophy of Aristotle, of more than 2,000 years
+ago, was revived at a comparatively recent date, it may be difficult
+not to believe in a <i>cyclic</i> rather than really progressive course of
+human ideas, at least in metaphysics. The fact, remarked by
+Macaulay, that the two principal sections of Christendom in Europe
+remain very nearly in the limits in which they were in the sixteenth,
+or in the middle of the seventeenth century, is incontestable. Nor,
+indeed, are present facts and symptoms so adverse, as is generally
+supposed, to the probability of an ultimate reaction in favour of
+Catholic doctrine and rule, even among the Teutonic peoples, in the
+revolutions to which human ideas are continually subject.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_166_166" id="Footnote_166_166"></a><a href="#FNanchor_166_166"><span class="label">166</span></a> Among the numerous evidences of recent travellers may be specially
+mentioned that of the well-known traveller R. F. Burton
+(<i>The Lake Regions of Central Africa</i>) for the practices of the Eastern
+Africans. On the African continent and elsewhere, as was the case
+amongst the ancient Jews, the demons are propitiated by human
+sacrifices. To what extent witch-superstition obtains among the
+Hindus, the historian of British India bears witness. 'The belief of
+witchcraft and sorcery,' says Mr. Mill, 'continues universally prevalent,
+and is every day the cause of the greatest enormities. It not
+unfrequently happens that Brahmins tried for murder before the
+English judges assign as their motive to the crime that the murdered
+individual had enchanted them. No fewer than five unhappy persons
+in one district were tried and executed for witchcraft so late
+as the year 1792. The villagers themselves assume the right of sitting
+in judgment on this imaginary offence, and their sole instruments of
+proof are the most wretched of all incantations (<i>History of British
+India</i>, book ii. 7). A certain instinctive or traditional dread of evil
+spirits excites the terrors of those peoples who have no firm belief in
+the providence or existence of a benevolent Divinity. Even among
+the Chinese&mdash;the least religious nation in the world, and whose trite
+formula of scepticism, 'Religions are many: Reason is one,' expresses
+their indifferentism to every form of religion&mdash;there exists a sort of
+demoniacal fear (Huc's <i>Chinese Empire</i>, <ins title="added period">xix.</ins>). The diabolic and
+magic superstitions of the Moslem are displayed in Sale's <i>Kor&acirc;n</i> and
+Lane's <i>Modern Egyptians</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_167_167" id="Footnote_167_167"></a><a href="#FNanchor_167_167"><span class="label">167</span></a> <i>Essay concerning the Human Understanding</i>, book iv. 18.</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class='center'>
+<p><br /></p>
+<table border="1" class="bbox" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="2" summary="Transcriber's Notes">
+<tr><td align='left'><a name="TRANSCRIBERS_NOTES" id="TRANSCRIBERS_NOTES"></a><h2>TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES</h2>
+
+<p>The footnotes have been moved and renumbered for easier reading; as a result,
+some of the page numbers are skewed in the HTML version.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_27">Page 27</a>: Deleted extra "the"</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_39">Page 39</a>: Removed comma after "Scandinavians."</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_90">Page 90</a>: Added missing quotation mark.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_107">Page 107</a>: Corrected typo "Hutchison's."</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_165">Page 165</a>: Corrected typo "transsubstantiated."</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_232">Page 232</a>: Corrected typo "&#7985;&#956;&#8049;&#962;."</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_278">Page 278</a>: Added period after "xix."</p>
+</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
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@@ -0,0 +1,8040 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Superstitions of Witchcraft, by Howard
+Williams
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Superstitions of Witchcraft
+
+
+Author: Howard Williams
+
+
+
+Release Date: October 1, 2007  [eBook #22822]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SUPERSTITIONS OF WITCHCRAFT***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Julie Barkley, Suzan Flanagan, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Transcriber's notes
+
+   The "oe" ligature is represented as [oe].
+
+   The footnotes have been moved and renumbered for easier reading.
+
+   A list of corrections is included at the end of the book.
+
+
+
+
+
+SUPERSTITIONS OF WITCHCRAFT.
+
+London
+Printed by Spottiswoode and Co.
+New-Street Square
+
+
+THE SUPERSTITIONS OF WITCHCRAFT.
+
+by
+
+HOWARD WILLIAMS, M.A.
+
+St. John's College, Cambridge.
+
+'Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas,
+ Nocturnos lemures, portentaque Thessala rides?'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London:
+Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green.
+1865.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+'THE SUPERSTITIONS OF WITCHCRAFT' is designed to exhibit a
+consecutive review of the characteristic forms and facts of a
+creed which (if at present apparently dead, or at least harmless,
+in Christendom) in the seventeenth century was a living and
+lively faith, and caused thousands of victims to be sent to the
+torture-chamber, to the stake, and to the scaffold. At this day,
+the remembrance of its superhuman art, in its different
+manifestations, is immortalised in the every-day language of the
+peoples of Europe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The belief in Witchcraft is, indeed, in its full development and
+most fearful results, modern still more than mediaeval, Christian
+still more than Pagan, and Protestant not less than Catholic.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+PART I.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+     The Origin, Prevalence, and Variety of Superstition--The
+       Belief in Witchcraft the most horrid Form of
+       Superstition--Most flourishing in the Sixteenth and
+       Seventeenth Centuries--The Sentiments of Addison,
+       Blackstone, and the Lawyers of the Eighteenth Century
+       upon the Subject--Chaldean and Persian Magic--Jewish
+       Witchcraft--Its important Influence on Christian and
+       Modern Belief--Greek Pharmacy and Sorcery--Early Roman
+       Laws against Conjuration and Magic Charms--Crimes
+       perpetrated, under the Empire, in connection with
+       Sorceric Practices--The general Persecution for Magic
+       under Valentinian and Valens--German and Scandinavian
+       Sagae--Essential Difference between Eastern and Western
+       Sorcery--The probable Origin of the general Belief in an
+       Evil Principle                                        PAGE 3
+
+
+PART II.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+     Compromise between the New and the Old Faiths--Witchcraft
+       under the Early Church--The Sentiments of the Fathers and
+       the Decrees of Councils--Platonic Influences--Historical,
+       Physiological, and Accidental Causes of the Attribution
+       of Witchcraft to the Female Sex--Opinions of the Fathers
+       and other Writers--The Witch-Compact                      47
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+     Charlemagne's Severity--Anglo-Saxon Superstition--Norman
+       and Arabic Magic--Influence of Arabic Science--Mohammedan
+       Belief in Magic--Rabbinical Learning--Roger Bacon--The
+       Persecution of the Templars--Alice Kyteler                63
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+     Witchcraft and Heresy purposely confounded by the
+       Church--Mediaeval Science closely connected with Magic and
+       Sorcery--Ignorance of Physiology the Cause of many of the
+       Popular Prejudices--Jeanne d'Arc--Duchess of
+       Gloucester--Jane Shore--Persecution at Arras              84
+
+
+PART III.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+     The Bull of Innocent VIII.--A new Incentive to the vigorous
+       Prosecution of Witchcraft--The 'Malleus Maleficarum'--Its
+       Criminal Code--Numerous Executions at the Commencement of
+       the Sixteenth Century--Examination of Christian
+       Demonology--Various Opinions of the Nature of
+       Demons--General Belief in the Intercourse of Demons and
+       other non-human Beings with Mankind                      101
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+     Three Sorts of Witches--Various Modes of Witchcraft--Manner
+       of Witch-Travelling--The Sabbaths--Anathemas of the Popes
+       against the Crime--Bull of Adrian VI.--Cotemporary
+       Testimony to the Severity of the Persecutions--Necessary
+       Triumph of the Orthodox Party--Germany most subject to
+       the Superstition--Acts of Parliament of Henry VIII.
+       against Witchcraft--Elizabeth Barton--The Act of
+       1562--Executions under Queen Elizabeth's Government--Case
+       of Witchcraft narrated by Reginald Scot                  126
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+     The 'Discoverie of Witchcraft,' published 1584--Wier's 'De
+       Praestigiis Daemonum,' &c.--Naude--Jean Bodin--His 'De la
+       Demonomanie des Sorciers,' published at Paris, 1580--His
+       Authority--Nider--Witch-case at Warboys--Evidence adduced
+       at the Trial--Remarkable as being the Origin of the
+       Institution of an Annual Sermon at Huntingdon            144
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+     Astrology in Antiquity--Modern Astrology and
+       Alchymy--Torralvo--Adventures of Dr. Dee and Edward
+       Kelly--Prospero and Comus, Types respectively of the
+       Theurgic and Goetic Arts--Magicians on the Stage in the
+       Sixteenth Century--Occult Science in Southern
+       Europe--Causes of the inevitable Mistakes of the
+       pre-Scientific Ages                                      157
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+     Sorcery in Southern Europe--Cause of the Retention of the
+       Demonological Creed among the Protestant Sects--Calvinists
+       the most Fanatical of the Reformed Churches--Witch-Creed
+       sanctioned in the Authorised Version of the Sacred
+       Scriptures--The Witch-Act of 1604--James VI.'s
+       'Demonologie'--Lycanthropy and Executions in France--The
+       French Provincial Parliaments active in passing Laws
+       against the various Witch-practices--Witchcraft in the
+       Pyrenees--Commission of Inquiry appointed--Its
+       Results--Demonology in Spain                             168
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+     'Possession' in France in the Seventeenth Century--Urbain
+       Grandier and the Convent of Loudun--Exorcism at
+       Aix--Ecstatic Phenomena--Madeleine Bavent--Her cruel
+       Persecution--Catholic and Protestant Witchcraft in
+       Germany--Luther's Demonological Fears and
+       Experiences--Originated in his exceptional Position and
+       in the extraordinary Circumstances of his Life and
+       Times--Witch-burning at Bamburg and at Wuerzburg          186
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+     Scotland one of the most Superstitious Countries in
+       Europe--Scott's Relation of the Barbarities perpetrated in
+       the Witch-trials under the Auspices of James VI.--The Fate
+       of Agnes Sampson, Euphane MacCalzean, &c.--Irrational
+       Conduct of the Courts of Justice--Causes of Voluntary
+       Witch-Confessions--Testimony of Sir G. Mackenzie,
+       &c.--Trial and Execution of Margaret Barclay--Computation
+       of the Number of Witches who suffered Death in England and
+       Scotland in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
+       Centuries--Witches burned alive at Edinburgh in 1608--The
+       Lancashire Witches--Sir Thomas Overbury and Dr.
+       Forman--Margaret Flower and Lord Rosse                   203
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+     The Literature of Europe in the Seventeenth Century proves
+       the Universality and Horror of Witchcraft--The most
+       acute and most liberal Men of Learning convinced of
+       its Reality--Erasmus and Francis Bacon--Lawyers prejudiced
+       by Legislation--Matthew Hale's judicial Assertion--Sir
+       Thomas Browne's Testimony--John Selden--The English
+       Church least Ferocious of the Protestant Sects--Jewell
+       and Hooker--Independent Tolerance--Witchcraft under
+       the Presbyterian Government--Matthew Hopkins--Gaule's
+       'Select Cases of Conscience'--Judicial and Popular Methods
+       of Witch-discovery--Preventive Charms--Witchfinders a Legal
+       and Numerous Class in England and Scotland--Remission in the
+       Severity of the Persecution under the Protectorship      219
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+     Glanvil's Sadducismus Triumphatus--His Sentiments on
+       Witchcraft and Demonology--Baxter's 'Certainty of the
+       World of Spirits,' &c.--Witch Trial at Bury St. Edmund's
+       by Sir Matthew Hale, 1664--The Evidence adduced in
+       Court--Two Witches hanged--Three hanged at Exeter in
+       1682--The last Witches judicially executed in
+       England--Uniformity of the Evidence adduced at the
+       Trials--Webster's Attack upon the Witch-creed in
+       1677--Witch Trials in England at the end of the
+       Seventeenth Century--French Parliaments vindicate the
+       Diabolic Reality of the Crime--Witchcraft in Sweden      237
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+     Witchcraft in the English Colonies in North
+       America--Puritan Intolerance and Superstition--Cotton
+       Mather's 'Late Memorable Providences'--Demoniacal
+       Possession--Evidence given before the
+       Commission--Apologies issued by Authority--Sudden
+       Termination of the Proceedings--Reactionary Feeling
+       against the Agitators--The Salem Witchcraft the last
+       Instance of Judicial Prosecution on a large Scale in
+       Christendom--Philosophers begin to expose the
+       Superstition--Meritorious Labours of Webster, Becker,
+       and others--Their Arguments could reach only the
+       Educated and Wealthy Classes of Society--These only
+       partially enfranchised--The Superstition continues to
+       prevail among the Vulgar--Repeal of the Witch Act in
+       England in 1736--Judicial and Popular Persecutions in
+       England in the Eighteenth Century--Trial of Jane
+       Wenham in England in 1712--Maria Renata burned in
+       Germany in 1749--La Cadiere in France--Last Witch
+       burned in Scotland in 1722--Recent Cases of
+       Witchcraft--Protestant Superstition--Witchcraft in the
+       Extra-Christian World                                    259
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+EARLIER FAITH.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+     The Origin, Prevalence, and Variety of Superstition--The
+     Belief in Witchcraft the most horrid Form of
+     Superstition--Most flourishing in the Sixteenth and
+     Seventeenth Centuries--The Sentiments of Addison,
+     Blackstone, and the Lawyers of the Eighteenth Century upon
+     the Subject--Chaldean and Persian Magic--Jewish
+     Witchcraft--Its important Influence on Christian and Modern
+     Belief--Greek Pharmacy and Sorcery--Early Roman Laws against
+     Conjuration and Magic Charms--Crimes perpetrated, under the
+     Empire, in connection with Sorceric Practices--The general
+     Persecution for Magic under Valentinian and Valens--German
+     and Scandinavian Sagae--The probable Origin of the general
+     Belief in an Evil Principle.
+
+
+Superstition, the product of ignorance of causes, of the
+proneness to seek the solution of phenomena out of and beyond
+nature, and of the consequent natural but unreasoning dread of
+the Unknown and Invisible (ignorantly termed the supernatural),
+is at once universal in the extent, and various in the kinds,
+of its despotism. Experience and reason seem to prove that,
+inherent to and apparently coexistent with the human mind, it
+naturally originates in the constitution of humanity: in ignorance
+and uncertainty, in an instinctive doubt and fear of the
+_Unknown_. Accident may moderate its power among particular peoples
+and persons; and there are always exceptional minds whose
+natural temper and exercise of reason are able to free them from
+the servitude of a delusive imagination. For the mass of mankind,
+the germ of superstition, prepared to assume always a new shape
+and sometimes fresh vigour, is indestructible. The severest
+assaults are ineffectual to eradicate it: hydra-like, far from
+being destroyed by a seeming mortal stroke, it often raises its
+many-headed form with redoubled force.
+
+It will appear more philosophic to deplore the imperfection, than
+to deride the folly of human nature, when the fact that the
+superstitious sentiment is not only a result of mere barbarism or
+vulgar ignorance, to be expelled of course by civilisation and
+knowledge, but is indigenous in the life of every man, barbarous
+or civilised, pagan or Christian, is fully recognised. The
+enlightening influence of science, as far as it extends, is
+irresistible; and its progress within certain limits seems sure
+and almost omnipotent. But it is unfortunately limited in the
+extent of its influence, as well as uncertain in duration; while
+reason enjoys a feeble reign compared with ignorance and
+imagination.[1] If it is the great office of history to teach by
+experience, it is never useless to examine the causes and the
+facts of a mischievous creed that has its roots deep in the
+ignorant fears of mankind; but against the recurrence of the
+fatal effects of fanaticism apparent in the earliest and latest
+records of the world, there can be no sufficient security.
+
+  [1] That 'speculation has on every subject of human enquiry
+  three successive stages; in the first of which it tends to
+  explain the phenomena by supernatural agencies, in the
+  second by metaphysical abstractions, and in the third or
+  final state, confines itself to ascertaining their laws of
+  succession and similitude' (_System of Logic_, by J. S.
+  Mill), is a generalisation of Positive Philosophy, and a
+  theory of the Science of History, consistent probably with
+  the progress of knowledge among philosophers, but is
+  scarcely applicable to the mass of mankind.
+
+Dreams, magic terrors, miracles, witches, ghosts, portents, are
+some of the various forms superstition has invented and magnified
+to disturb the peace of society as well as of individuals. The
+most extravagant of these need not be sought in the remoter ages
+of the human race, or even in the 'dark ages' of European
+history: they are sufficiently evident in the legislation and
+theology, as well as in the popular prejudices of the seventeenth
+century.
+
+The belief in the _infernal_ art of witchcraft is perhaps the
+most horrid, as it certainly is the most absurd, phenomenon in
+the religious history of the world. Of the millions of victims
+sacrificed on the altars of religion this particular delusion can
+claim a considerable proportion. By a moderate computation, nine
+millions have been burned or hanged since the establishment of
+Christianity.[2] Prechristian antiquity experienced its
+tremendous power, and the primitive faith of Christianity easily
+accepted and soon developed it. It was reserved, however, for the
+triumphant Church to display it in its greatest horrors: and if
+we deplore the too credulous or accommodative faith of the early
+militant Church or the unilluminated ignorance of paganism, we
+may still more indignantly denounce the cruel policy of
+Catholicism and the barbarous folly of Protestant theology which
+could deliberately punish an impossible crime. It is the reproach
+of Protestantism that this persecution was most furiously raging
+in the age that produced Newton and Locke. Compared with its
+atrocities even the Marian burnings appear as nothing: and it may
+well be doubted whether the fanatic zeal of the 'bloody Queen,'
+is no less contemptible than the credulous barbarity of the
+judges of the seventeenth century. The period 1484 (the year in
+which Innocent VIII. published his famous 'Witch Hammer' signally
+ratified 120 years later by the Act of Parliament of James I. of
+England) to 1680 might be characterised not improperly as the era
+of devil-worship; and we are tempted almost to embrace the theory
+of Zerdusht and the Magi and conceive that Ahriman was then
+superior in the eternal strife; to imagine the _Evil One_, as in
+the days of the Man of Uz, 'going to and fro in the earth, and
+walking up and down in it.' It is come to that at the present
+day, according to a more rational observer of the seventeenth
+century, that it is regarded as a part of religion to ascribe
+great wonders to the devil; and those are taxed with infidelity
+and perverseness who hesitate to believe what thousands relate
+concerning his power. Whoever does not do so is accounted an
+atheist because he cannot persuade himself that there are two
+Gods, the one good and the other evil[3]--an assertion which is
+no mere hyperbole or exaggeration of a truth: there is the
+certain evidence of facts as well as the concurrent testimony of
+various writers.
+
+  [2] According to Dr. Sprenger (_Life of Mohammed_). Cicero's
+  observation that there was no people either so civilised or
+  learned, or so savage and barbarous, that had not a belief
+  that the future may be predicted by certain persons (De
+  Divinatione, i.), is justified by the faith of Christendom,
+  as well as by that of paganism; and is as true of witchcraft
+  as it is of prophecy or divination.
+
+  [3] Dr. Balthazar Becker, Amsterdam, 1691, quoted in
+  Mosheim's _Institutes of Ecclesiastical History_, ed. Reid.
+
+Those (comparatively few) whose reason and humanity alike
+revolted from a horrible dogma, loudly proclaim the prevailing
+prejudice. Such protests, however, were, for a long time at
+least, feeble and useless--helplessly overwhelmed by the
+irresistible torrent of public opinion. All classes of society
+were almost equally infected by a plague-spot that knew no
+distinction of class or rank. If theologians (like Bishop Jewell,
+one of the most esteemed divines in the Anglican Church,
+publicly asserting on a well known occasion at once his faith and
+his fears) or lawyers (like Sir Edward Coke and Judge Hale) are
+found unmistakably recording their undoubting conviction, they
+were bound, it is plain, the one class by theology, the other by
+legislation. Credulity of so extraordinary a kind is sufficiently
+surprising even in theologians; but what is to be thought of the
+deliberate opinion of unbiassed writers of a recent age
+maintaining the possibility, if not the actual occurrence, of the
+facts of the belief?
+
+The deliberate judgment of Addison, whose wit and preeminent
+graces of style were especially devoted to the extirpation of
+almost every sort of popular folly of the day, could declare:
+'When I hear the relations that are made from all parts of the
+world, not only from Norway and Lapland, from the East and West
+Indies, but from every particular nation in Europe, I cannot
+forbear thinking that there is such an intercourse and commerce
+with evil spirits as that which we express by the name of
+witchcraft.... In short, when I consider the question whether
+there are such persons in the world as those we call witches, my
+mind is divided between two opposite opinions; or rather, to
+speak my thoughts freely, I believe in general that there is and
+has been such a thing as witchcraft, but at the same time can
+give no credit to any particular modern instance of it.'[4]
+Evidence, if additional were wanted, how deference to authority
+and universal custom may subdue the reason and understanding. The
+language and decision of Addison are adopted by Sir W. Blackstone
+in 'Commentaries on the Laws of England,' who shelters himself
+behind that celebrated author's sentiment; and Gibbon informs us
+that 'French and English lawyers of the present age [the latter
+half of the last century] allow the _theory_ but deny the
+_practice_ of witchcraft'--influenced doubtless by the spirit of
+the past legislation of their respective countries. In England
+the famous enactment of the subservient parliament of James I.
+against the crimes of sorcery, &c., was repealed in the middle of
+the reign of George II., our laws sanctioning not 130 years since
+the popular persecution, if not the legal punishment.
+
+  [4] _Spectator_, No. 117. The sentiments of Addison on a
+  kindred subject are very similar. Writing about the vulgar
+  ghost creed, he adds these remarkable words: 'At the same
+  time I think a person who is thus terrified with the
+  imagination of ghosts and spectres much more reasonable than
+  one who, contrary to the reports of all historians, sacred
+  and profane, ancient and modern, and to the traditions of
+  all nations, thinks the appearance of spirits fabulous and
+  groundless. Could not I give myself up to the general
+  testimony of mankind, I should to the relations of
+  particular persons who are now living, and whom I cannot
+  distrust in other matters of fact.' Samuel Johnson (whose
+  prejudices were equalled only by his range of knowledge)
+  proved his faith in a well-known case, if afterwards he
+  advanced so far as to consider the question as to the
+  reality of 'ghosts' as _undecided_. Sir W. Scott, who wrote
+  when the profound metaphysical inquiries of Hume had gained
+  ground (it is observable), is quite sceptical.
+
+The origin of witchcraft and the vulgar diabolism is to be found
+in the rude beginnings of the religious or superstitious feeling
+which, known amongst the present savage nations as Fetishism,
+probably prevailed almost universally in the earliest ages; while
+that of the sublimer magic is discovered in the religious systems
+of the ancient Chaldeans and Persians. Chaldea and Egypt were the
+first, as far as is known, to cultivate the science of magic: the
+former people long gave the well-known name to the professional
+practisers of the art. Cicero (_de Divinatione_) celebrates, and
+the Jewish prophets frequently deride, their skill in divination
+and their modes of incantation. The story of Daniel evidences how
+highly honoured and lucrative was the magical or divining
+faculty. The Chazdim, or Chaldeans, a priestly caste inhabiting a
+wide and level country, must have soon applied themselves to the
+study, so useful to their interests, of their brilliant expanse
+of heavens. By a prolonged and 'daily observation,' considerable
+knowledge must have been attained; but in the infancy of the
+science astronomy necessarily took the form of an empirical art
+which, under the name of astrology, engaged the serious attention
+and perplexed the brains of the mediaeval students of science or
+magic (nearly synonymous terms), and which still survives in
+England in the popular almanacks. The natural objects of
+veneration to the inhabitants of Assyria were the glorious
+luminaries of the sun and moon; and if their worship of the stars
+and planets degenerated into many absurd fancies, believing an
+intimate connection and subordination of human destiny to
+celestial influences, it may be admitted that a religious
+sentiment of this kind in its primitive simplicity was more
+rational, or at least sublime, than most other religious systems.
+
+It is not necessary to trace the oriental creeds of magic further
+than they affected modern beliefs; but in the divinities and
+genii of Persia are more immediately traced the spiritual
+existences of Jewish and Christian belief. From the Persian
+priests are derived both the name and the practice of magic. The
+Evil Principle of the Magian, of the later Jewish, and thence of
+the western world, originated in the system (claiming Zoroaster
+as its founder), which taught a duality of Gods. The philosophic
+lawgiver, unable to penetrate the mystery of the empire of evil
+and misery in the world, was convinced that there is an equal and
+antagonistic power to the representative of light and goodness.
+Hence the continued eternal contention between Ormuzd with the
+good spirits or genii, Amchaspands, on one side, and Ahriman with
+the Devs (who may represent the infernal crew of Christendom) on
+the other. Egypt, in the Mosaic and Homeric ages, seems to have
+attained considerable skill in magic, as well as in chymistry and
+astrology. As an abstruse and esoteric doctrine, it was strictly
+confined to the priests, or to the favoured few who were admitted
+to initiation. The magic excellence of the magicians, who
+successfully emulated the miracles of Moses, was apparently
+assisted by a legerdemain similar to that of the Hindu jugglers
+of the present day.[5]
+
+  [5] The names of two of these magicians, Jannes and Jambres,
+  have been preserved by revelation or tradition.
+
+In Persian theology, the shadowy idea of the devil of western
+Asia was wholly different from the grosser conception of
+Christendom. Neither the evil principle of Magianism nor the
+witch of Palestine has much in common with the Christian. 'No
+contract of subjection to a diabolic power, no infernal stamp or
+sign of such a fatal league, no revellings of Satan and his
+hags,'[6] no such materialistic notions could be conformable to
+the spirit of Judaism or at least of Magianism. It is not
+difficult to find the cause of this essential dissimilarity. A
+simple unity was severely inculcated by the religion and laws of
+Moses, which permitted little exercise of the imagination: while
+the Magi were equally severe against idolatrous forms. A
+monstrous idea, like that of 'Satan and his hags,' was impossible
+to them. Christianity, the religion of the West, has received
+its _corporeal_ ideas of demonology from the divinities and
+demons of heathenism. The Satyri and Fauni of Greece and Rome
+have suggested in part the form, and perhaps some of the
+characteristics, of the vulgar Christian devil. A knowledge of
+the arts of magic among the Jews was probably derived from their
+Egyptian life, while the Bedouins of Arabia and Syria (kindred
+peoples) may have instilled the less scientific rites of
+Fetishism. It is in the early accounts of that people that
+sorcery, whatever its character and profession, with the allied
+arts of divination, necromancy, incantations, &c., appears most
+flourishing. The Mosaic penalty, 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch
+to live,' and the comprehensive injunction, 'There shall not be
+found among you that maketh his son or his daughter to pass
+through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of
+times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter
+with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer,' indicate
+at once the extent and the horror of the practice. Balaam (that
+equivocal prophet), on the border-land of Arabia and Palestine,
+was courted and dreaded as a wizard who could perplex whole
+armies by means of spells. His fame extended far and wide; he was
+summoned from his home beyond the Euphrates in the mountains of
+Mesopotamia by the Syrian tribes to repel the invading enemy.
+This great magician was, it seems, universally regarded as 'the
+rival and the possible conqueror of Moses.'[7]
+
+  [6] Sir W. Scott, _Letters on Demonology_.
+
+  [7] Dean Stanley's _Lectures on the Jewish Church_.
+
+About the time when the priestly caste had to yield to a profane
+monarchy, the forbidden practices were so notorious and the evil
+was of such magnitude, that the newly-elected prince 'ejected'
+(as Josephus relates) 'the fortune-tellers, necromancers, and all
+such as exercised the like arts.' His interview with the witch
+has some resemblance to modern _diablerie_ in the circumstances.
+Reginald Scot's rationalistic interpretation of this scene may be
+recommended to the commentating critics who have been so much at
+a loss to explain it. He derides the received opinion of the
+woman of Endor being an agent of the devil, and ignoring any
+mystery, believes, 'This Pythonist being a _ventriloqua_, that
+is, speaking as it were from the bottom of her belly, did cast
+herself into a trance and so abused Saul, answering to Saul
+in Samuel's name in her counterfeit hollow voice.[8] An
+institution very popular with the Jews of the first temple,
+often commemorated in their scriptures--the schools of the
+prophets--was (it is not improbable) of the same kind as the
+schools of Salamanca and Salerno in the middle ages, where magic
+was publicly taught as an abstruse and useful science; and when
+Jehu justifies his conduct towards the queen-mother by bringing a
+charge of witchcraft, he only anticipates an expedient common and
+successful in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
+A Jewish prophet asserts of the Babylonian kings, that they were
+diligent cultivators of the arts, reproaching them with
+practising against the holy city.
+
+  [8] _Discoverie of Witchcraft_, lib. viii. chap. 12. The
+  contrivance of this illusion was possibly like that at
+  Delphi, where in the centre of the temple was a chasm, from
+  which arose an intoxicating smoke, when the priestess was to
+  announce divine revelations. Seated over the chasm upon the
+  tripod, the Pythia was inspired, it seems, by the soporific
+  and maddening drugs.
+
+Yet if we may credit the national historian (not to mention the
+common traditions), the Chaldean monarch might have justly
+envied, if he could scarcely hope to emulate, the excellence of a
+former prince of his now obscure province. Josephus says of
+Solomon that, amongst other attainments, 'God enabled him to
+learn that skill which expels demons, which is a science useful
+and sanative to men. He composed such incantations also by which
+distempers are alleviated, and he left behind him the manner of
+using exorcisms by which they drive away demons so that they
+never return.'[9] The story of Daniel is well known. In the
+captivity of the two tribes carried away into an honourable
+servitude he soon rose into the highest favour, because, as we
+are informed, he excelled in a divination that surpassed all the
+art of the Chaldeans, themselves so famous for it. The inspired
+Jew had divined a dream or vision which puzzled 'the magicians,
+and the astrologers, and the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans,'
+and immediately was rewarded with the greatest gift at the
+disposal of a capricious despot. Most of the apologetic writers
+on witchcraft, in particular the authors of the 'Malleus
+Maleficarum,' accept the assertion of the author of the history
+of Daniel that Nebuchadnezzar was 'driven from men, and did eat
+grass as oxen,' in its apparent sense, expounding it as plainly
+declaring that he was corporeally metamorphosed into an ox, just
+as the companions of Ulysses were transformed into swine by the
+Circean sorceries.
+
+  [9] _Antiquities_, book viii. 2. Whiston's transl.
+
+The Jewish ideas of good or at least evil spirits or angels were
+acquired during their forced residence in Babylon, whether under
+Assyrian or Persian government. At least 'Satan' is first
+discovered unmistakably in a personal form in the poem of Job, a
+work pronounced by critics to have been composed after the
+restoration. In the Mosaic cosmogony and legislation, the writer
+introduces not, expressly or impliedly, the existence of an evil
+principle, unless the serpent of the Paradisaic account, which
+has been rather arbitrarily so metamorphosed, represents it;[10]
+while the expressions in books vulgarly reputed before the
+conquest are at least doubtful. From this time forward (from the
+fifth century B.C.), says a German demonologist, as the Jews
+lived among the admirers of Zoroaster, and thus became acquainted
+with their doctrines, are found, partly in contradiction to the
+earlier views of their religion, many tenets prevailing amongst
+them the origin of which it is impossible to explain except by
+the operation of the doctrines of Zoroaster: to these belongs the
+general acceptance of the theory of Satan, as well as of good and
+bad angels.[11] Under Roman government or vassalage, sorceric
+practices, as they appear in the Christian scriptures, were much
+in vogue. Devils or demons, and the 'prince of the devils,'
+frequently appear; and the _demoniacs_ may represent the victims
+of witchcraft. The Talmud, if there is any truth in the
+assertions of the apologists of witchcraft, commemorates many of
+the most virtuous Jews accused of the crime and executed by the
+procurator of Judea.[12] Exorcism was a very popular and
+lucrative profession.[13] Simon Magus the magician (_par
+excellence_), the impious pretender to miraculous powers, who
+'bewitched the people of Samaria by his sorceries,' is celebrated
+by Eusebius and succeeding Christian writers as the fruitful
+parent of heresy and sorcery.
+
+  [10] Some ingenious remarks on the subject of the serpent,
+  &c., may be found in _Eastern Life_, part ii. 5, by H.
+  Martineau.
+
+  [11] Horst, quoted in Ennemoser's _History of Magic_. It has
+  been often remarked as a singular phenomenon, that the
+  'chosen people,' so prompt in earlier periods on every
+  occasion to idolatry and its cruel rites, after its
+  restoration under Persian auspices, has been ever since
+  uniformly opposed, even fiercely, to any sign contrary to the
+  unity of the Deity. But the Magian system was equally averse
+  to idolatry.
+
+  [12] Bishop Jewell (_Apology for the Church of England_)
+  states that Christ was accused by the malice of his
+  countrymen of being a juggler and wizard--_praestigiator et
+  maleficus_. In the apostolic narrative and epistles, sorcery,
+  witchcraft, &c., are crimes frequently described and
+  denounced. The Sadducean sect alone denied the existence of
+  demons.
+
+  [13] The common belief of the people of Palestine in the
+  transcendent power of exorcism is illustrated by a miracle
+  of this sort, gravely related by Josephus. It was exhibited
+  before Vespasian and his army. 'He [Eleazar, one of the
+  professional class] put a ring that had a root of one of
+  those sorts mentioned by Solomon to the nostrils of the
+  demoniac; after which he drew out the demon through his
+  nostrils: and when the man fell down immediately he adjured
+  him to return into him no more, making still mention of
+  Solomon, and reciting the incantations which he composed.
+  And when Eleazar would demonstrate to the spectators that he
+  had such power, he set a little way off a cup or basin full
+  of water, and commanded the demon as he went out of the man
+  to overturn it, and thereby to let the spectators know he
+  had left the man.' This performance was received with
+  contempt or credulity by the spectators according to their
+  faith: but the credulity of the believers could hardly
+  exceed that of a large number of educated people, who in our
+  own generation detect in the miracles of animal magnetism,
+  or the legerdemain of jugglers, an infernal or supernatural
+  agency.
+
+That witchcraft, or whatever term expresses the criminal
+practice, prevailed among the worshippers of Jehovah, is evident
+from the repeated anathemas both in their own and the Christian
+scriptures, not to speak of traditional legends; but the Hebrew
+and Greek expressions seem both to include at least the use of
+drugs and perhaps of poison.[14] The Jewish creed, as exposed in
+their scriptures, has deserved a fame it would not otherwise
+have, because upon it have been founded by theologians, Catholic
+and Protestant, the arguments and apology for the reality of
+witchcraft, derived from the sacred writings, with an ingenuity
+only too common and successful in supporting peculiar prejudices
+and interests even of the most monstrous kind.[15]
+
+  [14] _Chashaph_ and _Pharmakeia._ Biblical critics are
+  inclined, however, to accept in its strict sense the
+  translation of the Jacobian divines. 'Since in the LXX.,'
+  says Parkhurst, the lexicographer of the N.T., 'this noun
+  [pharmakeia] and its relatives always answer to some Hebrew
+  word that denotes some kind of their magical or conjuring
+  tricks; and since it is too notorious to be insisted upon,
+  that such infernal practices have always prevailed, and do
+  still prevail in idolatrous countries, I prefer the other
+  sense of incantation.'
+
+  [15] A sort of ingenuity much exercised of late by 'sober
+  brows approving with a text' the institution of slavery:
+  _divine_, according to them; _the greatest evil that afflicts
+  mankind_, according to Alexander von Humboldt. See _Personal
+  Narrative_.
+
+In examining the phenomenon as it existed among the Greeks and
+Romans, it will be remarked that, while the Greeks seem to have
+mainly adopted the ideas of the East, the Roman superstition was
+of Italian origin. Their respective expressions for the
+predictive or presentient faculty (_manteia_ and _divinatio_), as
+Cicero is careful to explain, appear to indicate its different
+character with those two peoples: the one being the product of a
+sort of madness, the other an elaborate and divine skill. Greek
+traditions made them believe that the magic science was brought
+from Egypt or Asia by their old philosophic and legislating
+sages. Some of the most eminent of the founders of philosophic
+schools were popularly accused of encouraging it. Pythagoras (it
+is the complaint of Plato) is said to have introduced to his
+countrymen an art derived from his foreign travels; a charge
+which recalls the names of Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Galileo,
+and others, who had to pay the penalty of a premature knowledge
+by the suspicion of their cotemporaries. Xenophanes is said
+to be the only one of the philosophers who admitted the existence
+or providence of the gods, and at the same time entirely
+discredited divination. Of the Stoics, Panaetius was the only one
+who ventured even to doubt. Some gave credit to one or two
+particular modes only, as those of dreams and frenzy; but for the
+most part every form of this sort of divine revelation was
+implicitly received.[16]
+
+  [16] Cicero, in his second book _De Divinatione_, undertakes
+  to refute the arguments of the Stoics, 'the force of whose
+  mind, being all turned to the side of morals, unbent itself
+  in that of religion.' The divining faculty is divisible
+  generally into the artificial and the natural.
+
+The science of magic proper is developed in the later schools of
+philosophy, in which Oriental theology or demonology was largely
+mixed. Apollonius of Tyana, a modern Pythagorean, is the most
+famous magician of antiquity. This great miracle-worker of
+paganism was born at the commencement of the Christian era; and
+it has been observed that his miracles, though quite independent
+of them, curiously coincide both in time and kind with the
+Christian.[17] According to his biographer Philostratus, this
+extraordinary man (whose travels and researches extended, we are
+assured, over the whole East even into India, through Greece,
+Italy, Spain, northern Africa, Ethiopia, &c.) must have been in
+possession of a scientific knowledge which, compared with that of
+his cotemporaries, might be deemed almost supernatural.
+Extraordinary attainments suggested to him in later life to
+excite the awe of the vulgar by investing himself with magical
+powers. Apollonius is said to have assisted Vespasian in his
+struggle for the throne of the Caesars; afterwards, when accused
+of raising an insurrection against Domitian, and when he had
+given himself up voluntarily to the imperial tribunal at Rome, he
+escaped impending destruction by the exertion of his superhuman
+art.
+
+  [17] The proclamation of the birth of Apollonius to his
+  mother by Proteus, and the incarnation of Proteus himself,
+  the chorus of swans which sang for joy on the occasion, the
+  casting out of devils, raising the dead, and healing the
+  sick, the sudden appearances and disappearances of
+  Apollonius, his adventures in the cave of Trophonius, and
+  the sacred voice which called him at his death, to which may
+  be added his claim as a teacher having authority to reform
+  the world, 'cannot fail to suggest,' says a writer in the
+  _Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography_, &c., ed. by Dr.
+  W. Smith, 'the parallel passages in the Gospel history.'
+
+Of the incantations, charms, and magic compounds in the practice
+of Greek witchcraft, numerous examples occur in the tragic and
+comic poetry of Greece; and the _philtres_, or love-charms, of
+Theocritus are well known. The names of Colchis, Chaldea,
+Assyria, Iberia, Thrace, may indicate the origin of a great part
+of the Hellenic sorceries. Yet, if the more honourable science
+may have been of foreign extraction, Hellas was not without
+something of the sorcery of modern Europe. The infernal goddess
+Hecate, of Greek celebrity, is the omnipotent patroness of her
+modern Christian slaves; and she presides at the witch meetings
+of Christendom with as much solemnity but with far greater
+malice. Originally of celestial rank, by a later metamorphosis
+connected, if not personally identical with, Persephone,
+the Queen of Hades, Hecate was invested with many of the
+characteristic attributes of a modern devil, or rather perhaps of
+a witch. The triple goddess, in her various shapes, wandered
+about at night with the souls of the dead, terrifying the
+trembling country people by apparitions of herself and infernal
+satellites, by the horrible whining and howls of her hellhounds
+which always announced her approach. She frequented cross-roads,
+tombs, and melancholy places, especially delighting in localities
+famous for deeds of blood and murder. The hobgoblins, the various
+malicious demons and spirits, who provoked the lively terrors of
+the mediaeval peoples, had some prototypes in the fairy-land of
+Greece, in the Hecatean hobgoblins (like the Latin larvae, &c.),
+Empusa, Mormo, and other products of an affrighted imagination
+familiar to the students of Greek literature in the comic pages
+of Aristophanes.[18] From the earliest literary records down to
+the latest times of paganism as the state religion, from the
+times of the Homeric Circe and Ulysses (the latter has been
+recognised by many as a genuine wizard) to the age of Apollonius
+or Apuleius, magic and sorcery, as a philosophical science or as
+a vulgar superstition, had apparently more or less distinctly a
+place in the popular mythology of old Greece. But in the pagan
+history of neither Greece nor Rome do we read of holocausts of
+victims, as in Christian Europe, immolated on the altars of a
+horrid superstition.[19] The occasion of the composition of the
+treatise by Apuleius 'On Magic' is somewhat romantic. On his way
+to Alexandria, the philosopher, being disabled from proceeding on
+the journey, was hospitably received into the mansion of one
+Sicinius Pontianus. Here, during the interesting period of his
+recovery, he captivated, or was captivated by, the love of his
+host's mother, a wealthy widow, and the lovers were soon united
+by marriage. Pudentilla's relatives, indignant at the loss of a
+much-coveted, and perhaps long-expected fortune, brought an
+action against Apuleius for having gained her affection by means
+of spells or charms. The cause was heard before the proconsul of
+Africa, and the apology of the accused labours to convince his
+judges that a widow's love might be provoked without superhuman
+means.[20]
+
+  [18] Particularly in the _Batrachoi_. The dread of the
+  infernal apparition of the fierce Gorgo in Hades blanched
+  the cheek of even much-daring Odysseus (Od. xi. 633). The
+  satellites of Hecate have been compared, not
+  disadvantageously, with the monstrous guardians of hell;
+  than whom
+
+       'Nor uglier follow the night-hag when, called
+        In secret, riding through the air she comes
+        Lured with the smell of infant blood to dance
+        With Lapland witches--.'
+
+  [19] An exceptional case, on the authority of Demosthenes,
+  is that of a woman condemned in the year, or within a year
+  or two, of the execution of Socrates.
+
+  [20] St. Augustin, in denouncing the Platonic theories of
+  Apuleius, of the mediation and intercession of demons
+  between gods and men, and exposing his magic heresies, takes
+  occasion to taunt him with having evaded his just fate by
+  not professing, like the Christian martyrs, his real faith
+  when delivering his 'very copious and eloquent' apology (_De
+  Civitate Dei_, lib. viii. 19). In the _Golden Ass_ of the
+  Greek romancist of the second century, who, in common with
+  his cotemporary the great rationalist Lucian, deserves the
+  praise of having exposed (with more wit perhaps than
+  success) some of the most absurd prejudices of the day, his
+  readers are entertained with stories that might pretty
+  nearly represent the sentiments of the seventeenth century.
+
+Gibbon observes of the Roman superstition on the authority of
+Petronius, that it may be inferred that it was of Italian rather
+than barbaric extraction. Etruria furnished the people of Romulus
+with the science of divination. Early in the history of the
+Republic the law is very explicit on the subject of witchcraft.
+In the decemviral code the extreme penalty is attached to the
+crime of witchcraft or conjuration: 'Let him be capitally
+punished who shall have bewitched the fruits of the earth, or by
+either kind of conjuration (_excantando neque incantando_) shall
+have conjured away his neighbour's corn into his own field,' &c.,
+an enactment sneered at in Justinian's _Institutes_ in Seneca's
+words. A rude and ignorant antiquity, repeat the lawyers of
+Justinian, had believed that rain and storms might be attracted
+or repelled by means of spells or charms, the impossibility of
+which has no need to be explained by any school of philosophy. A
+hundred and fifty years later than the legislation of the
+decemvirs was passed the _Lex Cornelia_, usually cited as
+directed against sorcery: but while involving possibly the more
+shadowy crime, it seems to have been levelled against the more
+'substantial poison.' The conviction and condemnation of 170
+Roman ladies for poisoning, under pretence of incantation, was
+the occasion and cause. Sulla, when dictator, revived this act
+_de veneficiis et malis sacrificiis_, for breach of which the
+penalty was 'interdiction of fire and water.' Senatorial
+anathemas, or even those of the prince, were ineffective to check
+the continually increasing abuses, which towards the end of the
+first century of the empire had reached an alarming height.[21]
+
+  [21] It will be observed that _veneficus and maleficus_ are
+  the significant terms among the Italians for the criminals.
+
+A general degradation of morals is often accompanied, it has been
+justly remarked, by a corresponding increase of the wildest
+credulity, and by an abject subservience to external religious
+rites in propitiation of an incensed deity. It was thus at Rome
+when the eloquence of Cicero, and afterwards the indignant satire
+of Juvenal or the calm ridicule of the philosophic Lucian,[22]
+attempted to assert the 'proper authority of reason.' To speak
+the truth, says Cicero, superstition has spread like a torrent
+over the entire globe, oppressing the minds and intellects of
+almost all men and seizing upon the weakness of human nature.[23]
+The historian of 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
+justifies and illustrates this lament of the philosopher of the
+Republic in the particular case of witchcraft. 'The nations and
+the sects of the Roman world admitted with equal credulity and
+similar abhorrence the reality of that infernal art which was
+able to control the eternal order of the planets, and the
+voluntary operations of the human mind. They dreaded the
+mysterious power of spells and incantations, of potent herbs and
+execrable rites, which could extinguish or recall life, influence
+the passions of the soul, blast the works of creation, and extort
+from the reluctant demons the secrets of Futurity. They believed
+with the wildest inconsistency that the preternatural dominion of
+the air, of earth, and of hell, was exercised from the vilest
+motives of malice or gain by some wrinkled hags or itinerant
+sorcerers who passed their obscure lives in penury and contempt.
+Such vain terrors disturbed the peace of society and the
+happiness of individuals; and the harmless flame which insensibly
+melted a waxen image might derive a powerful and pernicious
+energy from the affrighted fancy of the person whom it was
+maliciously designed to represent. From the infusion of those
+herbs which were supposed to possess a supernatural influence, it
+was an easy step to the case of more substantial poison; and the
+folly of mankind sometimes became the instrument and the mask of
+the most atrocious crimes.'[24]
+
+  [22] If the philosophical arguments of Menippus (_Nekrikoi
+  Dialogoi_) could have satisfied the interest of the priests
+  or the ignorance of the people of after times, the
+  _infernal_ fires of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
+  might not have burned.
+
+  [23] _De Divinatione_, lib. ii.
+
+  [24] _The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
+  Empire_, xxv. This description applies more to the Christian
+  and later empires.
+
+Latin poetry of the Augustan and succeeding period abounds with
+illustrations, and the witches of Horace, Ovid, and Lucan are the
+famous classical types.[25] Propertius has characterised the
+Striga as 'daring enough to impose laws upon the moon bewitched
+by her spells;' while Petronius makes his witch, as potent as
+Strepsiades' Thessalian sorceress, exclaim that the very form of
+the moon herself is compelled to descend from her position in the
+universe at her command. For the various compositions and
+incantations in common use, it must be sufficient to refer to the
+pages of the Roman poets. The forms of incantation and horrid
+rites of the Horatian Sagana Canidia (_Epod._ v. and _Sat._ i.
