The Superstitions of Witchcraft Part 8

Impenetrable by his shot, the beast made a spring upon the helpless huntsman, who in the struggle luckily, or unluckily for the unfortunate lady, contrived to cut off one of its fore-paws. This trophy he placed in his pocket, and made the best of his way homewards in safety. On the road he met a friend to whom he exhibited a bleeding paw, or rather a woman's hand (so it was produced from the hunter's pocket) upon which was a wedding ring. His wife's ring was at once recognised by the other. His suspicions aroused, he immediately went in search of his wife, who was found sitting by the fire in the kitchen, her arm hidden beneath her ap.r.o.n: when the husband seizing her by the arm found his terrible suspicions verified. The bleeding stump was there, evidently just fresh from the wound. She was given into custody, and in the event was burned at Riom in presence of thousands of spectators. Among some of the races of India, among the Khonds of the mountains of Orissa, a superst.i.tion obtains like that of the _loup-garou_ of France. In India the tiger takes the place of the wolf, and the metamorphosed witch is there known as the _Pulta-bag_.

A kindred prejudice, Vampirism, has still many adherents in Eastern Europe. The vampire is a human being who in his tomb maintains a posthumous existence by ascending in the night and sucking the bodies of the living. His punishment was necessarily less tremendous than that of the witch: the _dead_ body only being burned to ashes. An official doc.u.ment, quoted by Horst, narrates the particulars of the examination and burning of a disinterred vampire.

Several witches were burned in successive years throughout the kingdom. In 1564, three witches and a wizard were executed at Poictiers: on the rack they declared that they had destroyed numbers of sheep by magical preparations, attended the Sabbaths, &c. Trois Ech.e.l.les, a celebrated sorcerer, examined in the presence of Charles IX. and his court, acknowledged his obligation to the devil, to whom he had sold himself, recounting the debaucheries of the Sabbath, the methods of bewitching, and the compositions of the unguents for blighting cattle. The astounding fact was also revealed that some twelve hundred accomplices were at large in different parts of the land. The provincial parliaments in the end of this and the greater part of the next century are unremittingly engaged in pa.s.sing decrees and making provisions against the increasing offences.[120] 'The Parliament of Rouen decreed that the possession of a _grimoire_ or book of spells was sufficient evidence of witchcraft; and that all persons on whom such books were found should be _burned alive_. Three councils were held in different parts of France in 1583, all in relation to the same subject. The Parliament of Bordeaux issued strict injunctions to all curates and clergy whatever to use redoubled efforts to root out the crime of witchcraft. The Parliament of Tours was equally peremptory, and feared the judgments of an offended G.o.d if all these dealers with the devil were not swept from the face of the land. The Parliament of Rheims was particularly severe against the _noueurs d'aiguillettes_ or 'tiers of the knot'--people of both s.e.xes who took pleasure in preventing the consummation of marriage that they might counteract the command of G.o.d to our first parents to increase and multiply. This parliament held it to be sinful to wear amulets to preserve from witchcraft; and that this practice might not be continued within its jurisdiction, drew up a form of exorcism 'which could more effectually defeat the agents of the devil and put them to flight.'[121]

[120] Montaigne, one of the few Frenchmen at this time who seemed to discredit the universal creed, in one of his essays ventures to think 'it is very probable that the princ.i.p.al credit of visions, of enchantments, and of such extraordinary effects, proceeds from the power of the imagination acting princ.i.p.ally upon the more impressible minds of the vulgar.' He is inclined to a.s.sign the prevalent 'liaisons' (nouements d'aiguillettes) to the apprehensions of a fear with which in his age the French world was so perplexed (si entrave). _Essais_, liv. i. 20.

[121] _Extraordinary Popular Delusions_, by Mackay, whose authorities are Tablier, Boguet (_Discours sur les Sorciers_), and M. Jules Garinet (_Histoire de la Magie_).

