Chapter VI: Italian Text (5)

It is not our purpose to try and discover what amount of truth is contained in the immense farrago of absurdities comprised in the witch confessions. Actual nocturnal meetings of peasants, either to celebrate heathen rites or to plot against their oppressors, or merely to enjoy rude dances and music, as the negro in the Southern States was supposed to play the banjo nightly after his labours on the plantation, may or may not have assisted in spreading and confirming the belief in the sabbat, but they were not necessary. The whole story of child murder, obscene worship of a demon, dances and sexual orgies, was ready to hand long before. It had been applied in classic times to the worshippers of Isis and Bacchus, by the pagans to the early Christians, by the orthodox to the first heretics, to the Jews, to the Templars, and in our own day we have seen very similar charges brought against the Freemasons. All these sets of people had known meeting-places--the witches had none; they must therefore meet on some barren moor or mountain and be carried there supernaturally. Once started, the belief spread rapidly. Indeed we know from contemporary writers that it was a common subject of village gossip, and if any wretched victim had any doubt as to what she was expected to confess, the gaoler and judges were always ready with hints or leading questions.

One learned German[284] has attributed the whole witch mania to the _Datura Stramonium_, or thorn-apple, a plant introduced into Europe about this time. Women dosed themselves with this drug, or applied it in ointments, and forthwith had hallucinations of broomstick rides and witch dances. Others look upon belladonna as the principal agent, and one ardent investigator took dangerous doses of it in the hope of experiencing the adventures of a mediaeval sorcerer, but without definite effect. A similar experiment has recently been made by Kiesewetter, the historian of ‘Spiritualism’. He used the witch ointments described by Baptista Porta and others, but could produce nothing more diabolical than dreams of travelling in an express train.[285] Others, again, have supposed that the badly baked rye bread of the period must have produced an immense amount of nightmare among the poorer classes. The power of suggestion, doubtless, had a very real influence both on the victims and their judges, and with the aid of narcotics may not infrequently have produced vivid dreams of dancing and other intercourse with demons.

No doubt many persons were quite ready to become witches or sorcerers, and some really believed they had acquired such powers. Cases are recorded in which formal agreements, duly signed in blood, and awaiting the devil’s acceptance, were discovered, and resulted in the arrest and burning of the would-be wizard. Others took pleasure in the terror the reputed powers inspired, and may have sometimes caused or increased it by the use of actual poisons.

But these formed but a small minority of the vast army of victims; and even when some real criminal was arrested or some half-insane person voluntarily ‘confessed’, she was encouraged or compelled to denounce her supposed associates, and thus often involved scores of innocent acquaintances in her own awful fate.

The witch-hunters are not to be blamed for believing in witchcraft, or even for carrying out the scriptural injunction ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’. It is the methods they employed, compared with which the procedure of a Jeffreys or a Caiaphas was just and merciful, which cannot be excused by any talk about the spirit of the age, which brought agony and death to many thousands of innocent men, women and little children, and which excited the fiery and righteous indignation of Dr. John Weyer.

According to Pascal, men never do wrong so thoroughly and so cheerfully as when they are obeying the promptings of a false principle of conscience. To which we may add that men are never more cruel and unjust than when they are in a fright. The witch-hunters, most of them at least, were pious and conscientious men. They appeal to God, the Church, and the Bible at every step. Nicholas Remy, for instance, after torturing and burning over 800 of his fellow creatures, retired from work thinking he had done God and man good service. But one thing troubled his conscience. He had spared the lives of certain young children, and merely ordered them to be scourged naked three times round the place where their parents were burning. He is convinced that this was wrong, and that they will all grow up into witches and sorcerers. Besides, if God sent two she-bears to slay the forty and two children who mocked Elisha, of how much greater punishment are those worthy who have done despite to God, His Mother, the saints, and the Catholic religion?[286] He hopes his sinful clemency will not become a precedent--a fear which was quite unnecessary, for scores of children under twelve were burnt for witchcraft; and the one plea which even then respited the most atrocious murderess did not always avail a witch, since it was believed that her future child, if not the actual offspring of the devil, would infallibly belong to his kingdom.

But the witch-hunters were urged on by fear as well as by piety, for not only did they think themselves exposed to personal attacks from the devil and his allies, but they believed there was a vast and increasing society of men and women in league with the evil one, and that the fate of the world depended on its suppression.

All the machinery, therefore, which the Roman emperors had devised for their protection against treason and the Church for the suppression of heresy was brought into action against the witches, for witchcraft was the acme of treason and heresy, a _crimen laesae maiestatis divinae_.[287]

For a description of the methods employed we cannot do better than go to the _Malleus Maleficarum_,[288] the guide and handbook of the witch-hunters.