+8), or the scenes described by the pompous verses of the poet
+of the civil war (_De Bello Civili_, vi.), where all nature is
+subservient, are of a similar kind, but more familiar, in
+the dramatic writings of the Elizabethan age. The darker
+characteristics of the practice, however, are presented in the
+burning declamations of Juvenal, only too faithfully exhibiting
+the unnatural atrocities perpetrated in the form and under the
+disguise of love-potions and charms. Roman ladies in fact
+acquired considerable proficiency, worthy of a Borgia or
+Brinvilliers, in the art of poisoning and in the use of drugs.
+The reputed witch, both in ancient and modern times, very often
+belonged, like the Ovidian Dipsas, to the real and detestable
+class of panders: wrinkled hags were experienced in the arts of
+seduction, as well as in the employment of poison and drugs more
+familiar to the wealthier class (_Sat._ vi.). The great Satirist
+wrote in the latter half of the first century of Christianity;
+but even in the Augustan period such crimes were prevalent enough
+to make Ovid enumerate them among the universal evils introduced
+by the Iron age (_Metamorphoses_, i.). The despotic will of the
+princes themselves was exerted in vain; the mischief was too
+deep-rooted to succumb even to the decrees of the masters of the
+world. Nor did the _divi_ themselves disdain to be initiated in
+the infernal or celestial science. Nigidius Figulus and the two
+Thrasylli are magical or mathematical names closely connected
+with the destinies of the two first imperial princes. Nigidius
+predicted, and perhaps promoted, the future elevation of
+Octavianus; and the elder Thrasyllus, the famous Rhodian
+astrologer, skilfully identified his fate with the life of his
+credulous dupe but tyrannical pupil. Thrasyllus' art is stated to
+have been of service in preventing the superstitious tyrant from
+executing several intended victims of his hatred or caprice, by
+making _their_ safety the condition of _his_ existence. The
+historian of the early empire tells of the incantations which
+could 'affect the mind and increase the disease' of Germanicus,
+Tiberius' nephew. 'There were discovered,' says Tacitus, 'dug up
+from the ground and out of the walls of the house, the remains of
+human corpses, charms and spells, and the name of Germanicus
+inscribed on leaden tablets, ashes half consumed covered with
+decaying matter, and other practices by which it is believed that
+souls are devoted to the deities of hell.'[26]
+
+  [25] 'The Canidia of Horace,' Gibbon pronounces, 'is a
+  vulgar witch. The Erichtho of Lucan is tedious, disgusting,
+  but sometimes sublime.' The love-charms of Canidia and Medea
+  are chiefly indebted to the _Pharmakeutria_ of Theocritus.
+
+  [26] _Annales_, ii. 69. Writing of the mathematicians and
+  astrologers in the time of Galba, who urged the governor of
+  Lusitania on the perilous path to the supreme dignity, the
+  historian characterises them truly, in his inimitable
+  language and style, as 'a class of persons not to be trusted
+  by those in power, deceptive to the expectant; a class which
+  will always be proscribed and preserved in our state.'
+
+In the fourth century, the first Christian emperor limited the
+lawful exercise of magic to the beneficial use of preserving or
+restoring the fruits of the earth or the health of the human
+body, while the practice of the noxious charms is capitally
+punished. The science of those, proclaims the imperial convert,
+who, immersed in the arts of magic, are detected either in
+attempts against the life and health of their fellow-men, or in
+_charming_ the minds of modest persons to the practice of
+debauchery, is to be avenged and punished deservedly by severest
+penalties. But in no sorts of criminal charges are those remedies
+to be involved which are employed for the good of individuals, or
+are harmlessly employed in remote places to prevent premature
+rains, in the case of vineyards, or the injurious effects of
+winds and hailstorms, by which the health and good name of no one
+can be injured; but whose practices are of laudable use in
+preventing both the gifts of the Deity and the labours of men
+from being scattered and destroyed.[27]
+
+  [27] _Cod. Justinian_, lib. ix. tit. 18.
+
+Constantine, in distinguishing between good and bad magic,
+between the _theurgic_ and _goetic_, maintains a distinction made
+by the pagans--a distinction ignored in the later Christian
+Church, in whose system 'all demons are infernal spirits, and all
+commerce with them is idolatry and apostasy.' Christian zeal has
+accused the imperial philosopher and apostate Julian of having
+had recourse--not to much purpose--to many magical or necromantic
+rites; of cutting up the dead bodies of boys and virgins in the
+prescribed method; and of raising the dead to ascertain the event
+of his Eastern expedition against the Persians.
+
+Not many years after the death of Julian the Christian Empire
+witnessed a persecution for witchcraft that for its ferocity, if
+not for its folly, can be paralleled only by similar scenes in
+the fifteenth or seventeenth century. It began shortly after the
+final division of the East and West in the reigns of Valentinian
+and Valens, A.D. 373. The unfortunate accused were pursued with
+equal fury in the Eastern and Western Empires; and Rome and
+Antioch were the principal arenas on which the bloody tragedy was
+consummated. Gibbon informs us that it was occasioned by a
+criminal consultation, when the twenty-four letters of the
+alphabet were ranged round a magic tripod; a dancing ring placed
+in the centre pointed to the first four letters in the name of
+the future prince. 'The deadly and incoherent mixture of treason
+and magic, of poison and adultery, afforded infinite gradations
+of guilt and innocence, of excuse and aggravation, which in these
+proceedings appear to have been confounded by the angry or
+corrupt passions of the judges. They easily discovered that the
+degree of their industry and discernment was estimated by the
+imperial court according to the number of executions that were
+furnished from their respective tribunals. It was not without
+extreme reluctance that they pronounced a sentence of acquittal;
+but they eagerly admitted such evidence as was stained with
+perjury or procured by torture to prove the most improbable
+charges against the most respectable characters. The progress of
+the inquiry continually opened new subjects of criminal
+prosecution; the audacious informers whose falsehood was detected
+retired with impunity: but the wretched victim who discovered his
+real or pretended accomplices was seldom permitted to receive the
+price of his infamy. From the extremity of Italy and Asia the
+young and the aged were dragged in chains to the tribunals of
+Rome and Antioch. Senators, matrons, and philosophers expired in
+ignominious and cruel tortures. The soldiers who were appointed
+to guard the prisons declared, with a murmur of pity and
+indignation, that their numbers were insufficient to oppose the
+flight or resistance of the multitude of captives. The wealthiest
+families were ruined by fines and confiscations; the most
+innocent citizens trembled for their safety: and we may form some
+notion of the magnitude of the evil from the extravagant
+assertion of an ancient writer [Ammianus Marcellinus], that in
+the obnoxious provinces the prisoners, the exiles, and the
+fugitives formed the greatest part of the inhabitants. The
+philosopher Maximus,' it is added, 'with some justice was
+involved in the charge of magic; and young Chrysostom, who had
+accidentally found one of the proscribed books, gave himself up
+for lost.'[28]
+
+  [28] _The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
+  Empire_, xxv.
+
+The similarity of this to the horrible catastrophe of Arras,
+recorded by the chroniclers of the fifteenth century, excepting
+the grosser absurdities of the latter, is almost perfect.
+Valentinian and Valens, who seem to have emulated the atrocious
+fame of the Caesarean family, with their ministers, concealed, it
+is probable, under the disguise of a simulated credulity the real
+motives of revenge and cupidity.
+
+The Roman world, Christian and pagan, was subject to the
+prevailing fear. That portion of the globe, however, comprehended
+but a small part of the human race. The records of history are
+incomplete and imperfect; nor are they more confined in point of
+time than of extent. History is little more at any period than an
+imperfect account of the life of a few particular peoples.
+Necessarily limited almost entirely to an acquaintance with the
+history of that portion of the globe included in the 'Roman
+Empire,' we almost forget our profound ignorance of that vastly
+larger proportion of the earth's surface, the extra-Roman world,
+embracing then, as now, civilised as well as barbarous nations.
+The Chinese empire (the most extraordinary, perhaps, and whose
+antiquity far surpasses that of any known), comprehending within
+its limits two-thirds of the population of the globe; the refined
+and ingenious people of Hindustan, an immense population, in the
+East: in the Western hemisphere nations in existence whose
+remains excited the admiration of the Spanish invaders; the
+various savage tribes of the African continent; the nomad
+populations of Northern Asia and Europe; nearly all these more or
+less, on the testimony of past and present observation,
+experienced the tremendous fears of the vulgar demonism.[29]
+
+  [29] It may be safely affirmed, according to a celebrated
+  modern philosopher, that popular religions are really, in
+  the conception of their more vulgar votaries, a species of
+  demonism. 'Primus in orbe deos fecit timor,' or, in the
+  fuller expression of a modern, 'Fear made the devils, and
+  weak Hope the gods.'
+
+With the tribes who, in the time of Caesar or Tacitus, inhabited
+the forests of Germany, and, perhaps, amongst the Scandinavians,
+some more elevated ideas obtained, the germ, however, of a
+degenerated popular prejudice. By all the German tribes, on
+the testimony of cotemporary writers, women were held in
+high respect, and were believed to have something even divine
+in their mental or spiritual faculties. 'Very many of their
+women they regard in the light of prophetesses, and when
+superstitious fear is in the ascendant, even of goddesses.'
+History has preserved the names of some of these Teutonic
+_deities_. Veleda, by prophetic inspiration, or by superior genius,
+directed the councils of her nation, and for some years
+successfully resisted the progress of the imperial arms.[30]
+Momentous questions of state or religion were submitted to their
+_divine_ judgment, and it is not wonderful if, endowed with
+supernatural attributes, they, like other prophets, helped to
+fulfil their own predictions. The Britons and Gauls, of the Keltic
+race, seem to have resembled the Orientals, rather than the Teutons
+or Italians, in their religious systems. Long before the Romans came
+in contact with them the magic science is said to have been
+developed, and the priests, like those of India or Egypt,
+communicated the mysteries only to a privileged few, with
+circumstances of profound secrecy. Such was the excellence of the
+magic science of the British Druids, that Pliny (_Hist. Nat._
+xxx.) was induced to suppose that the Magi of Persia must have
+derived their system from Britain. For the most part the Kelts
+then, as in the present day, were peculiarly tenacious of a creed
+which it was the interest of a priestly caste to preserve. On the
+other hand, the looser religion of the Teuton nations, of the
+Scandinavians and Germans, could not find much difficulty in
+accepting the particular conceptions of the Southern conquerors;
+and the sorceric mythology of the Northern barbarians readily
+recognised the power of an Erichtho to control the operations of
+nature, to prevent or confound the course of the elements,
+interrupt the influence of the sun, avert or induce tempests, to
+affect the passions of the soul, to fascinate or charm a cruel
+mistress, &c., with all the usual necromantic rites. But if they
+could acknowledge the characteristics of the Italian Striga,
+those nations at the same time retained a proper respect for the
+venerated Saga--the German Hexe.
+
+  [30] Aurinia was the Latin name of another of these
+  venerable sagae. Tacitus, _Histor._ iv. 61, and _Germania_,
+  viii.
+
+Of all the historic peoples of ancient Europe, the Scandinavians
+were perhaps most imbued with a persuasion of the efficacy of
+magic; a fact which their home and their habits sufficiently
+explain. In the Eddas, Odin, the leader of the immigration in the
+first century, and the great national lawgiver, is represented as
+well versed in the knowledge of that preternatural art; and the
+heroes of the Scandinavian legends of the tenth or twelfth
+century are especially ambitious of initiation. The Scalds,
+like the Brahmins or Druids, were possessed of tremendous
+secrets; their _runic_ characters were all powerful charms,
+whether against enemies, the injurious effects of an evil eye,
+or to soften the resentment of a lover.[31] The Northmen, with
+the exception of some nations of Central Europe, like the
+Lithuanians, who were not christianised until the thirteenth or
+fourteenth century, from their roving habits as well perhaps as
+from their remoteness, were among the last peoples of Europe to
+abandon their old creed. Urged by poverty and the hopes of
+plunder, the pirates of the Baltic long continued to be the
+terror of the European coasts; but, without a political status,
+they were the common outlaws of Christendom. They were the relics
+of a savage life now giving way in Europe to the somewhat more
+civilised forms of society, continuing their indiscriminate
+depredations with impunity only because of the want of union and
+organisation among their neighbours. But they were in a
+transitional state: the coasts and countries they had formerly
+been content to ravage, they were beginning to find it their
+interest to colonise and cultivate. In the new interests and
+pursuits of civilisation and commerce, a natural disgust might
+have been experienced for the savage traditions of a religion
+whose gods and heroes were mostly personifications of war and
+rapine, under whose banners they had suffered the hardships, if
+they had enjoyed the plunder, of a piratic life. The national
+deities from being disregarded, must have come soon to be treated
+with undisguised contempt at least by the leaders: while the
+common people, serfs, or slaves were still immersed (as much as
+in Christian Europe) in a stupid superstition.
+
+  [31] The following story exhibits the influence of
+  witchcraft among the followers of Odin. Towards the end of
+  the tenth century, the dreaded Jomsburg sea-rovers had set
+  out on one of their periodical expeditions, and were
+  devastating with fire and sword the coast of Norway. A
+  celebrated Norwegian Jarl, Hakon, collected all his forces,
+  and sailed with a fleet of 150 vessels to encounter the
+  pirates. Hakon, after trying in vain to break through the
+  hostile line, retired with his fleet to the coast, and
+  proceeded to consult a well-known sorceress in whom he had
+  implicit confidence for any emergency. With some pretended
+  reluctance the sorceress at length informed him that the
+  victory could be obtained only by the sacrifice of his son.
+  Hakon hesitated not to offer up his only son as a
+  propitiatory sacrifice; after which, returning to his fleet,
+  and his accustomed post in the front ranks of the battle, he
+  renewed the engagement. Towards evening the Jomsburg pirates
+  were overtaken and overwhelmed by a violent storm,
+  destroying or damaging their ships. They were convinced that
+  they saw the witch herself seated on the prow of the Jarl's
+  ships with clouds of missile weapons flying from the tips of
+  her fingers, each arrow carrying a death-wound. With such of
+  his followers as had escaped the sorceric encounter, the
+  pirate-chief made the best of his way from the scene of
+  destruction, declaring he had made a vow indeed to fight
+  against men, but not against witches. A narrative not
+  inconsistent with the reply of a warrior to an inquiry from
+  the Saint-king Olaf, 'I am neither Christian nor pagan; my
+  companions and I have no other religion than a just
+  confidence in our strength, and in the good success which
+  always attends us in war; and we are of opinion that it is
+  all that is necessary.'--Mallet's _Northern Antiquities_.
+
+When men's minds are thus universally unsettled and in want--a
+want both universal and necessary in states--of some new
+divine objects of worship more suited to advanced ideas and
+requirements, a system of religion more civilising and rational
+than the antiquated one, will be adopted without much difficulty,
+especially if it is not too exclusive. Yet the Scandinavians were
+unusually tenacious of the forms of their ancestral worship; for
+while the Icelanders are said to have received Christianity about
+the beginning of the eleventh century, the people of Norway were
+not wholly converted until somewhat later. The halls of Valhalla
+must have been relinquished with a sigh in exchange for the less
+intelligible joys of a tranquil and insensuous paradise. An
+ancient Norsk law enjoins that the king and bishop, with all
+possible care, make inquiry after those who exercise pagan
+practices, employ magic arts, adore the genii of particular
+places, of tombs or rivers, who transport themselves by a
+diabolical mode of travelling through the air from place to
+place. In the extremity of the northern peninsula (amongst
+the Laplanders), where the light of science, or indeed of
+civilisation, has scarcely yet penetrated, witchcraft remains as
+flourishing as in the days of Odin; and the Laplanders at present
+are possibly as credulous in this respect as the old Northmen or
+the present tribes of Africa and the South Pacific. Before the
+introduction of the new religion (it is a curious fact), the
+Germans and Scandinavians, as well as the Jews, were acquainted
+with the efficacy of the rite of infant baptism. A Norsk
+chronicle of the twelfth century, speaking of a Norwegian
+nobleman who lived in the reign of Harald Harfraga, relates that
+he poured water on the head of his new-born son, and called him
+Hakon, after the name of his father. Harald himself had been
+baptized in the same way; and it is noted of the infant pagan St.
+Olaf that his mother had him baptized as soon as he was born. The
+Livonians observed the same ceremony; and a letter sent expressly
+by Pope Gregory III. to St. Boniface, the great apostle of the
+Germans, directs him how to act in such cases. It is probable,
+Mallet conjectures, that all these people might intend by such a
+rite to preserve their children from the sorceries and evil
+charms which wicked spirits might employ against them at the
+instant of their birth. Several nations of Asia and America have
+attributed such a power to ablutions of this kind; nor were the
+Romans without the custom, though they did not wholly confine it
+to new-born infants. A curious magical use of an initiatory and
+sacramental rite, ignorantly anticipated, it seems, by the
+unilluminated faith of the pagan world.
+
+In reviewing the characteristics of sorcery which prevailed in
+the ancient world, it is obvious to compare the superstition as
+it existed in the nations of the East and West, of antiquity and
+of modern times. These natural or accidental differences are
+deducible apparently from the following causes:--(1) The
+essential distinction between the demonology of Orientalism--of
+Brahminism, Buddhism, Magianism, Judaism, Mohammedanism--and that
+of the West, of paganism and of Christianity, founded on their
+respective _idealistic_ and _realistic_ tendencies. (2) The
+divining or necromantic faculties have been generally regarded in
+the East as honourable properties; whereas in the West they have
+been degraded into the criminal follies of an infernal compact.
+The magical art is a noble cultivated science--a prerogative of
+the priestly caste: witchcraft, in its strict sense, was mostly
+abandoned to the lowest, and, as a rule, to the oldest and
+ugliest of the female sex. In the one case the proficient was the
+master, in the other the slave, of the demons. (3) The position
+of the female sex in the Western world has been always very
+opposite to their status in the East, where women are believed to
+be an inferior order of beings, and therefore incapable of an art
+reserved for the superior endowments of the male sex. The modern
+witchcraft may be traced to that perhaps oldest form of religious
+conception, Fetishism, which still prevails in its utmost
+horrors amongst the savage peoples in different parts of the
+world. The early practice of magic was not dishonourable in its
+origin, closely connected as it was with the study of natural
+science--with astronomy and chymistry.
+
+The magic system--interesting to us as having influenced the
+later Jewish creed and mediately the Christian--referred like
+most developed creeds to a particular founder, Zerdusht
+(Zarathustra of the Zend), may have thus originated. Mankind, in
+seeking a solution for that most interesting but unsatisfactory
+problem, the cause of the predominance of evil on the earth, were
+obliged by their ignorance and their fears to imagine, in
+addition to the idea of a single supreme existence, the author
+and source of good, antagonistic influence--the source and
+representative of evil. Physical phenomena of every day
+experience; the alternations of light and darkness, of sunshine
+and clouds; the changes and oppositions in the outer world, would
+readily supply an analogy to the moral world. Thus the dawn and
+the sun, darkness and storms, in the wondering mind of the
+earlier inhabitants of the globe, may have soon assumed the
+substantial forms of personal and contending deities.[32] Such
+seems to be the origin of the personifications in the Vedic hymns
+of Indra and Vritra with their subordinate ministers (the Ormuzd
+and Ahriman, &c., of the Zend-Avesta), and of the first religious
+conceptions of other peoples. After this attempt to reconcile the
+contradictions, the irregularities of nature, by establishing a
+duality of gods whose respective provinces are the happiness and
+unhappiness of the human race, the step was easy to the
+conviction of the superior activity of a malignant god. The
+benevolent but epicurean security of the first deity might seem
+to have little concern in defeating or preventing the malicious
+schemes of the other. All the infernal apparatus of later ages
+was easy to be supplied by a delusive and an unreasoning
+imagination.
+
+  [32] The despotism of language and its immense influence on
+  the destiny, as well as on the various opinions, of mankind,
+  is well shown by Professor Max Mueller. 'From one point of
+  view,' he declares, 'the true history of religion would be
+  neither more nor less than an account of the various
+  attempts at expressing the Inexpressible' (_Lectures on the
+  Science of Language_, Second Series). The witch-creed may be
+  indirectly referred, like many other absurdities, to the
+  perversion of language.
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+MEDIAEVAL FAITH.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+     Compromise between the New and the Old Faiths--Witchcraft
+     under the Early Church--The Sentiments of the Fathers and
+     the Decrees of Councils--Platonic Influences--Historical,
+     Physiological, and Accidental Causes of the Attribution of
+     Witchcraft to the Female Sex--Opinions of the Fathers and
+     other Writers--The Witch-Compact.
+
+
+It might appear, in a casual or careless observation, surprising
+that Christianity, whose original spirit, if not universal
+practice, was to enlighten; whose professed mission was 'to
+destroy the works of the devil,' failed to disprove as well as to
+dispel some of the most pernicious beliefs of the pagan world:
+that its final triumph within the limits of the Roman empire, or
+as far as it extended without, was not attended by the extinction
+of at least the most revolting practices of superstition.
+Experience, and a more extended view of the progress of human
+ideas, will teach that the growth of religious perception is
+fitful and gradual: that the education of collective mankind
+proceeds in the same way as that of the individual man. And thus,
+in the expression of the biographer of Charles V., the barbarous
+nations when converted to Christianity changed the object, not
+the spirit, of their religious worship. Many of the ideas of the
+old religion were consciously tolerated by the first propagators
+of Christianity, who justly deemed that the new dogmas would be
+more readily insinuated into the rude and simple minds of their
+neophytes, if not too strictly uncompromising. Both past and
+present facts testify to this compromise. It was a maxim with
+some of the early promoters of the Christian cause, to do as
+little violence as possible to existing prejudices[33]--a
+judicious method still pursued by the Catholic, though condemned
+by the Protestant, missionaries of the present day.[34] It was
+not seldom that an entire nation was converted and christianised
+by baptism almost in a single day: the mass of the people
+accepting, or rather acquiescing in, the arguments of the
+missionaries in submission to the will or example of their
+prince, whose conduct they followed as they would have followed
+him into the field. Such was the case at the conversion of the
+Frankish chief Clovis, and of the Saxon Ethelbert. But if St.
+Augustin or St. Boniface, and the earlier missionaries, had more
+success in persuading the simple faith of the Germans, without a
+written revelation and miracles, than the modern emissaries have
+in inducing the Hindus to abandon their Vedas, it was easier to
+convince them of the facts, than of the reason, of their faith.
+Nor was it to be expected that such raw recruits (if the
+expression may be allowed) should lay aside altogether prejudices
+with which they were imbued from infancy.
+
+  [33] The remark of a late Professor of Divinity in the
+  University of Cambridge. 'The heathen temples,' says
+  Professor Blunt, 'became Christian churches; the altars of
+  the gods altars of the saints; the curtains, incense,
+  tapers, and votive-tablets remained the same; the
+  _aquaminarium_ was still the vessel for holy water; St.
+  Peter stood at the gate instead of Cardea; St. Rocque or St.
+  Sebastian in the bedroom instead of the Phrygian Penates;
+  St. Nicholas was the sign of the vessel instead of Castor
+  and Pollux; the Mater Deum became the Madonna; alms pro
+  Matre Deum became alms for the Madonna; the festival of the
+  Mater Deum the festival of the Madonna, or _Lady Day_; the
+  Hostia or victim was now the Host; the "Lugentes Campi," or
+  dismal regions, Purgatory; the offerings to the Manes were
+  masses for the dead.' The parallel, he ventures to assert,
+  might be drawn out to a far greater extent, &c.
+
+  [34] Conformably to this plan, the first proselytisers in
+  Germany and the North were often reduced (we are told) to
+  substituting the name of Christ and the saints for those of
+  Odin and the gods in the toasts drunk at their bacchanalian
+  festivals.
+
+The extent of the credit and practice of witchcraft under the
+Church triumphant is evident from the numerous decrees and
+anathemas of the Church in council, which, while oftener treating
+it as a dread reality, has sometimes ventured to contemn or to
+affect to contemn it as imposture and delusion. Both the civil
+and ecclesiastical laws were exceptionally severe towards
+_goetic_ practices. 'In all those laws of the Christian
+emperors,' says Bingham, 'which granted indulgences to criminals
+at the Easter festival, the _venefici_ and the _malefici_, that
+is, magical practices against the lives of men, are always
+excepted as guilty of too heinous a crime to be comprised within
+the general pardon granted to other offenders.'[35] In earlier
+ecclesiastical history, successive councils or synods are much
+concerned in fulminating against them. The council of Ancyra
+(314) prohibits the art under the name of pharmacy: a few years'
+penance being appointed for anyone receiving a magician into his
+house. St. Basil's canons, more severe, appoint thirty years as
+the necessary atonement. Divination by lots or by consulting
+their sacred scriptures, just as afterwards they consulted
+Virgil, seems to have been a very favourite mode of discovering
+the future. The clergy encouraged and traded upon this kind of
+divination: in the Gallican church it was notorious. 'Some
+reckon,' the pious author of the 'Antiquities of the Christian
+Church' informs us, 'St. Augustin's conversion owing to such a
+sort of consultation; but the thought is a great mistake, and
+very injurious to him, for his conversion was owing to a
+providential call, like that of St. Paul, from heaven.' And that
+eminent saint's confessions are quoted to prove that his
+conversion from the depths of vice and licentiousness to the
+austere sobriety of his new faith, was indebted to a legitimate
+use of the scriptures. St. Chrysostom upbraids his cotemporaries
+for exposing the faith, by their illegitimate inquiries, to the
+scorn of the heathen, many of whom where wiser than to hearken to
+any such fond impostures.
+
+  [35] Bingham's _Origines Ecclesiasticae_, xvi.
+
+St. Augustin complains that Satan's instruments, professing the
+exercise of these arts, were used to 'set the name of Christ
+before their ligatures, and enchantments, and other devices, to
+seduce Christians to take the venomous bait under the covert of a
+sweet and honey potion, that the bitter might be hid under the
+sweet, and make men drink it without discerning to their
+destruction.' The heretics of the primitive, as well as of the
+middle, ages were accused of working miracles, and propagating
+their accursed doctrines by magical or infernal art. Tertullian,
+and after him Eusebius, denounce the arch-heretic Simon Magus for
+performing his spurious miracles in that way: and Irenaeus had
+declared of the heretic Marcus, that when he would consecrate the
+eucharist in a cup of wine and water, by one of his juggling
+tricks, he made it appear of a purple and red colour, as if by a
+long prayer of invocation, that it might be thought the grace
+from above distilled the blood into the cup by his invocation. A
+correspondent of Cyprian, the celebrated African bishop,
+describes a woman who pretended 'to be inspired by the Holy
+Ghost, but was really acted on by a diabolical spirit, by which
+she counterfeited ecstasies, and pretended to prophesy, and
+wrought many wonderful and strange things, and boasted she would
+cause the earth to move. Not that the devil [he is cautious to
+affirm] has so great a power either to move the earth or shake
+the elements by his command; but the wicked spirit, foreseeing
+and understanding that there will be an earthquake, pretends to
+do that which he foresees will shortly come to pass. And by these
+lies and boastings, the devil subdued the minds of many to obey
+and follow him whithersoever he would lead them. And he made that
+woman walk barefoot through the snow in the depth of winter, and
+feel no trouble nor harm by running about in that fashion. But at
+last, after having played many such pranks, one of the exorcists
+of the Church discovered her to be a cheat, and showed that to be
+a wicked spirit which before was thought to be the Holy
+Ghost.'[36]
+
+  [36] _Origines Ecclesiasticae_, xvi. The exorcists were a
+  recognised and respectable order in the Church. See id. iii.
+  for an account of the _Energumenoi_ or demoniacs. The lawyer
+  Ulpian, in the time of Tertullian, mentions the Order of
+  Exorcists as well known. St. Augustin (_De Civit. Dei_,
+  xxii. 8) records some extraordinary cures on his own
+  testimony within his diocess of Hippo.
+
+Christian witchcraft was of a more tremendous nature than even
+that of older times, both in its origin and practice. The devils
+of Christianity were the metamorphosed deities of the old
+religions. The Christian convert was convinced, and the Fathers
+of the Church gravely insisted upon the fact, that the oracles of
+Delphi or Dodona had been inspired in the times of ignorance and
+idolatry by the great Enemy, who used the priest or priestess as
+the means of accomplishing his eternal schemes of malice and
+mischief. At the instant, however (so it was confidently
+affirmed), of the divine incarnation the oracular temples were
+closed for ever; and the demons were no longer permitted to
+delude mankind by impersonating pagan deities. They must now find
+some other means of effecting their fixed purpose. It was not far
+to seek. There were human beings who, by a preeminently wicked
+disposition, or in hope of some temporary profit, were prepared
+to risk their future prospects, willing to devote both soul and
+body to the service of hell. The 'Fathers' and great expounders
+of Christianity, by their sentiments, their writings, and
+their claims to the miraculous powers of exorcising, greatly
+assisted to advance the common opinions. Justin Martyr, Origen,
+Tertullian, Jerome, were convinced that they were in perpetual
+conflict with the disappointed demons of the old world, who had
+inspired the oracles and usurped the worship of the true God. Nor
+was the contest always merely spiritual: they engaged personally
+and corporeally. St. Jerome, like St. Dunstan in the tenth, or
+Luther in the sixteenth century, had to fight with an incarnate
+demon.
+
+Exorcism--the magical or miraculous ejection of evil spirits by a
+solemn form of adjuration--was a universal mode of asserting the
+superior authority of the orthodox Church against the spurious
+pretensions of heretics.[37]
+
+  [37] The art of expelling demons, indeed, has been preserved
+  in the Protestant section of the Christian Church until a
+  recent age. The _exorcising_ power, it is remarkable, is the
+  sole claim to miraculous privilege of the Protestants. The
+  formula _de Strumosis Attrectandis_, or the form of touching
+  for the king's evil (a similar claim), was one of the
+  recognised offices of the English Established Church in the
+  time of Queen Anne, or of George I.
+
+Christian theology in the first age even was considerably indebted
+to the Platonic doctrines as taught in the Alexandrian school; and
+demonology in the third century received considerable accessions
+from the speculations of Neo-Platonism, the reconciling medium
+between Greek and Oriental philosophy. Philo-Judaeus (whose
+reconciling theories, displayed in his attempt to prove the
+derivation of Greek religious or philosophical ideas from those
+of Moses, have been ingeniously imitated by a crowd of modern
+followers) had been the first to undertake to adapt the Jewish
+theology to Greek philosophy. Plotinus and Porphyrius, the
+founders of the new school of Platonism, introduced a large number
+of angels or demons to the acquaintance of their Christian
+fellow-subjects in the third century.[38] It has been remarked that
+'such was the mild spirit of antiquity that the nations were less
+attentive to the difference than to the resemblance of their
+religious worship. The Greek, the Roman, and the barbarian, as
+they met before their respective altars, easily persuaded themselves
+that, under various names and with various ceremonies, they adored
+the same deities.'[39] Magianism and Judaism, however, were little
+imbued with the spirit of toleration; and the purer the form of
+religious worship, the fiercer, too often, seems to be the
+persecution of differing creeds. Christianity, with something of
+the spirit of Judaism from which it sprung, was forced to believe
+that the older religions must have sprung from a diabolic origin.
+The whole pagan world was inspired and dominated by wicked
+spirits. 'The pagans _deified_, the Christians _diabolised_,
+Nature.'[40] It is in this fact that the entirely opposite
+spirit of antique and mediaeval thought, evident in the life,
+literature, in the common ideas of ancient and mediaeval Europe,
+is discoverable.
+
+  [38] 'The knowledge that is suited to our situation and
+  powers, the whole compass of moral, natural, and
+  mathematical science, was neglected by the new Platonists;
+  whilst they exhausted their strength in the verbal disputes
+  of metaphysics, they attempted to explore the secrets of the
+  invisible world, and studied to reconcile Aristotle with
+  Plato on subjects of which both these philosophers were as
+  ignorant as the rest of mankind. Consuming their reason in
+  those deep but unsubstantial meditations, their minds were
+  exposed to illusions of fancy. They flattered themselves
+  that they possessed the secret of disengaging the soul from
+  its corporeal prison; claimed a familiar intercourse with
+  demons and spirits; and by a very singular revolution,
+  converted the study of philosophy into that of magic.'--_The
+  Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, chap. xiii.
+
+  [39] The Egyptians, almost the only exception to polytheistic
+  tolerance, seem to have been rendered intolerant by the
+  number of antagonistic animal-gods worshipped in different
+  parts of the country, enumerated by Juvenal, who describes
+  the effects of religious animosity displayed in a faction
+  fight between Ombi or Coptos and Tentyra.--_Sat._ xv.
+
+  [40] _Life of Goethe_, by G. H. Lewes.
+
+The female sex has been always most concerned in the crime of
+Christian witchcraft. What was the cause of this general
+addiction, in the popular belief, of that sex, it is interesting
+to inquire. In the East now, and in Greece of the age of
+Simonides or Euripides, or at least in the Ionic States, women
+are an inferior order of beings, not only on account of their
+weaker natural faculties and social position, but also in respect
+of their natural inclination to every sort of wickedness. And if
+they did not act the part of a Christian witch, they were skilled
+in the practice of toxicology. With the Latin race and many
+European peoples, the female sex held a better position; and
+it may appear inconsistent that in Christendom, where the
+Goddess-Mother was almost the highest object of veneration, woman
+should be degraded into a slave of Satan. By the northern nations
+they were supposed to be gifted with supernatural power; and the
+universal powers of the Italian hag have been already noticed.
+But the Church, which allowed no miracle to be legitimate out of
+the pale, and yet could not deny the fact of the miraculous
+without, was obliged to assert it to be of diabolic origin. Thus
+the _priestess_ of antiquity became a _witch_. This is the
+historical account. Physically, the cause seems discoverable in
+the fact that the natural constitution of women renders their
+_imaginative_ organs more excitable for the ecstatic conditions
+of the prophetic or necromantic arts. On all occasions of
+religious or other cerebral excitement, women (it is a matter of
+experience) are generally most easily reduced to the requisite
+state for the expected supernatural visitation. Their hysterical
+(_hystera_) natures are sufficiently indicative of the origin of
+such hallucinations. Their magical or pharmaceutical attributes
+might be derived from savage life, where the men are almost
+exclusively occupied either in war or in the chase: everything
+unconnected with these active or necessary pursuits is despised
+as unbecoming the superior nature of the male sex. To the female
+portion of the community are abandoned domestic employments,
+preparation of food, the selection and mixture of medicinal
+herbs, and all the mysteries of the medical art. How important
+occupations like these, by ignorance and interest, might be
+raised into something more than natural skill, is easy to be
+conjectured. That so extraordinary an attribute would often be
+abused is agreeable to experience.[41]
+
+  [41] Quintilian declared, '_Latrocinium_ facilius in viro,
+  _veneficium_ in femina credam.' To the same effect is an
+  observation of Pliny: 'Scientiam feminarum in _veneficiis_
+  praevalere.'
+
+According to the earlier Christian writers, the frailer sex is
+addicted to infernal practices by reason of their innate
+wickedness: and in the opinion of the 'old Fathers' they are
+fitted by a corrupt disposition to be the recipients and agents
+of the devil's will upon earth. The authors of the _Witch-Hammer_
+have supported their assertions of the proneness of women to evil
+in general, and to sorcery in particular, by the respectable
+names and authority of St. Chrysostom, Augustin, Dionysius
+Areopagiticus, Hilary, &c. &c.[42] The Golden-mouthed is adduced
+as especially hostile in his judgment of the sex; and his 'Homily
+on Herodias' takes its proper place with the satires of
+Aristophanes and Juvenal, of Boccaccio and Boileau.[43]
+
+  [42]                               'They style a wife
+       The dear-bought curse and lawful plague of life,
+       A bosom-serpent and a domestic evil.'
+
+  [43] The royal author of the _Demonologie_ finds no
+  difficulty in accounting for the vastly larger proportion of
+  the female sex devoted to the devil's service. 'The reason
+  is easy,' he declares; 'for as that sex is frailer than man
+  is, so is it easier to be entrapped in the gross snares of
+  the devil, as was over-well proved to be true by the
+  serpent's deceiving of Eva at the beginning, which makes him
+  the homelier with that sex sensine:' and it is profoundly
+  observed that witches cannot even shed tears, though women
+  in general are, like the crocodile, ready to weep on every
+  light occasion.
+
+Reginald Scot gives the reasons alleged by the apologists of
+witchcraft. 'This gift and natural influence of fascination
+may be increased in man according to his affections and
+perturbations, as through anger, fear, love, hate, &c. For by
+hate, saith Varius, entereth a fiery inflammation into the eye of
+man, which being violently sent out by beams and streams infect
+and bewitch those bodies against whom they are opposed. And
+therefore (he saith) that is the cause that women are oftener
+found to be witches than men. For they have such an unbridled
+force of fury and concupiscence naturally, that by no means is it
+possible for them to temper or moderate the same. So as upon
+every trifling occasion they, like unto the beasts, fix their
+furious eyes upon the party whom they bewitch.... Women also
+(saith he) are oftenlie filled full of superfluous humours, and
+with them the melancholike blood boileth, whereof spring vapours,
+and are carried up and conveyed through the nostrils and mouth,
+to the bewitching of whatsoever it meeteth. For they belch up a
+certain breath wherewith they bewitch whomsoever they list. And
+of all other women lean, hollow-eyed, old, beetle-browed women
+(saith he) are the most infectious.'[44] Why _old_ women are
+selected as the most proper means of doing the devil's will may
+be discovered in their peculiar characteristics. The repulsive
+features, moroseness, avarice, malice, garrulity of his hags are
+said to be appropriate instruments. Scot informs us, 'One sort of
+such as are said to be witches are women which be commonly old,
+lame, blear-eyed, pale, foul, and full of wrinkles, poor, sullen,
+superstitious, and _papists_, or such as know no religion, in
+whose drowsy minds the devil hath got a fine seat. They are lean
+and deformed, showing melancholy in their faces, to the horror of
+all that see them. They are doting, scolds, mad, devilish ...
+neither obtaining for their service and pains, nor yet by their
+art, nor yet at the devil's hands, with whom they are said to
+make a perfect visible bargain, either beauty, money, promotion,
+wealth, worship, pleasure, honour, knowledge, or any other
+benefit whatsoever.' As to the preternatural gifts of these hags,
+he sensibly argues: 'Alas! what an unapt instrument is a
+toothless, old, impotent, unwieldy woman to fly in the air;
+truly, the devil little needs such instruments to bring his
+purposes to pass.'[45]
+
+  [44] _Discoverie of Witchcraft_, book xii. 21.--We shall
+  have occasion hereafter to notice this great opponent of the
+  devil's regime in the sixteenth century. We may be inclined
+  to consider a more probable reason--that spirits, being in
+  the general belief (so Adam infers that God had 'peopled
+  highest heaven with spirits masculine') of the masculine
+  gender, the recipients of their inspiration are naturally of
+  the other sex: evil spirits could propagate their human or
+  half-human agents with least suspicion and in the most
+  natural way.
+
+  [45] _Discoverie_, i. 3, 6.--Old women, however, may be
+  negatively useful. One of the writers on the subject (John
+  Nider) recommends them to young men since '_Vetularum
+  aspectus et colloquia amorem excutiunt_.'
+
+Dr. Glanvil, who wrote in the latter half of the seventeenth
+century, and is bitterly opposed to the 'Witch-Advocate' and his
+followers, defends the capabilities of hags and the like for
+serving the demons. He conjectures, 'Peradventure 'tis one of
+the great designs, as 'tis certainly the interest, of those
+wicked agents and machinators industriously to hide from us their
+influences and ways of acting, and to work as near as 'tis
+possible _incognito_; upon which supposal it is easy to conceive
+a reason why they most commonly work by and upon the weak and the
+ignorant, who can make no cunning observations or tell credible
+tales to detect their artifice.'[46] The act of bewitching is
+defined to be 'a supernatural work contrived between a corporal
+old woman and a spiritual devil' ('Discoverie,' vi. 2). The
+method of initiation is, according to a writer on the subject, as
+follows: A decrepit, superannuated, old woman is tempted by a man
+in black to sign a contract to become his, both soul and body. On
+the conclusion of the agreement (about which there was much
+cheating and haggling), he gives her a piece of money, and causes
+her to write her name and make her mark on a slip of parchment
+with her own blood. Sometimes on this occasion also the witch
+uses the ceremony of putting one hand to the sole of her foot and
+the other to the crown of her head. On departing he delivers to
+her an imp or familiar. The familiar, in shape of a cat, a mole,
+miller-fly, or some other insect or animal, at stated times of
+the day sucks her blood through teats in different parts of her
+body.[47] If, however, the proper vulgar witch is an old woman,
+the younger and fairer of the sex were not by any means exempt
+from the crime. Young and beautiful women, children of tender
+years, have been committed to the rack and to the stake on the
+same accusation which condemned the old and the ugly.
+
+  [46] _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, part i. sect. 8.
+
+  [47] _Grose's Antiquities_, in Brand's _Popular Antiquities
+  of Great Britain_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+     Charlemagne's Severity--Anglo-Saxon Superstition--Norman and
+     Arabic Magic--Influence of Arabic Science--Mohammedan Belief
+     in Magic--Rabbinical Learning--Roger Bacon--The Persecution
+     of the Templars--Alice Kyteler.
+
+
+Tremendous as was the power of the witch in earlier Christendom,
+it was not yet degraded into the thoroughly diabolistic character
+of her more recent successors. Diabolism advanced in the same
+proportion with the authority of the Church and the ignorant
+submission of the people. In the civil law, the Emperor Leo, in
+the sixth century, abrogated the Constantinian edict as too
+indulgent or too credulous: from that time all sorts of charms,
+all use of them, beneficial or injurious, were declared worthy of
+punishment. The different states of Europe, founded on the ruins
+of the Western Empire, more or less were engaged in providing
+against the evil consequences of sorcery. Charlemagne pursued the
+criminals with great severity. He 'had several times given orders
+that all necromancers, astrologers, and witches should be driven
+from his states; but as the number of criminals augmented daily,
+he found it necessary at last to resort to severer measures. In
+consequence, he published several edicts, which may be found at
+length in the "Capitulaire de Baluse." By these every sort of
+magic, enchantment, and witchcraft was forbidden, and the
+punishment of death decreed against those who in any way evoked
+the devil, compounded love-philters, afflicted either man or
+woman with barrenness, troubled the atmosphere, excited tempests,
+destroyed the fruits of the earth, dried up the milk of cows, or
+tormented their fellow-creatures with sores and diseases. All
+persons found guilty of exercising these execrable arts were to
+be executed immediately upon conviction, that the earth might be
+rid of the curse and burden of their presence; and those who
+consulted them might also be punished with death.'[48]
+
+  [48] M. Garinet's _Histoire de la Magic en France_, quoted
+  in _Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions_.
+
+The Saxons, in the fifth century, imported into Britain the pagan
+forms of the Fatherland; and the Anglo-Saxon (Christian) laws are
+usually directed against practices connected with heathen
+worship, of which many reminiscences were long preserved. Their
+Hexe, or witch,[49] appears to be half-divine, half-diabolic, a
+witch-priestess who derived her inspiration as much from heavenly
+as from hellish sources; from some divinity or genius presiding
+at a sacred grove or fountain. King Athelstan is said to have
+made a law against witchcraft and similar acts which inflict
+death; that if one by them be made away, and the thing cannot be
+denied, such practicers shall be put to death; but if they
+endeavour to purge themselves, and be cast by the threefold
+ordeal, they shall be in prison 120 days; which ended, their
+kindred may redeem them by the payment [in the universal style of
+the English penalties] of 120 shillings to the king, and further
+pay to the kindred of the slain the full valuation of the party's
+head; and then the criminals shall also procure sureties for good
+behaviour for the time to come; and the Danish prince Knut
+denounces by an express doom the noxious acts of sorcery.[50]
+Some of the witches who appear under Saxon domination are almost
+as ferocious as those of the time of Bodin or of James; cutting
+up the bodies of the dead, especially of children, devouring
+their heart and liver in midnight revels. Fearful are the deeds
+of Saxon sorcery as related by the old Norman or Anglo-Norman
+writers. Roger of Wendover ('Flowers of History') records the
+terrible fate of a hag who lived in the village of Berkely, in
+the ninth century. The devil at the appointed hour (as in the
+case of Faust) punctually carries off the soul of his slave, in
+spite of the utmost watch and ward. These scenes are, perhaps,
+rather Norman than Saxon. It was a favourite belief of the
+ancients and mediaevalists that the inhospitable regions of the
+remoter North were the abode of demons who held in those suitable
+localities their infernal revels, exciting storms and tempests:
+and the monk-chronicler Bede relates the northern parts of
+Britain were thus infested.[51]
+
+  [49] The Saxon 'witch' is derived, apparently, from the verb
+  'to weet,' to know, _be wise_. The Latin 'saga' is similarly
+  derived--'Sagire, sentire acute est: ex quo _sagae_ anus,
+  quia malta _scire_ volunt.'--Cicero, _de Divinatione_.
+
+  [50] A curious collection of old English superstitions in
+  these and their allied forms, as exhibited in various
+  documents, appears in a recent work of authority, entitled
+  'Leechdoms, Wort-Cunning, and Starcraft of Early England.
+  Published by the authority of the Lords Commissioners of Her
+  Majesty's Treasury, under the direction of the Master of the
+  Rolls.' Diseases of all sorts are for the most part inflicted
+  upon mankind by evil demons, through the agency of spells and
+  incantations.
+
+  [51] Strutt derives the 'long-continued custom of swimming
+  people suspected of witchcraft' from the Anglo-Saxon mode of
+  judicial trial--the ordeal by water. Another 'method of
+  proving a witch,' by weighing against the Church Bible (a
+  formidable balance), is traced to some of their ancient
+  customs. James VI. (_Demonologie_) is convinced that 'God
+  hath appointed, for a supernatural sign of the monstrous
+  impiety of witches, that the water shall refuse to receive
+  them in her bosom that have shaken off them the sacred water
+  of baptism and wilfully refused the benefit thereof.'
+
+From Scandinavia the Normans must have brought a conviction of
+the truths of magic; and although they had been long settled,
+before the conquest of England, in Northern France and in
+Christianity, the traditional glories of the land from which were
+derived their name and renown could not be easily forgotten. Not
+long after the Conquest the Arabic learning of Spain made its way
+into this country, and it is possible that Christian magic, as
+well as science, may have been influenced by it. Magic,
+scientifically treated, flourished in Arabic Spain, being
+extensively cultivated, in connection with more real or practical
+learning, by the polite and scientific Arabs. The schools of
+Salamanca, Toledo, and other Saracenic cities were famous
+throughout Europe for eminence in medicine, chymistry, astronomy,
+and mathematics. Thither resorted the learned of the North to
+perfect themselves in the then cultivated branches of knowledge.
