Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/409

 RIVAL T1IAUMATURGY. 393 punished those who merely wore on their necks amulets for the cure of tertian and quartan fevers. The darker practices of magic were repressed with relentless rigor. To perform or procure the per- formance of impious nocturnal rites with the object of bewitching any one was punished with the severest penalties known to the Roman law — crucifixion or the beasts. For immolating a man or offering human blood in sacrifices the penalty was simple death or the beasts, according to the station of the offender. Accomplices in magic practices were subjected to crucifixion or the beasts, while magicians themselves were burned alive. The knowledge of the art was forbidden as well as its exercise ; all books of magic were to be burned, and their owners subjected to deporta- tion or capital punishment, according to their rank. When the cross became the emblem of salvation, it of course passed out of use as an instrument of punishment ; with the abolition of the arena the beasts were no longer available; but the fagot and stake remained, and for long centuries continued to be the punish- ment for more or less harmless impostors.* With the triumph of Christianity the circle of forbidden prac- tices was enormously enlarged. A new sacred magic was intro- duced which superseded and condemned as sorcery and demon- worship a vast array of observances and beliefs, which had become an integral and almost ineradicable part of popular life. The struggle between the rival thaumaturgies is indicated already in Tertullian's complaint, that when in droughts the Christians by prayers and mortifications had extorted rain from God, the credit was given to the sacrifices offered to Jove; he challenges the pagans to bring before their own tribunals a demoniac, when a Christian will force the possessing spirit to confess himself a demon. The triumph of the new system was typified in the encounter between St. Peter and Simon Magus, when the flight through the air of the heathen theurgist was arrested by the prayers of the Christian, and he fell with a disastrous crash, break- ing a hip-bone and both heels. If, as conjectured by some modern N. H. xxviii. 4.— Liv. xxxix. 41.— Tacit. Annal. 11. 32; iv. 22, 52; xvi. 28-31. — Philost. Vit. Apollon. iv. 35.— Spartian. Anton. Caracall. 5.— Lib. XLvn. Dig. viii. 14.— Pauli Sententt. Receptt. v. xxiii. 14-18.
 * Legg. xn. Tabul. Tab. viii.— Seneca? Qusest. Natural. Lib. iv. c. 7.— Plin.