Page:The history of Witchcraft and demonology.djvu/55

 deal of confidence in her constant adherence to the Covenant, which she called the cause and interest of Christ.”

It will be seen that Miss Murray’s citation is incorrect and therefore impertinent. Major Weir was not executed “as a witch.” Moreover, both he and Gilles de Rais were actually strangled, and such examples must entirely fail to account “for the fact that the bodies of witches, male or female, were always burnt and the ashes scattered,” especially since in the latter case, as we have noticed, the body was honourably buried in the church of the Whitefriars. In fine, to endeavour to connect, however ingeniously, the fate of S. Joan of Arc, the execution of Gilles de Rais and Major Weir, with the folklorists’ theory of “the sacrifice of the incarnate deity” is merest fantasy.

The gist of the whole matter lies elsewhere. Death at the stake was the punishment reserved for heretics. As we have already noticed, Diocletian ruthlessly burned the Manichees: “We order then that the professors and teachers be punished with the utmost penalties, which is to say they are to be burned with fire together with all their execrable books and writings.” The Visigoth code condemned pagans or heretics who had committed sacrilege to the flames, and together with them it grouped all Manichees: “It is known that many Proconsuls have thrown blasphemers to the beasts, ray, have even burned some alive.” The Visigoth code of Rekeswinth (652–672) punishes Judaizers with death, “aut lapide puniatur, aut igne cremetur.” (Let them be stoned or burned with fire.) But it was actually in the eleventh century that the civil power first generally ordained the penalty of the stake for the heretics, who were, it must always be remembered, mad anarchists endeavouring to destroy all social order, authority, and decency. “In Italy even many adherents of this pestilential belief were found, and these wretches were slain with the sword or burned at the stake,” writes Adhémar de Chabannes, a monk of Angoulême, about the middle of the eleventh century. In a letter of Wazon, Bishop of Liège, there is an allusion to similar punishments which were being inflicted in Flanders.

A striking example of the heretical anarchists who troubled Europe about the beginning of the twelfth century may be seen in Tanchelin and his followers. This fanatic, who