All proceedings in cases of witchcraft, say the reverend authors, must be on the plan recommended by Popes Clement V and Boniface VIII, ‘summarie, simpliciter, et de plano, ac sine strepitu ac figura iudicii’, a harmless looking phrase which swept away at a stroke all the safeguards which the lawyers of pagan Rome and the ruder justice of ancient Gaul and Germany had placed around accused persons. There are, says the _Malleus_,[289] two forms of criminal procedure: (1) the old legal or _accusatorial_ form where the prosecutor offers to prove his charge and to accept the consequences of failure, which must be carefully avoided as being dangerous and litigious; and (2) the _inquisitorial_, where a man denounces another either from zeal for the faith, or because called upon to do so, but takes no further part nor offers to prove his charge, or where a man is suspected by common report and the judge makes inquiry, and this method must always be preferred. The inquisitors, on entering a new district, should issue a proclamation calling on all persons to give information against suspected witches on pain of excommunication and temporal penalties. Any one may be compelled, by torture if necessary, to give evidence, and if he refuses must be punished as an obstinate heretic. Other sorcerers, or the man’s wife and family, are lawful witnesses against, but not for, the accused. Criminals and perjured persons, if they show zeal for the faith, may be admitted to give evidence. Priests, nobles, graduates of universities, and others legally exempt from torture are not exempt in the case of witch trials.[290]

‘Delation,’ the scandal of imperial Rome, was not only encouraged but enforced, and in some places, as at Milan, boxes were put in the churches, into which any one might drop an anonymous denunciation of his neighbour.

Names of informers are not to be revealed under penalty of excommunication; the advocate, if there is one, need be told the charges only. This advocate must not be chosen by the accused but by the inquisitor, and he must refuse the case if it seems to him unjust or hopeless. He must not use legal quibbles or make delays or appeals, and is to be specially warned that if he be found a protector of heretics or a hinderer of the inquisition, he will incur the usual penalties for those heinous crimes. If he reply that he defends the person, not the error, this avails not, for he must make no defence which interferes with proceeding _summarie, simpliciter, et de plano_.[291] After this it is not surprising to find that those accused of witchcraft were rarely defended by an advocate.

Faith need be kept with heretics and sorcerers ‘for a time only’.[292] Therefore an inquisitor may promise not to condemn a person if he confesses, and then pass sentence after a few days, or if of very tender conscience by the mouth of another. It is also lawful to introduce persons, _etiam mulieres honestae_, to the accused who promise to find means for their escape if they will teach them some form of witchcraft. This, say the authors, is a most successful method for getting convictions.[293]

Torture, though it may not be repeated on the same charge, may be continued as long as necessary, and any fresh evidence justifies a repetition. Finally the accused may be burnt without confession if the evidence is strong enough, or he may be kept in prison for months or years, when the _squalor carceris_ may induce him to confess his crimes.[294]

Such are the proceedings recommended against persons suspected of or denounced for witchcraft, and they conclude appropriately with the hideously hypocritical formula with which they were delivered over to be burnt: ‘Relinquimus te potestati curiae secularis, deprecantes tamen illam ut erga te citra sanguinis effusionem et mortis periculum suam sententiam moderetur’,[295] which means, according to the _Malleus_, that sorcerers are to be burned even though they repent, while repentant heretics may be imprisoned for life.

What was meant by the _squalor carceris_ may be seen from the following description by an eye-witness, Pretorius:[296]

‘Some [of the dungeons] are holes like cellars or wells, fifteen
to thirty fathoms (?) deep with openings above, through which they
let down the prisoners with ropes and draw them up when they will.
Such prisons I have seen myself. Some sit in great cold, so that
their feet are frost-bitten or frozen off, and afterwards, if they
escape, they are crippled for life. Some lie in continual darkness,
so that they never see a ray of sunlight, and know not whether it
be night or day. All of them have their limbs confined so that they
can hardly move, and are in continual unrest, and lie in their own
refuse, far more filthy and wretched than cattle. They are badly
fed, cannot sleep in peace, have much anxiety, heavy thoughts, bad
dreams. And since they cannot move hands or feet, they are plagued
and bitten by lice, rats, and other vermin, besides being daily
abused and threatened by gaolers and executioners. And since all
this sometimes lasts months or years, such persons, though at first
they be courageous, rational, strong, and patient, at length become
weak, timid, hopeless, and if not quite, at least half idiotic and
desperate.’

Yet all this was not considered torture, and if some poor wretch, after a year of it, went mad, or preferred a quick death to a slow one, her confession was described as being ‘entirely voluntary and without torture’.

As to the torture itself, it combined all that the ferocity of savages and the ingenuity of civilized man had till then invented. Besides the ordinary rack, thumb-screws, and leg-crushers or Spanish boots, there were spiked wheels over which the victims were drawn with weights on their feet; boiling oil was poured on their legs, burning sulphur dropped on their bodies, and lighted candles held beneath their armpits. At Bamberg they were fed on salt fish and allowed no water, and then bathed in scalding water and quicklime. At Lindheim they were fixed to a revolving table and whirled round till they vomited and became unconscious, and on recovery remained in so dazed a state that they were ready to confess anything.[297] At Neisse they were fastened naked in a chair ‘with 150 finger-long spikes in it’ and kept there for hours. And so effective were these tortures that nine out of ten innocent persons preferred to die as confessed sorcerers rather than undergo a repetition of them.

