Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/283

 THE TEMPLARS. 267 prudence of the later Middle Ages will attach the slightest weight to confessions obtained under such conditions. We have seen, in the case of the Stedingers, how easy it was to create belief in the most groundless charges. We have seen, under Conrad of Mar- burg, how readily the fear of death and the promise of absolution would cause nobles of birth and station to convict themselves of the foulest and most impossible offences. We shall see, when we come to consider persecution for witchcraft, with what facility the rack and strappado procured from victims of all ranks confessions of participating in the Sabbat, and of holding personal intercourse with demons, of charming away harvests, of conjuring hail-storms, and of killing men and cattle with spells. Riding through the air on a broomstick, and commerce with incubi and succubi rest upon evidence of precisely the same character and of much greater weight than that upon w r hich the Templars were convicted, for the witch was sure of burning if she confessed, and had a chance of escaping if she could endure the torture, while the Templar was threatened with death for obstinacy, and was promised immunity as a reward for confession. If we accept the evidence against the Templar we cannot reject it in the case of the witch. As the testimony thus has no intrinsic weight, the only scien- tific method of analyzing the affair is to sift the whole mass of confessions, and determine their credibility according to the in- ternal evidence w r hich they afford of being credible or otherwise. Several hundred depositions have reached us, taken in France, England, and Italy, for the most part naturally those incriminat- ing the Order, for the assertions of innocence were usually sup- pressed, and the most damaging witnesses were made the most of. These are sufficiently numerous to afford us ample material for estimating the character of the proof on which the Order was condemned, and to obtain from them a reasonable approximation to the truth requires only the application of a few tests suggested by common-sense. There is, firstly, the extreme inherent improbability that a rich, Christ and spit on the cross, and had been taught that the gratification of un- natural lust was permissible. Yet this confession, so evidently the result of tort- ure, winds up with the customary formula that he swore it was not the result of force or fear of prison or torture. — Proces, II. 374-5.