There was another comfortable theory that those who exercised public functions for the suppression of witchcraft were not subject to the influence of witches or demons. Sprenger tells us that he and his colleagues had been many times assailed by devils in the shape of monkeys, dogs, and goats, but by the aid of God they had always been able to overcome the enemy. Yet there were exceptions to this, as we have seen in the case of the unlucky inquisitor and podestà of Como; and the lenity of some judges was explained by the fact that the witch was sometimes able so to affect their minds that they were unable to convict. This steeled the heart of the conscientious inquisitor, who repressed all sentiments of compassion in the belief that they were prompted by Satan. The witch was specially able to exert this power over her judge when she looked upon him before he saw her, and it was a wise precaution to make her enter the court backwards, so that the judge had the advantage of the first glance. He and his assistants were also advised to be very careful not to let a witch touch them, especially on the wrist or other joint, and to wear around the neck a bag containing salt exorcised on Palm Sunday, with consecrated herbs enclosed in blessed wax, besides constantly protecting themselves with the sign of the cross. It was doubtless through neglect of these salutary precautions that at a witch-burning in the Black Forest, as the executioner was lifting the convict on the pile she blew in his face, saying, “I will reward you,” whereupon a horrible leprosy broke out which spread over his body, and in a few days he was dead. Occasionally, moreover, the familiar demon of the witch, in the shape of a raven, would accompany her to the place of execution and prevent the wood from burning until he was driven off.[561]

To combat an evil so widespread and all-pervading required the combined exertions of Church and State. The secular and episcopal courts both had undoubted jurisdiction over it; the action of John XXII., in 1330, may have caused some question as to the Inquisition, but if so it was settled in 1374, when the Inquisitor of France was proceeding against some sorcerers and his competence was disputed, and Gregory XI., to whom the matter was referred, instructed him to prosecute them with the full severity of the laws. Commissions issued in 1409 and 1418 to Pons Feugeyron, Inquisitor of Provence, enumerate sorcerers, conjurers, and invokers of demons among those whom he is to suppress. As the growth of witchcraft became more alarming, Eugenius IV., in 1437, stimulated the inquisitors everywhere to greater activity against it, and these instructions were repeated in 1445. In 1451 Nicholas V. even enlarged the powers of Hugues le Noir, Inquisitor of France, by granting him jurisdiction over divination, even when it did not savor of heresy. There was occasional clashing, of course, between the episcopal officials and the inquisitors, but the rule seems to have been generally observed that either could proceed separately, while the Clementine regulation should be observed which prescribed their co-operation in the use of torture and punitive imprisonment and when rendering final sentence. The bishops, moreover, assumed that their assent was necessary to the action of the secular courts. In the case of Guillaume Edeline, condemned to perpetual imprisonment at Evreux in 1453, when the sentence was read by the episcopal official the bishop added “We retain our power of pardon,” but the inquisitor at once entered a formal protest that the prisoner should not be released without the consent of the Inquisition.[562]

Yet in France at this period the royal jurisdiction, as embodied in the Parlement, was, as we have seen in a former chapter, successfully exerting its superiority over both bishops and inquisitors. A curious case occurring in 1460 illustrates both this and the superstitions current at the time. A priest of the diocese of Soissons named Yves Favins brought a suit for tithes against a husbandman named Jean Rogier, who held of the Hospitallers. These, like the Templars, were exempt from tithes; Favins lost his case, was condemned in the expenses, which were heavy, and was eager for revenge. A poor woman of the village who had come from Merville in Hainault, had quarrelled with the wife of Rogier over the price of some spinning, and to her Yves had recourse. She gave him a great toad which she kept in a pot, and told him to baptize it and feed it on a consecrated wafer, which he did, giving it the name of John. The woman then killed it and made of it a “sorceron,” which her daughter took to Rogier’s house under pretence of demanding the money in dispute, and cast it under the table at which Rogier, his wife, and his son were dining. They all died within three days; suspicion was aroused, and the two women were arrested and confessed. The mother was burned, but the daughter obtained a respite on the plea of pregnancy, escaped from jail and fled to Hainault, but was brought back and was carried on appeal to Paris. Yves was rich and well-connected. He was arrested and confined in the prison of the Bishop of Paris, but he obtained counsel and appealed to the Parlement; the Parlement allowed the appeal, tried him, and acquitted him.[563]

All secular tribunals were not as enlightened as the Parlement of Paris, but there seems to have been at least sometimes an effort to administer even-handed justice. About this time a case occurred at Constance in which an accuser formally inscribed himself against a peasant whom he had met riding on a wolf, and had immediately become crippled. He applied to the peasant, who cured him, but observing that the wizard bewitched others, he felt it his duty to prosecute him. The case was exhaustively argued before the magistrates, for the prosecution and the defence, by two eloquent advocates, Conrad Schatz and Ulric Blaser. Torture was not used, but the accused was condemned and burned on the testimony of witnesses.[564]

In the ecclesiastical tribunals offenders had not the same chance. We have seen in a former chapter how skilfully the inquisitorial process was framed to secure conviction, and when, after a prolonged period of comparative inactivity, the Inquisition was aroused to renewed exertion in combating the legions of Satan, it sharpened its rusted weapons to a yet keener edge. The old hesitation about pronouncing a sentence of acquittal was no longer entertained, for though the accused might be dismissed with a verdict of not proven, the inquisitor was formally instructed never to declare him innocent. Yet few there were upon whom even this doubtful clemency was exercised, for all the resources of fraud and force, of guile and torment, were exhausted to secure conviction with even less reserve than of old. Engaged in a personal combat with Satan, the inquisitor was convinced in advance of the guilt of those brought before him as defamed for sorcery, and the ancient expedients were refined upon and improved. Formerly endurance of torture might be regarded as an evidence of innocence, now it was only an additional proof of guilt, for it showed that Satan was endeavoring to save his servitor, and the duty to defeat him was plain, even though, as Sprenger tells us was frequently the case, the witch would allow herself to be torn in pieces before she would confess. Though, as formerly, torture could not be repeated, it could be “continued” indefinitely, with prolonged periods of intervening imprisonment in dungeons of which the squalor was purposely heightened to exhaust the mental and physical forces of the victim. It is true that confession was not absolutely requisite, for when the evidence was sufficient the accused could be convicted without it, but it was held that common justice required that the criminal should avow his guilt, and therefore the use of torture was universal when confession could not be otherwise secured. Yet in view of the satanic gift of taciturnity it was desirable to avoid recourse to it, and therefore promises of pardon, not indefinitely veiled under a juggle of words as of old, but positive and specifying a moderate penance or exile, were to be freely made. If the fraud was successful, the inquisitor could let the sentence be pronounced by some one else, or allow a decent interval to elapse before himself sending his deluded victim to the stake. All the other devices to entrap or seduce the prisoner to confession which we have seen employed by the older inquisitors were also still recommended. One new and infallible sign was the inability of the witch to shed tears during torture and before the judges, though she could do so freely elsewhere. In such a case the inquisitor was instructed to adjure her to weep by the loving tears shed for the world by Christ on the cross, but the more she was adjured, we are told, the drier she would become. Still, with the usual logic of the demonologist, if she did weep it was a device of the devil and was not to be reckoned in her favor.[565]

