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H I ST

MALLEUS MALEFI r / CARUM

ACCESSION NUMBER

PRESS MARK

4?

MALLEUS

MALEFIC

ARUM translated

with an Introduction, Biblio¬ graphy and Notes by the Rev. Montague Summers

JOHN RODKER < PUBLISHER / 1928

Bve.fiQY' CfoUoe)

*

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

This edition of Malleus Maleficarum, comprising 12J5 numbered copies , is here trans¬ lated into English from the edition of 1489 for the first time. The book is printed by Messrs . R. Clay & Sons , Ltd., Bungay , Suffolk, on a Dutch paper specially made for the edition.

This copy is No. . . jLkL-2. _

CONTENTS

r\oe

INTRODUCTION xi

A NOTE UPON THE BIBLIOGRAPHY xli

THE BULL OF INNOCENT VIII xliii

THE FIRST PART

TREATING OF THE THREE NECESSARY CONCOMITANTS OF WITCHCRAFT WHICH ARE THE DEVIL, A WITCH. AND THE

PERMISSION OF

PART ONE

Question I.

Whether the Belief that there are such Beings as Witches is so Essential a Part of the Catholic Faith that Obstinacy to maintain the Opposite Opinion manifestly savours of Heresy page i

Question II.

If it be in Accordance with the Catholic Faith to maintain that in Order to bring about some Effect of Magic, the Devil must intimately co-operate with the Witch, or whether one without the other, that is to say, the Devil without the Witch, or conversely, could produce such an Effect 12

Question III.

Whether Children can be Generated by Incubi and Succubi 2 1

Question IV.

By which Devils are the Operations of Incubus and Succubus Practised? 28

Question V.

What is the Source of the Increase of Works of Witchcraft? Whence comes it that the Practice of Witchcraft hath so notably increased? 31

Question VI.

Concerning Witches who copulate with Devils. Why is it that Women are chiefly addicted to Evil Superstitions? 41

Question VII.

Whether Witches can Sway the Minds of Men to Love or Hatred 48

Question VIII.

Whether Witches can Hebetate the Powers of Generation or Obstruct the Venereal Act 54

Question IX.

Whether Witches may work some Prestidigitatory Illusion so that the Male Organ appears to be entirely removed and separate from the Body 58

Question X.

Whether Witches can by some Glamour Change Men into Beasts 61

ALMIGHTY GOD

Question XI.

That Witches who are Midwives in Various Ways Kill the Child Conceived in the Womb, and Pro¬ cure an Abortion; or if they do not this. Offer New-born Children to Devils page 66

Question XII.

Whether the Permission of Almighty God is an Accompaniment of Witchcraft 66

Question XIII.

Herein is set forth the Question concerning the Two Divine Permissions which God justly allows, namely, that the Devil, the Author of all Evil, should Sin, and that our First Parents should Fall, from which Origins the Works of Witches are justly suffered to take place 7 1

Solutions of the Arguments.

Question XIV.

The Enormity of Witches is Considered, and it is shown that the Whole Matter should be rightly Set Forth and Declared 73

Question XV.

It is Shown that, on Account of the Sins of Witches, the Innocent are often Bewitched, yea, Sometimes even for their Own Sins 77' •

Question XVI.

The Foregoing Truths are Set out in Particular, this by a Comparison of the Works of Watches with Other Baleful Superstitions 80

Question XVII.

A Comparison of their Crimes under Fourteen Heads, with the Sins of the Devils of all and every Kind 82

Question XVIII.

Here follows the Method of Preaching against and Controverting Five Arguments of Laymen and Lewd Folk) which seem to be Variously Ap¬ proved, that God does not Allow so Great Power to the Devil and Witches as is Involved in the Performance of such Mighty Works of Witch¬ craft 84

Vll

CONTENTS THE SECOND PART

TREATING OF THE METHODS BY WHICH THE WORKS OF WITCHCRAFT ARE WROUGHT AND DIRECTED, AND HOW THEY MAY BE SUCCESSFULLY ANNULLED AND DISSOLVED

Resolved in but two Questions, yet these are divided into many Chapters,

QUESTION I Chapter XIV.

Of those against whom the Power of Witches availeth not at all page 89

Chapter I.

Of the several Methods by which Devils through Witches Entice and Allure the Innocent to the Increase of that Horrid Craft and Company 96

Chapter II.

