WITCHCRAFT
676
WITCHCRAFT
p. 32) declares that "among the official representatives
of the Church this healthier tendency remained the
prevalent one down to the threshold of the witch-trial
epidemic, that is until far on in the sixteenth century ".
Even as late as the Salzburg Provincial Synod of
1569 (Dalham, "ConciUa Salisburgensia", p. 372),
we find indication of a strong tendency to prevent
as far as possible the infliction of the death penalty
in cases of reputed witchcraft, by insisting that these
things were diabolical illusions. Still there can be no
doubt that during the fourteenth century certain papal
constitutions of John XXII and Benedict XII (see
Hansen,"QuellenundUntersuchungen", pp. 2-15) did
very much to stimulate the prosecution by the inquisi-
tors of witches and others engaged in magical prac-
tices, especially in the south of France. In a witch
trial on a large scale carried on at Toulouse in 1335,
out of sixty-three persons accused of offences of this
kind, eight were handed over to the secular arm to be
burned and the rest were imprisoned either for life
or for a long term of years. Two of the condemned,
both elderly women, after repeated appUcations of
torture, confessed that they had assisted at witches'
sabbaths, had there worshipped the Devil, had been
guilty of indecencies with him and with the other
persons present, and had eaten the flesh of infants
whom they had carried off by night from their
nurses (Hansen, "Zauberwahn", 315; and "QueUen
und Untersuchungen", 451). In 1324 Petronilla de
Midia was burnt at Kilkenny in Ireland at the in-
stance of Richard, Bishop of Ossory; but analo-
gous cases in the British Isles seem to have been
very rare. During this period the secular courts
proceeded against witchcraft with equal or even
greater severity than the ecclesiastical tribunals, and
here also torture was employed and burning at the
stake. Fire was the punishment juridically appointed
for this ofTence in the secular codes known as the
"Sachsenspiegel" (1225) and the "Schwabenspiegel"
(1275). Indeed during the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries no prosecutions for witchcraft are known to
have been undertaken in Germanyby the papal inquisi-
tors. About the year 1400we find wholesale witch-pros-
ecutions being carried out at Berne in Switzerland
by Peter de Gruyeres, who, despite the assertions of
Riezler, was imquestionably a secular judge (see
Hansen, "QueUen, etc.", 91 n.), and other campaigns —
for example in t he Valais (1428-1434) when 200 witches
were put to death, or at Brian9on in 1437 when over
150 suffered, some of them by drowning, — were carried
on by the secular courts. The victims of the inquisi-
tors, e. g. at Heidelberg in 1447, or in Savoy in 1462,
do not seem to have been quite so numerous. In
France at this period the crime of witchcraft was fre-
quently designated as "Vauderie" through some
confusion seemingly with the followers of the heretic,
Peter Waldes. But this confusion between sorcery
and a particular form of heresy was unfortunately
bound to bring a still larger number of persons under
the jealous scrutiny of the inquisitors.
It will be readily understood from the foregoing that the importance attached by many older writers to the Bull, " Sumrais desiderantes aff eel ibus " , of Pope Innocent VIII (1484), as though this papal document were responsible for the witch mania of the two suc- ceeding centuries, is altogether illusory. Not only had an active campaign against most forms of sorcery already been going on for a long period, but in the matter of procedure, of punishments, of judges, etc.. Innocent's Bull enacted nothing new. Its direct pur- port was simply to ratify the powers already conferred upon Henry Institoris and James Sprenger, inquisi- tors, to deal with persons of every class and with every form of crime (for example, with witchcraft as well as heresy), and it called upon the Bishop of Strasburg to lend the inquisitors all possible support.
Indirectly, however, by specifying the evil practices
charged against the witches — for example their inter-
course with incubi and succubi, their interference with
the parturition of women and animals, the damage
they did to cattle and the fruits of the earth, their
power and mahce in the infliction of pain and disease,
the hindrance caused to men in their conjugal rela-
tions, and the witches' repudiation of the faith of their
baptism — the pope must no doubt be considered to
affirm the reahty of these alleged phenomena But,
as even Hansen points out (Zauberwahn, 468, n.
3), "it is perfectly obvious that the Bull pronounces
no dogmatic decision"; neither does the form suggest
that the pope wishes to bind anyone to believe more
about the reahty of witchcraft than is involved in the
utterances of Holy Scripture. Probably the most
disastrous episode was the pubhcation a year or two
later, by the same inquisitors, of the book "Malleus
Maleficarum" (the hammer of witches). This work
is divided into three parts, the first two of which deal
with the reality of witchcraft as estabhshed by the
Bible, etc., as well as its nature and horrors and the
manner of deahng with it, while the third lays down
practical rules for procedure whether the trial be
conducted in an ecclesiastical or a secular court.
There can be no doubt that the book, owing to its
reproduction by the printing press, exercised great
influence. It contained, indeed, nothing that was
new. The " Formicarius " of John Nider, which
had been %\Titten nearly fifty j-ears earlier, exhibits
just as intimate a knowledge of the supposed phenom-
ena of sorcery. But the "Malleus" professed (in part
fraudulently) to have been approved by the Uni-
versity of Cologne, and it was sensational in the stigma
it attached to witchcraft as a worse crime than heresy
and in its notable animus against the female sex.
The subject at once began to attract attention even in
the world of letters. Ulrich Molitoris a year or two
later published a work, "De Lamiis", which, though
disagreeing with the more extravagant of the rep-
resentations made in the "Malleus", did not question
the existence of witches. Other divines and popular
preachers joined in the discussion, and, though many
voices were raised on the side of common sense, the
pubhcity thus given to these matters inflamedthe
popular imagination. Certainh' the immediate effects
of Innocent VIII's BuU have been greatly exagger-
ated. Institoris started a witch campaign at Inns-
bruck in 1485, but here his procedure was severely
criticised and resisted bj' the Bishop of Brixen (see
Janssen, "Hist, of Germ. People", Eng. tr., XVI, 249-
251). So far as the papal inquisitors were concerned,
the Bull, especially in Germany, heralded the close
rather than the commencement of their acti^aty. The
witch-trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
were for t he most part in secular hands. One fact which
is absolutely certain is that, so far as Luther, Calvin,
and their followers were concerned, the popu-
lar behef in the power of the Devil as exercised through
witchcraft and other magical practices was developed
beyond all meaatu-e. Naturally Luther did not appeal
to the papal Bull. He looked only to the Bible,
and it was in virtue of the Bibhcal command that
he advocated the extermination of witches. But no
portion of Janssen's "History" is more imanswerable
than the fourth and fifth chapters of the last volume
(vol. XVI of the English edition, in which he attributes
a large, if not tlie greater, share of the responsibility
for the witch mania to the Reformers.
The penal code known as the Carolina (1532) decreed that sorcery throughout the German empire should be treated as a criminal offence, and if it purported to inflict injury upon any person the witch was to be burnt at the slake. In 1.572 Augustus of Saxony imposed the penalty of burning for witchcraft of every kind, including simple fort unetelling. On the whole, greater activity in hunting down witches was shown in the Protestant districts of Germany than in the Catholic
