Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/43

Rh the repudiation and punishment of superstitions as survivals of paganism to their acceptance and enforcement as Christian and Catholic articles of faith is brought out very clearly by Dr. Sigmund Riezler in his recent Geschichte der Hexenprozesse in Bayern (Stuttgart, Cotta, 1896). This work, which may be regarded as a sort of sequel to the author's well-known Geschichte Bayerns, in three volumes, is the first complete history of witch trials in Bavaria ever published. In using the epithet "complete" we would by no means imply that every prosecution of this kind within the limits of the duchy, and afterward electorate, of Bavaria is mentioned. Many protocols of such proceedings have been lost and many others lie hidden in municipal and especially in ecclesiastical archives hitherto inaccessible to scientific investigation; but all the essential features of these trials are here so fully presented and portrayed that no publication of isolated acts or individual instances will add materially to our knowledge of the subject.

The oldest mention of witchcraft in Bavarian law is the imposition of a fine of twelve shillings (about twenty cents) upon persons who injure the harvests by magic arts; in addition to this fine the sorcerer is also made pecuniarily responsible to the owner for loss of property. Penalties of a like character were also inflicted upon such as foretold future events, produced storms, or caused horses and cattle to disappear by means of diabolical machinations. In Arbeo's Life of Corbinianus, the first Bishop of Freising, it is related that as he was one day riding up to the castle he met an old woman reputed to be a witch, accompanied by men bearing meat and one of them leading a live animal. On asking whence they came and what they were doing, he was told that the duke's son had been vexed by demons and that she had healed him. This information so excited the wrath of the bishop that he leaped from his horse and gave the old hag a sound beating; he also took away the gifts which she had received for her services and distributed them among the poor at the gate of the city. This incident occurred between 718 and 724. One of the capitularies of Charlemagne, issued more than sixty years later, soon after the final subjugation of the Saxons and designed to Christianize the conquered people, punishes with death "any one who, blinded by the devil and following heathen devices, may believe any persons to be witches and to devour human beings, and who may burn them for this cause or give their flesh to be devoured or devour the same." The capitulary also provides that practices of divination and of sortilege shall be handed over to the Church and to the priests in order that they may be turned from the error of their way and instructed in the Christian faith.