+The vast amount of scientific literature of the Moslems of Spain,
+evidenced in their public libraries, relieves Southern Europe,
+in part at least, from the stigma of a universal barbaric
+illiteracy.[52] Several volumes of Arabian philosophy are said to
+have been introduced to Northern Europe in the twelfth century;
+and it was in the school of Toledo that Gerbert--a conspicuous
+name in the annals of magic--acquired his preternatural
+knowledge.
+
+  [52] The royal library of the Fatimites consisted of 100,000
+  manuscripts, elegantly transcribed and splendidly bound,
+  which were lent, without avarice or jealousy, to the
+  students of Cairo. Yet this collection must appear moderate
+  if we believe that the Ommiades of Spain had formed a
+  library of 600,000 volumes, 44 of which were employed in the
+  mere catalogue. Their capital, Cordova, with the adjacent
+  towns of Malaga, Almeira, and Murcia, had given birth to
+  more than 300 writers; and above 70 public libraries were
+  opened in the cities of the Andalusian kingdom.--_Decline
+  and Fall of the Roman Empire_, lii.
+
+The few in any way acquainted with Greek literature were indebted
+to the Latin translations of the Arabs; while the Jewish
+rabbinical learning, whose more useful lore was encumbered with
+much mystical nonsense, enjoyed considerable reputation at this
+period. The most distinguished of the rabbis taught in the
+schools in London, York, Lincoln, Oxford, and Cambridge; and
+Christendom has to confess its obligations for its first
+acquaintance with science to the enemies of the Cross.[53] The
+later Jewish authorities had largely developed the demonology of
+the subjects of Persia; and the spiritual or demoniacal creations
+of the rabbinical works of the Middle Ages might be readily
+acceptable, if not coincident, to Christian faith. But the
+Western Europeans, before the philosophy of the Spanish Arabs was
+known, had come in contact with the Saracens and Turks of the
+East during frequent pilgrimages to the tomb of Christ; and the
+fanatical crusades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries
+facilitated and secured the hazardous journey. Mohammedans of the
+present day preserve the implicit faith of their ancestors in the
+efficacy of the 113th chapter of the Koran against evil spirits,
+the spells of witches and sorcerers--a chapter said to have been
+revealed to the Prophet of Islam on the occasion of his having
+been bewitched by the daughters of a Jew. The Genii or Ginn--a
+Preadamite race occupying an intermediate position between angels
+and men, who assume at pleasure the form of men, of the lower
+animals, or any monstrous shape, and propagate their species
+like, and sometimes with, human kind--appear in imposing
+proportions in 'The Thousand and One Nights'--that rich display
+of the fancy of the Oriental imagination.[54] Credulous and
+confused in critical perception, the crusading adventurers for
+religion or rapine could scarcely fail to confound with their own
+the peculiar tenets of an ill-understood mode of thought; and
+that the critical and discriminating faculties of the champions
+of the Cross were not of the highest order, is illustrated by
+their difficulty in distinguishing the eminently unitarian
+religion of Mohammed from paganism. By a strange perversion the
+Anglo-Norman and French chroniclers term the Moslems _Pagans_,
+while the Saxon heathen are dignified by the title of _Saracens_;
+and the names of Mahmoud, Termagaunt, Apollo, could be confounded
+without any sense of impropriety. However, or in whatever degree,
+Saracenic or rabbinical superstition tended to influence
+Christian demonology, from about the end of the thirteenth
+century a considerable development in the mythology of witchcraft
+is perceptible.[55]
+
+  [53] Chymistry and Algebra still attest our obligation by
+  their Arabic etymology.
+
+  [54] A common tradition is that Soliman, king of the Jews,
+  having finally subdued--a success which he owed chiefly to
+  his vast magical resources--the rebellious spirits, punished
+  their disobedience by incarcerating them in various kinds of
+  prisons, for longer or shorter periods of time, in proportion
+  to their demerits. For the belief of the followers of
+  Mohammed in the magic excellence of Solomon, see Sale's
+  _Koran_, xxi. and xxvii. According to the prophet, the devil
+  taught men magic and sorcery. The magic of the Moslems, or,
+  at least, of the Egyptians, is of two kinds--high and
+  low--which are termed respectively _rahmanee_ (divine) and
+  _sheytanee_ (Satanic). By a perfect knowledge of the former
+  it is possible to the adept to 'raise the dead to life, kill
+  the living, transport himself instantly wherever he pleases,
+  and perform any other miracle. The _low_ magic (_sooflee_ or
+  _sheytanee_) is believed to depend on the agency of the devil
+  and evil spirits, and unbelieving genii, and to be used for
+  bad purposes and by bad men.' The _divine_ is 'founded on the
+  agency of God and of His angels, &c., and employed always for
+  good purposes, and only to be practised by men of probity,
+  who, by tradition or from books, learn the names of those
+  superhuman agents, &c.'--Lane's _Modern Egyptians_, chap.
+  xii.
+
+  [55] Its effect was probably to enlarge more than to modify
+  appreciably the current ideas. A large proportion of the
+  importations from the East may have been indebted to the
+  invention, as much as to the credulity, of the adventurers;
+  and we might be disposed to believe with Hume, that 'men
+  returning from so great a distance used the liberty [a too
+  general one] of imposing every fiction upon their believing
+  audience.'
+
+Conspicuous in the vulgar prejudices is the suspicion attaching
+to the extraordinary discoveries of philosophy and science.
+Diabolic inspiration (as in our age infidelity and atheism are
+popular outcries) was a ready and successful accusation against
+ideas or discoveries in advance of the time. Roger Bacon, Robert
+Grostete, Albert the Great, Thomas of Ercildoun, Michael
+Scot--eminent names--were all more or less objects of a
+persecuting suspicion. Bacon may justly be considered the
+greatest name in the philosophy of the Middle Age. That anomaly
+of mediaevalism was one of the few who could neglect a vain and
+senseless theology and system of metaphysics to apply his genius
+to the solid pursuits of truer philosophy; and if his influence
+has not been so great as it might have been, it is the fault of
+the age rather than of the man. Condemned by the fear or jealousy
+of his Franciscan brethren and Dominican rivals, Bacon was thrown
+into prison, where he was excluded from propagating 'certain
+suspected novelties' during fourteen years, a victim of his more
+liberal opinions and of theological hatred. One of the traditions
+of his diabolical compacts gives him credit at least for
+ingenuity in avoiding at once a troublesome bargain and a
+terrible fate. The philosopher's compact stipulated that after
+death his soul was to be the reward and possession of the devil,
+whether he died within the church's sacred walls or without them.
+Finding his end approaching, that sagacious magician caused a
+cell to be constructed in the walls of the consecrated edifice,
+giving directions, which were properly carried out, for his
+burial in a tomb that was thus neither within nor without the
+church--an evasion of a long-expected event, which lost the
+disappointed devil his prize, and probably his temper. 'Friar
+Bacon' became afterwards a well-known character in the vulgar
+fables: he was the type of the mediaeval, as the poet Virgil was
+of the ancient, magician. A popular drama was founded on his
+reputed exploits and character in the sixteenth century, by
+Robert Greene, in 'Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay;' but the famous
+Dr. Faustus, the most popular magic hero of that time on the
+stage, was a formidable rival. While his cotemporaries denounced
+his rational method, preferring their theological jargon and
+scholastic metaphysics; how much the Aristotle of mediaevalism has
+been neglected even latterly is a surprising fact.[56]
+
+  [56] The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge have not
+  exhibited the same impatience for a worthy edition of the
+  works of Bacon with which Clement IV. expected a copy of the
+  _Opus Majus_. His principal writings remained in MS. and
+  were not published to the world until the middle of last
+  century.
+
+But in proof of the prevalence of the popular suspicion, not even
+the all-powerful spiritual Chief of Christendom was spared. Many
+of the pontiffs were charged with being addicted to the 'Black
+Art'--an odd imputation against the vicars of Christ and the
+successors of St. Peter. A charge, however, which we may be
+disposed to receive as evidence that in a long and disgusting
+list of ambitious priests and licentious despots there have been
+some popes who, by cultivating philosophy, may have in some
+sort partially redeemed the hateful character of Christian
+sacerdotalism. At a council held at Paris in the interest of
+Philip IV., Boniface VIII. was publicly accused of sorcery: it
+was affirmed that 'he had a familiar demon [the Socratic
+Genius?]; for he has said that if all mankind were on one side
+and he alone on the other, he could not be mistaken either in
+point of fact or of right, which presupposes a diabolical art'--a
+dogma of sacerdotalism sufficiently confident, but scarcely
+requiring a miraculous solution. This pope's death, it is said,
+was hastened by these and similar reports of his dealings with
+familiar spirits, invented in the interest of the French king to
+justify his hostility. Boniface VIII.'s esoteric opinions on
+Catholicism and Christianity, if correctly reported, did not show
+the orthodoxy to be expected from the supreme pontiff: but he
+would not be a singular example amongst the numerous occupants of
+the chair of St. Peter.[57]
+
+  [57] Leo X. (whose tastes were rather profane than pious)
+  instructed or amused himself by causing to be discussed the
+  question of the nature of the soul--himself adopting the
+  opinion 'redit in nihilum quod fuit ante nihil,' and the
+  decision of Aristotle and of Epicurus.
+
+John XXII., one of his more immediate successors, is said to be
+the pope who first formally condemned the crime of witchcraft,
+more systematically anathematised some hundred and fifty years
+afterwards by Innocent VIII. He complains of the universal
+infection of Christendom: that his own court even, and immediate
+attendants, were attached to the devil's service, applying to him
+on all occasions for help. The earliest judicial trial for the
+crime on record in England is said to have occurred in the reign
+of John. It is briefly stated in the 'Abbreviatio Placitorum'
+that 'Agnes, the wife of Odo the merchant, accused Gideon of
+sorcery; and he was acquitted by the judgment of iron.' The first
+account of which much information is given occurs in Edward II.'s
+reign, when the lives of the royal favourites, the De Spencers,
+and his own, were attempted by a supposed criminal, one John of
+Nottingham, with the assistance of his man, Robert Marshall, who
+became king's evidence, and charged his master with having
+conspired the king's death by the arts of sorcery.[58] Cupidity
+or malice was the cause of this informer's accusation. One of the
+distinguishing characteristics in its annals was the abuse of the
+common prejudice for political purposes, or for the gratification
+of private passion.
+
+  [58] _Narratives of Sorcery and Magic_, by Thomas Wright.
+
+At the commencement of the fourteenth century the persecution and
+final destruction of the Order of the Knights Templars in the
+different countries of Europe, but chiefly in France (an instance
+of the former abuse), is one of the most atrocious facts in
+the history of those times. The fate of the Knights of the
+Temple (whose original office it had been to protect their
+coreligionists during pilgrimages in the Holy City, and whose
+quarters were near the site of the Temple--whence the title of
+the Order) in France was determined by the jealousy or avarice of
+Philip IV. Founded in the first half of the twelfth century as a
+half-religious, half-military institution, that celebrated Order
+was, in its earlier career, in high repute for valour and success
+in fighting the battles of the Cross. With wealth and fame, pride
+and presumption increased to the highest pitch; and at the end of
+150 years the champions of Christendom were equally hated and
+feared. Their entire number was no more than 1,500; but they were
+all experienced warriors, in possession of a number of important
+fortresses, besides landed property to the amount, throughout
+their whole extent, of nine thousand manorial estates. When the
+Holy Land was hopelessly lost to the profane ambition or
+religious zeal of the West, its defenders returned to their homes
+loaded with riches and prestige if not with unstained honour, and
+without insinuations that they had betrayed the cause of Christ
+and the Crusades. Such was the condition of the Temple when
+Philip, after exhausting the coffers of Jews and Christians,
+found his treasury still unfilled. The opportunity was not to
+be neglected: it remained only to secure the consent of the
+Church, and to provoke the ready credulity of the people. Church
+and State united, supported by the popular superstition,
+were irresistible; and the destined victims expected their
+impending fate in silent terror. At length the signal was given.
+Prosecutions in 1307 were carried on simultaneously throughout
+the provinces; but in French territory they assumed the most
+formidable shape. In many places they were acquitted of the
+gravest indictments: the English king, from a feeling of justice
+or jealousy, expressed himself in their favour. As for Spain, 'it
+was not in presence of the Moors, and on the classic ground of
+Crusade, that the thought could be entertained of proscribing the
+old defenders of Christendom.' Paris, where was their principal
+temple, was the centre of the Order; their wealth and power were
+concentrated in France; and thus the spoils not of a single
+province, but almost of the entire body, were within the grasp of
+a single monarch. Hence he assumed the right of presiding as
+judge and executioner.[59] On October 12, 1307, Jacques Molay,
+with the heads of the Temple, was invited to Paris, where, loaded
+with favours, they were lulled into fatal security. The delusion
+was soon abruptly dispelled. Molay, together with 140 of his
+brethren, was arrested--the signal for a more general procedure
+throughout the kingdom.
+
+  [59] Dante seems to refer to this recent spoliation in the
+  following verses:--
+
+       'Lo! the new Pilate, of whose cruelty
+        Such violence cannot fill the measure up,
+        With no decree to sanction, pushes on
+        Into the Temple his yet eager sails.'
+
+                      _Purgat._ xx. Cary's Transl.
+
+The charges have been resolved under three heads: (1) The denial
+of Christ. (2) Treachery to the cause of Christianity. (3) The
+worship of the devil, and the practice of sorcery. The principal
+articles in the indictment were that the knights at initiation
+formally denied the divinity of Christ, pronouncing he was not
+truly a God--even going so far as to assert he was a false
+prophet, a man who had been punished for his crimes; that they
+had no hopes of salvation through him; that at the final
+reception they always spat on the Cross, trampling it under foot;
+that they worshipped the devil in the form of a cat, or some
+other familiar animal; that they adored him in the figure of an
+idol consecrated by anointing it with the fat of a new-born
+infant, the illegitimate offspring of a brother; that a demon
+appeared in the shape of a black or gray cat, &c. The idol is a
+mysterious object. According to some it was a head with a beard,
+or a head with three faces: by others it was said to be a skull,
+a cat. One witness testified that in a chapter of the Order one
+brother said to another, 'Worship this head; it is your God and
+your Mahomet.' Of this kind was the general evidence of the
+witnesses examined. Less incredible, perhaps, is the statement
+that they sometimes saw demons in the appearance of women; and a
+more credible allegation is that of a secret understanding with
+the Turks.
+
+Notoriously suspicious communication had been maintained with the
+enemy; they even went so far as to adopt their style of dress and
+living. Worse than all, by an amiable but unaccustomed tolerance,
+the followers of Mohammed had been allowed a free exercise of
+their religion, a sort of liberality little short of apostasy
+from the faith. Without recounting all the horrors of the
+persecution, it must be sufficient to repeat that fifty-four
+of the wretched condemned, having been degraded by the Bishop
+of Paris, were handed over to the flames. Four years afterwards
+the scene was consummated by the burning of Jacques Molay.
+Torture of the most dreadful sort had been applied to force
+necessary confessions; and the complaint of one of the criminals
+is significant--'I, single, as I am, cannot undertake to argue
+with the Pope and the King of France.'[60] In attempting to
+detect the mysterious facts of this dark transaction little
+assistance is given by the contradictory statements of cotemporary
+or later writers; some asserting the charges to be mere
+fabrications throughout; others their positive reality; and recent
+historians have attempted to substantiate or destroy them. Hallam
+truly remarks that the rapacious and unprincipled conduct of
+Philip, the submission of Clement V. to his will, the apparent
+incredibility of the charges from their monstrousness, the just
+prejudice against confessions obtained by torture and retracted
+afterwards; the other prejudice, not always so just, but in the
+case of those not convicted on fair evidence deserving a better
+name, in favour of assertions of innocence made on the scaffold
+and at the stake, created, as they still preserve, a strong
+willingness to disbelieve the accusations which come so
+suspiciously before us.[61] An approximation to the truth may
+be obtained if, rejecting as improbable the accusations of
+devil-worship and its concomitant rites which, invented to
+amuse the vulgar, characterise the proceedings, we admit the
+_probability_ of a secret understanding with the Turks, or the
+_possibility_ of infidelity to the religion of Christ. Their
+destruction had been predetermined; the slender element of truth
+might soon be exaggerated and confounded with every kind of
+fiction. Their pride, avarice, luxury, corrupt morals, would give
+colour to the most absurd inventions.[62]
+
+  [60] Michelet's _History of France_, book v. 4. M. Michelet
+  suggests an ingenious explanation of some of their supposed
+  secret practices. 'The principal charge, the denial of the
+  Saviour, rested on an equivocation. The Templars might
+  confess to the denial without being in reality apostates.
+  Many averred that it was a symbolical denial, in imitation
+  of St. Peter's--one of those pious comedies in which the
+  antique Church enveloped the most serious acts of religion,
+  but whose traditional meaning was beginning to be lost in
+  the fourteenth century.' The idol-head, believed to
+  represent Mohammed or the devil, he supposes to have been 'a
+  representation of the Paraclete, whose festival, that of
+  Pentecost, was the highest solemnity of the Temple.' Some
+  have identified them, like those of the Albigenses or
+  Waldenses, with the ceremonies of the Gnostics.
+
+  [61] _View of the Middle Ages_, chap. i. The judicial
+  impartiality (eulogised by Macaulay) and patient
+  investigation of truth (the first merits of a historian) of
+  the author of the _Constitutional History of England_, might
+  almost entitle him to rank with the first of historians,
+  Gibbon.
+
+  [62] The alliance of the Church--of the Dominican Order in
+  particular--with the secular power against its once foremost
+  champions, is paralleled and explained by the causes that led
+  to the dissolution of the Order of Jesus by Clement XIV. in
+  the eighteenth century--fear and jealousy.
+
+If the history of the extermination of the Templars exemplifies
+in an eminent manner the political uses made by the highest in
+office of a prevalent superstition, the story of Alice Kyteler
+illustrates equally the manner in which it was prostituted to the
+private purposes of designing impostors. The scene is in Ireland,
+the period the first half of the fourteenth century; Richard de
+Ledrede, Bishop of Ossory, being the principal prosecutor, and a
+lady, Alice Kyteler, the defendant. The details are too tedious
+to be repeated here;[63] but the articles upon which the
+conviction of Alice Kyteler and her accomplices was sought are
+not dissimilar to those just narrated. To give effect to their
+sorcery they were in the habit of denying the faith for a year,
+or shorter period, as the object to be attained was greater or
+less. Demons were propitiated with sacrifices of living animals,
+torn limb by limb and scattered (a Hecatean feast) about
+cross-roads. It was alleged that by sorceries they obtained help
+from the devil; that they impiously used the ceremonies of the
+Church in nightly conventicles, pronouncing with lighted candles
+of wax excommunication against the persons of their own husbands,
+naming expressly every member from the sole of the foot to the
+top of the head. Their compositions are of the Horatian and
+Shakspearian sort. With the intestines of cocks were sacrificed
+various herbs, the nails of dead men, hair, brains, and clothes
+of children dying unbaptized, with other equally efficacious
+ingredients, boiled in the skull of a certain famous robber
+recently beheaded: powders, ointments, and candles of fat boiled
+in the same skull were the intended instruments for exciting love
+or hatred, and in affecting the bodies of the faithful. An unholy
+connection existed between the Lady Alice and a demon in the form
+sometimes of a black dog, sometimes of a cat. She was possessed
+of a secret ointment for impregnating a piece of wood, upon
+which, with her companions, she was carried to any part of the
+world without hurt or hindrance: in her house was found a wafer
+of consecrated bread inscribed with the name of the devil. The
+event of this trial was the conviction and imprisonment of the
+criminals, with the important exception of the chief object of
+the bishop's persecution, who contrived an escape to England.
+Petronilla de Meath was the first to suffer the extreme penalty.
+This lady, by order of the bishop, had been six times flogged,
+when, to escape a repetition of that barbarous infliction, she
+made a public confession involving her fellow-prisoners. After
+which Petronilla was carried out into the city and burned before
+all the people--the first witch, it is said, ever burned in
+Ireland. Of the other accused all were treated with more or less
+severity; two were subsequently burned, some were publicly
+flogged in the market-place and through the city, others
+banished; a few, more fortunate, escaping altogether.
+
+  [63] They are given in full in _Narratives of Sorcery and
+  Magic from the most Authentic Sources_, by Thomas Wright. In
+  the _Annals of Ireland_, affixed to Camden's _Britannia_,
+  ed. 1695, sub anno 1325 A.D., the case of Dame Alice Ketyll
+  is briefly chronicled. Being cited and examined by the
+  Bishop of Ossory, it was discovered, among other things,
+  'That a certain spirit called Robin Artysson lay with her;
+  and that she offered him nine red cocks on a stone bridge
+  where the highway branches out into four several parts.
+  _Item_: That she swept the streets of Kilkenny with besoms
+  between Compline and Courefeu, and in sweeping the filth
+  towards the house of William Utlaw, her son, by way of
+  conjuring, wished that all the wealth of Kilkenny might flow
+  thither. The accomplices of this Alice in these devilish
+  practices were Pernil of Meth, and Basilia the daughter of
+  this Pernil. Alice, being found guilty, was fined by the
+  bishop, and forced to abjure her sorcery and witchcraft. But
+  being again convicted of the same practice, she made her
+  escape with Basilia, and was never found. But Pernil was
+  burnt at Kilkenny, and before her death declared that
+  William above-said deserved punishment as well as she--that
+  for a year and a day he wore the devil's girdle about his
+  bare body,' &c.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+     Witchcraft and Heresy purposely confounded by the
+     Church--Mediaeval Science closely connected with Magic and
+     Sorcery--Ignorance of Physiology the Cause of many of the
+     Popular Prejudices--Jeanne d'Arc--Duchess of
+     Gloucester--Jane Shore--Persecution at Arras.
+
+
+What can hardly fail to be discerned in these prosecutions is the
+confusion of heresy and sorcery industriously created by the
+orthodox Church to secure the punishment of her offending
+dissentients. There are few proceedings against the pretended
+criminals in which it is not discoverable; the one crime being,
+as a matter of course, the necessary consequence of the other. In
+the interest of the Church as much as in the credulity of the
+people must be sought the main cause of so violent an epidemic,
+of so fearful a phenomenon in its continuance and atrocities, a
+fact demonstrated by the whole course of the superstition in the
+old times of Catholicism. Materials for exciting animosity and
+indignation against suspected heretics were near at hand. In
+the assurance of the pre-scientific world everything remote
+from ordinary knowledge or experience was inseparable from
+supernaturalism. What surpassed the limits of a very feeble
+understanding, what was beyond the commonest experience of
+every-day life, was with one accord relegated to the domain of
+the supernatural, or rather to that of the devil. For what was
+not done or taught by Holy Church must be of 'that wicked
+One'--the cunning imitator.
+
+In the twelfth century the Church was alarmed by the simultaneous
+springing up of various sects, which, if too hastily claimed by
+Protestantism as _Protestants_, in the modern sense, against
+Catholic theology, were yet sufficiently hostile or dangerous to
+engage the attention and to provoke the enmity of the pontiffs.
+The fate of the Stedingers and others in Germany, of the
+Paulicians in Northern France; of the Albigenses and Waldenses in
+Southern Europe, is in accordance with this successful sort of
+theological tactics. Many of the articles of indictment against
+those outlaws of the Church and of society are extracted from the
+primitive heresies, in particular from the doctrines of the
+anti-Judaic and _spiritualising_ Gnostics, and their more than
+fifty subdivided sects--Marcionites, Manicheans, &c. Gregory IV.
+issued a bull in 1232 against the Stedingers, revolted from the
+rule of the Archbishop of Bremen, where they are declared to be
+accustomed to scorn the sacraments, hold communion with devils,
+make representative images of wax, and consult with witches.[64]
+
+  [64] A second bull enters into details. On the reception of
+  a convert, a toad made its appearance, which was adored by
+  the assembled crowd. On sitting down to the banquet a black
+  cat comes upon the stage, double the size of an ordinary
+  dog, advancing backwards with up-turned tail. The neophytes,
+  one after another, kissed this feline demon, with due
+  solemnity, on the back. Walter Mapes has given an account of
+  the similar ceremonies of the _Publicans_ (Paulicians).
+  Heretical worship was of a most licentious as well as
+  disgusting kind. The religious meetings terminate always in
+  indiscriminate debauchery.
+
+Alchymy, astrology, and kindred arts were closely allied to the
+practice of witchcraft: the profession of medicine was little
+better than the mixing of magical ointments, love-potions,
+elixirs, not always of an innocent sort; and Sangrados were not
+wanting in those days to trade upon the ignorance of their
+patients.[65] Nor, unfortunately, are the genuine seekers after
+truth who honestly applied to the study of nature exempt from the
+charge of often an unconscious fraud. Monstrous notions mingled
+with the more real results of their meritorious labours. Science
+was in its infancy, or rather was still struggling to be freed
+from the oppressive weight of speculative and theological
+nonsense before emerging into existence. Many of the fancied
+phenomena of witch-cases, like other physical or mental
+eccentricities, have been explained by the progress of reason and
+knowledge. Lycanthropy (the transformation of human beings into
+wolves by sorcery), with the no less irrational belief in
+demoniacal possession, the product of a diseased imagination and
+brain, was one of the many results of mere ignorance of
+physiology. In the seventeenth century lycanthropy was gravely
+defended by doctors of medicine as well as of divinity, on the
+authority of the story of Nebuchadnezzar, which proved undeniably
+the possibility of such metamorphoses.
+
+  [65] Pliny (_Hist. Natur._ xxx.) 'observes,' as Gibbon
+  quotes him, 'that magic held mankind by the triple chain of
+  religion, of physic, and of astronomy.'
+
+Cotemporary annalists record the extraordinary frenzy aggravated,
+as it was, by the proceedings against the Templars, the signal of
+witch persecutions throughout France. The historian of France
+draws a frightful picture of the insecure condition of an
+ignorantly prejudiced society. Accusations poured in; poisonings,
+adulteries, forgeries, and, above all, charges of witchcraft,
+which, indeed, entered as an ingredient into all causes, forming
+their attraction and their horror. The judge shuddered on the
+judgment seat when the proofs were brought before him in the
+shape of philtres, amulets, frogs, black cats, and waxen images
+stuck full of needles. Violent curiosity was blended at these
+trials with the fierce joy of vengeance and a cast of fear. The
+public mind could not be satiated with them: the more there were
+burnt, the more there were brought to be burnt.[66] In 1398 the
+Sorbonne, at the chancellor's suggestion, published 27 articles
+against all sorts of sorcery, pictures of demons, and waxen
+figures. Six years later a synod was specially convened at
+Langres, and the pressing evil was anxiously deliberated at the
+Council of Constance.
+
+  [66] Michelet, whose poetic-prose may appear hardly suitable
+  to the philosophic dignity of history, relating the fate of
+  two knights accused with a monk of having 'sinned' with the
+  king's daughter-in-law 'even on the holiest days,' and who
+  were castrated and flayed alive, truly enough infers that
+  'the pious confidence of the middle age which did not
+  mistrust the immuring of a great lady along with her knights
+  in the precincts of a castle, of a narrow tower; the
+  vassalage which imposed on young men as a feudal duty the
+  sweetest cares, was a dangerous trial to human nature.'
+
+Conspicuous about this period, by their importance and iniquity,
+are the cases of the Pucelle d'Orleans and the catastrophe of
+Arras. Incited (it is a modern conviction) by a noble enthusiasm,
+by her own ardent imagination, the Pucelle divested herself of
+the natural modesty of her sex for the dress and arms of a
+warrior; and 'her inexperienced mind, working day and night on
+the favourite object, mistook the impulses of passion for
+heavenly inspiration.' Reviewing the last scenes in the life of
+that patriotic shepherdess, we hesitate whether to stigmatise
+more the unscrupulous policy of the English authorities or the
+base subservience of the Parliament of Paris. The English Regent
+and the Cardinal of Winchester, unable to allege against their
+prisoner (the saviour of her country, taken prisoner in a sally
+from a besieged town, had been handed over by her countrymen to
+the foreigner) any civil crime, were forced to disguise a
+violation of justice and humanity in the pretence of religion;
+and the Bishop of Beauvais presented a petition against her, as
+an ecclesiastical subject, demanding to have her tried by an
+ecclesiastical court for sorcery, impiety, idolatry, and magic.
+The University of Paris acquiesced. Before this tribunal the
+accused was brought, loaded with chains, and clothed in her
+military dress. It was alleged that she had carried about a
+standard consecrated by magical enchantments; that she had been
+in the habit of attending at the witches' sabbath at a fountain
+near the oak of Boulaincourt; that the demons had discovered to
+her a magical sword consecrated in the Church of St. Catherine,
+to which she owed her victories; that by means of sorcery she had
+gained the confidence of Charles VIII. Jeanne d'Arc was convicted
+of all these crimes, aggravated by _heresy_: her revelations were
+declared to be inventions of the devil to delude the people.[67]
+
+  [67] Shakspeare brings the fiends upon the stage: their work
+  is done, and they now abandon the enchantress. In vain La
+  Pucelle invokes in her extremity--
+
+              'Ye familiar spirits, that are cull'd
+        Out of the powerful regions under earth,
+        Help me this once, that France may get the field.
+        Oh, hold me not with silence over-long!
+
+       'Where I was wont to feed you with my blood,
+        I'll lop a member off, and give it you,
+        In earnest of a further benefit;
+        So you do condescend to help me now.
+
+        *       *       *       *       *
+
+        Cannot my body, nor blood-sacrifice,
+        Entreat you to your wonted furtherance?
+        Then take my soul; my body, soul, and all,
+        Before that England give the French the foil.
+        See! they forsake me.
+
+        *       *       *       *       *
+
+        My ancient incantations are too weak
+        And hell too strong for me to buckle with.'
+
+  But a worthier, if contradictory, origin is assigned for her
+  enthusiasm when she replies to the foul aspersion of her
+  taunting captors--
+
+       'Virtuous, and holy; chosen from above,
+        By inspiration of celestial grace,
+        To work exceeding miracles on earth,
+        I never had to do with wicked spirits.
+        But you--that are polluted with your lusts,
+        Stain'd with the guiltless blood of innocents,
+        Corrupt and tainted with a thousand vices--
+        Because you want the grace that others have,
+        You judge it straight a thing impossible
+        To compass wonders, but by help of devils.'
+
+Her ecclesiastical judges then consigned their prisoner to the
+civil power; and, finally, in the words of Hume, 'this admirable
+heroine--to whom the more generous superstition of the ancients
+would have erected altars--was, on pretence of heresy and magic,
+delivered over alive to the flames; and expiated by that dreadful
+punishment the signal services she had rendered to her prince and
+to her native country.'[68]
+
+  [68] _History of England_, XX. Shakspeare (_Henry VI._ part
+  ii. act i.) has furnished us with the charms and
+  incantations employed about the same time in the case of the
+  Duchess of Gloucester. Mother Jourdain is the representative
+  witch-hag.
+
+Without detracting from the real merit of the patriotic martyr,
+it might be suspected that, besides her inflamed imagination, a
+pious and pardonable collusion was resorted to as a last
+desperate effort to rouse the energy of the troops or the hopes
+of the people--a collusion similar to that of the celebrated
+Constantinian Cross, or of the Holy Lance of Antioch. Every
+reader is acquainted with the fate of the great personages who in
+England were accused, politically or popularly, of the crime; and
+the histories of the Duchess of Gloucester and of Jane Shore are
+immortalised by Shakspeare. In 1417, Joan, second wife of Henry
+IV., had been sentenced to prison, suspected of seeking the
+king's death by sorcery; a certain Friar Randolf being her
+accomplice and agent. The Duchess of Gloucester, wife of Humphry
+and daughter of Lord Cobham, was an accomplice in the witchcraft
+of a priest and an old woman. Her associates were Sir Roger
+Bolingbroke, priest; Margery Jordan or Guidemar, of Eye, in
+Suffolk; Thomas Southwell, and Roger Only. It was asserted 'there
+was found in their possession a waxen image of the king, which
+they melted in a magical manner before a slow fire, with the
+intention of making Henry's force and vigour waste away by like
+insensible degrees.' The duchess was sentenced to do penance and
+to perpetual imprisonment; Margery was burnt for a witch in
+Smithfield; the priest was hanged, declaring his employers had
+only desired to know of him how long the king would live; Thomas
+Southwell died the night before his execution; Roger Only was
+hanged, having first written a book to prove his own innocence,
+and against the opinion of the vulgar.[69] Jane Shore (whose
+story is familiar to all), the mistress of Edward IV., was
+sacrificed to the policy of Richard Duke of Gloucester, more than
+to any general suspicion of her guilt. Both the Archbishop of
+York and the Bishop of Ely were involved with the citizen's wife
+in demoniacal dealings, and imprisoned in the Tower. As for the
+'harlot, strumpet Shore,' not being convicted, or at least
+condemned, for the worse crime, she was found guilty of adultery,
+and sentenced (a milder fate) to do penance in a white sheet
+before the assembled populace at St. Paul's.[70]
+
+  [69] The historian of England justly reflects on this case
+  that the nature of the crime, so opposite to all common
+  sense, seems always to exempt the accusers from using the
+  rules of common sense in their evidence.
+
+  [70] This unfortunate woman was celebrated for her beauty
+  and, with one important exception, for her virtues; and, if
+  her vanity could not resist the fascination of a royal lover,
+  her power had been often, it is said, exerted in the cause of
+  humanity. Notwithstanding the neglect and ill-treatment
+  experienced from the ingratitude of former fawning courtiers
+  and people, she reached an advanced age, for she was living
+  in the time of Sir Thomas More, who relates that 'when the
+  Protector had awhile laid unto her, for the manner sake, that
+  she went about to bewitch him, and that she was of counsel
+  with the lord chamberlain to destroy him; in conclusion, when
+  no colour could fasten upon this matter, then he laid
+  heinously to her charge the thing that herself could not
+  deny, that all the world wist was true, and that natheless
+  every man laughed at to hear it then so suddenly so highly
+  taken--that she was naught of her body.'--_Reign of Richard
+  III._, quoted by Bishop Percy in _Reliques of Old English
+  Romance Poetry_. The deformed prince fiercely attributes his
+  proverbial misfortune to hostile witchcraft. He addresses his
+  trembling council:
+
+       'Look how I am bewitch'd; behold mine arm
+        Is, like a blasted sapling, wither'd up:
+        And this is Edward's wife, that monstrous witch,
+        Consorted with that harlot, strumpet Shore,
+        That by their witchcraft thus have marked me.'
+
+                      _Richard III._ act iii. sc. 4.
+
+More tremendous than any of the cases above narrated is that of
+Arras, where numbers of all classes suffered. So transparent were
+the secret but real motives of the chief agitators, that even the
+unbounded credulity of the public could penetrate the thin
+disguise. The affair commenced with the accusation of a woman of
+Douai, called Demiselle (une femme de folle vie). Put to the
+torture repeatedly, this wretched woman was forced to confess she
+had frequented a meeting of sorcerers where several persons were
+seen and recognised; amongst others Jehan Levite, a painter at
+Arras. The chronicler of the fifteenth century relates the
+diabolical catastrophe thus: 'A terrible and melancholy
+transaction took place this year (1459) in the town of Arras, the
+capital of the county of Artois, which said transaction was
+called, I know not why, _Vaudoisie_: but it was said that certain
+men and women transported themselves whither they pleased from
+the places where they were seen, by virtue of a compact with the
+devil. Suddenly they were carried to forests and deserts, where
+they found assembled great numbers of both sexes, and with them a
+devil in the form of a man, whose face they never saw. This devil
+read to them, or repeated his laws and commandments in what way
+they were to worship and serve him: then each person kissed his
+back, and he gave to them after this ceremony some little money.
+He then regaled them with great plenty of meats and wines, when
+the lights were extinguished, and each man selected a female for
+amorous dalliance; and suddenly they were transported back to the
+places they had come from. For such criminal and mad acts many of
+the principal persons of the town were imprisoned; and others of
+the lower ranks, with women, and such as were known to be of this
+sect, were so terribly tormented, that some confessed matters to
+have happened as has been related. They likewise confessed to
+have seen and known many persons of rank, prelates, nobles, and
+governors of districts, as having been present at these meetings;
+such, indeed, as, upon the rumour of common fame, their judges
+and examiners named, and, as it were, put into their mouths: so
+that through the pains of the torments they accused many, and
+declared they had seen them at these meetings. Such as had been
+thus accused were instantly arrested, and so long and grievously
+tormented that they were forced to confess just whatever their
+judges pleased, when those of the lower rank were inhumanly
+burnt. Some of the richer and more powerful ransomed themselves
+from this disgrace by dint of money; while others of the highest
+orders were remonstrated with, and seduced by their examiners
+into confession under a promise that if they would confess, they
+should not suffer either in person or property. Others, again,
+suffered the severest torments with the utmost patience and
+fortitude. The judges received very large sums of money from such
+as were able to pay them: others fled the country, or completely
+proved their innocence of the charges made against them, and
+remained unmolested. It must not be concealed (proceeds
+Monstrelet) that many persons of worth knew that these charges
+had been raked up by a set of wicked persons to harass and
+disgrace some of the principal inhabitants of Arras, whom they
+hated with the bitterest rancour, and from avarice were eager to
+possess themselves of their fortunes. They at first maliciously
+arrested some persons deserving of punishment for their crimes,
+whom they had so severely tormented, holding out promises of
+pardon, that they forced them to accuse whomsoever they were
+pleased to name. This matter was considered [it must have been an
+exceedingly ill-devised plot to provoke suspicion and even
+indignation in such a matter] by all men of sense and virtue as
+most abominable: and it was thought that those who had thus
+destroyed and disgraced so many persons of worth would put their
+souls in imminent danger at the last day.'[71]
+
+  [71] Enguerrand de Monstrelet's _Chronicles_, lib. iii. cap.
+  93, Johnes' Translation. _Vaudoisie_, which puzzles the
+  annalist, seems to disclose the pretence, if not the motive,
+  of the proceedings. Yet it is not easy to conceive so large
+  a number of all classes involved in the proscribed heresy of
+  the Vaudois in a single city in the north of France.
+
+Meanwhile the inquisitor, Jacques Dubois, doctor in theology,
+dean of Notre Dame at Arras, ordered the arrest of Levite the
+artist, and made him confess he had attended the 'Vauldine;' that
+he had seen there many people, men and women, burghers,
+ecclesiastics, whose names were specified. The bishops' vicars,
+overwhelmed by the number and quality of the involved, began to
+dread the consequence, and wished to stop the proceedings. But
+this did not satisfy the projects of two of the most active
+promoters, Jacques Dubois and the Bishop of Bayrut, who urged the
+Comte d'Estampes to use his authority with the vicars to proceed
+energetically against the prisoners. Soon afterwards the matter
+was brought to a crisis; the fate of the tortured convicts was
+decided, and amidst thousands of spectators from all parts, they
+were brought out, each with a mitre on his head, on which was
+painted the devil in the form in which he appeared at the general
+assemblies, and burned.
+
+They admitted (under the severest torture, promises, and threats)
+the truth of their meetings at the sabbaths. They used a sort of
+ointment well known in witch-pharmacy for rubbing a small wooden
+rod and the palms of their hands, and by a very common mode of
+conveyance were borne away suddenly to the appointed rendezvous.
+Here their lord and master was expecting them in the shape of a
+goat with the face of a man and the tail of an ape. Homage was
+first done by his new vassals offering up their soul or some part
+of the body; afterwards in adoration kissing him on the back--the
+accustomed salutation.[72] Next followed the different signs and
+ceremonies of the infernal vassalage, in particular treading and
+spitting upon the cross. Then to eating and drinking; after which
+the guests joined in acts of indescribable debauchery, when the
+devil took the form alternately of either sex. Dismissal was
+given by a mock sermon, forbidding to go to church, hear mass, or
+touch holy water. All these acts indicate schismatic offences
+which yet for the most part are the characteristics of the
+sabbaths in later Protestant witchcraft, excepting that the
+wicked apostates are there usually _papistical_ instead of
+_protestant_. During nearly two years Arras was subjected to the
+arbitrary examinations and tortures of the inquisitors; and
+an appeal to the Parliament of Paris could alone stop the
+proceedings, 1461. The chance of acquittal by the verdict of the
+public was little: it was still less by the sentence of judicial
+tribunals.
+
+  [72] The 'Osculum in tergo' seems to be an indispensable
+  part of the Homagium or _Diabolagium_.
+
+
+
+
+PART III.
+
+MODERN FAITH.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+     The Bull of Innocent VIII.--A new Incentive to the vigorous
+     Prosecution of Witchcraft--The 'Malleus Maleficarum'--Its
+     Criminal Code--Numerous Executions at the Commencement of
+     the Sixteenth Century--Examination of Christian
+     Demonology--Various Opinions of the Nature of
+     Demons--General Belief in the Intercourse of Demons and
+     other non-human Beings with Mankind.
+
+
+Perhaps the most memorable epoch in the annals of witchcraft is
+the date of the promulgation of the bull of Pope Innocent VIII.,
+when its prosecution was formally sanctioned, enforced, and
+developed in the most explicit manner by the highest authority in
+the Church. It was in the year 1484 that Innocent VIII. issued
+his famous bull directed especially against the crime in Germany,
+whose inquisitors were empowered to seek out and burn the
+malefactors _pro strigiatus haeresi_. The bull was as follows:
+'Innocent, Bishop, servant of the servants of God, in order to
+the future memorial of the matter.... In truth it has come to our
+ears, not without immense trouble and grief to ourselves, that
+in some parts of Higher Germany ... very many persons of both
+sexes, deviating from the Catholic faith, abuse themselves with
+the demons, Incubus and Succubus; and by incantations, charms,
+conjurations, and other wicked _superstitions_, by criminal acts
+and offences have caused the offspring of women and of the lower
+animals, the fruits of the earth, the grape, and the products of
+various plants, men, women, and other animals of different kinds,
+vineyards, meadows, pasture land, corn, and other vegetables of
+the earth, to perish, be oppressed, and utterly destroyed; that
+they torture men and women with cruel pains and torments,
+internal as well as external; that they hinder the proper
+intercourse of the sexes, and the propagation of the human
+species. Moreover, they are in the habit of denying the very
+faith itself. We therefore, willing to provide by opportune
+remedies according as it falls to us by our office, by our
+apostolical authority, by the tenor of these presents do appoint
+and decree that they be convicted, imprisoned, punished, and
+mulcted according to their offences.... By the apostolic rescript
+given at Rome.'
+
+This, in brief, is an outline of the proclamation of Innocent
+VIII., the principles of which were developed in the more
+voluminous work of the 'Malleus Maleficarum,'[73] or Hammer of
+Witches, five years later. In the interval, the effect of so
+forcible an appeal from the Head of the Church was such as might
+be expected. Cumanus, one of the inquisitors in 1485, burned
+forty-one witches, first shaving them to search for 'marks.'
+Alciatus, a lawyer, tells us that another ecclesiastical officer
+burned one hundred witches in Piedmont, and was prevented in his
+plan of daily _autos-da-fe_ only by a general uprising of the
+people, who at length drove him out of the country, when the
+archbishop succeeded to the vacant office. In several provinces,
+even the servile credulity of the populace could not tolerate the
+excesses of the judges; and the inhabitants rose _en masse_
+against their inquisitorial oppressors, dreading the entire
+depopulation of their neighbourhood. As a sort of apology for the
+bull of 1484 was published the 'Malleus'--a significantly
+expressive title.[74] The authors appointed by the pope were
+Jacob Sprenger, of the Order of Preachers, and Professor of
+Theology in Cologne; John Gremper, priest, Master in Arts; and
+Henry Institor. The work is divisible, according to the title,
+into three parts--Things that pertain to Witchcraft; The Effects
+of Witchcraft; and The Remedies for Witchcraft.
+
+  [73] Ennemoser (_History of Magic_), a modern and milder
+  Protestant, excepts to the general denunciations of Pope
+  Innocent ('who assumed this name, undoubtedly, because he
+  wished it to indicate what he really desired to be') by
+  Protestant writers who have used such terms as 'a scandalous
+  hypocrite,' 'a cursed war-song of hell,' 'hangmen's slaves,'
+  'rabid jailers,' 'bloodthirsty monsters,' &c.; and thinks
+  that 'the accusation which was made against Innocent could
+  only have been justly founded if the pope had not
+  participated in the general belief, if he had been wiser
+  than his time, and really seen that the heretics were no
+  allies of the devil, and that the witches were no heretics.'
+
+  [74] The complete title is 'MALLEUS MALEFICARUM in tres
+  partes divisus, in quibus I. Concurrentia ad maleficia; II.
+  Maleficiorum effectus; III. Remedia adversus maleficia. Et
+  modus denique procedendi ac puniendi maleficas abunde
+  continetur, praecipue autem omnibus inquisitoribus et divini
+  verbi concionatoribus utilis et necessarius.' The original
+  edition of 1489 is the one quoted by Hauber, _Bibliotheca
+  Mag._, and referred to by Ennemoser, _History of Magic_.
+
+In this apology the editors are careful to affirm that they
+_collected_, rather than _furnished_, their materials originally,
+and give as their venerable authorities the names of Dionysius
+the Areopagite, Chrysostom, Hilary, Augustin, Gregory I.,
+Remigius, Thomas Aquinas, and others. The writers exult in the
+consciousness of security, in spite of the attempts of the
+demons, day and night, to deter them from completing their
+meritorious labours. Stratagems of every sort are employed in
+vain. In their judgment the worst species of human wickedness
+sink into nothing, compared with apostasy from the Church and, by
+consequence, alliance with hell. A genuine or pretended dread of
+sorcery, and an affected contempt for the female sex, with an
+extremely low estimate of its virtues (adopting the language of
+the Fathers), characterises the opinions of the compilers.
+
+Ennemoser has made an abstract from the 'Demonomagie' of Horst
+(founded on Hauber's original work), of the 'Hexenhammer,' under
+its three principal divisions. The third part, which contains the
+Criminal Code, and consists of thirty-five questions, is the most
+important section. It is difficult to decide which is the more
+astonishing, the perfect folly or the perfect iniquity of the
+Code: it is easier to understand how so many thousands of victims
+were helplessly sacrificed. The arrest might take place on the
+simple rumour of a witch being found somewhere, without any
+previous denunciation. The most abandoned and the most infamous
+persons may be witnesses: no criminal is too bad. Even a witch or
+heretic (the _worst_ criminal in the eye of ecclesiastical law)
+is capable of giving evidence. Husbands and wives may witness one
+against the other; and the testimony of children was received as
+good evidence.
+
+The ninth and tenth chapters consider the question 'whether a
+defence was to be allowed; if an advocate defended his client
+beyond what was requisite, whether it was not reasonable that he
+too should be considered guilty; for he is a patron of witches
+and heretics.... Thirteenth chapter: What the judge has to notice
+in the torture-chamber. Witches who have given themselves up for
+years, body and soul, to the devil, are made by him so insensible
+to pain on the rack, that they rather allow themselves to be torn
+to pieces than confess. Fourteenth chapter: Upon torture and the
+mode of racking. In order to bring the accused to voluntary
+confession, you may promise her her life; which promise, however,
+may afterwards be withdrawn. If the witch does not confess the
+first day, the torture to be continued the second and third days.
