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 WITCHCRAFT

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WITCHCRAFT

p. 32) declares that "among the official representatives of the Church this healthier tendency remained the prevalent one down to the threshold of the witch-trial epidemic, that is until far on in the sixteenth century ". Even as late as the Salzburg Provincial Synod of 1569 (Dalham, "ConciUa Salisburgensia", p. 372), we find indication of a strong tendency to prevent as far as possible the infliction of the death penalty in cases of reputed witchcraft, by insisting that these things were diabolical illusions. Still there can be no doubt that during the fourteenth century certain papal constitutions of John XXII and Benedict XII (see Hansen,"QuellenundUntersuchungen", pp. 2-15) did very much to stimulate the prosecution by the inquisi- tors of witches and others engaged in magical prac- tices, especially in the south of France. In a witch trial on a large scale carried on at Toulouse in 1335, out of sixty-three persons accused of offences of this kind, eight were handed over to the secular arm to be burned and the rest were imprisoned either for life or for a long term of years. Two of the condemned, both elderly women, after repeated appUcations of torture, confessed that they had assisted at witches' sabbaths, had there worshipped the Devil, had been guilty of indecencies with him and with the other persons present, and had eaten the flesh of infants whom they had carried off by night from their nurses (Hansen, "Zauberwahn", 315; and "QueUen und Untersuchungen", 451). In 1324 Petronilla de Midia was burnt at Kilkenny in Ireland at the in- stance of Richard, Bishop of Ossory; but analo- gous cases in the British Isles seem to have been very rare. During this period the secular courts proceeded against witchcraft with equal or even greater severity than the ecclesiastical tribunals, and here also torture was employed and burning at the stake. Fire was the punishment juridically appointed for this ofTence in the secular codes known as the "Sachsenspiegel" (1225) and the "Schwabenspiegel" (1275). Indeed during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries no prosecutions for witchcraft are known to have been undertaken in Germanyby the papal inquisi- tors. About the year 1400we find wholesale witch-pros- ecutions being carried out at Berne in Switzerland by Peter de Gruyeres, who, despite the assertions of Riezler, was imquestionably a secular judge (see Hansen, "QueUen, etc.", 91 n.), and other campaigns — for example in t he Valais (1428-1434) when 200 witches were put to death, or at Brian9on in 1437 when over 150 suffered, some of them by drowning, — were carried on by the secular courts. The victims of the inquisi- tors, e. g. at Heidelberg in 1447, or in Savoy in 1462, do not seem to have been quite so numerous. In France at this period the crime of witchcraft was fre- quently designated as "Vauderie" through some confusion seemingly with the followers of the heretic, Peter Waldes. But this confusion between sorcery and a particular form of heresy was unfortunately bound to bring a still larger number of persons under the jealous scrutiny of the inquisitors.

It will be readily understood from the foregoing that the importance attached by many older writers to the Bull, " Sumrais desiderantes aff eel ibus ", of Pope Innocent VIII (1484), as though this papal document were responsible for the witch mania of the two suc- ceeding centuries, is altogether illusory. Not only had an active campaign against most forms of sorcery already been going on for a long period, but in the matter of procedure, of punishments, of judges, etc.. Innocent's Bull enacted nothing new. Its direct pur- port was simply to ratify the powers already conferred upon Henry Institoris and James Sprenger, inquisi- tors, to deal with persons of every class and with every form of crime (for example, with witchcraft as well as heresy), and it called upon the Bishop of Strasburg to lend the inquisitors all possible support.

Indirectly, however, by specifying the evil practices

charged against the witches — for example their inter- course with incubi and succubi, their interference with the parturition of women and animals, the damage they did to cattle and the fruits of the earth, their power and mahce in the infliction of pain and disease, the hindrance caused to men in their conjugal rela- tions, and the witches' repudiation of the faith of their baptism — the pope must no doubt be considered to affirm the reahty of these alleged phenomena But, as even Hansen points out (Zauberwahn, 468, n. 3), "it is perfectly obvious that the Bull pronounces no dogmatic decision"; neither does the form suggest that the pope wishes to bind anyone to believe more about the reahty of witchcraft than is involved in the utterances of Holy Scripture. Probably the most disastrous episode was the pubhcation a year or two later, by the same inquisitors, of the book "Malleus Maleficarum" (the hammer of witches). This work is divided into three parts, the first two of which deal with the reality of witchcraft as estabhshed by the Bible, etc., as well as its nature and horrors and the manner of deahng with it, while the third lays down practical rules for procedure whether the trial be conducted in an ecclesiastical or a secular court. There can be no doubt that the book, owing to its reproduction by the printing press, exercised great influence. It contained, indeed, nothing that was new. The " Formicarius " of John Nider, which had been %\Titten nearly fifty j-ears earlier, exhibits just as intimate a knowledge of the supposed phenom- ena of sorcery. But the "Malleus" professed (in part fraudulently) to have been approved by the Uni- versity of Cologne, and it was sensational in the stigma it attached to witchcraft as a worse crime than heresy and in its notable animus against the female sex. The subject at once began to attract attention even in the world of letters. Ulrich Molitoris a year or two later published a work, "De Lamiis", which, though disagreeing with the more extravagant of the rep- resentations made in the "Malleus", did not question the existence of witches. Other divines and popular preachers joined in the discussion, and, though many voices were raised on the side of common sense, the pubhcity thus given to these matters inflamedthe popular imagination. Certainh' the immediate effects of Innocent VIII's BuU have been greatly exagger- ated. Institoris started a witch campaign at Inns- bruck in 1485, but here his procedure was severely criticised and resisted bj' the Bishop of Brixen (see Janssen, "Hist, of Germ. People", Eng. tr., XVI, 249- 251). So far as the papal inquisitors were concerned, the Bull, especially in Germany, heralded the close rather than the commencement of their acti^aty. The witch-trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were for t he most part in secular hands. One fact which is absolutely certain is that, so far as Luther, Calvin, and their followers were concerned, the popu- lar behef in the power of the Devil as exercised through witchcraft and other magical practices was developed beyond all meaatu-e. Naturally Luther did not appeal to the papal Bull. He looked only to the Bible, and it was in virtue of the Bibhcal command that he advocated the extermination of witches. But no portion of Janssen's "History" is more imanswerable than the fourth and fifth chapters of the last volume (vol. XVI of the English edition, in which he attributes a large, if not tlie greater, share of the responsibility for the witch mania to the Reformers.

The penal code known as the Carolina (1532) decreed that sorcery throughout the German empire should be treated as a criminal offence, and if it purported to inflict injury upon any person the witch was to be burnt at the slake. In 1.572 Augustus of Saxony imposed the penalty of burning for witchcraft of every kind, including simple fort unetelling. On the whole, greater activity in hunting down witches was shown in the Protestant districts of Germany than in the Catholic