Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/518

 502 WITCHCRAFT. for the destruction of her neighbors, and constantly exhorted to activity by her master. Those powers, moreover, were sufficient to justify the terror in which she was held by the people. Sprenger divides witches into three classes, those who can injure and not cure, those who can cure and not injure, and those who can do both, and the worst are those who unite these faculties, for the more they insult and offend God, the greater power of evil he gives them. They kill and eat children, or devote them to the devil if unbaptized. They cause abortion by merely laying a hand upon a woman, or dry up her milk if she is nursing. By twirling a moistened broom, or casting flints behind them towards the east, or boiling hogs' bristles in a pot, or stirring a pool with a finger, they raise tempests and hail -storms which devastate whole regions ; they bring the plagues of locusts and caterpillars which devour the harvests ; they render men impotent and women barren, and cause horses to become suddenly mad under their riders. They can make hidden things known and predict the future, bring about love or hatred at will, cause mortal sickness, slay men with lightning, or even with their looks alone, or turn them into beasts. "We have the unquestioned authority of Eu- genius IV. that by a simple word or touch or sign they can bewitch whom they please, cause or cure sickness, and regulate the weather. Sometimes they scattered over the fields powders which destroyed the cattle. They constantly entered houses at night, and, sprink- ling a powder on the pillows of the parents which rendered them insensible, would touch the children with fingers smeared with a poisonous unguent causing death in a few days ; or they would thrust needles under the nails of an infant and suck the blood, which was partly swallowed and partly spit into a vessel to serve in the confection of their infernal ointments ; or the child would be put upon the fire and its fat be collected for the same purpose. AYitches, moreover, could transform themselves into cats and other beasts, and Bernardo di Como gravely cites the case of the com- panions of Ulysses, as adduced by St. Augustin, to prove the real- ity of such illusions. Ludicrous as all this may seem, every one of these details has served as the basis of charges under which countless human beings have perished in the flames.* Mall. Maleficar. P. n. Q. i. c. 2, 4, 11, 15 ; Q. ii. c. 4.— Prieriat. de Strigimag.