slavery and what with black-magic, life is precarious among the Wakhutu, and 'no one, especially in old age, is safe from being burnt at a day's notice;' and, travelling in the country of the Wazaramo, he tells us of meeting every few miles with heaps of ashes and charcoal, now and then such as seemed to have been a father and mother, with a little heap hard by that was a child.[1] Even in districts of British India a state of mind ready to produce horrors like these is well known to exist, and to be kept down less by persuasion than by main force. From the level of savage life, we trace witchcraft surviving throughout the barbarian and early civilized world. It was existing in Europe in the centuries preceding the 10th, but with no especial prominence, while laws of Rothar and Charlemagne are actually directed against such as should put men or women to death on the charge of witchcraft. In the 11th century, ecclesiastical influence was discouraging the superstitious belief in sorcery. But now a period of reaction set in. The works of the monastic legend and miracle-mongers more and more encouraged a baneful credulity as to the supernatural. In the 13th century, when the spirit of religious persecution had begun to possess all Europe with a dark and cruel madness, the doctrine of witchcraft revived with all its barbaric vigour.[2] That the guilt of thus bringing down Europe intellectually and morally to the level of negro Africa lies in the main upon the Roman Church, the records of Popes Gregory IX. and Innocent VIII., and the history of the Holy Inquisition, are conclusive evidence to prove. To us here the main interest of mediæval witchcraft lies in the extent and accuracy with which the theory of survival explains it. In the very details of the bald conventional accusations that were sworn against the witches, there may be traced
- ↑ Du Chaillu, 'Ashango-land,' pp. 428, 435; Burton, 'Central Afr.' vol. i. pp. 57, 113, 121.
- ↑ See Grimm, 'D. M.' ch. xxxiv.; Lecky, 'Hist. of Rationalism,' vol. i. chap. i.; Horst, 'Zauber-Bibliothek;' Raynald, 'Annales Ecclesiastici,' vol. ii., Greg. IX. (1233), xli.-ii.; Innoc. VIII. (1484), lxxiv.
