Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/464

 448 SORCERY AND OCCULT ARTS. tory litany, composed of comminatory fragments from the psalms and prophets, recited by the officiating priest with his back to the altar, while the responses were given by the boys in the choir. The frightened bishop appealed to the University of Paris, which, after many months' deliberation, gravely decided that the position of the priest and the responses of the boys rendered the services suspect of incantation ; that imprecatory services are to be dreaded by those who give cause for them ; that they are not lightly to be used, espe- cially against a bishop who is ready for settlement in the courts, and that they ought not to be employed even against a contumacious bishop except in case of necessity arising from extreme peril. When, towards the close of the thirteenth century, the Inqui- sition succeeded in including sorcery within its jurisdiction, its or- ganizing faculty speedily laid down rules and formulas for the guidance of its members which aided largely in shaping the un- certain jurisprudence of the period and gave a decided impulse to the persecution of those who practised the forbidden arts. A manual of practice, which probably bears date about the year 1280, contains a form for the interrogation of the accused cover- ing all the details of sorcery as known at the time. This served as the foundation on which still more elaborate formulas were constructed by Bernard Gui and others. If space permitted, a re- production of these would present a tolerably complete picture of current superstitions, but I can only pause to call attention to one feature in them. The earliest draught contains no allusion to the nocturnal excursions of the " good women " whence the Witches' Sabbat was derived, while the later ones introduce an interroga- tion concerning it, showing that during the interval it was attract- ing increased attention. It is further noteworthy that none of the formulas embrace questions concerning practices of vulgar witch- craft, which in the fifteenth and succeeding centuries, as we shall see, furnished nearly the whole basis of prosecutions for sorcery, f pana, T. XVIII. p. 19), — Wright, Proceedings against Dame Alice Kyteler, pp. xxxii.-xxxiii. — D'Argentre, I. n. 344-5. t MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, Xo. 14930 fol. 229-30.— Doat, XXXVII. 258.- Vaissette, III. Pr. 374.— Bern. Guidon. Pract. P. v. Molinier (Etudes sur quelques MSS. des Bibliotheques dltalie, Paris, 1887,
 * Concil. Toletan. XVII. arm. 694. c. v.— Amador de los Rios (Re vista de Es-