In France, and still more in Italy, there is reason for believing that many of the convicts were not without the real guilt of toxicological practices; and they might sometimes properly deserve the opprobrium of the old _venefici_. The formal trial and sentence to death of La Marechale de l'Ancre in 1617 was perhaps more political than superst.i.tious, but witchcraft was introduced as one of the gravest accusations. Her preponderance in the councils of Marie de Medici and of Louis XIII. originated in the natural _fascination_ of royal but inferior minds. Two years afterwards occurred a bona fide prosecution on a large scale. A commission was appointed by the Parliament of Bordeaux to inquire into the causes and circ.u.mstances of the prevalence of witchcraft in the Pyrenean districts. Espaignol, president of the local parliament, with the better known councillor, Pierre de l'Ancre, who has left a record ('Tableau de l'Inconstance des Mauvais Anges et Demons, ou il est amplement traite des Sorciers et Demons: Paris'), was placed at the head of the commission. How the district of Labourt was so infested with the tribe, that of thirty thousand inhabitants hardly a family existed but was infected with sorcery, is explained by the barren, sterile, mountainous aspect of the neighbourhood of that part of the Pyrenees: the men were engaged in the business of fishermen, and the women left alone were exposed to the tempter. The priests too were as ignorant and wicked as the people; their relations with the lonely wives and daughters being more intimate than proper.

Young and handsome women, some mere girls, form the greater proportion of the accused. As many as forty a day appeared at the bar of the commissioners, and at least two hundred were hanged or burned.

Evidence of the appearance of the devil was various and contradictory. Some at the _Domdaniel_, the place of a.s.semblage, had a vision of a hideous wild he-goat upon a large gilded throne; others of a man twisted and disfigured by Tartarean torture; of a gentleman in black with a sword, booted and spurred; to others he seemed as some shapeless indistinct object, as that of the trunk of a tree, or some huge rock or stone. They proceeded to their meetings riding on spits, pitchforks, broom-sticks: being entertained on their arrival in the approved style, and indulging in the usual licence. Deputies from witchdom attended from all parts, even from Scotland. When reproached by some of his slaves for failing to come to the rescue in the torture-chamber or at the stake, their lord replied by causing illusory fires to be lit, bidding the doubters walk through the harmless flames, promising not more inconvenience in the bonfires of their persecutors. Lycanthropic criminals were also brought up who had prowled about and devastated the sheepfolds. Espaignol and De l'Ancre were provided with two professional Matthew Hopkinses: one a surgeon for examining the 'marks' (generally here discovered in the left eye, like a frog's foot) in the men and older women; the other a girl of seventeen, for the younger of her s.e.x. Many of the priests were executed; several made their escape from the country. Besides the work before mentioned, De l'Ancre published a treatise under the t.i.tle of 'L'Incredulite et Mescreance du Sortilege pleinement convaincue,' 1622. The expiration of the term of the Bordeaux commission brought the proceedings to a close, and fortunately saved a number of the condemned.

In Spain, the land of Torquemada and Ximenes, which had long ago fanatically expelled the Jews and recently its old Moorish conquerors from its soil, the unceasing activity of the Inquisition during 140 years must have extorted innumerable confessions and proofs of diabolic conspiracies and heresy.

Antonio Llorente, the historian of the Inquisition, to whose rare opportunities of obtaining information we are indebted for some instructive revelations, has exposed a large number of the previously silent and dark transactions of the Holy Office. But the demonological ideas of the Southern Church and people are profusely displayed in the copious dramatic literature of the Spaniards, whose theatre was at one time nearly as popular, if not as influential, as the Church.

The dramas of the celebrated Lope de Vega and of Calderon in particular, are filled with demons as well as angels[122]--a sort of religious compensation to the Church for the moral deficiencies of a licentious stage, or rather licentious public.

[122] In the _Nacimiento de Christo_ of Lope de Vega the devil appears in his popular figure of the dragon.

Calderon's _Wonder-Working Magician_, relating the adventures of St. Cyprian and the various temptations and seductions of the Evil Spirit, like Goethe's Faust, introduces the devil in the disguise of a fas.h.i.+onable and gallant gentleman.--Ticknor's _History of Spanish Literature_.

