Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/434

 4:18 SORCERY AND OCCULT ARTS. the belief in magic powers that the Church conceded the dissolu- tion of the indissoluble sacrament of matrimony when the con- summation of marriage was prevented by the arts of the sorcerer, and exorcisms and prayers and almsgiving and other ecclesiastical remedies proved powerless for three years to overcome the power of Satan. Guibert of Cogent relates, with pardonable pride, that although this occurred when his father and mother were married, through the malice of a stepmother, yet his mother resisted all persuasion to avail herself of a divorce, although the impediment continued for seven years, and the spell was broken at last, not by priestly ministrations, but by an ancient wise-woman. Such £l cause was alleged when Philip Augustus abandoned his bride, Ingeburga of Denmark, on their marriage-day, and Bishop Durand, in his Sjjeculum Juris, tells us that these cases were of daily occur- rence. Even so enlightened a man as John of Salisbury airs his learning in describing all the varieties of magic, and is careful to define that if sorcerers kill men with the violence of their spells it is through the permission of God ; while Peter of Blois, if he shows himself superior to the vulgar belief in omens, admits the potency of Satanic suggestiveness in the darker forms of magic* With this universal belief in sorcery and in its diabolic origin, there seems to have been no thought of enforcing the severity of the laws. About 1030, Poppo, Archbishop of Treves, sent to a nun a piece of his cloak of which to make him a pair of shoes to be worn in saying mass. She bewitched them so that when he gist, vil 21. — Reginon. de Discip. Eccles. ir. 347 sqq. — Burchardi Deciet. Lib. x., Lib. xix. c. 5. — Ivon. Decreti P. xi. — Ivon. Panorm. vi. 117; vm. 61 sqq. — P. II. Decret. caus. xxxrn. Q. 1, c. 4. — Mall. Maleficar. P. i. Q. 8. — Guibert. No- viogeut. de Vita sua i. 12. — Rigord. de Gest. Phil. Aug. ann. 1193. — Durandi Specul. Juris Lib. iv., Partic. iv., Rubr. de Frigidis, etc. — Johann. Saresberiens. Pol)'crat. ii. 9-12. — Pet. Blesens. Epist. 65. The belief in "ligatures" is one of the oldest and most universal of supersti- tions. Herodotus (n. 181) relates that Amasis who reigned in Egypt about the middle of the sixth century b. c, found himself thus afflicted v.iien he mar- ried the Cyrenean princess Ladice. Notwithstanding the political importance of maintaining the alliance cemented by the marriage, he accused her of employ- ing sorcery and threatened her with death. In her extremity she made a vow in the temple of Venus to send a statue of the goddess to Cyrene. Her prayer was heard and her life was saved.
 * Synod. Patricii c. 16 (Haddan and Stubbs, II. 329).— Gregor. PP. VII. Re-