Page:Witchcraft In Christian Countries.pdf/9

Rh most daring and dangerous of those rebels against the Papacy were the Waldenses and Albigenses, occupying the vine-clad valleys of Southern France. These heretics were denounced as sorcerers, and subjected to the most merciless visitations of sword and fire, rack and gallows. Florimond, a writer of the time, in a work on Anti-Christ, observes: "All those who have afforded us some signs of the approach of Anti-Christ agree that the increase of witchcraft and sorcery is to distinguish the melancholy period of his advent; and was ever age so afflicted with them as ours? The seats destined for criminals before our judges are blackened by persons accused of this crime. There are not judges enough to try them. Our dungeons are gorged with them. No day passes in which we do not render our tribunals bloody by the dooms which we pronounce, or in which we do not return to our homes discountenanced and terrified at the horrible contents of the confessions which it has been our duty to hear. And the devil is accounted so good a master that we cannot commit so great a number of his slaves to the flames but what there shall arise from their ashes a number sufficient to supply their place." But more terrible days still were in store, for the revolt against Rome had fairly set in, and the bull of Pope Innocent VIII. was the sanction and stimulant to a desperate attempt to exterminate heresy by fire and massacre. "Dreadful," says the author of "Demonology and Witchcraft," were "the consequences of this bull all over the continent, especially in Italy, Germany, and France. About 1485 Cumanus burnt as witches forty-one poor women in one year in the county of Burlia. In the ensuing years he continued the prosecution with such unremitting zeal that many fled from the country ... . .... . Some were accused of having dishonoured the crucifix and denied their salvation; others of having absconded to keep the Devil's Sabbath, in spite of bolts and bars; others of merely having joined in the choral dances round the witches' tree of rendezvous. Several of their husbands and relatives swore that they were in bed and asleep during these pretended excursions ......... In 1488 the country four leagues round Constance was laid waste by lightning and tempest; and two women, by fair means or foul, being made to confess themselves guilty of the