CHAPTER VI.

'Possession' in France in the Seventeenth Century--Urbain Grandier and the Convent of Loudun--Exorcism at Aix--Ecstatic Phenomena--Madeleine Bavent--Her cruel Persecution--Catholic and Protestant Witchcraft in Germany--Luther's Demonological Fears and Experiences--Originated in his exceptional Position and in the extraordinary Circ.u.mstances of his Life and Times--Witch-burning at Bamburg and at Wurzburg.

Demoniacal possession was a phase of witchcraft which obtained extensively in France during the seventeenth century: the victims of this hallucination were chiefly the female inmates of religious houses, whose inflamed imaginations were prost.i.tuted by their priestly advisers to the most atrocious purposes. Urbain Grandier's fate was connected with that of an entire convent. The facts of this celebrated sorcerer's history are instructive. He was educated in a college of the Jesuits at Bordeaux, and presented by the fathers, with whom his abilities and address had gained much applause, to a benefice in Loudun. He provoked by his haughtiness the jealousy of his brother clergy, who regarded him as an intruder, and his pride and resentment increased in direct proportion to the activity of his enemies, who had conspired to effect his ruin. Mounier and Mignon, two priests whom he had mortally offended, were most active. Urbain Grandier was rash enough to oppose himself alone to the united counsels of unscrupulous and determined foes. Defeated singly in previous attempts to drive him from Loudun, the two priests combined with the leading authorities of the place. Their haughty and careless adversary had the advantage or disadvantage of a fine person and handsome face, which, with his other recommendations, gained him universal popularity with the women; and his success and familiarities with the fair s.e.x were not likely to escape the vigilance of spies anxious to collect damaging proofs. What inflamed to the utmost the animosities of the two parties was the success of Canon Mignon in obtaining the coveted position of confessor to the convent of Ursulines in Loudun, to the exclusion of Grandier, himself an applicant. This convent was destined to a.s.sume a prominent part in the fate of the cure of the town. The younger nuns, it seems, to enliven the dull monotony of monastic life, adopted a plan of amusing their leisure by frightening the older ones in making the most of their knowledge of secret pa.s.sages in the building, playing off ghost-tricks, and raising unearthly noises. When the newly appointed confessor was informed of the state of matters he at once perceived the possibility, and formed the design, of turning it to account. The offending nuns were promised forgiveness if they would continue their ghostly amus.e.m.e.nt, and also affect demoniacal possession; a fraud in which they were more readily induced to partic.i.p.ate by an a.s.surance that it might be the humble means of converting the heretics--Protestants being unusually numerous in that part of the country.

As soon as they were sufficiently prepared to a.s.sume their parts, the magistrates were summoned to witness the phenomena of possession and exorcism. On the first occasion the Superior of the convent was the selected patient; and it was extracted from the demon in possession that he had been sent by Urbain Grandier, priest of the church of St. Peter. This was well so far; but the civil authorities generally, as it appears, were not disposed to accept even the irrefragable testimony of a demoniac; and the ecclesiastics, with the leading inhabitants, were in conflict with the civil power. Opportunely, however, for the plan of the conspirators, who were almost in despair, an all-powerful ally was enlisted on their side. A severe satire upon some acts of the minister of France, Cardinal Richelieu, or of some of his subordinates, had made its appearance. Urbain was suspected to be the author; his enemies were careful to improve the occasion; and the Cardinal-minister's cooperation was secured. A royal commission was ordered to inquire into the now notorious circ.u.mstances of the Loudun diabolism. Laubardemont, the head of the commission, arrived in December 1633, and no time was lost in bringing the matter to a crisis. The house of the suspected was searched for books of magic; he himself being thrown into a dungeon, where the surgeons examined him for the 'marks.' Five insensible spots were found--a certain proof. Meanwhile the nuns become more hysterical than ever; strong suspicion not being wanting that the priestly confessors to the convent availed themselves of their situation to abuse the bodies as well as the minds of the reputed demoniacs. To such an extent went the audacity of the exorcists, and the credulity of the people, that the _enceinte_ condition of one of the sisters, which at the end of five or six months disappeared, was explained by the malicious slander of the devil, who had caused that scandalous illusion.

