Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/529

 THE INQUISITORIAL PROCESS. ;,!.; all died within three days; suspicion was aroused, and the two women were arrested and confessed. The mother was burned, but the daughter obtained a respite on the plea of pregnancy, es- caped from jail and fled to Hainault, but was brought back and was carried on appeal to Paris. Yves was rich and well-con- nected. He was arrested and confined in the prison of the Bishop of Paris, but he obtained counsel and appealed to the Parlement ; the Parlement allowed the appeal, tried him, and acquitted him.* All secular tribunals were not as enlightened as the Parlement of Paris, but there seems to have been at least sometimes an effort to administer even-handed justice. About this time a case occurred at Constance in which an accuser formally inscribed himself against a peasant whom he had met riding on a wolf, and had immediately become crippled. He applied to the peasant, who cured him, but ob- serving that the wizard bewitched others, he felt it his duty to prose- cute him. The case was exhaustively argued before the magistrates, for the prosecution and the defence, by two eloquent advocates, Con- rad Schatz and Ulric Biaser. Torture was not used, but the accused was condemned and burned on the testimony of witnesses. f In the ecclesiastical tribunals offenders had not the same chance. We have seen in a former chapter how skilfully the inquisitorial process was framed to secure conviction, and when, after a prolonged period of comparative inactivity, the Inquisi- tion was aroused to renewed exertion in combating the legions of Satan, it sharpened its rusted weapons to a yet keener edge. The old hesitation about pronouncing a sentence of acquittal was no longer entertained, for though the accused might be dismissed with a verdict of not proven, the inquisitor was formally instruct- ed never to declare him innocent. Yet few there were upon whom even this doubtful clemency was exercised, for all the resources of The constant recurrence of the toad in all the operations of witchcraft opens a suggestive question in zoological mythology. Space will not admit its discus- sion here, but I may mention, as a proof of the antiquity of the superstitions con- nected with the animal, that in Mazdcism the toad was one of the special crea- tions of Ahriman, and was devoted to his service. It was a toad which he set to destroying the Gokard, or Tree of all plants, and which will always be endeavor- ing to do so until the resurrection (Bundehesh, ch. xviii.). t Ulric. Molitoris de Python. Mulierib. c. iv. III.— 33
 * Memoires de Jacques du Clercq, Liv. iv. ch. xxiii.