Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/514

 498 WITCHCRAFT. heretics in their waking hours. These speculations of Jaquerius at- tracted little attention at the time. Thirty years later, Sprenger, who did so much to formulate belief and organize persecution, found the Cap. Episcopi a constant stumbling-block in his path, as sceptics were apt to argue that, if the Sabbat was an illusion, all witchcraft was illusorv. He endeavored, therefore, to argue it away, assuming that, while the devil undoubtedly possessed the power of transportation, the presence of the witch frequently was only mental. In such case she lay down on the left side and in- voked the devil, when a whitish vapor would issue from her mouth, and she saw all that occurred. If she went personally, and had a husband, an accommodating demon would assume her shape and take her place to conceal her absence. Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola takes the same ground, that presence at the Sabbat was sometimes real and sometimes imaginary ; the place of assemblage was beyond the river Jordan, and transportation thither took place instantaneously. He avoids the definition of the Cap. Episcopi by assuming that the Decretum of Gratian had not the authority of law, and was corrupt in many places. The Inquisitor Bernardo di Como, about 1500, in addition to these arguments, had trium- phantly adduced the fact that numerous persons had been burned for attending the Sabbat, which could not have been done without the assent of the pope, and this was sufficient proof that the heresy was real, for the Church punishes only manifest crimes.* About this time the learned jurist, Gianfrancesco Ponzinibio, wrote a tract on the subject of witchcraft in which he upheld the doctrine of the Cap. Episcopi and boldly applied it to all magic and sorcery, which he treated as delusions. ^Vith a vast array of authorities he proved his case ; he exposed the baldness of the pretence that existing witches belonged to a different sect; he argued that their confessions are not to be received, as they con- fess what is illusory and impossible, and that their evidence as to their associates is to be rejected, as they are deluded and can only delude others. Lawyers, he added, ought to take part in trials before the Inquisition, as they are trained to deal with criminal P. i. Q. i. c. 10 ; P. ii. Q. i. c. 3, 9.— G. F. Pico della Mirandola. La Strega, Milano, 1864, pp. 61, 73. — Bernardi Comensis de Strigiis c. 3-6.
 * Fr. Xich. Jaquerii Flagellum Haeret. Fascinar. c. vii., xxviii. — Mall. Malef.