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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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