Of the Way whereby a Formal Pact with Evil is made 99

Chapter III.

How they are Transported from Place to Place 104

Chapter IV.

Here follows the Way whereby Witches copulate with those Devils known as Incubi 109

Chapter V.

Witches commonly perform their Spells through the Sacraments of the Church. And how they Impair the Powers of Generation, and how they may Cause other Ills to happen to God’s Creatures of all Kinds. But herein we except the Question of the Influence of the Stars 1 14

Chapter VI.

How Witches Impede and Prevent the Power of Procreation 1 1 7

Chapter VII.

How, as it were, they Deprive Man of his Virile Member 1 1 8

Chapter VIII.

Of the Manner whereby they Change Men into the Shapes of Beasts 122

Chapter IX.

How Devils may enter the Human Body and the Head without doing any Hurt, when they cause such Metamorphosis by Means of Prestidigita¬ tion • 124

Chapter X.

Of the Method by which Devils through the Operations of Witches sometimes actually possess Men 128

Chapter XI.

Of the Method by which they can Inflict Every Sort of Infirmity, generally Ills of the Graver Kind 1 34

Chapter XII.

Of the Way how in Particular they Afflict Men with Other Like Infirmities 137

Chapter XIII.

How Witch Midwives commit most Horrid Crimes when they either Kill Children or Offer them to Devils in most Accursed Wise 140

Here followeth how Witches Injure Cattle in

Various Ways page 144

Chapter XV.

How they Raise and Stir up Hailstorms and

Tempests, and Cause Lightning to Blast both Men and Beasts 147

Chapter XVI.

Of Three Ways in which Men and not Women may be Discovered to be Addicted to Witchcraft: Divided into Three Heads: and First of the Witchcraft of Archers 150

QUESTION II

THE METHODS OF DESTROYING AND CURING WITCHCRAFT

Introduction, wherein is Set Forth the Difficulty of this

Question.

Chapter I.

The Remedies prescribed by Holy Church against Incubus and Succubus Devils 164

Chapter II.

Remedies prescribed for Those who are Bewitched by the Limitation of the Generative Power 167

Chapter III.

Remedies prescribed for those who are Bewitched by being Inflamed with Inordinate Love or Extraordinary Hatred 1 70

Chapter IV.

Remedies prescribed for those who by Prestidi- gitatory Art have lost their Virile Members or have seemingly been Transformed into the Shapes of Beasts 1 73

Chapter V.

Prescribed Remedies for those who are Obsessed owing to some Spell 1 75

Chapter VI.

Prescribed Remedies ; to wit, the Lawful Exorcisms of the Church, for all Sorts of Infirmities and Ills due to Witchcraft; and the Method of Exorcising those who are Bewitched 1 79

Chapter VII.

Remedies prescribed against Hailstorms, and for Animals that are Bewitched 188

Chapter VIII.

Certain Remedies prescribed against those Dark and Horrid Harms with which Devils may Afflict Men 192

CONTENTS

IX

THE THIRD PART

RELATING TO THE JUDICIAL PROCEEDINGS IN BOTH THE ECCLESIASTICAL AND CIVIL COURTS AGAINST WITCHES AND INDEED ALL HERETICS

Containing XXXV Questions in which are most Clearly set out the Formal Rules for Initiating a Process of Justice, how it should be Conducted, and the Method of Pronouncing Sentence.

QUESTION I General and Introductory

Who are the Fit and Proper Judges in the Trial of Witches ? page 1 94

THE FIRST HEAD

Question I.

The Method of Initiating a Process 205

Question II.

Of the Number of the Witnesses 208

Question III.

Of the Solemn Adjuration and Re-examination of Witnesses 209

Question IV.

Of the Quality and Condition of Witnesses 209

Question V.

Whether Mortal Enemies may be Admitted as

Witnesses 209

THE SECOND HEAD

Question VI.

How the Trial is to be Proceeded with and Con¬ tinued. And how the Witnesses are to be Examined in the Presence of Four Other Persons, and how the Accused is to be Questioned in Two Ways 210

Question VII.

In Which Various Doubts are Set Forth with Regard to the Foregoing Questions and Negative Answers. Whether the Accused is to be Im¬ prisoned, and when she is to be considered as Manifestly Taken in the Foul Heresy of Witch¬ craft. This is the Second Action 213

Question VIII.

