Although it was not at first intended to deal in this book with witchcraft other than as it appeared in England, it has been found to be irresistibly impossible to refrain from giving at least a kind of skeleton outline of its career on the continent of Europe; for it was, without doubt, the outbreaks of witch-mania abroad, with their terrible aftermath of persecution and horror, that gave contemporary outbreaks in England such a fearful impetus. The story of witchcraft in England will be continued a chapter or two farther on. It will be understood all the better for the interlude.
Up to the thirteenth century witchcraft on the Continent was treated as witchcraft pure and simple. Then, at the time of the Inquisition, it became confused with charges of heresy.
The Inquisition, as the reader will remember, was established in 1233 by the setting up in every parish of a priest and several laymen empowered to search for those that practised false doctrines and bring them before the bishops for trial and punishment. The bishops, however, soon tiring of the task, transferred the responsibility to the Dominicans.
Its tribunal was called the Holy Office or the Holy Inquisition. Its judges in their zeal encouraged informers, and concealed their names from those accused. Torture of a terrible description was used to extract evidence and confession. The attitude of the Church towards “false doctrine” was that divinations and sorcery and practices harmful to property were left to the secular authorities; the church courts and the Inquisition concerned themselves only with the witches’ doctrines that smacked of heresy, compact with the devil, abjuration of the faith of their baptism, and breach of clerical celibacy. The most notorious heretics were the Alpine peasants called the Waldenses or Vaudois, and from them all sorts
Of heresy and witchcraft were loosely but popularly called “Vauderie,” just as we might now call any sort of discontent Bolshevism.
The Dominican black friars were organised primarily to combat heresy, but as heresy and witchcraft were closely associated in the popular mind, we find sporadic outbreaks of persecution during the next two centuries, and especially in those areas which were most infected with heretical teaching.
The decree of Pope Innocent VIII carefully enumerated the heretical doctrines and unchristian practices of witchcraft, and commanded the Inquisitors of the Waldenses in Piedmont to summon before them all those “suspected of intrigue with the Devil,” and invested them with power to punish as they thought fitting to the occasion; with the result, that a persecution of heretics or witches became rife all over the Continent.
Upon charges of “divination, sorcery, and practices harmful to property” the witches were brought before the secular courts; and upon the other, “compact with the Devil,” they were brought before the Inquisitors. So they had very little chance of escaping.
On the Continent the charge of heresy meant torture, confession of false doctrine, and then death. That it was understood very differently in England is shown by the following. In 1372, a man alleged to have practised it, and with the head of a corpse and a book of magic in his possession as proof, was charged before the King’s Bench at Southwark. The court, although acknowledging it to be a deed deserving of death if committed abroad, made it clear that as sorcery it was no indictment so far as the English law was concerned. The man was acquitted, but his book of magic and the skull were burned by the public executioner atTothill Fields.
Thus it was in the thirteenth century that heresies and charges of witchcraft became prevalent on the Continent, and it was in the same century that the friar Stephen of Bourbon wrote the first descriptions of the witches’ Sabbath. A century later it was followed by a Latin book. The Hammer of the Witches, written by two Inquisitors, the friars Sprenger and Institor, and published with the approval of the University of Cologne. Nothing original was claimed for this work, but it proved the actual existence of witchcraft with the usual clerical evidence, and gave the time-honoured rules for discovering it; finally, it outlined the method of procedure in the civil and ecclesiastical courts. Its importance is due to the fact that it was the first book of its kind to be printed, and in consequence it came to be adopted far and wide as a handbook for witch-hunters.
For considerably over two hundred years after the setting up of the Inquisition there was a continuance of tortures, burnings and other horrors.
With such persistency was the decree of the Pope prosecuted that in Geneva alone, in three months, in the year 1515, so it is estimated by Delrio, nearly five hundred “witches” were condemned to death, while in the Diocese of Como a thousand paid the penalty in less than a year.
Some sixty years afterwards, from 1575, there were nine hundred condemned in fifteen years in Lorraine. It is also reckoned that in France during the reign of Henry III the executions must be numbered at about thirty thousand.
In Germany the tragedy was just as bad, especially during the religious wars following on the Reformation. In 1627, in Wurtzburg alone no fewer than one hundred and fifty-seven women, men, and young persons were burned to death in twenty-nine conflagrations. Hauber relates that among the victims there figured fourteen vicars of the Church, a blind girl, and numberless children of ages between nine and twelve. In another small district, that of Lindheim, where the population was only about six hundred, some thirty of them a year, for the four years 1660-64, were put to death. Think of it! Twenty per cent of the population!