+But here the difference between continuing and repeating is
+important. The torture may not be _continued_ without fresh
+evidence, but it may be _repeated_ according to judgment.
+Fifteenth chapter: Continuance of the discovery of a witch by her
+marks. Amongst other signs, weeping is one. It is a damning thing
+if the accused, on being brought up, cannot shed tears. The
+clergy and judges lay their hands on the head of the accused, and
+adjure her by the hot tears of the Most Glorified Virgin that in
+case of her innocence, she shed abundant tears in the name of God
+the Father.'[75]
+
+  [75] Ennemoser's _History of Magic_. Translated by W.
+  Howitt. There are three kinds of men whom witchcraft cannot
+  touch--magistrates; clergymen exercising the pious rites of
+  the Church; and saints, who are under the immediate
+  protection of the angels.
+
+The 'Bull' and 'Malleus' were the code and textbook of Witchcraft
+amongst the Catholics, as the Act and 'Demonologie' of James VI.
+were of the Protestants. Perhaps the most important result of the
+former was to withdraw entirely the authorised prosecution and
+punishment of the criminals from the civil to the ecclesiastical
+tribunals. Formerly they had a divided jurisdiction. At the
+same time the fury of popular and judicial fanaticism was
+greatly inflamed by this new sanction. Immediately, and almost
+simultaneously, in different parts of Europe, heretical witches
+were hunted up, tortured, burned, or hanged; and those parts of
+the Continent most infected with the widening heresy suffered
+most. The greater number in Germany seems to show that the
+dissentients from Catholic dogma there were rapidly increasing,
+some time before Luther thundered out his denunciations. An
+unusual storm of thunder and lightning in the neighbourhood of
+Constance was the occasion of burning two old women, Ann Mindelen
+and one 'Agnes.'[76] One contemporary writer asserts that 1,000
+persons were put to death in one year in the district of Como;
+and Remigius, one of the authorised _inquisitores pravitatis
+haereticae_, boasts of having burned 900 in the course of fifteen
+years. Martin del Rio states 500 were executed in Geneva in
+the short space of three months in 1515; and during the next
+five years 40 were burned at Ravensburgh. Great numbers suffered
+in France at the same period. At Calahorra, in Spain, in 1507,
+a vast _auto-da-fe_ was exhibited, when 39 women, denounced
+as sorceresses, were committed to the flames--religious
+carnage attested by the unsuspected evidence of the judges and
+executioners themselves.
+
+  [76] Hutchinson's _Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft_,
+  chap ii.
+
+It is opportune here to examine the common beliefs of demonology
+and sorcery as they existed in Europe. Christian demonology is a
+confused mixture of pagan, Oriental, and Christian ideas. The
+Christian Scriptures have seemed to suggest and sanction a
+constant personal interference of the 'great adversary,' who is
+always traversing the earth 'seeking whom he may devour;' and his
+popular figure is represented as a union of the great dragon,
+the satyrs, and fauns. Nor does he often appear without one or
+other of his recognised marks--the cloven foot, the goat's
+horns, beard, and legs, or the dragon's tail. With young and
+good-looking witches he is careful to assume the recommendations
+of a young and handsome man, whilst it is not worth while to
+disguise so unprepossessing peculiarities in his incarnate
+manifestations to _old_ women, the enjoyment of whose souls is
+the great purpose of seduction.
+
+Sir Thomas Browne ('Vulgar Errors'), a man of much learning and
+still more superstitious fancy, speciously explains the
+phenomenon of the cloven foot. He suggests that 'the ground of
+this opinion at first might be his frequent appearing in the
+shape of a goat, which answers this description. This was the
+opinion of the ancient Christians concerning the apparitions of
+_panites_, fauns, and satyrs: and of this form we read of one
+that appeared to Anthony in the wilderness. The same is also
+confirmed from exposition of Holy Scripture. For whereas it is
+said "Thou shalt not offer unto devils," the original word is
+_Seghuirim_, i. e. rough and hairy goats; because in that shape
+the devil most often appeared, as is expounded by the rabbins, as
+Tremellius hath also explained; and as the word _Ascimah_, the
+God of Emath, is by some explained.' Dr. Joseph Mede, a pious and
+learned divine, author of the esteemed 'Key to the Apocalypse,'
+pronounces that 'the devil could not appear in human shape while
+man was in his integrity, because he was a spirit fallen from his
+first glorious perfection, and therefore must appear in such
+shape which might argue his imperfection and abasement, which was
+the shape of a beast; otherwise [he plausibly contends] no reason
+can be given why he should not rather have appeared to Eve in the
+shape of a woman than of a serpent. But since the fall of man the
+case is altered; now we know he can take upon him the shape of a
+man. He appears in the shape of man's imperfection rather for age
+or deformity, as like an old man (for so the witches say); and,
+perhaps, it is not altogether false, which is vulgarly affirmed,
+that the devil appearing in human shape has always a deformity
+of some uncouth member or other, as though he could not yet take
+upon him human shape entirely, for that man is not entirely and
+utterly fallen as he is.' Whatever form he may assume, the
+cloven foot must always be visible under every disguise; and
+Othello looks first for that fabulous but certain sign when he
+scrutinises his treacherous friend.
+
+Reginald Scot's reminiscences of what was instilled into him in
+the nursery may possibly occur to some even at this day. 'In our
+childhood,' he complains, 'our mothers' maids have so terrified
+us with an ugly devil having horns on his head, fire in his
+mouth, a tail in his breech, eyes like a bison, fangs like a dog,
+a skin like a _niger_, a voice roaring like a lion, whereby we
+start and are afraid when we hear one cry Boh!' Chaucer has
+expressed the belief of his age on the subject. It seems to have
+been a proper duty of a parish priest to bring to the notice of
+his ecclesiastical superior, with other crimes, those of sorcery.
+The Friar describes his 'Erchedeken' as one--
+
+    That boldely didde execucioun
+    In punyschying of fornicacioun,
+    Of wicchecraft....
+
+This ecclesiastic employed in his service a subordinate
+'sompnour,' who, in the course of his official duty, one day
+meets a devil, whose 'dwellynge is in Helle,' who condescends to
+enlighten the officer on the dark subject of demon-apparitions:--
+
+    When us liketh we can take us on
+    Or ellis make you seme that we ben schape
+    Som tyme like a man or like an ape;
+    Or like an aungel can I ryde or go:
+    It is no wonder thing though it be so,
+    A lowsy jogelour can deceyve the;
+    And, parfay, yet can I more craft than he.
+
+To the question why they are not satisfied with _one_ shape for
+all occasions, the devil answers at length:--
+
+    Som tyme we ben Goddis instrumentes
+    And menes to don his commandementes,
+    Whan that him liste, upon his creatures
+    In divers act and in divers figures.
+    Withouten him we have no might certayne
+    If that him liste to stonden ther agayne.
+    And som tyme at our prayer, have we leve
+    Only the body and not the soule greve;
+    Witnesse on Job, whom we didde ful wo.
+    And som tyme have we might on bothe two,
+    That is to say of body and soule eeke
+    And som tyme be we suffred for to seeke
+    Upon a man and don his soule unrest
+    And not his body, and al is for the best.
+    Whan he withstandeth our temptacioun
+    It is a cause of his savacioun.
+    Al be it so it was naught our entente
+    He schuld be sauf, but that we wolde him hente.
+    And som tyme we ben servaunt unto man
+    As to the Erchebisschop Saynt Dunstan;
+    And to the Apostolis servaunt was I.
+
+    *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Som tyme we fegn, and som tyme we ryse
+    With dede bodies, in ful wonder wyse,
+    And speke renably, and as fayre and wel
+    As to the Phitonissa dede Samuel:
+    And yit wil som men say, it was not he.
+    I do no fors of your divinitie.[77]
+
+  [77] _Canterbury Tales._ T. Wright's Text. Chaucer, the
+  English Boccaccio in verse, attacks alike with his sarcasms
+  the Church and the female sex.
+
+Jewish theology, expanded by their leading divines, includes a
+formidable array of various demons; and the whole of nature in
+Christian belief was peopled with every kind
+
+    'Of those demons that are found
+     In fire, air, flood, or under ground.'
+
+Various opinions have been held concerning the nature of devils
+and demons. Some have maintained, with Tertullian, that they are
+'the souls of baser men.' It is a disputed question whether they
+are mortal or immortal; subject to, or free from, pain. 'Psellus,
+a Christian, and sometime tutor to Michael Pompinatius, Emperor
+of Greece, a great observer of the nature of devils, holds they
+are corporeal, and live and die: ... that they feel pain if they
+be hurt (which Cardan confirms, and Scaliger justly laughs him to
+scorn for); and if their bodies be cut, with admirable celerity
+they come together again. Austin approves as much; so doth
+Hierome, Origen, Tertullian, Lactantius, and many eminent fathers
+of the Church; that in their fall their bodies were changed into
+a more aerial and gross substance.' The Platonists and some
+rabbis, Porphyrius, Plutarch, Zosimus, &c., hold this opinion,
+which is scornfully denied by some others, who assert that they
+only deceive the eyes of men, effecting no real change. Cardan
+believes 'they feed on men's souls, and so [a worthy origin]
+belike that we have so many battles fought in all ages,
+countries, is to make them a feast and their sole delight: but if
+displeased they fret and chafe (for they feed belike on the souls
+of beasts, as we do on their bodies) and send many plagues
+amongst us.'
+
+Their exact numbers and orders are differently estimated by
+different authorities. It is certain that they fill the air, the
+earth, the water, as well as the subterranean globe. The air,
+according to Paracelsus, is not so full of flies in summer as it
+is at all times of invisible devils. Some writers, professing to
+follow Socrates and Plato, determine nine sorts. Whatever or
+wherever the supralunary may be, our world is more interested in
+the sublunary tribes. These are variously divided and subdivided.
+One authority computes six distinct kinds--Fiery, Aerial,
+Terrestrial, Watery, Subterranean and Central: these last
+inhabiting the central regions of the interior of the earth. The
+Fiery are those that work 'by blazing stars, fire-drakes; they
+counterfeit suns and moons, stars oftentimes. The Aerial live,
+for the most part, in the air, cause many tempests, thunder and
+lightning, tear oaks, fire steeples, houses; strike men and
+beasts; make it rain stones, as in Livy's time, wool, frogs, &c.;
+counterfeit armies in the air, strange noises ... all which Guil.
+Postellus useth as an argument (as, indeed, it is) to persuade
+them that will not believe there be spirits or devils. They
+cause whirlwinds on a sudden and tempestuous storms, which,
+though our meteorologists generally refer to natural causes, yet
+I am of Bodine's mind, they are more often caused by those aerial
+devils in their several quarters; for they ride on the storms as
+when a desperate man makes away with himself, which, by hanging
+or drowning, they frequently do, as Kormannus observes,
+_tripudium agentes_, dancing and rejoicing at the death of a
+sinner. These can corrupt the air, and cause sickness, plagues,
+storms, shipwrecks, fires, inundations.... Nothing so familiar
+(if we may believe those relations of Saxo Grammaticus, Olaus
+Magnus, &c.) as for witches and sorcerers in Lapland, Lithuania,
+and all over Scandia to sell winds to mariners and cause
+tempests, which Marcus Paulus, the Venetian, relates likewise of
+the Tartars.[78]
+
+  [78] It is still the custom of the Tartar or Thibetian
+  Lamas, or at least of some of them, to scatter charms to the
+  winds for the benefit of travellers. M. Huc's _Travels in
+  Tartary, Thibet, &c._
+
+'These are they which Cardan thinks desire so much carnal
+copulation with witches (Incubi and Succubi), transform bodies,
+and are so very cold if they be touched, and that serve
+magicians.... Water devils are those naiads or water nymphs which
+have been heretofore conversant about waters and rivers. The
+water (as Paracelsus thinks) is their chaos, wherein they live
+... appearing most part (saith Trithemius) in women's shapes.
+Paracelsus hath several stories of them that have lived and been
+married to mortal men, and so continued for certain years with
+them, and after, upon some dislike, have forsaken them. Such an
+one was Egeria, with whom Numa was so familiar, Diana, Ceres,
+&c.... Terrestrial devils are Lares, Genii, Fauns, Satyrs,
+Wood-nymphs, Foliots, Fairies, Robin Goodfellows, Trulli; which,
+as they are most conversant with men, so they do them most harm.
+Some think it was they alone that kept the heathen people in awe
+of old.... Subterranean devils are as common as the rest, and do
+as much harm. Olaus Magnus makes six kinds of them, some bigger,
+some less, commonly seen about mines of metals, and are some of
+them noxious; some again do no harm (they are guardians of
+treasure in the earth, and cause earthquakes). The last (sort)
+are conversant about the centre of the earth, to torture the
+souls of damned men to the day of judgment; their egress and
+ingress some suppose to be about AEtna, Lipari, Hecla, Vesuvius,
+Terra del Fuego, because many shrieks and fearful cries are
+continually heard thereabouts, and familiar apparitions of dead
+men, ghosts, and goblins.'
+
+As for the particular offices and operations of those various
+tribes, 'Plato, in _Critias_, and after him his followers,
+gave out that they were men's governors and keepers, our
+lords and masters, as we are of our cattle. They govern
+provinces and kingdoms by oracles, auguries, dreams, rewards
+and punishments, prophecies, inspirations, sacrifices and
+religious _superstitions_, varied in as many forms as there be
+diversity of spirits; they send wars, plagues, peace, sickness,
+health, dearth, plenty, as appears by those histories of
+Thucydides, Livius, Dionysius Halicarnassensis, with many others,
+that are full of their wonderful stratagems.' They formerly devoted
+themselves, each one, to the service of particular individuals as
+familiar demons, 'private spirits.' Numa, Socrates, and many
+others were indebted to their _Genius_. The power of the devil is
+not limited to the body. 'Many think he can work upon the body,
+but not upon the mind. But experience pronounceth otherwise, that
+he can work both upon body and mind. Tertullian is of this
+opinion.'
+
+The causes and inducements of 'possession' are many. One writer
+affirms that 'the devil being a slender, incomprehensible spirit
+can easily insinuate and wind himself into human bodies, and
+cunningly couched in our bowels, vitiate our healths, terrify our
+souls with fearful dreams, and shake our minds with furies. They
+go in and out of our bodies as bees do in a hive, and so provoke
+and tempt us as they perceive our temperature inclined of itself
+and most apt to be deluded.... Agrippa and Lavater are persuaded
+that this humour [the melancholy] invites the devil into it,
+wheresoever it is in extremity, and, of all other, melancholy
+persons are most subject to diabolical temptations and illusions,
+and most apt to entertain them, and the devil best able to work
+upon them. 'But whether,' declares Burton, 'by obsession, or
+possession, or otherwise, I will not determine; 'tis a difficult
+question.'[79]
+
+  [79] _The Anatomy of Melancholy_, by Democritus junior;
+  edited by Democritus minor. Part i. sect. 2. An equally
+  copious and curious display of learning. Few authors,
+  probably, have been more plagiarised.
+
+The mediaevalists believed themselves surrounded everywhere by
+spiritual beings; but unlike the ancients, they were convinced
+not so much that they were the peculiar care of heaven as that
+they were the miserable victims of hellish malice, ever seeking
+their temporal as well as eternal destruction; a fact apparent in
+the whole mediaeval literature and art.[80]
+
+  [80] Sismondi (_Literature of the South of Europe_) has
+  observed of the greatest epic of the Middle Age, that
+  'Dante, in common with many fathers of the Church, under the
+  supposition that paganism, in the persons of the infernal
+  gods, represented the fallen angels, has made no scruple to
+  adopt its fables.' Tasso, at a later period, introduces the
+  deities of heathendom. In the _Gerusalemme Liberata_ they
+  sit in council to frustrate the plans and destroy the forces
+  of the Christian leaders before Jerusalem (iv). Ismeno, a
+  powerful magician in the ranks of the Turks, brings up a
+  host of diabolic allies to guard the wood which supplied the
+  infidels with materials for carrying on the siege of the
+  city (xiii.). And the masterpieces of art of Guido or
+  Raffaelle, which excite at once admiration and despair in
+  their modern disciples, consecrated and immortalised the
+  vulgar superstition.
+
+Glanvil's conjectures on the cause of the _comparative_ rarity of
+demoniac and other spiritual apparitions in general may interest
+the credulous or curious reader. ''Tis very probable,' reasons
+the Doctor, 'that the state wherein they are will not easily
+permit palpable intercourses between the bad genii and mankind:
+since 'tis like enough their own laws and government do not allow
+their frequent excursions into the world. Or it may with great
+probability be supposed that 'tis a very hard and painful thing
+for them to force their thin and _tenuious_ bodies into a visible
+consistence, and such shapes as are necessary for their designs
+in their correspondence with witches. For in this action their
+bodies must needs be exceedingly compressed, which cannot well be
+without a painful sense. And this is, perhaps, a reason why there
+are so few apparitions, and why appearing spirits are commonly in
+such a hurry to be gone, viz. that they may be delivered of the
+unnatural pressure of their tender vehicles,[81] which I confess
+holds more in the apparition of good than evil spirits ... the
+reason of which probably is the greater subtlety and tenuity of
+the former, which will require far greater degrees of compression
+and consequently of pain to make them visible; whereas the latter
+are feculent and gross, and so nearer allied to palpable
+existences, and more easily reducible to appearance and
+visibility.'[82]
+
+  [81] So specious a theory must have occurred to, and its
+  propriety will easily be recognised by, the spirit and ghost
+  advocates of the present day.
+
+  [82] _Sadducismus Triumphatus._ Considerations about
+  Witchcraft. Sect. xi.
+
+'Palpable intercourses between the bad genii and mankind' are
+more frequent than Dr. Glanvil was disposed to believe; and he
+must have been conversant with the acts of Incubus and Succubus.
+In the first age (orbe novo c[oe]loque recenti) under the
+Saturnian regime, 'while yet there was no fear of Jove,'[83]
+innocence prevailed undisturbed; but soon as the silver age was
+inaugurated by the usurpation of Jove, _liaisons_ between gods
+and mortals became frequent. Love affairs between good or bad
+'genii' and mankind are of common occurrence in the mythology of
+most peoples. In the romance-tales of the middle age lovers find
+themselves unexpectedly connected with some mysterious being of
+inhuman kind. The writers in defence of witchcraft quote Genesis
+vi. in proof of the reality of such intercourses; and Justin
+Martyr and Tertullian, the great apologists of Christianity, and
+others of the Fathers, interpret _Filios Dei_ to be angels or
+evil spirits who, enamoured with the beauty of the women, begot
+the primeval giants.[84]
+
+  [83] 'Jove nondum Barbato.'
+
+  [84] Milton indignantly exclaims, alluding to this common
+  fancy of the leaders of the Primitive Church, 'Who would
+  think him fit to write an apology for Christian faith to the
+  Roman Senate that could tell them "how of the angels"--of
+  which he must needs mean those in Genesis called the Sons of
+  God--"mixing with women were begotten the devils," as good
+  Justin Martyr in his Apology told them.' (_Reformation in
+  England_, book i.). And 'Clemens Alexandrinus, Sulpicius
+  Severus, Eusebius, &c., make a twofold fall of angels--one
+  from the beginning of the world; another a little before the
+  deluge, as Moses teacheth us, openly professing that these
+  _genii_ can beget and have carnal copulation with woman'
+  (_Anatomy of Melancholy_, part i.). Robert Burton gives in
+  his adhesion to the sentiments of Lactantius (xiv. 15). It
+  seems that the later Jewish devils owe their origin
+  (according to the Talmudists, as represented by Pererius in
+  the _Anatomy_) to a former wife of Adam, called Lilis, the
+  predecessor of Eve.
+
+Some tremendous results of diabolic connections appear in the
+metrical romances of the twelfth or thirteenth century, as well
+as in those early Anglo-Norman chroniclers or fabulists, who have
+been at the pains to inform us of the pre-historic events of
+their country. The author of the romance-poem of the well-known
+Merlin--so famous in British prophecy--in introducing his hero,
+enters upon a long dissertation on the origin of the infernal
+arts. He informs us on the authority of 'David the prophet, and
+of Moses,' that the greater part of the angels who rebelled under
+the leadership of Lucifer, lost their former power and beauty,
+and became 'fiendes black:' that instead of being precipitated
+into 'helle-pit,' many remained in mid-air, where they still
+retain the faculty of seducing mortals by assuming whatever
+shape they please. These had been much concerned at the
+miraculous birth of Christ; but it was hoped to counteract the
+salutary effects of that event, by producing from some virgin a
+semi-demon, whose office it should be to disseminate sorcerers
+and wicked men. For this purpose the devil[85] prepares to seduce
+three young sisters; and proceeds at once in proper disguise to
+an old woman, with whose avarice and cunning he was well
+acquainted. Her he engaged by liberal promises to be mediatrix in
+the seduction of the elder sister, whom he was prevented from
+attempting in person by the precautions of a holy hermit. Like
+'the first that fell of womankind,' the young lady at length
+consented; was betrayed by the _fictitious_ youth, and condemned
+by the law to be burnt alive.
+
+  [85] Probably,
+
+       'Belial, the dissolutest spirit that fell,
+        The sensualist; and after Asmodai
+        The fleshliest Incubus.'--_Par. Reg._
+
+The same fate, excepting the fearful penalty, awaited the second.
+And now, too late, the holy hermit became aware of his disastrous
+negligence. He strictly enjoined on the third and remaining
+sister a constant watch. Her security, however, was the cause of
+her betrayal. On one occasion, in a moment of remissness, she
+forgot her prayers and the sign of the cross, before retiring for
+the night. No longer excluded, the fiend, assuming human shape,
+effected his purpose. In due time a son was born, whose
+parentage was sufficiently evinced by an entire covering of black
+hair, although his limbs were well-formed, and his features fine.
+Fortunately, the careless guardian had exactly calculated the
+moment of the demon's birth; and no sooner was he informed of the
+event, than the new-born infant was borne off to the regenerating
+water, when he was christened by the name of Merlin; the fond
+hopes of the demons being for this time, at least, irretrievably
+disappointed. How Merlin, by superhuman prowess and knowledge,
+defeated the Saracens (Saxons) in many bloody battles; his
+magical achievements and favour at the court of King Vortigern
+and his successors, are fully exhibited by the author of the
+history.[86] Geoffrey of Monmouth recounts them as matters of
+fact; and they are repeated by Vergil in the History of Britain,
+composed under the auspices of Henry VIII.
+
+  [86] See _Early English Metrical Romances_, ed. by Sir H.
+  Ellis.
+
+By the ancients, whole peoples were sometimes said to be derived
+from these unholy connections. Jornandes, the historian of the
+Goths, is glad to be able to relate their hated rivals, the Huns
+(of whom the Kalmuck Tartars are commonly said to be the modern
+representatives), to have owed their origin to an intercourse of
+the Scythian witches with infernal spirits. The extraordinary
+form and features of those dreaded emigrants from the steppes of
+Tartary, had suggested to the fear and hatred of their European
+subjects, a fable which Gibbon supposes might have been derived
+from a more pleasing one of the Greeks.[87]
+
+  [87] A sufficiently large collection from ancient and modern
+  writers of the facts of _inhuman_ connections may be seen in
+  the _Anatomy of Melancholy_, part iii. sect. 2. Having
+  repeated the assertions of previous authors proving the fact
+  of intercourses of human with inferior species of animals,
+  Burton fortifies his own opinion of their reality by
+  numerous authorities. If those stories be true, he reasons,
+  that are written of Incubus and Succubus, of nymphs,
+  lascivious fauns, satyrs, and those heathen gods which were
+  devils, those lascivious Telchines of whom the Platonists
+  tell so many fables; or those familiar meetings in our day
+  [1624] and company of witches and devils, there is some
+  probability for it. I know that Biarmannus, Wierus, and some
+  others stoutly deny it ... but Austin (lib. xv. _de Civit.
+  Dei_) doth acknowledge it. And he refers to Plutarch, _Vita
+  Numae; Wierus, de Praestigiis Daemon., Giraldus Cambrensis,
+  Malleus Malef., Jacobus Reussus, Godelman, Erastus, John
+  Nider, Delrio, Lipsius, Bodin, Pererius, King James, &c_.
+  The learned and curious work of the melancholy Student of
+  Christ Church and Oxford Rector has been deservedly
+  commended by many eminent critics. That 'exact mathematician
+  and curious calculator of nativities' calculated exactly,
+  according to Anthony Wood (_Athenae Oxon._), the period of
+  his own death--1639.
+
+The acts of Incubus assume an important part in witch-trials and
+confessions. Incubus is the visitor of females, Succubus of
+males. Chaucer satirises the gallantries of the vicarious Incubus
+by the mouth of the wife of Bath (that practical admirer of
+Solomon and the Samaritan woman),[88] who prefaces her tale with
+the assurance:--
+
+    That maketh that ther ben no fayeries,
+    For ther as wont was to walken an elf
+    Ther walketh noon but the _Lymitour_ himself.
+
+    *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Women may now go safely up and downe;
+    In every busch and under every tre
+    Ther is noon other _Incubus_ but he.
+
+  [88] The wife of Bath, who had buried only her fifth
+  husband, must appear modest by comparison. Not to mention
+  Seneca's or Martial's assertions or insinuations, St. Jerome
+  was acquainted with the case of a woman who had buried her
+  _twenty-second_ husband, whose conjugal capacity, however,
+  was exceeded by the Dutch wife who, on the testimony of
+  honest John Evelyn, had buried her _twenty-fifth_ husband!
+
+Reginald Scot has devoted several chapters of his work to a
+relation of the exploits of Incubus.[89] But he honestly warns
+his readers 'whose chaste ears cannot well endure to hear of such
+lecheries (gathered out of the books of divinity of great
+authority) to turn over a few leaves wherein I have, like a
+groom, thrust their stuff, even that which I myself loath, as
+into a stinking corner: howbeit none otherwise, I hope, but that
+the other parts of my writing shall remain sweet.' He repeats a
+story from the 'Vita Hieronymi,' which seems to insinuate some
+suspicion of the character of a certain Bishop Sylvanus. It
+relates that one night Incubus invaded a certain lady's bedroom.
+Indignant at so unusual, or at least disguised, an apparition,
+the lady cried out loudly until the guests of the house came and
+found it under the bed in the likeness of the bishop; 'which holy
+man,' adds Scot, 'was much defamed thereby.' Another tradition or
+legend seems to reflect upon the chastity of the greatest saint
+of the Middle Ages.[90] The superhuman oppression of Incubus is
+still remembered in the proverbial language of the present day.
+The horrors of the infernal compacts and leagues, as exhibited in
+the fates of wizards or magicians at the last hour, formed one of
+the most popular scenes on the theatrical stage. Christopher
+Marlow, in 'The Life and Death of Dr. Faustus,' and Robert
+Greene, in 'Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay,' in the Elizabethan
+age, dramatised the common, conception of the Compact.
+
+  [89] See the fourth book of the _Discoverie_.
+
+  [90] 'It is written in the legend of St. Bernard,' we are
+  told, 'that a pretty wench that had the use of Incubus his
+  body by the space of six or seven years in Aquitania (being
+  belike weary of him for that he waxed old), would needs go to
+  St. Bernard another while. But Incubus told her if she would
+  so forsake him, he would be revenged upon her. But befal what
+  would, she went to St. Bernard, who took her his staff and
+  bad her lay it in the bed beside her. And, indeed, the devil,
+  fearing the staff or that St. Bernard lay there himself,
+  durst not approach into her chamber that night. What he did
+  afterwards I am uncertain.' This story will not appear so
+  evidential to the reader as Scot seems to infer it to be. If
+  any credit is to be given to the strong insinuations of
+  Protestant divines of the sixteenth century, the 'holy bishop
+  Sylvanus' is not the only example among the earlier saints of
+  the frailty of human nature.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+     Three Sorts of Witches--Various Modes of Witchcraft--Manner
+     of Witch-Travelling--The Sabbaths--Anathemas of the Popes
+     against the Crime--Bull of Adrian VI.--Cotemporary Testimony
+     to the Severity of the Persecutions--Necessary Triumph of
+     the Orthodox Party--Germany most subject to the
+     Superstition--Acts of Parliament of Henry against
+     Witchcraft--Elizabeth Barton--The Act of 1562--Executions
+     under Queen Elizabeth's Government--Case of Witchcraft
+     narrated by Reginald Scot.
+
+
+The ceremonies of the compact by which a woman became a witch
+have been already referred to. It was almost an essential
+condition in the vulgar creed that she should be, as Gaule
+('Select Cases of Conscience touching Witches,' &c., 1646)
+represents, an old woman with a wrinkled face, a furred brow, a
+hairy lip, a gobber tooth, a squint eye, a squeaking voice, a
+scolding tongue, having a ragged coat on her back, a skull-cap on
+her head, a spindle in her hand, a dog or cat by her side. There
+are three sorts of the devil's agents on earth--the black, the
+gray, and the white witches. The first are omnipotent for evil,
+but powerless for good. The white have the power to help, but not
+to hurt.[91] As for the third species (a mixture of white and
+black), they are equally effective for good or evil.
+
+  [91] A writer at the beginning of the seventeenth century
+  (Cotta, _Tryall of Witchcraft_) says, 'This kind is not
+  obscure at this day, swarming in this kingdom, whereof no
+  man can be ignorant who lusteth to observe the uncontrouled
+  liberty and licence of open and ordinary resort in all
+  places unto _wise_ men and _wise_ women, so vulgarly termed
+  for their reputed knowledge concerning such diseased persons
+  as are supposed to be bewitched.' And (_Short Discoverie of
+  Unobserved Dangers, 1612_) 'the mention of witchecraft doth
+  now occasion the remembrance in the next place of a sort of
+  practitioners whom our custom and country doth call wise men
+  and wise women, reputed a kind of good and honest harmless
+  witches or wizards, who, by good words, by hallowed herbs
+  and salves, and other superstitious ceremonies, promise to
+  allay and calm devils, practices of other witches, and the
+  forces of many diseases.' Another writer of the same date
+  considers 'it were a thousand times better for the land if
+  all witches, but specially the _blessing witch_, might
+  suffer death. Men do commonly hate and spit at the
+  _damnifying_ sorcerer as unworthy to live among them,
+  whereas they fly unto the other in necessity; they depend
+  upon him as their God, and by this means thousands are
+  carried away, to their final confusion. Death, therefore, is
+  the just and deserved portion of the _good_
+  witch.'--_Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great
+  Britain_, by Brand, ed. by Sir H. Ellis.
+
+Equally various and contradictory are the motives and acts
+assigned to witches. Nothing is too great or too mean for their
+practice: they engage with equal pleasure in the overthrow of a
+kingdom or a religion, and in inflicting the most ordinary evils
+and mischiefs in life. Their mode of bewitching is various: by
+fascination or casting an evil eye ('Nescio,' says the Virgilian
+shepherd, 'quis teneros oculus mihi fascinat agnos'); by making
+representations of the person to be acted upon in wax or clay,
+roasting them before a fire; by mixing magical ointments or
+other compositions and ingredients revealed to us in the
+witch-songs of Shakspeare, Jonson, Middleton, Shadwell, and
+others; sometimes merely by muttering an imprecation.
+
+They ride in sieves on the sea, on brooms, spits magically
+prepared; and by these modes of conveyance are borne, without
+trouble or loss of time, to their destination. By these means
+they attend the periodical sabbaths, the great meetings of the
+witch-tribe, where they assemble at stated times to do homage, to
+recount their services, and to receive the commands of their
+lord. They are held on the night between Friday and Saturday; and
+every year a grand sabbath is ordered for celebration on the
+Blocksberg mountains, for the night before the first day of May.
+In those famous mountains the obedient vassals congregate from
+all parts of Christendom--from Italy, Spain, Germany, France,
+England, and Scotland. A place where four roads meet, a rugged
+mountain range, or perhaps the neighbourhood of a secluded lake
+or some dark forest, is usually the spot selected for the
+meeting.[92]
+
+  [92] 'When orders had once been issued for the meeting of
+  the sabbath, all the wizards and witches who failed to
+  attend it were lashed by demons with a rod made of serpents
+  or scorpions. In France and England the witches were
+  supposed to ride uniformly upon broom-sticks; but in Italy
+  and Spain, the devil himself, in the shape of a goat, used
+  to transport them on his back, which lengthened or shortened
+  according to the number of witches he was desirous of
+  accommodating. No witch, when proceeding to the sabbath,
+  could get out by a door or window were she to try ever so
+  much. Their general mode of ingress was by the key-hole, and
+  of egress by the chimney, up which they flew, broom and all,
+  with the greatest ease. To prevent the absence of the
+  witches being noticed by their neighbours, some inferior
+  demon was commanded to assume their shapes, and lie in their
+  beds, feigning illness, until the sabbath was over. When all
+  the wizards and witches had arrived at the place of
+  rendezvous, the infernal ceremonies began. Satan having
+  assumed his favourite shape of a large he-goat, with a face
+  in front and another in his haunches, took his seat upon a
+  throne; and all present in succession paid their respects to
+  him and kissed him in his face behind. This done, he
+  appointed a master of the ceremonies, in company with whom
+  he made a personal examination of all the witches, to see
+  whether they had the secret mark about them by which they
+  were stamped as the devil's own. This mark was always
+  insensible to pain. Those who had not yet been marked
+  received the mark from the master of the ceremonies, the
+  devil at the same time bestowing nick-names upon them. This
+  done, they all began to sing and dance in the most furious
+  manner until some one arrived who was anxious to be admitted
+  into their society. They were then silent for a while until
+  the new comer had denied his salvation, kissed the devil,
+  spat upon the Bible, and sworn obedience to him in all
+  things. They then began dancing again with all their might
+  and singing.... In the course of an hour or two they
+  generally became wearied of this violent exercise, and then
+  they all sat down and recounted their evil deeds since last
+  meeting. Those who had not been malicious and mischievous
+  enough towards their fellow-creatures received personal
+  chastisement from Satan himself, who flogged them with
+  thorns or scorpions until they were covered with blood and
+  unable to sit or stand. When this ceremony was concluded,
+  they were all amused by a dance of toads. Thousands of these
+  creatures sprang out of the earth, and standing on their
+  hind-legs, danced while the devil played the bagpipes or the
+  trumpet. These toads were all endowed with the faculty of
+  speech, and entreated the witches there to reward them with
+  the flesh of unbaptized infants for their exertions to give
+  them pleasure. The witches promised compliance. The devil
+  bade them remember to keep their word; and then stamping his
+  foot, caused all the toads to sink into the earth in an
+  instant. The place being thus cleared, preparations were
+  made for the banquet, where all manner of disgusting things
+  were served up and greedily devoured by the demons and
+  witches, although the latter were sometimes regaled with
+  choice meats and expensive wines, from golden plates and
+  crystal goblets; but they were never thus favoured unless
+  they had done an extraordinary number of evil deeds since
+  the last period of meeting. After the feast, they began
+  dancing again; but such as had no relish for any more
+  exercise in that way, amused themselves by mocking the holy
+  sacrament of baptism. For this purpose the toads were again
+  called up, and sprinkled with filthy water, the devil making
+  the sign of the cross, and all the witches calling
+  out--[some gibberish]. When the devil wished to be
+  particularly amused, he made the witches strip off their
+  clothes and dance before him, each with a cat tied round her
+  neck, and another dangling from her body in form of a tail.
+  When the cock crew they all disappeared, and the sabbath was
+  ended. This is a summary of the belief that prevailed for
+  many centuries nearly all over Europe, and which is far from
+  eradicated even at this day.'--_Memoirs of Extraordinary
+  Popular Delusions_, by C. Mackay.
+
+A mock sermon often concludes the night's proceedings, the
+ordinary salutation of the _osculum in tergo_ being first given.
+But these circumstances are innocent compared with the obscene
+practices when the lights are put out; indiscriminate debauchery
+being then the order of the night. A new rite of baptism
+initiated the neophyte into his new service: the candidate being
+signed with the sign of the devil on that part of the body least
+observable, and submitting at the same time to the first act of
+criminal compliance, to be often repeated. On these occasions the
+demon presents himself in the form of either sex, according to
+that of his slaves. It was elicited from a witch examined at a
+trial that, from the period of her servitude, the devil had had
+intercourse with her _ut viri cum f[oe]minis solent_, excepting
+only in one remarkable particular.
+
+During the pontificate of Julius II.--the first decade of the
+sixteenth century--a set of sorceresses was discovered in large
+numbers: a dispute between the civil and ecclesiastical
+authorities averted their otherwise certain destruction. The
+successors of Innocent VIII. repeated his anathemas. Alexander
+VI., Leo X., and Adrian VI. appointed special commissioners for
+hunting up sorcerers and heretics. In 1523, Adrian issued a bull
+against _Haeresis Strigiatus_ with power to excommunicate all who
+opposed those engaged in the inquisition. He characterises the
+obnoxious class as a sect deviating from the Catholic faith,
+denying their baptism, showing contempt for the sacraments, in
+particular for that of the Eucharist, treading crosses under
+foot, and taking the devil as their lord.[93] How many suffered
+for the crime during the thirty or forty years following upon the
+bull of 1484, it is difficult exactly to ascertain: that some
+thousands perished is certain, on the testimony of the judges
+themselves. The often-quoted words of Florimond, author of a work
+'On Antichrist,' as given by Del Rio the Jesuit ('De Magia'), are
+not hyperbolical. 'All those,' says he, '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 enough. Our dungeons are gorged with them.
+No day passes that we do not render our tribunals bloody by the
+dooms 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.'
+
+  [93] Francis Hutchison's _Historical Essay concerning
+  Witchcraft_, chap. xiv.; the author quotes Barthol. de
+  Spina, _de Strigibus_.
+
+It is within neither the design nor the limits of these pages to
+repeat all the witch-cases, which might fill several volumes; it
+is sufficient for the purpose to sketch a few of the most
+notorious and prominent, and to notice the most remarkable
+characteristics of the creed.
+
+Maximilian I., Emperor of Germany, protected the inquisitorial
+executioners from the indignant vengeance of the inhabitants of
+the districts of Southern Germany, which would have been soon
+almost depopulated by an unsparing massacre and a ferocious zeal:
+while Sigismund, Prince of the Tyrol, is said to have been
+inclined to soften the severity of a persecution he was totally
+unable, if he had been disposed, to prevent. Ulric Molitor,
+under the auspices of this prince, however, published a treatise
+in Switzerland ('De Pythonicis Mulieribus') in the form of a
+dialogue, in which Sigismund, Molitor, and a citizen of Constance
+are the interlocutors. They argue as to the practice of
+witchcraft; and the argument is to establish that, although the
+practicers of the crime are worthy of death, much of the vulgar
+opinion on the subject is false. Even in the middle of the
+fifteenth century, and in Spain, could be found an assertor, in
+some degree, of common sense, whose sentiments might scandalise
+some Protestant divines. Alphonse de Spina was a native of
+Castile, of the order of St. Francis: his book was written
+against heretics and unbelievers, but there is a chapter in which
+some acts attributed to sorcerers, as transportation through the
+air, transformations, &c., are rejected as unreal.
+
+From that time two parties were in existence, one of which
+advocated the entire reality of all the acts commonly imputed to
+witches; while the other maintained that many of their supposed
+crimes were mere delusions suggested by the Great Enemy. The
+former, as the orthodox party, were, from the nature of the case,
+most successful in the argument--a seeming paradox explained by
+the nature and course of the controversy. Only the _received_
+method of demoniacal possession was questioned by the adverse
+side, accepting without doubt the possibility--and, indeed, the
+actual existence--of the phenomenon. Thus the liberals, or
+pseudo-liberals, in that important controversy were placed in an
+illogical position. For (as their opponents might triumphantly
+argue) if the devil's power and possession could be manifested in
+one way, why not by any other method. Nor was it for them to
+determine the appointed methods of his schemes, as permitted by
+Providence, for the injury and ruin of mankind. The diabolic
+economy, as evidently set forth in the work of man's destruction,
+might require certain modes of acting quite above our reason and
+understanding. To the sceptics (or to the _atheists_, as they
+were termed) the orthodox could allege, 'Will you not believe
+in witches? The Scriptures aver their existence: to the
+jurisconsults will you dispute the existence of a crime against
+which our statute-book and the code of almost all civilised
+countries have attested by laws upon which hundreds and thousands
+have been convicted; many, or even most, of whom have, by their
+judicial confessions, acknowledged their guilt and the justice of
+their punishment? It is a strange scepticism, they might add,
+that rejects the evidence of Scripture, of human legislature, and
+of the accused persons themselves.'[94] Reason was hopelessly
+oppressed by faith. In the presence of universal superstition, in
+the absence of the modern philosophy, escape seemed all but
+impossible.
+
+  [94] Sir W. Scott's _Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft_,
+  chap. vi.
+
+If preeminence in this particular prejudice can be assigned to
+any single region or people, perhaps Germany more than any other
+land was subject to the demonological fever. A fact to be
+explained as well by its being the great theatre for more than a
+hundred years of the grand religious struggle between the
+opposing Catholics and Protestants, as by its natural fitness.
+The gloomy mountain ranges--the Hartz mountains are especially
+famous in the national legend--and forests with which it abounds
+rendered the imaginative minds of its peoples peculiarly
+susceptible to impressions of supernaturalism.[95] France
+takes the next place in the fury of the persecution. Danaeus
+('Dialogue') speaks of an innumerable number of witches. England,
+Scotland, Spain, Italy perhaps come next in order.
+
+  [95] How greatly the imagination of the Germans was
+  attracted by the supernatural and the marvellous is plainly
+  seen both in the old national poems and in the great work of
+  the national mythologist, Jacob Grimm (_Deutsche
+  Mythologie_).
+
+Spain, the dominion of the Arabs for seven centuries, was
+naturally the land of magic. During the government of Ferdinand
+I., or of Isabella, the inquisition was firmly established. That
+numbers were sent from the dungeons and torture-chambers to the
+stake, with the added stigma of dealing in the 'black art,' is
+certain; but in that priest-dominated, servilely orthodox
+southern land, the Church was not perhaps so much interested in
+confounding the crimes of heresy and sorcery. The first was
+simply sufficient for provoking horror and hatred of the
+condemned. The South of France is famous for being the very nest
+of sorcery: the witch-sabbaths were frequently held there. It was
+the country of the Albigenses, which had been devastated by De
+Montfort, the executioner of Catholic vengeance, in the twelfth
+century, and was, with something of the same sort of savageness,
+ravaged by De Lanere in the seventeenth century. Scotland, before
+the religious revolution, exhibits a few remarkable cases of
+witch-persecution, as that of the Earl of Mar, brother of James
+III. He had been suspected of calling in the aid of sorcery to
+ascertain the term of the king's life: the earl was bled to death
+without trial, and his death was followed by the burning of
+twelve witches, and four wizards, at Edinburgh. Lady Glammis,
+sister of the Earl of Angus, of the family of Douglas, accused of
+conspiring the king's death in a similar way, was put to death in
+1537. As in England, in the cases of the Duchess of Gloucester
+and others, the crime appears to be rather an adjunct than the
+principal charge itself; more political than popular. Protestant
+Scotland it is that has earned the reputation of being one of the
+most superstitious countries in Europe.
+
+In 1541 two Acts of Parliament were passed in England--the first
+interference of Parliament in this kingdom--against false
+prophecies, conjurations, witchcraft, sorcery, pulling down
+crosses; crimes made felony without benefit of clergy. Both the
+last article in the list and the period (a few years after the
+separation from the Catholic world) appear to indicate the causes
+in operation. Lord Hungerford had recently been beheaded by the
+suspicious tyranny of Henry VIII., for consulting his death by
+conjuration. The preamble to the statute has these words: 'The
+persons that had done these things, had dug up and pulled down an
+infinite number of crosses.'[96] The new head of the English
+Church, if he found his interest in assuming himself the
+spiritual supremacy, was, like a true despot, averse to any
+further revolution than was necessary to his purposes. Some
+superstitious regrets too for the old establishment which, by a
+fortunate caprice, he abandoned and afterwards plundered, may
+have urged the tyrant, who persecuted the Catholics for
+questioning his supremacy, to burn the enemies of
+transubstantiation. Shortly before this enactment, eight persons
+had been hanged at Tyburn, not so much for sorcery as for a
+disagreeable prophecy. Elizabeth Barton, the principal, had been
+instigated to pronounce as revelation, that if the king went on
+in the divorce and married another wife, he should not be king a
+month longer, and in the estimation of Almighty God not one hour
+longer, but should die a villain's death. The Maid of Kent, with
+her accomplices--Richard Martin, parson of the parish of
+Aldington; Dr. Bocking, canon of Christ Church, Canterbury;
+Deering; Henry Gold, a parson in London; Hugh Rich, a friar, and
+others--was brought before the Star Chamber, and adjudged to
+stand in St. Paul's during sermon-time; the majority being
+afterwards executed. In Cranmer's 'Articles of Visitation,' 1549,
+an injunction is addressed to his clergy, that 'you shall inquire
+whether you know of any that use charms, sorcery, enchantments,
+witchcrafts, soothsaying, or any like craft, invented by the
+devil.'
+
+  [96] Hutchison's _Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft_.
+  The author, chaplain in ordinary to George I., published his
+  book in 1718. It is worth while to note the colder
+  scepticism of the Hanoverian chaplain as compared with the
+  undoubting faith of his predecessor, Dr. Glanvil.
+
+During the brief reigns of Edward VI. and Mary I. in England, no
+conspicuous trials occur. As for the latter monarch, the queen
+and her bishops were too absorbed in the pressing business of
+burning for the real offence of heresy to be much concerned in
+discovering the concomitant crimes of devil-worship.[97] An
+impartial judgment may decide that superstition, whether engaged
+in vindicating the dogmas of Catholicism or those of witchcraft,
+is alike contemptible and pernicious.
+
+  [97] Agreeably to that common prejudice which selects
+  certain historical personages for popular and peculiar
+  esteem or execration, and attributes to them, as if they
+  were eccentricities rather than examples of the age, every
+  exceptional virtue or vice, the 'Bloody Queen' has been
+  stigmatised, and is still regarded, as an _extraordinary_
+  monster, capable of every inhuman crime--a prejudice more
+  popular than philosophical, since experience has taught that
+  despots, unchecked by fear, by reason, or conscience, are
+  but examples, in an eminent degree, of the character, and
+  personifications of the worst vices (if not of the best
+  virtues) of their time. Considered in this view, Mary I.
+  will but appear the example and personification of the
+  religious intolerance of Catholicism and of the age, just as
+  Cromwell was of the patriotic and Puritanic sentiment of the
+  first half, or Charles II. of the unblushing licentiousness
+  of the last half, of the seventeenth century.
+
+In the year of Elizabeth's accession, 1558, Strype ('Annals of
+the Reformation,' i. 8, and ii. 545) tells that Bishop Jewell,
+preaching before the queen, animadverted upon the dangerous and
+direful results of witchcraft. 'It may please your Grace,'
+proclaims publicly the courtly Anglican prelate, 'to understand
+that witches and sorcerers, within these last few years, are
+marvellously increased within your Grace's realm. Your Grace's
+subjects pine away even to the death, their colour fadeth, their
+flesh rotteth, their speech is benumbed, their senses are bereft.