The most significant change, however, between the old procedure and the new regarded the death-penalty. We have seen that with the heretic the object was held to be the salvation of his soul, and, except in case of relapse, he could always purchase life by recantation, at the expense of lifelong imprisonment, with the prospect that in time submission might win him release. At what period the rule changed with respect to witches is uncertain. When convicted by the secular courts they were invariably burned, and the Inquisition came to adopt the same practice. In 1445 the Council of Rouen still treats them with singular mildness. Invokers of demons were to be publicly preached with mitres on their heads, when, if they abjured, the bishop was empowered to release them after performance of appropriate penance; after this, if they relapsed, clerks were to be perpetually imprisoned, and laymen abandoned to the secular arm, while for minor superstitions and incantations a month’s prison and fasting were sufficient, with heavier penance for relapse. In 1448 the Council of Lisieux contented itself with ordering priests on all Sundays and festivals to denounce as excommunicate all usurers, sorcerers, and diviners. In 1453 Guillaume Edeline escaped with abjuration and prison. In 1458 Jaquerius laboriously argues that the witch is not to be treated like other heretics, to be spared if she recants, showing that the change was still a novelty, requiring justification. In 1484 Sprenger says positively that while the recanting heretic is to be imprisoned, the sorcerer, even if penitent, is to be put to death, indicating that by this time there was no longer any question on the subject. There was, as usual, a pretence of shifting the responsibility of this upon the secular authorities, for Sprenger adds that the most the ecclesiastical judge can do is to absolve the penitent and converted witch from the ipso facto excommunication under which she lies and let her go, to be apprehended by the lay courts and be burned for the evil which she has wrought. Silvester Prierias shows us how transparent was this juggle, when he instructs the inquisitor that if the witch confesses and is penitent she is to be received to mercy and not be delivered to the secular arm: she is to abjure, is absolved and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment in a black dress; the dress is put on her and she is led to the church-door—but not to prison. The Inquisition takes no further concern about her; if the secular court is content, well and good—if not, it does as it pleases. What the inquisitors would have said if it pleased the secular authorities to let the witch go free may be judged by the maledictions of Sprenger on the incredulous laity who disbelieved in the reality of witchcraft, and through whose supineness the secular arm had allowed the cursed sect to so increase that its extirpation appeared impossible.[566] Still more instructive, as we shall see hereafter, was the indignation of Leo X. when the Signory of Venice refused to burn the witches of Brescia condemned by the Inquisition.

Equally frivolous was the pretence that the punishment of burning was merely for the injuries wrought by the witch, for we shall see that in the case of the Vaudois of Arras the convicts were burned as a matter of course, although attendance upon the Sabbat was the only crime with which most of the sufferers were charged, and that they were delivered for the purpose by the ecclesiastical court to the magistrates, and even burned without such formality. Besides, Sprenger tells us that in the case of prominent and influential witches the death-penalty was frequently commuted to perpetual imprisonment on bread and water, as a reward for betraying their accomplices, which shows that the fate of the accused in reality rested with the inquisitor. Still, there appears to have been, in at least one case, a simulacrum of judgment by the secular court which I have rarely met where heretics were concerned. November 5, 1474, at Levone, in Piedmont, Francesca Viloni and Antonia d’ Alberto were condemned by the acting inquisitor Francesco Chiabaudi. The sentence orders their delivery to the secular arm with a protest that no corporal punishment was thereby indicated, directly or indirectly, although the goods of the convicts were declared confiscated. The same day the assistant inquisitor, Frà Lorenzo Butini, delivered them to the podestà, Bartolomeo Pasquale, with the protest, to protect himself from “irregularity,” that he did not intend to indicate for them any corporal punishment or to consent to it. The podestà allowed two days to elapse and then held, November 7, a solemn court to which the population was summoned by blast of trumpet. The convicts were brought before him, when his consultore, or legal adviser, Lorenzo di Front, addressed him to the effect that the women had been condemned by the Inquisition for witchcraft, heresy, and apostasy, and that, according to the laws, he must sentence them to the legal punishment of burning alive, which he incontinently did. It evidently was the merest formality, and possibly, as the death of two of the podestà’s children had been attributed to one of the witches, he may have wished to magnify his share in the retribution.[567]

As of old, practically the sole defence of the accused lay in disabling the witnesses for enmity, and judges were reminded that the enmity must be of the most violent nature, for, with the wonted happy facility of assuming guilt in advance, they were told that there was almost always some enmity involved, since witches were odious to everybody. At the same time all the old methods of reducing this slender chance to a minimum were followed, supplemented with such as additional experience had suggested. The names of the witnesses were generally suppressed, but if they were communicated they were so arranged as to mislead, and in advance effort was made to debar the accused from disabling the most damaging ones by enticing her to deny all knowledge of them or to declare them to be her friends. If she insisted on seeing the evidence, it might be given to her after interpolating in it extraneous matters and accusations to lead her astray.[568]

Appeals were always to be refused if possible. Outside of France the only one that could be made was to Rome for refusing counsel, for improper torture, and other unjust proceeding; and then, as we have seen, the inquisitor could either refuse “apostoli” or grant either reverential or negative ones. If conscious of injustice and aware that an appeal was coming, he could elude it by appointing some one to sit in his place. The danger of appeals was small, however, for if the accused insisted on having counsel she was not allowed to select him. The inquisitor appointed him; he was bound not to assume the defence if he knew it to be unjust; he was not allowed to know the names of the witnesses, and his functions were restricted to advising his client either to confess or to disable the witnesses. If he made difficulties and delays and interjected appeals he was subject to excommunication as a fautor of heresy, and was worse than the witches themselves—of all of which he was to be duly warned when accepting the case.[569]

The consequences of neglecting these salutary precautions are seen in two trials in 1474, at Rivara in Piedmont. A number of witches had been burned, and as usual they had implicated others. The matter had been conducted by Francesco Chiabaudi, a canon regular, commissioned by both the Bishop of Turin and Michele de’ Valenti, the Inquisitor of Lombardy. Inexperienced and unskilled, he had appointed Tommaso Balardi, parish priest of Rivara, to make the preliminary informations in five fresh accusations. The evidence, as usual, was overwhelming; Balardi arrested the culprits and gave them ten days to show cause why they should not be tortured. At the same time, with incredible ignorance of his duties, he allowed them to select defenders, when they chose their husbands or brothers or sons. In the case of three, these defenders did nothing and the trials were conducted as usual, though the fragmentary documents remaining do not acquaint us with the result. The other two, Guglielmina Ferreri and Margherita Cortina, were more fortunate. They seem to have been rich peasants, and their families retained three able lawyers for their defence. When these were once admitted before the tribunal the prosecution went to pieces. Chiabaudi, unacquainted with the privileges of the inquisitorial process, was wholly unable to control them. He allowed them to enter protests against the initial informations for irregularity, and even permitted them, against all precedent, to introduce witnesses for the defence. They had the audacity to summon Balardi himself, and made him testify that the accused were regular in all religious observances; after which they poured in evidence that the so-called witches were eminently pious and charitable women, and that the rumors against them had only arisen a couple of years before, on the burning of three sisters who were said to have named them in their confessions. Chiabaudi sought refuge in appointing Antonio Valo, a local legal luminary, as procurator-fiscal, or prosecutor, an official unknown to the Inquisition of the period, whom the counsel for the accused speedily drove out of court. With each hearing they grew more aggressive. They boldly quoted the Digest and the rules of law and justice as though such things had not been expressly prohibited in inquisitorial trials. Finally they told Chiabaudi that he was himself suspect; that as a canon he had no right to leave his convent for such business, and that all his acts were null. The whole prosecution, they said, was merely an attempt to extort money and to divide the plunder of the accused, and they appealed to the episcopal vicar of Turin, with a threat, if necessary, to obtain the intervention of the Duke of Savoy himself. Chiabaudi yielded to the storm which he had imprudently allowed to gather strength, and in February, 1375, he permitted the transfer of the case to the episcopal court of Turin. Whether the unfortunate women fared better there will, doubtless, never be known, but the case shows the wisdom of the precautions adopted by the regular inquisitors of selecting counsel themselves and threatening them with excommunication if they defended their clients. It is interesting, moreover, as probably the only inquisitorial trial on record, save that of Gilles de Rais, in which the forbidden litis contestatio was carried out.[570]