Crowds of persons of all ranks flocked from Paris and from the most distant parts to see and hear the wild ravings of these hysterical or drugged women, whose excitement was such that they spared not their own reputations; and some scandalous exposures were submitted to the amus.e.m.e.nt or curiosity of the surrounding spectators. Some few of them, aroused from the horrible delusion, or ashamed of their complicity, admitted that all their previous revelations were simple fiction. Means were found to effectually silence such dangerous announcements. The accusers pressed on the prosecution; the influence of his friends was overborne, and Grandier was finally sentenced to the stake. Fearing the result of a despair which might convincingly betray the facts of the case to the a.s.sembled mult.i.tude, they seem to have prevailed upon the condemned to keep silence up to the last moment, under promise of an easier death. But already fastened to the stake, he learned too late the treachery of his executioners; instead of being first strangled, he was committed alive to the flames. Nor were any 'last confessions' possible. The unfortunate victim of the malice of exasperated rivals, and of the animosity of the implacable Richelieu, has been variously represented.[123] It is noticeable that the scene of this affair was in the heart of the conquered Protestant region--Roch.e.l.le had fallen only six years before the execution; and the heretics, although politically subdued, were numerous and active. A fact which may account for the seeming indifference and even the opposition of a large number of the people in this case of diabolism which obtained comparatively little credit. It had been urged to the nuns that it would be for the good and glory of Catholicism that the heretics should be confounded by a few astounding miracles.

Whether Grandier had any decided heretical inclinations is doubtful; but he wrote against the celibacy of the priesthood, and was suspected of liberal opinions in religion. A Capuchin named Tranquille (a contemporary) has furnished the materials for the 'History of the Devils of Loudun' by the Protestant Aubin, 1716.

[123] Michelet apparently accepts the charge of immorality; according to which the cure took advantage of his popularity among the ladies of Loudun, by his insinuating manners, to seduce the wives and daughters of the citizens. By another writer (Alexandre Dumas, _Celebrated Crimes_) he is supposed to have been of a proud and vindictive disposition, but innocent of the alleged irregularities.

Twenty-four years previously a still more scandalous affair--that of Louis Gauffridi and the Convent of Aix, in which Gauffridi, who had debauched several girls both in and out of the establishment, was the princ.i.p.al actor--was transacted with similar circ.u.mstances.

Madeleine, one of the novices, soon after entering upon her noviciate, was seized with the ecstatic trances, which were speedily communicated to her companions.[124] These fits, in the judgment of the priests, were nothing but the effect of witchcraft.

Exorcists elicited from the girls that Louis Gauffridi, a powerful magician having authority over demons throughout Europe, had bewitched them. The questions and answers were taken down, by order of the judges, by reporters, who, while the priests were exorcising, committed the results to writing, published afterwards by one of them, Michaelis, in 1613. Among the interesting facts acquired through these spirit-media, the inquisitors learned that Antichrist was already come; that printing, and the invention of it, were alike accursed, and similar information. Madeleine, tortured and imprisoned in the most loathsome dungeon, was reduced to such a condition of extreme horror and dread, that from this time she was the mere instrument of her atrocious judges. Having been intimate with the wizard, she could inform them of the position of the 'secret marks' on his person: these were ascertained in the usual way by p.r.i.c.king with needles. Gauffridi, by various torture, was induced to make the required confession, and was burned alive at Aix, April 30, 1611.

[124] M. Maury, in a philosophical and learned work (_La Magie et l'Astrologie dans l'Antiquite et au Moyen age_), has scientifically explored and exposed the mysteries of these and the like ecstatic phenomena, of such frequent occurrence in Protestant as well as in Catholic countries; in the orphan-houses of Amsterdam and Horn, as well as in the convents of France and Italy in the 17th century. And the Protestant revivalists of the present age have in great measure reproduced these curious results of religious excitement.