Which Follows from the Preceding Question, Whether the Witch is to be Imprisoned, and of the Method of Taking her. This is the Third Action of the Judge 214

Question IX.

What is to be done after the Arrest, and whether the Names of the Witnesses should be made Known to the Accused. This is the Fourth Action 216

Question X.

What Kind of Defence may be Allowed, and of the Appointment of an Advocate. This is the Fifth Action 2 1 7

Question XI.

What Course the Advocate should Adopt when the Names of the Witnesses are not Revealed to him. The Sixth Action 218

Question XII.

Of the Same Matter, Declaring more Particularly how the Question of Personal Enmity is to be Investigated. The Seventh Action. page 220

Question XIII.

Of the Points to be Observed by the Judge before the Formal Examination in the Place of Deten¬ tion and Torture. This is the Eighth Action 222

Question XIV.

Of the Method of Sentencing the Accused to be Questioned: and How she must be Questioned on the First Day; and Whether she may be Promised her Life. The Ninth Action 225

Question XV.

Of the Continuing of the Torture, and of the Devices and Signs by which the Judge can Recognize a Witch ; and how he ought to Protect himself from their Spells. Also how they are to be Shaved in those Parts where they use to Conceal the Devil’s Masks and Tokens; to¬ gether with the due Setting Forth of Various Means of Overcoming their Obstinacy in Keeping Silence and Refusal to Confess. And it is the Tenth Action 227

Question XVI.

Of the fit Time and of the Method of the Second Examination. And it is the Eleventh Action, concerning the Final Precautions to be Observed by the Judge 230

THE THIRD HEAD

Which is the last Part of this Work. How the Process is to be Concluded by the Pronounce¬ ment of a Definite and Just Sentence 232

Question XVII.

Of Common Purgation, and especially of the Trial by Red-hot Iron, to which Witches Appeal 233

Question XVIII.

Of the Manner of Pronouncing a Sentence which is Final and Definitive 235

Question XIX.

Of the Various Degrees of Overt Suspicion which render the Accused liable to be Sentenced 236

Question XX.

Of the First Method of Pronouncing Sentence 240 Question XXI.

Of the Second Method of Pronouncing Sentence, when the Accused is no more than Defamed 241

Question XXII.

Of the Third Kind of Sentence, to be Pronounced on one who is Defamed, and who is to be put to the Question 242

X

CONTENTS

Question XXIII.

The Fourth Method of Sentencing, in the Case of one Accused upon a Light Suspicion page 244

Question XXIV.

The Fifth Manner of Sentence, in the Case of one under Strong Suspicion 246

Question XXV.

The Sixth Kind of Sentence, in the Case of one who is Gravely Suspect 248

Question XXVI.

The Method of passing Sentence upon one who is both Suspect and Defamed 250

Question XXVII.

The Method of passing Sentence upon one who hath Confessed to Heresy, but is not Penitent 252

Question XXVIII.

The Method of passing Sentence upon one who hath Confessed to Heresy but is Relapsed,

Albeit now Penitent 2 54

Question XXIX.

The Method of passing Sentence upon one who hath Confessed to Heresy but is Impenitent, although not Relapsed 257

Question XXX.

Of One who has Confessed to Heresy, is Relapsed, and is also Impenitent page 258

Question XXXI.

Of One Taken and Convicted, but Denying Everything 259

Question XXXII.

Of One who is Convicted but who hath Fled or who Contumaciously Absents himself 261

Question XXXIII.

Of the Method of passing Sentence upon one who has been Accused by another Witch, who has been or is to be Burned at the Stake 264

Question XXXIV.

Of the Method of passing Sentence upon a Witch who Annuls Spells wrought by Witchcraft; and of Witch Midwives and Archer-Wizards 268

Question XXXV.

Finally, of the Method of passing Sentence upon Witches who Enter or Cause to be Entered an Appeal, whether such be Frivolous or Legitimate and Just 271

/

INTRODUCTION

IT has been recognized even from the very earliest times, during the first gropings towards the essential conveniences of social decency and social order, that witchcraft is an evil thing, an enemy to light, an ally of the powers of darkness, disruption, and decay. Sometimes, no doubt, primitive communities were obliged to tolerate the witch and her works owing to fear ; in other words, witchcraft was a kind of blackmail ; but directly Cities were able to co-ordinate, and it became possible for Society to protect itself, precautions were taken and safeguards were instituted against this curse, this bane whose object seemed to blight all that was fair, all that was just and good, all that was well-appointed and honour¬ able, in a word, whose aim proved to set up on high the red standard of revolu¬ tion; to overwhelm religion, existing order, and the comeliness of life in an abyss of anarchy, nihilism, and despair. In his great treatise De Ciuitate Dei S. Augustine set forth the theory, or rather the living fact, of the two Cities, the City of God, and the opposing strong¬ hold of all that is not for God, that is to say, of all that is against Him.