+I pray God they never practise further than upon the subject.'
+For himself, the bishop declares, 'these eyes have seen most
+evident and manifest marks of their wickedness.' The annalist
+adds that this, no doubt, was the occasion of bringing in a bill
+the next Parliament, for making enchantments and witchcraft
+felony; and, under year 1578, we are informed that, whether it
+were the effect of magic, or proceeded from some natural cause,
+the queen was in some part of this year under excessive anguish
+_by pains of her teeth_, insomuch that she took no rest for
+divers nights, and endured very great torment night and day. The
+statute of 1562 includes 'fond and fantastic prophecies' (a very
+common sort of political offences in that age) in the category of
+forbidden arts. With unaccustomed lenity it punished a first
+conviction with the pillory only.
+
+Witch-persecutions (which needed not any legal enactment) sprung
+up in different parts of the country; but they were not carried
+out with either the frequency or the ferocity of the next age, or
+as in Scotland, under the superintendence of James VI. A number
+of pamphlets unnecessarily enforced the obligatory duty of
+unwearied zeal in the work of discovery and extermination.[98]
+Among the executions under Elizabeth's Government are specially
+noticed that of a woman hanged at Barking in 1575; of four at
+Abingdon; three at Chelmsford; two at Cambridge, 1579; of a
+number condemned at St. Osythes; of several in Derbyshire and
+Staffordshire. One of the best known is the case at Warboys, in
+Huntingdonshire, 1593.
+
+  [98] One of these productions, printed in London, bore the
+  sensational title, 'A very Wonderful and Strange Miracle of
+  God, shewed upon a Dutchman, of the age of 23 years, who was
+  possessed of ten devils, and was, by God's Mighty
+  Providence, dispossessed of them again the 27 January last
+  past, 1572.' Another, dedicated to Lord Darcy, by W. W.,
+  1582, sets forth that all those tortures in common use 'are
+  far too light, and their rigour too mild; and in this
+  respect he (the pamphleteer) impudently exclaimeth against
+  our magistrates who suffer them to be but hanged, when
+  _murtherers and such malefactors be so used, which deserve
+  not the hundredth part of their punishment_.'
+
+The author of the 'Discoverie' relates a fact that came under his
+personal observation: it is a fair example of the trivial origin
+and of the facility of this sort of charges. 'At the assizes
+holden at Rochester, anno 1581, one Margaret Simons, wife of John
+Simons, of Brenchly in Kent, was arraigned for witchcraft, at the
+instigation and complaint of divers fond and malicious persons,
+and especially by the means of one John Farral, vicar of that
+parish, with whom I talked about the matter, and found him both
+fondly assotted in the cause and enviously bent towards her: and,
+which is worse, as unable to make a good account of his faith as
+she whom he accused. That which he laid to the poor woman's
+charge was this. His son, being an ungracious boy, and 'prentice
+to one Robert Scotchford, clothier, dwelling in that parish of
+Brenchly, passed on a day by her house; at whom, by chance, her
+little dog barked, which thing the boy taking in evil part, drew
+his knife and pursued him therewith even to her door, whom
+she rebuked with such words as the boy disdained, and yet
+nevertheless would not be persuaded to depart in a long time. At
+the last he returned to his master's house, and within five or
+six days fell sick. Then was called to mind the fray betwixt the
+dog and the boy: insomuch as the vicar (who thought himself so
+privileged as he little mistrusted that God would visit his
+children with sickness) did so calculate as he found, partly
+through his own judgment and partly (as he himself told me) by
+the relation of other witches, that his said son was by her
+bewitched. Yea, he told me that his son being, as it were, past
+all cure, received perfect health at the hands of another witch.'
+Not satisfied with this accusation, the vicar 'proceeded yet
+further against her, affirming that always in his parish church,
+when he desired to read most plainly his voice so failed him that
+he could scant be heard at all: which he could impute, he said,
+to nothing else but to her enchantment. When I advertised the
+poor woman thereof, as being desirous to hear what she could say
+for herself, she told me that in very deed his voice did fail
+him, specially when he strained himself to speak loudest.
+Howbeit, she said, that at all times his voice was hoarse and
+low; which thing I perceived to be true. But sir, said she, you
+shall understand that this our vicar is diseased with such a kind
+of hoarseness as divers of our neighbours in this parish not
+long ago doubted ... and in that respect utterly refused to
+communicate with him until such time as (being thereunto enjoined
+by the ordinary) he had brought from London a certificate under
+the hands of two physicians that his hoarseness proceeded from a
+disease of the lungs; which certificate he published in the
+church, in the presence of the whole congregation: and by this
+means he was cured, or rather excused of the shame of the
+disease. And this,' certifies the narrator, 'I know to be true,
+by the relation of divers honest men of that parish. And truly if
+one of the jury had not been wiser than the others, she had been
+condemned thereupon, and upon other as ridiculous matters as
+this. For the name of witch is so odious, and her power so feared
+among the common people, that if the honestest body living
+chanced to be arraigned thereupon, she shall hardly escape
+condemnation.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+     The 'Discoverie of Witchcraft,' published 1584--Wier's 'De
+     Praestigiis Daemonum, &c.'--Naude--Jean Bodin--His 'De la
+     Demonomanie des Sorciers,' published at Paris, 1580--His
+     authority--Nider--Witch-case at Warboys--Evidence adduced at
+     the Trial--Remarkable as being the origin of the institution
+     of an Annual Sermon at Huntingdon.
+
+
+Three years after this affair, Dr. Reginald Scot published his
+'Discoverie of Witchcraft, proving that common opinions of
+witches contracting with devils, spirits, or their familiars, and
+their power to kill, torment, and consume the bodies of men,
+women, and children, or other creatures, by disease, or
+otherwise, their flying in the air, &c., to be but imaginary,
+erroneous conceptions and novelties: wherein also the lewd,
+unchristian, practices of witchmongers upon aged, melancholy,
+ignorant, and superstitious people, in extorting confessions by
+inhuman terrors and tortures, is notably detected.'[99]
+
+  [99] The edition referred to is that of 1654. The author is
+  commemorated by Hallam in terms of high praise--'A solid and
+  learned person, beyond almost all the English of that
+  age.'--_Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the
+  Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries._
+
+This work is divided into sixteen books, with a treatise affixed
+upon devils and spirits, in thirty-four chapters. It contains an
+infinity of quotations from or references to the writings of
+those whom the author terms _witch-mongers_; and several chapters
+are devoted to a descriptive catalogue of the charms in repute
+and diabolical rites of the most extravagant sort. On the
+accession of James I., whose 'Demonologie' was in direct
+opposition to the 'Discoverie,' it was condemned as monstrously
+heretical; as many copies as could be collected being solemnly
+committed to the flames. This meritorious and curious production
+is therefore now scarce.
+
+Prefixed is a dedicatory epistle, addressed to the Right
+Worshipful, his loving friend, Mr. Dr. Coldwell, Dean of
+Rochester, and Mr. Dr. Readman, Archdeacon of Canterbury, in
+which the author appealingly expostulates, 'O Master Archdeacon,
+is it not pity that that which is said to be done with the
+almighty power of the Most High God, and by our Saviour his only
+Son Jesus Christ our Lord, should be referred to a baggage old
+woman's nod or wish? Good sir, is it not one manifest kind of
+idolatry for them that labour and are laden to come unto witches
+to be refreshed? If witches could help whom they are said to have
+made sick, I see no reason but remedy might as well be required
+at their hands as a purse demanded of him that hath stolen it.
+But truly it is manifest idolatry to ask that of a creature
+which none can give but the Creator. The papist hath some colour
+of Scripture to maintain his idol of bread, but no Jesuitical
+distinction can cover the witchmongers' idolatry in this behalf.
+Alas! I am ashamed and sorry to see how many die that, being said
+to be bewitched, only seek for magical cures whom wholesome diet
+and good medicine would have recovered.'[100] An utterance of
+courage and common sense equally rare and useless. Reginald Scot,
+perhaps the boldest of the early impugners of witchcraft, was yet
+convinced apparently of the reality of ghostly apparitions.
+
+  [100] Writing in an age when the _magical_ powers of steam
+  and electricity were yet undiscovered, it might be a
+  forcible argument to put--'Good Mr. Dean, is it possible for
+  a man to break his fast with you at Rochester, and to dine
+  that day in Durham with Master Dr. Matthew?'
+
+Johannes Wierus, physician to the Duke of Cleves, and a disciple
+of the well-known Cornelius Agrippa (himself accused of devotion
+to the black art), in 1563 created considerable sensation by an
+attack upon the common opinions, without questioning however the
+principles, of the superstition in his 'De Praestigiis Daemonum
+Incantationibus et Veneficiis.' His common sense is not so clear
+as that of the Englishman. Another name, memorable among the
+advocates of Reason and Humanity, is Gabriel Naude. He was
+born at Paris in 1600; he practised as a physician of great
+reputation, and was librarian successively to Cardinals Richelieu
+and Mazarin, and to Queen Christina of Sweden. His book 'Apologie
+pour les Grands Hommes accuses de Magie,' published in Paris in
+1625, was received with great indignation by the Church. Some
+others, both on the Continent and in England, at intervals by
+their protests served to prove that a few sparks of reason, hard
+to be discovered in the thick darkness of superstition, remained
+unextinguished; but they availed not to stem the torrent of
+increasing violence and volume.
+
+A more copious list can be given of the champions of orthodoxy
+and demonolatry; of whom it is sufficient to enumerate the more
+notorious names--Sprenger, Nider, Bodin, Del Rio, James VI.,
+Glanvil, who compiled or composed elaborate treatises on the
+subject; besides whom a cloud of witnesses expressly or
+incidentally proclaimed the undoubted genuineness of all the
+acts, phenomena, and circumstances of the diabolic worship;
+loudly and fiercely denouncing the 'damnable infidelity' of the
+dissenters--a proof in itself of their own complicity. Jean
+Bodin, a French lawyer, and author of the esteemed treatise 'De
+la Republique,' was one of the greatest authorities on the
+orthodox side. His publication 'De la Demonomanie des Sorciers'
+appeared in Paris in the year 1580: an undertaking prompted by
+his having witnessed some of the daily occurring trials. Instead
+of being convinced of their folly, he was or affected to be,
+certain of their truth, setting himself gravely to the task of
+publishing to the world his own observations and convictions.
+
+One of the most surprising facts in the whole history of
+witchcraft is the insensibility or indifference of even men of
+science, and therefore observation, to the obvious origin of the
+greatest part of the confessions elicited; confession of such a
+kind as could be the product only of torture, madness, or some
+other equally obvious cause. Bodin himself, however, sufficiently
+explains the fact and exposes the secret. 'The trial of this
+offence,' he enunciates, 'must not be conducted like other
+crimes. Whoever adheres to the ordinary course of justice
+perverts the spirit of the law both divine and human. He who is
+accused of sorcery should _never_ be acquitted unless the malice
+of the prosecutor be clearer than the sun; for it is so difficult
+to bring full proof of this secret crime, that out of a million
+of witches _not one would be convicted if the usual course were
+followed_.'[101] He speaks of an old woman sentenced to the stake
+after confessing to having been transported to the sabbath in a
+state of insensibility. Her judges, anxious to know how this was
+effected, released her from her fetters, when she rubbed herself
+on the different parts of her body with a prepared unguent and
+soon became insensible, stiff, and apparently dead. Having
+remained in that condition for five hours, the witch as suddenly
+revived, relating to the trembling inquisitors a number of
+extraordinary things proving she must have been _spiritually_
+transported to distant places.[102] An earlier advocate of the
+orthodox cause was a Swiss friar, Nider, who wrote a work
+entitled 'Formicarium' (_Ant-Hill_) on the various sins against
+religion. One section is employed in the consideration of
+sorcery. Nider was one of the inquisitors who distinguished
+themselves by their successful zeal in the beginning of the
+century.
+
+  [101] Yet the lawyer who enunciated such a maxim as this has
+  been celebrated for an unusual liberality of sentiment in
+  religious and political matters, as well as for his
+  learning. Dugald Stewart commends 'the liberal and moderate
+  views of this philosophical politician,' as shown in the
+  treatise _De la Republique_, and states that he knows of 'no
+  political writer of the same date whose extensive, and
+  various, and discriminating reading appears to me to have
+  contributed more to facilitate and to guide the researches
+  of his successors, or whose references to ancient learning
+  have been more frequently transcribed without
+  acknowledgment.'--Bayle considered him 'one of the ablest
+  men that appeared in France during the sixteenth
+  century.'--_Dissertation First_ in the _Encyclopaedia
+  Britannica_. Hallam (_Introduction to the Literature of
+  Europe_) occupies several of his pages in the review of
+  Bodin's writings. Jean Bodin, however, on the authority of
+  his friend De Thou, did not escape suspicion himself of
+  being heretical.
+
+  [102] In witchcraft (as in the sacramental mystery) it was a
+  subject for much doubt and dispute whether there might not be
+  simply a _spiritual_ (without a _real corporeal_) presence at
+  the sabbath. Each one decided according to the degree of his
+  orthodoxy.
+
+The Swiss witches, like the old Italian larvae and most of the
+sisterhood, display extraordinary affection for the blood of
+new-born unbaptized infants; and it is a great desideratum to
+kill them before the preventive rite has been irrevocably
+administered; for the bodies of unbaptized children were almost
+indispensable in the witches' preparations. Soon as buried their
+corpses are dug out of their graves and carried away to the place
+of assembly, where they are boiled down for the fat for making
+the ointments.[103] The liquid in which they are boiled is
+carefully preserved; and the person who tastes it is immediately
+initiated into all the mysteries of sorcery. A witch, judicially
+examined by the papal commission which compiled the 'Malleus,'
+gives evidence of the prevalence of this practice: 'We lie in
+wait for children. These are often found dead by their parents;
+and the simple people believe that they have themselves overlain
+them, or that they died from natural causes; but it is we who
+have destroyed them. We steal them out of the grave, and boil
+them with lime till all the flesh is loosed from the bones and is
+reduced to one mass. We make of the firm part an ointment, and
+fill a bottle with the fluid; and whoever drinks with due
+ceremonies of this belongs to our league, and is already capable
+of bewitching.' 'Finger of birth-strangled babe' is one of the
+ingredients of that widely-collected composition of the Macbeth
+witches.
+
+  [103] A practice not entirely out of repute at the present
+  day if we may credit a statement in the _Courrier du Havre_
+  (as quoted in _The Times_ newspaper, Nov. 7, 1864), that
+  recently the corpse of an old woman was dug up for the
+  purpose of obtaining the fat, &c., as a preventive charm
+  against witchcraft, by a person living in the neighbourhood
+  of Havre.
+
+The case at Warboys, which, connected with a family of some
+distinction, occasioned unusual interest, was tried in the year
+1593. The village of Warboys, or Warbois, is situated in the
+neighbourhood of Huntingdon. One of the most influential of
+the inhabitants was a gentleman of respectability, Robert
+Throgmorton, who was on friendly terms with the Cromwells of
+Hitchinbrook, and the lord of the manor, Sir Henry Cromwell.
+Three criminals--old Samuel, his wife, and Agnes Samuel their
+daughter, were tried and condemned by Mr. Justice Fenner for
+bewitching Mr. Throgmorton's five children, seven servants, the
+Lady Cromwell, and others. The father and daughter maintained
+their innocence to the last; the old woman confessed. A fact
+which makes this affair more remarkable is, that with the forty
+pounds escheated to him, as lord of the manor, out of the
+property of the convicts, Sir Samuel Cromwell founded an annual
+sermon or lecture upon the sin of witchcraft, to be preached at
+their town every Lady-day, by a Doctor or Bachelor of Divinity of
+Queen's College, Cambridge; the sum of forty pounds being
+entrusted to the Mayor and Aldermen of Huntingdon, for a
+rent-charge of forty shillings yearly to be paid to the select
+preacher. This lecture, says Dr. Francis Hutchison, is continued
+to this day--1718.
+
+Four years previously to this important trial, Jane Throgmorton,
+a girl ten years of age, was first suddenly attacked with strange
+convulsive fits, which continued daily, and even several times in
+the day, without intermission. One day, soon after the first
+seizure, Mother Samuel coming into the Throgmortons' house,
+seated herself as customary in a chimney-corner near the child,
+who was just recovering from one of her fits. The girl no sooner
+noticed her than she began to cry out, pointing to the old woman,
+'Did you ever see one more like a witch than she is? Take off her
+black-thumbed cap, for I cannot abide to look at her.' The
+illness becoming worse, they sent to Cambridge to consult Dr.
+Barrow, an experienced physician in that town; but he could
+discover no natural disease. A month later, the other children
+were similarly seized, and persuaded of Mother Samuel's guilt.
+The parents' increasing suspicions, entertained by the doctors,
+were confirmed when the servants were also attacked. About the
+middle of March, 1590, Lady Cromwell arrived on a visit to the
+Throgmortons; and being much affected at the sufferings of the
+patients, sent for the suspected person, whom she charged with
+being the malicious cause. Finding all entreaty of no avail in
+extorting an admission of guilt, Lady Cromwell suddenly and
+unexpectedly cut off a lock of the witch's hair (a powerful
+counter-charm), at the same time secretly placing it in Mrs.
+Throgmorton's hands, desiring her to burn it. Indignant, the
+accused addressed the lady, 'Madam, why do you use me thus? I
+never did you any harm _as yet_'--words afterwards recollected.
+'That night,' says the narrative, 'my lady Cromwell was suddenly
+troubled in her sleep by a cat which Mother S. had sent her,
+which offered to pluck the skin and flesh off her bones and arms.
+The struggle betwixt the cat and the lady was so great in her bed
+that night, and she made so terrible a noise, that she waked her
+bedfellow Mrs. C.' Whether, 'as some sager' might think, it was a
+nightmare (a sort of incubus which terrified the disordered
+imagination of the ancients), or some more substantial object
+that disturbed the rest of the lady, it is not important to
+decide; but next day Lady Cromwell was laid up with an incurable
+illness. Holding out obstinately against all threats and
+promises, the reputed witch was at length induced to pronounce an
+exorcism, when the afflicted were immediately for the time
+dispossessed. 'Next day being Christmas-eve and the Sabbath, Dr.
+Donington [vicar of the parish] chose his text of repentance out
+of the _Psalms_, and communicating her confession to the
+assembly, directed his discourse chiefly to that purpose
+to comfort a penitent heart that it might affect her. All
+sermon-time Mother S. wept and lamented, and was frequently so
+loud in her passions, that she drew the eyes of the congregation
+upon her.' On the morrow, greatly to the disappointment of the
+neighbours, she contradicted her former confession, declaring it
+was extracted by surprise at finding her exorcism had relieved
+the child, unconscious of what she was saying.
+
+The case was afterwards carried before the Bishop of Lincoln. Now
+greatly alarmed, the old woman made a fresh announcement that she
+was really a witch; that she owned several spirits (of the nine
+may be enumerated the fantastic names of Pluck, Hardname, Catch,
+Smack, Blew), one of whom was used to appear in the shape of a
+chicken, and suck her chin. The mother and daughters were, upon
+this voluntary admission, committed to Huntingdon gaol. Of the
+possessed Jane Throgmorton seems to have been most familiar with
+the demons.[104]
+
+  [104] The following ravings of epilepsy, or of whatever was
+  the disorder of the girl, are part of the evidence of Dr.
+  Donington, clergyman in the town, and were narrated and
+  could be received as grave evidence in a court of justice.
+  They will serve as a specimen of the rest. The girl and the
+  spirit known as _Catch_ are engaged in the little by-play.
+  'After supper, as soon as her parents were risen, she fell
+  into the same fit again as before, and then became
+  senseless, and in a little time, opening her mouth, she
+  said, "Will this hold for ever? I hope it will be better one
+  day. From whence come you now, Catch, limping? I hope you
+  have met with your match." Catch answered that Smack and he
+  had been fighting, and that Smack had broken his leg. Said
+  she, "That Smack is a shrewd fellow; methinks I would I
+  could see him. Pluck came last night with his head broke,
+  and now you have broken your leg. I hope he will break both
+  your necks before he hath done with you." Catch answered
+  that he would be even with him before he had done. Then,
+  said she, "Put forth your other leg, and let me see if I can
+  break that," having a stick in her hand. The spirit told her
+  she could not hit him. "Can I not hit you?" said she; "let
+  me try." Then the spirit put forth his leg, and she lifted
+  up the stick easily, and suddenly struck the ground.... So
+  she seemed divers times to strike at the spirit; but he
+  leaped over the stick, as she said, like a Jackanapes. So
+  after many such tricks the spirit went away, and she came
+  out of her fit, continuing all that night and the next day
+  very sick and full of pain in her legs.'
+
+The sessions at Huntingdon began April 4, 1593, when the three
+Samuels were arraigned; and the above charges, with much more of
+the same sort, were repeated: the indictments specifying the
+particular offences against the children and servants of the
+Throgmortons, and the 'bewitching unto death' of the lady
+Cromwell. The grand jury found a true bill immediately, and they
+were put upon their trial in court. After a mass of nonsense had
+been gone through, 'the judge, justices, and jury said the case
+was apparent, and their consciences were well satisfied that the
+said witches were guilty, and deserved death.' When sentence of
+death was pronounced, the old woman, sixty years of age, pleaded,
+in arrest of judgment, that she was with child--a pleading which
+produced only a derisive shout of laughter in court. Husband and
+daughter asserted their innocence to the last. All three were
+hanged. From the moment of execution, we are assured, Robert
+Throgmorton's children were permanently freed from all their
+sufferings. Such, briefly, are the circumstances of a witch case
+that resulted in the sending to the gallows three harmless
+wretches, and in the founding an annual sermon which perpetuated
+the memory of an iniquitous act and of an impossible crime. The
+sermon, it may be presumed, like other similar surviving
+institutions, was preserved in the eighteenth century more for
+the benefit of the select preacher than for that of the people.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+     Astrology in Antiquity--Modern Astrology and
+     Alchymy--Torralvo--Adventures of Dr. Dee and Edward
+     Kelly--Prospero and Comus Types respectively of the Theurgic
+     and Goetic Arts--Magicians on the Stage in the 16th
+     century--Occult Science in Southern Europe--Causes of the
+     inevitable mistakes of the pre-Scientific Ages.
+
+
+The nobler arts of magic, astrology, alchymy, necromancy, &c.,
+were equally in vogue in this age with that of the infernal art
+proper. But they were more respected. Professors of those arts
+were habitually sought for with great eagerness by the highest
+personages, and often munificently rewarded. In antiquity
+astrology had been peculiarly Oriental in its origin and
+practice. The Egyptians, and especially the Chaldaeans, introduced
+the foreign art to the West among the Greeks and Italians; the
+Arabs revived it in Western Europe in the Middle Age. Under the
+early Roman Empire the Chaldaic art exercised and enjoyed
+considerable influence and reputation, if it was often subject to
+sudden persecutions. Augustus was assisted to the throne, and
+Severus selected his wife, by its means. After it had once
+firmly established itself in the West,[105] the Oriental
+astrology was soon developed and reduced to a more regular
+system; and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Dee and
+Lilly enjoyed a greater reputation than even Figulus or
+Thrasyllus had obtained in the first century. Queen Elizabeth and
+Catherine di Medici (two of the astutest persons of their age)
+patronised them. Dr. Dee in England, and Nostradamus in France,
+were of this class. Dr. Caius, third founder of a college still
+bearing his name in the university of Cambridge, Kelly, Ashmole,
+and Lilly, are well-known names in the astrological history of
+this period. Torralvo, whose fame as an aerial voyager is
+immortalised by Cervantes in 'Don Quixote,' was as great a
+magician in Spain and Italy as Dee in England, although not so
+familiar to English readers as their countryman, the protege of
+Elizabeth. Neither was his magical faculty so well rewarded. Dr.
+Torralvo, a physician, had studied medicine and philosophy with
+extraordinary success, and was high in the confidence of many
+of the eminent personages of Spain and Italy, for whom he
+fortunately predicted future success. A confirmed infidel or
+freethinker, he was denounced to the Inquisition by the treachery
+of an associate as denying or disputing the immortality of the
+soul, as well as the divinity of Christ. This was in 1529.
+Torralvo, put to the torture, admitted that his informing spirit,
+Zequiel, was a demon by whose assistance he performed his aerial
+journeys and all his extraordinary feats, both of prophecy and of
+actual power. Some part of the severity of the tortures was
+remitted by the demon's opportune reply to the curiosity of the
+presiding inquisitors, that Luther and the Reformers were bad and
+cunning men. Torralvo seems to have avoided the extreme penalty
+of fire by recanting his heresies, submitting to the superior
+judgment of his gaolers, and still more by the interest of his
+powerful employers; and he was liberated not long afterwards.
+
+  [105] The diffusion and progress of astrology in the last
+  two centuries before the Empire, in Greece and Italy, was
+  favoured chiefly by the four following causes: its
+  resemblance to the meteorological astrology of the Greeks;
+  the belief in the conversion of the souls of men into stars;
+  the cessation of the oracles; the belief in a tutelary
+  genius.--Sir G. C. Lewis's _Historical Survey of the
+  Astronomy of the Ancients_, chap. v.
+
+The life of Dr. Dee, an eminent Cambridge mathematician, and of
+his associate Edward Kelly, forms a curious biography. Dee was
+born in 1527. He studied at the English and foreign universities
+with great success and applause; and while the Princess Elizabeth
+was quite young he acquired her friendship, maintained by
+frequent correspondence, and on her succession to the throne the
+queen showed her good will in a conspicuous manner. John Dee left
+to posterity a diary in which he has inserted a regular account
+of his conjurations, prophetic intimations, and magical
+resources. Notwithstanding his mathematical acumen, he was the
+dupe of his cunning subordinate--more of a knave, probably, than
+his master. In 1583 a Polish prince, Albert Laski, visiting the
+English court, frequented the society of the renowned astrologer,
+by whom he was initiated in the secrets of the art; and predicted
+to be the future means of an important revolution in Europe. The
+astrologers wandered over all Germany, at one time favourably
+received by the credulity, at another time ignominiously ejected
+by the indignant disappointment, of a patron.[106] Dee returned
+to England in 1589, and was finally appointed to the wardenship
+of the college at Manchester. In James's reign he was well
+received at Court, his reputation as a magician increasing; and
+in 1604 he is found presenting a petition to the king, imploring
+his good offices in dispelling the injurious imputation of being
+'a conjuror, or caller, or invocator of devils.' Lilly, the most
+celebrated magician of the seventeenth century in England, was in
+the highest repute during the civil wars: his prophetic services
+were sought with equal anxiety by royalists and patriots, by king
+and parliament.[107] Sometimes the professor of the occult
+science may have been his own dupe: oftener he imposed and
+speculated upon the credulity of others.
+
+  [106] While traversing Bohemia, on a particular occasion, it
+  was revealed to be God's pleasure that the two friends
+  should have a community of wives; a little episode noted in
+  Dee's journal. 'On Sunday, May 3, 1587, I, John Dee, Edward
+  Kelly, and our two wives, covenanted with God, and
+  subscribed the same for indissoluble unities, charity, and
+  friendship keeping between us four, and all things between
+  us to be common, as God by sundry means willed us to do.' A
+  sort of inspiration of frequent occurrence in religious
+  revelations, from the times of the Arabian to those of the
+  American prophet.
+
+  [107] William Lilly wrote a History of his own life and
+  times. His adroitness in accommodating his prophecies to the
+  alternating chances of the war does him considerable credit
+  as a prophet.
+
+Prospero is the type of the Theurgic, as Comus is of the Goetic,
+magician. His spiritual minister belongs to the order of good, or
+at least middle spirits--
+
+    'Too black for heav'n, and yet too white for hell.'[108]
+
+  [108] Released by his new lord from the sorceric spell of
+  that 'damn'd witch Sycorax,' he comes gratefully, if
+  somewhat weariedly, to answer his 'blest pleasure; be't to
+  fly, to swim, to dive into the fire, to ride on the curl'd
+  clouds,' &c.
+
+Prospero, by an irresistible magic, subdued to his service the
+reluctant Caliban, a monster 'got by the devil himself upon his
+wicked dam:' but that semi-demon is degraded into a mere beast of
+burden, brutal and savage, with little of the spiritual essence
+of his male parent. Comus, as represented in that most beautiful
+drama by the genius of Milton, is of the classic rather than
+Christian sort: he is the true son of Circe, using his mother's
+method of enchantment, transforming his unwary victims into the
+various forms or faces of the bestial herd. Like the island
+magician without his magical garment, the wicked enchanter
+without his wand loses his sorceric power; and--
+
+    'Without his rod reversed,
+     And backward mutters of dissevering power,'
+
+it is not possible to disenchant his spell-bound prisoners.
+
+In the sixteenth century many wonderful stories obtained of the
+tremendous feats of the magic art. Those that related the lives
+of Bacon, and of Faust (of German origin), were best known in
+England; and, in the dramatic form, were represented on the
+stage. The comedy of 'Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay,' and the
+tragedy of 'The Life and Death of Dr. Faustus,' are perhaps the
+most esteemed of the dramatic writings of the age which preceded
+the appearance of Shakspeare. In the latter Faustus makes a
+compact with the devil, by which a familiar spirit and a
+preternatural art are granted him for twenty-four years. At
+the end of this period his soul is to be the reward of the
+demons.[109] From the 'Faustus' of Christopher Marlow, Goethe has
+derived the name and idea of the most celebrated tragedy of our
+day.
+
+  [109] Conscious of his approaching fate, the trembling
+  magician replies to the anxious inquiries of his surrounding
+  pupils--'"For the vain pleasure of four-and-twenty years
+  hath Faustus lost eternal joy and felicity. I writ them a
+  bill with my own blood; the date is expired; this is the
+  time, and he will fetch me." First Scholar--"Why did not
+  Faustus tell us of this before, that divines might have
+  prayed for thee?" Faust--"Oft have I thought to have done
+  so; but the devil threatened to tear me in pieces if I named
+  God; to fetch me body and soul if I once gave ear to
+  divinity. And now it is too late."' As the fearful moment
+  fast approaches, Dr. Faustus, orthodox on the subject of the
+  duration of future punishment, exclaims in agony--
+
+       'Oh! if my soul must suffer for my sin,
+        Impose some end to my incessant pain.
+        Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years--
+        A hundred thousand, and at the last be saved:
+        No end is limited to damned souls.
+        Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?
+        Oh, why is this immortal that thou hast?' &c.
+
+  Mephistopheles, it need hardly be added, was on this occasion
+  true to his reputation for punctuality. _Friar Bacon and
+  Friar Bungay_ is remarked for being one of the last dramatic
+  pieces in which the devil appears on the stage in his proper
+  person--1591. It is also noticeable that he is the only
+  Scripture character in the new form of the play retained from
+  the _miracles_ which delighted the spectators in the
+  fifteenth century, who were at once edified and gratified by
+  the corporal chastisement inflicted upon his vicarious back.
+
+Magic and necromantic prowess was equally recognised in Southern
+Europe. The Italian poets employed such imposing paraphernalia in
+the construction of an epic; and Cervantes has ridiculed the
+prevailing belief of his countrymen.[110]
+
+  [110] Benvenuto Cellini, the Florentine engraver, in his
+  amusing _Autobiography_, astonishes his readers with some
+  necromantic wonders of which he was an eyewitness. Cellini
+  had become acquainted and enamoured with a beautiful
+  Sicilian, from whom he was suddenly separated. He tells with
+  his accustomed candour and confidence, 'I was then indulging
+  myself in pleasures of all sorts, and engaged in another
+  amour to cancel the memory of my Sicilian mistress. It
+  happened, through a variety of odd accidents, that I made
+  acquaintance with a Sicilian priest, who was a man of
+  genius, and well versed in the Latin and Greek authors.
+  Happening one day to have some conversation with him upon
+  the art of necromancy, I, who had a great desire to know
+  something of the matter, told him I had all my life felt a
+  curiosity to be acquainted with the mysteries of this art.
+  The priest made answer that the man must be of a resolute
+  and steady temper who enters upon that study.' And so it
+  should seem from the event. One night, Cellini, with a
+  companion familiar with the Black Art, attended the priest
+  to the Colosseum, where the latter, 'according to the custom
+  of necromancy, began to draw marks upon the ground, with the
+  most impressive ceremonies imaginable; he likewise brought
+  thither _asaf[oe]tida, several precious perfumes and fire,
+  with some compositions which diffused noisome odours_.'
+  Although several legions of devils obeyed the summons of the
+  conjurations or compositions, the sorceric rites were not
+  attended with complete success. But on a succeeding night,
+  'the necromancer having begun to make his tremendous
+  invocations, called by their names a multitude of demons who
+  were the leaders of the several legions, and invoked them by
+  the virtue and power of the eternal uncreated God, who lives
+  for ever, insomuch that the amphitheatre was almost in an
+  instant filled with demons a hundred times more numerous
+  than at the former conjuration ... I, by the direction of
+  the necromancer, again desired to be in the company of my
+  Angelica. The former thereupon turning to me said, "Know
+  that they have declared that in the space of a month you
+  shall be in her company." He then requested me to stand
+  resolutely by him, because the legion were now above a
+  thousand more in number than he had designed; and besides,
+  these were the most dangerous, so that after they had
+  answered my question it behoved him to be civil to them and
+  dismiss them quietly.' The infernal legions were more easily
+  evoked than dismissed. He proceeds--'Though I was as much
+  terrified as any of them, I did my utmost to conceal the
+  terror I felt; so that I greatly contributed to inspire the
+  rest with resolution. But the truth is,' ingenuously
+  confesses the amorous artist, 'I gave myself over for a dead
+  man, seeing the horrid fright the necromancer was
+  in.'--_Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini_, chap. xiii.,
+  Roscoe's transl.--The information was verified, and
+  Benvenuto enjoyed the society of his mistress at the time
+  foretold.
+
+Alchymy, the science of the transformation of baser metals into
+gold, a pursuit which engaged the anxious thought and wasted the
+health, time, and fortunes of numbers of fanatical empirics, was
+one of the most prized of the abstruse _occult_ arts. Monarchs,
+princes, the great of all countries, eagerly vied among
+themselves in encouraging with promises and sometimes with more
+substantial incentives the zeal of their illusive search; and
+Henry IV. of France could see no reason why, if the bread and
+wine were transubstantiated so miraculously, a metal could not be
+transformed as well.[111]
+
+  [111] The class of horoscopists (the old Chaldaic
+  _genethliacs_), or those who predicted the fortunes of
+  individuals by an examination of the planet which presided
+  at the natal hour, was as much in vogue as that of any other
+  of the masters of the occult arts; and La Fontaine, towards
+  the end of the seventeenth century, apostrophises the class:
+
+       'Charlatans, faiseurs d'horoscope!
+        Quittez les cours des princes de l'Europe;
+        Emmenez avec vous les souffleurs tout d'un temps;
+        Vous ne meritez pas plus de foi.'....
+
+                      _Fables_, ii. 13.
+
+  But it is only necessary to recollect the name of Cagliostro
+  (Balsamo) and others who in the eighteenth century could
+  successfully speculate upon the credulity of people of rank
+  and education, to moderate our wonder at the success of
+  earlier empirics.
+
+Among the eminent names of self-styled or reputed masters of the
+nobler or white magic, some, like the celebrated Paracelsus, were
+men of extraordinary attainments and largely acquainted with the
+secrets of natural science. A necessarily imperfect knowledge, a
+natural desire to impose upon the ignorant wonder of the vulgar,
+and the vanity of a learning which was ambitious of exhibiting,
+in the most imposing if less intelligible way, their superior
+knowledge, were probably the mixed causes which led such
+distinguished scholars as Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, Cardan,
+and Campanella to oppress themselves and their readers with a
+mass of unintelligible rubbish and cabalistic mysticism.[112]
+Slow and gradual as are the successive advances in the knowledge
+and improvement of mankind, it would not be reasonable to be
+surprised that preceding generations could not at once attain to
+the knowledge of a maturer age; and the teachers of mankind
+groped their dark and uncertain way in ages destitute of the
+illumination of modern times.'[113]
+
+  [112]
+
+       'Cardan believed great states depend
+        Upon the tip o' th'
+        Bear's tail's end,'
+
+  correctly enough expresses both the persuasion of the public
+  and that of many of the soi-disant philosophers of the
+  intimate dependence of the fates of both states and
+  individuals of this globe upon other globes in the universe.
+
+  [113] It was not so much a want of sufficient observation of
+  known facts, as the want of a true method and of
+  verification, which rendered the investigations of the
+  earlier philosophers so vague and uncertain. And the same
+  causes which necessarily prevented Aristotle, the greatest
+  intellect perhaps that has ever illuminated the world, from
+  attaining to the greater perfection of the modern philosophy,
+  are applicable, in a greater degree, to the case of the
+  mediaeval and later discoverers. The causes of the failure of
+  the pre-scientific world are well stated by a living writer.
+  'Men cannot, or at least they will not, await the tardy
+  results of discovery; they will not sit down in avowed
+  ignorance. Imagination supplies the deficiencies of
+  observation. A theoretic arch is thrown across the chasm,
+  because men are unwilling to wait till a solid bridge be
+  constructed.... The early thinkers, by reason of the very
+  splendour of their capacities, were not less incompetent to
+  follow the slow processes of scientific investigation, than a
+  tribe of martial savages to adopt the strategy and discipline
+  of modern armies. No accumulated laws, no well-tried methods
+  existed for their aid. The elementary laws in each department
+  were mostly undetected.' The guide of knowledge is
+  verification. 'The complexity of phenomena is that of a
+  labyrinth, the paths of which cross and recross each other;
+  one wrong turn causes the wanderer infinite perplexity.
+  Verification is the Ariadne-thread by which the real issues
+  may be found. Unhappily, the process of verification is slow,
+  tedious, often difficult and deceptive; and we are by nature
+  lazy and impatient, hating labour, eager to obtain. Hence
+  credulity. We accept facts without scrutiny, inductions
+  without proof; and we yield to our disposition to believe
+  that the order of phenomena must correspond with our
+  conceptions.' A profound truth is contained in the assertion
+  of Comte (_Cours de Philosophie Positive_) that 'men have
+  still more need of method than of doctrine, of education than
+  of instruction.'--_Aristotle_, by G. H. Lewes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+     Sorcery in Southern Europe--Cause of the Retention of the
+     Demonological Creed among the Protestant Sects--Calvinists
+     the most Fanatical of the Reformed Churches--Witch-Creed
+     sanctioned in the Authorised Version of the Sacred
+     Scriptures--The Witch-Act of 1604--James VI.'s
+     'Demonologie'--Lycanthropy and Executions in France--The
+     French Provincial Parliaments active in passing Laws against
+     the various Witch-practices--Witchcraft in the
+     Pyrenees--Commission of Inquiry appointed--Its
+     Results--Demonology in Spain.
+
+
+In the annals of black magic, the silent tribunals of the
+Inquisition in Southern Europe which has consigned so many
+thousands of heretics to the torture room and to the flames, do
+not reveal so many trials for the simple crime of witchcraft as
+the tribunals of the more northern peoples: there all dissent
+from Catholic and priestly dogma was believed to be inspired by
+the powers of hell, deserving a common punishment, whether in the
+form of denial of transubstantiation, infallibility, of skill in
+magic, or of the vulgar practice of sorcery. Throughout Europe
+penalties and prosecutions were being continually enacted. The
+popes in Italy fulminated abroad their decrees, and the
+parliaments of France were almost daily engaged in pronouncing
+sentence.
+
+Where the papal yoke had been thrown off in Northern Germany, in
+Scotland, and in England, the belief and the persecution remained
+in full force, indeed greatly increased; and it is obvious to
+inquire the cause of the retention, with many additions, of the
+doctrine of witchcraft by those who had at last finally rejected
+with scorn most of the grosser religious dogmas of the old
+Church, who were so loud in their just denunciation of Catholic
+tyranny and superstition. A general answer might be given that
+the Reformation of the sixteenth century, while it swept away in
+those countries in which it was effected the most injurious
+principles of ecclesiasticism, the principles of infallibility
+and authority in matters of faith, for the destruction of which
+gratitude is due to the independent minds of Luther, Zuinglius,
+and others, was yet far from complete in its negations. The
+leaders of that great revolution, with all their genius and
+boldness, could only partially free themselves from the
+prejudices of education and of the age. To develope the important
+principles they established, the rights of private judgment and
+religious freedom, was the legacy and duty of their successors; a
+duty which they failed to perform, to the incalculable misfortune
+of succeeding generations. The Sacred Scriptures, the common
+and only authority on faith among the different sections
+of Protestantism, unfortunately seemed to inculcate the dread
+power of the devil and his malicious purposes, and both the
+Jewish and Christian Scriptures apparently taught the reality
+of witchcraft. Theologians of all parties would have as easily
+dared to question the existence of God himself as to doubt the
+actual power of that other deity, and the unbelievers in his
+universal interference were not illogically stigmatised as
+atheists. With the Protestants some adventitious circumstances
+might make a particular church more fanatical and furious than
+another, and the Calvinists have deserved the palm for the
+bitterest persecution of witchcraft. But neither the Lutheran nor
+the Anglican section is exempt from the odious imputation.[114]
+
+  [114] Lord Peter, and his humbler brothers Martin and Jack,
+  in different degrees, are all of them obnoxious to the
+  accusation; and Bossuet (_Variations des Eglises
+  Protestantes_, xi. 201), who is assured that St. Paul
+  predicted the 'doctrines of devils' to be characteristic of
+  Manichaean and Albigensian heresy, might have more safely
+  interpreted the prophecy as applicable to the universal
+  Christian Church (at least of Western Europe) of the
+  sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
+
+The followers of Calvin were most deeply imbued with hatred and
+horror of Catholic practices, and, adopting the old prejudice or
+policy of their antagonists, they were willing to confound the
+superstitious rites of Catholicism with those of demonolatry. The
+Anglican Church party, whose principles were not so entirely
+opposite to the old religion, had far less antipathy: until the
+revolution of 1688 it was for the most part engaged in contending
+against liberty rather than against despotism of conscience;
+against Calvinism than against Catholicism. Yet the Church of
+England is exposed to the reproach of having sanctioned the
+common opinions in the most authoritative manner. In the
+authorised version of the Sacred Scriptures, in the translation
+of which into the English language forty-seven selected divines,
+eminent for position and learning, could concur in consecrating
+a vulgar superstition, the most imposing sanction was given.
+Had they possessed either common sense or courage, these Anglican
+divines might have expressed their disbelief or doubt of
+its truth by a more rational, and possibly more proper,
+interpretation of the Hebrew and Greek expressions; or if that
+was not possible, by an accompanying unequivocal protest. But the
+subservience as well as superstition of the English Church under
+the last of the Tudors and under the Stuarts is equally a matter
+of fact and of reprobation.
+
+It was in the first year of the first King of Great Britain that
+the English Parliament passed the Act which remained in force, or
+at least on the Statute Book, until towards the middle of last
+century.[115] After due consideration the bill passed both
+Houses; and by it, it was enacted that 'If any person shall use
+any invocation or conjuration of any evil or wicked spirit, or
+shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward
+any evil or cursed spirit to or for any intent or purpose, or
+take up any dead man, woman, or child out of the grave--or the
+skin, bone, or any part of the dead person, to be employed or
+used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment;
+or shall use, exercise, or practice any sort of witchcraft, &c.,
+whereby any person shall be destroyed, killed, wasted, consumed,
+pined or lamed in any part of the body; that every such person
+being convicted shall suffer death.' Twelve bishops sat in the
+Committee of the Upper House.[116]
+
+  [115] The 'Witch Act' of James I. was passed in the year
+  1604. The new translation, or the present authorised
+  version, of the Bible, was executed in 1607. The inference
+  seems plain. An ecclesiastical canon passed at the same
+  period, which prohibits the inferior clergy from exorcising
+  without episcopal licence, proves at the same time the
+  prevalence of 'possession' and the prevalence of exorcism in
+  the beginning of the seventeenth century.
+
+  [116] The parliament of James I. would have done wisely to
+  have embraced the philosophic sentiment of a Hungarian prince
+  (1095-1114) who is said to have dismissed the absurd
+  superstition with laconic brevity: 'De strigis vero, quae non
+  sunt, nulla quaestio fiat.'
+
+The Scottish Parliament, during Queen Mary's reign, anathematised
+the _papistical_ practices; and from that time the annals of
+Scottish judicature are filled with records of trials and
+convictions. James was educated among the stern adherents of
+Calvin. In whatever matters of ecclesiastical faith and rule the
+countryman of Knox may have deviated from the teaching of his
+preceptors, he maintained with constant zeal his faith in the
+devil's omnipotence; and we may be disposed to concede the
+title of 'Defender of the Faith' (so confidently prefixed to
+successive editions of the Authorised Version) to his activity in
+the extermination of witches, rather than to his hatred of
+priestcraft. While monarch only of the Northern kingdom, he
+published a denunciation of the damnable infidelity of the 'Witch
+Advocates,' and his own unhesitating belief. James VI. and his
+clerical advisers were persuaded, or affected to be persuaded,
+that the devil, with all his hellish crew, was conspiring to
+frustrate the beneficial intentions of a pious Protestant prince.
+Infernal despair and rage reached the climax when the marriage
+with the Danish princess was to be effected. But, far from being
+terrified by so formidable a conspiracy, he gloried in the
+persuasion that he was the devil's greatest enemy; and the man
+who shuddered at the sight of a drawn sword was not afraid to
+enter the lists against the _invisible_ spiritual enemy.
+
+The 'Demonologie' was published at Edinburgh in 1597. The author
+introduces his book with these words: 'The fearful abounding at
+this time in this country of these detestable slaves of the
+devil, the witches or enchanters, hath moved me (beloved reader)
+to despatch in post this following treatise of mine, not in any
+wise (as I protest) to serve for a show of my learning and
+ingine, but only moved of conscience to press thereby so far as I
+can to resolve the doubting hearts of many; both that such
+assaults of Sathan are most certainly practised, and that the
+instruments thereof merits most severely to be punished: against
+the damnable opinions of two principally in our age, whereof the
+one called Scot, an Englishman, is not ashamed in public print to
+deny that there can be such a thing as witchcraft, and so
+maintains the old error of the Sadducees in denying of spirits.