The Jesuit Father Spee, a worthy successor of John Weyer, accompanied nearly two hundred victims to the stake at Würzburg in less than two years. At the end of this time his hair had turned grey and he seemed twenty years older, and on being questioned as to the cause, declared that he was convinced that all these persons were innocent. They had, he said, at first repeated the usual confession, but on being tenderly dealt with had one and all protested their innocence, adjuring him at the same time not to reveal this, for they would much rather die than be tortured again. He added that he had received similar reports from other father confessors.[298] A few years later, 1631, he plucked up courage to publish anonymously his _Cautio Criminalis_, in which he exclaims:

‘Why do we search so diligently for sorcerers? I will show you
at once where they are. Take the Capuchins, the Jesuits, all the
religious orders, and torture them--they will confess. If some
deny, repeat it a few times--they will confess. Should a few still
be obstinate, exorcise them, shave them: they use sorcery, the
devil hardens them, only keep on torturing--they will give in. If
you want more, take the Canons, the Doctors, the Bishops of the
Church--they will confess. How should the poor delicate creatures
hold out? If you want still more, I will torture you and then you
me. I will confess the crimes you will have confessed, and so we
shall all be sorcerers together.’[299]

In the most notorious of judicial murders, we read that the judges had some difficulty owing to a disagreement between the witnesses. This rarely troubled the witch-hunters. At Lindheim a woman was accused of having dug up and carried off the body of an infant, which, under torture, she admitted, denouncing four others as her accomplices. But on the grave being opened, the body was found uninjured. The inquisitors at once decided that this must be a delusion of the devil, and all five women were burned. A man confessed, under torture, that he was a were-wolf, and in that form had killed a calf belonging to a neighbour; the latter, however, said he had never lost a calf, though two or three years ago two hens had disappeared, he believed through witchcraft. The accused was burnt, for what need had they of witnesses? Had they not heard his confession?[300]

It was even laid down as a principle that doubtful points must be decided ‘in favour of the faith’--in other words, against the accused. ‘If a sorcerer retracts his denunciations at the stake, it is not void, for he may have been corrupted by friends of the accused. Also when witnesses vary, as they often do, the positive assertion is always to be believed,’ says Bishop Covarivias, a prominent member of the Council of Trent. In which he is supported by the jurist Menochius of Padua, ‘ne tam horrendum crimen occultum sit’.

Anything might start a witch-hunting, and once started it increased like an avalanche. If an old woman happened to be out of doors in a thunder-storm; if the winter was prolonged; if there was a more than usual number of flies and caterpillars; if a woman had a spite against her neighbour, some one might be denounced and forced in turn to denounce others. The prolonged winter of 1586 in Savoy, for instance, resulted in the burning of 113 women and two men, who confessed, after torture, that it was due to their incantations.

It is thus not difficult to understand how, in the diocese of Como, witches were burnt for many years at an average rate of 100 per annum; how in that of Strassburg 5,000 were burnt in twenty years, 1615-35; how in the small diocese of Neisse 1,000 suffered between 1640-50, insomuch that they gave up the stake and pile as being too costly, and roasted them in a specially prepared oven; and how the Protestant jurist Benedict Carpzov could boast not only of having read the Bible through fifty-three times, but also of having passed 20,000 death sentences, chiefly on witches and sorcerers.[301]

One of Carpzov’s victims is specially interesting to medical men, the Saxon physician, Dr. Veit Pratzel, who on one occasion (1660) produced twenty mice by sleight of hand in a public-house, probably for the sake of advertisement. He was denounced as a sorcerer, tortured and burnt, while his children were bled to death in a warm bath by the executioner, lest they should acquire similar diabolical powers.[302]

A like fate befell the servant of a travelling dentist at Schwersenz in Poland. The dentist, John Plan, left his assistant in the town to attract attention by conjuring tricks, while he went to sell his infallible toothache tinctures in the neighbouring villages. On his return next evening, he was horrified to see the body of the unfortunate man hanging on the town gallows, and was told on inquiry that he was an evident sorcerer who had made eggs, birds, and plants before everybody in the market-place. He had therefore been arrested, scourged, put on the rack, and otherwise tortured till he confessed he was in league with the devil. Whereupon the town council, ‘out of special grace and to save expense’, had, instead of burning him, mercifully condemned him to be hanged. The dentist fled in terror to Breslau.[303]

But it was by no means necessary to be so foolhardy as this to fall into the hands of the witch-hunters. A woman at Lindheim was noticed to run into her barn as the inquisitorial officials came down the street. She had never been accused or even suspected of witchcraft, but was nevertheless immediately arrested, and brought more dead than alive to the chief inquisitor, Geiss,[304] who declared her flight justified the strongest suspicion. Exposed to the most extreme torture, she confessed nothing, but at length, at the question whether she had made a compact with the devil, one of the inquisitors declared he saw her nod her head. This was enough; she was burnt; probably a happy fate under the circumstances, for she thus escaped being forced by further tortures to give details of her imaginary crime and to denounce her neighbours.

Once in the clutches of the witch-hunters, the unfortunate victim was confronted by a series of dilemmas from which few escaped. A favourite beginning was to ask whether he believed in witchcraft. If he said ‘Yes’, he evidently knew more of the subject; if ‘No’, he was _ipso facto_ a heretic and slanderer of the inquisition; if in confusion he tried to distinguish, he was _varius in confessionibus_,[305] and a fit subject for immediate torture. If he confessed under torture, the matter was, of course, settled; if he endured manfully, it was evident that the devil must be aiding him. If a mark could be found on his body which was insensible and did not bleed when pricked, it was the devil’s seal and a sure sign of guilt; but if there was none, his case was no better, for it was held that the devil only marked those whose fidelity he doubted, so that a suspected person who had no such mark was in all probability a specially eminent sorcerer.[306]

Then came the water test, of which there is no better account than the report sent by W. A. Scribonius, Professor of Philosophy at Marburg, to the town council of Lemgo in 1583:

‘When I came to you, most prudent and learned consules, 26th
September, there were, two days later on St. Michael’s eve, three
witches burnt alive for divers and horrible crimes. The same day
three others, denounced by those aforesaid, were arrested, and on
the following day about 2 p.m. for further proving of the truth
were thrown into water to see whether they would swim or not. Their
clothes were removed and they were bound by the right thumb to
the left big toe and vice versa, so that they could not move in
the least. They were then cast three times into the water in the
presence of some thousands of spectators, and floated like logs
of wood, nor did one of them sink. And it is also remarkable that
almost at the moment they touched the water a shower of rain then
falling ceased, and the sun shone, but when they were taken out it
started raining as before.’