Demoniacal possession was a mania in France in the seventeenth century. The story of Madeleine Bavent, as reported, reveals the utmost licentiousness and fiendish cruelty.[125] Gibbon justly observes that ancient Rome supported with the greatest difficulty the inst.i.tution of _six_ vestals, notwithstanding the certain fate of a living grave for those who could not preserve their chast.i.ty; and Christian Rome was filled with many thousands of both s.e.xes bound by vows to perpetual virginity. Madeleine was seduced by her Franciscan confessor when only fourteen; and she entered a convent lately founded at Louviers. In this building, surrounded by a wood, and situated in a suitable spot, some strange practices were carried on. At the instigation of their director, a priest called David, the nuns, it is reported, were seized with an irresistible desire of imitating the primitive Adamite simplicity: the novices were compelled to return to the simple nudity of the days of innocence when taking exercise in the conventual gardens, and even at their devotions in the chapel. The novice Madeleine, on one occasion, was reprimanded for concealing her bosom with the altar-cloth at communion. She was originally of a pure and artless mind; and only gradually and stealthily she was corrupted by the pious arguments of her priest. This man, Picart by name--one of that extensive cla.s.s the 'tristes obsc[oe]ni,' of whom the Angelos and Tartuffes[126] are representatives--succeeded to the vacant office of directing confessor to the nuns of Louviers; and at once embraced the opportunities of the confessional. Without repeating all the disgusting scenes that followed, as given by Michelet, it is only necessary to add that the miserable nun became the mistress and helpless creature of her seducer. 'He employed her as a magical charm to gain over the rest of the nuns. A holy wafer steeped in Madeleine's blood and buried in the garden would be sure to disturb their senses and their minds. This was the very year in which Urban Grandier was burned. Throughout France men spoke of nothing but the devils of Loudun.... Madeleine fancied herself bewitched and knocked about by devils; followed about by a lewd cat with eyes of fire. By degrees other nuns caught the disorder, which showed itself in odd supernatural jerks and writhings.'

[125] It is but one instance of innumerable amours within the secret penetralia of the privileged conventual establishments. In the dark recesses of these vestal inst.i.tutions on a gigantic scale, where publicity, that sole security, was never known, what vices or even crimes could not be safely perpetrated? Luther, who proved in the most practical way his contempt for the sanct.i.ty of monastic vows by eloping with a nun, a.s.sures us, among other scandals attaching to convent life, of the fact that when a fish-pond adjoining one of these establishments in Rome was drained off, six thousand infant skulls were exposed to view. A story which may be fact or fiction. But while fully admitting the probability of invention and exaggeration in the relations of enemies, and the fact that undue prejudice is likely to somewhat exaggerate the probable evils of the mysterious and unknown, how could it be otherwise than that during fourteen centuries many crimes should have been committed in those silent and safe retreats? Nor, indeed, is experience opposed to the possibility of the highest fervour of an unnatural enthusiasm being compatible with more human pa.s.sions. The virgin who,

'Ut flos in septis secretus nascitur hortis Ignotus pecori,'

as eulogised by the virgin-chorus in the beautiful epithalamium of Catullus, might be recognised in the youthful 'religieuse' if only human pa.s.sion could be excluded; but the story of Heloise and Abelard is not a solitary proof of the superiority of human nature over an impossible and artificial spirituality.

[126] As Tartuffe privately confesses,

'L'amour qui nous attache aux beautes eternelles N'etouffe pas en nous l'amour des temporelles.

Pour etre devot, je n'en suis pas moins homme.'