+The other, called Wierus, a German physician, sets out a public
+apology for all these crafts-folks, whereby procuring for their
+impunity, he plainly bewrays himself to have been one of that
+profession. And for to make this treatise the more pleasant and
+facile, I have put it in form of a dialogue, which I have divided
+into three books: the first speaking of magic in general, and
+necromancy in special; the second, of sorcery and witchcraft; and
+the third contains a discourse of all those kinds of spirits and
+spectres that appears and troubles persons, together with a
+conclusion of the whole work. My intention in this labour is
+only to prove two things, as I have already said: the one, that
+such devilish arts have been and are; the other, what exact trial
+and severe punishment they merit; and therefore reason I what
+kind of things are possible to be performed in these arts, and
+by what natural causes they may be. Not that I touch every
+particular thing of the devil's power, for that were infinite;
+but only, to speak scholasticly (since this cannot be spoken in
+our language), I reason upon _genus_, leaving _species_ and
+_differentia_ to be comprehended therein.'[117]
+
+  [117] Speculating on the manner of witches' aerial travels,
+  he thinks, 'Another way is somewhat more strange, and yet it
+  is possible to be true: which is, by being carried by the
+  force of their spirit, which is their conductor, either
+  above the earth or above the sea swiftly to the place where
+  they are to meet: which I am persuaded to be likewise
+  possible, in respect that as Habakkuk was carried by the
+  angel in that form to the den where Daniel lay, so think I
+  the devil will be ready to imitate God as well in that as in
+  other things, which is much more possible to him to do,
+  being a spirit, than to a mighty wind, being but a natural
+  meteor to transport from one place to another a solid body,
+  as is commonly and daily seen in practice. But in this
+  violent form they cannot be carried but a short bounds,
+  agreeing with the space that they may retain their breath;
+  for if it were longer their breath could not remain
+  unextinguished, their body being carried in such a violent
+  and forcible manner.... And in this transporting they say
+  themselves that they are invisible to any other, except
+  amongst themselves. For if the devil may form what kind of
+  impressions he pleases in the air, as I have said before,
+  speaking of magic, why may he not far easier thicken and
+  obscure so the air that is next about them, by contracting
+  it straight together that the beams of any other man's eyes
+  cannot pierce through the same to see them?'
+  &c.--_Cyclopaedia of English Literature_, edited by Robert
+  Chambers.
+
+The following injunction is characteristic of all persecuting
+maxims, and is worthy of the disciple of Bodin: 'Witches ought to
+be put to death according to the law of God, the civil and the
+imperial law, and the municipal law of all Christian nations.
+Yea, to spare the life and not to strike whom God bids strike,
+and so severely in so odious a treason against God, is not only
+unlawful but doubtless as great a sin in the magistrate as was
+Saul's sparing Agag.' It is insisted upon by this _sagacious_
+author (echoing the rules laid down in the 'Malleus'), that any
+and every evidence is good against an exceptional crime: that the
+testimony of the youngest children, and of persons of the most
+infamous character, not only may, but ought to be, received.
+
+This mischievous production is a curious collection of
+demonological learning and experience, exhibiting the reputed
+practices and ceremonies of witches, the mode of detecting them,
+&c.; but is useless even for the purpose of showing the popular
+Scottish or English notions, being chiefly a medley of classical
+or foreign ideas, inserted apparently (spite of the royal
+author's assurance to the contrary) to parade an array of
+abstruse and pedantic learning. That some of the excessive terror
+said to have been exhibited was simulated to promote his
+pretensions to the especial hostility of Satan, is probable: but
+that also he was impressed, in some degree, with a real and
+lively fear scarcely admits of doubt. The modern Solomon might
+well have blushed at the superior common sense of a barbaric
+chief; and the 'judges of the seventeenth century might have been
+instructed and confounded at the superior wisdom of Rotharis
+[a Lombardic prince], who derides the absurd superstition and
+protects the wretched victims of popular or judicial cruelty.'[118]
+
+  [118] _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, xlv. It would
+  have been well for his subjects if he could have
+  congratulated himself, like Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (the
+  model of philosophic princes, and a more practically
+  virtuous, if not wiser, philosopher than the proverbial
+  Solomon, and of whom Niebuhr, _History of Rome_, v.,
+  asserts, 'If there is any sublime human virtue, it is his'),
+  that he had learnt from his instructors to laugh at the
+  bugbears of witches and demons.--[Greek: Ta eis
+  heauton.]--_The Meditations of M. A. Antoninus._
+
+Previously to the 'Witch Act,' the charge of sorcery was, in most
+cases, a subordinate and subsidiary one, attached to various
+political or other indictments. Henceforward the practice of the
+peculiar offence might be entirely independent of any more
+substantial accusation. In England, compared with the other
+countries of Europe, folly more than ferocity, perhaps, generally
+characterises the proceedings of the tribunals. During the
+pre-Reformation ages, France, even more than her island
+neighbour, suffered from the crime. The fates of the Templars, of
+Jeanne d'Arc, of Arras, of those suspected of causing the mad
+king's, Charles VI., derangement (when many of the _white_
+witches, or wizards, 'mischievously good,' suffered for failing,
+by a pretended skill, to effect his promised cure) are some of
+the more conspicuous examples. But in France, as in the rest of
+Europe, it was in the post-feudal period that prosecutions became
+of almost daily occurrence.
+
+A prevalent kind of sorcery was that of lycanthropy, as it was
+called, a prejudice derived, it seems, in part from the
+Pythagorean metempsychosis. A few cases will illustrate the
+nature of this stupendous transformation. That it is mostly
+found to take place in France and in the southern districts, the
+country of wolves, that still make their ravages there, is a fact
+easily intelligible; and if the devil can enter into swine, he
+can also, in the opinion of the demonologists, as easily enter
+into wolves. At Dole, in 1573, a loup-garou, or wehr-wolf
+(man-wolf), was accused of devastating the country and devouring
+little children. The indictment was read by Henri Camus, doctor
+of laws and counsellor of the king, to the effect that the
+accused, Gilles Garnier, had killed a girl twelve years of age,
+having torn her to pieces, partly with his teeth, and partly with
+his wolf's paws; that having dragged the body into the forest, he
+there devoured the larger portion, reserving the remainder for
+his wife; also that, by reason of injuries inflicted in a similar
+way on another young girl, the loup-garou had occasioned her
+death; also that he had devoured a boy of thirteen, tearing him
+limb by limb; that he displayed the same unnatural propensities
+even in his own proper shape. Fifty persons were found to bear
+witness; and he was put to the rack, which elicited an unreserved
+confession. He was then brought back into court, when Dr. Camus,
+in the name of the Parliament of Dole, pronounced the following
+sentence: 'Seeing that Gilles Garnier has, by the testimony of
+credible witnesses and by his own spontaneous confession, been
+proved guilty of the abominable crimes of lycanthropy and
+witchcraft, this court condemns him, the said Grilles, to be
+this day taken in a cart from this spot to the place of
+execution, accompanied by the executioner, where he, by the said
+executioner, shall be tied to a stake and burned alive, and that
+his ashes be then scattered to the winds. The court further
+condemns him, the said Gilles, to the costs of this prosecution.
+Given at Dole this 18th day of January, 1573.' Five years later a
+man named Jacques Rollet was burned alive in the Place de Greve
+for the same crime, having been tried and condemned by the
+Parliament of Paris.[119]
+
+  [119] A still more sensational case happened at a village in
+  the mountains of Auvergne. A gentleman while hunting was
+  suddenly attacked by a savage wolf of monstrous size.
+  Impenetrable by his shot, the beast made a spring upon the
+  helpless huntsman, who in the struggle luckily, or unluckily
+  for the unfortunate lady, contrived to cut off one of its
+  fore-paws. This trophy he placed in his pocket, and made the
+  best of his way homewards in safety. On the road he met a
+  friend to whom he exhibited a bleeding paw, or rather a
+  woman's hand (so it was produced from the hunter's pocket)
+  upon which was a wedding ring. His wife's ring was at once
+  recognised by the other. His suspicions aroused, he
+  immediately went in search of his wife, who was found
+  sitting by the fire in the kitchen, her arm hidden beneath
+  her apron: when the husband seizing her by the arm found his
+  terrible suspicions verified. The bleeding stump was there,
+  evidently just fresh from the wound. She was given into
+  custody, and in the event was burned at Riom in presence of
+  thousands of spectators. Among some of the races of India,
+  among the Khonds of the mountains of Orissa, a superstition
+  obtains like that of the _loup-garou_ of France. In India
+  the tiger takes the place of the wolf, and the metamorphosed
+  witch is there known as the _Pulta-bag_.
+
+  A kindred prejudice, Vampirism, has still many adherents in
+  Eastern Europe. The vampire is a human being who in his tomb
+  maintains a posthumous existence by ascending in the night
+  and sucking the bodies of the living. His punishment was
+  necessarily less tremendous than that of the witch: the
+  _dead_ body only being burned to ashes. An official document,
+  quoted by Horst, narrates the particulars of the examination
+  and burning of a disinterred vampire.
+
+Several witches were burned in successive years throughout the
+kingdom. In 1564, three witches and a wizard were executed at
+Poictiers: on the rack they declared that they had destroyed
+numbers of sheep by magical preparations, attended the Sabbaths,
+&c. Trois Echelles, a celebrated sorcerer, examined in the
+presence of Charles IX. and his court, acknowledged his
+obligation to the devil, to whom he had sold himself, recounting
+the debaucheries of the Sabbath, the methods of bewitching, and
+the compositions of the unguents for blighting cattle. The
+astounding fact was also revealed that some twelve hundred
+accomplices were at large in different parts of the land. The
+provincial parliaments in the end of this and the greater part of
+the next century are unremittingly engaged in passing decrees and
+making provisions against the increasing offences.[120] 'The
+Parliament of Rouen decreed that the possession of a _grimoire_
+or book of spells was sufficient evidence of witchcraft; and that
+all persons on whom such books were found should be _burned
+alive_. Three councils were held in different parts of France in
+1583, all in relation to the same subject. The Parliament of
+Bordeaux issued strict injunctions to all curates and clergy
+whatever to use redoubled efforts to root out the crime of
+witchcraft. The Parliament of Tours was equally peremptory, and
+feared the judgments of an offended God if all these dealers with
+the devil were not swept from the face of the land. The
+Parliament of Rheims was particularly severe against the _noueurs
+d'aiguillettes_ or 'tiers of the knot'--people of both sexes who
+took pleasure in preventing the consummation of marriage that
+they might counteract the command of God to our first parents to
+increase and multiply. This parliament held it to be sinful to
+wear amulets to preserve from witchcraft; and that this practice
+might not be continued within its jurisdiction, drew up a form of
+exorcism 'which could more effectually defeat the agents of the
+devil and put them to flight.'[121]
+
+  [120] Montaigne, one of the few Frenchmen at this time who
+  seemed to discredit the universal creed, in one of his
+  essays ventures to think 'it is very probable that the
+  principal credit of visions, of enchantments, and of such
+  extraordinary effects, proceeds from the power of the
+  imagination acting principally upon the more impressible
+  minds of the vulgar.' He is inclined to assign the prevalent
+  'liaisons' (nouements d'aiguillettes) to the apprehensions
+  of a fear with which in his age the French world was so
+  perplexed (si entrave). _Essais_, liv. i. 20.
+
+  [121] _Extraordinary Popular Delusions_, by Mackay, whose
+  authorities are Tablier, Boguet (_Discours sur les
+  Sorciers_), and M. Jules Garinet (_Histoire de la Magie_).
+
+In France, and still more in Italy, there is reason for believing
+that many of the convicts were not without the real guilt of
+toxicological practices; and they might sometimes properly
+deserve the opprobrium of the old _venefici_. The formal trial
+and sentence to death of La Marechale de l'Ancre in 1617 was
+perhaps more political than superstitious, but witchcraft was
+introduced as one of the gravest accusations. Her preponderance
+in the councils of Marie de Medici and of Louis XIII. originated
+in the natural _fascination_ of royal but inferior minds. Two
+years afterwards occurred a bona fide prosecution on a large
+scale. A commission was appointed by the Parliament of Bordeaux
+to inquire into the causes and circumstances of the prevalence of
+witchcraft in the Pyrenean districts. Espaignol, president of the
+local parliament, with the better known councillor, Pierre de
+l'Ancre, who has left a record ('Tableau de l'Inconstance des
+Mauvais Anges et Demons, ou il est amplement traite des Sorciers
+et Demons: Paris'), was placed at the head of the commission. How
+the district of Labourt was so infested with the tribe, that of
+thirty thousand inhabitants hardly a family existed but was
+infected with sorcery, is explained by the barren, sterile,
+mountainous aspect of the neighbourhood of that part of the
+Pyrenees: the men were engaged in the business of fishermen, and
+the women left alone were exposed to the tempter. The priests too
+were as ignorant and wicked as the people; their relations with
+the lonely wives and daughters being more intimate than proper.
+Young and handsome women, some mere girls, form the greater
+proportion of the accused. As many as forty a day appeared at the
+bar of the commissioners, and at least two hundred were hanged or
+burned.
+
+Evidence of the appearance of the devil was various and
+contradictory. Some at the _Domdaniel_, the place of assemblage,
+had a vision of a hideous wild he-goat upon a large gilded
+throne; others of a man twisted and disfigured by Tartarean
+torture; of a gentleman in black with a sword, booted and
+spurred; to others he seemed as some shapeless indistinct object,
+as that of the trunk of a tree, or some huge rock or stone. They
+proceeded to their meetings riding on spits, pitchforks,
+broom-sticks: being entertained on their arrival in the approved
+style, and indulging in the usual licence. Deputies from witchdom
+attended from all parts, even from Scotland. When reproached by
+some of his slaves for failing to come to the rescue in the
+torture-chamber or at the stake, their lord replied by causing
+illusory fires to be lit, bidding the doubters walk through the
+harmless flames, promising not more inconvenience in the bonfires
+of their persecutors. Lycanthropic criminals were also brought up
+who had prowled about and devastated the sheepfolds. Espaignol
+and De l'Ancre were provided with two professional Matthew
+Hopkinses: one a surgeon for examining the 'marks' (generally
+here discovered in the left eye, like a frog's foot) in the men
+and older women; the other a girl of seventeen, for the younger
+of her sex. Many of the priests were executed; several made their
+escape from the country. Besides the work before mentioned, De
+l'Ancre published a treatise under the title of 'L'Incredulite et
+Mescreance du Sortilege pleinement convaincue,' 1622. The
+expiration of the term of the Bordeaux commission brought the
+proceedings to a close, and fortunately saved a number of the
+condemned.
+
+In Spain, the land of Torquemada and Ximenes, which had long ago
+fanatically expelled the Jews and recently its old Moorish
+conquerors from its soil, the unceasing activity of the
+Inquisition during 140 years must have extorted innumerable
+confessions and proofs of diabolic conspiracies and heresy.
+Antonio Llorente, the historian of the Inquisition, to whose rare
+opportunities of obtaining information we are indebted for some
+instructive revelations, has exposed a large number of the
+previously silent and dark transactions of the Holy Office. But
+the demonological ideas of the Southern Church and people are
+profusely displayed in the copious dramatic literature of the
+Spaniards, whose theatre was at one time nearly as popular, if
+not as influential, as the Church.
+
+The dramas of the celebrated Lope de Vega and of Calderon in
+particular, are filled with demons as well as angels[122]--a
+sort of religious compensation to the Church for the moral
+deficiencies of a licentious stage, or rather licentious public.
+
+  [122] In the _Nacimiento de Christo_ of Lope de Vega the
+  devil appears in his popular figure of the dragon.
+  Calderon's _Wonder-Working Magician_, relating the
+  adventures of St. Cyprian and the various temptations and
+  seductions of the Evil Spirit, like Goethe's Faust,
+  introduces the devil in the disguise of a fashionable and
+  gallant gentleman.--Ticknor's _History of Spanish
+  Literature_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+     'Possession' in France in the Seventeenth Century--Urbain
+     Grandier and the Convent of Loudun--Exorcism at
+     Aix--Ecstatic Phenomena--Madeleine Bavent--Her cruel
+     Persecution--Catholic and Protestant Witchcraft in
+     Germany--Luther's Demonological Fears and
+     Experiences--Originated in his exceptional Position and in
+     the extraordinary Circumstances of his Life and
+     Times--Witch-burning at Bamburg and at Wuerzburg.
+
+
+Demoniacal possession was a phase of witchcraft which obtained
+extensively in France during the seventeenth century: the victims
+of this hallucination were chiefly the female inmates of
+religious houses, whose inflamed imaginations were prostituted by
+their priestly advisers to the most atrocious purposes. Urbain
+Grandier's fate was connected with that of an entire convent. The
+facts of this celebrated sorcerer's history are instructive. He
+was educated in a college of the Jesuits at Bordeaux, and
+presented by the fathers, with whom his abilities and address had
+gained much applause, to a benefice in Loudun. He provoked by his
+haughtiness the jealousy of his brother clergy, who regarded him
+as an intruder, and his pride and resentment increased in direct
+proportion to the activity of his enemies, who had conspired to
+effect his ruin. Mounier and Mignon, two priests whom he had
+mortally offended, were most active. Urbain Grandier was rash
+enough to oppose himself alone to the united counsels of
+unscrupulous and determined foes. Defeated singly in previous
+attempts to drive him from Loudun, the two priests combined with
+the leading authorities of the place. Their haughty and careless
+adversary had the advantage or disadvantage of a fine person and
+handsome face, which, with his other recommendations, gained him
+universal popularity with the women; and his success and
+familiarities with the fair sex were not likely to escape the
+vigilance of spies anxious to collect damaging proofs. What
+inflamed to the utmost the animosities of the two parties was the
+success of Canon Mignon in obtaining the coveted position of
+confessor to the convent of Ursulines in Loudun, to the exclusion
+of Grandier, himself an applicant. This convent was destined to
+assume a prominent part in the fate of the cure of the town. The
+younger nuns, it seems, to enliven the dull monotony of monastic
+life, adopted a plan of amusing their leisure by frightening the
+older ones in making the most of their knowledge of secret
+passages in the building, playing off ghost-tricks, and raising
+unearthly noises. When the newly appointed confessor was informed
+of the state of matters he at once perceived the possibility,
+and formed the design, of turning it to account. The offending
+nuns were promised forgiveness if they would continue their
+ghostly amusement, and also affect demoniacal possession; a fraud
+in which they were more readily induced to participate by an
+assurance that it might be the humble means of converting the
+heretics--Protestants being unusually numerous in that part of
+the country.
+
+As soon as they were sufficiently prepared to assume their parts,
+the magistrates were summoned to witness the phenomena of
+possession and exorcism. On the first occasion the Superior of
+the convent was the selected patient; and it was extracted from
+the demon in possession that he had been sent by Urbain Grandier,
+priest of the church of St. Peter. This was well so far; but the
+civil authorities generally, as it appears, were not disposed to
+accept even the irrefragable testimony of a demoniac; and the
+ecclesiastics, with the leading inhabitants, were in conflict
+with the civil power. Opportunely, however, for the plan of the
+conspirators, who were almost in despair, an all-powerful ally
+was enlisted on their side. A severe satire upon some acts of the
+minister of France, Cardinal Richelieu, or of some of his
+subordinates, had made its appearance. Urbain was suspected to be
+the author; his enemies were careful to improve the occasion; and
+the Cardinal-minister's cooperation was secured. A royal
+commission was ordered to inquire into the now notorious
+circumstances of the Loudun diabolism. Laubardemont, the head of
+the commission, arrived in December 1633, and no time was lost in
+bringing the matter to a crisis. The house of the suspected was
+searched for books of magic; he himself being thrown into a
+dungeon, where the surgeons examined him for the 'marks.' Five
+insensible spots were found--a certain proof. Meanwhile the nuns
+become more hysterical than ever; strong suspicion not being
+wanting that the priestly confessors to the convent availed
+themselves of their situation to abuse the bodies as well as the
+minds of the reputed demoniacs. To such an extent went the
+audacity of the exorcists, and the credulity of the people, that
+the _enceinte_ condition of one of the sisters, which at the end
+of five or six months disappeared, was explained by the malicious
+slander of the devil, who had caused that scandalous illusion.
+Crowds of persons of all ranks flocked from Paris and from the
+most distant parts to see and hear the wild ravings of these
+hysterical or drugged women, whose excitement was such that they
+spared not their own reputations; and some scandalous exposures
+were submitted to the amusement or curiosity of the surrounding
+spectators. Some few of them, aroused from the horrible delusion,
+or ashamed of their complicity, admitted that all their previous
+revelations were simple fiction. Means were found to effectually
+silence such dangerous announcements. The accusers pressed on the
+prosecution; the influence of his friends was overborne, and
+Grandier was finally sentenced to the stake. Fearing the result
+of a despair which might convincingly betray the facts of the
+case to the assembled multitude, they seem to have prevailed upon
+the condemned to keep silence up to the last moment, under
+promise of an easier death. But already fastened to the stake, he
+learned too late the treachery of his executioners; instead of
+being first strangled, he was committed alive to the flames. Nor
+were any 'last confessions' possible. The unfortunate victim of
+the malice of exasperated rivals, and of the animosity of the
+implacable Richelieu, has been variously represented.[123] It is
+noticeable that the scene of this affair was in the heart of the
+conquered Protestant region--Rochelle had fallen only six years
+before the execution; and the heretics, although politically
+subdued, were numerous and active. A fact which may account for
+the seeming indifference and even the opposition of a large
+number of the people in this case of diabolism which obtained
+comparatively little credit. It had been urged to the nuns that
+it would be for the good and glory of Catholicism that the
+heretics should be confounded by a few astounding miracles.
+Whether Grandier had any decided heretical inclinations is
+doubtful; but he wrote against the celibacy of the priesthood,
+and was suspected of liberal opinions in religion. A Capuchin
+named Tranquille (a contemporary) has furnished the materials for
+the 'History of the Devils of Loudun' by the Protestant Aubin,
+1716.
+
+  [123] Michelet apparently accepts the charge of immorality;
+  according to which the cure took advantage of his popularity
+  among the ladies of Loudun, by his insinuating manners, to
+  seduce the wives and daughters of the citizens. By another
+  writer (Alexandre Dumas, _Celebrated Crimes_) he is supposed
+  to have been of a proud and vindictive disposition, but
+  innocent of the alleged irregularities.
+
+Twenty-four years previously a still more scandalous affair--that
+of Louis Gauffridi and the Convent of Aix, in which Gauffridi, who
+had debauched several girls both in and out of the establishment,
+was the principal actor--was transacted with similar circumstances.
+Madeleine, one of the novices, soon after entering upon her
+noviciate, was seized with the ecstatic trances, which were
+speedily communicated to her companions.[124] These fits, in the
+judgment of the priests, were nothing but the effect of witchcraft.
+Exorcists elicited from the girls that Louis Gauffridi, a powerful
+magician having authority over demons throughout Europe, had
+bewitched them. The questions and answers were taken down, by
+order of the judges, by reporters, who, while the priests were
+exorcising, committed the results to writing, published afterwards
+by one of them, Michaelis, in 1613. Among the interesting facts
+acquired through these spirit-media, the inquisitors learned that
+Antichrist was already come; that printing, and the invention of
+it, were alike accursed, and similar information. Madeleine,
+tortured and imprisoned in the most loathsome dungeon, was reduced
+to such a condition of extreme horror and dread, that from this
+time she was the mere instrument of her atrocious judges. Having
+been intimate with the wizard, she could inform them of the
+position of the 'secret marks' on his person: these were
+ascertained in the usual way by pricking with needles. Gauffridi,
+by various torture, was induced to make the required confession,
+and was burned alive at Aix, April 30, 1611.
+
+  [124] M. Maury, in a philosophical and learned work (_La
+  Magie et l'Astrologie dans l'Antiquite et au Moyen Age_),
+  has scientifically explored and exposed the mysteries of
+  these and the like ecstatic phenomena, of such frequent
+  occurrence in Protestant as well as in Catholic countries;
+  in the orphan-houses of Amsterdam and Horn, as well as in
+  the convents of France and Italy in the 17th century. And
+  the Protestant revivalists of the present age have in great
+  measure reproduced these curious results of religious
+  excitement.
+
+Demoniacal possession was a mania in France in the seventeenth
+century. The story of Madeleine Bavent, as reported, reveals the
+utmost licentiousness and fiendish cruelty.[125] Gibbon justly
+observes that ancient Rome supported with the greatest difficulty
+the institution of _six_ vestals, notwithstanding the certain fate
+of a living grave for those who could not preserve their
+chastity; and Christian Rome was filled with many thousands of
+both sexes bound by vows to perpetual virginity. Madeleine was
+seduced by her Franciscan confessor when only fourteen; and she
+entered a convent lately founded at Louviers. In this building,
+surrounded by a wood, and situated in a suitable spot, some
+strange practices were carried on. At the instigation of their
+director, a priest called David, the nuns, it is reported, were
+seized with an irresistible desire of imitating the primitive
+Adamite simplicity: the novices were compelled to return to the
+simple nudity of the days of innocence when taking exercise in
+the conventual gardens, and even at their devotions in the
+chapel. The novice Madeleine, on one occasion, was reprimanded
+for concealing her bosom with the altar-cloth at communion. She
+was originally of a pure and artless mind; and only gradually and
+stealthily she was corrupted by the pious arguments of her
+priest. This man, Picart by name--one of that extensive class the
+'tristes obsc[oe]ni,' of whom the Angelos and Tartuffes[126] are
+representatives--succeeded to the vacant office of directing
+confessor to the nuns of Louviers; and at once embraced the
+opportunities of the confessional. Without repeating all the
+disgusting scenes that followed, as given by Michelet, it is only
+necessary to add that the miserable nun became the mistress and
+helpless creature of her seducer. 'He employed her as a magical
+charm to gain over the rest of the nuns. A holy wafer steeped in
+Madeleine's blood and buried in the garden would be sure to
+disturb their senses and their minds. This was the very year in
+which Urban Grandier was burned. Throughout France men spoke of
+nothing but the devils of Loudun.... Madeleine fancied herself
+bewitched and knocked about by devils; followed about by a lewd
+cat with eyes of fire. By degrees other nuns caught the disorder,
+which showed itself in odd supernatural jerks and writhings.'
+
+  [125] It is but one instance of innumerable amours within
+  the secret penetralia of the privileged conventual
+  establishments. In the dark recesses of these vestal
+  institutions on a gigantic scale, where publicity, that sole
+  security, was never known, what vices or even crimes could
+  not be safely perpetrated? Luther, who proved in the most
+  practical way his contempt for the sanctity of monastic vows
+  by eloping with a nun, assures us, among other scandals
+  attaching to convent life, of the fact that when a fish-pond
+  adjoining one of these establishments in Rome was drained
+  off, six thousand infant skulls were exposed to view. A
+  story which may be fact or fiction. But while fully
+  admitting the probability of invention and exaggeration in
+  the relations of enemies, and the fact that undue prejudice
+  is likely to somewhat exaggerate the probable evils of the
+  mysterious and unknown, how could it be otherwise than that
+  during fourteen centuries many crimes should have been
+  committed in those silent and safe retreats? Nor, indeed, is
+  experience opposed to the possibility of the highest fervour
+  of an unnatural enthusiasm being compatible with more human
+  passions. The virgin who,
+
+       'Ut flos in septis secretus nascitur hortis
+        Ignotus pecori,'
+
+  as eulogised by the virgin-chorus in the beautiful
+  epithalamium of Catullus, might be recognised in the
+  youthful 'religieuse' if only human passion could be
+  excluded; but the story of Heloise and Abelard is not a
+  solitary proof of the superiority of human nature over an
+  impossible and artificial spirituality.
+
+  [126] As Tartuffe privately confesses,
+
+       'L'amour qui nous attache aux beautes eternelles
+        N'etouffe pas en nous l'amour des temporelles.
+
+        *       *       *       *       *
+
+        Pour etre devot, je n'en suis pas moins homme.'
+
+The Superior was not averse to the publication of these events,
+having the example and reputation of Loudun before her. Little is
+new in the possession and exorcism: for the most part they are a
+repetition of those of Aix and Loudun. During a brief interval
+the devils were less outrageous: for the Cardinal-minister was
+meditating a reform of the monastic establishments. Upon his
+death they commenced again with equal violence. Picart was now
+dead--but not so the persecution of his victim. The priests
+recommenced miracle-working with renewed vigour.[127] Saved from
+immediate death by a fortunate or, as it may be deemed,
+unfortunate sensitiveness to bodily pain, she was condemned for
+the rest of her life to solitary confinement in a fearful
+dungeon, in the language of her judges to an _in pace_. There
+lying tortured, powerless in a loathsome cell, their prisoner was
+alternately coaxed and threatened into admitting all sorts of
+crimes, and implicating whom they wished.[128] The further
+cruelties to which the lust, and afterwards the malignancy, of
+her gaolers submitted her were not brought to an end by the
+interference of parliament in August 1647, when the destruction
+of the Louviers establishment was decreed. The guilty escaped by
+securing, by intimidation, the silence of their prisoner, who
+remained a living corpse in the dungeons of the episcopal palace
+of Rouen. The bones of Picart were exhumed, and publicly burned;
+the cure Boulle, an accomplice, was dragged on a hurdle to the
+fish-market, and there burned at the stake. So terminated this
+last of the trilogical series. But the hysterical or demoniacal
+disease was as furious as ever in Germany in the middle of the
+eighteenth century; and was attended with as tremendous effects
+at Wuerzburg as at Louviers.
+
+  [127] To the diabolic visions of the other they opposed
+  those of 'a certain Anne of the Nativity, a girl of sanguine
+  hysterical temperament, frantic at need, and half mad--so
+  far at least as to believe in her own lies. A kind of
+  dog-fight was got up between the two. They besmeared each
+  other with false charges. Anne saw the devil quite naked by
+  Madeleine's side. Madeleine swore to seeing Anne at the
+  Sabbath with the Lady Superior, the Mother Assistant, and
+  the Mother of the novices.... Madeleine was condemned,
+  without a hearing, to be disgraced, to have her body
+  examined for the marks of the devil. They tore off her veil
+  and gown, and made her the wretched sport of a vile
+  curiosity that would have pierced till she bled again in
+  order to win the right of sending her to the stake. Leaving
+  to no one else the care of a scrutiny which was in itself a
+  torture, these virgins, acting as matrons, ascertained if
+  she were with child or no; shaved all her body, and dug
+  their needles into her quivering flesh to find out the
+  insensible spots.'--_La Sorciere._
+
+  [128] The horrified reader may see the fuller details of this
+  case in Michelet's _La Sorciere_, who takes occasion to state
+  that, than 'The History of Madeleine Bavent, a nun of
+  Louviers, with her examination, &c., 1652, Rouen,' he knows
+  of 'no book more important, more dreadful, or worthier of
+  being reprinted. It is the most powerful narrative of its
+  class. _Piety Afflicted_, by the Capuchin Esprit de Bosrager,
+  is a work immortal in the annals of tomfoolery. The two
+  excellent pamphlets by the doughty surgeon Yvelin, the
+  _Inquiry_ and the _Apology_, are in the Library of Ste.
+  Genevieve.'--_La Sorciere_, the Witch of the Middle Ages,
+  chap. viii. Whatever exaggeration there may possibly be in
+  any of the details of these and similar histories, there is
+  not any reasonable doubt of their general truth. It is much
+  to be wished, indeed, that writers should, in these cases,
+  always confine themselves to the simple facts, which need not
+  any imaginary or fictitious additions.
+
+In Germany during the seventeenth century witches felt the fury
+of both Catholic and Protestant zeal; but in the previous age
+prosecutions are directed against Protestant witches. They
+abounded in Upper Germany in the time of Innocent VIII., and
+what numbers were executed has been already seen. When the
+revolutionary party had acquired greater strength and its power
+was established, they vied with the conservatives in their
+vigorous attacks upon the empire of Satan.
+
+Luther had been sensible to the contagious fear that the great
+spiritual enemy was actually fighting in the ranks of his
+enemies. He had personal experience of his hostility. Immured for
+his safety in a voluntary but gloomy prison, occupied intensely
+in the plan of a mighty revolution against the most powerful
+hierarchy that has ever existed, engaged continuously in the
+laborious task of translating the Sacred Scriptures, only
+partially freed from the prejudices of education, it is little
+surprising that the antagonist of the Church should have
+experienced infernal hallucinations. This weakness of the
+champion of Protestantism is at least more excusable than the
+pedantic folly of the head of the English Church. When Luther,
+however, could seriously affirm that witchcraft 'is the devil's
+proper work wherewith, when God permits, he not only hurts people
+but makes away with them; for in this world we are as guests and
+strangers, body and soul, cast under the devil: that idiots, the
+lame, the blind, the dumb are men in whom ignorant devils have
+established themselves, and all the physicians who attempt to
+heal these infirmities as though they proceeded from natural
+causes, are ignorant blockheads who know nothing about the power
+of the demon,' we cannot be indignant at the blind credulity of
+the masses of the people. It appears inconsistent that Luther,
+averse generally to supernaturalism, should yet find no
+difficulty in entertaining these irrational diabolistic ideas.
+The circumstances of his life and times sufficiently explain the
+inconsistency.[129]
+
+  [129] The following sentence in his recorded conversation,
+  when the free thoughts of the Reformer were unrestrained in
+  the presence of his most intimate friends, is suggestive. 'I
+  know,' says he, 'the devil thoroughly well; he has over and
+  over pressed me so close that I scarcely knew whether I was
+  alive or dead. Sometimes he has thrown me into such despair
+  that I even knew not that there is a God, and had great
+  doubts about our dear Lord Christ. But the Word of God has
+  speedily restored me' (Luther's _Tischreden_ or _Table
+  Talk_, as cited in Howitt's _History of the Supernatural_).
+  The eloquent controversialist Bossuet and the Catholics have
+  been careful to avail themselves of the impetuosity and
+  incautiousness of the great German Reformer.
+
+  Of all the leaders of the religious revolution of the
+  sixteenth century, the Reformer of Zurich was probably the
+  most liberally inclined; and Zuinglius' unusual charity
+  towards those ancient sages and others who were ignorant of
+  Christianity, which induced him to place the names of
+  Aristides, Socrates, the Gracchi, &c., in the same list with
+  those of Moses, Isaiah, and St. Paul, who should meet in the
+  assembly of the virtuous and just in the future life, obliged
+  Luther openly to profess of his friend that 'he despaired of
+  his salvation,' and has provoked the indignation of the
+  bishop of Meaux.--_Variations des Eglises Protestantes_, ii.
+  19 and 20.
+
+On the eve of the prolonged and ferocious struggle on the
+continent between Catholicism and Protestantism a wholesale
+slaughter of witches and wizards was effected, a fitting prologue
+to the religious barbarities of the Thirty Years' War. Fires were
+kindled almost simultaneously in two different places, at Bamburg
+and Wuerzburg; and seldom, even in the annals of witchcraft, have
+they burned more tremendously. The prince-bishops of those
+territories had long been anxious to extirpate Lutheranism from
+their dioceses. Frederick Forner, Suffragan of Bamburg, a
+vigorous supporter of the Jesuits, was the chief agent of John
+George II. He waged war upon the heretical sorcerers in the
+'whole armour of God,' _Panoplia armaturae Dei_. According to the
+statements of credible historians, nine hundred trials took
+place in the two courts of Bamburg and Zeil between 1625 and
+1630. Six hundred were burned by Bishop George II. No one was
+spared. The chancellor, his son, Dr. Horn, with his wife and
+daughters, many of the lords and councillors of the bishop's
+court, women and priests, suffered. After tortures of the most
+extravagant kind it was extorted that some twelve hundred of them
+were confederated to bewitch the entire land to the extent that
+'there would have been neither wine nor corn in the country, and
+that thereby man and beast would have perished with hunger, and
+men would be driven to eat one another. There were even some
+Catholic priests among them who had been led into practices too
+dreadful to be described, and they confessed among other things
+that they had baptized many children in the devil's name. It must
+be stated that these confessions were made under tortures of the
+most fearful kind, far more so than anything that was practised
+in France or other countries.... The number brought to trial in
+these terrible proceedings were so great, and they were treated
+with so little consideration, that it was usual not even to take
+the trouble of setting down their names; but they were cited as
+the accused Nos. 1, 2, 3, &c. The Jesuits took their confessions
+in private, and they made up the lists of those who were
+understood to have been denounced by them.'
+
+More destructive still were the burnings of Wuerzburg at the same
+period under the superintendence of Philip Adolph, who ascended
+the episcopal throne in 1623. In spite of the energy of his
+predecessors, a grand confederacy of sorcerers had been
+discovered, and were at once denounced.[130]
+
+  [130] 'A catalogue of nine and twenty _braende_ or burnings
+  during a very short period of time, previous to the February
+  of 1629, will give the best notion of the horrible character
+  of these proceedings; it is printed,' adds Mr. Wright, 'from
+  the original records in Hauber's _Bibliotheca Magica_.' E.g.
+  in the Fifth Braende are enumerated: (1) Latz, an eminent
+  shopkeeper. (2) Rutscher, a shopkeeper. (3) The housekeeper
+  of the Dean of the cathedral. (4) The old wife of the Court
+  ropemaker. (5) Jos. Sternbach's housekeeper. (6) The wife of
+  Baunach, a Senator. (7) A woman named Znickel Babel. (8) An
+  old woman. In the Sixteenth Burning: (1) A noble page of
+  Ratzenstein. (2) A boy of ten years of age. (3, 4, 5) The
+  two daughters of the Steward of the Senate and his maid. (6)
+  The fat ropemaker's wife. In the Twentieth Burning: (1)
+  Gobel's child, the most beautiful girl in Wuerzburg. (2) A
+  student on the fifth form, who knew many languages, and was
+  an excellent musician. (3, 4) Two boys from the New Minster,
+  each twelve years old. (5) Stepper's little daughter. (6)
+  The woman who kept the bridge gate. In the Twenty-sixth
+  Burning are specified: (1) David Hans, a Canon in the New
+  Minster. (2) Weydenbusch, a Senator. (3) The innkeeper's
+  wife of the Baumgarten. (4) An old woman. (5) The little
+  daughter of Valkenberger was privately executed and burned
+  on her bier. (6) The little son of the town council bailiff.
+  (7) Herr Wagner, vicar in the cathedral, was burned
+  alive.--_Narratives of Sorcery and Magic._ The facts are
+  taken from Dr. Soldan's _Geschichte der Hexenprocesse_,
+  whose materials are to be found in Horst's _Zauber
+  Bibliothek_ and Hauber's _Bibliotheca Magica_.
+
+Nine appears to have been the greatest number, and sometimes only
+two were sent to execution at once. Five are specially recorded
+as having been burned alive. The victims are of all professions
+and trades--vicars, canons, goldsmiths, butchers, &c. Besides the
+twenty-nine conflagrations recorded, many others were lighted
+about the same time: the names of whose prey are not written in
+the Book of Death. Frederick Spee, a Jesuit, formerly a violent
+enemy of the witches, but who had himself been incriminated by
+their extorted confessions at these holocausts, was converted to
+the opposite side, and wrote the 'Cautio Criminalis,' in which
+the necessity of caution in receiving evidence is insisted
+upon--a caution, without doubt, 'very necessary at that time for
+the magistracy throughout Germany.' All over Germany executions,
+if not everywhere so indiscriminately destructive as those in
+Franconia and at Wuerzburg, were incessant: and it is hardly the
+language of hyperbole to say that no province, no city, no
+village was without its condemned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+     Scotland one of the most Superstitious Countries in
+     Europe--Scott's Relation of the Barbarities perpetrated in
+     the Witch-trials under the auspices of James VI.--The Fate
+     of Agnes Sampson, Euphane MacCalzean, &c.--Irrational
+     Conduct of the Courts of Justice--Causes of voluntary
+     Witch-confessions--Testimony of Sir G. Mackenzie, &c.--Trial
+     and Execution of Margaret Barclay--Computation of the number
+     of Witches who suffered death in England and Scotland in the
+     sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--Witches burned alive at
+     Edinburgh in 1608--The Lancashire Witches--Sir Thomas
+     Overbury and Dr. Forman--Margaret Flower and Lord Rosse.
+
+
+Scotland, by the physical features of the country and by the
+character and habits of the people, is eminently apt for the
+reception of the magical and supernatural of any kind;[131] and
+during the century from 1563 it was almost entirely subject to
+the dominion of Satan. Sir Walter Scott has narrated some of the
+most prominent cases and trials in the northern part of the
+island. The series may be said to commence from the confederated
+conspiracy of hell to prevent the union of James VI. with the
+Princess Anne of Denmark. An overwhelming tempest at sea during
+the voyage of these anti-papal, anti-diabolic royal personages
+was the appointed means of their destruction.
+
+  [131] A late philosophic writer has ventured to institute a
+  comparison in point of superstition and religious
+  intolerance between Spain and Scotland. The latter country,
+  however, has denied to political what it conceded to
+  priestly government: hence its superior material progress
+  and prosperity.--Buckle's _History of Civilisation in
+  England_.
+
+The human agents were Agnes Sampson, the wise wife of Keith (one
+of the better sort, who cured diseases, &c.); Dame Euphane
+MacCalzean, widow of a senator of the College of Justice, and a
+Catholic; Dr. John Fian or Cunninghame, a man of some learning,
+and of much skill in poison as well as in magic; Barbara Napier
+or Douglas; Geillis Duncan; with about thirty other women of the
+lowest condition. 'When the monarch of Scotland sprung this
+strong covey of his favourite game, they afforded the Privy
+Council and himself sport for the greatest part of the remaining
+winter. He attended on the examinations himself.... Agnes
+Sampson, after being an hour tortured by the twisting of a cord
+around her head according to the custom of the buccaneers,
+confessed that she had consulted with one Richard Grahame
+concerning the probable length of the king's life and the means
+of shortening it. But Satan, to whom at length they resorted for
+advice, told them in French respecting King James, _Il est un
+homme de Dieu_. The poor woman also acknowledged that she had
+held a meeting with those of her sisterhood, who had charmed a
+cat by certain spells, having four joints of men knit to its
+feet, which they threw into the sea to excite a tempest: they
+embarked in sieves with much mirth and jollity, the fiend rolling
+himself before them upon the waves dimly seen, and resembling a
+huge haystack in size and appearance. They went on board of a
+foreign ship richly laden with wines, where, invisible to the
+crew, they feasted till the sport grew tiresome; and then Satan
+sunk the vessel and all on board. Fian or Cunninghame was also
+visited by the sharpest tortures, ordinary and extraordinary. The
+nails were torn from his fingers with smiths' pincers; pins were
+driven into the places which the nails usually defended; his
+knees were crushed in the _boots_; his finger-bones were
+splintered in the _pilniewincks_. At length his constancy,
+hitherto sustained, as the bystanders supposed, by the help of
+the devil, was fairly overcome; and he gave an account of a great
+witch-meeting at North Berwick, where they paced round the church
+_withershins_--i. e. in reverse of the motion of the sun. Fian
+then blew into the lock of the church door, whereupon the bolts
+gave way: the unhallowed crew entered, and their master the devil
+appeared to his servants in the shape of a black man occupying
+the pulpit. He was saluted with a "Hail, Master!" but the company
+were dissatisfied with his not having brought a picture of the
+king, repeatedly promised, which was to place his Majesty at the
+mercy of this infernal crew.... The devil, on this memorable
+occasion, forgot himself, and called Fian by his own name instead
+of the demoniacal sobriquet of Rob the Rowan, which had been
+assigned to him as Master of the Rows or Rolls. This was
+considered as bad taste; and the rule is still observed at every
+rendezvous of forgers, smugglers, or the like, where it is
+accounted very indifferent manners to name an individual by his
+own name in case of affording ground of evidence which may upon
+a day of trial be brought against him. Satan, something
+disconcerted, concluded the evening with a divertissement and
+a dance after his own manner. The former consisted in disinterring
+a new-buried corpse, and dividing it in fragments among
+the company; and the ball was maintained by well-nigh two
+hundred persons, who danced a ring dance.... Dr. Fian, muffled,
+led the ring, and was highly honoured, generally acting as
+clerk or recorder. King James was deeply interested in those
+mysterious meetings, and took great delight to be present at the
+examinations of the accused. He sent for Geillis Duncan, and
+caused her to play before him the same tune to which Satan and
+his companions led the brawl in North Berwick churchyard. His
+ears were gratified in another way: for at this meeting it was
+said the witches demanded of the devil why he did bear such
+enmity against the king, who returned the flattering answer,
+that the king was the greatest enemy whom he had in the world.
+Almost all these poor wretches were executed: nor did Euphane
+MacCalzean's station in life save her from the common doom, which
+was strangling to death and burning to ashes thereafter. The
+majority of the jury which tried Barbara Napier, having acquitted
+her of attendance at the North Berwick meeting, were themselves
+threatened with a trial for wilful error upon an assize, and
+could only escape from severe censure and punishment by pleading
+guilty, and submitting themselves to the king's pleasure. The
+alterations and trenching,' adds Scott, 'which lately took place
+on the Castle-hill at Edinburgh for the purpose of forming the
+new approach to the city from the west, displayed the ashes of
+the numbers who had perished in this manner, of whom a large
+proportion must have been executed between 1590--when the great
+discovery was made concerning Euphane MacCalzean and the wise
+wife of Keith and their accomplices--and the union of the
+crowns.'[132]
+
+  [132] Sir W. Scott's _Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft_,
+  ix.
+
+Euphane's exceptional doom was 'to be bound to the stake, and
+burned in ashes _quick_ to the death.' 'Burning quick' was not an
+uncommon sentence: if the less cruel one of hanging or strangling
+first and afterwards burning was more usual. Thirty warlocks and
+witches was the total number executed on June 25th, 1591. A few,
+like Dr. Cunninghame, may have been really experienced in the use
+of poison and poisonous drugs. The art of poisoning has been
+practised perhaps almost as extensively as (often coextensively
+with) that of sorcery; a tremendous and mostly inscrutable crime
+which science, in all ages, has been able more surely to conceal
+than to detect.
+
+Two facts eminently illustrate the barbarous iniquity of the
+Courts of Justice when dealing with their witch prisoners. An
+expressed malediction, or frequently an almost inaudible mutter,
+followed by the coincident fulfilment of the imprecation, was
+accepted eagerly by the judges as sufficient proof (an antecedent
+one, contrary to the boasted principle of English law at least,
+which assumes the innocence until the guilt has been proved, of
+the accused) of the crime of the person arraigned. And they
+complacently attributed to conscious guilt the ravings produced
+by an excruciating torture--that equally inhuman and irrational
+invention of judicial cruelty; confidently boasting that they
+were careful to sentence no person without previous confession
+duly made.
+
+But these confessions not seldom were partly extracted from a
+natural wish to be freed from the persecution of neighbours as
+well as from present bodily torture. Sir George Mackenzie, Lord
+Advocate of Scotland during the period of the greatest fury, and
+himself president at many of the trials, a believer, among other
+cases in his _Criminal Law_, 1678, relates that of a condemned
+witch who had confessed judicially to him and afterwards 'told me
+under secrecy, that she had not confessed because she was guilty;
+but being a poor creature who wrought for her meat, and being
+defamed for a witch she knew she should starve, for no person
+thereafter would either give her meat or lodging, and that all
+men would beat her and set dogs at her, and that therefore she
+desired to be out of the world. Whereupon she wept most bitterly,
+and upon her knees called God to witness to what she said.
+Another told me that she was afraid the devil would challenge a
+right to her after she was said to be his servant, and would
+haunt her, as the minister said when he was desiring her to
+confess, and therefore she desired to die. And really,' admits
+the learned judge, 'ministers are oft-times indiscreet in their
+zeal to have poor creatures to confess in this; and I recommend
+to judges that the wisest ministers should be sent to them; and
+that those who are sent should be cautious in this particular.'