A much more typical and illustrative case, of which we happen to have the details, is that of the “Vaudois,”[571] or witches of Arras, showing how witchcraft panics were developed and what could be accomplished by inquisitorial methods, even under the supreme jurisdiction of the Parlement of Paris. In 1459, while a general chapter of the Dominican Order was in session at Langres, there chanced to be burned there as a witch a hermit named Robinet de Vaulx. He was forced to name all whom he had seen in the Sabbat, and among them was a young femme de folle vie of Douai, named Deniselle, and a resident of Arras, advanced in years, named Jean la Vitte—a painter and poet, who had written many beautiful ballads in honor of the Virgin, and who was a general favorite, though, as he was popularly known as the Abbé-de-peu-de-sens, he was probably not a very sedate character.[572] Pierre le Brousart, the Inquisitor of Arras, was present at the chapter, and on his return he lost no time in looking after the accused. Deniselle was soon arrested and thrown into the episcopal prison; Jean, Bishop of Arras, whom we have seen promoted to the cardinalate for his services in procuring the repeal of the Pragmatic Sanction, was then in Rome; his suffragan was a Dominican, Jean, titular Bishop of Beirut, formerly a papal penitentiary, and his vicars were Pierre du Hamel, Jean Thibault, Jean Pochon, and Mathieu du Hamel. These took up the matter warmly and were earnestly supported by Jacques du Boys, a doctor of laws and dean of the chapter, who thrust himself into the affair and pushed it with relentless vigor. After repeated torture, Deniselle confessed to have attended the Sabbat and named various persons seen there, among them Jean la Vitte. He had already been compromised by Robinet, and had gone into hiding, but the inquisitor hunted him up at Abbeville, arrested him, and brought him to Arras, when he was no sooner in prison than in despair he tried to cut out his tongue with a pocket-knife, so as to prevent himself from confessing. He did not succeed, but though he was long unable to speak, this did not save him from torture, for he could use the pen and was obliged to write out his confession. Forced to name all whom he had seen in the Sabbat, he implicated a large number, including nobles, ecclesiastics, and common folk. Six more arrests were made among the latter, including several women of the town; the affair threatened to spread farther than had at first been expected; the vicars grew timid and concluded to discharge all the prisoners. Then Jacques du Boys and the Bishop of Beirut constituted themselves formal complainants; the latter, moreover, went to Péronne and brought to Arras the Comte d’Estampes, Captain-general of Picardy for Philippe le Bon of Burgundy, who ordered the vicars to do their duty under threats of prosecuting them.

Four women of the last batch of prisoners confessed under torture and implicated a large number of others. The vicars, uncertain as to their duty, sent the confessions to two notable clerks, Gilles Carlier, dean, and Gregoire Nicolai, official, of Cambrai, who replied that if the accused were not relapsed and if they would recant they were not to be put to death, provided they had not committed murder and abused the Eucharist. Here we recognize a transition period between the old practice with heretics and the new with sorcerers, but du Boys and the Bishop of Beirut were fully imbued with the new notions, and insisted that all should be burned. They declared that whoever disputed this was himself a sorcerer, that any one who should presume to aid or counsel the prisoners should share their fate. The welfare of Christendom was concerned, a full third of nominal Christians were secretly sorcerers, including many bishops, cardinals, and grand masters, and that if they could assemble under a leader it would be difficult to estimate the destruction which they could inflict on religion and society. Possibly one of these worthies may be credited with the authorship of a tract upon the subject, a copy of which, formerly belonging to Philippe le Bon, is now in the Royal Library of Brussels. The anonymous writer, who describes himself as a priest, speaks of “Vauderie” as something new and unheard of, more execrable than all the detestable errors of paganism since the beginning of the world. He calls on the prelates to arise and purge Christendom of these abominable sectaries, and to excite the people by denouncing their most damnable crimes, but his most burning eloquence is addressed to the princes. Not without significance is the sword borne before them, for it is to remind them that they are ministers and officers of God, whose duty it is to order unsparing vengeance on these criminals. If the sectaries are allowed to multiply the most fearful results are to be expected, and the King of Darkness is already rejoicing at the prospect. Wars and enmities will come; strife and sedition will rage in the fields, in the cities, and in the kingdoms. In mutual slaughter men will fall dead in heaps. Children will rise against their elders and the villeins will assail the nobles. It was not only religion, but the whole social order, which was threatened by a few strumpets and the Abbé-de-peu-de-sens.[573]

Like the agent of Conrad Tors in the days of Conrad of Marburg, the Bishop of Beirut boasted that he could recognize a Vaudois or sorcerer at sight. In conjunction with du Boys he procured another arrest, and induced the Comte d’Estampes to order the vicars to hasten their proceedings. Under this pressure, an assembly of all the principal ecclesiastics of Arras, with some jurists, was held on May 9, 1460, to consider the evidence. The deliberation was short, and the accused were condemned. The next day, on a scaffold in front of the episcopal palace, and in presence of a crowd which had gathered from twelve leagues around, the convicts were brought forward, together with the body of one of them, Jean le Febvre, who had been found hanging in his cell. Mitres were placed on their heads, with pictures representing them as worshipping the devil. The inquisitor preached the sermon, and read the description of the Sabbat and of their visits to it, and then asked them individually if it was true, to which they all assented. Then he read the sentence abandoning them to the secular arm, their property to be confiscated, the real estate to the seigneur and the movables to the bishop, and they were delivered to their several jurisdictions, Deniselle being handed over to the authorities of Douai who were present to receive her, and the rest to those of Arras. At once they began with shrieks to assert that they had been cruelly deceived—that they had been promised that if they would confess they would be discharged with a pilgrimage of ten or twelve leagues, and had been threatened with burning for persistence in denial. With one voice they declared that they had never been to the “Vauderie,” that their confessions had been extorted under stress of torture and false promises and blandishments, and until they were silenced by the flames they begged the people to pray for them, and their friends to have masses sung in their behalf. The last words heard from the Abbé-de-peu-de-sens, were “Jesus autem transiens per medium illorum.” Gilles Flameng, an advocate who had been active in the whole proceeding, was the especial object of their reproaches; they reviled him as a traitor who had been particularly earnest in the false promises which had lured them to destruction.

