Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/445

 SPAIN. 429 their property sequestrated, but at the place of execution Petro- nille had exculpated them, declaring them innocent on the peril of her soul. They hastened to Paris and purged themselves, and the Parlement, May 8, 1314, ordered the Seneschal of Poitou to withdraw the proceedings and release the property. Sorcery was now beginning to be energetically suppressed, and henceforth we shall see it occupy the peculiar position of a crime justiciable by both the ecclesiastical and secular courts.* Spain had been exposed to a peculiarly active infection. The fatalistic belief of the Saracens naturally predisposed them to the arts of divination ; they cultivated the occult sciences more zeal- ously than any other race, and they were regarded throughout Europe as the most skilled teachers and practitioners of sorcery. In the school of Cordoba there were two professors of astrology, three of necromancy, pyromancy, and geomancy, and one of the Ars Notoria, all of whom lectured daily. Arabic bibliographers enumerate seven thousand seven hundred writers on the interpre- tation of dreams, and as many more who won distinction as ex- pounders of goetic magic. Intercourse with the Saracens natu- rally stimulated among the Christians the thirst for forbidden knowledge, and as the Christian boundaries advanced, there was left in the conquered territories a large subject population allowed to retain its religion, and propagate the beliefs which had so irre- sistible an attraction. It was in vain that, in 345, Eamiro I. of Asturias burned a large number of sorcerers, including many Jew- ish astrologers. Such exhibitions of severity were spasmodic, while the denunciation of superstitions in the councils occasionally held indicate the continued prevalence of the evil without the appli- cation of an effective remedy. Queen Urraca of Castile, in the early part of the twelfth century, describes her former husband, Alonso el Batallador of Aragon, as wholly given to divination and the augury of birds, and about 1220, Pedro Muiioz, Archbishop of San- tiago, was so defamed for necromancy that by order of Honorius III. he was relegated to the hermitage of San Lorenzo. The an- cient Wisigothic Law, or Fuero Juzgo, was for a time almost lost sigkt of in the innumerable local fueros which sprang up, until in nus).— Beaumanoir, Coutumes du Beauvoisis, Cap. xi. §§ 25, 26.— Olim, II. 205, 619.— Vaissette, IV. 17-1 81 Chron. Bardin,Ib. IV. Pr. 5.
 * Livres de Jostice et de Plet, pp. 177-83, 284 (Dig. xlviii. viii. 3., Marcia-