+Another confession at the supreme moment of the same sort, as
+recorded by the Rev. G. Sinclair in 'Satan's Invisible World
+Discovered' is equally significant and genuine. What impression
+it left upon the pious clergyman will be seen in his concluding
+inference. The witch, 'being carried forth to the place of
+execution, remained silent during the first, second, and third
+prayer, and then, perceiving there remained no more but to rise
+up and go to the stake, she lifted up her body and with a loud
+voice cried out, "Now all you that see me this day know that I am
+now to die as a witch by my own confession, and I free all men,
+especially the ministers and magistrates, of the guilt of my
+blood. I take it wholly upon myself--my blood be upon my own
+head; and as I must make answer to the God of heaven presently, I
+declare I am as free of witchcraft as any child. But being
+delated by a malicious woman, and put in prison under the name of
+a witch; disowned by my husband and friends, and seeing no ground
+of hope of my coming out of prison or ever coming in credit
+again, through the temptation of the devil I made up that
+confession on purpose to destroy my own life, being weary of it,
+and choosing rather to die than live"--and so died; which
+lamentable story as it did then astonish all the spectators, none
+of which could restrain themselves from tears, so it may be to
+all a demonstration of Satan's subtlety, whose design is still to
+destroy all, partly by tempting many to presumption, and some
+others to despair.'
+
+The trial of Margaret Barclay took place in 1613. Her crime
+consisted in having caused by means of spells the loss of a ship
+at sea. She was said to have had a quarrel with the owner of the
+shipwrecked vessel, in the course of which she uttered a wish
+that all on board might sink to the bottom of the sea. Her
+imprecation was accomplished, and upon the testimony of an
+itinerant juggler, John Stewart, she was arraigned before a Court
+of Justice. With the help of the devil in the shape of a handsome
+black dog, she had moulded some figures of clay representing the
+doomed sailors, which with the prescribed rites were thrown into
+the deep. We are informed by the reporters of the proceedings at
+this examination, that 'after using this kind of gentle torture
+[viz. placing the legs in a pair of stocks and laying on
+gradually increasing weights of iron bars], the said Margaret
+began, according to the increase of the pain, to cry and crave
+for God's cause to take off her shin the foresaid irons, and she
+should declare truly the whole matter. Which being removed, she
+began at her formal denial; and being of new assayed in torture
+as before, she then uttered these words: "Take off, take off! and
+before God I shall show you the whole form." And the said irons
+being of new, upon her faithful promise, removed, she then
+desired my Lord of Eglinton, the said four justices, and the said
+Mr. David Dickson, minister of the burgh; Mr. George Dunbar,
+minister of Ayr; Mr. Mitchell Wallace, minister of Kilmarnock;
+Mr. John Cunninghame, minister of Dalry; and Hugh Kennedy,
+provost of Ayr, to come by themselves and to remove all others,
+and she should declare truly, as she should answer to God, the
+whole matter. Whose desire in that being fulfilled, she made her
+confession in this manner without any kind of demand, freely
+without interrogation: God's name by earnest prayer being called
+upon for opening of her lips and easing of her heart, that she by
+rendering of the truth might glorify and magnify His holy name
+and disappoint the enemy of her salvation.'
+
+One of those involved in the voluntary confession was Isabel
+Crawford, who was frightened into admitting the offences alleged.
+In court, when asked if she wished to be defended by counsel,
+Margaret Barclay, whose hopes and fears were revived at seeing
+her husband, answered, 'As you please; but all I have confessed
+was in agony of torture; and, before God, all I have spoken is
+false and untrue.' She was found guilty; sentenced to be
+strangled at the stake; her body to be burned to ashes. Isabel
+Crawford, after a short interval, was subjected to the same sort
+of examination: a new commission having been granted for the
+prosecution, and 'after the assistant-minister of Irvine, Mr.
+David Dickson, had made earnest prayers to God for opening her
+obdurate and closed heart, she was subjected to the torture of
+iron bars laid upon her bare shins, her feet being in the stocks.
+She endured this torture with incredible firmness, since she did
+"admirably, without any kind of din or exclamation, suffer above
+thirty stone of iron to be laid on her legs, never shrinking
+thereat in any sort, but remaining, as it were, steady." But in
+shifting the situation of the iron bars, and removing them to
+another part of her shins, her constancy gave way; she broke out
+into horrible cries of "Take off! take off!" On being relieved
+from the torture she made the usual confession of all that she
+was charged with, and of a connection with the devil which had
+subsisted for several years. Sentence was given against her
+accordingly. After this had been denounced she openly denied all
+her former confessions, and died without any sign of repentance;
+offering repeated interruptions to the minister in his prayers,
+and absolutely refusing to pardon the executioner.'[133] It might
+be possible to form an imperfect estimate of how many thousands
+were sacrificed in the Jacobian persecution in Scotland alone
+from existing historical records, which would express, however,
+but a small proportion of the actual number: and parish registers
+may still attest the quantity of fuel provided at a considerable
+expense, and the number of the fires. By a moderate computation
+an average number of two hundred annually, making a total of
+eight thousand, are reckoned to have been burned in the last
+forty years of the sixteenth century.[134]
+
+  [133] _Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft_, ix.
+
+  The Scotch trials and tortures, of which the above cases are
+  but one or two out of a hundred similar ones, are perhaps the
+  more extraordinary as being the result of _mere_
+  superstition: religious or political heresy being seldom an
+  excuse for the punishment and an aggravation of the offence.
+
+  [134] A larger proportion of victims than even those of the
+  Holy Office during an equal space of time. According to
+  Llorente (_Hist. de l'Inquisition_) from 1680 to 1781, the
+  latter period of its despotism (which flourished especially
+  under Charles II., himself, as he was convinced, a victim of
+  witch-malice), between 13,000 and 14,000 persons suffered by
+  various punishments: of which number, however, 1,578 were
+  burned alive.
+
+In England, from 1603 to 1680, seventy thousand persons are said
+to have been executed; and during the fifteen hundred years
+elapsed since the triumph of the Christian religion, millions are
+reckoned to have been sacrificed on the bloody altars of the
+Christian Moloch. An entry in the minutes of the proceedings in
+the Privy Council for 1608 reveals that even James's ministers
+began to experience some horror of the consequences of their
+instructions. And the following free testimony of one of them is
+truly 'an appalling record:'--'1608.--December 1.--The Earl of
+Mar declared to the council that some women were taken in
+Broughton [suburban Edinburgh] as witches, and being put to an
+assize and convicted, albeit they persevered constant in their
+denial to the end, yet they were burned _quick_ after such a
+cruel manner that some of them died in despair, renouncing and
+blaspheming God; and others half-burned broke out of the fire,
+and were cast _quick_ in it again till they were burned to the
+death.'[135]
+
+  [135] The terrestrial and _real_ Fiends seem to have striven
+  to realise on earth and to emulate the 'Tartarus horrificos
+  eructans faucibus aestus' described by the Epicurean
+  philosophic poet (Lucretius, _De Rerum Natura_, iii.).
+
+Equally monstrous and degrading were the disclosures in the
+torture-chambers; and many admitted that they had had children by
+the devil. The circumstances of the Sabbath, the various rites of
+the compact, the forms and method of bewitching, the manner of
+sexual intercourse with the demons--these were the principal
+staple of the judicial examinations.
+
+In the southern part of the island witch-hanging or burning
+proceeded with only less vehemence than in Scotland. One of the
+most celebrated cases in the earlier half of the seventeenth
+century (upon which Thomas Shadwell the poet laureate, who, under
+the name of MacFlecknoe, is immortalised by the satire of Dryden,
+founded a play) is the story of the Lancashire Witches. This
+persecution raged at two separate periods; first in 1613, when
+nineteen prisoners were brought before Sir James Altham and Sir
+Edward Bromley, Barons of Exchequer. Elizabeth Southern, known as
+'Mother Demdike' in the poet laureate's drama, is the leader of
+the criminals. In 1634 the proceedings were renewed wholly on the
+evidence of a boy who, it was afterwards ascertained, had been
+instructed in his part against an old woman named Mother
+Dickenson. The evidence was of the feeblest sort; nor are its
+monotonous details worth repetition. Out of some forty persons
+implicated on both occasions, fortunately the greater number
+escaped. 'Lancashire Witches,' a term so hateful in its origin,
+has been long transferred to celebrate the superior _charms_ (of
+another kind) of the ladies of Lancashire; and the witches'
+spells are those of natural youth and beauty.
+
+The social position of Sir Thomas Overbury has made his fate
+notorious. An infamous plot had been invented by the Earl of
+Rochester (Robert Kerr) and the Countess of Essex to destroy a
+troublesome obstacle to their contemplated marriage. The practice
+of 'hellish charms' is only incidental; an episode in the dark
+mystery. Overbury was too well acquainted with royal secrets
+(whose disgusting and unnatural kind has been probably correctly
+conjectured), too important for the keeping of even a private
+secretary. His ruin was determined by the revenge of the noble
+lovers and sealed by the fear of the king. At the end of six
+months he had been gradually destroyed by secret poison in his
+prison in the Tower (to which for an alleged offence he had been
+committed) by the agency of Dr. Forman, a famous 'pharmaceutic,'
+under the auspices of the Earl of Rochester. This Dr. Forman
+had been previously employed by Lady Essex, a notorious
+_dame d'honneur_ at James's Court, to bewitch the Earl to an
+irresistible love for her, an enchantment which required,
+apparently, no superhuman inducement. A Mrs. Turner, the
+countess's agent, was associated with this skilful conjuror. They
+were instructed also to bewitch Lord Essex, lately returned from
+abroad, in the opposite way--to divert his love from his
+wife.[136]
+
+  [136] The husband was impracticable; he could not be
+  _disenchanted_. Conjurations and charms failing, 'the
+  countess was instructed to bring against the Earl of Essex a
+  charge of conjugal incapacity: A commission of reverend
+  prelates of the church was appointed to sit in judgment,
+  over whom the king presided in person; and a jury of matrons
+  was found to give their opinion that the Lady Essex was a
+  maiden.' Divorce was accordingly pronounced, and with all
+  possible haste the king married his favourite to the
+  appellant with great pomp at Court. After the conspirators
+  had been arraigned by the public indignation, a curious
+  incident of the trial, according to a cotemporary report,
+  was, that there being 'showed in court certain pictures of a
+  man and a woman made in lead, and also a mould of brass
+  wherein they were cast; a black scarf also full of white
+  crosses which Mrs. Turner had in her custody; enchanted paps
+  and other pictures [as well as a list of some of the devil's
+  particular names used in conjuration], suddenly was heard a
+  crack from the scaffold, which carried a great fear, tumult,
+  and commotion amongst the spectators and through the hall;
+  every one fearing hurt as if the devil had been present and
+  grown angry to have his workmanship known by such as were
+  not his own scholars' (_Narratives of Sorcery and Magic_, by
+  Thomas Wright). Whatever may have been the crime or crimes
+  for the knowledge of which Sir Thomas Overbury was doomed,
+  it is significant that for his own safety the king was
+  compelled to break an oath (sworn upon his knees before the
+  judges he had purposely summoned, with an imprecation that
+  God's curse might light upon him and his posterity for ever
+  if he failed to bring the guilty to deserved punishment),
+  and to not only pardon but remunerate his former favourite
+  after he had been solemnly convicted and condemned to a
+  felon's death. The crime, the knowledge of which prevented
+  the appearance of Somerset at the gibbet or the scaffold,
+  has been supposed by some, with scarcely sufficient cause or
+  at least proof, to be the murder by the king of his son
+  Prince Henry. Doubt has been strongly expressed of the
+  implication at all of the favourite in the death of
+  Overbury: the evidence produced at the trial about the
+  poisoning being, it seems, made up to conceal or to mystify
+  the real facts.
+
+Two women were executed at Lincoln, in 1618, for bewitching Lord
+Rosse, eldest son of the Earl of Rutland, and others of the
+family--Lord Rosse being bewitched to death; also for preventing
+by diabolic arts the parents from having any more children.
+Before the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and one of the
+Barons of the Exchequer, it was proved that the witches had
+effected the death of the noble lord by burying his glove in the
+ground, and 'as that glove did rot and waste, so did the liver of
+the said lord rot and waste.' Margaret Flower confessed she had
+'two familiar spirits sucking on her, the one white, the other
+black spotted. The white sucked under her left breast,' &c.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+     The Literature of Europe in the Seventeenth Century proves
+     the Universality and Horror of Witchcraft--The most acute
+     and most liberal Men of Learning convinced of its
+     Reality--Erasmus and Francis Bacon--Lawyers prejudiced by
+     Legislation--Matthew Hale's judicial Assertion--Sir Thomas
+     Browne's Testimony--John Selden--The English Church least
+     Ferocious of the Protestant Sects--Jewell and
+     Hooker--Independent Tolerance--Witchcraft under the
+     Presbyterian Government--Matthew Hopkins--Gaule's 'Select
+     Cases of Conscience'--Judicial and Popular Methods of
+     Witch-discovery--Preventive Charms--Witchfinders a legal and
+     numerous Class in England and Scotland--Remission in the
+     Severity of the Persecution under the Protectorship.
+
+
+Had we not the practical proof of the prevalence of the credit of
+the black art in accomplished facts, the literature of the first
+half of the seventeenth century would be sufficient testimony to
+its horrid dominion. The works of the great dramatists, the
+writings of men of every class, continually suppose the universal
+power and horror of witchcraft. Internal evidence is abundant.
+The witches of Macbeth are no fanciful creation, and Shakspeare's
+representation of La Pucelle's fate is nothing more than a copy
+from life. What the vulgar superstition must have been may be
+easily conceived when men of the greatest genius or learning
+credited the possibility, and not only a theoretical but actual
+occurrence, of these infernal phenomena. Gibbon is at a loss to
+account for the fact that the acute understanding of the learned
+Erasmus, who could see through much more plausible fables,
+believed firmly in witchcraft.[137] Francis Bacon, the advocate
+and second founder of the inductive method and first apostle of
+the Utilitarian philosophy, opposed though he might have been to
+the vulgar persecution, was not able to get rid of the principles
+upon which the creed was based.[138] Sir Edward Coke, his
+contemporary, the most acute lawyer of the age, or (as it is
+said) of any time, ventured even to define the devil's agents in
+witchcraft. Sir Thomas Browne (author of 'Pseudodoxia Epidemica'
+or 'Vulgar Errors!'), a physician and writer of considerable
+merit, and Sir Matthew Hale, in 1664, proved their faith, the one
+by his solemn testimony in open court, the other by his still
+more solemn sentence.
+
+  [137] See _Miscellaneous Works: Abstract of my Readings_.
+
+  [138] 'Consorting with them [the unclean spirits who have
+  fallen from their first estate] and all use of their
+  assistance is unlawful; much more any worship or veneration
+  whatsoever. But a contemplation and knowledge of their
+  nature, power, illusions, not only from passages of sacred
+  scripture but _from reason or experience_, is not the least
+  part of spiritual wisdom. So truly the Apostle, "We are not
+  ignorant of his wiles." And it is not less permissible in
+  theology to investigate the nature of demons, than in physics
+  to investigate the nature of drugs, or in ethics the nature
+  of vice.'--_De Augmentis Scientiarum_, lib. iii. 2.
+
+If theologians were armed by the authority or their
+interpretation of Scripture, lawyers were no less so by that of
+the Statute Book. Judge Hale, in an address to the jury at Bury
+St. Edmund's, carefully weighing evidence, and, summing up,
+assures them he did 'not in the least doubt there are witches:
+first, because _the Scriptures affirmed it_; secondly, because
+the _wisdom of all nations_, particularly of our own, _had
+provided laws_ against witchcraft which implied their belief of
+such a crime.'[139] Sir Thomas Browne, who gave his professional
+experience at this trial, to the effect that the devil often acts
+upon human bodies by natural means, afflicting them in a more
+surprising manner through the diseases to which they are usually
+subject; and that in the particular case, the fits (of vomiting
+nails, needles, deposed by other witnesses) might be natural,
+only raised to a great degree by the subtlety of the devil
+cooperating with the malice of the witches, employs a well-known
+argument when he declares ('Religio Medici'), 'Those that to
+confute their incredulity desire to see apparitions shall
+questionless never behold any. The devil hath these already in a
+heresy as capital as witchcraft; and to appear to them were _but_
+to convert them.'
+
+  [139] Unfortunately for the cause of truth and right, Sir
+  Matthew Hale's reasons are not an exceptional illustration
+  of the mischief according to Roger Bacon's experience of
+  'three very bad arguments we are always using--This has been
+  shown to be so; This is customary; This is universal:
+  Therefore it must be kept to.' Sir Thomas Browne, unable, as
+  a man of science, to accept in every particular alleged the
+  actual bona fide reality of the devil's power, makes a
+  compromise, and has 'recourse to a fraud of Satan,'
+  explaining that he is in reality but a clever juggler, a
+  transcendent physician who knows how to accomplish what is
+  in relation to us a prodigy, in knowing how to use natural
+  forces which our knowledge has not yet discovered. Such an
+  unworthy compromise was certainly not fitted to arouse men
+  from their 'cauchemar demonologique.'--See _Revue des Deux
+  Mondes_, Aug. 1, 1858.
+
+John Selden, a learned lawyer, but of a liberal mind, was gifted
+with a large amount of common sense, and it might be juster to
+attribute the _dictum_ which has been supposed to betray 'a
+lurking belief' to an excess of legal, rather than to a defect of
+intellectual, perception. Selden, inferring that 'the law against
+witches does not prove there be any, but it punishes the malice
+of those people that use such means to take away men's lives,'
+proceeds to assert that 'if one should profess that by turning
+his hat thrice and crying "Buz," he could take away a man's life
+(though in truth he could do no such thing), yet this were a just
+law made by the state, that whosoever shall turn his hat ... with
+an intention to take away a man's life, should be put to
+death.'[140]
+
+  [140] _Table Talk or Discourses_ of John Selden. Although it
+  must be excepted to the lawyer's summary mode of dealing
+  with an imaginary offence, we prefer to give that eminent
+  patriot at least the benefit of the doubt, as to his belief
+  in witchcraft.
+
+If men of more liberal sentiments were thus enslaved to old
+prejudices, it is not surprising that the Church, not leading but
+following, should firmly maintain them. Fortunately for the
+witches, without the motives actuating in different ways
+Catholics and Calvinists, and placed midway between both parties,
+the reformed English Church was not so much interested in
+identifying her crimes with sorcerers as in maintaining the less
+tremendous formulae of Divine right, Apostolical succession, and
+similar pretensions. Yet if they did not so furiously engage
+themselves in actual witch-prosecutions, Anglican divines have
+not been slow in expressly or impliedly affirming the reality of
+diabolical interposition. Nor can the most favourable criticism
+exonerate them from the reproach at least of having witnessed
+without protestation the barbarous cruelties practised in the
+name of heaven; and the eminent names of Bishop Jewell, the great
+apologist of the English Church, and of the author of the
+'Ecclesiastical Polity,' among others less eminent, may be
+claimed by the advocates of witchcraft as respectable authorities
+in the Established Church. The 'judicious' Hooker affirms that
+the evil spirits are dispersed, some in the air, some on the
+earth, some in the waters, some among the minerals, in dens and
+caves that are under the earth, labouring to obstruct and, if
+possible, to destroy the works of God. They were the _dii
+inferi_ [the old persuasion] of the heathen worshipped in
+oracles, in idols, &c.[141] The privilege of 'casting out devils'
+was much cherished and long retained in the Established Church.
+
+  [141] Quoted in Howitt's _History of the Supernatural_. The
+  author has collected a mass of evidence 'demonstrating an
+  universal faith,' a curious collection of various
+  superstition. He is indignant at the colder faith of the
+  Anglican Church of later times.
+
+During the ascendency of the Presbyterian party from 1640 to the
+assumption of the Protectorship by Cromwell, witches and
+witch-trials increased more than ever; and they sensibly
+decreased only when the Independents obtained a superiority.
+The adherents of Cromwell, whatever may have been their own
+fanatical excesses, were at least exempt from the intolerant
+spirit which characterised alike their Anglican enemies and
+their old Presbyterian allies. The astute and vigorous intellect
+of the great revolutionary leader, the champion of the people
+in its struggles for civil and religious liberty, however
+much he might affect the forms of the prevailing religious
+sentiment, was too sagacious not to be able to penetrate,
+with the aid of the counsels of the author of the 'Treatise
+of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes,' who so triumphantly
+upheld the fundamental principle of Protestantism,[142]
+somewhat beneath the surface. In what manner the Presbyterian
+Parliament issued commissions for inquiring into the crimes
+of sorcery, how zealously they were supported by the clergy
+and people, how Matthew Hopkins--immortal in the annals of
+English witchcraft--exercised his talents as witchfinder-general,
+are facts well known.[143]
+
+  [142] 'Seeing therefore,' infers Milton, the greatest of
+  England's patriots as well as poets, 'that no man, no synod,
+  no session of men, though called the Church, can judge
+  definitively the sense of Scripture to another man's
+  conscience, which is well known to be a maxim of the
+  Protestant religion; it follows plainly, that he who holds
+  in religion that belief or those opinions which to his
+  conscience and utmost understanding appear with most
+  evidence or probability in the Scripture, though to others
+  he seem erroneous, can no more be justly censured for a
+  heretic than his censurers, who do but the same thing
+  themselves, while they censure him for so doing.... To
+  Protestants therefore, whose common rule and touchstone is
+  the Scripture, nothing can with more conscience, more
+  equity, nothing more Protestantly can be permitted than a
+  free and lawful debate at all times by writing, conference,
+  or disputation of what opinion soever disputable by
+  Scripture.... How many persecutions, then, imprisonments,
+  banishments, penalties, and stripes; how much bloodshed,
+  have the forcers of conscience to answer for--and
+  Protestants rather than Papists!' (_A Treatise of Civil
+  Power in Ecclesiastical Causes._) The reasons which induced
+  Milton to exclude the Catholics of his day from the general
+  toleration are more intelligible and more plausible, than
+  those of fifty or sixty years since, when the Rev. Sidney
+  Smith published the _Letters of Peter Plymley_.
+
+  [143] Displayed in the satire of _Hudibras_, particularly in
+  Part II. canto 3, Part III. 1, and the notes of Zachary Grey.
+  The author of this amusing political satire has exposed the
+  foibles of the great Puritan party with all the rancour of a
+  partisan.
+
+That the strenuous antagonists of despotic dogmas, by whom the
+principles of English liberty were first inaugurated, that they
+should so fanatically abandon their reason to a monstrous idea,
+is additional proof of the universality of superstitious
+prejudice. But the conviction, the result of a continual
+political religious persecution of their tenets, that if heaven
+was on their side Satan and the powers of darkness were still
+more inimical, cannot be fully understood unless by referring to
+those scenes of murder and torture. Hunted with relentless
+ferocity like wild beasts, holding conventicles and prayer
+meetings with the sword suspended over their heads, it is not
+surprising that at that period these English and Scotch
+Calvinists came to believe that they were the peculiar objects of
+diabolical as well as human malice. Their whole history during
+the first eighty years of the seventeenth century can alone
+explain this faith. Besides this genuine feeling, the clergy of
+the Presbyterian sect might be interested in maintaining a creed
+which must magnify their credit as miracle-workers.[144]
+
+  [144] The author of _Hudibras_, in the interview of the
+  Knight and Sidrophel (William Lilly), enumerates the various
+  practices and uses of astrology and witchcraft in vogue at
+  this time, and employed by Court and Parliament with equal
+  eagerness and emulation. Dr. Zachary Grey, the sympathetic
+  editor of _Hudibras_, supplies much curious information on
+  the subject in extracts from various old writers. 'The
+  Parliament,' as he states, 'took a sure way to secure all
+  prophecies, prodigies, and almanac-news from stars, &c., in
+  favour of their own side, by appointing a licenser thereof,
+  and strictly forbidding and punishing all such as were not
+  licensed. Their man for this purpose was the famous Booker,
+  an astrologer, fortune-teller, almanac-maker, &c. The words
+  of his license in Rushorth are very remarkable--for
+  mathematics, almanacs, and prognostications. If we may
+  believe Lilly, both he and Booker did conjure and
+  prognosticate well for their friends the Parliament. He
+  tells us, "When he applied for a license for his _Merlinus
+  Anglicus Junior_ (in Ap. 1644), Booker wondered at the book,
+  made many impertinent obliterations, framed many objections,
+  and swore it was not possible to distinguish between a king
+  and a parliament; and at last licensed it according to his
+  own fancy. Lilly delivered it to the printer, who, being an
+  arch-Presbyterian, had five of the ministers to inspect it,
+  who could make nothing of it, but said it might be printed;
+  for in that he meddled not with their Dagon." (_Lilly's
+  Life._) Which opposition to Lilly's book arose from a
+  jealousy that he was not then thoroughly in the Parliament's
+  interest--which was true; for he frankly confesses, "that
+  till the year 1645 he was more Cavalier than Roundhead, and
+  so taken notice of; but after that he engaged body and soul
+  in the cause of the Parliament."' (_Life._) Lilly was
+  succeeded successively by his assistant Henry Coley, and
+  John Partridge, the well-known object of Swift's satire.
+
+The years 1644 and 1645 are distinguished as especially abounding
+in witches and witchfinders. In the former year, at Manningtree,
+a village in Essex, during an outbreak in which several women
+were tried and hanged, Matthew Hopkins first displayed his
+peculiar talent. Associated with him in his recognised legal
+profession was one John Sterne. They proceeded regularly on their
+circuit, making a fixed charge for their services upon each
+town or village. Swimming and searching for secret marks were
+the infallible methods of discovery. Hopkins, encouraged
+by an unexpected success, arrogantly assumed the title of
+'Witchfinder-General.' His modest charges (as he has told us)
+were twenty shillings a town, which paid the expenses of
+travelling and living, and an additional twenty shillings a head
+for every criminal brought to trial, or at least to execution.
+
+The eastern counties of Huntingdon, Cambridge, Suffolk,
+Northampton, Bedford, were chiefly traversed; and some two or
+three hundred persons appear to have been sent to the gibbet or
+the stake by his active exertions. One of these specially
+remembered was the aged _parson_ of a village near Framlingham,
+Mr. Lowes, who was hanged at Bury St. Edmund's. The pious Baxter,
+an eyewitness, thus commemorates the event: 'The hanging of a
+great number of witches in 1645 and 1646 is famously known. Mr.
+Calamy went along with the judges on the circuit to hear their
+confessions and see that there was no fraud or wrong done them. I
+spoke with many understanding, pious, learned, and credible
+persons that lived in the counties, and some that went to them in
+the prison and heard their sad confessions. Among the rest, an
+old _reading_ parson named Lowes, not far from Framlingham, was
+one that was hanged, who confessed that he had two imps, and that
+one of them was always putting him upon doing mischief; and he
+being near the sea as he saw a ship under sail, it moved him to
+send it to sink the ship, and he consented and saw the ship sink
+before them.' Sterne, Hopkins's coadjutor, in an Apology
+published not long afterwards, asserts that Lowes had been
+indicted thirty years before for witchcraft; that he had made a
+covenant with the devil, sealing it with his blood, and had those
+familiars or spirits which sucked on the marks found on his body;
+that he had confessed that, besides the notable mischief of
+sinking the aforesaid vessel and making fourteen widows in one
+quarter of an hour, he had effected many other calamities; that
+far from repenting of his wickedness, he rejoiced in the power of
+his imps.
+
+The excessive destruction and cruelty perpetrated by the
+indiscriminate procedure of the Witchfinder-General incited a Mr.
+Gaule, vicar of Great Staughton in Huntingdonshire, to urge some
+objections to the inhuman character of his method. Gaule, like
+John Cotta before him and others of that class, was provoked to
+challenge the propriety of the ordinary prosecutions, not so much
+from incredulity as from humanity, which revolted at the
+extravagance of the judges' cruelty. In 'Select Cases of
+Conscience touching Witches and Witchcraft,' the minister of
+Great Staughton describes from personal knowledge one of the
+ordinary ways of detecting the guilt of the accused. 'Having
+taken the suspected witch, she is placed in the middle of a room
+upon a stool or table, cross-legged, or in some other uneasy
+position, to which, if she submits not, she is then bound with
+cords: there is she watched and kept without meat or sleep for
+the space of four-and-twenty hours (for they say within that
+time they shall see her imps come and suck); a little hole is
+likewise made in the door for the imps to come in at, and, lest
+they should come in some less discernible shape, they that watch
+are taught to be ever and anon sweeping the room, and if they see
+any spiders or flies to kill them; and if they cannot kill them,
+then they may be sure they are her imps.'
+
+'Swimming' and 'pricking' were the approved modes of discovery.
+By the former method the witch was stripped naked, securely bound
+(hands and feet being crossed), rolled up in a blanket or cloth,
+and carried to the nearest water, upon which she was laid on her
+back, with the alternative of floating or sinking. In case of the
+former event (the water not seldom refusing to receive the
+wretch, because--declares James I.--they had impiously thrown off
+the holy water of baptism) she was rescued for the fire or the
+gallows; while, in case of sinking to the bottom, she would be
+properly and clearly acquitted of the suspected guilt. Hopkins
+prided himself most on his ability for detecting special marks.
+Causing the suspected woman to be stripped naked, or as far as
+the waist (as the case might be), sometimes in public, this
+stigmatic professor began to search for the hidden signs with
+unsparing scrutiny. Upon finding a mole or wart or any similar
+mark, they tried the 'insensibleness thereof' by inserting
+needles, pins, awls, or any sharp-pointed instrument; and in an
+old and withered crone it might not be difficult to find
+somewhere a more insensitive spot.
+
+Such examinations were conducted with disregard equally for
+humanity and decency. All the disgusting circumstances must be
+sought for in the works of the writers upon the subject. Reginald
+Scot has collected many of the commonest. These marks were
+considered to be teats at which the demons or imps were used to
+be suckled. Many were the judicial and vulgar methods of
+detecting the guilty--by repeating the 'Lord's Prayer;' weighing
+against the church Bible; making them shed tears--for a witch can
+shed tears only with the left eye, and that only with difficulty
+and in limited quantity. The counteracting or preventive charms
+are as numerous as curious, not a few being in repute in some
+parts at this day. 'Drawing blood' was most effective. Nailing up
+a horse-shoe is one of the best-known preventives. That
+efficacious counter-charm used to be suspended over the
+entrance of churches and houses, and no wizard or witch could
+brave it.[145] 'Scoring above the breath' is omnipotent in
+Scotland, where the witch was cut or 'scotched' on the face and
+forehead. Cutting off secretly a lock of the hair of the accused,
+burning the thatch of her roof and the thing bewitched; these
+are a few of the least offensive or obscene practices in
+counter-charming.[146] In what degree or kind the Fetish-charms
+of the African savages are more ridiculous or disgusting than
+those popular in England 200 years ago, it would not be easy to
+determine.
+
+  [145] Gay's witch complains:
+
+       'Straws, laid across, my pace retard.
+        The horse-shoe's nailed, each threshold's guard.
+        The stunted broom the wenches hide
+        For fear that I should up and ride.
+        They stick with pins my bleeding seat,
+        And bid me show my secret teat.'
+
+  [146] The various love-charms, amulets, and spells in the
+  pharmacy of witchcraft are (like the waxen image known, both
+  to the ancient and modern art) equally monstrous and absurd.
+  Of a more natural and pleasing sort was the [Greek: himas
+  poikilos], the irresistible charm of Aphrodite. Here--
+
+       [Greek:               Thelkteria panta tetykto;
+       Enth' eni men philotes, en d' himeros, en d' oaristys,
+       Parphasis, he t' eklepse noon pyka per phroneonton.]
+
+Matthew Hopkins pursued a lucrative trade in witch-hunting for
+some years with much applause and success. His indiscriminating
+accusations at last excited either the alarm or the indignation
+of his townspeople, if we may believe the tradition suggested
+in the well-known verses of Butler, who has no authority,
+apparently, for his insinuation ('Hudibras,' ii. 3), that this
+eminent _Malleus_ did not die 'the common death of all men.'
+However it happened, his death is placed in the year 1647. An
+Apology shortly before had been published by him in refutation
+of an injurious report gaining ground that he was himself
+intimately allied with the devil, from whom he had obtained a
+memorandum book in which were entered the names of all the
+witches in England. It is entitled 'The Discovery of Witches; in
+Answer to several Queries lately delivered to the Judge of Assize
+for the County of Norfolk; and now published by Matthew Hopkins,
+Witchfinder, for the Benefit of the whole Kingdom. Printed for R.
+Royston, at the Angel in Inn Lane, 1647.'[147] It is, indeed,
+sufficiently probable that, confident of the increasing coolness,
+and perhaps of the wishes, of the magistrates, the mob, ever
+ready to wreak vengeance upon a disgraced favourite who has long
+abused the public patience, retaliated upon Hopkins a method of
+torture he had frequently inflicted upon others.[148]
+
+  [147] Quoted by Sir W. Scott from a copy of this 'very rare
+  tract' in his possession.
+
+  [148] Dr. Francis Hutchinson (Historical Essay), referring to
+  the verses of Samuel Butler, says that he had often heard
+  that some persons, 'out of indignation at the barbarity [of
+  the witchfinder], took him and tied his own thumbs and toes,
+  as he used to tie others; and when he was put into the water,
+  he himself swam as they did.' But whether the usual fate upon
+  that event awaited him does not appear. The verses in
+  question are the following:--
+
+       'has not he, within a year,
+        Hang'd threescore of 'em in one shire,
+
+        *       *       *       *       *
+
+        Who after prov'd himself a witch,
+        And made a rod for his own breech?'
+
+  The Knight's Squire on the same occasion reminds his master
+  of the more notorious of the devil's tricks of that and the
+  last age:--
+
+       'Did not the devil appear to Martin
+        Luther in Germany for certain,
+        And would have gull'd him with a trick
+        But Mart was too, too politic?
+        Did he not help the Dutch to purge
+        At Antwerp their cathedral church?
+        Sing catches to the saints at Mascon,
+        And tell them all they came to ask him?
+        Appear in divers shapes to Kelly,
+        And speak i' th' nun of Loudun's belly?
+        Meet with the Parliament's committee
+        At Woodstock on a pers'nal treaty?
+        ... &c. &c.'
+
+                      _Hudibras_, II. 3.
+
+Hopkins is the most famous of his class on account of his
+superior talent; but both in England and Scotland witchfinders,
+or _prickers_, as they were sometimes called, before and since
+his time abounded--of course most where the superstition raged
+fiercest. In Scotland they infested all parts of the country,
+practising their detestable but legal trade with entire impunity.
+The Scottish prickers enjoyed a great reputation for skill and
+success; and on a special occasion, about the time when
+Hopkins was practising in the South, the magistrates of
+Newcastle-upon-Tyne summoned from Scotland one of great
+professional experience to visit that town, then overrun with
+witches. The magistrates agreed to pay him all travelling
+expenses, and twenty shillings for every convicted criminal. A
+bellman was sent round the town to invite all complainants to
+prefer their charges. Some thirty women, having been brought to
+the town-hall, were publicly subjected to an examination. By the
+ordinary process, twenty-seven on this single occasion were
+ascertained to be guilty, of whom, at the ensuing assizes,
+fourteen women and one man were convicted by the jury and
+executed.
+
+Three thousand are said to have suffered for the crime in England
+under the supremacy of the Long Parliament. A respite followed on
+this bloody persecution when the Independents came into power,
+but it was renewed with almost as much violence upon the return
+of the Stuarts. The Protectorship had been fitly inaugurated by
+the rational protest of a gentleman, witness to the proceedings
+at one of the trials, Sir Robert Filmore, in a tract, 'An
+Advertizement to the Jurymen of England touching Witches.' This
+was followed two years later by a similar protest by one Thomas
+Ady, called, 'A Candle in the Dark; or, a Treatise concerning the
+Nature of Witches and Witchcraft: being Advice to Judges,
+Sheriffs, Justices of the Peace and Grand Jurymen, what to do
+before they pass Sentence on such as are arraigned for their
+Lives as Witches.' Notwithstanding the general toleration of the
+Commonwealth, in 1652, the year before Cromwell assumed the
+Dictatorship (1653-1658), there appeared to be a tendency to
+return to the old system, and several were executed in different
+parts of the country. Six were hanged at Maidstone. 'Some there
+were that wished rather they might be burned to ashes, alleging
+that it was a received opinion amongst many that the body of a
+witch being burned, her blood is thereby prevented from becoming
+hereafter hereditary to her progeny in the same evil, while by
+hanging it is not; but whether this opinion be erroneous or not,'
+the reporter adds, 'I am not to dispute.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+     Glanvil's Sadducismus Triumphatus--His Sentiments on
+     Witchcraft and Demonology--Baxter's 'Certainty of the World
+     of Spirits,' &c.--Witch Trial at Bury St. Edmund's by Sir
+     Matthew Hale, 1664--The Evidence adduced in Court--Two
+     Witches hanged--Three hanged at Exeter in 1682--The last
+     Witches judicially executed in England--Uniformity of the
+     Evidence adduced at the Trials--Webster's Attack upon the
+     Witch-Creed in 1677--Witch Trials in England at the end of
+     the Seventeenth Century--French Parliaments vindicate the
+     Diabolic Reality of the Crime--Witchcraft in Sweden.
+
+
+The bold licentiousness and ill-concealed scepticism of Charles
+II. and his Court, whose despotic prejudices, however, supported
+by the zeal of the Church, prosecuted dissenters from a form of
+religion which maintained 'the right divine of kings to govern
+wrong,' might be indifferent to the prejudice of witchcraft. But
+the princes and despots of former times have seldom been more
+careful of the lives than they have been of the liberties, of
+their subjects. The formal apology for the reality of that crime
+published by Charles II.'s chaplain-in-ordinary, the Rev.
+Dr. Joseph Glanvil, against the modern Sadducees (a very
+inconsiderable sect) who denied both ghosts and witches, their
+well-attested apparitions and acts, has been already noticed.
+His philosophic inquiry (so he terms it) into the nature and
+operations of witchcraft (_Sadducismus Triumphatus_, Sadduceeism
+Vanquished, or 'Considerations about Witchcraft'), was occasioned
+by a case that came under the author's personal observation--the
+'knockings' of the demon of Tedworth in the house of a Mr.
+Mompesson. The Tedworth demon must have been of that sort of
+active spirits which has been so obliging of late in enlightening
+the spiritual _seances_ of our time.
+
+Glanvil traces the steps by which a well-meaning student may
+unwarily be involved in _diablerie_. This philosophical inquirer
+observes:--'Those mystical students may, in their first address
+to the science [astrology], have no other design than the
+satisfaction of their curiosity to know remote and hidden things;
+yet that in the progress, being not satisfied within the bounds
+of their art, doth many times tempt the curious inquirer to use
+worse means of information; and no doubt those mischievous
+spirits, that are as vigilant as the beasts of prey, and watch
+all occasions to get us within their envious reach, are more
+constant attenders and careful spies upon the actions and
+inclinations of such whose genius and designs prepare them for
+their temptations. So that I look on judicial astrology as a fair
+introduction to sorcery and witchcraft; and who knows but it was
+first set on foot by the infernal hunters as a lure to draw the
+_curiosos_ into those snares that lie hid beyond it. And yet I
+believe it may be innocently enough studied.... I believe there
+are very few among those who have been addicted to those strange
+arts of wonder and prediction, but have found themselves attacked
+by some unknown solicitors, and enticed by them to the more
+dangerous actions and correspondencies. For as there are a sort
+of base and sordid spirits that attend the envy and malice of the
+ignorant and viler sort of persons, and betray them into compacts
+by promises of revenge; so, no doubt, there are a kind of more
+airy and speculative fiends, of a higher rank and order than
+those wretched imps, who apply themselves to the curious....
+Yea, and sometimes they are so cautious and wary in their
+conversations with more refined persons, that they never offer to
+make any _express_ covenant with them. And to this purpose, I
+have been informed by a very reverend and learned doctor that one
+Mr. Edwards, a Master of Arts of Trinity College, in Cambridge,
+being reclaimed from conjuration, declared in his repentance that
+the demon always appeared to him like a man of good fashion, and
+never required any compact from him: and no doubt they sort
+themselves agreeably to the rate, post, and genius of those with
+whom they converse.'[149]
+
+  [149] _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, section xvi.
+
+The sentiments of the royal chaplain on demonology are curious.
+'Since good men,' he argues, 'in their state of separation are
+said to be [Greek: isangeloi], why the wicked may not be supposed
+to be [Greek: isodaimones] (in the worst sense of the word), I
+know nothing to help me to imagine. And if it be supposed that
+the imps of witches are sometimes wicked spirits of our own kind
+and nature, and possibly the same that have been witches and
+sorcerers in this life: this supposal may give a fairer and more
+probable account of many of the actions of sorcery and witchcraft
+than the other hypothesis, that they are always devils. And to
+this conjecture I will venture to subjoin another, which hath
+also its probability, viz. that it is not improbable but the
+familiars of witches are a vile kind of spirits of a very
+inferior constitution and nature; and none of those that
+were once of the highest hierarchy now degenerated into the
+spirits we call devils.... And that all the superior--yea, and
+inferior--regions have their several kinds of spirits, differing
+in their natural perfections as well as in the kinds and degrees
+of their depravities; which being supposed, 'tis very probable
+that those of the basest and meanest sorts are they who submit to
+the servilities.'[150] It is a curious speculation how the old
+apologists of witchcraft would regard the modern 'curiosos'--the
+adventurous _spirit-media_ of the present day, and whether the
+consulted spirits are of 'base and sordid rank,' or are 'a kind
+of airy and more speculative fiends.' It is fair to infer,
+perhaps, that they are of the latter class.
+
+  [150] _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, Part I. sect. 4. Affixed to
+  this work is a _Collection of Relations_ of
+  well-authenticated instances. Glanvil was one of the first
+  Fellows of the recently established Royal Society. He is the
+  author of a philosophical treatise of great merit--the
+  _Scepsis Scientifica_--a review of which occupies several
+  pages of _The Introduction to the Literature of Europe_, and
+  which is favourably considered by Hallam. Not the least
+  unaccountable fact in the history and literature of
+  witchcraft is the absurd contradiction involved in the
+  unbounded credulity of writers (who were sceptical on almost
+  every other subject) on the one subject of demonology.
+
+The author of the 'Saints' Everlasting Rest,' the moderate and
+conscientious Baxter, was a contemporary of the Anglican divine.
+In another and later work this voluminous theological writer more
+fully developed his spiritualistic ideas. 'The Certainty of the
+World of Spirits fully evinced by unquestionable Histories of
+Apparitions, Witchcrafts, Operations, Voices, &c., proving the
+Immortality of Souls, the Malice and Misery of Devils and the
+Damned, and the Blessedness of the Justified. Written for the
+Conviction of Sadducees and Infidels,' was a formidable
+inscription which must have overawed, if it did not subdue, the
+infidelity of the modern Sadducees.[151]
+
+  [151] It would not be an uninteresting, but it would be a
+  melancholy, task to investigate the reasoning, or rather
+  unreasoning, process which involved such honest men as
+  Richard Baxter in a maze of credulity. While they rejected
+  the principle of the ever-recurring ecclesiastical miracles
+  of Catholicism (so sympathetic as well as useful to ardent
+  faith), their devout imagination yet required the aid of a
+  present supernaturalism to support their faith amidst the
+  perplexing doubts and difficulties of ordinary life, and
+  they gladly embraced the consoling belief that the present
+  evils are the work of the enmity of the devil, whose
+  temporary sovereignty, however, should be overthrown in the
+  world to come, when the faith and constancy of his victims
+  shall be eternally rewarded.
+
+The sentence and execution of two old women at Bury St. Edmund's,
+in 1664, has been already noticed. This trial was carried on with
+circumstances of great solemnity and with all the external forms
+of justice--Sir Matthew Hale presiding as Lord Chief Baron: and
+the following is a portion of the evidence which was received two
+hundred years ago in an English Court of Justice and under the
+presidency of one of the greatest ornaments of the English Bench.
+One of the witnesses, a woman named Dorothy Durent, deposed that
+she had quarrelled with one Amy Duny, immediately after which her
+infant child was seized with fits. 'And the said examinant
+further stated that she being troubled at her child's distemper
+did go to a certain person named Doctor Job Jacob, who lived at
+Yarmouth, who had the reputation in the country to help children
+that were bewitched; who advised her to hang up the child's
+blanket in the chimney-corner all day, and at night when she put
+the child to bed to put it into the said blanket; and if she
+found anything in it she should not be afraid, but throw it into
+the fire. And this deponent did according to his direction; and
+at night when she took down the blanket with an intent to put the
+child therein, there fell out of the same a great toad which ran
+up and down the hearth; and she, having a young youth only with
+her in the house, desired him to catch the toad and throw it into
+the fire, which the youth did accordingly, and held it there with
+the tongs; and as soon as it was in the fire it made a great and
+terrible noise; and after a space there was a flashing in the
+fire like gunpowder, making a noise like the discharge of a
+pistol, and thereupon the toad was no more seen nor heard. It was
+asked by the Court if that, after the noise and flashing, there
+was not the substance of the toad to be seen to consume in the
+fire; and it was answered by the said Dorothy Durent that after
+the flashing and noise there was no more seen than if there had
+been none there. The next day there came a young woman, a
+kinswoman of the said Amy, and a neighbour of this deponent, and
+told this deponent that her aunt (meaning the said Amy) was in a
+most lamentable condition, having her face all scorched with
+fire, and that she was sitting alone in her house in her smock
+without any fire. And therefore this deponent went into the house
+of the said Amy Duny to see her, and found her in the same
+condition as was related to her; for her face, her legs, and
+thighs, which this deponent saw, seemed very much scorched and
+burnt with fire; at which this deponent seemed much to wonder,
+and asked how she came in that sad condition. And the said Amy
+replied that she might thank her for it, for that she (deponent)
+was the cause thereof; but she should live to see some of her
+children dead, and she upon crutches. And this deponent further
+saith, that after the burning of the said toad her child
+recovered and was well again, and was living at the time of the
+Assizes.' The accused were next arraigned for having bewitched
+the family of Mr. Samuel Pacy, merchant, of Lowestoft. The witch
+turned away from their door had at once inflicted summary
+vengeance by sending some fearful fits and pains in the stomach,
+apparently caused by an internal pricking of pins; the children
+shrieking out violently, vomiting nails, pins, and needles, and
+exclaiming against several women of ill-repute in the town;
+especially against two of them, Amy Duny and Rose Cullender.