Appetite grew by what it fed on. This execution was followed immediately by the arrest, on the requisition of the inquisitor, of thirteen persons, including six public women, who had been implicated by the confessions. The managers of the business, however, seemed to tire of the pursuit of such worthless game, and grew bold enough to strike higher. On June 22 Arras was startled by the arrest of Jean Tacquet, an eschevin and one of the richest citizens; on the next day by that of Pierre des Carieulx, equally wealthy and esteemed the best accountant in Artois; and on the next by that of the Chevalier Payen de Beauffort, a septuagenary and the head of one of the most ancient and richest houses in the province, who had manifested his piety by founding three convents. He had been warned that his name was on the list of accused, but had declared that if he were a thousand leagues away he would return to meet the charge, and in fact he had come to the city for the purpose. In his hôtel of la Chevrette his children and friends had entreated him to depart if he felt himself guilty, when with the most solemn oaths he asserted his innocence. His arrest had not been ventured upon without the consent of Philippe le Bon, secured by Philippe de Saveuse; the Comte d’Estampes had come to Arras to insure it, and refused to see him when he begged an interview. This was followed, July 7, by an auto de fé of seven of those arrested on May 9; five of these were burned, and, like their predecessors, asserted that their confessions had been wrung from them by torture, and died begging the prayers of all good Christians. Two were sentenced to imprisonment for definite terms, the reason alleged being that they had not revoked after their first confession—a highly irregular proceeding of which the object was to facilitate further convictions.

The affair was now beginning to attract general attention and animadversion. Philippe le Bon was disturbed, for he heard that at Paris and elsewhere it was reported that he was seizing the rich men of his dominions to confiscate their property. Accordingly he sent to Arras, as supervisors, his confessor, a Dominican and titular Bishop of Selimbria, together with the Chevalier Baudoin de Noyelles, Governor of Péronne, while the Comte d’Estampes deputed his secretary, Jean Forme, together with Philippe de Saveuse, the Seigneur de Crèvecœur, who was bailly of Amiens, and his lieutenant, Guillaume de Berri. The first effort of these new-comers seems to have been to share in the spoils. On July 16 Baudoin de Noyelles arrested Antoine Sacquespée, an eschevin and one of the richest of the citizens, who had been urged to fly, but who, like de Beauffort, had declared that he would come a thousand leagues to face the accusation. The next day another eschevin, Jean Josset, was seized, and a sergent-de-ville named Henriet Royville, while three whose arrest was pending fled, two of them being wealthy men, Martin Cornille, and Willaume le Febvre, whom the Comte d’Estampes pursued as far as Paris without success. A panic terror by this time pervaded the community; no one knew when his turn would come, and men scarce dared to leave the city for fear they would be accused of flying through conscious guilt, while citizens who were absent were unwelcome guests everywhere, and could scarce find lodgings. Similarly, strangers would not venture to visit the city. Arras was a prosperous seat of manufactures, and its industries suffered enormously. Its merchants lost their credit; creditors importunately demanded settlement, for the risk of confiscation hung over every man, and we have seen how the rights of creditors in such cases were extinguished. The vicars endeavored to soothe the general alarm and distress by a proclamation that no one need fear arrest who was innocent, for none were arrested unless eight or ten witnesses swore to seeing them at the Sabbat—though it was afterwards found that many were seized on the evidence of only one or two.

At length, at the expense of the prisoners, the inquisitor, with the vicars and Gilles Flameng, was sent to the Duke of Burgundy at Brussels, to lay before him the evidence of the trials. The duke called a great assembly of clerks, including the doctors of Louvain, who gravely debated the matter. Some held, with the Cap. Episcopi, that it was all a delusion, others that it was a reality. No conclusion was reached, and the duke finally sent his herald, Toison d’Or (Lefebvre, Seigneur de Saint-Remy) in whom he had great confidence, back with the vicars, to be present at all examinations. They reached Arras August 14, after which there were no further arrests, although innumerable names were on the lists of accused. The prisoners were less inhumanly treated, and but four of the pending trials were pushed to a conclusion. Reports of these were sent to Brussels for the duke’s consideration, and they were brought back, October 12, by the president of the ducal chamber, Adrien Collin, in whose presence the accused were again examined. Finally, on October 22, the customary assembly was held, immediately followed by the auto de fé, where the sermon was preached by the Inquisitor of Cambrai, and the sentences were read by the Inquisitor of Arras, and by Michael du Hamel, one of the vicars. The four convicts had different fates.

The Chevalier de Beauffort, it was recited, had confessed that he had thrice been to the Sabbat—twice on foot and once by flying on an anointed staff. He had refused to give his soul to Satan, but had given him four of his hairs. The inquisitor asked him if this was true, and he replied in the affirmative, begging for mercy. The inquisitor then announced that, as he had confessed without torture, and had never retracted, he should not be mitred and burned but be scourged (a penance inflicted by the inquisitor on the spot, but without removing the penitent’s clothes), be imprisoned for seven years, and pay a long list of fines for pious purposes, amounting in all to eight thousand two hundred livres, including one thousand five hundred to the Inquisition. But besides these fines, thus publicly announced, he was obliged to pay four thousand to the Duke of Burgundy, two thousand to the Comte d’Estampes, one thousand to the Seigneur de Crèvecœur, and one hundred to his lieutenant, Guillaume de Berry.[574]

The next was the rich eschevin, Jean Tacquet. He admitted that he had been to the Sabbat ten times or more. He had endeavored to withdraw his allegiance from Satan, who had forced him to continue it by beating him cruelly with a bull’s pizzle. He was now condemned to scourging, administered as in the case of de Beauffort, to ten years’ prison, and to fines amounting to one thousand four hundred livres, of which two hundred went to the Inquisition; but, as in de Beauffort’s case, there were secret contributions exacted from him.

The third was Pierre du Carieulx, another rich citizen. His sentence recited that he had been to the Sabbat innumerable times; holding a lighted candle he had kissed, under the tail, the devil in the shape of a monkey; he had given him his soul in a compact written with his own blood; he had thrice given to the Abbé-de-peu-de-sens consecrated wafers received at Easter, out of which, with the bones of men hanged, which he had picked up under the gallows, and the blood of young children, of whom he had slain four, he had helped to make the infernal ointment and certain powders, with which they injured men and beasts. When asked to confirm this he denied it, saying that it had been forced from him by torture; and he would have added much more, but he was silenced. Abandoned to secular justice, the eschevins demanded him as their bourgeois, and on their paying his prison expenses he was delivered to them. They allowed him to talk in the town-hall, when he disculpated all whom he had accused, of whom he said there were many present, eschevins and others, adding that, under torture, he had accused every one he knew, and if he had known more he would have included them. He was burned the same day.

The fourth was Huguet Aubry, a man of uncommon force and resolution. In spite of the severest and most prolonged torture, he had confessed nothing. He had been accused by nine witnesses, and he was now asked if he would confess under promise of mercy; but he repeated that he knew nothing of Vauderie, and had never been to the Sabbat. Then the inquisitor told him that he had broken jail and been recaptured, which rendered him guilty. He threw himself on his knees and begged for mercy, but was condemned to prison, on bread and water, for twenty years; a most irregular sentence, which could never have been rendered under the perfected system of procedure, for the evidence against him was strong, and his constancy under torture only proved that Satan had endowed him with the gift of taciturnity.