On request of the burgomaster, he investigated ‘the philosophy’ of this, and, though he could find nothing definite, had no doubt of its value as a test of witchcraft. ‘The physician Weyer rejects it as absurd and fallacious, but he can produce no good arguments or examples against it, and may therefore be ignored.’ Perhaps witches are made lighter because possessed by demons who are ‘powers of the air’ and often carry them through the air. All who float have afterwards confessed, therefore though not scriptural nor of itself sufficient to convict, the swimming test is not to be despised.[307]

With regard to the number of victims, even sober historians, such as Soldan, speak of millions, but if we take three-quarters of a million for the two centuries 1500-1700, it will give a rate of ten executions daily, at least eight of which were judicial murders.

Even more pathetic than the notice of 800 condemned in one body by the senate of Savoy[308] are the long lists of yearly executions preserved in the fragmentary records of small towns and villages. Thus at Meiningen, between 1610-31 and 1656-85, 106 suffered--in 1610 three, 1611 twenty-two, 1612 four, &c. &c., the intervening records being omitted owing to war. Similar notices have survived at Waldsee, Thun in Alsace, and many other hamlets, where through a long series of years we read of one to twenty persons burnt annually, some of them being previously ‘torn with red-hot pincers’.[309]

At Würzburg the Prince-bishop, Philip of Ehrenberg, is said to have burnt 900 in five years (1627-31), and we have terrible lists of twenty-nine of the burnings, almost all of which include young children. Here are two of them:

‘In the thirteenth burning, four persons: the old court smith, an
old woman, a little girl of nine or ten years, a younger girl her
sister.’

‘In the twentieth burning, six persons: Babelin Goebel, the
prettiest girl in Würzburg; a student in the fifth form who knew
many languages and was an excellent musician, instrumental and
vocal; two boys from the new minster, twelve years old; Babel
Stepper’s daughter; the caretaker on the bridge.’[310]

At Bamberg the Prince-bishop, John George, 1625-30, burnt at least 600 persons, and his predecessors had been hardly less vigorous witch-hunters. He was ably seconded by his suffragan, Bishop Förner, and two doctors of law, Braun and Kötzendörffer, who besides the ordinary torture implements, salt fish and quicklime baths, found a so-called prayer stool or bench covered with spikes, on which the victim was forced to kneel, and a cage with a sharp ridged floor on which he could not stand, sit, or lie without torment, of great value in extorting confessions. The record of their deeds has been published by Dr. F. Leitschuh,[311] librarian of Bamberg, and contains, among other cases, that of the Burgomaster, John Junius, which throws more light on the nature of the witch trials than do volumes of second-hand history.[312]

John Junius, a man universally respected, had been five times Burgomaster of Bamberg, and held that office in June 1628, when he was arrested on a charge of sorcery. He protested his innocence though six witnesses declared, under torture, that they had seen him at the witch dances. On June 30 he endured the torment of the thumb-screws and leg-crushers (Spanish boots) without confession. Then they stuck pins in him and found a ‘devil’s mark’, and finally drew him up with his arms twisted backwards, but he would admit nothing. Next day, however, when threatened with a repetition of the torture, he broke down, made the usual confession (including intercourse with a female demon who turned into a he-goat), and denounced twenty-seven persons whose names and addresses are given.[313] He was condemned to be beheaded and burnt, but before his death wrote the following letter to his daughter:

‘Many hundred thousand good-nights, my dearest daughter Veronica!
Guiltless was I taken to prison, guiltless have I been tortured,
guiltless I must die. For whoever comes here must either be a
sorcerer, or is tortured until (God pity him) he makes up a
confession of sorcery out of his head. I’ll tell you how I fared.
When I was questioned the first time, there were present Dr. Braun,
Dr. Kötzendörffer, and two strangers. Dr. Braun asked me, “Friend,
how came you hither?” I answered, “Through lies and misfortune.”
“Hear you,” said he, “you’re a sorcerer. Confess it willingly or
we’ll bring witnesses and the executioner to you.” I said, “I am
no sorcerer. I have a clear conscience on this matter, and care
not for a thousand witnesses, but am ready to hear them.” Then the
chancellor’s son, Dr. Haan, was brought out. I asked, “Herr Doctor,
what do you know of me? I never had anything to do with you, good
or bad.” He answered, “Sir, it is a judgement matter, excuse me
for witnessing against you. I saw you at the dances.” “Yes, but
how?” He did not know. Then I asked the commissioners to put him on
oath, and examine him properly. “The thing is not to be arranged
as you want it,” said Dr. Braun; “it is enough that he saw you.”
I said, “What sort of witness is that? If things are so managed,
you are as little safe as I or any other honourable person.” Next
came the chancellor and said the same as his son. He had seen me,
but had not looked carefully to see who I was. Then Elsa Hopffen.
She had seen me dancing on Haupt’s moor. Then came the executioner
and put on the thumb-screws, my hands being tied together, so that
the blood spurted from under the nails, and I cannot use my hands
these four weeks, as you may see by this writing. Then they tied
my hands behind and drew me up. I thought heaven and earth were
disappearing. Eight times they drew me up and let me fall so that I
suffered horrible agony. All which time I was stark naked, for they
had me stripped.

