because his personal feeling was strongly involved, inasmuch as he firmly believed that the barrenness of his first wife Elizabeth was due to magic influences. The court exorcist, a Barnabite named Marrano, tried his powers of disenchantment, but did not succeed in breaking the satanic spell, since the duchess died childless.
A tragi-comical feature of these witch trials was the prominence they gave to the hangman or headsman. Usually this public functionary was despised as a pariah, with whom no respectable person would associate; but in these topsy-turvy times he became one of the most conspicuous and influential members of the community. Thus Meister Jörg Abriel, the executioner of Schöngau, is described in contemporary records as driving three horses tandem through the country, like a fine gentleman, accompanied by his wife and two apparitors as attendants. Everywhere he was warmly greeted and hospitably entertained, and on one occasion on leaving Garmisch his health was drunk in eight gallons of wine. The reason for this distinction was that the executioner as an expert in the detection of "witch marks" on the bodies of the accused held the fate of hundreds of persons in his hands, since it depended upon his decision whether they should be tortured or not. Once he remarked that he had found no "devil's signs" but that the woman had "the look of a witch" and this observation sufficed to have the woman thrown into prison and put to the rack.
A new era of enlightenment began in Bavaria with the founding of the Academy of Sciences by the Elector Max Joseph on March 28, 1759, the aim of which, as he expressed it, was to "purify all departments of philosophy from unprofitable pedantries and prejudices" The motto of the institution, "Tendit ad æquum" would imply an endeavor to be not only just and equitable, but also level-headed generally; in other words, it was the intention to cultivate the moral and mental characteristics, in which the foremost men of learning had hitherto shown themselves lamentably deficient. Although the character of the academy forbade the discussion of matters of faith, this prohibition was fortunately so interpreted as not to include the question of witchcraft, which seems to have been placed by common consent in the category of "prejudices" Accordingly, on October 13, 1766, one of the academicians, Don Ferdinand Sterzinger, the superior of the Theatine Cloister in Munich and an acknowledged authority in ecclesiastical history, delivered an address on the common prejudice concerning witchcraft: Von dem gemeinen Vorurtheil der wirkenden und thätigen Hexerei. "Our enlightened times" he began, "in which the sciences seem to have reached the highest point, no longer tolerate any prejudices" He confesses, however, that he himself had not