This was the last of the persecution. There had been only thirty-four arrests and twelve burnings; which, in the flourishing times of witchcraft, would have been a trifle, but the novelty of the occurrence in Picardy, the character of the victims, and the subsequent proceedings in the Parlement attracted to it a disproportionate attention. That it came to so early a termination is possibly attributable to the fact that Philippe de Saveuse had directed the torture of the women not only to convict de Beauffort, but to incriminate the Seigneurs de Croy and others, from avaricious and perhaps political motives. The de Croy were at this time all-powerful at the ducal court, and doubtless used their interest to arrest the ecclesiastical machinery which was strong enough to crush even them. It has every appearance of a repetition of the old story of Conrad of Marburg.

Whatever the cause, the inquisitor and the vicars now put a stop to the prosecutions, without calling in the Bishop of Beirut, Jacques du Boys, de Saveuse, and others, who urged them to proceed with the good work. In vain the latter talked of the imminent dangers impending over Christendom from the innumerable multitude of sorcerers, many of whom held high station in the Church and in the courts of princes. Vainly even the last card was played, and the superstitious were frightened by rumors that Antichrist was born, and that the sorcerers would support him.[575]

One by one the accused were discharged, as they were able to raise money to pay the expenses of their prison and of the Inquisition, which was a condition of liberation in all cases except those of utter poverty. Some had to undergo the formality of purging themselves with compurgators. Antoine Sacquespée, for instance, who had been tortured without confession, had to furnish seven, and was not allowed to escape without surrendering a portion of his substance. Others had light penance, like Jennon d’Amiens, a woman who had confessed after being several times tortured, and was now only required to make a five-league pilgrimage to Nôtre Dame d’Esquerchin. This was an admission that the whole affair was a fraud; and even more remarkable was the case of fille de joie named Belotte, who had been repeatedly tortured, and had confessed. She would have been burned with the other women on May 9, but it happened, accidentally or otherwise, that her mitre was not ready, and her execution was postponed, and now she was only banished from the diocese, and ordered to make a pilgrimage to Nôtre Dame de Boulogne. Of the whole number arrested nine had the constancy to endure torture—in most cases long and severe—without confession.

As the terror passed away the feelings of the people expressed themselves sportively in some verses scattered through the streets, lampooning the principal actors in the tragedy. The stanza devoted to Pierre le Brousart runs thus:

The vicars and their advocates and the assembly of experts are all held guilty, and the verses conclude by threatening them:

The prophecy was not wholly unverified. Fortunately there was in France a Parlement which had succeeded in establishing its jurisdiction over both the great vassals and the Inquisition, and the relations between the courts of Paris and Brussels were such as to render it nothing loath to interfere. De Beauffort, before his examination, had made an appeal to this supreme tribunal, which had been disregarded and suppressed, but his son Philippe had carried to Paris the tale of the wrongs committed on his father. The Parlement moved slowly, but on January 16, 1461, Philippe came back with an usher commissioned to bring de Beauffort before it after investigating the case. This official took testimony, and on the 25th, accompanied by de Beauffort’s four sons and thirty well-armed men, he presented himself before the vicars. Frightened by this formidable demonstration, they refused to see him; but he went to the episcopal palace, took the keys of the prison by force, and carried de Beauffort to the Conciergerie in Paris, after serving notice on the vicars to answer before the Parlement on February 25. The matter was now fairly in train for a legal investigation in which both sides could be heard. The convicts who had been condemned to imprisonment were set at liberty and carried to Paris, where their evidence confirmed that of de Beauffort. The conspirators were grievously alarmed. Jacques du Boys, the dean, who had been the prime mover, became insane about the time set for the hearing; and though he recovered his senses, his limbs failed him; he took to his bed, where bed-sores ate great holes in his flesh, and he died in about a year, some persons attributing to sorcery and others to divine vengeance what evidently was mental trouble, causing temporary insanity followed by paresis. The Bishop of Beirut was thrown in prison, charged with having set the affair on foot, but he managed to escape, by miracle as he asserted; he made a pilgrimage to Compostella, and on his return secured the position of confessor to Queen Marie, dowager of Charles VII., where he was safe. Other conspicuous actors in the tragedy left Arras to escape the hatred of their fellow-citizens. Meanwhile the legal proceedings dragged on with the interminable delays for which the Parlement was notorious, enhanced on this occasion by the political vicissitudes of the period, and the final decision was not rendered until 1491, thirty years after its commencement, when all the sufferers had passed off the scene except the indomitable Huguet Aubry, who was still alive to enjoy a rehabilitation celebrated in a manner as imposing as possible. On July 18 the decree was published from a scaffold erected on the spot where the sentences had been pronounced. The magistrates had been ordered to proclaim a holiday, and to offer prizes for the best folie moralisée and pure folie, and to send notice to all the neighboring towns, so that a crowd of eight or nine thousand persons was collected. After a sermon of two hours and a half, preached by the celebrated Geoffroi Broussart, subsequently chancellor of the University, the decree was read, condemning the Duke of Burgundy to pay the costs, and the processes and sentences to be torn and destroyed as unjust and abusive; ordering the accused and condemned to be restored to their good name and fame, all confiscations and payments to be refunded, while the vicars were to pay twelve hundred livres each, Gilles Flameng one thousand, de Saveuse five hundred, and others smaller sums, amounting in all to six thousand five hundred; out of which fifteen hundred were to be applied to founding a daily mass for the souls of those executed, and erecting a cross on the spot where they had been burned. The cruel and unusual tortures made use of in the trials were, moreover, prohibited for the future in all secular and ecclesiastical tribunals. It was probably the only case on record in which an inquisitor stood as a defendant in a lay court to answer for his official action. One cannot help reflecting that, if the Council of Vienne had done its duty as fearlessly as the Parlement, the affair of the Templars, so similar in many of its features, might have had a similar termination; and the contrast between this and the rehabilitation proceedings in the case of Joan of Arc shows how the Inquisition had fallen during the interval.[577]

Besides the general significance of this transaction in the history of witchcraft and of its persecution, there are several points worthy of attention in their bearing on the practical application of the methods of procedure described above. In the first place, it is evident throughout that no counsel were allowed to the accused. Then, the combined episcopal and inquisitorial court permitted no appeals, even to the Parlement, whose supreme jurisdiction was unquestioned. Not only was the attempt of de Beauffort to interject such an appeal contemptuously suppressed, but when Willaume le Febvre, who had fled to Paris and constituted himself a prisoner there to answer all charges, sent his son Willemet with a notary to serve an appeal, the service was rightly regarded as involving considerable risk. After watching their opportunity, Willemet and the notary served the notice on one of the vicars at church, then leaped on their horses and made all speed for Paris, but the vicars instantly despatched well-mounted horsemen, who overtook them at Montdidier and brought them back. They were clapped in jail, along with a number of friends and kinsmen who had been privy to their intention without betraying it, and were not released until they agreed to withdraw the appeal. Thus, an appeal was treated as an offence justifying vigorous measures. It is more difficult to understand the contemptuous indifference with which a papal bull was treated. Martin Cornille, the other fugitive, had pursued a different policy. He carried with him an ample store of money, part of which he invested in a bull from Pius II. transferring the whole matter to Gilles Charlier and Grégoire Nicolai of Cambrai, and two of the Arras vicars. This was brought to Arras in August, 1460, by the Dean of Soignies, after which we hear nothing more of it, though it may have contributed to cool the ardor of those who were expecting to profit by the prosecutions.[578]