The Superior was not averse to the publication of these events, having the example and reputation of Loudun before her. Little is new in the possession and exorcism: for the most part they are a repet.i.tion of those of Aix and Loudun. During a brief interval the devils were less outrageous: for the Cardinal-minister was meditating a reform of the monastic establishments. Upon his death they commenced again with equal violence. Picart was now dead--but not so the persecution of his victim. The priests recommenced miracle-working with renewed vigour.[127] Saved from immediate death by a fortunate or, as it may be deemed, unfortunate sensitiveness to bodily pain, she was condemned for the rest of her life to solitary confinement in a fearful dungeon, in the language of her judges to an _in pace_. There lying tortured, powerless in a loathsome cell, their prisoner was alternately coaxed and threatened into admitting all sorts of crimes, and implicating whom they wished.[128] The further cruelties to which the l.u.s.t, and afterwards the malignancy, of her gaolers submitted her were not brought to an end by the interference of parliament in August 1647, when the destruction of the Louviers establishment was decreed. The guilty escaped by securing, by intimidation, the silence of their prisoner, who remained a living corpse in the dungeons of the episcopal palace of Rouen. The bones of Picart were exhumed, and publicly burned; the cure Boulle, an accomplice, was dragged on a hurdle to the fish-market, and there burned at the stake. So terminated this last of the trilogical series. But the hysterical or demoniacal disease was as furious as ever in Germany in the middle of the eighteenth century; and was attended with as tremendous effects at Wurzburg as at Louviers.

[127] To the diabolic visions of the other they opposed those of 'a certain Anne of the Nativity, a girl of sanguine hysterical temperament, frantic at need, and half mad--so far at least as to believe in her own lies. A kind of dog-fight was got up between the two. They besmeared each other with false charges. Anne saw the devil quite naked by Madeleine's side. Madeleine swore to seeing Anne at the Sabbath with the Lady Superior, the Mother a.s.sistant, and the Mother of the novices.... Madeleine was condemned, without a hearing, to be disgraced, to have her body examined for the marks of the devil. They tore off her veil and gown, and made her the wretched sport of a vile curiosity that would have pierced till she bled again in order to win the right of sending her to the stake. Leaving to no one else the care of a scrutiny which was in itself a torture, these virgins, acting as matrons, ascertained if she were with child or no; shaved all her body, and dug their needles into her quivering flesh to find out the insensible spots.'--_La Sorciere._

[128] The horrified reader may see the fuller details of this case in Michelet's _La Sorciere_, who takes occasion to state that, than 'The History of Madeleine Bavent, a nun of Louviers, with her examination, &c., 1652, Rouen,' he knows of 'no book more important, more dreadful, or worthier of being reprinted. It is the most powerful narrative of its cla.s.s. _Piety Afflicted_, by the Capuchin Esprit de Bosrager, is a work immortal in the annals of tomfoolery. The two excellent pamphlets by the doughty surgeon Yvelin, the _Inquiry_ and the _Apology_, are in the Library of Ste.

Genevieve.'--_La Sorciere_, the Witch of the Middle Ages, chap. viii. Whatever exaggeration there may possibly be in any of the details of these and similar histories, there is not any reasonable doubt of their general truth. It is much to be wished, indeed, that writers should, in these cases, always confine themselves to the simple facts, which need not any imaginary or fict.i.tious additions.

In Germany during the seventeenth century witches felt the fury of both Catholic and Protestant zeal; but in the previous age prosecutions are directed against Protestant witches. They abounded in Upper Germany in the time of Innocent VIII., and what numbers were executed has been already seen. When the revolutionary party had acquired greater strength and its power was established, they vied with the conservatives in their vigorous attacks upon the empire of Satan.

Luther had been sensible to the contagious fear that the great spiritual enemy was actually fighting in the ranks of his enemies. He had personal experience of his hostility. Immured for his safety in a voluntary but gloomy prison, occupied intensely in the plan of a mighty revolution against the most powerful hierarchy that has ever existed, engaged continuously in the laborious task of translating the Sacred Scriptures, only partially freed from the prejudices of education, it is little surprising that the antagonist of the Church should have experienced infernal hallucinations. This weakness of the champion of Protestantism is at least more excusable than the pedantic folly of the head of the English Church. When Luther, however, could seriously affirm that witchcraft 'is the devil's proper work wherewith, when G.o.d permits, he not only hurts people but makes away with them; for in this world we are as guests and strangers, body and soul, cast under the devil: that idiots, the lame, the blind, the dumb are men in whom ignorant devils have established themselves, and all the physicians who attempt to heal these infirmities as though they proceeded from natural causes, are ignorant blockheads who know nothing about the power of the demon,' we cannot be indignant at the blind credulity of the ma.s.ses of the people. It appears inconsistent that Luther, averse generally to supernaturalism, should yet find no difficulty in entertaining these irrational diabolistic ideas.

