Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/443

 SECULAR INDIFFERENCE. 427 Still more remarkable is the indifference of secular jurists and lawgivers during the thirteenth century, when the jurisprudence of Europe was developing and assuming definite shape. In Eng- land there is a strong contrast with the Anglo-Saxon period in the silence respecting sorcery in Glanvill, Bracton, the Fleta, and Britton. The latter, in describing the circuits of the sheriffs, gives an elaborate enumeration of the offences about which they are to make inquisition, including renegades and misbelievers, but omit- ting sorcery, and the same omission is observable in the minute instructions given by Edward I. to the sheriffs in the Statute of Euddlan in 1283, although Peter, Bishop of Exeter, in his instruc- tions to confessors in 1287, mentions sorcerers and demon- worship- pers among the criminals to whom they are to assign penance. It is true that Horn's Myrror of Justice classes sorcery and heresy together as majestas, or treason to the King of Heaven, and we may assume that both were liable to the same penalty, though neither were actively prosecuted. It is the same with the mediai- val laws of Scotland as collected by Skene. The Iter Camerarii embodies detailed instructions for the inquests to be held by the royal chamberlain in his circuits, but in the long list of crimes and misdemeanors requiring investigation there is no allusion to sor- cery or divination.* It is nearly the same in French jurisprudence. The Conseil of Pierre de Fontaines and the so-called Etablissements of St. Louis contain no references to sorcery. The livres de Jostice et de Plet, though based on the Koman law, makes no mention of it in its long list of crimes and penalties, although incidentally an im- perial law is said to apply to those who slay by poisons or en- chantments. Beaumanoir, however, though he seems only to know of sorcery employed to excite love, tells us that it is wholly under ecclesiastical jurisdiction ; its practitioners err in the faith, and thus are justiciable by the Church, which summons them to abandon their errors, and in case of refusal condemns them as misbelievers. Then secular justice lays hold of them and inflicts death if it ap- 523-7). — Th. Cantimprat. Bonum universal. Lib. n. c. 56.— Praecept. Antiq. Ro- tomag. c. 109 (Bessin, Concil. Rotoinagens. II. 67, 76). — Durandi Specul. Juris Lib. rv. Partic. iv. Rubr. de Sortilegiis. — Synod. Andegavens. ann. 1294 c. 2 (D'Achery, I. 737).
 * Britton, ch. 29.— Owen's Laws and Institutes of Wales, II. 910-2.— P. Exon.