Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/48

36 states that in the sixth year of the reign of the Pope Martin (i. e., in 1423) the belief that certain women and men were wont to transform themselves into cats and kill children was quite prevalent in Rome, and relates the case of a man who, having been harmed in this manner by a woman in his neighborhood, had her arrested and brought to the Capitol, where she exclaimed aloud, "If I only had my salve, I would travel off." Hartheb, who was present, had his curiosity greatly excited by this remark, and would have gladly given her the salve to see what she could do with it. But a doctor, in whom the spirit of scientific investigation was less strongly developed, stood up and said that she ought not to have the salve, since there was no knowing what mischief the devil might devise. The woman was then condemned to be burned, and Hartheb witnesedwitnessed [sic] the execution, although he evidently regretted that she was not permitedpermited [sic] to try the experiment of salving and saving herself with witches' ointment. If it be true, he adds, that old women can transport a man through the air on a calf or a he-goat, there is no doubt that the devil has to do with it. In this connection he raises the query why there are so many more witches than wizards. To this question, he says, the "masters" or inquisitors reply that woman being, as a rule, more frivolous and credulous, is therefore more accessible and amenable to Satan than man. How enormous and atrocious this disproportion of the sexes was may be inferred from the witchcraft prosecutions at Schöngau and Werdenfels in Bavaria from 1589 to 1591, where, of one hundred and fourteen persons condemned to be burned or beheaded, one hundred and thirteen were women. The true explanation of this strange and shameful phenomenon is the false and contemptuous conception of woman growing out of the ascendency of ascetic and scholastic ideas in the mediæval Church. In the eyes of the religious celibate woman was the personification of seduction, and had been from