| PART 2 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 (1258) that the inquisitors should limit their intervention to those cases in which there was some clear presumption of heretical belief (manifeste haeresim saparent), but Hansen shows reason for supposing 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 Catholic ritual in their "consolamentum" and other rites, and how easily the Manichaean 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 Catharan 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 Magic", II, 217). The woman, probably half crazy, "confessed" to having brought forth a monster after intercourse with an evil spirit and to having nourished it with babies' flesh which she procured in her nocturnal expeditions. 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. Bonaventure. Nevertheless within the Church itself there was always a strong common-sense reaction against this theorizing, a reaction which more especially manifested itself in the confession manuals of the close of the fifteenth century. These were largely compiled by men who were in actual contact with the people, and who realized the harm effected by the extravagance of these superstitious beliefs. Stephen Lanzkranna, for instance, treated the belief in women who rode about at night, hobgoblins, were-wolves, and "other such heathen nonsensical impostures", as one of the greatest of sins. Moreover this common-sense influence was a powerful one. Speaking of the synods held in Bavaria, so unfriendly a witness as Riezler (Hexenprozesse in Bayern, 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, "Concillia Salisburgensia", p. 372), we find indication of a strong tendency to prevent as far as possible the imposition 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, "Quellen und Untersuchungen", pp. 2-15) did very much to stimulate the prosecution by the inquisitors of witches and others engaged in magical practices, especially in the south of France. In a witch trial on a large scale carried on at Toulouse in 1334, 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 application 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 "Quellen und Untersuchungen", 451). In 1324 Petronilla de Midia was burnt at Kilkenny in Ireland at the instance of Richard, Bishop of Ossory; but analogous 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 offence 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 Germany by the papal inquisitors. About the year 1400 we find wholesale witch-prosecutions being carried out at Berne in Switzerland by Peter de Gruyères, who, despite the assertions of Riezler, was unquestionably a secular judge (see Hansen, "Quellen, etc.", 91 n.), and other campaigns — for example in the Valais (1428-1434) when 200 witches were put to death, or at Briancon in 1437 when over 150 suffered, some of them by drowning — were carried on by the secular courts. The victims of the inquisitors, 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 frequently 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, "Summis desiderantes affectibus", of Pope Innocent VIII (1484), as though this papal document were responsible for the witch mania of the two succeeding 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 purport was simply to ratify the powers already conferred upon Henry Institoris and James Sprenger, inquisitors, 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 intercourse 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 malice in the infliction of pain and disease, the hindrance caused to men in their conjugal relations, and the witches' repudiation of the faith of their baptism — the pope must no doubt be considered to affirm the reality 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 reality of witchcraft than is involved in the utterances of Holy Scripture. Probably the most disastrous episode was the publication 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 established by the Bible, etc., as well as its nature and horrors and the manner of dealing 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 "Formicaris" of John Nider, which had been written nearly fifty years earlier, exhibits just as intimate a knowledge of the supposed phenomena of sorcery. But the "Malleus" professed (in part fraudulently) to have been approved by the University 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 representations 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 publicity thus given to these matters inflamed the popular imagination. Certainly the immediate effects of Innocent VIII's Bull have been greatly exaggerated. Institoris started a witch campaign at Innsbruck in 1485, but here his procedure was severely criticised and resisted by 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 activity. The witch-trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were for the most part in secular hands. One fact which is absolutely certain is that, so far as Luther, Calvin, and their followers were concerned, the popular belief in the power of the Devil as exercised through witchcraft and other magic practices was developed beyond all measure. Naturally Luther did not appeal to the papal Bull. He looked only to the Bible, and it was in virtue of the Biblical command that he advocated the extermination of witches. But no portion of Janssen's "History" is more unanswerable than the fourth and fifth chapters of the last volume (vol. XVI of the English edition, in which he attributes a large, if not the greater, share of the responsibility for the witch mania to the Reformers. |