Part 40

In the enlightened sixteenth century, any one who professed his disbelief that witches could ride through the air, change themselves into cats, or make caterpillars and thunder-storms, would have had an excellent chance of being burnt as a heretic or concealed sorcerer. St. Boniface (680-755) classed belief in witches and were-wolves among the works of the devil, and St. Agobard of Lyons (779-840) declared the idea that witches caused hail and thunder-storms to be impious and absurd. The laws of Charlemagne made it murder to put any one to death on charge of witchcraft, and in the eleventh century King Coloman of Hungary asserted briefly, ‘Let no one speak of witches, seeing there are none’. Few, indeed, were quite so sceptical as this; still witchcraft was in the Middle Ages looked upon by the educated in a half-contemptuous fashion, and even those who openly professed sorcery frequently escaped with no worse punishment than penance, banishment, or an ecclesiastical scourging.

This may be well illustrated by a story told in the life of the learned Dominican, St. Vincent of Beauvais. An old woman once (1190-1264) came to a priest in his church and demanded money from him, saying she had done him a great service, for that, when she and her companions, who were witches, had entered his bedroom the previous night, she had prevented them from injuring him. ‘But how’, asked the priest, ‘could you enter my chamber, seeing that the door was locked?’ ‘Oh,’ said the witch, ‘that matters naught to us, for we go through keyholes as easily as through open doors.’ ‘If what you say is true,’ replied the holy man, ‘you shall not lack a reward, but I must first have proof of it.’ With these words, he locked the church door, and began vigorously to beat the old woman with the handle of the crucifix he carried, asking her, when she complained, why she did not escape through the keyhole.

The great Pope Nicholas I (died 867) strongly condemned the use of torture to induce confessions, and Gregory VII (died 1085) forbade inquisition to be made for witches and sorcerers on occasions of plague or bad weather. Later, the inquisitorial process, combined with torture to enforce denunciations, became the chief agent in spreading and maintaining the witch mania.

The Eastern Church remained in this mediaeval stage, and never developed a witch mania. In the West the change seems to have been brought about mainly by two causes, the development of heresies and the increasing prominence of the devil.

There is no doubt that the Albigensian and other heresies of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries contained Manichean elements. It was taught that there were two divinities--one perfectly good, the creator of the invisible spiritual world, the other the creator of the material world, the Demiurgus, a being capable of evil passions, wrath, jealousy, &c., who was identified with the Jehovah of the Old Testament. It required very little to confound this Demiurgus with Satan, the Prince of this world; after which it was easy to look upon Satan as a being not entirely evil, as Lucifer, son of the morning, the disinherited son or brother of God, a natural object of worship for the oppressed and discontented.

The serfs, equally tyrannized over by bishop and noble, the relics of the persecuted sects Waldenses and Cathari, sought refuge, like Saul of old, in forbidden arts, and thus sects of Luciferans, or devil-worshippers, arose (especially in Germany and France) whose numbers were exaggerated by the fear and horror of the orthodox.

At the same time the devil acquired more importance in other ways. That fearful calamity, the Black Death, seemed to display his power over both the just and the unjust; while the Great Schism in which each pope excommunicated the other, handing him and his adherents over to Satan, put every one not absolutely certain of being on the right side in reasonable fear of the powers of darkness.

The belief in the great activity and power of the devil and his servants the sorcerers was further supported by the vast authority of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), whose ingenuity enabled him to explain away those ancient canons which seemed opposed to the more extreme views. Thus the synod of Bracara (A.D. 563) had declared the doctrine that the devil can produce drought or thunder-storms to be heresy; to which the Doctor Angelicus replied that though it is doubtless heresy to believe the devil can make natural thunder-storms, it is by no means contrary to the Catholic faith to hold that he may, by the permission of God, make artificial ones.

For these and other reasons, the devil assumed greater prominence during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries than ever before. Men believed that he might appear to them from behind every hedge or ruin, that his action was to be seen in almost all pains and diseases, but that he was to be dreaded most of all when he entered into a league with some man or woman. Thus everything was ready for the outbreak of witch mania when, in 1484, Pope Innocent VIII by his bull Summis desiderantes gave the sanction of the Church to the popular beliefs concerning witches, such as sexual intercourse with devils, destruction of crops, and infliction of sterility and disease on man and beast.

The charge of sorcery had usually been employed in earlier times either to check learned men who seemed to be going too far, or tending to heresy in their researches, as in the case of the physicians Arnold of Villanova (1240-1312) and Peter of Abano (1250-1320), or to crush individuals and societies who were politically dangerous, as with Joan of Arc, the Duchess of Gloucester, and the Templars--the Church being called in to aid the civil power. Now it was the Church which called upon the civil power to assist in a crusade against witches and sorcerers as being the worst and most dangerous of heretics.

