Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/526

 510 WITCHCRAFT. the river and roasted again. A three days' fast was ordered for the whole city, when it was revealed that they had charms con- cealed in a certain spot under the skin, ancl after the removal of these there was no further trouble in reducing them to ashes. Charms could also be used from a distance. At Innsbruck a witch boasted that if she had a single thread of a prisoner's gar- ment she could cause him to endure torture to the death without confessing. Some inquisitors, to break the spell of taciturnity, were wont to try sacred magic by administering to the prisoner, on an empty stomach, after invoking the Trinity, three drinks of holv water in which blessed wax had been melted. In one case the most excruciating torture, continued through two whole days, failed to elicit confession, but the third day chanced to be the feast of the Virgin, and during the celebration of the holy rites the devil lost the power with which he had thus far sustained the prisoner, who revealed a plot to make way with the implacable judge, Peter of Berne, by means of sorcery. These were simple devices ; a more elaborate one was to take a strip of paper of the length of the body of Christ, and write on it the seven words ut- tered on the cross ; on a holy day, at the hour of mass, this was to be bound around the waist of the witch with relics, she was to be made to drink holy water, and be at once placed on the rack. When all these efforts failed it was a mooted question whether the Church in her extremity could have recourse to the devil by call- ing in other magicians to break the spell, and Prierias succeeds by ingenious casuistry in proving that she could. One precaution, held indispensable by some experienced practitioners, was that the witch on arrest was to be placed immediately in a basket and thus be carried to prison, without allowing her feet to touch the earth, for if she were permitted to do so she could slay her cap- tors with lightning and escape.* There was another comfortable theory that those who exer- cised public functions for the suppression of witchcraft were not subject to the influence of witches or demons. Sprenger tells us that he and his colleagues had been manv times assailed bv devils in the shape of monkeys, dogs, and goats, but by the aid of God they c. 9; Lib. in. c. 3. — Xider Formicar. Lib. y. c. 7.
 * Mall. Maleficar. P. n. Q. i. ; P. it. Q. viii. : P. in. Q. xv.— Prieriat. Lib. n.