Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/264

232 accustom his children to Christianity, and teach them the Paternoster and the Creed.

18. And we enjoin, that on feast-days heathen songs and devil's games be abstained from.

10th cent. Laws of Ethelred.

Let every Christian man do as is needful to him; let him strictly keep his Christianity.

Let us zealously venerate right Christianity, and totally despise every heathenism.

11th cent. Laws of Cnut.

5. We earnestly forbid every heathenism: heathenism is, that men worship idols; that is, that they worship heathen gods, and the sun or the moon, fire or rivers, water-wells or stones, or forest trees of any kind; or love witchcraft, or promote morthwork in any wise.

12th cent. John of Salisbury.

Mentions witches' Sabbaths.

13th cent. Galilee porches, for the use of the unbaptised and excommunicate, no longer built.

14th cent. Nider's Formicarius.

Berne infested with witches for more than sixty years.

Inquisition of Como in 1510, records that witches had existed there for more than 150 years.

Dame Alice Kyteler, tried for witchcraft, 1324. Devil appeared as a black man. Had in her possession a wafer bearing the devil's name instead of Christ's.

15th cent.

Trials of witches in Italy, France, and Germany. The characteristic features of the ritual are found.

15th cent. Decree of Innocent VIII, Generally said to be the beginning of the "outbreak" of witchcraft.

It has come to our ears. . . that many persons of