In the Middle Ages it was held that a man who called up the devil, knowing it to be wrong, was not a heretic but merely a sinner. But if he thought it was not wrong, or that the devil would tell him the truth, or that the devil could do anything without God’s permission, he was also a heretic, since these beliefs are contrary to Church doctrine. In the fifteenth century it was taught that all sorcerers are heretics, maleficus being, according to the learned authors of the Malleus Maleficarum, a contraction of male de fide sentiens or heretic.

Nor was the identification of heresy and witchcraft illogical, whatever we may think of the etymology. The Church is the kingdom of God, heretics form the kingdom of the devil, and just as the Church possesses saints who see visions, work miracles, and commune with Christ face to face, so there are specially eminent heretics, saints of the devil’s church, who work miracles and have obscene intercourse with their master. All true Christians are potential saints, all heretics potential sorcerers, for all have committed treason against the divine Majesty, though only some may have entered into a definite compact with the enemy. The former, if they repent, may hope for perpetual imprisonment; the latter are to be put to death whether they repent or not.

This view was also of advantage to the Church, for it increased the horror of heresy and facilitated its suppression. The laity had never entirely reconciled themselves to the sight of their apparently harmless neighbours being tortured and burnt for differences in abstract belief, but almost every one was ready to torture and burn a sorcerer, and local outbreaks of witch-hunting were frequently started by mob violence. In 1555 it was declared by the Peace of Augsburg that no one should suffer in life and property for his religion; but to take a Lutheran, call him a sorcerer, confiscate his goods, and force him by torture to confess that he was led into his errors by the devil himself, seems to have been too great a temptation for the prince-bishops who headed the ‘counter-reformation’ in South Germany to resist. That this was partly the cause of the great witch-burnings in the bishoprics of Würzburg, Bamberg, Fulda, and Trèves is evidenced by the large proportion of male victims, and by the frequent and significant appearance of the phrase ‘is also Lutheran’ in the official reports.

As soon as the Reformation was established, Protestants vied with Catholics as witch-hunters. Eager to show that they were in no way inferior to their opponents in zeal for the Lord and enmity against Satan and his servants, they had the advantage of being able to follow the scriptural injunction, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’, without previously explaining away ancient canons and decrees of Church synods which seemed to throw doubt on the very existence of the more typical forms of witchcraft. Nor did they hesitate to attack their rivals with similar weapons. If Protestants were burnt as sorcerers at Würzburg, we find the first Danish Lutheran bishop, Peter Palladius, recommending the zealous members of his flock to seek out the so-called wise women of their neighbourhoods on pretence of having some disease. If then the latter use paternosters, holy water, or invocations of saints, they are probably not only Catholics but witches, and should be treated accordingly.

Almost all the victims of the witch mania were executed on their own confession, extorted in the vast majority of instances by torture or the fear of torture. In England, where torture was theoretically illegal, confessions were comparatively rare, and nearly all died protesting their innocence. The few exceptions prove the rule; thus Elinor Shaw and Mary Philips, almost the last witches legally executed in England, 1705, confessed because they were threatened with death if they refused, and promised release if they pleaded guilty, while others were induced to admit their guilt by being kept awake several nights, and forced to run up and down their cells till utterly exhausted, methods almost as effectual in producing ‘a readiness to confess’ as the rack or the thumb-screw.

Nearly all the confessions were to a similar effect. From Lisbon to Liegnitz, from Calabria to Caithness, the central point of the story was the ‘sabbat’, an assembly of witches and sorcerers in some barren spot where they adored a visible devil, indulged in feasts, dances, and sexual orgies, reported what evil they had done and plotted more.

A few examples will therefore suffice, and they may be best taken from the Daemanolatria of Nicholas Remy, Inquisitor of Lorraine, who burned nearly 900 witches and sorcerers in fifteen years, 1575-90.

He proves the reality of the witch dances as follows: A boy named John of Haimbach confessed that his mother took him to a sabbat to play the flute. He was told to climb up into a tree that he might be heard the better, and was so amazed by what he saw that he exclaimed: ‘Good God! where did this crowd of fools and lunatics come from?’ Thereupon he fell from the tree and found himself alone with a dislocated shoulder. Ottilia Velvers, who was arrested soon after, confirmed the whole story, as did also Eysarty Augnel, who was burnt the following year. So too, Nicholas Langbernard, while going home in the early morning of July 21, 1590, saw in full daylight a number of men and women dancing back to back, some of them with cloven hoofs. He cried out ‘Jesus’ and crossed himself, upon which all vanished except a woman called Pelter, whose broomstick dropped, and who was then carried off by a whirlwind. The grass was afterwards found to be beaten down in a circle with marks of hoof-prints. Pelter and two other women were arrested and confessed they were present, as also did John Michael, who said he was playing the flute in a tree, and fell down when Nicholas crossed himself, but was carried off in a whirlwind, his broomstick not being at hand.