This seems to be a natural truth which the inspired Doctor has so eloquently demonstrated in his mighty pages, and even before the era of Christianity men recognized the verity, and nations who had never heard the Divine command put into practice the obligation of the Mosaic maxim : Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. (Vul¬ gate: Maleficos non patieris uiuere. Douay: Wizards thou shalt not suffer to live. Exodus , xxii, 18.)

It is true that both in the Greek and in the earlier Roman cults, worships often directly derived from secret and sombre sources, ancient gods, or rather demons, had their awful superstitions and their horrid rites, powers whom men dreaded but out of very terror placated ; fanes men loathed but within whose shadowed portals they bent and bowed the knee perforce in trembling fear.

Such deities were the Thracian Bendis, whose manifestation was heralded by the howling of her fierce black hounds, and Hecate the terrible “ Queen of the realm of ghosts,” as Euripides calls her, and the vampire Mormo and the dark Summanus who at midnight hurled loud thunderbolts and launched the deadly levin through the starless sky. Pliny tells us that the worship of this mysterious deity lasted long, and dogs with their puppies were sacri¬ ficed to him with atrocious cruelty, but S. Augustine says that in his day “ one could scarce find one within a while, that had heard, nay more, that had read so much as the name of Summanus” ( De Ciuitate Dei , iv, 23). Nevertheless there is only too much reason to believe that this devil-god had his votaries, although his liturgy was driven underground and his supplicants were obliged to assemble in remote and secret places. Towards the end of the fifth century, the Carthaginian Martianus Capella boldly declares that Summanus is none other than the lord of Hell, and he was writing, it may be remembered, only a few years before the birth of S. Bene¬ dict; * some think that he was still alive when the Father of All Monks was born.

Although in Greek States the prose¬ cution of witches was rare, in large measure owing to the dread they inspired, yet cases were not unknown, for Theoris, a woman of Lemnos, who is denounced by Demosthenes, was publicly tried at Athens and burned for her necromancy. It is perhaps

* The influence of this Saint over the dark powers was very remarkable , and he is especially venerated as “ effugator daemonum ." The Medal of S. Benedict has been found to be extremely potent against all evil spells. During a trial for witchcraft in 1647 at Nattenberg near the Abbey of Metten in Bavaria , the sorcerers acknow¬ ledged that their attempts against the monks were foiled by the holy Medal. The possessed boys of Illfurt (Alsace), 1864-69, exhibited the utmost dread of S. Benedict's Medal.

xi

INTRODUCTION

• •

Xll

not impertinent to observe that many strange legends attached to the island of Lemnos, which is situated in the Aegaean Sea, nearly midway between Mt. Athos and the Hellespont. It is one of the largest of the group, having an area of some 147 square miles. Lemnos was sacred to Hephaestus, who is said to have fallen here when hurled by Zeus from Olympus.* The workshops of the Smith-God in ancient legend were supposed to be on the island, although recent geologists deny that this area was ever volcanic, and the fires which are spoken of as issuing from it must be considered gaseous. Later the officinae of Hephaestus were placed in Sicily and the Lipari Islands,! particularly Hiera.

The worship of Hephaestus in later days seems to have degenerated and to have been identified with some of the secret cults of the evil powers. This was probably due to his connexion with fire and also to his extreme ugliness, for he was frequently repre¬ sented as a swarthy man of grim and forbidding aspect. It should further be noted that the old Italian deity Vol- canus, with whom he was to be identified, is the god of destructive fire — fire considered in its rage and terror, as contrasted with fire which is a com¬ fort to the human race, the kindly blaze on the hearth, domestic fire, presided over by the gracious lady Vesta. It is impossible not to think of the fall of Lucifer when one considers the legend of Hephaestus. Our Lord replied, when the disciples reported: Domine, etiam daemonia subiiciuntur nobis in nomine tuoj (Lord, the devils also are subject to us in Thy Name), Uidebam Satanam sicut fulgur de coelo cadentem (I saw Satan like lightning falling from Heaven) ; and Isaias says:§ “Quomodo cecidisti de

