Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/535

 THE VAUDOIS OF ARRAS. 519 tonio Valo, a local legal luminary, as procurator-fiscal, or prose- cutor, an official unknown to the Inquisition of the period, whom the counsel for the accused speedily drove out of court. With each hearing they grew more aggressive. They boldly quoted the Digest and the rules of law and justice as though such things had not been expressly prohibited in inquisitorial trials. Fi- nally they told Chiabaudi that he was himself suspect ; that as a canon he had no right to leave his convent for such business, and that all his acts were null. The whole prosecution, they said, was merely an attempt to extort money and to divide the plunder of the accused, and they appealed to the episcopal vicar of Turin, with a threat, if necessary, to obtain the intervention of the Duke of Savoy himself. Chiabaudi yielded to the storm which he had imprudently allowed to gather strength, and in February, 1375, he permitted the transfer of the case to the episcopal court of Turin. Whether the unfortunate women fared better there will, doubt- less, never be known, but the case shows the wisdom of the pre- cautions adopted by the regular inquisitors of selecting counsel themselves and threatening them with excommunication if they defended their clients. It is interesting, moreover, as probably the only inquisitorial trial on record, save that of Gilles de Eais, in which the forbidden litis contestatio was carried out.* A much more typical and illustrative case, of which we hap- pen to have the details, is that of the " Vaudois,"f or witches of Arras, showing how witchcraft panics were developed and what could be accomplished by inquisitorial methods, even under the supreme jurisdiction of the Parlement of Paris. In 1459, while a general chapter of the Dominican Order was in session at Langres, there chanced to be burned there as a witch a hermit named Robinet de Vaulx. He was forced to name all whom he had seen in the Sabbat, and among them was a young femme defolle vie of Douai, named Deniselle, and a resident of Arras, advanced in years, named Jean la Yitte — a painter and poet, who had written man} r t It will be remembered (Vol. II. p. 158) that by this time in France, Vaudois and Vaudoisie had become the designation of all deviations from faith, and was especially applied to sorcery. Hence is derived the word Voodooism, descriptive of the negro sorcery of the French colonies, transmitted to the United States through Louisiana.
 * P. Vayra, Le Streghe nel Canavese, op. cit. pp. 658-715.