Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/555

 STIMULATED BY THE CHURCH. 539 turn to Satan for help. According to Sprenger, a prolific source of witches was the seduction of young girls who when refused marriage had nothing more to hope for, and sought to avenge themselves on society by acquiring at least the power of evil.* Not only thus was there on the part of many a desire to enter the abhorred sect of Satan- worshippers, which the Church de- clared to be so numerous and powerful, but doubtless not a few performed the ceremonies to effect it, when perhaps some evil wish which chanced to be realized would convince them that Satan had really accepted their allegiance, and granted them the power which they sought. Certain minds might, in moments of high-wrought exaltation, even imagine that they had obtained admission to the foul mysteries whose reality was rapidly becoming an article of orthodox belief. Others again, in weakness and poverty, found that the reputation of possessing the power of evil was a protec- tion and a support, and they encouraged rather than repressed the credulity of their neighbors. To these must be added the multi- tudes who derived a source of gain from curing the sorcery which the Church was confessedly unable to relieve, and there was ample material in the despised and lower stratum of society for the in- numerable army of witches conjured up by the heated imagina- tions of the demonographers. Unfortunately the Church, in its alarm at the development of this new heresy, stimulated it to the utmost in the endeavor to re- press it. Every inquisitor whom it commissioned to suppress witch- craft was an active missionary who scattered the seeds of the be- lief ever more widely. We have seen what a brood of witches Pierre le Brousart hatched at Arras out of the single one burned at Langres, and how Chiabaudi succeeded in infecting the valleys of the Canavese. It mattered little in the end that le Brousart overreached himself and that Chiabaudi was outwrangled. The minds of the people became more and more familiarized with the idea that witches were everywhere around them, and that every misfortune and accident was the result of their malignity. Every man was thus assiduously taught, when he lost an ox or a child, or a harvest, or was suddenly prostrated with illness, to suspect his neighbors and look for evidence to confirm his suspicions, so that
 * Mall. Malef. P. 1. Q. i. c. 1.