§ 58. Heretical and Unchurchly Movements (part 2 of 2)

Experts gave it as their opinion that "the new sect of witches" had its beginning about the year 1300.⁹³⁷ But the writers of the 15th and 16th centuries were careful to prove that their two characteristic performances, the flight through the air and demonic intercourse, were not illusions of the imagination, but palpable realities.⁹³⁸ To the testimonies of the witches themselves were added the ocular observations of church officials.⁹³⁹ Other devilish performances dwelt upon, were the murder of children before baptism, the eating of their flesh after it had been consecrated to the devil and the trampling upon the host.⁹⁴⁰ One woman, in 1457, confessed she had been guilty of the last practice 30 years.

The more popular places of the weekly sabbats were the Brocken, Benevento, Como and the regions beyond the Jordan. Here the witches and demons congregated by the thousands and committed their excesses. The witches went from congregation to congregation as they pleased⁹⁴¹ and, according to Prierias, children as young as eight and ten joined in the orgies.

Sometimes it went hard with the innocent, though prurient, onlookers of these scenes, as was the case with the inquisitor of Como, Bartholomew of Homate, and some of his companions. Determined to see for themselves, they looked on at a sabbat in Mendrisio from a place of concealment. As if unaware of their presence, the presiding devil dismissed the assembly, but immediately calling the revellers back, had them drag the intruders forth and the demons belabored them so lustily that they survived only 15 days.⁹⁴² The forms the devil usually assumed were those of a large tom-cat or a goat. If the meeting was in a building, he was wont to descend by a ladder, tail foremost. The witches kissed his posterior parts and, after indulging in a feast, the lights were put out and wild revels followed. As early as 1460, pictures were printed representing women riding through the air, straddling stocks and broomsticks, on goats or carried by demons. In Normandy, the obsessed were called broom-riders—scobaces.⁹⁴³ Taught by demons, they made a salve of the ashes of a toad fed on the wafer, the blood of murdered children and other ingredients, which they applied to their riding sticks to facilitate their flights. According to the physician, John Hartlieb, who calls this salve the "unguent of Pharelis"—Herodias—it was made from seven different herbs, each gathered on a different day of the week and mixed with the fat of birds and animals.⁹⁴⁴

The popularity of the witch-delusion as a subject of literary treatment is shown by the extracts Hansen gives from 70 writings, without exhausting the list.⁹⁴⁵ Most of the writers were Dominicans. The Witches Hammer was printed in many editions, issued 13 times before 1520 and, from 1574-1669, 16 times. The most famous of these writers in the earlier half of the 15th century was John Nider, d. 1438, in his Formicarius or Ant-Industry. He was a member of the Dominican order, professor of theology in Vienna and attended the Council of Basel. Writers like Jacquier were not satisfied with sending forth a single treatise.⁹⁴⁶ Writers like Sylvester Prierias, d. 1523, known in the history of Luther, and Bartholomew Spina, d. 1546, occupied important positions at the papal court.⁹⁴⁷ These two men expounded Innocent VIII.'s bull, and quote the Witches Hammer. Geiler of Strassburg repeated from the pulpit the vilest charges against witches. Pico della Mirandola, the biographer of Savonarola, filled a book with material of the same sort, and declared that one might as well call in question the discovery of America as the existence of witches.⁹⁴⁸

The prosecution of witches assumed large proportions first in Switzerland and Northern Italy and then in France and Germany. In Rome, the first reported burning was in 1424.⁹⁴⁹ In the diocese of Como, Northern Italy, 41 were burnt the year after the promulgation of Innocent VIII.'s bull. Between 1500-1525 the yearly number of women tried in that district was 1000 and the executions averaged 100. In 1521, Prierias declared that the Apennine regions were so full of witches that they were expected soon to outnumber the faithful.

In France, one of the chief victims, the Carmelite William Adeline, was professor in Paris and had taken part in the Council of Basel. Arraigned by the Inquisition, 1453, he confessed to being a Vaudois, and having habitually attended their synagogues and done homage to the devil. In spite of his abjurations, he was kept in prison till he died.⁹⁵⁰ In Briançon, 1428-1447, 110 women and 57 men were executed for witchcraft in the flames or by drowning.

