Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/563

 THE WITCHES OF BRESCIA. 547 grandmother used to tell him lie in wait in the woods to swallow little boys.* Venice had always been careful to preserve the secular juris- diction over sorcery. A resolution of the great council in 1410 allows the Inquisition to act in such cases when they involve her- esy or the abuse of sacraments, but if injury had resulted to indi- viduals the spiritual offence alone was cognizable by the Inquisi- tion, while the resultant crimes were justiciable by the lay court ; and when, in 1422, some Franciscans were charged with sacrificing to demons, the Council of Ten committed the affair to a councillor, a capo, an inquisitor, and an advocate. Brescia was a spot peculiarly infected with witchcraft. As early as 1455 the inquisitor, Fra Antonio, called upon the Senate for aid to exterminate it, which was presumably afforded, but when a fresh persecution arose in 1486 the podesta refused to execute the inquisitorial sentences, and the Signoria supported him, calling forth, as we have seen, the vigorous protest of Innocent VIII. Under the stimulus of perse- cution the evil increased with terrible rapidity. In 1510 we hear of seventy women and seventy men burned at Brescia ; in 1514 of three hundred at Como. In such an epidemic every victim was a new source of infection, and the land was threatened with depopu- lation. In the madness of the hour it was currently reported that on the plain of Tonale, near Brescia, the customary gathering at the Sabbat exceeded twenty-live thousand souls : and in 1518 the Senate was officially informed that the inquisitor had burned seventy witches of the Valcamonica, that he had as many in his prisons, and that those suspected or accused amounted to about five thousand, or one fourth of the inhabitants of the valleys. It was time to interfere, and the Signoria interposed effectually, leading to violent remonstrances from Rome. Leo X. issued, February 15, 1521, his fiery bull, Hbnestis, ordering the inquisitors to use freely the excommunication and the interdict, if their sentences on the witches were not executed without examination or revision, showing how transparent were the subterfuges adopted to throw 250.— Mall. Maleficar. P. 11. Q. i. c. 1, 12.— Ripoll IV. 190.— Pegnae Append, ad Eymeric. p. 105. — G. F. Pico, La Strega, p. 17. — Prieriat. de Strigimag. Lib. il c. 1, 5. — Ang. Politian. Lamia, Colon. 1518.
 * Raynald. ann. 1457, No. 90. — P. Vayra, Le Streghe nel Canavese, op. cit. p.