The means employed to obtain confession show that Sprenger only recorded the usage of the period in advising recourse to whatever fraud or force might prove necessary. Promises of immunity or of trifling penance were lavished on those whom it was intended to burn if they yielded to the blandishment, and these were supplemented with threats of burning as the punishment of taciturnity. De Beauffort’s confession without torture excited general astonishment until it was known that, on his arrest, after he had sworn to his innocence, Jacques du Boys entreated him to confess, even kneeling before him and praying him to do so, assuring him that if he refused he could not be saved from the stake, and that all his property would be confiscated, to the beggaring of his children, while, if he would confess, he should be released within four days without public humiliation or exposure; and when de Beauffort argued that this would be committing perjury, du Boys told him not to mind that, as he should have absolution. Those whose constancy was proof against such persuasiveness were tortured without stint or mercy. The women were frightfully scourged. Huguet Aubry was kept in prison for eleven months, during which, at intervals, he was tortured fifteen times, and when the ingenuity of the executioners failed in devising more exquisite forms of torment, he was threatened with drowning and thrown into the river, and then with hanging and suspended from a tree with his eyes duly bandaged. Le petit Henriot’s resolution was tried with seven months’ incarceration, during which he was also tortured fifteen times, fire being applied to the soles of his feet until he was crippled for life. Others are mentioned whose endurance was equally tried, and we hear of such strange devices as pouring oil and vinegar down the throat, and other expedients not recognized by law.[579]

With regard to the death-penalty, it is to be observed that none of these were cases of relapse, and under the old inquisitorial practice they would all have been entitled to the penance of imprisonment. Their burning had not even the pretext of being punishment for injuries inflicted on their neighbors, for, with the exception of Pierre du Carieulx, the only offence assigned to them was attendance at the Sabbat. At the same time there was no resort to the juggle suggested by later authorities, of assigning penance, and then not inquiring what the secular power might see fit to do. The condemned were formally delivered to the magistrates to be burned, and though at the first auto a death-sentence was pronounced by the eschevins, at the second even this formality was omitted, and the victims were dragged directly from the place of sentence to that of execution.[580]

One specially notable feature of the whole affair was the utter incredulity everywhere excited. Just as the crimes imputed to the Templars found credence nowhere out of France, so, outside of Arras, we are told not one person in a thousand believed in the truth of the charges. This was fortunate, for the victims naturally included in their lists of associates many residents of other places, and the conflagration might readily have spread over the whole country, had it found agents like Pierre le Brousart, who carried the spark from Langres to Arras. On the strength of revelations in the confessions several persons were arrested in Amiens, but the bishop, who was a learned clerk and had long resided in Rome, promptly released them and declared that he would dismiss all brought before him, for he did not believe in the possibility of such offences. At Tournay others were seized, and the matter was warmly debated, with the result that they were set free, although Jean Taincture, a most notable clerk, wrote an elaborate treatise to prove their guilt. It was the same with the accused who managed to fly. Martin Cornille was caught in Burgundy and brought before the Archbishop of Besançon, who acquitted him on the strength of informations made in Arras. Willaume le Febvre surrendered himself to the Bishop of Paris; the Inquisitor of Paris came to Arras to get the evidence concerning him, and the vicars furnished the confessions of those who had implicated him. The result was that the tribunal, consisting of the Archbishop of Reims, the Bishop of Paris, the Inquisitor of France, and sundry doctors of theology, not only acquitted him, but authorized him to prosecute the vicars for reparation of his honor, and for expenses and damages.[581] Evidently up to this time the excitement concerning witchcraft was to a great extent artificial—the creation of a comparatively few credulous ecclesiastics and judges: the mass of educated clerks and jurists were disposed to hold fast to the definition of the Cap. Episcopi, and to regard it as a delusion. Had the Church resolutely repressed the growing superstition, in place of stimulating it with all the authority of the Holy See, infinite bloodshed and misery might have been spared to Christendom.

The development of the witchcraft epidemic, in fact, had not been rapid. The earliest detailed account which we have of it is that of Nider, in his Formicarius, written in 1337. Although Nider himself seems to have sometimes acted as inquisitor, he tells us that his information is principally derived from the experience of Peter of Berne, a secular judge, who had burned large numbers of witches of both sexes, and had driven many more from the Bernese territory, which they had infested for about sixty years. This would place the origin of witchcraft in that region towards the close of the fourteenth century, and Silvester Prierias, as we have seen, attributes it to the first years of the fifteenth. Bernardo di Como, writing about 1510, assigns to it a somewhat earlier origin, for he says the records of the Inquisition of Como showed that it had existed for a hundred and fifty years. It is quite likely, indeed, that the gradual development of witchcraft from ordinary sorcery commenced about the middle of the fourteenth century. The great jurist Bartolo, who died in 1357, when acting as judge at Novara, tried and condemned a woman who confessed to having adored the devil, trampled on the cross, and killed children by touching and fascinating them. This approach to the later witchcraft was so novel to him that he appealed to the theologians to explain it. In this there seems no reference to the distinctive feature of the Sabbat, but the popular beliefs concerning Holda and Dame Habonde and their troop were rife, and the coalescence of the various superstitions was only a question of time. As early as 1353 an allusion to the witches’ dance occurs in a trial at Toulouse. Thus the stories grew, under the skilful handling of such judges as Peter of Berne, until they assumed the detailed and definite shape that we find in Nider. The latter also acknowledges his obligation to the Inquisitor of Autun, which would indicate that witchcraft was prevalent in Burgundy at a comparatively early period. In 1424 we hear of a witch named Finicella burned in Rome for causing the death of many persons and bewitching many more. According to Peter of Berne, the evil originated with a certain Scavius, who openly boasted of his powers, and always escaped by transforming himself into a mouse, until he was assassinated through a window near which he incautiously sat. His principal disciple was Poppo, who taught Staedelin; the latter fell into the hands of Peter, and, after four vigorous applications of torture, confessed all the secrets of the diabolical sect. The details given are virtually those described above, showing that the subsequent inquisitors who drew their inspiration from Nider were skilled in their work and knew how to extract confessions in accordance with their preconceived notions. There are a few unimportant variants, of course; infants, as already stated, when killed, were boiled down, the soup being used to procure converts by its magic power, while the solid portion was worked up into ointment required for the unholy rites. Apparently, moreover, the theory had not yet established itself that the witch was powerless against officers of public justice, for the latter were held to incur great dangers in the performance of their functions. It was only by the most careful observance of religious duties and the constant use of the sign of the cross that Peter of Berne escaped, and even he once, at the castle of Blankenburg, nearly lost his life when, going up a lofty staircase at night in such haste that he forgot to cross himself, he was precipitated violently to the bottom—manifestly the effect of sorcery, as he subsequently learned by torturing a prisoner.[582]