‘But our Lord God helped me, and I said to them, “God forgive
you for treating an innocent man like this; you want not only to
destroy body and soul, but also to get the goods and chattels.” [At
Bamberg, two-thirds of the property of convicted sorcerers went to
the bishop, and the rest to the inquisitors.] “You’re a rascal,”
said Dr. Braun. I replied, “I am no rascal, but as respectable as
any of you; but if things go on like this, no respectable man in
Bamberg will be safe, you as little as I or another.” The doctor
said he had no dealings with the devil. I said, “Nor have I. Your
false witnesses are the devils, your horrible tortures. You let no
one go, even though he has endured all your torments.”

‘It was Friday, 30th June, that, with God’s help, I endured these
tortures. I have ever since been unable to put my clothes on or use
my hands, besides the other pains I had to suffer innocently.

‘When the executioner took me back to prison, he said to me, “Sir,
for God’s sake confess something, whether true or not. Think a
little. You can’t stand the tortures they’ll inflict on you, and
even if you could you wouldn’t escape, though you were a count, but
they’ll go through them again and again and never leave you till
you say you are a sorcerer, as may be seen by all their judgements,
for all end alike.” Another came and said the bishop had determined
to make an example of me which would astonish people, and begged me
for God’s sake to make up something, for I should not escape even
though I were innocent, and so said Neudecker and others.

‘Then I asked to see a priest, but could not get one.... And then
this is my confession as follows, but all of it lies.

‘Here follows, dearest child, what I confessed that I might escape
the great torments and agonies, for I could not have endured them
any longer. This is my confession, nothing but lies, that I had to
make on threat of still greater tortures, and for which I must die.

‘“I went into my field, and sat down there in great melancholy,
when a peasant girl came to me and said, ‘Sir, what is the matter?
Why are you so sorrowful?’ I said I did not know, and then she sat
down close to me, and suddenly changed into a he-goat and said,
‘Now you know with whom you have to do.’ He took me by the throat
and said, ‘You must be mine, or I’ll kill you.’ Then I said, ‘God
forbid.’ Then he vanished and came back with two women and three
men; bade me deny God, and I did so, denied God and the heavenly
host. Then he baptized me and the two women were sponsors; gave me
a ducat, which turned into a potsherd.”

‘Now I thought I had got it over, but they brought in the
executioner, and asked where I went to the witch dances. I did not
know what to say, but remembered that the chancellor and his son
and Elsa Hopffen had mentioned Haupt’s moor and other places, so I
said the same. Then I was asked whom I had seen there. Replied I
did not recognize any. “You old rascal, I must get the executioner
to you. Was the chancellor there?” Said “Yes.” “Who else?” “I
recognized none.” Then he said, “Take street by street, beginning
from the market.” Then I had to name some persons. Then Long
Street. I knew nobody; had to name eight persons.... Did I know
any one in the castle? I must speak out boldly whoever it was.
So they took me through all the streets till I could and would
say no more. Then they gave me to the executioner to strip, shave
off my hair, and torture me again. “The rascal knows a man in the
market-place, goes about with him daily, and won’t name him.” They
meant Dietmeyer, so I had to name him.

‘Next they asked what evil I had done. I replied, “None.” The
devil bade me to, and beat me when I refused. “Put the rascal on
the rack.” So I said I was told to murder my children but killed
a horse instead. That wasn’t enough for them. I had also taken a
sacramental wafer and buried it. When I said this they left me in
peace.

‘There, dearest child, you have all my confession, for which I must
die, and it is nothing but lies and made-up things, so God help me.
For I had to say all this for fear of the tortures threatened me,
besides all those I had gone through. For they go on torturing till
one confesses something; be he as pious as he will, he must be a
sorcerer. No one escapes, though he were a count. And if God does
not interfere, all our friends and relations will be burnt, for
each has to confess as I had.

‘Dearest child, I know you are pious as I, but you have already had
some trouble, and if I may advise, you had better take what money
there is and go on a pilgrimage for six months, or somewhere where
you can stay for a time outside the diocese till one sees what
will happen. Many honourable men and women in Bamberg go to church
and about their business, do no evil, and have clear consciences as
I hitherto, as you know, yet they come to the witch prison, and if
they have a tongue to confess, confess they must, true or not.

‘Neudecker, the chancellor, his son, Candelgiesser, Hofmeister’s
daughter, and Elsa Hopffen all denounced me at once. I had no
chance. Many are in the same case, and many more will be, unless
God intervenes.

‘Dear child, keep this letter secret so that nobody sees it, or I
shall be horribly tortured and the gaoler will lose his head, so
strict is the rule against it. You may let Cousin Stamer read it
quickly in private. He will keep it secret. Dear child, give this
man a thaler.

‘I have taken some days to write this. Both my hands are lamed. I
am in a sad state altogether. I entreat you by the last judgement,
keep this letter secret, and pray for me after my death as for your
martyred father ... but take care no one hears of this letter. Tell
Anna Maria to pray for me too. You may take oath for me that I am
no sorcerer, but a martyr.

‘Good-night, for your father, John Junius, will see you never more.

24th July, 1628.’

