| PART 3 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 stake. In 1572 Augustus of Saxony imposed the penalty of burning for witchcraft of every kind, including simple fortunetelling. On the whole, greater activity in hunting down witches was shown in the Protestant districts of Germany than in the Catholic provinces. Striking examples are given by Janssen. In Osnabruck, in 1583, 121 persons were burned in three months. At Wolfenbuttenl in 1593 as many as ten witches were often burned in one day. It was not until 1563 that any effective resistance to the persecution began to be offered. This came first from a Protestant of Cleues, John Weyer, and other protests were shortly afterwards published in the same sense by Ewich and Witekind. On the other hand, Jean Bodin, a French Protestant lawyer, replied to Weyer in 1580 with much asperity, and in 1589 the Catholic Bishop Binsfeld and Father Delrio, a Jesuit, wrote on the same side, though Delrio wished to mitigate the severity of the witch trials and denounced the excessive use of torture. Bodin's book was answered amongst others by the Englishman Reginald Scott in his "Discoverie of Witchcraft" (1584), but this answer was ordered to be burned by James I, who replied to it in his "Daemonologie". Perhaps the most effective protest on the side of humanity and enlightenment was offered by the Jesuit Friedrich von Spee, who in 1631 published his "Cautio criminalis" and who fought against the craze by every means in his power. This cruel persecution seems to have extended to all parts of the world. In the sixteenth century there were cases in which witches were condemned by lay tribunals and burned in the immediate neighbourhood of Rome. Pope Gregory XV, however, in his Constitution, "omnipotentis" (1623), recommended a milder procedure, and in 1657 an Instruction of the Inquisition brought effective remonstrances to bear upon the cruelty shown in these prosecutions. England and Scotland, of course, were by no means exempt from the same epidemic of cruelty, though witches were not usually burned. As to the number of executions in Great Britain it seems impossible to form any safe estimate. One statement declares that 30,000, another that 3000, were hanged in England during the rule of the Parliament (Notestein, op. cit. infra, p. 194). Stearne the witchfinder boasted that he personally knew of 200 executions. Howell, writing in 1648, says that within the compass of two years near upon 300 witches were arraigned, and the major part executed, in Essex and Suffolk only (ibid., 195). In Scotland there is the same lack of statistics. A careful article by Legge in the "Scottish Review" (Oct., 1891) estimates that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries "3400 persons perished". For a small population such as that of Scotland, this number is enormous, but many authorities, though confessedly only guessing, have given a much higher estimate. Even America was not exempt from this plague. The well-known Cotton Mather, in his "Wonders of the Invisible World" (1693), gives an account of 19 executions of witches in New England, where one poor creature was pressed to death. In modern times, considerable attention has been given to the subject by Hexham and others. At the end of the seventeenth century the persecution almost everywhere began to slacken, and early in the eighteenth it practically ceased. Torture was abolished in Prussia in 1754, in Bavaria in 1807, in Hanover in 1822. The last trial for witchcraft in Germany was in 1749 at Würzburg, but in Switzerland a girl was executed for this offence in the Protestant Canton of Glarus in 1783. There seems to be no evidence to support the allegation sometimes made that women suspected of witchcraft were formally tried and put to death in Mexico late in the nineteenth century (see Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, XXXII, 1887, p. 378). The question of the reality of witchcraft is one upon which it is not easy to pass a confident judgment. In the face of Holy Scripture and the teaching of the Fathers and theologians the abstract possibility of a pact with the Devil and of a diabolical interference in human affairs can hardly be denied, but no one can read the literature of the subject without realizing the awful cruelties to which this belief and without being convinced that in 99 cases out of 100 the allegations rest upon nothing better than pure delusion. The most bewildering circumstance is the fact that in a large number of witch prosecutions the confessions of the victims, often involving all kinds of satanistic horrors, have been made spontaneously and apparently without threat or fear of torture. Also the full admission of guilt seems constantly to have been confirmed on the scaffold when the poor suffered had nothing to gain or lose by the confession. One can only record the fact as a psychological problem, and point out that the same tendency seems to manifest itself in other similar cases. The most remarkable instance, perhaps, is one mentioned by St. Agobard in the ninth century (P.L., CIV, 158). A certain Grimaldus, Duke of Beneventum, was accused, in the panic engendered by a plague that was destroying all the cattle, of sending men out with poisoned dust to spread infection among the flocks and herds. These men, when arrested and questioned, persisted, says Agobard, in affirming their guilt, though the absurdity was patent. BIBLIOGRAPHY. JANASSEN-PASTOR, Gesch. des deutschen Volkes, VIII, tr. XVI (Freiburg, 1908); DIEFENBACH in Wetzer und Welle, Kirchenlexikon, s. v. Hexenprozess; SOLDAN-HEPPE, gesch. der Hexenprozessen (2 vols., Stuttgart, 1880); GORRES, Mystik, IV (Ratisbon, 1842); DURR, Stellung d. Jesuiten in d. deutschen Hexenprozessen (Freiburg, 1900); PAULUS, Hexenwahn u. Hexenprozess in 16 Jahr. (Freiburt, 1910); HANSEN, Zauberwahn, etc. in M. A. (Munich, 1900); IDEM, Quellen und Untersuchungen (Berlin, 1901); De CAUZONS, La magie en France (4 vols., Paris, 1909); LEA, Hist. of the Inquisition, II (New York, 1900); BURR in Papers of the Amer. Hist. Soc., IV (New York, 1894), 237-66; RIETZLER, Hexenprozess in Bayern (Stuttgart, 1896); NOTESTEIN, History of Witchcraft in England (Washington, 1911); KITTREDGE, Notes on Witchcraft (Worcester, Mass., 1907); BAISSAC, Les grands jours de la sorcellerie (Paris, 1900); FERGUSON, Bibliographical Notes on the Witchcraft Literature of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1897); MASSON, La sorcellerie au xvii siecle (Paris, 1904); YVE-PLESSIS, Bibliographie de la sorcellerie (Paris, 1900); POOLE, Salem Witchcraft (Boston, 1869); LEHMANN, Aberglaube u. Zauberi (Stuttgart, 1908); GERISH, A Hertfortshire Witch (London, 1906); UPHAM, Hist. of Salem Witchcraft (2 vols., BOston, 1867); MOORE, Notes on the Hist. of Witchcraft (5 vols., Worcester, Mass., 1883-85); TAYLOR, The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut, 1647-1697 (2 vols., Berlin, 1902); KOPP, Die Hexenprozess u. ihre Gegner in Tyrol (Innsbruck, 1874); BANG, Norske Hexeformularer (Christiania, 1902). HERBERT THURSTON Transcribed by Michael T. Barrett Dedicated to catechists through the ages The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XV Copyright © 1912 by Robert Appleton Company Online Edition Copyright © 1999 by Kevin Knight Nihil Obstat, October 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York |