Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/553

 GROWTH OF THE BELIEF. 537 It was probably about this time that the inquisitors of Tou- louse were busy with burning the numerous witches of Dauphine and Gascony, as related by Alonso de Spina, who admired on the walls of the Toulousan Inquisition pictures painted from their con- fessions, representing the Sabbat, with the votaries adoring, with lighted candles, Satan in the form of a goat. The allusions of Ber- nardo di Como show that at the same period persecution was busy in Como. In 1456 we hear of two burned at Cologne. They had caused a frost so intense in the month of May that all vegetation was blasted, without hope of recovery. The steward of the arch- bishop asked one of them to give him an example of her art, when she took a cup of water, and muttering spells over it for the space of a couple of Paternosters, it froze so solidly that the ice could not be broken w T ith a dagger. In this case, at least, the hand of justice had not weakened her power, though w T hy she allowed her- self to be burned is not recorded. In 1459 Pius II. called the at- tention of the Abbot of Treguier to somewhat similar practices in Britanny, and gave him papal authority for their suppression, showing how vain had been the zeal of Duke Artus III., of whom, at his death in 1457, it was eulogistically declared that he had burned more sorcerers in France, Britanny, and Poitou than any man of his time.* These incidents will show the growth and spread of the belief throughout Europe, and it must be borne in mind that they are but the indications of much that never attracted public attention or came to be recorded in history. A chance allusion, in a pleading of 1455, shows what was working under the surface in probably every corner of Christendom. In the parish of Torcy (Normandy) there had been for forty years a belief that a family of laborers — Ilugue- nin de la Meu and his dead father before him, and Jeanne his w ife — were all sorcerers who killed or sickened many men and beasts. An appeal to the Inquisition w T ould doubtless have ex- Carthus. de Relig. Orig. c. 25-6 (Martene Am pi. Coll. VI. 57-9).— Jean Chartier, Hist, de Charles VII. aim. 1453.— MSmoires de Jacques du Clercq, Liv. in. ch. 11.— D'Argentre, I. n. 251.— Soldan, Gesch. der Hexenprocesse, p. 198.— Lilien- thal, Die Hexenprocesse der beiden Stadte Braunsberg, p. 70. 3— Cbron. Cornel. Zantfliet, ann. 1456 (Martene Ampl. Coll. V. 491).— Raynald. ann. 1459, No. 30.— Guill. Gruel, Chroniques d' Artus III. (Ed. Bucbon, p. 405).
 * Alonso cle Spina, Fortalic. Fidei, fol. 284.— Bernardi Comens. de Strigiis c.