WITCHCRAFT
675
WITCHCRAFT
the Empire, in the third century, the punishment of
burning ahve was enacted by the State against witches
who compassed another person's death through their
enchantments (Juhus Pauhis, "Sent.", V, 23, 17). The
ecclesiastical legislalion followed a similar but milder
course. The Council of Elvira (306), can. vi, refused
the holy Viaticum to those who had killed a man by a
spell {per ynaleficium) and adds the reason that such a
crime could not be effected "without idolatry"; which
probably means without the aid of the Devil, devil-
worshij) and idolatry being then convertible terms.
Similarly canon x.\iv of the Council of Ancyra (314)
imposes five years of penance upon those who consult
magicians, and here again the offence is treated as
being a practical participation in pagani.sni. This
legislation represented the mind of the Church for
many centuries. Similar penalties were enacted
at the Eastern council in Trullo (692), while certain
early Irish canons in the far West treated sorcery as
a crime to be visited with excommunication until
adequate penance had been performed. None the
less the general desire of the clergj' to check fanaticism
is well illustrated by such a council as that of Pader-
born (7S.5). Although it enacts that sorcerers are
to be reduced to serfdom and made over to the service
of the Church, a decree was also passed in the follow-
ing terms: "Whosoever, blinded by the devil and
infected with pagan errors, holds another person for a
witch that eats human flesh, and therefore burns her,
eats her flesh, or gives it to others to eat, shall be
punished with death". Altogether it may be said
that in the first thirteen hundred years of the Chris-
tian era we find no trace of that fierce denunciation
and persecution of supjiosed sorceresses which charac-
terized the cruel witch hunts of a later age. In these
earlier centuries a few individual prosecutions for
witchcraft took place, and in some of these torture
(permitted by the Roman civil law) was apparently
employed. Pope Nicholas I, indeed (A. D. 866),
prohibited the use of torture, and a similar decree
may be found in the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals. In
spite of this it was not everywhere given up. Also
we must notice that a good many susjjected witches
were subjected to the ordeal of cold water, but as the
sinking of the victim was regarded as a proof of her
innocence, we may reasonably believe that the
verdicts so arrived at were generally verdicts of
acquittal. On many different occasions ecclesiastics
who spoke with authority did their best to disabuse
the people of their belief in witchcraft. This for
instance is the general purport of the book, "Contra
insulsam vulgi opinionem de grandine et tonitruis"
(Against the fooHsh belief of the common sort con-
cerning hail and thunder), written by Saint Agobard
(d. 841), Archbishop of Lyons (P. L., CIV, 147).
Still more to the point is the section of the work,
"De ccclesiasticis disciplinis" ascribed to Regino of
Prum (A. D. 906). In § .364 we read: This also is
not to be passed over that "certain abandoned
women, turning aside to follow Satan, being seduced
by the illusions and phantasms of demons, believe
and openly profess that in the dead of night they ride
upon certain beasts along with the pagan goddess
Diana and a countless horde of women and that in
these silent hours they fly over vast tracts of country
and obey her as their mistress, while on other niglits
they are summoned to pay her homage." And then
he goes on to remark that if it were only that the
women themselves were deluded it would be a matter
of little consequence, but unfortunately an immense
number of people (innumera mulfiludo) believe
these things to be true and believing them depart
from the true J'aith, so that practically speaking they
fall into Paganism. And on this account he says
"it is the duly of priests earnestly to instruct the
people that the.se things are absolutely untrue and
that such imaginings are planted in the minds of
misbelieving folk, not by a Divine spirit, but by the
spirit of evil" (P. L., ("XXXII, ;i.")2; cf. ibid.,
284). It would, as Hansen has shown (Zauberwahn,
pp. 81-82), be far too .sweeping a conclusion to infer
that the Carlovingian Church by this utterance pro-
claimed its disbelief in witchcraft, but the passage
at least proves tliat in regard to such matters a
saner and more critical spirit had begun to prevail
among the clergy. The "Decretum" of Burchard,
Bishop of Worms (about 1020), and especially its 19th
Book, often known separately as the "Corrector",
is another work of great importance. Burchard, or
the teachers from whom lie has compiled his treatise,
still believes in some forms of witchcraft — in magical
potions, for instance, which may produce imiiotence
or abortion. But he altogether rejects the possibility
of many of the marvellous powers with which
witches were popularly credited. Such, for example,
were the nocturnal riding through the air, the changing
of a person's disposition from love to hate, the control
of thunder, rain, and sunshine, the transformation of
a man into an animal, the intercourse of incubiand
succubi with human beings. Not only the attempt
to practise such things but the very belief in their
possibility is treated by him as a sin for which the
confessor must require his penitent to do a serious
assigned penance. Gregory VII in 1080 WTote to
King Harold of Denmark forbidding witches to be
put to death upon presumption of their having caused
storms or failure of crops or pestilence. Neither
were these the only examples of an effort to stem the
tide of unjust suspicion to which these poor creatures
were exposed. See for example the Weihenstephan
case discussed by Weiland in the "Zeitschrift f.
Kirchengesch.", IX, 592.
On the other hand, after the middle of the thirteenth century, the then recently-constituted Papal Inquisition began to concern itself with charges of witchcraft. Alexander IV, indeed, ruled (12.58) that the inquisitors should limit their intervention to those cases in which there was some clear presumption of heretical belief (manifesle hter- esim saperent), but Han^n shows reason for suppos- ing that heretical tendencies were very readily inferred from almost any sort of magical practices. Neither is this altogether surprising when we remember how freely the Cathari parodied CathoHc ritual in their "consolamentum" and other rites, and how easily the Manichsean dualism of their system might be interpreted as a homage to the powers of darkness. It was at any rate at Toulouse, the hot-bed of Cath- aran infection, that we meet in 1275 the earliest example of a witch burned to death after judicial sentence of an inquisitor, who was in this case a certain Hugues de Baniol (Cauzons, "La Magie", 11, 217). The woman, probably half crazy, "confessed" to having brought forth a monster after intercourse with an evil sjjirit and to having nourished it with babies' flesh which she procured in her nocturnal ex- peditions. The possibility of such carnal intercourse between human beings and demons was unfortunately accepted by some of the great schoolmen, even, for example, by St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonavenfure. Nevertheless within the Church itself there was always a strong common-sense react ion against this theorizing, a reaction which more especially mariifi'sted itself in the confession manuals of the close of the fifteenth cen- tury. These were largely compiled by men who were in actual contact with the people, and who realized the harm effected by the extravagances of these super- stitious beliefs. Stephen Lanzkranna, for instance, treated the belief in women who rodeabo\it at night, hobgoblins, were-wolves, and "other such heathen nonsensical impostures", as one of the great est of sins. Moreover this common-sense influence was a powerful one. .'>pcaking of the synods he Id in Bavaria, .so im- f ri<'ndly a witness aa Riezler (He.\enproze.s.se in Hayern,
