Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/524

 508 WITCHCRAFT. his disease to some one else or by performing some equivalent evil act. Sprenger tells us that they were to be found every German mile or two. At Reichshof en was one whose business was so large that the lord of the place levied a toll of a penny on every one who came to her for relief, and used to boast of the large revenue which he derived from this source. A man named Hengst, at Eningen, near Constance, had more applicants than any shrine of the Virgin — even than that at Aix — and in winter, when the high- ways were blocked with snow, those which led to his house were trampled smooth by the crowds of his patients.* When once the belief was fairly started in the existence of beings possessed of the powers which I have described, and actu- ated by motives purely malignant, it was destined to inevitable extension under the stimulus afforded by persecution. Every mis- fortune and every accident that occurred in a hamlet would be attributed to witchcraft. Suspicion would gradually attach to some ill-tempered crone, and she would be seized, for inquisitors held that a single careless threat, such as " You will be sorrv for this," if followed by a piece of ill-luck, was sufficient to justify arrest and trial. f All the neighbors would flock in as accusers — this one had lost a cow, that one's vintage had been ruined by hail, another's garden-patch had been ravaged by caterpillars, one mother had suffered an abortion, another's milk had suddenly dried, another had lost a promising child, two lovers had quar- relled, a man had fallen from an apple-tree and had broken his neck — and under the persuasive influence of starvation or of the rack the unfortunate woman would invent some story to account for each occurrence, would name her accomplices in each, and tell whom she had met in the Sabbats, which she attended regularly. ~No one can read the evidence adduced at a witch-trial, or the con- fessions of the accused, without seeing how every accident and every misfortune and every case of sickness or death which had occurred in the vicinage for years was thus explained, and how the circle of suspicion widened so that every conviction brought new victims ; burnings multiplied, and the terrified community was ready to believe that a half or more of its members were slaves of f Bernard. Comens. de Strigiis c. 14.
 * Prieriat. Lib. m. c. 3.— Mall. Malef. P. n. Q. ii.