Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/469

 PROPAGANDA OF JOHN XXII. 453 persuasive influence of torture they confessed that they had at first intended to use poison, but finding no opportunity for this they had recourse to figurines, in the fabrication of which they were skilled. They had made them under the invocation of «le- mons ; they could confine demons in rings and thus learn the se- crets of the past and of the future ; they could induce sickness, cause death, or prolong life by incantations, charms, and spells consist- ing simply of words. Of course they were condemned and exe- cuted, and John set to work vigorously to extirpate the abhorred race of sorcerers to which he had so nearly fallen a victim. We hear of proceedings against Kobert, Bishop of Aix, accused of having practised magic arts at Bologna; and John, regarding the East as the source whence this execrable science spread over Christendom, sought to attack it in its home. In 1318 he ordered the Dominican provincial in the Levant to appoint special inquis- itors for the purpose in all places subject to the Latin rite, and he called upon the Doge of Venice, the Prince of Achaia, and the Latin barons to lend their effective aid. He even wrote to the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Oriental archbishops, urging them to assist in the good work. Not satisfied with the implied jurisdiction conferred on the Inquisition by Alexander IT., in 1320 he had letters sent out by the Cardinal of S. Sabina formally conferring it fully on inquisitors and urging them to exercise it actively. Subsequent bulls stimulated still further the growing dread of magic by expressing his grief at the constant increase of the infection which was spreading throughout Christendom, and by ordering sorcerers to be publicly anathematized and punished as heretics and all books of magic lore to be burned. When he warned all baptized Christians not to enter into compacts with hell, or to imprison demons in rings or mirrors so as to penetrate the secrets of the future, and threatened all guilty of such prac- tices that, if they did not reform within eight days, they should be subject to the penalties of heresy, he took the most effective means to render the trade of the sorcerer profitable and to in- crease the number of his dupes. Apparently he became dissat- isfied with the response to these appeals, for in 1330 he deplored the continued existence of demon-worship and its affiliated errors ; he ordered the prelates and inquisitors to speedily bring to con- clusion all cases on hand and send the papers under seal to him