Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/513

 THE SABBAT. 497 devil cannot transport a human body or make it pass through a disproportionate opening, but they endeavored to explain lm ad- mitted facts by enlarging on his powers of creating illusions. The witch consecrated herself to him with words and with anointing when he would take her figure or phantasm and lead it where she wished, while her body remained insensible and covered with a diabolical shadow, rendering it invisible; when the object had been accomplished, he brought back the phantasm, reunited it to the body, and removed the shadow. The question turned upon the ability of the devil to carry off human beings, and this was hotly debated. A case adduced by Albertus Magnus, in a disputation on the subject before the Bishop of Paris, and recorded by Thomas of Cantimpre, in which the daughter of the Count of Schwalen- berg was regularly carried away every night for several hours, gave immense satisfaction to the adherents of the new doctrine, and eventually an ample store of more modern instances was ac- cumulated to confirm Satan in his enlarged privileges.* In 1458 the Inquisitor Nicholas Jaquerius hit upon the true solution of the difficulty by arguing that the existing sect of witches was wholly different from the heretics alluded to in the Cap. Episcopi, and adduced in evidence of their bodily presence in the Sabbat numberless cases which had come before him in his official capacity, including one of a man who, as a child, fifty -five years before, had been carried thither by his mother in company with an infant brother, and presented to Satan wearing the form of a goat, who with his hoofs had imprinted on them an indelible mark — the stigma diabolicum. Jaquerius, however, adds, reason- ably enough, that even if the affair is an illusion, it is none the less heretical, as the followers of Diana and Herodias are necessarily talic. Fidei, fol. 284.— Bern. Basin de Artibus Magicis.— Ulric. Molitor. de Python. Mulierib. Conclus. iv.— Th. Cantimprat. ubi sup.— Mall. Maleficar. P. ii. Q. i. c. 3.— Prieriat. de Strigimag. Lib. i. c. xiv., Lib. ii. c. 1. Friar Thomas gives circumstantial contemporary instances occurring in Flan- ders, where women were carried away and their images were on the point of burial, when the deception was accidentally discovered, and the images, on being cut open, were found to consist of rotten wood covered with skin. He admits his inability to explain these cases, and says that on consulting Albertus Magnus about them the latter evaded a positive answer (Bonum universale, ubi sup.). III.— 31
 * Thorn. Cantimprat. Bonum universal. Lib. 11. c. 56.— Alonso de Spina, For-