Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/451

 HERETICAL SORCERY. 435 thus in possession of a portion of the field, rapidly extended its jurisdiction. There was no limitation expressed when the pious Alfonse of Toulouse and his wife Jeanne, in 1270, at Aigues- mortes, when starting on the crusade of Tunis, issued letters-patent conceding that their servants and household should be answerable to the Inquisition for abjuration of the faith, heresy, magic, sor- cery, and perjury. It is doubtless to this extension of the inquisi- torial jurisdiction that we may attribute the increasing rigor which henceforth marked the persecution of sorcery.* Alexander's definition, it is true, had left open for discussion a tolerably wide and intricate class of questions as to the degree of heresy involved in the occult arts, but in time these came all to be decided " in favor of the faith." It was not simply the worship of demons and making pacts with Satan that were recognized as he- retical by the subtle casuistry of the inquisitors. A figurine to be effective required to be baptized, and this argued an heretical no- tion as to the sacrament of baptism, and the same was the case as to the sacrament of the altar in the various superstitious uses to which the Eucharist was put. Scarce any of the arts of the diviner in forecasting the future or in tracing stolen articles could be exercised without what the inquisitors assumed to be at least a tacit invocation of demons. For this, in fact, they had the author- ity of John of Salisbury, who, as early as the twelfth century, argued that all divination is an invocation of demons ; for if the operator offers no other sacrifice, he sacrifices his body in perform- ing the operation. This refinement was not reduced to practice, but in time the ingenious dilemma was invented that a man Avho invoked a demon, thinking it to be no sin, was a manifest heretic ; if he knew it to be a sin he was not a heretic, but was to be classed with heretics, while to expect a demon to tell the truth is the act of a heretic. To ask of a demon, even without adoration, that which depends upon the will of God, or of man, or upon the future, indicated heretical notions as to the power of demons. In short, as Sylvester Prierias says, it is not necessary to inquire into the motives of those who invoke demons — they are all heretics, real or presumptive. Love-potions and philtres, by a similar system of — C. 8, § 4, Sexto v. 2.— Chron. Bardin. ann. 1270 (Vaissette, IV. Pr. 5).
 * Raynald. ann. 1258, No. 23.— Pottliast. No. 17745, 18396.— Eymeric. p. 133.