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 WITCHCRAFT

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WITCHCRAFT

wards printed in a volume of four hundred pages. Cheered by the warmth of the welcome accorded him by Irishmen of every class and creed, he returned home, improved in spirits if not in health, to find himself engrossed not only with the affairs of his arch- diocese, but with the march of political events in Rome and Italy, in which he was very keenly interested. He had lately published his "Recollections of the Last Four Popes", which had roused much interest both in England and on the Continent. His fervent loy- alty to Pius IX found vent in a pastoral which he addressed from Rome, early in 1S60, to the English Catholics asking for contributions to the needs of the Holy See. Later he founded an Academia in London, chiefly at the instance of Manning, who hoped through its means to kindle an enthusiasm for the temporal power of the pope. Wiseman's own idea, reflected in his inaugur.al lecture in June, 1S61, was rather that the new institution should encourage the scholarly and scientific researches which so greatly interested him. Both these objects were advocated in the early papers read at the Academia by Dr. Rock, W. G. Ward, and others. After 1860 Wiseman, realizing that his health was now permanently broken, lived chiefly in the country, leaving the conduct of diocesan affairs largely in the hands of Manning who possessed his entire confidence, though he was at this time far from popular in the archdiocese. Wiseman thought it prudent, early in 1861, to remove the Oblates from the diocesan seminary. He visited Rome that year, and again in 1862, in connexion with the canonization of the Japanese martyrs, and was treated by Pius IX with special kindness and favour. We find him during the next two years, notwithstand- ing increasing bodily weakness, working with unabated zeal to redress Catholic grievances, especially with regard to poor schools, and the position of Cathohc soldiers and sailors, as well as the inmates of prisons, reformatories, and workhouses. He attended a great Catholic Congress at Mechlin in June, 1863, and gave an address in French dealing with the progress of the Church in England since the Emancipation Act of 1829. Later in the. same year he interested himself warmly in the work undertaken by Herbert (afterwards Cardinal) Vaughan, of founding a college for Foreign Missions in England. One of his last pubhc utterances was an indignant pastoral jjublished in May, 1864, in which, with his unfailing loyalty to the Holy See, he protested against the enthusiastic welcome of Garibaldi in England, and especially against the adulation paid by Anglican bishops to a man who had openly avowed his sympathy with Atheism. In the following October he assisted at the consecration of the Bishop of Bruges, and on his return home occupied himself with the writing of a lecture on Shakespeare, which he hoped to deliver at the Royal Institution on 27 Jan., 1S6.5. When that date arrived, however, he was already on his death-bed. His last weeks were spent in religious exercises and preparation for death. The news of his illness and death evoked expressions of general sym- pathy from men of every class and every creed ; and the practically unanimous voice of the Press testified to the high place he had won for himself in the re- spect and affections of his fellow-countrymen, to the astonishing change which had been wrought in fifteen years in the feelings entertained towards him by the people of England. His funeral at Kensal Green was made the occasion of an extraordinary popular demonstration, taking place, as the "Times" re- marked, "amid such tokens of public interest, and almost of sorrow, as do not often mark the funerals even of our most illustrious dead".

Ward, Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman, with three illus- trative portruit.s (London, 189S); Gli.mw, Bibl. Did. Eng. Calh.. s. v., with a complete list of h\s published work.s; Whitk. .Memoir of Cardinal Wiseman (London, 1867); Milnm (Lord Houoh- tok). Monographs (London, 1873); Morris, The Last Illness of

D O Hunter-Blair.

Witchcraft. — It is not easy to draw a clear dis- tinction between magic and witchcraft. Both are concerned with the producing of effects beyond the nat ural powers of man b)' agencies ot her t han the Divine (cf. Occult Art, Occultism). But in witchcraft, as commonly understood, there is involved the idea of a diabolical pact or at least an appeal to the inter- vention of the spirits of evil. In such cases this supernatural aid is usually invoked either to compass the death of some obno.xious person, or to awaken the passion of love in those who are the objects of desire, or to call up the dead, or to bring calamity or impotence upon enemies, rivals, and fancied oppres- sors. This is not an exhaustive enumeration, but these represent some of the principal purposes that witchcraft has been made to serve at nearly all periods of the world's history. In the traditional belief, not only of the dark ages, but of post-Reforma- tion times, the witches or wizards addicted to such practices entered into a compact with Satan, abjured Christ and the Sacraments, observed "the witches' sabbath" — performing infernal rites which often took the shape of a parody of the Mass or the offices of the Church — paid Divine honour to the Prince of Darkness, and in return received from him pre- ternatural powers, such as those of riding through the air upon a broomstick, assuming different shapes at will, and tormenting their chosen victims, while an imp or "familiar spirit" was placed at their disposal, able and willing to perform any service that might be needed to further their nefarious purposes.

The belief in witchcraft and its practice seem to have existed among aU primitive peoples. Both in ancient Egypt and in Babylonia it played a con- spicuous part, as existing records plainly show. It will be sufficient to quote a short section from the recently recovered Code of Hammurabi (about 2000 B. c). "If a man", it is there prescribed, "has laid a charge of witchcraft upon a man and has not justified it, he upon whom the witchcraft is laid shaU go to the holy river; he shall plunge into the holy river and if the holy river overcome him, he who accused him shall take to himself his house." In the Holy Scripture references to witchcraft are fre- quent, and the strong condemnations of such practices which we read there do not seem to be based so much upon the supposition of fraud as upon the "abomination" of the magic in itself. (See Deut., xviii, 11-12; Ex., xxii, IS, "wizards thou shalt not suffer to hve " — A. V. "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live".) The whole narrative of Saul's visit to the witch of Endor (I Kings, xxviii) impUes the reahty of the witch's evocation of the shade of Samuel; and from Lev., xx, 27: "A man or woman in whom there is a pythonical or divining spirit, dying let them die: they shall stone them: Their blood be upon them", we should naturally infer that the divining spirit was not a mere imposture. The prohibitions of sorcery in the New Testament leave the same impression (Gal., v, 20, compared with Apoc, xxi, 8; xxii, 1.5; and Acts, viii, 9; xiii, 6). Supposing that the belief in witchcraft were an idle superstition, it would be strange that the suggestion should nowhere be made that the evil of these prac- tices only lay in the pretending to the possession of powers which did not really exist.

We are led to draw the same conclusion from the attitude of the early Church. Prob.ably that attitude was not a little influenced by the criminal legislation of the Empire as well as by Jewish feeling. The law of the Twelve Tables already assumes the reahty of magical powers, and the terms of the frequent references in Horace to Canidia allow us to see the odium in which such sorceresses were held. Under