Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/559

 THE "MALLEUS MALEFIC ARUM." 543 a practical bearing on the tribunals, and it was a mere matter of speculation whether the Sabbat was a dream or a reality, and whether the evil she wrought was the result of a special or a gen- eral concession of power by God to Satan. Thus the work of Molitoris is important as showing how feeble were the barriers which intelligent and fair-minded men could erect against the prevailing tendencies so sedulously fostered by popes and inquisi- tors.* The fine-drawn distinctions of such men were quickly brushed aside by the aggressive self-confidence of the inquisitors. Even more potent than the personal activity of Sprenger was the legacy which he left behind him in the work which he proudly enti- tled the Malleus Maleficarum, or Hammer of Witches, the most portentous monument of superstition which the world has pro- duced. All his vast experience and wide erudition are brought to the task of proving the reality of witchcraft and the extent of its evils, and, further, of instructing the inquisitor how to elude the whiles of Satan and to punish his devotees. He was no vulgar witch-finder, but a man trained in all the learning of the schools. He apparently was not inhumane. In many places he manifests a laudable desire to give the accused the benefit of whatever pleas they might rightfully put forward, but he is so fully convinced of the gigantic character of the evils to be combated, he so thoroughly believes that his tribunal is engaged in a contest with Satan for human souls, that he eagerly justifies every artifice and every cruelty that could be suggested to outwit the adversary, on whom fair play would be thrown away. Like Conrad of Marburg and Capistrano, he was a man of the most dangerous type, an honest fanatic. His work is, moreover, an inexhaustible storehouse of marvels to which successive generations resorted whenever evi- The absurd contrast between the illimitable powers ascribed to the witch and her personal wretchedness was explained under torture by the victims as the result of the faithlessness of Satan, who desired to keep them in poverty. When steeped in misery he would appear to them and allure them into his service by the most attractive promises, but when he had attained his end those promises were never kept. Gold given to them would always disappear before it could be used. As one of the Tyrolese witches in 1506 declared, " The devil is a Schalk (knave)." (Rapp, Die Hexenprocesse und ihre Gegner aus Tirol, p. 147.)
 * Molitoris Dial, de Pythonicis Mulieribus c. 1, 10.