In Germany, Heidelberg, Pforzheim, Nürnberg, Würzburg, Bamberg, Vienna, Cologne, Metz and other cities were centres of the craze and witnessed many executions. It was during the five years preceding 1486 that Heinrich Institoris and Sprenger sent 48 to the stake. The Heidelberg court-preacher, Matthias Widman, of Kemnat, pronounced the "Cathari or heretical witches" the most damnable of the sects, one which should be subjected to "abundance of fire and without mercy." He reports that witches rode on broomsticks, spoons, cats, goats and other objects, and that he had seen many of them burnt in Heidelberg. In 1540, six years before Luther's death, four witches and sorcerers were burnt in Protestant Wittenberg. And in 1545, 34 women were burnt or quartered in Geneva. In England the law for the burning of heretics, 1401, was applied to these unfortunate people, not a few of whom were committed to the flames. But the persecution in the mediaeval period never took on the proportions on English soil it reached on the Continent; and there, it was not the Church but the state that dealt with the crime of sorcery.

According to the estimate of Louis of Paramo, himself a distinguished inquisitor of Sicily who had condemned many to the flames, there had been during the 150 years before 1597, the date of his treatise on the Origin and Progress of the Inquisition, 30,000 executions for witchcraft.⁹⁵¹

The judgments passed upon witches were whipping, banishment and death by fire, or, as in Cologne, Strassburg and other places, by drowning. The most common forms of torture were the thumb-screw and the strappado. In the latter the prisoner's hands were bound behind his back with a rope which was drawn through a pulley in the ceiling. The body was slowly lifted up, and at times left hanging or allowed to suddenly drop to the floor. In our modern sense, there was no protection of law for the accused. The suspicion of an ecclesiastical or civil court was sufficient to create an almost insurmountable presumption of guilt. Made frantic by the torture, the victims were willing to confess to anything, however untrue and repulsive it might be. Death at times must have seemed, even with the Church's ban, preferable to protracted agonies, for the pains of death at best lasted a few hours and might be reduced to a few minutes. As Lecky has said, these unfortunate people did not have before them the prospect of a martyr's crown and the glory of the heavenly estate. They were not buoyed up by the sympathies and prayers of the Church. Unpitied and unprayed for, they yielded to the cold scrutiny of the inquisitor and were consumed in the flames.

Persons who took the part of the supposed witch, or ventured to lift up their voices against the trials for witchcraft, did so at the risk of their lives. In 1598, the Dutch priest, Cornelius Loos Callidus, was imprisoned at Treves for declaring that women, making confession under torture to witch devices, confessed to what was not true. And four years before, 1589, Dr. Dietrich Flade, a councillor of Treves, was burnt for attacking the prosecution of witchcraft.⁹⁵²

The belief in demonology and all manner of malefic arts was a legacy handed down to the Church from the old Roman world and, where the influence of the Northern mythologies was felt, the belief took still deeper roots. But it cannot be denied that cases and passages taken from the Scriptures, especially the Old Testament, were adduced to justify the wild dread of malign spirits in the Middle Ages. Saul's experience with the witch of Endor, the plagues brought by the devil upon Job, the representations in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, incidents from the Apocrypha and the cases of demonic agency in the New Testament were dwelt upon and applied with literal and relentless rigor.

It is a long chapter which begins with the lonely contests the old hermits had with demons, recounts the personal encounters of mediaeval monks in chapel and cell and relates the horrors of the inquisitorial process for heresy. Our more rational processes of thought and our better understanding of the Christian law of love happily have brought this chapter to a close in enlightened countries. The treatment here given has been in order to show how greatly a Christian society may err, and to confirm in this generation the feeling of gratitude for the better sentiments which now prevail. It is perhaps also clue to those who suffered, that a general description of the injustice done them should be given. The chapter may not unfitly be brought to a close by allowing one of the victims to speak again from his prison-cell, the burgomaster of Bamberg, though he suffered a century after the Middle Ages had closed, 1628. After being confronted by false witnesses he confessed, under torture, to having indulged in the practices ascribed to the bewitched and he thus wrote to his daughter:—

