Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/481

 STIMULUS OF BELIEF. 465 those who denied that sorcery, incantations, and the invocation of demons possessed the powers claimed for them by sorcerers.* Like all other efforts to repress sorcery, this of course only served to give it fresh significance and importance. The decla- ration that it was erroneous to doubt the reality of sorcery and its effects became a favorite argument of the demonologists. Gerson declared that to call in question the existence and activity of de- mons was not only impious and heretical, but destructive to all human and political society. Sprenger concludes that the denial of the existence of witchcraft is not in itself heresy, as it may pro- ceed from ignorance, but such ignorance in an ecclesiastic is in itself highly culpable ; such denial is sufficient to justify vehement suspicion of heresy, calling for prosecution, and we have seen what was the significance of " vehement suspicion " in inquisitorial prac- tice, f With popular credulity thus stimulated, the insanity of Charles VI. afforded a tempting opportunity for charlatans to market their wares. In 1397 the Marechal de Sancerre sent to Paris from Guyenne two Augustinian hermits who had great reputation for skill in the occult sciences, and who promised relief. They pro- nounced the royal patient a victim of sorcery, and after some incantations he recovered his senses, but it proved only a lucid interval, and in a week he relapsed. This they charged upon the royal barber and a porter of the Duke of Orleans, who were arrested, but nothing could be proved against them, and they were discharged. For months the two impostors led a joyous life with ample fees, but at last they were compelled to name the author of the sorceries, and this time they had the audacity to pitch upon the king's brother, Louis of Orleans himself. This grew serious, and on being threatened with torture they confessed themselves sorcerers, apostates, and invokers of demons. They were accord- ingly tried, condemned, degraded from the priesthood, and mer- cifully beheaded and quartered. Undeterred by this example, in 1403 a priest named Ives Gilemme, who boasted that he had three de Python. Contractu.— Basin de Artibus Magise.— Pegnae Comment, in Eymeric. p. 346. t Gersoni Tract, de Error, circa Artem Magicam (Opp. Ed. 1494, xxi. G-H).— Mall. Maleficar. P. i. Q. 1, 8. III.— 30
 * D'Ar^entrg I. n. 154. Cf. Bodin. de Magor. Deinonoman. — Murner Tract,