It is reckoned that in Germany between the years 1610 and 1660 there were over one hundred thousand convictions. So hardened had the people become in the course of a generation or two to the exhibitions of torture that, except when their own kith and kin were concerned, they raised little or no protest.
In 1728, at Szegedin, in Hungary, no fewer than thirteen persons were burned alive simultaneously, in three piles, amid horrors of appalling cruelty.
Such callous depravity was there exhibited on these occasions, that after a grand round-up and burning of witches in Franconia and Bamberg, the ballad-singers amused the crowd by singing doggerel verses detailing how the poor victims had sold themselves to the Devil. The ballad was entitled Druten Zeitung (The Witches’ Chronicle), and sung to the tune of “Dorothea.” The printed account was fully illustrated with woodcuts, showing with hideous glee some pugilistic-looking devils dragging into what was supposed to depict the confines of Hell as many creatures as they could clutch.
On the Continent, as in England, the most astonishing thing about the charge of sorcery and witchcraft was the simplicity of the whole business;
For on occasions when a charge broke down, and with the release of the person accused there voluntarily came forward others who were quite willing, aye, even anxious, to play their part in the tragedy, and to die as martyrs for the cause. (Some explanations regarding the strange fantasy which led to these confessions will be found in a later chapter.) It was also surprisingly common at the trials for those accused to avow their guilt, and to confess how they had abjured Jesus Christ, had been initiated into the mysteries of the black art, had been baptised in the Devil’s name, and had entered into an infernal compact with him for doing all manner of evil; and how they had, with the Devil’s help, bewitched, poisoned, blighted, and tortured by means of arrows and images almost everything and everybody they were capable of thinking of.
Another astounding thing was the indifference with which they would at times face their accusers and voluntarily perjure themselves before their judges. For instance, in 1669, at Mora, in Sweden, there was a persecution of witches, and at the trials there were as many as seventy-two women of varying ages that confessed to having been in the habit of meeting with others at a place called Blocula, and that their gatherings were frequently visited by the Devil if they called for him loud enough: “Beelzebub, come forth!”
They also added the information that when he did appear he “wore a red beard and breeches to match, a grey coat and stockings, and a peaked cap with cocks’ feathers in it”; that he fed them with witch-butter which made them sickly, and that sons and daughters were born to him by the witches. They said, in addition, that they had all been baptised with a new name, which had been written in blood in a big black book; that they had been given power to ride through the air on broomsticks and horses called “nightmares,” and in this manner had carried off children for the Devil’s broth-pot — and much more trumpery of a like nature.
The one little bit of humour about the foregoing confession, not yet mentioned, was the habit which Beelzebub had of closing these little “at homes” by making the old hags fly round and round him very many times on their brooms until they became dizzy. This seemed to have a somnolent effect upon him, for he would fall asleep; but when he woke he would take the sticks away from them and, in exchange, thrash them soundly.
Apparently there were three places in particular that the Continental witches were in the habit of visiting when on flight. One was the Brocken in Germany, an oak tree near Benevento in Italy, and some place unknown but according to all accounts beyond the Jordan. Their Sabbaths, like
Those of other witches, were usually held on a Thursday, and the Devil would be there in the form of a goat or dog. The Sabbath ceremony was opened in mock fashion by the chief, who would read out the witches’ commandments. Then he would preach to them, telling them that they were all his, and that they had no soul whatsoever (for it had been surrendered when they had given up their names).
The whole service undoubtedly was one of negatived Christianity. These night-flying escapades, it is of interest to note, were regarded by the clericals simply as fiction, but they renounced as heretics those that confessed that they believed in the reality of the illusion. In time, the final test as to whether those accused were witches or not rested upon evidence concerning the midnight flights; and strange as it may seem, judge and victim found it quite easy by mutual assistance to build up a coherent story of the abandonment to Satan. The stories became so universal and so complete in detail that they could not be rejected without discrediting the whole structure of witchcraft.
When the judges had it explained to them in one instance that the Devil, clever though he be, could not make a body fly through a closed door, they replied,“No! but he could create the illusion, and that was just as bad — it was heresy.”
