Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/446

 430 SORCERY AND OCCULT ARTS. the eleventh century it was rehabilitated by Fernando I. of Cas- tile. In Aragon, Jayme I., el Conquistador, in the thirteenth cen- tury, when recasting the Fuero of Aragon and granting the Fuero of Valencia, introduced penalties for sorcery similar to those of the Fuero Juzgo.* Thus the AVisigothic legislation was practical- ly in force until, about 1200, Alonzo the Wise, of Castile, issued his code known as the Siete Partidas, in which all branches of magic are treated as completely under the secular power and in a fashion singularly rationalistic. There is no allusion to heresy or to any spiritual offence involved in occult science, which is to be rewarded or punished as it is employed for good or evil. Astrology is one of the seven liberal arts ; its conclusions are drawn from the courses of the stars as expounded by Ptolemy and other sages ; when an astrologer is applied to for the recovery of lost or stolen goods, and designates where they are to be found, the party aggrieved has no recourse against him for the dishonor inflicted, because he has only answered in accordance with the rules of his art. But if he is a deceiver, who pretends to know that whereof he is ignorant, the complainant can have him punished as a common sorcerer. These sorcerers and diviners who pretend to reveal the future and the unknown by augury, or lots, or hydromancy, or crystallomancy, or by the head of a dead man, or the palm of a virgin, are deceivers. So are necromancers who work by the invocation of evil spirits, which is displeasing to God and injurious to man. Philtres and love-potions and figurines, to inspire desire or aversion, are also condemned as often causing death and permanent infirmity, and all these practitioners and cheats are to be put to death when duly convicted, while those who shelter them are to be banished. But those who use incantations for a good purpose, such as casting out devils from the possessed, or removing ligatures between married folk, or for dissolving a hail-cloud or fog which threatens the har- vests, or for destroying locusts or caterpillars, are not to be pun- ished, but rather to be rewarded.-f 392-3; T. XVIII. p. 6).— Concil Legionens. arm. 1012 c. 19; C. Compostellan. arm. 1031 c. 6; C. Coyacens. aim. 1050 c. 4; C. Compostellan. arm. 1056 c. 6 (Aguirre, IV. 388, 396, 405, 414).— Histor. Compostellan. Lib. i. c. lxiv.— Pelayo, Heterodoxos Espanoles, I. 590. t Partidas, P. vn. Tit. ix. 1. 17 ; Tit. xxiii. 11. 1, 2, 3.
 * Jose" Amador de los Rios (Revista de Espana, T. XVII. pp. 382, 384-5, 388,