Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/532

 516 WITCHCRAFT. not, it does as it pleases. What the inquisitors would have said if it pleased the secular authorities to let the witch go free may be judged by the maledictions of Sprenger on the incredulous laity who disbelieved in the reality of witchcraft, and through whose supineness the secular arm had allowed the cursed sect to so in- crease that its extirpation appeared impossible.* Still more in- structive, as we shall see hereafter, was the indignation of Leo X. when the Signory of Venice refused to burn the witches of Bres- cia condemned by the Inquisition. Equally frivolous was the pretence that the punishment of burning was merely for the injuries wrought by the witch, for we shall see that in the case of the Vaudois of Arras the convicts were burned as a matter of course, although attendance upon the Sabbat was the only crime with which most of the sufferers were charged, and that they were delivered for the purpose by the ec- clesiastical court to the magistrates, and even burned without such formality. Besides, Sprenger tells us that in the case of promi- nent and influential witches the death-penalty was frequently com- muted to perpetual imprisonment on bread and water, as a reward for betraying their accomplices, which shows that the fate of the accused in reality rested with the inquisitor. Still, there appears to have been, in at least one case, a simulacrum of judgment by the secular court which I have rarely met where heretics were con- cerned. November 5, 1474, at Levone, in Piedmont, Francesca Yiloni and Antonia d' Alberto were condemned by the acting inquisitor Francesco Chiabaudi. The sentence orders their de- livery to the secular arm with a protest that no corporal punish- ment was thereby indicated, directly or indirectly, although the goods of the convicts were declared confiscated. The same day the assistant inquisitor, Fra Lorenzo Butini, delivered them to the podesta, Bartolomeo Pasquale, with the protest, to protect himself from " irregularity," that he did not intend to indicate for them any corporal punishment or to consent to it. The podesta allowed two days to elapse and then held, November 7, a solemn court to C. Lexoviens. ann. 1448 c. 9 (Ibid. II. 482).— Nic. Jaqucrii Flagollum Ilaeret. Fascinar. c. 27.— Mall. Malef. P. i. Q. xiv. ; P. XL Q. i. c. 3, 10.— Prieriat. de Strigimag. Lib. in. c. 3.
 * Concil. Rotomagens. arm. 1445 c. G (Bessin Concil. Rotomagens. I. 184). —