Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 13.pdf/626

 The Devil in Law. an unsatisfactory one. That is an assertion of a specific fact. Was it a true assertion? Having regard to what took place between Lady Day and Midsummer, I think it was

THE

not. ... In my opinion a tenant who had paid the last quarter's rent by driblets under pressure must be regarded as an un desirable tenant."

DEVIL

IN

LAW.

BY R. VASHON ROGERS. WE wish to speak of the position assumed by the law towards a crime which was regarded for centuries not only as possible but as specially noxious. As the writer of the article on "Witchcraft," in the "Encyclo paedia Brittanica,'' says: "It is a long interval from 'The Twelve Tables' to the 'Petition of Right,' but the lawyers of the latte;- age accepted the existence of witchcraft with a faith almost as unquestioning as those of the former, and comparatively few were they, whether lawyers or laymen, who dared to raise their voices against the prevailing superstition/' Witchcraft may be taken to include any claim of a power to produce effects by other than natural causes. In Christian times "a witch'' has meant any person who is con federate with the devil, and works with him, or by him, or through him. The Twelve Tables forbade the conjuring away of a neighbor's crops. According to other Roman laws those who worked by magical or diabolical arts were liable to be burned alive, those that consulted them to crucifixion. To possess magical books was a crime; to give a love potion was punishable by labor in the mines or by fine. Under Constantine sorcery was punished by death, by burning or by banishment; an accusation of witchcraft rendered anyone liable to torture. Under the early Christians witchcraft was deemed heresy. In the fourteenth century a bull was published against witchcraft, and in the fifteenth a vigorous crusade against

it was begun by Innocent VIII. The "Mal leus Maleficarum" is the great text book of procedure on this subject; it was published in 1489. The author, Sprenger, divides witches into three classes: (i) Those who can injure and not cure; (2) those who can cure and not injure: (3) those who can do both, and these are the worst. According to this authority they kill and eat children, and devote the unbaptized to the devil. They cause abortion, and make man and woman barren; by twirling a moistened broom or casting flints behind them, or boiling hogs' bristles, they raise tempests and hail-storms, bring plagues of locusts and caterpillars, and make animals mad. They predict the future, bring about love or hate, slay men with lightning, or even with a glance; turn men into beasts, or transform themselves into cats and wild animals; cause or cure sickness, and regulate the weather. They banquet upon children and cattle and then restore them to life. Taking the ashes of a toad fed on a consecrated wafer, the powdered bones of a man who had been hung, certain herbs, and mixing them together with the blood of an unbaptized infant, they make an ointment, and spreading it on hands and on a stick or stool placed between the knees, quickly they are transported to their place of meeting, the Brocken. Benvenuto, Berwick on Tweed, or the other side of Jordan. Sometimes they rode thereto on horse, or goat, or dog. At their Sabbat there was high feasting and wild revelry; homage was paid to the devil, visibly present in the form of a pig or goat