Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/562

 513 WITCHCRAFT. The most decided rebuff, however, which the Inquisition ex- perienced in its new sphere of activity was administered by Venice. I have had occasion more than once to allude to the controversy between the Signory and the Holy See over the witches of Brescia, when the Kepublic definitely refused to exe- cute the sentences of the inquisitors. To understand the full sig- nificance of its action, it is to be observed that for two generations the Church had been energetically cultivating witchcraft through- out Lombardy by unceasingly urging its persecution and breaking down all resistance on the part of the intelligent laity, until it had succeeded in rendering upper Italy a perfect hot-bed of the heresy. In 1457 Calixtus III. ordered his nuncio, Bernardo di Bosco, to use active measures in repressing its growth in Brescia, Bergamo, and the vicinage. Thirty years later Fra Girolamo Yisconti found an abundant field for his labor in Como, the result of which he com- municated to the world in his Lamiarum Tractatus, and Sprenger assures us that a whole book would be required to record the cases, in Brescia alone, of women who had become witches through de- spair inconsequence of seduction, although the episcopal court had shown the most praiseworthy vigor in suppressing them. In 1494 we find Alexander VI. stimulating the Lombard inquisitor, Fra Angelo da Yerona, to greater activity, assuring him that witches were numerous in Lombardy and inflicted great damage on men, harvests, and cattle. AVhen at Cremona, in the early years of the sixteenth century, the inquisitor, Giorgio di Casale, endeavored to exterminate the numberless witches flourishing there, and was in- terfered with by certain clerks and laymen, who asserted that he was exceeding Ms jurisdiction, Julius II., following the example of Innocent VIII. in the case of Sprenger, promptly came to the rescue by defining his powers, and offering to all who would aid him in the good work indulgences such as were given to crusaders — provisions which, in 1523, were extended to the In- quisitor of Como by Adrian VI. The result of all this careful stimulation is seen in the description of the Lombard witches by Gianfrancesco Pico, and in the alarming report by Silvester Prierias that they were extending down the Apennines and boasting that they would outnumber the faithful. The spread of popular belief is illustrated in the remark of Politian, that when he was a child he had great dread of the witches whom his