Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/498

 482 SORCERY AND OCCULT ARTS. guilty of heretical apostasy and the invocation of demons, while the bishop alone was to pronounce sentence on his unnatural crimes and sacrilege, the Inquisition having no cognizance of these offences. It is worthy of note that there is no allusion to alchemy ; apparently it was not regarded as an unlawful pursuit.* It is not easy to understand what followed. "When two days lat- er, on the 15th, Gilles was brought into court he was a changed man. We have no means of knowing what influences had meanwhile been brought to bear upon him, but the only probable explanation would seem to be that he recognized from the details of the charges that his servants had been forced to betray him, that further re- sistance would only subject him to torture, and, in his earnest care for the salvation of his soul, that submission to the Church and en- durance of the inevitable was the only path to heaven. Still, he could not at once summon resolution to incur the humiliation of a detailed public confession. While he humbly admitted the bish- op and inquisitor to be his judges, and on bended knee, with tears and sighs, craved their pardon for the insults which he had show- ered upon them, and begged for absolution from the excommunica- tion incurred by contumacy; while he took with the prosecutor the jar amentum de calamnia / while in general terms he acknowl- edged that he had no objection to make to the charges and confessed the crimes alleged against him, yet when he was required to answer to the articles seriatim he at once denied that he had invoked, or caused to be invoked, any malignant spirits ; he had, it is true, dabbled in alchemy, but he freely offered himself to be burned if the witnesses to be produced, whose testimony he was willing to accept in advance, should prove that he had invoked demons or entered into pacts with them and offered them sacrifices. All the rest of the charges he specifically denied, but he invited the prose- cutor to produce what witnesses he chose, and he (Gilles) would admit their evidence to be conclusive. Although in all this there is a contradiction which casts doubt upon the frankness of the official record, it may perhaps be explained by vacillation not im- probable in his terrible position. He did not shrink, however, when his servants and agents, Henriet, Poitou, Prelati, Blanchet, and his two procuresses were brought forward and sworn in his
 * Bossard et Maulde, Pr. pp. xvii.-xxx.