Many hundred good nights, dearly beloved daughter, Veronica. Innocent have I come into prison, innocent must I die. For whoever comes into a witch-prison must become a witch or be tortured till he invents something out of his head and—God pity him—bethinks himself of something. I will tell you how it has gone with me .... Then came the executioner and put the thumbscrews on me, both hands bound together, so that the blood ran out at the nails and everywhere, so that for four weeks I could not use my hands, as you can see from the writing .... Then they stripped me, bound my hands behind my back and drew me up. I thought heaven and earth were at an end. Eight times did they do this and let me drop again so that I suffered terrible agony .... [Here follows a rehearsal of the confessions he was induced to make.] ... Now, dear child, you have all my confessions for which I must die. They are sheer lies made up. All this I was forced to say through fear of the rack, for they never leave off the torture till one confesses something .... Dear child, keep this letter secret so that people may not find it or else I shall be tortured most piteously and the jailers be beheaded .... I have taken several days to write this for my hands are both lame. Good night, for your father Johannes Junius will never see you more.⁹⁵³

Innocent VIII's Bull, Summit desiderantes. December 5, 1484: In Part:95⁹⁵⁴

Innocentius episcopus, servus servorum dei, ad perpetuam rei memoriam. Summis desiderantes affectibus, prout pastoralis sollicitudinis cura requirit, ut fides catholica nostris potissime temporibus ubique augeatur et floreat ac omnis haeretica pravitas de finibus fidelium procul pellatur, es libenter declaramus ac etiam de novo concedimus per quae hujusmodi pium desiderium nostrum votivum sortiatur effectum; cunctisque propterea, per nostrae operationis ministerium, quasi per providi operationis saeculum erroribus exstirpatis, eiusdem fidei zelus et observantia in ipsorum corda fidelium fortium imprimatur.

Sane nuper ad nostrum non sine ingenti molestia pervenit auditum, quod in nonnullis partibus Alemaniae superioris, necnon in Maguntinensi, Coloniensi, Treverensi, Saltzumburgensi, et Bremensi, provinciis, civitatibus, terris, locis et dioecesibus complures utriusque sexus personae, propriae salutis immemores et a fide catholica deviantes, cum daemonibus, incubis et succubis abuti, ac suis incantationibus, carminibus et coniurationibus aliisque nefandis superstitiosis, et sortilegis excessibus, criminibus et delictis, mulierum partus, animalium foestus, terra fruges, vinearum uvas, et arborum fructus; necnon homines, mulieres, pecora, pecudes et alia diversorum generam animalia; vineas quoque, pomeria, prata, pascua, blada, frumenta et alia terra legumina perirs, suffocari et extingui facere et procurare; ipsosque homines, mulieres, iumenta, pecora, pecudes et animalia diris tam intrinsecis quam extrinsecis doloribus et tormentis afficere et excruciare; ac eosdem homines ne gignere, et mulieres ne concipere, virosque, ne uxoribus, et mulieres, ne viris actus coniugales reddere valeant, impedire; fidem praeterea ipsam, quam in sacri susceptione baptismi susceperunt, ore sacrilego abnegare, aliaque quam plurima nefanda, excussus et crimina, instigante humani generis inimico, committere et perpetrare non verentur in animarum suarum periculum, divines maiestatis offensam ac perniciosum exemplum ac scandulum plurimorum. Quodque licet dilecti filii Henrici Institoris in praedictis partibus Alemaniae superioris ... necnon Iacobus Sprenger per certas partes lineae Rheni, ordinis Praedicatorum et theologiae professores, haeretics pravitatis inquisitores per literas apostolicas deputati fuerunt, prout adhuc existunt; tamen nonnulli clerici et laici illarum partium, quaerentes plura sapere quam oporteat, pro eo quod in literis deputationis huiusmodi provinciae, civitates dioeceses terrae et alia loca praedicta illarumque personae ac excessus huiusmodi nominatim et specifice expressa non fuerunt, illa sub eisdem partibus minime contineri, et propterea praefatis inquisitoribus in provinciis, civitatibus, dioecesibus, terris et locis praedictis huiusmodi inquisitionis officium exequi non licere; et ad personarum earundem super excessibus et criminibus antedictis punitionem, incarcerationem et correctionem admitti non debere, pertinaciter asserere non erubescunt ... Huiusmodi inquisitions officium exequi ipsasque personas, quas in praemissis culpabiles reperierint, iuxta earum demerita corrigere, incarcerare, punire et mulctare .... Quotiens opus fuerant, aggravare et reaggravare auctoritate nostra procuret, invocato ad hoc, si opus fuerit, auxilio brachii saecularis.