+
+A friend of the family appeared in court, and deposed: 'At some
+times the children would see things run up and down the house in
+the appearance of mice, and one of them suddenly snapt one with
+the tongs and threw it into the fire, and it screeched out like a
+bat. At another time the younger child, being out of her fits,
+went out of doors to take a little fresh air, and presently a
+little thing like a bee flew upon her face and would have gone
+into her mouth, whereupon the child ran in all haste to the door
+to get into the house again, shrieking out in a most terrible
+manner. Whereupon this deponent made haste to come to her; but
+before she could get to her the child fell into her swooning fit,
+and at last, with much pain and straining herself, she vomited up
+a twopenny nail with a broad head; and being demanded by this
+deponent how she came by this nail, she answered that the bee
+brought this nail and forced it into her mouth. And at other
+times the elder child declared unto this deponent that during the
+time of her fits she saw flies come unto her and bring with them
+in their mouths crooked pins; and after the child had thus
+declared the same she fell again into violent fits, and
+afterwards raised several pins. At another time the said elder
+child declared unto this deponent, and sitting by the fire
+suddenly started up and said she saw a mouse; and she crept under
+the table, looking after it; and at length she put something in
+her apron, saying she had caught it. And immediately she ran to
+the fire and threw it in; and there did appear upon it to this
+deponent like the flashing of gunpowder, though she confessed she
+saw nothing in the child's hands.' Another witness was the mother
+of a servant girl, Susanna Chandler, whose depositions are of
+much the same kind, but with the addition that her daughter was
+sometimes stricken with blindness and dumbness by demoniacal
+contrivance at the moment when her testimony was required in
+court. 'Being brought into court at the trial, she suddenly fell
+into her fits, and being carried out of the court again, within
+the space of half an hour she came to herself and recovered her
+speech; and thereupon was immediately brought into the court, and
+asked by the Court whether she was in condition to take an oath
+and to give evidence. She said she could. But when she was sworn
+and asked what she could say against either of the prisoners,
+before she could make any answer she fell into her fits,
+shrieking out in a miserable manner, crying "Burn her! burn her!"
+which was all the words she could speak.' Doubts having been
+hazarded by one or two of the less credulous of the origin of the
+fits and contortions, 'to avoid this scruple, it was privately
+desired by the judge that the Lord Cornwallis, Sir Edmund Bacon,
+and Mr. Serjeant Keeling and some other gentlemen there in court,
+would attend one of the distempered persons in the farthest part
+of the hall whilst she was in her fits, and then to send for one
+of the witches to try what would then happen, which they did
+accordingly.' Some of the possessed, having been put to the proof
+by having their eyes covered, and being touched upon the hand by
+one of those present, fell into contortions as if they had been
+touched by the witches.
+
+The suspicion of imposture thus raised was quickly silenced by
+fresh proof. Robert Sherringham, farmer, deposed that 'about two
+years since, passing along the street with his cart and horses,
+the axle-tree of his cart touched her house and broke down some
+part of it; at which she was very much displeased, threatening
+him that his horses should suffer for it. And so it happened; for
+all those horses, being four in number, died within a short time
+after. Since that time he hath had great losses by sudden dying
+of his other cattle. So soon as his sows pigged, the pigs would
+leap and caper, and immediately fall down and die. Also, not long
+after, he was taken with a lameness in his limbs that he could
+neither go nor stand for some days.'[152]
+
+  [152] This witness finished his evidence by informing the
+  Court that 'after all this, he was very much vexed with a
+  great number of lice, of extraordinary bigness; and although
+  he many times shifted himself, yet he was not anything the
+  better, but would swarm again with them. So that in the
+  conclusion he was forced to burn all his clothes, being two
+  suits of apparel, and then was clear from
+  them.'--_Narratives of Sorcery_, &c., from the most
+  authentic sources, by Thomas Wright.
+
+The extreme ridiculousness, even more than the iniquity, of the
+accusations may be deemed the principal characteristic of such
+procedures: these _childish_ indictments were received with
+eagerness by prosecutors, jury, and judge. After half an hour's
+deliberation the jury returned a unanimous verdict against the
+prisoners, who were hanged, protesting their innocence to the
+end. The year before, a woman named Julian Coxe was hanged at
+Taunton on the evidence of a hunter that a hare, which had taken
+refuge from his pursuit in a bush, was found on the opposite side
+in the likeness of a witch, who had assumed the form of the
+animal, and taken the opportunity of her hiding-place to resume
+her proper shape. In 1682 three women were executed at Exeter.
+Their witchcraft was of the same sort as that of the Bury
+witches. Little variety indeed appears in the English witchcraft
+as brought before the courts of law. They chiefly consist in
+hysterical, epileptic, or other fits, accompanied by vomiting of
+various witch-instruments of torture. The Exeter witches are
+memorable as the last executed judicially in England.
+
+Attacks upon the superstition of varying degrees of merit were
+not wanting during any period of the seventeenth century.
+Webster, who, differing in this respect from most of his
+predecessors, declared his opinion that the whole of witchcraft
+was founded on natural phenomena, credulity, torture, imposture,
+or delusion, has deserved to be especially commemorated among the
+advocates of common sense. He had been well acquainted in his
+youth with the celebrated Lancashire Witches' case, and enjoyed
+good opportunities of studying the absurd obscenities of the
+numerous examinations. His meritorious work was given to the
+world in 1677, under the title of 'The Displaying of Supposed
+Witchcraft.' Towards the close of the century witch-trials still
+occur; but the courts of justice were at length freed from the
+reproach of legal murders.
+
+The great revolution of 1688, which set the principles of
+Protestantism on a firmer basis, could not fail to effect an
+intellectual as well as a political change. A recognition of the
+claims of common sense (at least on the subject of diabolism)
+seemed to begin from that time; and in 1691, when some of the
+criminals were put upon their trial at Frome, in Somersetshire,
+they were acquitted, not without difficulty, by the exertion of
+the better reason of the presiding judge, Lord Chief Justice
+Holt. Fortunately for the accused, Lord Chief Justice Holt was a
+person of sense, as well as legal acuteness; for he sat as judge
+at a great number of the trials in different parts of the
+kingdom. Both prosecutors and juries were found who would
+willingly have sent the proscribed convicts to death. But the age
+was arrived when at last it was to be discovered that fire and
+torture can extinguish neither witchcraft nor any other heresy;
+and the princes and parliaments of Europe seemed to begin to
+recognise in part the philosophical maxim that, 'heresy and
+witchcraft are two crimes which commonly increase by punishment,
+and are never so effectually suppressed as by being totally
+neglected.'
+
+In France, until about the year 1670, there was little abatement
+in the fury or number of the prosecutions. In that year several
+women had been sentenced to death for frequenting the _Domdaniel_
+or Sabbath meeting by the provincial parliament of Normandy.
+Louis XIV. was induced to commute the sentence into banishment
+for life. The parliament remonstrated at so astonishing an
+interference with the due course of justice, and presented a
+petition to the king in which they insist upon the dread reality
+of a crime that 'tends to the destruction of religion and the
+ruin of nations.'[153]
+
+  [153] 'Your parliament,' protest these legislators, 'have
+  thought it their duty on occasion of these crimes, the
+  greatest which men can commit, to make you acquainted with
+  the general and uniform feelings of the people of this
+  province with regard to them; it being moreover a question
+  in which are concerned the glory of God and the relief of
+  your suffering subjects, who groan under their fears from
+  the threats and menaces of this sort of persons, and who
+  feel the effects of them every day in the mortal and
+  extraordinary maladies which attack them, and the surprising
+  damage and loss of their possessions.' They then review the
+  various laws and decrees of Church and State from the
+  earliest times in support of their convictions: they cite
+  the authority of the Church in council and in its most
+  famous individual teachers. Particularly do they insist upon
+  the opinions of St. Augustin, in his _City of God_, as
+  irrefragable. 'After so many authorities and punishments
+  ordained by human and divine laws, we humbly supplicate your
+  Majesty to reflect once more upon the extraordinary results
+  which proceed from the malevolence of this sort of people;
+  on the deaths from unknown diseases which are often the
+  consequence of their menaces; on the loss of the goods and
+  chattels of your subjects; on the proofs of guilt
+  continually afforded by the insensibility of the marks upon
+  the accused; on the sudden transportation of bodies from one
+  place to another; on the sacrifices and nocturnal
+  assemblies, and other facts, corroborated by the testimony
+  of ancient and modern authors, and verified by so many
+  eyewitnesses, composed partly of accomplices and partly of
+  people who had no interest in the trials beyond the love of
+  truth, and confirmed moreover by the confessions of the
+  accused parties themselves, and that, Sire, with so much
+  agreement and conformity between the different cases, that
+  the most ignorant persons convicted of this crime have
+  spoken to the same circumstances and in nearly the same
+  words as the most celebrated authors who have written about
+  it; all of which may be easily proved to your Majesty's
+  satisfaction by the records of various trials before your
+  parliaments.'--Given in _Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular
+  Delusions_. Louis XIV., with an unaccustomed care for human
+  life, resisting these forcible arguments, remained firm, and
+  the condemned were saved from the stake.
+
+While most of the Governments of Europe were now content to leave
+sorcerers and witches to the irregular persecutions of the
+people, tacitly abandoning to the mob the right of proceeding
+against them as they pleased, without the interference of the
+law, in a remote kingdom of Europe a witch-persecution commenced
+with the ordinary fury, under express sanction of the Government.
+It is curious that at the last moments of its existence as a
+legal crime, one of the last fires of witchcraft should have been
+lighted in Sweden, a country which, remote from continental
+Europe, seems to have been up to that period exempt from the
+judicial excesses of England, France, or Germany. The story of
+the Mohra witches is inserted in an appendix to Glanvil's
+'Collection of Relations,' by Dr. Anthony Horneck. The epidemic
+broke out in 1669, in the village of Mohra, in the mountainous
+districts of Central Sweden. A number of children became
+affected with an imaginative or mischievous disease, which
+carried them off to a place called Blockula, where they held
+communion and festival with the devil. These, numbering a large
+proportion of the youth of the neighbourhood, were incited, it
+seems, by the imposture or credulity of the ministers of Mohra
+and Elfdale, to report the various transactions at their
+spiritual _seances_. To such a height increased the terrified
+excitement of the people, that a commission was appointed by the
+king, consisting of both clergy and laity, to enquire into the
+origin and circumstances of the matter. It commenced proceedings
+in August 1670. Days for humiliation and prayer were ordered, and
+a solemn service inaugurated the judicial examinations. Agreeably
+to the dogma of the most approved foreign authorities, which
+allowed the evidence of the greatest criminals and of the
+youngest age, the commission began by examining the children,
+three hundred in number, claiming to be bewitched, confronting
+them with the witches who had, according to the indictment,
+been the means of the devil's seduction. They were strictly
+interrogated whether they were certain of the fact of having been
+actually carried away by the devil in his proper person. Being
+answered in the affirmative, the royal commissioners proceeded to
+demand of the accused themselves, 'Whether the confessions of
+those children were true, and admonished them to confess the
+truth, that they might turn away from the devil unto the living
+God. At first most of them did very stiffly, and without shedding
+the least tear, deny it, though much against their will and
+inclination. After this the children were examined every one by
+themselves, to see whether their confessions did agree or no; and
+the commissioners found that all of them, except some very little
+ones, which could not tell all the circumstances, did punctually
+agree in their confessions of particulars. In the meanwhile, the
+commissioners that were of the clergy examined the witches, but
+could not bring them to any confession, all continuing steadfast
+in their denials, till at last some of them burst out into tears,
+and their confession agreed with what the children said; and
+these expressed their abhorrence of the fact, and begged pardon,
+adding that the devil, whom they called _Locyta_, had stopped the
+mouths of some of them, so loath was he to part with his prey,
+and had stopped the ears of others. And being now gone from them,
+they could no longer conceal it, for they had now perceived his
+treachery.' The Elfdale witches were induced to announce--'We of
+the province of Elfdale do confess that we used to go to a
+gravel-pit which lies hard by a cross-way, and there we put on a
+vest over our heads, and then danced round; and after this ran to
+the cross-way and called the devil thrice, first with a still
+voice, the second time somewhat louder, and the third time very
+loud, with these words, "Antecessor, come and carry us to
+Blockula." Whereupon immediately he used to appear, but in
+different habits; but for the most part we saw him in a grey
+coat and red and blue stockings.[154] He had a red beard, a
+high-crowned hat with linen of divers colours wrapt about it, and
+long garters about upon his stockings. Then he asked us whether
+we would serve him with soul and body. If we were content to do
+so, he set us on a beast which he had there ready, and carried us
+over churches and high walls, and after all he came to a green
+meadow where Blockula lies [the Brockenberg in the Hartz forest,
+as Scott conjectures]. We procured some scrapings of altars and
+filings of church clocks, and then he gave us a horn with a salve
+in it, wherewith we do anoint ourselves, and a saddle, with a
+hammer and a wooden nail thereby to fix the saddle. Whereupon we
+call upon the devil, and away we go.'
+
+  [154] Accommodating himself to modern refinement, the devil
+  usually discards the antiquated horns, hoofs, and tail; and
+  if, as Dr. Mede supposed, 'appearing in human shape, he has
+  always a deformity of some uncouth member or other,' such
+  inconvenient appendages are disguised as much as possible.
+  As Goethe's Mephistopheles explains to his witch:
+
+       'Culture, which renders man less like an ape,
+        Has also licked the devil into shape.'
+
+Many interrogatories were put. Amongst others, how it was
+contrived that they could pass up and down chimneys and through
+unbroken panes of glass (to which it was replied that the devil
+removes all obstacles); how they were enabled to transport so
+many children at one time? &c. They acknowledged that 'till of
+late they had never power to carry away children; but only this
+year and the last: and the devil did at that time force them to
+it: that heretofore it was sufficient to carry but one of their
+own children or a stranger's child with them, which happened
+seldom: but now he did plague them and whip them if they did not
+procure him many children, insomuch that they had no peace or
+quiet for him. And whereas that formerly one journey a week would
+serve their turn from their own town to the place aforesaid, now
+they were forced to run to other towns and places for children,
+and that they brought with them some fifteen, some sixteen
+children every night.' As to their means of conveyance, they were
+sometimes men; at other times, beasts, spits, and posts: but a
+preferable mode was the riding upon goats, whose backs were made
+more commodious by the use of a magical ointment whenever a
+larger freight than usual was to be transported. Arrived at
+Blockula, their diabolical initiation commenced. First they were
+made to deny their baptism and take an oath of fealty to their
+new master, to whom they devoted soul and body to serve
+faithfully. Their new baptism was a baptism of blood: for their
+lord cut their fingers and wrote their names in blood in his
+book. After other ceremonies they sit down to a table, and are
+regaled with not the choicest viands (for such an occasion and
+from such a host)--broth, bacon, cheese, oatmeal. Dancing and
+fighting (the latter a peculiarity of the Northern Sabbath) ensue
+alternately. They indulge, too, in the debauchery of the South:
+the witches having offspring from their intercourse with the
+demons, who intermarry and produce a mongrel breed of toads and
+serpents. As interludes, it may be supposed, to the serious part
+of the entertainment the fiend would contrive various jokes,
+affecting to be dead; and, a graver joke, he would bid them to
+erect a huge building of stone, in which they were to be saved
+upon the approaching day of judgment. While engaged at this work
+he threw down the unfinished house about their ears, to the
+consternation, and sometimes injury, of his vassals.[155] Some of
+the witnesses spoke of a great dragon encircled with flames, and
+an iron chair; of a vision of a burning pit. The minister of the
+district gave his evidence that, having been suffering from a
+painful headache, he could account for the unusual severity of
+the attack only by supposing that the witches had celebrated one
+of their infernal dances upon his head while asleep in bed: and
+one of them, in accordance with this conjecture, acknowledged
+that the devil had sent her with a sledge-hammer to drive a nail
+into the temples of the obnoxious clergyman. The solidity of his
+skull saved him; and the only result was, as stated, a severe
+pain in his head.
+
+  [155] Le Sage's _Diable Boiteux_, who so obligingly
+  introduces the Spanish student to the secret realities of
+  human life, is, it may be observed, of both a more rational
+  and more instructive temperament than the ordinary demons
+  who appear at the witches' revels to practise their
+  senseless and fantastic rites.
+
+All the persuasive arguments of the examiners could not induce
+the witches to repeat before them their well-known tricks:
+because, as they affirmed, 'since they had confessed all they
+found all their witchcraft was gone: and the devil at this time
+appeared very terrible with claws on his hands and feet, with
+horns on his head and a long tail behind, and showed them a pit
+burning with a hand out; but the devil did thrust the person down
+again with an iron fork, and suggested to the witches that if
+they continued in their confession he would deal with them in the
+same manner.' These are some of the interesting particulars of
+this judicial commission as reported by contemporaries. Seventy
+persons were condemned to death. One woman pleaded (a frequent
+plea) in arrest of judgment that she was with child; the rest
+perseveringly denying their guilt. Twenty-three were burned in a
+single fire at the village of Mohra. Fifteen children were also
+executed; while fifty-six others, convicted of witchcraft in a
+minor degree, were sentenced to various punishments: to be
+scourged on every Sunday during a whole year being a sentence of
+less severity. The proceedings were brought to an end, it seems,
+by the fear of the upper classes for their own safety. An edict
+of the king who had authorised the enquiry now ordered it to be
+terminated, and the history of the commission was attempted to be
+involved in silent obscurity. Prayers were ordered in all the
+churches throughout Sweden for deliverance from the malice of
+Satan, who was believed to be let loose for the punishment of the
+land.[156] It is remarkable that the incidents of the Swedish
+trials are chiefly reproductions of the evidence extracted in the
+courts of France and Germany.
+
+  [156] _Narratives of Sorcery, &c._, by Thomas Wright, who
+  quotes the authorised reports. Sir Walter Scott refers to
+  'An account of what happened in the kingdom of Sweden in the
+  years 1669, 1670, and afterwards translated out of High
+  Dutch into English by Dr. Anthony Horneck, attached to
+  Glanvil's _Sadducismus Triumphatus_. The translation refers
+  to the evidence of Baron Sparr, ambassador from the court of
+  Sweden to the court of England in 1672, and that of Baron
+  Lyonberg, envoy-extraordinary of the same power, both of
+  whom attest the confessions and execution of the witches.
+  The King of Sweden himself answered the express inquiries of
+  the Duke of Holstein with marked reserve. "His judges and
+  commissioners," he said, "had caused divers men, women, and
+  children to be burnt and executed on such pregnant evidence
+  as was brought before them; but whether the actions
+  confessed and proved against them were real, or only the
+  effect of a strong imagination, he was not as yet able to
+  determine."'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+     Witchcraft in the English Colonies in North America--Puritan
+     Intolerance and Superstition--Cotton Mather's 'Late
+     Memorable Providences'--Demoniacal Possession--Evidence
+     given before the Commission--Apologies issued by
+     Authority--Sudden Termination of the
+     Proceedings--Reactionary Feeling against the Agitators--The
+     Salem Witchcraft the last Instance of Judicial Prosecution
+     on a large Scale in Christendom--Philosophers begin to
+     expose the Superstition--Meritorious Labours of Webster,
+     Becker, and others--Their Arguments could reach only the
+     Educated and Wealthy Classes of Society--These only
+     partially Enfranchised--The Superstition continues to
+     prevail among the Vulgar--Repeal of the Witch Act in England
+     in 1736--Judicial and Popular Persecutions in England in the
+     Eighteenth Century--Trial of Jane Wenham in England in
+     1712--Maria Renata burned in Germany in 1749--La Cadiere in
+     France--Last Witch burned in Scotland in 1722--Recent Cases
+     of Witchcraft--Protestant Superstition--Witchcraft in the
+     Extra-Christian World.
+
+
+A review of the superstitions of witchcraft would be incomplete
+without some notice of the Salem witches in New England.
+An equally melancholy and mischievous access of fanatic
+credulity, during the years 1688-1692, overwhelmed the colony of
+Massachusetts with a multitude of demons and their human
+accomplices; and the circumstances of the period were favourable
+to the vigour of the delusion. In the beginning of their
+colonisation the New Englanders were generally a united
+community; they were little disturbed by heresy; and if they had
+been thus infected they were too busily engaged in contending
+against the difficulties and dangers of a perilous position to be
+able to give much attention to differences in religious belief.
+But soon the _purity_ of their faith was in danger of being
+corrupted by heretical immigrants. The Puritans were the most
+numerous and powerful of the fugitives from political and
+religious tyranny in England, and the dominant sect in North
+America almost as severely oppressed Anabaptists and Quakers
+in the colonies as they themselves, religious exiles from
+ecclesiastical despotism, had suffered in the old world. They
+proved themselves worthy followers of the persecutors of
+Servetus. Other enemies from without also were active in seeking
+the destruction of the true believers. Fierce wars and struggles
+were continuously being waged with the surrounding savages, who
+regarded the increasing prosperity and number of the intruders
+with just fear and resentment.
+
+Imbued as the colonists were with demoniacal prepossessions, it
+is not so surprising that they deemed their rising State beset by
+spiritual enemies; and it is fortunate, perhaps, that the wilds
+of North America were not still more productive of fiends and
+witches, and more destructive massacres than that of 1690-92 did
+not disgrace their colonial history. From the pen of Dr. Cotton
+Mather, Fellow of Harvard College, and his father (who was the
+Principal), we have received the facts of the history. These two
+divines and their opinions obtained great respect throughout the
+colony. They devoutly received the orthodox creed as expounded in
+the writings of the ancient authorities on demonology, firmly
+convinced of the reality of the present wanderings of Satan 'up
+and down' in the earth; and Dr. Cotton Mather was at the same
+time the chief supporter and the historian of the demoniacal war
+now commenced. It was significantly initiated by the execution of
+a papist, an Irishman named Glover, who was accused of having
+bewitched the daughters of a mason of Boston, by name Goodwin.
+These girls, of infantile age, suffered from convulsive fits, the
+ordinary symptom of 'possession.' Mather received one of them
+into his house for the purpose of making experiments, and, if
+possible, to exorcise the evil spirits. She would suddenly, in
+presence of a number of spectators, fall into a trance, rise up,
+place herself in a riding attitude as if setting out for the
+Sabbath, and hold conversation with invisible beings. A peculiar
+phase of this patient's case was that when under the influence of
+'hellish charms' she took great pleasure in reading or hearing
+'bad' books, which she was permitted to do with perfect freedom.
+Those books included the Prayer Book of the English Episcopal
+Church, Quakers' writings, and popish productions. Whenever the
+Bible was taken up, the devil threw her into the most fearful
+convulsions.
+
+As a result of this _diagnosis_ appeared the publication of 'Late
+Memorable Providences relating to Witchcraft and Possession,'
+which, together with Baxter's 'Certainty of the World of
+Spirits,' a work Mather was careful to distribute and recommend
+to the people, increased the fever of fear and fanaticism to the
+highest pitch. The above incidents were the prelude only to the
+proper drama of the Salem witches. In 1692, two girls, the
+daughter and niece of Mr. Parvis, minister, suffering from a
+disease similar to that of the Goodwins, were pronounced to be
+preternaturally afflicted. Two miserable Indians, man and wife,
+servants in the family, who indiscreetly attempted to cure the
+witch-patients by means of some charm or drug, were suspected
+themselves as the guilty agents, and sent to execution. The
+physicians, who seem to have been entirely ignorant of the origin
+of these attacks, and as credulous as the unprofessional world,
+added fresh testimony to the reality of 'possession.'[157] At
+first, persons of the lower classes and those who, on account of
+their ill-repute, would be easily recognised to be diabolic
+agents, were alone incriminated. But as the excitement increased
+others of higher rank were pointed out. A _black_ man was
+introduced on the stage in the form of an Indian of terrible
+aspect and portentous dimensions, who had threatened the
+christianising colonists with extermination for intruding their
+faith upon the reluctant heathen. In May 1692, a new governor,
+Sir William Phipps, arrived with a new charter (the old one
+had been suspended) from England; this official, far from
+discouraging the existing prejudices, urged the local authorities
+on to greater extravagance. The examinations were conducted in
+the ordinary and most approved manner, the Lord's Prayer and the
+secret marks being the infallible tests. Towards the end of May
+two women, Bridget Bishop and Susannah Martin, were hanged.
+
+  [157] A phenomenon of apparently the same sort as that which
+  was of such frequent occurrence in the Middle Age and in the
+  seventeenth century, is said to have been lately occupying
+  considerable attention in the South of France. The _Courrier
+  des Alpes_ narrates an extraordinary scene in one of the
+  churches in the _Commune_ of Morzine, among the women, on
+  occasion of the visitation of the bishop of the district. It
+  seems that the malady in question attacks, for the most
+  part, the female population, and the patients are
+  confidently styled, and asserted to be, _possessed_. It
+  'produces all the effects of madness, without having its
+  character,' and is said to baffle all the resources of
+  medical science, which is ignorant of its nature. There had
+  been an intermission of the convulsions for some time, but
+  they have now reappeared with greater violence than
+  ever.--_The Times_ newspaper, June 6, 1864.
+
+On June 2, a formal commission sat, before which the most
+ridiculous evidence was gravely given and as gravely received.
+John Louder deposed against Bridget Bishop, 'that upon some
+little controversy with Bishop about her fowls going well to bed,
+he did awake in the night by moonlight, and did see clearly the
+likeness of this woman grievously oppressing him, in which
+miserable condition she held him unable to help himself till next
+day. He told Bishop of this, but she denied it, and threatened
+him very much. Quickly after this, being at home on a Lord's day
+with the doors shut about him, he saw a black pig approach him,
+at which he going to kick, it vanished away. Immediately after
+sitting down he saw a black thing jump in at the window and come
+and stand before him. The body was like that of a monkey, the
+feet like a cock's, but the face much like that of a man.[158] He
+being so extremely affrighted that he could not speak, this
+monster spoke to him and said, "I am a messenger sent unto you,
+for I understand that you are in some trouble of mind, and if you
+will be ruled by me you shall want for nothing in this world."
+Whereupon he endeavoured to clap his hands upon it, but he could
+feel no substance; and it jumped out of window again, but
+immediately came in by the porch (though the doors were shut) and
+said, "You had better take my counsel." He then struck at it with
+a stick, and struck only the ground and broke the stick. The arm
+with which he struck was presently disabled, and it vanished
+away. He presently went out at the back door, and spied this
+Bishop in her orchard going towards her house, but he had no
+power to set one foot forward to her; whereupon, returning into
+the house, he was immediately accosted by the monster he had seen
+before, which goblin was now going to fly at him; whereat he
+cried out, "The whole armour of God be between me and you!" so it
+sprung back and flew over the apple-tree, shaking many apples off
+the tree in its flying over. At its leap, it flung dirt with its
+feet against the stomach of the man, whereupon he was then struck
+dumb, and so continued for three days together.' Another witness
+declared in court; that, 'being in bed on the Lord's day, at
+night he heard a scrambling at the window; whereat he then saw
+Susanna Martin come in and jump down upon the floor. She took
+hold of this deponent's foot, and, drawing his body into a heap,
+she lay upon him nearly two hours, in all which time he could
+neither speak nor stir. At length, when he could begin to move,
+he laid hold on her hand, and, pulling it up to his mouth, he bit
+some of her fingers, as he judged into the bone; whereupon she
+went from the chamber down stairs out at the door,' &c.
+
+  [158] 'Rara avis in terris.' A mongrel and anomalous species
+  like the German _Meerkatzen_--monkey-cats.
+
+On July 19 five women, and on August 19, six persons, were sent
+to the gallows, among whom was Mr. George Burroughs, minister,
+who had provoked his judges by questioning the very existence of
+witchcraft. At the last moments he so favourably impressed the
+assembled spectators by an eloquent address, that Dr. Mather, who
+was present, found it necessary to prevent the progress of a
+reactionary feeling by asserting that the criminal was no
+regularly ordained minister, and the devil has often been
+transformed into an angel of light. So transparently iniquitous
+and absurd had their mode of procedure become, that one of the
+subordinates in the service of the authorities, whose office it
+was to arrest the accused, refused to perform any longer his
+hateful office, and being himself denounced as an accomplice, he
+sought safety in flight. He was captured and executed as a
+recusant and wizard. Eight sorcerers suffered the extreme penalty
+of the law on September 22. Giles Gory, a few days before,
+indignantly refusing to plead, was 'pressed to death,' an
+accustomed mode of punishing obstinate prisoners; and in the
+course of this torture, it is said, when the tongue of the victim
+was forced from his mouth in the agony of pain, the presiding
+sheriff forced it back with his cane with much _sang froid_. At
+this stage in the proceedings, the magistrates considered that a
+justificatory memoir ought to be published for the destruction of
+twenty persons of both sexes, and, at the express desire of the
+governor, Cotton Mather drew up an Apology in the form of a
+treatise, 'More Wonders of the Invisible World,' in which the
+Salem, executions are justified by the precedent of similar and
+notorious instances in the mother-country, as well as by the
+universally accepted doctrines of various eminent authors of all
+ages and countries. Increase Mather, Principal of Harvard
+College, was also directed to solve the question whether the
+devil could sometimes assume the shape of a saint to effect his
+particular design. The reverend author resolved it affirmatively
+in a learned treatise, which he called (a seeming plagiarism)
+'Cases of Conscience concerning Witchcraft and Evil Spirits
+personating Men,' an undertaking prompted by an unforeseen and
+disagreeable circumstance. The wife of a minister, one of the
+most active promoters of the prosecution, was involved in the
+indiscriminate charges of the informers, who were beginning to
+aim at more exalted prey. The minister, alarmed at the unexpected
+result of his own agitation, was now convinced of the falseness
+of the whole proceeding. It was a fortunate occurrence. From that
+time the executions ceased.[159]
+
+  [159] If, however, individuals of the human species were at
+  length exempt from the penalty of death, those of the canine
+  species were sacrificed, perhaps vicariously. Two dogs,
+  convicted, as it is reported, of being accessories, were
+  solemnly hanged!
+
+The dangerously increasing class of informers who, like the
+'delatores' of the early Roman Empire, made a lucrative
+profession by their baseness, and spared not even reluctant or
+recusant magistrates themselves, more than anything else, was the
+cause of the termination of the trials. If they would preserve
+their own lives, or at least their reputations, the authorities
+and judges found it was necessary at once to check the progress
+of the infection. About one hundred and fifty witches or wizards
+were still under arrest (two hundred more being about to be
+arrested), when Governor Phipps having been recalled by the Home
+Government, was induced by a feeling of interest or justice to
+release the prisoners, to the wonder and horror of the people.
+From this period a reaction commenced. Those who four years
+before originated the trials suddenly became objects of hatred or
+contempt. Even the clergy, who had taken a leading part in them,
+became unpopular. In spite of the strenuous attempts of Dr.
+Cotton Mather and his disciples to revive the agitation, the tide
+of public opinion or feeling had set the other way, and people
+began to acknowledge the insufficiency of the evidence and the
+possible innocence of the condemned. Public fasts and prayers
+were decreed throughout the colony. Judges and juries emulated
+one another in admitting a misgiving 'that we were sadly deluded
+and mistaken.' Dr. Mather was less fickle and less repentant. In
+one of his treatises on the subject, recounting some of the
+signs and proofs of the actual crime, he declares: 'Nor are these
+the tenth part of the prodigies that fell out among the
+inhabitants of New England. _Fleshy_ people may burlesque these
+things: but when hundreds of the most solemn people, in a country
+where they have as much mother-wit certainly as the rest of
+mankind, know them to be true, nothing but the froward spirit of
+Sadduceeism can question them. I have not yet (he confidently
+asserts) mentioned so much as one thing that will not be
+justified, if it be required, by the oaths of more considerate
+persons than any that can ridicule these odd phenomena.'[160]
+
+  [160] _Narratives of Sorcery and Magic_, chap. xxxi. The
+  faith of the Fellow of Harvard College, we may be inclined
+  to suppose, was quickened in proportion to his doubts. To do
+  him justice, he admitted that _some_ of the circumstances
+  alleged might be exaggerated or even imaginary.
+
+So ended the last of public and judicial persecutions of
+considerable extent for witchcraft in Christendom. As far as the
+superior intellects were concerned, philosophy could now dare to
+reaffirm that reason 'must be our last judge and guide in
+everything.' Yet Folly, like Dulness, 'born a goddess, never
+dies;' and many of the higher classes must have experienced some
+silent regrets for an exploded creed which held the reality of
+the constant personal interference of the demons in human
+affairs. The fact that the great body of the people of every
+country in Europe remained almost as firm believers as their
+ancestors down to the present age, hardly needs to be insisted
+on; that theirs was a _living_ faith is evidenced in the
+ever-recurring popular outbreaks of superstitious ignorance,
+resulting both in this country and on the Continent often in the
+deaths of the objects of their diabolic fear.
+
+Such arguments as those of Webster in England, of Becker and
+Thomasius in Germany, on the special subject of witchcraft, and
+the general arguments of Locke or of Bayle, could be addressed
+only to the few.[161] Nor indeed would it be philosophical to
+expect that the vulgar should be able to penetrate an inveterate
+superstition that recently had been universally credited by the
+learned world.
+
+  [161] Dr. Balthazar Becker, theological professor at
+  Amsterdam, published his heretical work in Dutch, under the
+  title of 'The World Bewitched, or a Critical Investigation
+  of the commonly-received Opinion respecting Spirits, their
+  Nature, Power, and Acts, and all those extraordinary Feats
+  which Men are said to perform through their Aid;' 1691. 'He
+  founds his arguments on two grand principles--that from
+  their very nature spirits cannot act upon material beings,
+  and that the Scriptures represent the devil and his
+  satellites as shut up in the prison of hell. To explain away
+  the texts which militate against his system, evidently cost
+  him much labour and perplexity. His interpretations, for the
+  most part, are similar to those still relied on by the
+  believers in his doctrine' (Note by Murdock in Mosheim's
+  _Institutes of Ecclesiastical History_). The usually candid
+  Mosheim notices, apparently with contempt, '"The World
+  Bewitched," a prolix and copious work, in which he perverts
+  and explains away, with no little ingenuity indeed, but with
+  no less audacity, whatever the sacred volume relates of
+  persons possessed by evil spirits, and of the power of
+  demons, and maintains that the miserable being whom the
+  sacred writers call Satan and the devil, together with his
+  ministers, is bound with everlasting chains in hell, so that
+  he cannot thence go forth to terrify mortals and to plot
+  against the righteous.' Balthazar Becker, one of the most
+  meritorious of the opponents of diabolism, was deposed from
+  his ministerial office by an ecclesiastical synod, and
+  denounced as an atheist. His position, and the boldness of
+  his arguments, excited extraordinary attention and
+  animosity, and 'vast numbers' of Lutheran divines arose to
+  confute his atheistical heresy. The impunity which he
+  enjoyed from the vengeance of the devil (he had boldly
+  challenged the deity of hell to avenge his overturned
+  altars) was explained by the orthodox divines to be owing to
+  the superior cunning of Satan, who was certain that he would
+  be in the end the greatest gainer by unbelief. Christ.
+  Thomasius, professor of jurisprudence, was the author of
+  several works against the popular prejudice between the
+  years 1701 and 1720. He is considered by Ennemoser to have
+  been able to effect more from his professional position than
+  the humanely-minded Becker. But, after all, the overthrow of
+  the diabolic altars was caused much more by the discoveries
+  of science than by all the writings of literary
+  philosophers. Even in Southern Europe and in Spain (as far
+  as was possible in that intolerant land) reason began to
+  exhibit some faint signs of existence; and Benito Feyjoo,
+  whose Addisonian labours in the eighteenth century in the
+  land of the Inquisition deserve the gratitude of his
+  countrymen (in his _Teatro Critico_), dared to raise his
+  voice, however feeble, in its behalf.
+
+The cessation of legal procedure against witches was negative
+rather than positive: the enactments in the statute-books were
+left unrepealed, and so seemed not to altogether discountenance a
+still somewhat doubtful prejudice. It was so late as in the ninth
+year of the reign of George II., 1736, that the Witch Act of 1604
+was formally and finally repealed. By a tardy exertion of sense
+and justice the Legislature then enacted that, for the future, no
+prosecutions should be instituted on account of witchcraft,
+sorcery, conjuration, enchantment, &c., against any person or
+persons. Unfortunately for the credit of civilisation, it would
+be easy to enumerate a long list of _illegal_ murders both before
+and since 1736. One or two of the most remarkable cases plainly
+evincing, as Scott thinks, that the witch-creed 'is only asleep,
+and might in remote corners be again awakened to deeds of blood,'
+are too significant not to be briefly referred to. In 1712 Jane
+Wenham, a poor woman belonging to the village of Walkern, in the
+county of Hertford, was solemnly found guilty by the jury on the
+evidence of sixteen witnesses, of whom three were clergymen;
+Judge Powell presiding. She was condemned to death as a witch in
+the usual manner; but was reprieved on the representation of the
+judge. She had been commonly known in the neighbourhood of her
+home as a malicious witch, who took great pleasure in afflicting
+farmers' cattle and in effecting similar mischief. The incumbent
+of Walkern, the Rev. Mr. Gardiner, fully shared the prejudice of
+his parishioners; and, far from attempting to dispel, he entirely
+concurred with, their suspicions. A warrant was obtained from the
+magistrate, Sir Henry Chauncy, for the arrest of the accused: and
+she was brought before that local official; depositions were
+taken, and she was searched for 'marks.' The vicar of Ardley, a
+neighbouring village, tested her guilt or innocence with the
+Lord's Prayer, which was repeated incorrectly: by threats and
+other means he forced the confession that she was indeed an agent
+of the devil, and had had intercourse with him.
+
+But, even in the middle of the eighteenth century, witches were
+occasionally tried and condemned by judicial tribunals. In the
+year 1749, Maria or Emma Renata, a nun in the convent of
+Unterzell, near Wuerzburg, was condemned by the spiritual, and
+executed by the civil, power. By the clemency of the prince, the
+proper death by burning alive was remitted to the milder sentence
+of beheading, and afterwards burning the corpse to ashes: for no
+vestige of such an accursed criminal should be permitted to
+remain after death. When a young girl Maria Renata had been
+seduced to witchcraft by a military officer, and was accustomed
+to attend the witch-assemblies. In the convent she practised her
+infernal arts in bewitching her sister-nuns.[162] About the same
+time a nun in the south of France was subjected to the barbarous
+imputation and treatment of a witch: Father Girard, discovering
+that his mistress had some extraordinary scrofulous marks,
+conceived the idea of proclaiming to the world that she was
+possessed of the _stigmata_--impressions of the marks of the
+nails and spear on the crucified Lord, believed to be reproduced
+on the persons of those who, like the celebrated St. Francis,
+most nearly assimilated their lives to His. The Jesuits eagerly
+embraced an opportunity of producing a miracle which might
+confound their Jansenist rivals, whose sensational miracles were
+threatening to eclipse their own.[163] Sir Walter Scott states
+that the last judicial sentence of death for witchcraft in
+Scotland was executed in 1722, when Captain David Ross, sheriff
+of Sutherland, condemned a woman to the stake. As for illegal
+persecution, M. Garinet ('Histoire de la Magie en France') gives
+a list of upwards of twenty instances occurring in France between
+the years 1805 and 1818. In the latter year three tribunals were
+occupied with the trials of the murderers.
+
+  [162] Ennemoser relates the history of this witch from 'The
+  Christian address at the burning of Maria Renata, of the
+  convent of Unterzell, who was burnt on June 21, 1749, which
+  address was delivered to a numerous multitude, and
+  afterwards printed by command of the authorities.' The
+  preacher earnestly insisted upon the divine sanction and
+  obligation of the Mosaic law, 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch
+  to live,' which was taken as the text; and upon the fact
+  that, so far from being abolished by Christianity, it was
+  made more imperative by the Christian Church.
+
+  [163] The victim of the pleasure, and afterwards of the
+  ambition, of Father Girard, is known as La Cadiere. She was a
+  native of Toulon, and when young had witnessed the
+  destructive effects of the plague which devastated that city
+  in 1720. Amidst the confusion of society she was
+  distinguished by her purity and benevolence. The story of La
+  Cadiere and Father Girard is eloquently narrated by M.
+  Michelet in _La Sorciere_. The convulsions of the Flagellants
+  of the thirteenth century, and of the Protestant Revivalists
+  of the present day, exhibit on a large scale the paroxysms of
+  the French convents and the Dutch orphan-houses of the
+  seventeenth century. Nor is diabolical 'possession' yet
+  extinct in Christendom, if the reports received from time to
+  time from the Continent are to be credited. Recently, a
+  convent of Augustinian nuns at Loretto, on the authority of
+  the _Corriere delle Marche_ of Ancona, was attacked in a
+  similar way to that of Loudun. A vomiting of needles and
+  pins, the old diabolical torture, and a strict examination of
+  the accused, followed.
+
+If a belief should be entertained that the now 'vulgar' ideas of
+witchcraft have been long obsolete in England, it would be
+destroyed by a perusal of a few of the newspapers and periodicals
+of the last hundred years; and a sufficiently voluminous work
+might be occupied with the achievements of modern Sidrophels, and
+the records of murders or mutilations perpetrated by an ignorant
+mob.[164]
+
+  [164] Without noticing other equally notorious instances of
+  recent years, it may be enough (to dispel any such possible
+  illusion) to transcribe a paragraph from an account in _The
+  Times_ newspaper of Sept. 24, 1863. 'It is a somewhat
+  singular fact,' says the writer, describing a late notorious
+  witch-persecution in the county of Essex, 'that nearly all
+  the sixty or seventy persons concerned in the outrage which
+  resulted in the death of the deceased _were of the small
+  tradesmen class_, and that none of the agricultural
+  labourers were mixed up in the affair. It is also stated
+  that none of those engaged were in any way under the
+  influence of liquor. The whole disgraceful transaction arose
+  out of a deep belief in witchcraft, which possesses to a
+  lamentable extent the tradespeople and the lower orders of
+  the district.' Nor does it appear that the village of
+  Hedingham (the scene of the witch-murder) claims a
+  superiority in credulity over other villages in Essex or in
+  England. The instigator and chief agent in the Hedingham
+  case was the wife of an innkeeper, who was convinced that
+  she had been bewitched by an old wizard of reputation in the
+  neighbourhood: and the mode of punishment was the popular
+  one of drowning or suffocating in the nearest pond. Scraps
+  of written papers found in the hovel of the murdered wizard
+  revealed the numerous applications by lovers, wives, and
+  other anxious inquirers. Amongst other recent revivals of
+  the 'Black Art' in Southern Europe already referred to, the
+  inquisition at Rome upon a well-known English or American
+  'spiritualist,' when, as we learn from himself, he was
+  compelled to make a solemn abjuration that he had not
+  surrendered his soul to the devil, is significant.
+
+Nor would it be safe to assume, with some writers, that
+diabolism, as a vulgar prejudice, is now entirely extirpated from
+Protestant Christendom, and survives only in the most orthodox
+countries of Catholicism or in the remoter parts of northern or
+eastern Europe. Superstition, however mitigated, exists even in
+the freer Protestant lands of Europe and America; and if
+Protestants are able to smile at the religious creeds or
+observances of other sects, they may have, it is probable,
+something less pernicious, but perhaps almost as absurd, in their
+own creed.[165] But, after a despotism of fifteen centuries,
+Christendom has at length thrown off the hellish yoke, whose
+horrid tyranny was satiated with innumerable holocausts. The once
+tremendous power of the infernal arts is remembered by the higher
+classes of society of the present age only in their proverbial
+language, but it is indelibly graven in the common literature of
+Europe. With the savage peoples of the African continent and of
+the barbarous regions of the globe, witchcraft or sorcery, under
+the name of Fetishism, flourishes with as much vigour and with as
+destructive effects as in Europe in the sixteenth century; and
+every traveller returning from Eastern or Western Africa, or from
+the South Pacific, testifies to the prevalence of the practice of
+horrid and bloody rites of a religious observance consisting of
+charms and incantations. With those peoples that have no further
+conception of the religious sentiment there obtains for the most
+part, at least, the magical use of sorcery.[166] Superstition,
+ever varying, at some future date may assume, even in Europe, a
+form as pernicious or irrational as any of a past or of the
+present age; for in every age 'religion, which should most
+distinguish us from beasts, and ought most peculiarly to elevate
+us as rational creatures above brutes, is that wherein men
+often appear most irrational and more senseless than beasts
+themselves.'[167]
+
+  [165] A modern philosopher has well illustrated this obvious
+  truth (_Natural History of Religion_, sect. xii.). 'The age
+  of superstition,' says an essayist of some notoriety, with
+  perfect truth, 'is not past; nor,' he adds, a more
+  questionable thesis, 'ought we to wish it past.' Some of the
+  most eminent writers (e.g. Plutarch, Francis Bacon, Bayle,
+  Addison) have rightly or wrongly agreed to consider
+  fanatical superstition more pernicious than atheism. When it
+  is considered that the scientific philosophy of Aristotle,
+  of more than 2,000 years ago, was revived at a comparatively
+  recent date, it may be difficult not to believe in a
+  _cyclic_ rather than really progressive course of human
+  ideas, at least in metaphysics. The fact, remarked by
+  Macaulay, that the two principal sections of Christendom in
+  Europe remain very nearly in the limits in which they were
+  in the sixteenth, or in the middle of the seventeenth
+  century, is incontestable. Nor, indeed, are present facts
+  and symptoms so adverse, as is generally supposed, to the
+  probability of an ultimate reaction in favour of Catholic
+  doctrine and rule, even among the Teutonic peoples, in the
+  revolutions to which human ideas are continually subject.
+
+  [166] Among the numerous evidences of recent travellers may
+  be specially mentioned that of the well-known traveller R. F.
+  Burton (_The Lake Regions of Central Africa_) for the
+  practices of the Eastern Africans. On the African continent
+  and elsewhere, as was the case amongst the ancient Jews, the
+  demons are propitiated by human sacrifices. To what extent
+  witch-superstition obtains among the Hindus, the historian of
+  British India bears witness. 'The belief of witchcraft and
+  sorcery,' says Mr. Mill, 'continues universally prevalent,
+  and is every day the cause of the greatest enormities. It not
+  unfrequently happens that Brahmins tried for murder before
+  the English judges assign as their motive to the crime that
+  the murdered individual had enchanted them. No fewer than
+  five unhappy persons in one district were tried and executed
+  for witchcraft so late as the year 1792. The villagers
+  themselves assume the right of sitting in judgment on this
+  imaginary offence, and their sole instruments of proof are
+  the most wretched of all incantations (_History of British
+  India_, book ii. 7). A certain instinctive or traditional
+  dread of evil spirits excites the terrors of those peoples
+  who have no firm belief in the providence or existence of a
+  benevolent Divinity. Even among the Chinese--the least
+  religious nation in the world, and whose trite formula of
+  scepticism, 'Religions are many: Reason is one,' expresses
+  their indifferentism to every form of religion--there exists
+  a sort of demoniacal fear (Huc's _Chinese Empire_, xix.). The
+  diabolic and magic superstitions of the Moslem are displayed
+  in Sale's _Koran_ and Lane's _Modern Egyptians_.
+
+  [167] _Essay concerning the Human Understanding_, book iv.
+  18.
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+Transcriber's notes
+
+   Page 27: Deleted extra "the"
+
+   Page 39: Removed comma after "Scandinavians."
+
+   Page 90: Added missing quotation mark.
+
+   Page 107: Corrected typo "Hutchison's."
+
+   Page 165: Corrected typo "transsubstantiated."
+
+   Page 278: Added period after "xix."
+
+
+
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