Although, in 1452, a witch tried at Provins declared that in all France and Burgundy the total number of witches did not exceed sixty, no believer contented himself with figures so moderate. In 1453 we hear of an epidemic of witchcraft in Normandy, where the witches were popularly known as Scobaces, from scoba, a broom, in allusion to their favorite mode of equitation to the Sabbat. The same year occurred the case of Guillaume Edeline, which excited wide astonishment from the character of the culprit, who was a noted doctor of theology and Prior of St. Germain-en-Laye. Madly in love with a noble lady, he sought the aid of sorcery. He doubtless fell victim to some sharper, for on his person was found a compact with Satan, formally drawn up with reciprocal obligations, one of which was that in his sermons he should assert the falsity of the stories told of sorcerers, and this, we are told, greatly increased their number, for the judges were restrained from prosecuting them. Another condition was that he should present himself before Satan whenever required. The methods of his examination must have been sharp, for he confessed that he performed this obligation by striding a broomstick, when he would be at once transported to the Sabbat, where he performed the customary homage of kissing the devil, in the form of a white sheep, under the tail. Prosecuted before Guillaume de Floques, Bishop of Evreux, he persuaded the University of Caen to defend him; but the bishop procuring the support of the University of Paris, he was forced to confess and was convicted. It shows the uncertainty of procedure as yet that he was not burned, but was allowed to abjure, and was penanced with perpetual imprisonment on bread and water. At the auto de fé the inquisitor dwelt upon his former high position and the edification of his teaching, when the unfortunate man burst into tears and begged mercy of God. He was thrown into a basse-fosse at Evreux, where he lingered for four years, showing every sign of contrition, and at last he was found dead in his cell in the attitude of prayer. The epidemic was spreading, for in 1446 several witches were burned in Heidelberg by the inquisitor, and in 1447 another, who passed as their teacher; but there was as yet no uniform practice in such cases, for in this same year, 1447, at Braunsberg, a woman convicted of sorcery was only banished to a distance of two (German) miles, and three securities were required for her in the sum of ten marks.[583]

It was probably about this time that the inquisitors of Toulouse were busy with burning the numerous witches of Dauphiné and Gascony, as related by Alonso de Spina, who admired on the walls of the Toulousan Inquisition pictures painted from their confessions, representing the Sabbat, with the votaries adoring, with lighted candles, Satan in the form of a goat. The allusions of Bernardo di Como show that at the same period persecution was busy in Como. In 1456 we hear of two burned at Cologne. They had caused a frost so intense in the month of May that all vegetation was blasted, without hope of recovery. The steward of the archbishop asked one of them to give him an example of her art, when she took a cup of water, and muttering spells over it for the space of a couple of Paternosters, it froze so solidly that the ice could not be broken with a dagger. In this case, at least, the hand of justice had not weakened her power, though why she allowed herself to be burned is not recorded. In 1459 Pius II. called the attention of the Abbot of Tréguier to somewhat similar practices in Britanny, and gave him papal authority for their suppression, showing how vain had been the zeal of Duke Artus III., of whom, at his death in 1457, it was eulogistically declared that he had burned more sorcerers in France, Britanny, and Poitou than any man of his time.[584]

These incidents will show the growth and spread of the belief throughout Europe, and it must be borne in mind that they are but the indications of much that never attracted public attention or came to be recorded in history. A chance allusion, in a pleading of 1455, shows what was working under the surface in probably every corner of Christendom. In the parish of Torcy (Normandy) there had been for forty years a belief that a family of laborers—Huguenin de la Meu and his dead father before him, and Jeanne his wife—were all sorcerers who killed or sickened many men and beasts. An appeal to the Inquisition would doubtless have extracted from them confessions of the Sabbat and devil-worship, with lists of accomplices leading to a widespread epidemic, but the simple peasants found a speedier remedy in beating Huguenin and his wife, when the person or animal whom they had bewitched would recover. A certain André suspected them of causing the death of some of his cattle, and Jeanne said to his wife, Alayre, “Your husband has done ill in saying that I killed his cattle, and he will find it so before long.” That same day Alayre fell sick and was not expected to survive the night. To cure her André went next morning to Jeanne, and threatened that if she did not restore Alayre he would beat her so that she would never be well again—and Alayre recovered the next day.[585]

This shows the material which existed everywhere for development into organized persecution when properly handled by the Inquisition, and the Flagellum Hæreticorum Fascinariorum of the Inquisitor, Nicholaus Jaquerius, in 1458, indicates that the Holy Office was beginning to appreciate the necessity of organizing its efforts for systematic work. Perhaps the untoward result of the affair at Arras may have retarded this somewhat by the over-zeal and unscrupulous greed of its manipulators, but if there was a reaction it was limited, both in extent and duration. All the accumulated beliefs in the occult powers of demonic agencies inherited from so many creeds and races still flourished in their integrity. In the existing wretchedness of the peasantry throughout the length and breadth of Europe, recklessness as to the present and hopelessness as to the future led thousands to wish that they could, by transferring their allegiance to Satan, find some momentary relief from the sordid miseries of life. The tales of the sensual delights of the Sabbat, where exquisite meats and drink were furnished in abundance, had an irresistible allurement for those who could scantily reckon on a morsel of black bread, or a turnip or a few beans, to keep starvation at bay. Sprenger, as already stated, tells us that the attraction of intercourse with incubi and succubi was a principal cause of luring souls to ruin. The devastating wars, with bands of écorcheurs and condottieri pillaging everywhere with savage cruelty, reduced whole populations to despair, and those who fancied themselves abandoned by God might well turn to Satan for help. According to Sprenger, a prolific source of witches was the seduction of young girls who when refused marriage had nothing more to hope for, and sought to avenge themselves on society by acquiring at least the power of evil.[586] Not only thus was there on the part of many a desire to enter the abhorred sect of Satan-worshippers, which the Church declared to be so numerous and powerful, but doubtless not a few performed the ceremonies to effect it, when perhaps some evil wish which chanced to be realized would convince them that Satan had really accepted their allegiance, and granted them the power which they sought. Certain minds might, in moments of high-wrought exaltation, even imagine that they had obtained admission to the foul mysteries whose reality was rapidly becoming an article of orthodox belief. Others again, in weakness and poverty, found that the reputation of possessing the power of evil was a protection and a support, and they encouraged rather than repressed the credulity of their neighbors. To these must be added the multitudes who derived a source of gain from curing the sorcery which the Church was confessedly unable to relieve, and there was ample material in the despised and lower stratum of society for the innumerable army of witches conjured up by the heated imaginations of the demonographers.

Unfortunately the Church, in its alarm at the development of this new heresy, stimulated it to the utmost in the endeavor to repress it. Every inquisitor whom it commissioned to suppress witchcraft was an active missionary who scattered the seeds of the belief ever more widely. We have seen what a brood of witches Pierre le Brousart hatched at Arras out of the single one burned at Langres, and how Chiabaudi succeeded in infecting the valleys of the Canavese. It mattered little in the end that le Brousart overreached himself and that Chiabaudi was outwrangled. The minds of the people became more and more familiarized with the idea that witches were everywhere around them, and that every misfortune and accident was the result of their malignity. Every man was thus assiduously taught, when he lost an ox or a child, or a harvest, or was suddenly prostrated with illness, to suspect his neighbors and look for evidence to confirm his suspicions, so that wherever an inquisitor passed he was overwhelmed with accusations against all who could be imagined to be guilty, from children of tender years to superannuated crones. When Girolamo Visconti was sent to Como he speedily raised such a storm of witchcraft that in 1485 he burned no less than forty-one unfortunates in the little district of Wormserbad in the Grisons—an exploit repeatedly referred to by Sprenger with honest professional pride.[587]