‘What further evidence’, asks the inquisitor, ‘can any one require?’ The only possible objection, viz. that they were phantoms or spirits of people whose bodies were asleep in their beds, is worthless, ‘it being the pious and Christian belief that soul and body when once parted do not reunite till the day of judgement’.

The food at these sabbats usually included the flesh of unbaptized children, and was always abominable. A certain Morel said he was obliged to spit it out, at which the demon was much enraged. ‘Dancing opens a large window to wickedness,’ and is therefore specially encouraged by the devil, but the dances cause great exhaustion, just as his feasts cause loathing, and his money changes to dung or potsherds. ‘Barberina Rahel, and nearly all others, declared they had to lie in bed two days after a witch dance, but even the oldest cannot excuse themselves, and the devil beats them if they are lazy.’ The music is horrible; every one sings or plays what he likes, a favourite method being to drum on horse skulls or trees. Sometimes the devil gives a concert of his own, at which all are required to applaud and show pleasure; those who do not are beaten so that they are sore for two days, as Joanna Gransandeau confessed.

All are compelled to attend and give an account of their evil deeds under heavy penalties. C. G. said ‘he was beaten till he nearly died for failing to attend a sabbat, and for curing a girl whom he had been told to poison. The devil also carried him up into the air over the river Moselle, and threatened to drop him unless he swore to poison a certain person.’ The witch Belhoria was attacked by dropsy because she refused to poison her husband. If they failed in their attempts on others, they were compelled to poison their own children, or destroy their own property.

Antonius Welch was asked to lend his garden for a witch dance. He refused, and found it full of snails and caterpillars. Men of little faith have objected that only God can create, for ‘without Him nothing is made that was made’; but why should not demons collect vast numbers of insects in a moment? Look at the well-known rain of frogs, blood, &c. This is doubtless done by devils out of mere sport: how much more would they do for love of harm? The making of thunder-storms is harder to believe, but has been admitted by more than 200 condemned witches and sorcerers. Almost all confessed that they could creep into locked rooms and houses in the form of small animals, and resuming their natural shape commit all sorts of crimes, showing, says Remy, what a peril they are to mankind.

A worthy comrade of Remy was Peter Binsfeld, suffragan Bishop of Trèves and foremost opponent of John Weyer. He is said to have burnt no fewer than 6,500 persons and to have so desolated his diocese that in many villages round Trèves there was scarcely a woman left. His Tractatus de confessionibus maleficorum begins with the following case, which with those mentioned above affords a complete view of the usual witch confessions. John Kuno Meisenbein, a youth about eighteen years old, was studying ‘poetry and the humaner letters’ at the High School in Trèves, when he confessed to the authorities that his mother, brother, sister, and self were all in league with the devil. He said that in his ninth year his mother had initiated him as a sorcerer, and had carried him up the chimney on a goat to a heath near Trèves, where he took part in the usual sabbat and had intercourse with a female demon named Capribarba. The mother, Anna Meisenbein, a woman of good position, had already escaped to Cologne, but a son and daughter were arrested, strangled, and burned. ‘They died with much sorrow and penitence.’ The eldest son, John Kuno, thereupon urged the judges to use all means to capture his mother, ‘that by punishment and momentary death in this world she might escape eternal damnation’.

Moved by this most creditable and merciful petition (honestissima et plenissima misericordiae petitione excitatus), the prior wrote to his friends at Cologne, and the unhappy woman was arrested and taken back to Trèves. At first she protested her innocence, ‘but when more severe tortures were employed’ she made the usual admissions. Having lost a baby, she had, for a moment, doubted the goodness of God. Whereupon a man in black raiment appeared at the side of the bed, and promised if she would renounce God and serve him he would give her peace of mind. She did so, and he became her lover, and gave her money, which however vanished. He called himself Fedderhans, and had asses’ feet. Then follows the usual story of the sabbat. ‘This woman’, concludes the bishop, ‘was burnt alive October 20, 1590, and had a good end.’ They offered to behead John Kuno as a reward for his filial piety and repentance, but he said he was unworthy of such a favour and was therefore strangled and burnt. ‘He had a most edifying end,’ says the bishop, who proceeds to comment upon sexual intercourse between witches, sorcerers, and demons, ‘which is so certain that it is an impudence to deny it, as St. Augustine saith, being supported by the confessions of learned and unlearned, and by all the doctors of the Church, though a few medical men, advocates of the devil’s kingdom [an obvious reference to Weyer, whom he abuses in the preface], have dared to deny it’.

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 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. 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.