Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/516

 500 WITCHCRAFT. as an impeder of the Holy Office.* This sufficiently shows that the new beliefs had completely conquered the old. The question had passed beyond the range of reason and argument, and every- where throughout Europe the Witches' Sabbat was accepted as an established fact, which it was dangerous to dispute. Jurists and canonists might amuse themselves with debating it theoretically ; practically it had become the veriest commonplace of the courts, both secular and ecclesiastical. That the details of the Sabbat varied but little throughout Eu- rope is doubtless to be ascribed to the leading questions habitually put by judges, and to the desire of the tortured culprits to satisfy their examiners, yet this consentaneity at the time was an irref- ragable proof of truth. The first step of the witch was to secure a consecrated wafer by pretending to receive communion, and car- rying the sacrament home. On this was fed a toad, which was then burned, and the ashes were mixed with the blood of an infant, unbaptized if possible, powdered bone of a man who had been hanged, and certain herbs. AVith this mixture the witch anointed the palms of her hands, or her wrist, and a stick or stool which she placed between her legs, and she was at once transported to the place of meeting. As a variant of this the ride was some- times made on a demon in the shape of a horse, or goat, or dog. The assembly might be held anywhere, but there were certain spots specially resorted to — in Germany the Brocken, in Italy an oak-tree near Benevento, and there was, besides, the unknown place beyond the Jordan. At all these they gathered in thou- sands. Thursday night was the one generally selected. They feasted at tables loaded with meat and wine which rose from the earth at the command of the presiding demon, and they paid hom- age to the devil, who was present, usually in the form of a goat, dog, or ape. To him they offered themselves, body and soul, and kissed him under the tail, holding a lighted candle. They tram- pled and spat upon the cross and turned up their backs to heaven in derision of God. The devil preached to them, sometimes com- mencing with a parody of the mass ; he told them that they had no souls and that there was no future life ; they were not to go to church or confession, or to use holy water, or, if they did so to
 * Ponzinib. de Lamiis c. 65. — Bart. Spinei de Strigibus, p. 175, Romae, 1575.