Page:The history of Witchcraft and demonology.djvu/149

 bodily & actually conveyed to and fro by the Devil, or whether this be merely imaginary?” He freely acknowledges the extraordinary difficulty and intricacy of the investigation, beginning his answer with the phrase “Quaestio ista est multum ardua et famosa.” (This is a very difficult and oft-discussed question.) But S. Augustine, S. Thomas, S. Bonaventure, and a score of great names are agreed upon the reality of this locomotion, and Grilland, after balancing the evidence to the nicety of a hair wisely concludes: “Myself I hold the opinion that they are actually transported.”

In his Compendium Maleficarum Francesco Maria Guazzo discusses (Liber I. 13) “Whether Witches are actually and bodily conveyed from place to place to attend their Sabbats”; and lays down: “The opinion which many who follow Luther & Melancthon hold is that Witches only assist at these assemblies in their imagination, & that they are choused by some trick of the devil, in support of which argument the objectors assert that the Witches have very often been seen lying in one spot and not moving thence. Moreover, what is related in the life of S. Germain is not impertinent in this connexion, to wit, when certain women declared that they had been present at a banquet, & yet all the while they slumbered and slept, as several persons attested. That women of this kind are very often deceived in such a way is certain; but that they are always so deceived is by no means sure. … The alternative opinion, which personally I hold most strongly, is that sometimes at any rate Witches are actually conveyed from one place to another by the Devil, who under the bodily form of a goat or some other unclean & monstrous animal himself carries them, & that they are verily and indeed present at their foul midnight Sabbats. This opinion is that generally held by the authoritative Theologians and Master Jurisprudists of Italy and Spain, as also by the Catholic divines and legalists. The majority of writers, indeed, advance this view, for example, Torquemada in his commentary on Grilland, Remy, S. Peter Damian, Silvester of Abula, Tommaso de Vio Gaetani, Alfonso de Castro, Sisto da Siena, O.P., Père Crespet, Bartolomeo Spina in his glosses on Ponzinibio, Lorenzo Anania, and a vast number of others, whose names for brevity’s save I here omit.”