On the margin is written:

‘Dear child, six denounced me: the chancellor, his son, Neudecker,
Zaner, Ursula Hoffmaister, and Elsa Hopffen, all falsely and on
compulsion as they all confessed. They begged my pardon for God’s
sake before they were executed. They said they knew nothing of me
but what was good and loving. They were obliged to name me, as I
should find out myself. I cannot have a priest, so take heed of
what I have written, and keep this letter secret.’

The letter is still preserved, with its crippled handwriting, in the library at Bamberg. This case is beyond comment. It is like the trial of Faithful at Vanity Fair, but with rack and thumb-screw in place of a jury. Yet it is but a moderate sample of those outrages on justice and humanity called witch trials. Men rarely held out long, but, did space permit, we might tell stories of many heroic women who endured ten, twenty, even fifty repetitions of torture, till they died on the rack or in the dungeon rather than falsely accuse themselves or their neighbours.[314]

For when once arrested, the victim had small hope of acquittal, and in the most favourable cases, when there was no external evidence, and no amount of torture could induce a ‘confession’, the accused was sent back friendless and crippled to her home, which she was forbidden to leave, having first sworn to have no more dealings with the devil, and to take no proceedings against her accusers. To acquit her would imply that an innocent person had been tortured, a thing naturally repugnant to the tender consciences of the inquisitors.

Nor was the mania confined to any special class. Protestants vied with Catholics, and town councils with bishops in cruelty and injustice. At Nördlingen they had a special set of torture instruments which the Protestant town council lent to neighbouring district authorities, with the pious observation that ‘by these means, and more especially by the thumb-screw, God has often been graciously pleased to reveal the truth, if not at first, at any rate at the last’.[315]

It is obvious from the above cases that the main cause of the continuance of the witch-burnings, and of the number of the victims, was the use of torture to obtain denunciations. The instances in which insane persons accused themselves or others seem to have been fewer than we might have expected.

Then, as now, there were melancholics who thought they had committed the unpardonable sin, and in those days the unpardonable sin might be represented by an imaginary compact with the devil. Then, as now, the ‘mania of persecution’ was a prominent symptom in some forms of insanity, and the idea of being bewitched by some old woman corresponded to the modern dread of detectives, electric batteries, or telephones.

Some of the supposed signs of witchcraft resemble those of mania and melancholia. Thus maniacs sometimes collect dirt for money, and witches often confessed that the devil’s money changed to dirt. Melancholics mutter to themselves, look on the ground, and avoid society, all of which were considered signs of witchcraft. But then red hair and left-handedness were no less infallible indications.

Insanity and crime were indeed present at the witch trials, but they were at least as obvious in the accusers and judges as in the victims, and the first man who was bold enough to say so was Dr. John Weyer. Though a few feeble protests may have been made by others, it was from the medical profession that the first determined opposition came. Mystics like Paracelsus and Cardan might encourage the superstition; pious and able members of the profession like Ambroise Paré and Sir Thomas Brown might give it their sanction, but it was the physician Cornelius Agrippa who first successfully defended a witch at the risk of his own life,[316] and it was his pupil John Weyer who first declared open war against the witch-hunters and invoked the vengeance of heaven upon their atrocities.

‘The feareful abounding at this time in this countrie of those
detestable slaves of the divell, the witches or enchanters hath
moved me (beloved reader) to dispatch in post the following
treatise of mine, not in any wise (as I protest) to serve for a
shewe of my learning and ingine, but only (moved of conscience to
preasse thereby) so far as I can, to resolve the doubting hearts
of manie both that such assaults of Satan are most certainly
practised, and that the instruments thereof merit most severely
to be punished, against the damnable opinions of two principally
in our age, whereof the one called Scot, an Englishman, is not
ashamed in public print to denie that there can be such a thing
as witchcraft and so maintains the old error of the Sadduces in
denying of spirits, the other called Wierus, a German physition
sets out a publike apologie for all these crafts-folks, whereby
procuring for their impunity, he plainly bewrayes himself to have
been of that profession.’

Thus did our ‘British Solomon’, James I, commence his _Daemonologia_ (1598), a work directed against the two men who alone up to that time had made a bold and open protest against the witch mania and its abominations. Reginald Scot in his _Discovery of Witchcraft_ (1584) took the view of a modern common-sense Englishman, that the whole thing is absurd, a mixture of roguery and false accusations. Weyer, on the other hand, his predecessor by twenty years, is a firm believer in the activity of the devil, whose object, however, is not to get possession of the souls of crazy old women, but by deluding them, to convert pious and learned lawyers and theologians into torturers and murderers.

Born about 1516 at Grave in Brabant, the son of a dealer in hops and faggots, Weyer was acquainted with the supernatural from his earliest years, for they had a domestic ‘house cobold’ or _Poltergeist_, who was heard tumbling the hop-sacks about whenever a customer was expected. At seventeen years of age the boy was sent to study medicine as apprentice to Cornelius Agrippa, an extraordinary man, long held to be a sorcerer, who had recently incurred yet stronger suspicion by his heroic and successful defence of a woman accused of witchcraft at Metz, and by his fondness for a black dog called ‘Monsieur’ which scarcely ever left him. The young Weyer used to take this animal out on a string, and soon became convinced, to use his own words, that it was ‘a perfectly natural male dog’.[317] He next went to Paris and thence to Orleans, a university then famous for its medical school, where he took the degree of M.D. in 1537. He commenced practice in Brabant, became public medical officer at Arnheim in 1545, and in 1550 physician to Duke William of Cleves. In 1563 he published his great work _De praestigiis daemonum et incantationibus ac veneficiis_,[318] the object of which is to show that so-called witchcraft is usually due to delusions of demons, who take advantage of the weaknesses and diseases of women to bring about impious and absurd superstitions, hatreds, cruelties, and a vast outpouring of innocent blood, things in which they naturally delight.

