Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/523

 CURATIVE SORCERY. 507 could find no relief on earth or in heaven— human means were useless, and exorcism and the invocation of saints were powerless except in demoniacal possession. The only cure was from the devil through other witches. Curative sorcery had long been a subject of debate in theologic ethics, but it had been formally condemned as inadmissible. It not only was a pact, tacit or ex- pressed, with Satan, but it was ascertained that one of his leading objects in urging his acolytes to injure their neighbors was to force the sufferer in despair to have recourse to sorcery and thus be drawn into evil ways. This was illustrated by a case, cele- brated among demonographers, of a German bishop who, in Rome, fell madly in love with a young girl and induced her to accom- pany him home. During the journey she undertook to kill him by sorcery, that she might make off with the jewels with which he had loaded her, and he was nightly attacked with a burning pain in his chest which resisted all the resources of his physicians. His life was despaired of, when recourse was had to an old woman who recognized the source of his affection and told him he could only be saved by the same methods, involving the death of the bewitcher. His conscience would not allow him to assent to this without permission ; he applied to Pope Nicholas V., who kindly granted him a dispensation, and then he ordered the old woman to do what she proposed. That night he was perfectly well, and word was brought him that his young paramour was dying. He went to console her, but she naturally received him with maledic- tions, and died devoting her soul to Satan. As Bodin admiringly remarks, the devil was cunning enough to make a pope, a bish- op, and a witch all obey him, and all become accomplices in a homicide.* Thus a very profitable trade sprang up in counteracting witch- craft, and many witches confined themselves to this branch of the profession, although they were as liable as their adversaries to condemnation for compact with the devil, for it was an incontro- vertible fact that they could only relieve a sufferer by transferring Vayra, Le Streghe nel Canavese, op. cit. p. 230.— Artie. Univers. Paris. No. 5.— Concil. Lingonens. ann. 1403 c. 4.— Prieriat. de Strigimag. Lib. n. c. 10.— Bodini Magor. Daemonoman. p. 288.
 * Bemardi Comens. de Strigiis c. 14. — Mall. Maleficar. P. n. Q. i., ii.— P.