Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/557

 OPPOSITION IN THE TYROL. 541 Tyrol the Bishop of Brixen published Innocent's bull July 23, 1485, and on September 21 he issued to the inquisitor Henry In- stitoris a commission granting him full episcopal jurisdiction, but recommending him to associate with him a secular official of the suzerain, Sigismund of Austria. The latter, however, ordered the bishop to appoint a commissioner, and he named Sigismund Samer, pastor of Axams near Innsbruck. The pair commenced operations October 14, but their career, though vigorous, was short and in- glorious. It chanced that some of the archduke's courtiers desired to separate him from his wife, Catharine of Saxony, and spread reports that she had endeavored to poison him ; and they followed this up by placing in an oven a worthless woman who personated an imprisoned demon and denounced a number of people. Insti- toris at once seized the accused and applied torture without stint. Then the bishop interposed, and by the middle of ^November or- dered him to leave the diocese and betake himself to his convent, the sooner the better. Institoris, however, was loath to abandon his duty, and drew upon himself a sharper reproof on Ash Wed- nesday, 1486 ; he was told that he had nought to do there, that the bishop would attend to all that was necessary through the exercise of the ordinary jurisdiction, and he was warned that if he persisted in remaining he was in danger of assassination from the husbands or kinsmen of the women whom he was persecuting. He finally withdrew to Germany, richly rewarded for his labor by Sigismund, and from his account of the matter it is easy to see that all the sick and withered of Innsbruck had Hocked to him with complaints of their neighbors so detailed that he was justified in regarding the place as thoroughly infected. The next year the Tyrolese Landtag complained to the archduke that recently many persons, on baseless denunciations, had been imprisoned, tortured, and disgracefully treated, and we can readily understand the com- plaint of the Malleus Maleficarum that Innsbruck abounded in witches of the most dangerous character, who could bewitch their judges and could not be forced to confess. Still, the seeds of superstition were scattered to fructify in due time. Although in the Tyrolese criminal ordinance issued by Maximilian I., in 1499, there is no allusion to sorcery and witchcraft, yet in 1506 we find the craze fully developed. Some records which have been pre- served show trials before secular judges with juries of twelve men,