Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/538

 522 WITCHCRAFT. and sedition will rage in the fields, in the cities, and in the king- doms. In mutual slaughter men will fall dead in heaps. Chil- dren will rise against their elders and the villeins will assail the nobles. It was not only religion, but the whole social order, which was threatened by a few strumpets and the Abbe-de-peu- de-sens.* Like the agent of Conrad Tors in the days of Conrad of Mar- burg, the Bishop of Beirut boasted that he could recognize a Yau- dois or sorcerer at sight. In conjunction with du Boys he pro- cured another arrest, and induced the Comte d'Estampes to order the vicars to hasten their proceedings. Under this pressure, an assembly of all the principal ecclesiastics of Arras, with some jurists, was held on May 9, 1±60, to consider the evidence. The deliberation was short, and the accused were condemned. The next day, on a scaffold in front of the episcopal palace, and in presence of a crowd which had gathered from twelve leagues around, the convicts were brought forward, together with the body of one of them, Jean le Febvre, who had been found hanging in his cell. Mitres were placed on their heads, with pictures repre- senting them as worshipping the devil. The inquisitor preached the sermon, and read the description of the Sabbat and of their visits to it, and then asked them individually if it was true, to which they all assented. Then he read the sentence abandoning them to the secular arm, their property to be confiscated, the real estate to the seigneur and the movables to the bishop, and they were delivered to their several jurisdictions, Deniselle being handed over to the authorities of Douai who were present to receive her, and the rest to those of Arras. At once they began with shrieks to assert that they had been cruelly deceived — that they had been promised that if they would confess they would be discharged with a pilgrimage of ten or twelve leagues, and had been threat- ened with burning for persistence in denial. With one voice they declared that they had never been to the " Yauderie, 1 ' that their confessions had been extorted under stress of torture and false promises and blandishments, and until they were silenced by the flames they begged the people to pray for them, and their friends to have masses sung in their behalf. The last words heard from
 * MSS. Bib. Roy. de Bruxelles, No. 11209.