The circ.u.mstances of his life and times sufficiently explain the inconsistency.[129]

[129] The following sentence in his recorded conversation, when the free thoughts of the Reformer were unrestrained in the presence of his most intimate friends, is suggestive. 'I know,' says he, 'the devil thoroughly well; he has over and over pressed me so close that I scarcely knew whether I was alive or dead. Sometimes he has thrown me into such despair that I even knew not that there is a G.o.d, and had great doubts about our dear Lord Christ. But the Word of G.o.d has speedily restored me' (Luther's _Tischreden_ or _Table Talk_, as cited in Howitt's _History of the Supernatural_).

The eloquent controversialist Bossuet and the Catholics have been careful to avail themselves of the impetuosity and incautiousness of the great German Reformer.

Of all the leaders of the religious revolution of the sixteenth century, the Reformer of Zurich was probably the most liberally inclined; and Zuinglius' unusual charity towards those ancient sages and others who were ignorant of Christianity, which induced him to place the names of Aristides, Socrates, the Gracchi, &c., in the same list with those of Moses, Isaiah, and St. Paul, who should meet in the a.s.sembly of the virtuous and just in the future life, obliged Luther openly to profess of his friend that 'he despaired of his salvation,' and has provoked the indignation of the bishop of Meaux.--_Variations des Eglises Protestantes_, ii.

19 and 20.

On the eve of the prolonged and ferocious struggle on the continent between Catholicism and Protestantism a wholesale slaughter of witches and wizards was effected, a fitting prologue to the religious barbarities of the Thirty Years' War. Fires were kindled almost simultaneously in two different places, at Bamburg and Wurzburg; and seldom, even in the annals of witchcraft, have they burned more tremendously. The prince-bishops of those territories had long been anxious to extirpate Lutheranism from their dioceses. Frederick Forner, Suffragan of Bamburg, a vigorous supporter of the Jesuits, was the chief agent of John George II. He waged war upon the heretical sorcerers in the 'whole armour of G.o.d,' _Panoplia armaturae Dei_. According to the statements of credible historians, nine hundred trials took place in the two courts of Bamburg and Zeil between 1625 and 1630. Six hundred were burned by Bishop George II. No one was spared. The chancellor, his son, Dr. Horn, with his wife and daughters, many of the lords and councillors of the bishop's court, women and priests, suffered. After tortures of the most extravagant kind it was extorted that some twelve hundred of them were confederated to bewitch the entire land to the extent that 'there would have been neither wine nor corn in the country, and that thereby man and beast would have perished with hunger, and men would be driven to eat one another. There were even some Catholic priests among them who had been led into practices too dreadful to be described, and they confessed among other things that they had baptized many children in the devil's name. It must be stated that these confessions were made under tortures of the most fearful kind, far more so than anything that was practised in France or other countries.... The number brought to trial in these terrible proceedings were so great, and they were treated with so little consideration, that it was usual not even to take the trouble of setting down their names; but they were cited as the accused Nos. 1, 2, 3, &c. The Jesuits took their confessions in private, and they made up the lists of those who were understood to have been denounced by them.'

