Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/561

 CORNELIUS AGRIPPA. 545 of office, perpetual disability, and heavy arbitrary fines. It was doubtless owing to this exclusion of spiritual jurisdiction over sorcery that the spread of witchcraft in France was slower than in Germany and Italy.* Cornelius Agrippa, whose learned treatises on the occult sciences trench so nearly on forbidden ground, when he held the position of Town Orator and Advocate of Metz, had the hardihood, in 1519, to save from the clutches of the inquisitor, Nicholas Savin, an unfortunate woman accused of witchcraft. The only evidence against her was that her mother had been burned as a witch. Savin quoted the " Malleus Malejicarum" to show that if she were not the offspring of an incubus she must undoubtedly have been devoted to Satan at her birth. In conjunction with the episcopal official, John Leonard, he had her cruelly tortured, and she was then exposed to starvation in her prison. When Agrippa offered to defend her he was turned out of court and threatened with prosecution as a fautor of heresy, and her husband was refused ac- cess to the place of trial, lest he should interject an appeal. Leon- ard chanced to fall mortally sick, and, touched with remorse on his death-bed, he executed an instrument declaring his conviction of her innocence and asked the chapter to set her at liberty ; but Savin demanded that she should be further tortured and then burned. Agrippa, however, labored so effectually with Leonard's successor and with the chapter that the woman was discharged ; but his disinterested zeal cost him his office, and he was obliged to leave Metz. Relieved of his presence, the inquisitor speedily found another witch, whom he burned after forcing her by torture to confess all the horrors of the Sabbat and customary evil deeds wrought through the power of Satan. Encouraged by this, he organized a search for others, doubtless based on the confessions of the victim, and imprisoned a number, while others fled, and there would have been a pitiless massacre had not Eoger Brennon, parish priest of St. Cross, openly opposed him and vanquished him in disputation, whereupon the jail doors were thrown open and the fugitives returned.f t Cornel. Agrippa de Occult. Philos. Lib. 1. c. 40; Lib. in. c. 33; Epistt. n. 38, 39, 40, 59 ; De Vanitate Scientiarum c. xcvi. III.— 35
 * Fontanon, Edicts et Ordonnances, IV. 237.— Isambert, XI. 190, 253.