He proposes to treat the subject under four heads corresponding to the four faculties, theology, philosophy, medicine, and law. In the first section he attempts to show that the Hebrew word _Kasaph_ does not mean ‘witch’ but ‘poisoner’, or at any rate that Greek, Latin, and Rabbinical interpreters so vary, that no reliance can be placed upon them. Moreover the law of Moses was given to the Jews ‘for the hardness of their hearts’, and is by no means always to be used by Christians.[319] Magicians and sorcerers do indeed still exist, as in ancient Egypt, but these are always men, and usually rogues and swindlers, such as was Faust, of whom Weyer gives us one of the earliest and most authentic notices. Faust, he says, was once arrested by Baron Hermann of Batoburg, and given in charge of his chaplain, J. Dursten, who hoping to see some sign or wonder, treated him with much kindness, giving him the best of wine. But all he got out of him was a magic ointment to enable him to shave without a razor, containing arsenic, and so strong that it brought not only the hair but the skin from the reverend gentleman’s cheeks. ‘The which he has told me more than once with much indignation.’[320]

Weyer, however, firmly believes that the devil may assist sorcerers, such as Faust, in some of their feats, though he does this chiefly by deluding the eyes of the spectators. He may also delude women into the belief that they have been at witch dances and caused thunder-storms, &c., but his greatest deception is to make men believe in the reality of witchcraft and so torture and murder the innocent.[321] Women are more liable to his deceptions owing to their greater instability both of mind and body, and the delusion may be favoured by the use of drugs and ointments, especially those containing belladonna, lolium, henbane, opium, and even more by herbs recently introduced from east and west, such as Indian hemp, datura, ‘and the plant called by the Indians “tabacco”, by the Portuguese “peto”, and by the French “nicotiana”’.[322]

As for the supposed compact with the devil, it is an absurdity only surpassed by the belief in sexual intercourse with demons. This delusion, Weyer points out, may be explained medically by the phenomena of nightmare and the effects of certain drugs, and is not sanctioned by Scripture. For, though holy men such as Lactantius, Justin Martyr, and Tertullian have maintained that the ‘sons of God’ mentioned in Genesis vi. 2 were spirits, this interpretation is opposed by still more eminent theologians, such as Saints Jerome, Gregory Nazianzen, and Chrysostom, though he is obliged to admit that St. Augustine believed in _incubi_ and _succubae_,[323] and that distinguished living theologians hold that Luther’s father was literally the devil. This, however, says Weyer, is an unfair and prejudiced way of attacking the Lutheran heresy.[324]

People who fancy themselves bewitched are really possessed or assaulted by the devil, as were Job and the demoniacs of the New Testament. If these demoniacs had lived in our days, he remarks, they would probably have each cost the lives of numerous old women.[325] The strange objects vomited by such persons are either deceptions or put into the person’s mouth by the devil, as is shown by there being no admixture of food, and the absence of pain or injury in spite of the size of the objects.[326]

A girl near Cleves fell into convulsions with clenched hands and teeth which, according to her father, could only be opened by making the sign of the cross. She also complained of pains for which it was necessary to buy a bottle of holy water from a priest at Amersfort, on drinking which she proceeded to vomit pins, needles, scraps of iron, and pieces of cloth. She spoke in an altered boyish voice, intended for that of a demon, and declared the whole was caused by an ‘in my opinion honest matron’, who was imprisoned with her mother and two other women.

Weyer undertook the case, ‘whereupon she said in her boy’s voice she would have nothing to do with me, and that I was a cunning fellow. “Look what sharp eyes he has.”’ Weyer opened her hands and mouth, without making the sign of the cross, ‘not that I would in any way speak irreverently thereof’. He also showed that the objects produced, even soon after eating, were free from admixture of food, and had therefore never been farther than the mouth; and he thus obtained the release of the four women after a month’s imprisonment.[327]

As for the stories of men changed into animals, they are partly poetic and moral allegories, as the sailors of Ulysses, and partly a form of insanity long recognized by physicians, and termed lycanthropy.[328]

Many think they are possessed when they are only melancholic, and others pretend to be so to excite interest and obtain money. Those who fancy themselves attacked by devils should, instead of accusing their neighbours, take to themselves the armour of God as described by St. Paul. Unfortunately, spiritual pastors, in their ignorance and greed, teach that not only diabolical possession, but even ordinary diseases are to be cured by charms, incantations, palm branches, consecrated candles, and an execrable abuse of scriptural words. Cures are, indeed, sometimes so produced, but are really due to the imagination.

Persons supposed to be possessed should first be taken to an intelligent physician, who should investigate and treat any bodily disorder. Should spiritual disorders be also present he may then send the patient to a pious minister of the Church, but this will often be unnecessary. The devil is especially fond of attacking nuns, who should be separated from the rest, and, if possible, sent home to their relations.[329]

Here Weyer inserts several instances in his own experience.

