Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/435

 ACCUSATIONS OF SORCERY. 4 ly put them on he found himself dying of love for her. He resisted the desire and gave the shoes to one of his chief ecclesiastics, who experienced the same effect. The experiment was tried with like result on all the principal clergy of the cathedral, and when the evidence was overwhelming the fair offender was condemned simply to expulsion from the convent, while Poppo himself ex- piated his transient passion by a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. It was felt, however, that the discipline of the nunnery must be dan- gerously lax, and the other nuns were given the option of adopt- ing a stricter rule or of dispersion. They chose the latter, and were replaced with a body of monks. When, in 1074, a revolt in Cologne forced the archbishop to fly, it is related among the ex- cesses of the triumphant rebels that they threw from the walls and killed a woman defamed for having crazed a number of men by magic arts. That was regarded as a crime which three cen- turies later would have been a manifestation of praiseworthy zeal. About the same time a council in Bohemia warns the faithful not to have recourse in their troubles to sorcerers ; but it only pre- scribes confession and repentance and to abstain from a repetition of the offence.* Still, the accusation of sorcery was felt to be damaging, and as it w T as easy to bring and hard to disprove, it w^as bandied about somewhat recklessly. It w r as not enough for Berenger of Tours to be compelled to abjure his notions concerning transubstantia- tion, but he was stigmatized as the most expert of necromancers. In the bitter strife of Gregory VII. with the empire, when, in 1080, the Synod of Brescia deposed him and elected Wiberto of Bavenna as antipope, one of the reasons alleged against him was that he was a manifest necromancer — an art which he was sup- posed to have learned in Toledo. The manner in which partisan- ship availed itself of this method of attack is curiously illustrated by the opposing accounts given of Liutgarda, niece of Egilbert, Archbishop of Treves, at this period. He was a resolute imperial- ist, and accepted his pallium from Wiberto, after which he made Liutgarda abbess of a convent in his diocese. The account of his episcopate is written by a contemporary ; one MS., which is ller, Prager Concilien, p. xvi.
 * Gest. Treviror. Archiep. c. 19.— Lambert. Hersfeld. Annal. auu. 1074.— Ho-