Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/479

 SECULAR JURISDICTION. 4G3 Margot, who was pilloried and burned the same day ; but three of the experts thought that the pillory and banishment would suince for Marion. Her case was postponed till the 23d, when another consultation was held ; opinions remained unaltered, and as the majority was in favor of condemnation the prevot condemned her, and she was burned the next day. Both the victims may have been innocent, and the whole story may have been invented to avoid the repetition of the intolerable torture ; but, inevitable as was the result under the conditions of the trial, the judges mani- fested every disposition to deal fairly with the unfortunates in their hands, and could entertain no possible doubt as to the reality of the offence and of the apparition of the demon as described by Margot.* It is necessary to bear this in mind when estimating the conduct of the judges and inquisitors who sent thousands of un- fortunates to the stake in the next two centuries, for offences which to a modern mind are purely chimerical, for, according to the ju- risprudence of the age, no evidence could be more absolute than that on which rested the cruelly punished absurdities of witchcraft. Simultaneous with this case was the burning of a sorceress named Jeanette Neuve or Revergade, August 6, 1390, in Velay. Although she was tried and executed by the court of the Abbey of Saint-Chaffre, this was in its capacity as kaut-justicier, and not as a spiritual tribunal. A century later w r e should have found the case embroidered with full accounts of the Sabbat and of demon- worship, but the time had not yet arrived for this. Jeanette was a poor wandering crone who had come to Chadron, within the abbatial jurisdiction, and earned a livelihood by curing diseases with charms, to which she usually added the prescription of a pil- grimage to some shrine of local renown. She must have gained reputation as a wise- woman, for the Sire de Burzet, quarrelling with his wife and desiring reconciliation, came to her for a philtre. She gave him a potion of which he died, and her fate was sealed.f About this period may be dated a fresh impulse given to the belief in sorcery, whose continued growth during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was destined to produce results so deplorable, t Chassaing, Spicilegiurn Brivatense, pp. 438-46.
 * Registre Criminel du CMtelet de Paris, I. 332-63 (Paris, 1861).