Page:The history of Witchcraft and demonology.djvu/83

 But when every allowance has been made, as we examine in detail the long and bloody history of Witchcraft, as we recognize the fearful fanaticism and atrocious extravagances of the witch mania, as we are enabled to account for in the light of ampler knowledge, both psychological and physical, details and accidents which would have inevitably led to the stake without respite or mercy, as we can elucidate case after case—one an hysterical subject, a cataleptic, an epileptic, a sufferer from some obscure nervous disorder even to-day not exactly diagnosed; another, denounced by the malice of private enemies, perhaps on political grounds; a third, some doting beldame the victim of idlest superstition or mere malignity; a fourth, accused for the sake of gain by a disappointed blackmailer or thief; others, silly bodies, eccentrics, and half-crazed cranks; and the even greater number of victims who were incriminated by poor wretches raving in the agonies of the rack and boots;—none the less after having thus frankly discounted every possible circumstance, after having completely realized the world-wide frenzy of persecution that swept through those centuries of terror, we cannot but recognize that there remain innumerable and important cases which are not to be covered by any ordinary explanation, which fall within no normal category. As a most unprejudiced writer has well said: “The underlying and provocative phenomena had really been present in a huge number of cases.” And there is no other way of accounting for these save by acknowledging the reality of Witchcraft and diabolic contracts. It must be steadily remembered that the most brilliant minds, the keenest intelligences, the most learned scholars, the noblest names, men who had heard the evidence at first hand, all firmly believed in Witchcraft. Amongst them are such supreme authorities as S. Augustine, “a philosophical and theological genius of the first order, dominating, like a pyramid, antiquity and the succeeding ages”; Blessed Albertus Magnus, the “Universal Doctor” of encyclopædic knowledge; S. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor Angelicus, one of the profoundest intellects the world has ever seen; the Seraphic S. Bonaventura, most loving of mystics; Popes not a few, Alexander IV, the friend of the Franciscans, prudent, kindly, deeply religious, “assiduous in prayer and strict in abstinence”; John XXII,