When the law thus pitilessly turned all the chances against the victim, it is easy to understand that few escaped. In the existing condition of popular frenzy on the subject, there was no one but could feel that he might at any moment be brought under accusation by personal enemies or by unfortunates compelled on the rack to declare the names of all whom they might have seen congregated at the witches’ sabbat. We can thus readily comprehend the feelings of those who, living under such uncertainties, coolly and deliberately made up their minds in advance that, if chance should expose them to suspicion, they would at once admit everything that the inquisitors might desire of them, preferring a speedy death to one more lingering and scarcely less certain.1801 The evil fostered with such careful exaggeration grew to so great proportions that Father Tanner speaks of the multitude of witches who were daily convicted through torture;1802 and that this was no mere form of speech is evident when one judge, in a treatise on the subject, boasted of his zeal and experience in having dispatched within his single district nine hundred wretches in the space of fifteen years, and another trustworthy authority relates with pride that in the diocese of Como alone as many as a thousand had been burnt in a twelvemonth, while the annual average was over a hundred.1803

Were it not for the steady patronage bestowed on the system by the Church, it would seem strange that torture should invade the quiet and holy retirement of the cloister. Its use, however, in monasteries was, if possible, even more arbitrary than in secular tribunals. Monks and nuns were exempt from the jurisdiction of the civil authorities, and were bound by vows of blind obedience to their superiors. The head of each convent thus was an autocrat, and when investigating the delinquencies of any of his flock he was subjected to no limitations. Not only could he order the accused to be tortured at will, but the witnesses, whether male or female, were liable to the same treatment, with the exception that in the case of nuns it was recommended that the tortures employed should not be indecent or too severe for the fragility of the sex. As elsewhere, it was customary to commence the torment with the weakest of the witnesses or criminals.1804