A special impulse was given to this development when Innocent VIII., December 5, 1484, issued his Bull Summis desiderantes, in which he bewailed the deplorable fact that all the Teutonic lands were filled with men and women who exercised upon the faithful all the malignant power which we have seen ascribed to witchcraft, and of which he enumerates the details with awe-inspiring amplification. Henry Institoris and Jacob Sprenger had for some time been performing the office of inquisitors in those regions, but their commissions did not specially mention sorcery as included in their jurisdiction, wherefore their efforts were impeded by over-wise clerks and laymen who used this as an excuse for protecting the guilty. Innocent therefore gives them full authority in the premises and orders the Bishop of Strassburg to coerce all who obstruct or interfere with them, calling in, if necessary, the aid of the secular arm. After this, to question the reality of witchcraft was to question the utterance of the Vicar of Christ, and to aid any one accused was to impede the Inquisition. Armed with these powers the two inquisitors, full of zeal, traversed the land, leaving behind them a track of blood and fire, and awakening in all hearts the cruel dread inspired by the absolute belief thus inculcated in all the horrors of witchcraft. In the little town of Ravenspurg alone they boast that they burned forty-eight in five years.[588]

It is true that they were not everywhere so successful. In the Tyrol the Bishop of Brixen published Innocent’s bull July 23, 1485, and on September 21 he issued to the inquisitor Henry Institoris a commission granting him full episcopal jurisdiction, but recommending him to associate with him a secular official of the suzerain, Sigismund of Austria. The latter, however, ordered the bishop to appoint a commissioner, and he named Sigismund Samer, pastor of Axams near Innsbruck. The pair commenced operations October 14, but their career, though vigorous, was short and inglorious. It chanced that some of the archduke’s courtiers desired to separate him from his wife, Catharine of Saxony, and spread reports that she had endeavored to poison him; and they followed this up by placing in an oven a worthless woman who personated an imprisoned demon and denounced a number of people. Institoris at once seized the accused and applied torture without stint. Then the bishop interposed, and by the middle of November ordered him to leave the diocese and betake himself to his convent, the sooner the better. Institoris, however, was loath to abandon his duty, and drew upon himself a sharper reproof on Ash Wednesday, 1486; he was told that he had nought to do there, that the bishop would attend to all that was necessary through the exercise of the ordinary jurisdiction, and he was warned that if he persisted in remaining he was in danger of assassination from the husbands or kinsmen of the women whom he was persecuting. He finally withdrew to Germany, richly rewarded for his labor by Sigismund, and from his account of the matter it is easy to see that all the sick and withered of Innsbruck had flocked to him with complaints of their neighbors so detailed that he was justified in regarding the place as thoroughly infected. The next year the Tyrolese Landtag complained to the archduke that recently many persons, on baseless denunciations, had been imprisoned, tortured, and disgracefully treated, and we can readily understand the complaint of the Malleus Maleficarum that Innsbruck abounded in witches of the most dangerous character, who could bewitch their judges and could not be forced to confess. Still, the seeds of superstition were scattered to fructify in due time. Although in the Tyrolese criminal ordinance issued by Maximilian I., in 1499, there is no allusion to sorcery and witchcraft, yet in 1506 we find the craze fully developed. Some records which have been preserved show trials before secular judges with juries of twelve men, in which the unfortunate women accused, after due torture, confess all the customary horrors.[589]

One result of this campaign of Institoris in the Tyrol was that it left Sigismund of Austria in a condition of perplexity as to the reality of witchcraft. His judges had apparently been inexperienced in such matters, the confessions of the accused had varied greatly, and the inquisition had been cut short before they could be forced to consentaneous avowals. To satisfy his mind, in 1487, he consulted on the subject two learned doctors of the law, Ulric Molitoris and Conrad Stürtzel, and the result was published at Constance in 1489 by Ulric, in the form of a discussion between the three. Sigismund is represented as urging the natural argument that the results obtained by witchcraft were so wofully inadequate to the powers ascribed to it as to cast doubt upon the reality of those powers—if they were real, a conqueror would only have, like William the Manzer at Ely, to put a witch at the head of his army to overcome all opposition. Against this view the customary texts and citations were alleged, and the conclusions reached represent very fairly the moderate opinions of the conservatives, who had not as yet yielded fully to the witchcraft craze, but who shrank from a rationalistic denial of that which had been handed down by the wisdom of ages. These are summed up in eight propositions: 1. Satan cannot himself, or by means of human instruments, disturb the elements, or injure men and animals, or render them impotent, but God sometimes permits him to do so to a certain determinate extent. 2. He cannot exceed this designated limit. 3. By permission of God he can sometimes cause illusions by which men appear to be transformed. 4. The night-riding and assemblages of the Sabbat are illusions. 5. Incubi and succubi are incapable of procreation. 6. God alone knows the future and the thoughts of men; the devil can only conjecture and use his knowledge of the stars. 7. Nevertheless witches, by worshipping and sacrificing to Satan, are real heretics and apostates. 8. Finally, they should therefore be put to death. In this cautious endeavor to harmonize the old school and the new, the witch thus gained nothing; everything was conceded, that had a practical bearing on the tribunals, and it was a mere matter of speculation whether the Sabbat was a dream or a reality, and whether the evil she wrought was the result of a special or a general concession of power by God to Satan. Thus the work of Molitoris is important as showing how feeble were the barriers which intelligent and fair-minded men could erect against the prevailing tendencies so sedulously fostered by popes and inquisitors.[590]

The fine-drawn distinctions of such men were quickly brushed aside by the aggressive self-confidence of the inquisitors. Even more potent than the personal activity of Sprenger was the legacy which he left behind him in the work which he proudly entitled the Malleus Maleficarum, or Hammer of Witches, the most portentous monument of superstition which the world has produced. All his vast experience and wide erudition are brought to the task of proving the reality of witchcraft and the extent of its evils, and, further, of instructing the inquisitor how to elude the wiles of Satan and to punish his devotees. He was no vulgar witch-finder, but a man trained in all the learning of the schools. He apparently was not inhumane. In many places he manifests a laudable desire to give the accused the benefit of whatever pleas they might rightfully put forward, but he is so fully convinced of the gigantic character of the evils to be combated, he so thoroughly believes that his tribunal is engaged in a contest with Satan for human souls, that he eagerly justifies every artifice and every cruelty that could be suggested to outwit the adversary, on whom fair play would be thrown away. Like Conrad of Marburg and Capistrano, he was a man of the most dangerous type, an honest fanatic. His work is, moreover, an inexhaustible storehouse of marvels to which successive generations resorted whenever evidence was needed to prove any special manifestation of the power or malignity of the witch. Told as the results of his own experience or that of his colleagues, with the utmost good faith, they carried conviction with them. In fact, but for the delusive character of human testimony in such matters, the evidence would seem to be overwhelming. Statements of disinterested eye-witnesses, complaints of sufferers, confessions of the guilty, even after condemnation, and at the stake, when there was no hope save of pardon of their sins by God, are innumerable, and so detailed and connected together that the most fertile imagination would seem inadequate to their invention. Besides, the work is so logical in form, according to the fashion of the time, and so firmly based on scholastic theology and canon law, that we cannot wonder at the position accorded to it for more than a century of a leading authority on a subject of the highest practical importance. Quoted implicitly by all succeeding writers, it did more than all other agencies, save the papal bulls, to stimulate and perfect the persecution, and consequently the extension of witchcraft.[591]