The Devil in Law. witches or demons. Although the devil deserted the witch so soon as an official took her, he still, often, gave her the gift of taciturnity, which kept her from confessing even when under the most terrible torture. One way of getting over this taciturnity was by giving the prisoner (on an empty stomach after invoking the Trinity) three drinks of holy water, in which blessed wax had been melted. If we believe many of those who, in the olden times, studied the question we must hold that the devils were the children of Adam by his first wife, Lilis. Spirits and devils are everywhere, not so much as a hair breadth is empty of them in heaven above, in the earth beneath or in the waters above or under the earth. They have the most excellent skill in all the arts and sciences; and as Cicogna maintains, the most illiter ate devil is more knowing than any man. Mather came upon one who understood English, Latin, Greek and Hebrew, but he was deficient in his knowledge of the Indian languages. Both the secular and the spiritual courts had jurisdiction over witchcraft. It would seem that in Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the secular tribunals some times tried to do justice; but when the Inquisition took up the matter all the re sources of fraud and force, of guile and torment, were exhausted to secure con viction; the inquisitor was instructed never to declare the accused innocent, the most favorable verdict possible was "not proven." From a very early period torture was recognized as indispensable in all trials for sorcery and magic. Witchcraft was con sidered so peculiarly difficult of proof that torture became an unfailing resource to the puzzled tribunal, although every legal safe guard was refused to the wretched criminal, and the widest latitude of evidence was allowed against him. Generally endurance of torture might be regarded as a proof of innocence, but in these cases it was only an additional sign of guilt; it showed that Satan
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was endeavoring to save his servant, and the duty to defeat him was plain; the power of Satan was checked to a certain extent if the whole body had been shaven before the rack was applied. Torture could not be repeated, but it could be continued indefinitely. Con fession was not requisite, still it was greatly desired, and to obtain it torture was used, or else it was obtained by fraud or promises. An infallible sign was the inability of a witch to weep under torture or before her judges. She was to be adjured by the living tears shed by Christ to weep, and if she did weep it was held to be a device of Satan and was not to be reckoned in her favor. The cold-water ordeal was, in the thirteenth century, abandoned as a judicial practice in ordinary cases, but it was still maintained as a special mode of trying those accused of witchcraft and sorcery. For a time it fell into desuetude, but it was revived in the second half of the sixteenth century. The accused were stripped naked, hands and feet were bound together, right to left and left to right, and they were then thrown into the water. If guilty they would float, because witches from their intercourse with Satan partake of his nature; he resides within them —he is an imponderable spirit of air, and therefore they become lighter than water, as he is lighter. Some supposed that the bodywas actually borne up by demons. There was any amount of evidence of learned and respectable men to show that witches were very light—very large and fat women were found to weigh only thirteen or fifteen pounds. In 1728, in Hungary, six men and seven women were burnt alive for witchcraft, their guilt had been proved beyond a doubt, first by the cold-water ordeal and then by the balance. One of these wretches—a large, fat woman—weighed only one and a half drachms, her husband five drachms, and the rest varied from a pennyweight to three drachms and under. James VI, of Scotland, eulogized this ordeal as an infallible guide in such cases; his argument was the old one that the pure
