Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/455

Rh afflict humanity, and the Scripture on which the action recommended against witches in this papal bull, as well as in so many sermons and treatises for centuries afterward, was based, was the famous text, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." This idea persisted long; and the evolution of it is among the most fearful things in human history. On the plagues generally, see Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle Ages, passim; but especially Haeser, as above III. Band, s., pp. 1-202; also, Sprengel, Baas, Isensee, et al. For brief statement showing the enormous loss of life in these plagues, see Littré Médecine et Médecins, Paris, 1875, p. 3 et seq. For a summary of the effects of the Black Plague throughout England, see Green's History of the English People, chap. v. For the mortality in the Paris hospitals, see Desmazes, Supplices, Prisons et Graces en France, Paris, 1866. For striking descriptions of plague-stricken cities, see the well-known passages in Thucydides, Bocaccio, De Foe, and above all, Manzoni's Promessi Sposi. For examples of averting the plagues by processions, see Leopold Delisle, Études sur la Condition de la Classe Agricole, etc., en Normandie au Moyen Age, p. 630; also Fort, chap, xxiii. For the anger of St. Sebastian as a cause of the Plague at Rome, and its cessation when a monument had been erected to him, see Paulus Diaconus, cited in Gregorovius, vol. ii, p. 165. For the sacrifice of an ox in the Colosseum to the ancient gods as a means of averting the plague of 1522, at Rome, see Gregorovius, vol. viii, p. 390. As to massacres of the Jews in order to averting the wrath of God in pestilence, see L'École et la Science, Paris, 1887, p. 178; also Hecker, and especially Hoeniger, Gang und Verbreitung des Schwarzen Todes in Deutschland, Berlin, 1880. As to absolute want of sanitary precautions, see Hecker, p. 292. As to condemnation by strong religionists of medical means in the plague, see Fort, p. 130. For a detailed account of the action of Popes Eugene IV and Innocent VIII against witchcraft, ascribing to It storms and diseases, and for the bull "Summis Desiderantes," see the chapter on Meteorology in this series. The text of the bull is given in the Malleus Maleficarum, in Binsfeld, and in Roskoff, Geschichte des Teufels, Leipzig, 1869, vol. i, pp. 222-225, and a good summary and analysis of it in Soldan, Geschichte der Hexenprocesse. For a concise and admirable statement of the contents and effects of the bull, see Lea, History of the Inquisition, vol. iii, pp. 40 et seq.; and for the best statement known to me of the general subject, Prof. George L. Burr's paper on witchcraft, read before the American Historical Association at Washington.

In Germany this development was especially terrible. From the middle of the sixteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth, Catholic and Protestant theologians and ecclesiastics vied with each other in detecting witches guilty of producing sickness or bad weather; women were sent to torture and death by thousands, and with them, from time to time, men and children. On the Catholic side sufficient warrant for this work was found in the bull of Pope Innocent VIII, and the bishops' palaces of south Germany became shamble—s the lordly prelates of Salzburg, Würzburg, and Bamberg taking the lead in this butchery.

In north Germany Protestantism was just as conscientiously cruel. It based its theory and practice toward witches directly upon the Bible, and above all on the great text which has cost the lives of so many myriads of innocent men, women, and children: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Naturally the Protestant authorities strove to show that Protestantism was