Not that this view of the belief in night-flying was new to the, twelfth century. In the ninth it had been protested against, as is shown by the following pronouncement of the Church:
“Some wicked women, reverting to Satan, and seduced by the illusions and phantasms of demons, believe and profess that they ride at night with Diana on certain beasts, obeying her commands as their mistress. Priests, therefore, should preach that they know this to be false, and that such phantasms are sent by evil spirits, and he who believes such things has lost his faith, and he who has lost his faith is not of God, but of the Devil.”Thus it was then treated as a diabolical illusion.
Another item of interest showing the anti-Christian character of these gatherings and flight was that if the name of Christ was mentioned during the flight the one who uttered it would fall to the earth. All these illusions, as mad as they undoubtedly were, were made the basis of charges under which thousands of women were committed to the flames.
Probably all the accounts on record are emanations from a type of mind given more to fanciful imaginings than to the recording of actualities. There was the notorious case of the Angel de la Barthe, for instance, who at Toulouse in the year 1275 confessed to having had habitual intercourse
With Satan, and who at the age of fifty-four had borne a monster son possessing a wolf’s head and a devil’s tail, and which for its first two years was sustained on the flesh of babes.
One of the most remarkable confessions — not of night-flying particularly, but of mischievous witchcraft — was that of Marie Renata, a sub-prioress at one time at the Untezell Convent, near Wurtzburg.
Being initiated secretly into the mysteries of witchcraft at the age of seventeen, she, two years afterwards, against her wish, but to please her guardians, entered a convent. There, with pretended piety and an attention to discipline, she won favour and in course of time became subprioress, and would even have been promoted still further had she not at an unguarded moment shown her real self by expressing in no uncertain manner a decided disgust with the convent and everybody connected with it. She had now been at the convent for forty years, and during the whole time had kept her witchcraft propensities a secret, although she had managed to work spasmodic but studied spells of mischief, such as that of mixing herbs with the food of the nuns and causing them to have strange seizures in consequence, and to suffer deliriums from which some did not recover.
From long security she at last became careless; and as the desire for stronger excitement made itself felt, so she lessened her vigilance and increased the risk when displaying her questionable talents. Her favourite tricks were to pass at night into the dormitories, making weird uncanny noises; or to utter loud shrieks from behind the convent wall; or, when the nuns were asleep, to creep quietly into their rooms and pinch them, or give them a stinger on their pars posterior with a strap carried especially for the purpose.
Such happenings, as one may readily imagine, caused much consternation and not a little indignation on the part of those who had been victimised, and, such is life, in the morning the most indignant of them all was the hypocritical sub-prioress!
Her undoing, however, was the possession of one of those beautifying appendages popularly referred to as “a lovely black eye,” given to her one night when she was up to her tricks in the dormitory, and which she could not get rid of by breakfast-time. A confession made a little later by one of the nuns who lay dying — that Marie was “uncanny,” and that she had been tormented by her in the night — also helped in the discovery. This dying confession caused some alarm, and especially so when it was added to by another nun becoming hysterical, or “possessed” as it
Was styled, and telling of unpardonable things that had been done by her superior.
With adroitness worthy of a better cause, the sub-prioress put the accusations down as due to an imaginative mind, calumny, or spitefulness, and so cleverly too that for a time she played off to some extent any further suspicions.
Then came a day when as many as five of the nuns were caused to have strange seizures simultaneously. When they recovered and made charges against Marie, the superior thought it serious enough to warrant deep investigation, and the result was the placing of the prioress in a cell. Here, realising that she had been found out, she made confession and avowed herself a witch.
For fear of scandal the superiors endeavoured to keep the affair a secret, and with a hope of reforming her she was sent away to a remote convent. But under her old assumed piety she commenced her bewitchings afresh, and with such success that many nuns had seizures even more severe than the last: so she was handed over to the civil authorities to be taken care of.
At the trial she repeated her belief in her bewitchment, and added that she had often been carried off by night to a witches’ Sabbath, where she had been presented to Beelzebub in the usual fashion after abjuring God and the Virgin. Her real name had been changed to “Devil’s Spawn,” or something of that sort, and in the usual manner had been written by the Evil One in his black book; while she herself had been branded on the body as the Devil’s property. She believed all this, and, like other witches, more besides. Her trial found her “guilty,” and she was condemned to be burnt; but as she was seventy years of age, her judges gave her what they considered to be leniency in ordering that her head be struck off by the executioner before she was burnt.
