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 WITCHCRAFT

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WITCHCRAFT

the Empire, in the third century, the punishment of burning ahve was enacted by the State against witches who compassed another person's death through their enchantments (Juhus Pauhis, "Sent.", V, 23, 17). The ecclesiastical legislalion followed a similar but milder course. The Council of Elvira (306), can. vi, refused the holy Viaticum to those who had killed a man by a spell {per ynaleficium) and adds the reason that such a crime could not be effected "without idolatry"; which probably means without the aid of the Devil, devil- worshij) and idolatry being then convertible terms. Similarly canon x.\iv of the Council of Ancyra (314) imposes five years of penance upon those who consult magicians, and here again the offence is treated as being a practical participation in pagani.sni. This legislation represented the mind of the Church for many centuries. Similar penalties were enacted at the Eastern council in Trullo (692), while certain early Irish canons in the far West treated sorcery as a crime to be visited with excommunication until adequate penance had been performed. None the less the general desire of the clergj' to check fanaticism is well illustrated by such a council as that of Pader- born (7S.5). Although it enacts that sorcerers are to be reduced to serfdom and made over to the service of the Church, a decree was also passed in the follow- ing terms: "Whosoever, blinded by the devil and infected with pagan errors, holds another person for a witch that eats human flesh, and therefore burns her, eats her flesh, or gives it to others to eat, shall be punished with death". Altogether it may be said that in the first thirteen hundred years of the Chris- tian era we find no trace of that fierce denunciation and persecution of supjiosed sorceresses which charac- terized the cruel witch hunts of a later age. In these earlier centuries a few individual prosecutions for witchcraft took place, and in some of these torture (permitted by the Roman civil law) was apparently employed. Pope Nicholas I, indeed (A. D. 866), prohibited the use of torture, and a similar decree may be found in the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals. In spite of this it was not everywhere given up. Also we must notice that a good many susjjected witches were subjected to the ordeal of cold water, but as the sinking of the victim was regarded as a proof of her innocence, we may reasonably believe that the verdicts so arrived at were generally verdicts of acquittal. On many different occasions ecclesiastics who spoke with authority did their best to disabuse the people of their belief in witchcraft. This for instance is the general purport of the book, "Contra insulsam vulgi opinionem de grandine et tonitruis" (Against the fooHsh belief of the common sort con- cerning hail and thunder), written by Saint Agobard (d. 841), Archbishop of Lyons (P. L., CIV, 147). Still more to the point is the section of the work, "De ccclesiasticis disciplinis" ascribed to Regino of Prum (A. D. 906). In § .364 we read: This also is not to be passed over that "certain abandoned women, turning aside to follow Satan, being seduced by the illusions and phantasms of demons, believe and openly profess that in the dead of night they ride upon certain beasts along with the pagan goddess Diana and a countless horde of women and that in these silent hours they fly over vast tracts of country and obey her as their mistress, while on other niglits they are summoned to pay her homage." And then he goes on to remark that if it were only that the women themselves were deluded it would be a matter of little consequence, but unfortunately an immense number of people (innumera mulfiludo) believe these things to be true and believing them depart from the true J'aith, so that practically speaking they fall into Paganism. And on this account he says "it is the duly of priests earnestly to instruct the people that the.se things are absolutely untrue and that such imaginings are planted in the minds of

misbelieving folk, not by a Divine spirit, but by the spirit of evil" (P. L., ("XXXII, ;i.")2; cf. ibid., 284). It would, as Hansen has shown (Zauberwahn, pp. 81-82), be far too .sweeping a conclusion to infer that the Carlovingian Church by this utterance pro- claimed its disbelief in witchcraft, but the passage at least proves tliat in regard to such matters a saner and more critical spirit had begun to prevail among the clergy. The "Decretum" of Burchard, Bishop of Worms (about 1020), and especially its 19th Book, often known separately as the "Corrector", is another work of great importance. Burchard, or the teachers from whom lie has compiled his treatise, still believes in some forms of witchcraft — in magical potions, for instance, which may produce imiiotence or abortion. But he altogether rejects the possibility of many of the marvellous powers with which witches were popularly credited. Such, for example, were the nocturnal riding through the air, the changing of a person's disposition from love to hate, the control of thunder, rain, and sunshine, the transformation of a man into an animal, the intercourse of incubiand succubi with human beings. Not only the attempt to practise such things but the very belief in their possibility is treated by him as a sin for which the confessor must require his penitent to do a serious assigned penance. Gregory VII in 1080 WTote to King Harold of Denmark forbidding witches to be put to death upon presumption of their having caused storms or failure of crops or pestilence. Neither were these the only examples of an effort to stem the tide of unjust suspicion to which these poor creatures were exposed. See for example the Weihenstephan case discussed by Weiland in the "Zeitschrift f. Kirchengesch.", IX, 592.

On the other hand, after the middle of the thirteenth century, the then recently-constituted Papal Inquisition began to concern itself with charges of witchcraft. Alexander IV, indeed, ruled (12.58) that the inquisitors should limit their intervention to those cases in which there was some clear presumption of heretical belief (manifesle hter- esim saperent), but Han^n shows reason for suppos- ing that heretical tendencies were very readily inferred from almost any sort of magical practices. Neither is this altogether surprising when we remember how freely the Cathari parodied CathoHc ritual in their "consolamentum" and other rites, and how easily the Manichsean dualism of their system might be interpreted as a homage to the powers of darkness. It was at any rate at Toulouse, the hot-bed of Cath- aran infection, that we meet in 1275 the earliest example of a witch burned to death after judicial sentence of an inquisitor, who was in this case a certain Hugues de Baniol (Cauzons, "La Magie", 11, 217). The woman, probably half crazy, "confessed" to having brought forth a monster after intercourse with an evil sjjirit and to having nourished it with babies' flesh which she procured in her nocturnal ex- peditions. The possibility of such carnal intercourse between human beings and demons was unfortunately accepted by some of the great schoolmen, even, for example, by St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonavenfure. Nevertheless within the Church itself there was always a strong common-sense react ion against this theorizing, a reaction which more especially mariifi'sted itself in the confession manuals of the close of the fifteenth cen- tury. These were largely compiled by men who were in actual contact with the people, and who realized the harm effected by the extravagances of these super- stitious beliefs. Stephen Lanzkranna, for instance, treated the belief in women who rodeabo\it at night, hobgoblins, were-wolves, and "other such heathen nonsensical impostures", as one of the great est of sins. Moreover this common-sense influence was a powerful one. .'>pcaking of the synods he Id in Bavaria, .so im- f ri<'ndly a witness aa Riezler (He.\enproze.s.se in Hayern,