Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/245

Rh The opinion that the rides through the air and the orgies of the witches’ sabbath were but delusions which the devil suggested to the poor foolish women, was already rather widely spread in the fifteenth century. Froissart, describing the striking case of a Gascon nobleman and his familiar demon called Horton (he surpasses himself here in exactness and vividness of narrative), treats it as an “error.” But it is an error caused by the devil, so the rationalizing interpretation, after all, goes only half-way. Gerson alone goes so far as to suggest the notion of a cerebral lesion, the others confine themselves to the hypothesis of diabolical illusions. Martin Lefranc, provost of the church of Lausanne, in the Champion des Dames, which he dedicated to Philip the Good in 1440, defended this opinion.

In general the mental attitude towards supernatural facts