Apart from the fantasies indulged in by many of those who believed themselves to be witches, the most terrible thing about witchcraft was, that when once a man, woman, or child had been accused of it there was very little chance of anything happening other than an execution, no matter how innocent they may have been.
At Lindheim on one occasion, six women were charged with having opened a grave and robbed it of the body of an unbaptised infant for the purpose of making a witch-broth. It so happened that these women were quite innocent of the charge, and, to prove it, the husband of one applied for an official examination of the grave. This was granted, and the condition of the coffin definitely disproved the charge. But the severe
Cruelty of the trial, the hetero-suggestion of the women’s examiners, and the perjuring of their witnesses, was more than they could endure, so in despair they all pleaded “guilty” as a quick termination to their sufferings. The whole six of them were burned.
Another account illustrating the manner in which people were implicated, and eventually hastened toward what came to be regarded as the inevitable end, is given in the old chronicles of Monstrelet. It states that at Arras, in the middle of the fifteenth century, there existed a coven of “certain persons, both men and women, who, under cover of night, by power of the Devil, repaired to some solitary spot amid the woods, where he appeared to them in human form, save that his visage was never perfectly visible.” He was then said to read to the assembly a book of his ordinances, informing them how he would be obeyed and the punishment he would inflict for disobedience, distribute a little money, provide a plentiful meal, and conclude by a revel of general profligacy; after which each one of the party would be conveyed home in a mysterious manner.
On being accused of taking part in such acts of madness, several creditable persons of the town of Arras were seized and imprisoned along with some foolish women of little consequence. These were so horribly tortured that some of them — perhaps thinking of the old Bulgarian proverb: “Better an end in horror than horror without end” admitted as truth all that they had been accused of; and then, with contagious malice, they said they had seen and recognised in their nocturnal assemblies many persons of rank belonging to their own and other cities.
Several of those who had been informed against were thereupon arrested, thrown into prison and tortured; after which those who were poor were executed and inhumanly burned, while the richer and more powerful of the accused ransomed themselves by large sums of money. Others there were, of a truth, that suffered with marvellous patience the torments inflicted on them, and would confess nothing.
The foregoing are just a few examples of witch-cases at random; comparatively, they are representative of minor conflicts between the judiciary or ecclesiastical courts and those that were either daft enough to believe anything, or unfortunate enough to be victims of malevolence and superstition. There were other witch-trials and witch-huntings that assumed the proportions of holocausts — burning out whole communities.
In three months (in 1515) in the small Bishopric of Bamberg 600 people were burned; in Wurtzburg, 900; and in Geneva, 500; while in
Toulouse, 400 were burned in a year; and in Douay, 50. In the opening of 1586, the Archbishop of Treves burned 118 women and 2 men who had all confessed under torture to being witches, and therefore responsible by their spells and incantations for the severe winter of 1585 and the late spring of 1586. In 1597, Nicholaus Remingius, a judge of Lorraine, confessed to having condemned more than 900 in fifteen years. At Brescia, in Italy, in the year 1510, men and women were burned to the number of 140, and at Como during the same period 300 suffered the extreme penalty. The Inquisition (1254-1404) accounted for the great number of 30,000. And, as all know, Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans, was burned as a witch at Rouen in 1431 — by the English!
As showing how even Continental stories of witchcraft, spells, and so on are not without a touch of humour, we quote the following:
In the eleventh century, Poppo, Archbishop of Treves, sent a piece of his cloak to a nun with the request that she would make him a pair of slippers in which he might stand when saying mass. Now the nun had a dying love for Poppo, so when she made the slippers she bewitched them in the bargain. When the slippers were worn the spell began to work; so the archbishop, to resist temptation and to deceive the devils working for his destruction, gave the slippers to one of his chief ecclesiastics, who before very long began to experience the same old feeling. Then he gave them away, and quietly they went from one to another of the whole of the clergy of Treves Cathedral. The secret, however, becoming generally known, and the evidence being overwhelming, the fair offender was condemned to expulsion. The authorities, feeling that the discipline of the nunnery had become dangerously lax, gave the other nuns option of adopting a more strict rule, or of dispersion. They chose the latter, and were replaced by a body of monks.
Another: A demon story is related of St Gregory. A nun once came to him with the information that while walking in the garden of the convent she had eaten a lettuce leaf without first marking the sign of the cross, and that immediately afterwards she felt herself possessed of a demon.
World History