More destructive still were the burnings of Wurzburg at the same period under the superintendence of Philip Adolph, who ascended the episcopal throne in 1623. In spite of the energy of his predecessors, a grand confederacy of sorcerers had been discovered, and were at once denounced.[130]

[130] 'A catalogue of nine and twenty _brande_ or burnings during a very short period of time, previous to the February of 1629, will give the best notion of the horrible character of these proceedings; it is printed,' adds Mr. Wright, 'from the original records in Hauber's _Bibliotheca Magica_.' E.g.

in the Fifth Brande are enumerated: (1) Latz, an eminent shopkeeper. (2) Rutscher, a shopkeeper. (3) The housekeeper of the Dean of the cathedral. (4) The old wife of the Court ropemaker. (5) Jos. Sternbach's housekeeper. (6) The wife of Baunach, a Senator. (7) A woman named Znickel Babel. (8) An old woman. In the Sixteenth Burning: (1) A n.o.ble page of Ratzenstein. (2) A boy of ten years of age. (3, 4, 5) The two daughters of the Steward of the Senate and his maid. (6) The fat ropemaker's wife. In the Twentieth Burning: (1) Gobel's child, the most beautiful girl in Wurzburg. (2) A student on the fifth form, who knew many languages, and was an excellent musician. (3, 4) Two boys from the New Minster, each twelve years old. (5) Stepper's little daughter. (6) The woman who kept the bridge gate. In the Twenty-sixth Burning are specified: (1) David Hans, a Canon in the New Minster. (2) Weydenbusch, a Senator. (3) The innkeeper's wife of the Baumgarten. (4) An old woman. (5) The little daughter of Valkenberger was privately executed and burned on her bier. (6) The little son of the town council bailiff.

(7) Herr Wagner, vicar in the cathedral, was burned alive.--_Narratives of Sorcery and Magic._ The facts are taken from Dr. Soldan's _Geschichte der Hexenprocesse_, whose materials are to be found in Horst's _Zauber Bibliothek_ and Hauber's _Bibliotheca Magica_.

Nine appears to have been the greatest number, and sometimes only two were sent to execution at once. Five are specially recorded as having been burned alive. The victims are of all professions and trades--vicars, canons, goldsmiths, butchers, &c. Besides the twenty-nine conflagrations recorded, many others were lighted about the same time: the names of whose prey are not written in the Book of Death. Frederick Spee, a Jesuit, formerly a violent enemy of the witches, but who had himself been incriminated by their extorted confessions at these holocausts, was converted to the opposite side, and wrote the 'Cautio Criminalis,' in which the necessity of caution in receiving evidence is insisted upon--a caution, without doubt, 'very necessary at that time for the magistracy throughout Germany.' All over Germany executions, if not everywhere so indiscriminately destructive as those in Franconia and at Wurzburg, were incessant: and it is hardly the language of hyperbole to say that no province, no city, no village was without its condemned.

CHAPTER VII.

Scotland one of the most Superst.i.tious Countries in Europe--Scott's Relation of the Barbarities perpetrated in the Witch-trials under the auspices of James VI.--The Fate of Agnes Sampson, Euphane MacCalzean, &c.--Irrational Conduct of the Courts of Justice--Causes of voluntary Witch-confessions--Testimony of Sir G. Mackenzie, &c.--Trial and Execution of Margaret Barclay--Computation of the number of Witches who suffered death in England and Scotland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--Witches burned alive at Edinburgh in 1608--The Lancas.h.i.+re Witches--Sir Thomas Overbury and Dr. Forman--Margaret Flower and Lord Rosse.

Scotland, by the physical features of the country and by the character and habits of the people, is eminently apt for the reception of the magical and supernatural of any kind;[131] and during the century from 1563 it was almost entirely subject to the dominion of Satan. Sir Walter Scott has narrated some of the most prominent cases and trials in the northern part of the island. The series may be said to commence from the confederated conspiracy of h.e.l.l to prevent the union of James VI. with the Princess Anne of Denmark. An overwhelming tempest at sea during the voyage of these anti-papal, anti-diabolic royal personages was the appointed means of their destruction.

[131] A late philosophic writer has ventured to inst.i.tute a comparison in point of superst.i.tion and religious intolerance between Spain and Scotland. The latter country, however, has denied to political what it conceded to priestly government: hence its superior material progress and prosperity.--Buckle's _History of Civilisation in England_.