Philip Wesselich, a monk of Knechtenstein near Cologne, an honest, simple-minded man, was miserably afflicted by a spirit about the year 1550. Sometimes he was carried up to the roof, at others thrust in among the beams of the belfry, often carried unexpectedly through the wall (_plerumque per murum transferebatur inopinato_) and knocked about generally. At length the spirit declared he was Matthew Duren, a former abbot, condemned to penance for having paid an artist insufficiently for a painting of the Blessed Virgin, so that the poor man went bankrupt and committed suicide, ‘which was true’. He could only be released if the monk went to Trèves and Aix and recited three masses in the respective cathedrals. The theological faculty of Cologne advised that he should do so, but the abbot Gerard, a man of firmness and intelligence, told the possessed man that he was a victim of diabolical deceptions, and that unless he put his trust in God, and pulled himself together, he should be publicly whipped. Whereupon the monk did so, and the devil left him and went elsewhere.[330]

A similar case was that of a young woman known to Weyer, who had convulsions in church whenever the ‘Gloria in excelsis’ was sung in German, and said she was possessed. It was observed, however, that she looked about for a soft place to fall on. She was therefore sent for by Weyer’s friend the Countess Anna of Virmont, who said she was about to sing the chant, and that if the demon attacked her she would soon drive him out. The young woman fell in the usual fit, on which the countess, _prudens et cordata matrona_, with the aid of her daughter pulled up her dress and gave her a good whipping. ‘She confessed to me afterwards that it completely cured her.’ Extreme diseases, adds Weyer, require, according to Hippocrates, extreme remedies, but care should be taken to distinguish suitable cases.[331]

The last and most important section of the book treats of the punishment of witches, who are to be carefully distinguished from poisoners and magicians, such as Faust, who are often wealthy men and spend much money in travel, books, &c., to learn diabolic arts; or deceivers, such as the mason who buried wolves’ dung in a cattle stall, and when the animals showed great excitement, said they were bewitched, and offered to cure them for a consideration. Such men, when proved to have done serious harm, are to be severely punished. The less guilty should be admonished, and among them are those who spread superstitious practices and persuade sick people that they are bewitched by some old woman.

This is all that the laws of Church or State require, and is a very different thing from seizing poor women possessed by diabolic delusions, or on the malicious accusations or foolish suspicions of the ignorant vulgar, and casting them into horrible dungeons, whence they are dragged to be torn and crushed by every imaginable instrument of torture, till, however guiltless they are, they confess to sorcery, since it is better to give their souls to God in innocence, even through flame, than longer endure the hideous torments of bloodthirsty tyrants. And should they die under torture or in prison, the accusers and judges cry out triumphantly that they have committed suicide, or that the devil has broken their necks.

Here follows a burst of indignant eloquence which would have cost Weyer dear had he fallen into the clutches of the witch-hunters, and which may be given in the terse vigour of the original:

‘Sed ubi tandem is apparuerit quem nihil latet, Scrutator cordium
et renum, ipsius abstrusissimae etiam veritatis Cognitor et Iudex,
vestri actus palam fient, O vos praefracti tyranni, O iudices
sanguinarii, hominem exuti et caecitate ab omni misericordia
procul remoti. Ad ipsius extremi iudicii tribunal iustissimum
vos provoco, qui inter vos et me decernet ubi sepulta et culcata
Veritas resurget vobisque in faciem resistet latrociniorum ultionem
exactura.’[332]

Their credulity almost equals their cruelty, as shown by the belief that a certain old woman caused the excessive cold of the preceding winter, and by the absurd swimming test. What effect can denial of faith, evil intentions, or a corrupt fantasy have upon a person’s specific gravity, on which floating depends? Moreover, women usually float, since their specific gravity is less than that of men, as Hippocrates pointed out.[333] But nothing is too absurd for a witch inquisitor. Some fishermen at Rotterdam drew up their nets full of stones but fishless. This was clearly witchcraft, so they seized an unfortunate woman who confessed in her terror that she had flown out of the window through a hole the size of a finger-end, dived under the sea in a mussel-shell,[334] and there terrified the fishes and put stones in the nets. The woman, says Weyer, was evidently mad or deluded by the devil, but they burnt her all the same. Treachery and cruelty go together. A priest, having failed to make a witch confess, promised that if she would admit some small act of sorcery, he would see that she was released after some slight penance. Thereupon she confessed and was burnt alive.[335]

In contrast to this, Weyer describes the method of dealing with witchcraft in the duchy of Cleves. In 1563 a farmer, finding his cows gave less milk than usual, consulted a witch-finder, who told him that one of his own daughters had bewitched them. The girl, deluded by the devil, admitted this and accused sixteen other women of being her accomplices. The magistrate wrote to the duke proposing to imprison them all, but the latter, probably at Weyer’s instigation, replied that the witch-finder was to be imprisoned, the girl to be instructed by a priest and warned against the delusions of demons, and the sixteen women in no way to be molested.[336]

An old woman of eighty was arrested at Mons on charge of witchcraft, the chief evidence being that her mother had long ago been tortured to death on a similar charge. To make her confess they poured boiling oil over her legs, which produced blisters and ulcers, and her son hearing of it sent her a roll of lint to put round them. This was supposed to make magic bandages by the aid of which the woman might escape, and the son was promptly arrested. The mother was to be burnt in a few days, and her son would probably have followed, when Weyer, by permission of the Duke of Cleves, visited Count William of Mons and explained his views on witchcraft. He also examined the old woman, who was so broken down that she fainted several times, and finally obtained the release of both.[337]