* Homer, “Iliad,” I, §go, sqq. Cf. Ovid, “Fasti” III, 82 : “ Uolcanum tellus Hypsi¬ pylea colit” Upon which Paulus glosses : “Hoc est, Lemnos insula, at Hypsipyle Thoantis filia quae in ea regnauit.”

f “ Aeneid ,” VIII, 416—422 :

Insula Sicanium iuxta latus Aeoliamque erigitur Liparen, fumantibus ardua saxis, quam subter specus et Cyclopum exesa caminis antra Aetnaea tonant, ualidique incudibus ictus auditi referunt gemitus, striduntque cauernis stricturae Chalybum et fornacibus ignis anhelat, Uolcani domus, et Uolcania nomine tellus.

J S. Luke, x, 17, 18. § Isaias , xiv, 12.

coelo, Lucifer, qui mane oriebaris? Corruisti in terram qui uulnerabas gentes?” (How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, who didst rise in the morning? How art thou fallen to the earth, that didst wound the nations?) Milton also has the following poetic allusion:

Nor was his name unheard or unador’d

In Ancient Greece ; and in Ausonian land

Men called him Mulciber; and how he fell

From Heav’n, they fabl’d, thrown by angry Jove

Sheer o’er the Chrystal Battlements: from Morn

To Noon he fell, from Noon to dewy Eve,

A Summers day ; and with the setting Sun

Dropt from the Zenith like a falling Star,

On Lemnos th’ JEgcean lie: thus they relate,

Erring ; for he with his rebellious rout

Fell long before ; nor aught avail’d him now

To have built in Heav’n high Towrs ; nor did he scape

By all his Engins, but was headlong sent

With his industrious crew to build in hell.il

Hephaestus, especially in later days, is represented with one leg shortened to denote his lameness ; and throughout the Middle Ages it was popularly believed that his cloven hoof was the one feature which the devil was unable to disguise. In this connexion Loki, the Vulcan of Northern Europe, will be readily remembered. Frederick Hall writes :^j “Hephaestos, Vulcan and Loki, each lame from some deformity of foot, in time joined natures with the Pans and satyrs of the upper world ; the lame sooty blacksmith donned their goatlike extremities of cloven hoofs, tail and horns; and the black dwarfs became uncouth ministers of this sooty, black, foul fiend. If ever mortal man accepted the services of these cunning metal¬ workers, it was for some sinister purpose, and at a fearful price — no less than that of the soul itself, bartered away in a contract of red blood, the emblem of life and the colour of fire.”

There were also dark histories of

|| “Paradise Lost,” I, 738-51.

If “The Pedigree of the Devil,” London, 1883, pp. 178-g.

INTRODUCTION

Xlll

murder and blood connected with Lemnos. When the Argonauts landed here they found it inhabited only by Amazons, who, having murdered all their husbands, had chosen as their queen Hypsipyle, daughter of Thoas, whom she secretly preserved alive. When this was discovered the unfortu¬ nate woman was compelled to leave the island, and being subsequently cap¬ tured by pirates she was sold to Lycurgus, king of the sacred groves that surrounded the temple of Zeus Nemeus in a remote Argive valley. Hypsipyle here became the nurse of the mysterious child Archemorus, the Forerunner of Death, who was bitten by a magic serpent and vanished, portending the doom of the Seven who went against Thebes.

At a later time the Pelasgians are said to have massacred the inhabitants of Lemnos, and to have settled there with some Athenian maidens they had carried off from Attica. Afterwards these savages murdered both their wives and their children. In consequence of such atrocities Lemnian deeds became proverbial in Greek for horrors and sorceries.* It is curious to remark that a certain red clay ( terra Lemnia) found on the island was, as Pliny tells us, employed as a remedy for wounds, and especially the bite of a snake. This latter may have some obscure connexion with the story of Archemorus. In any case enough has been said to show that this island was considered a land of mystery and ancient terrors, a fitting origin for the witch Theoris.

In Rome black magic was punished as a capital offence by the Law of the Twelve Tables, which are to be assigned to the fifth century b.c., and, as Livyf records, from time to time Draconian statutes were directed against those who attempted to blight crops and vineyards or to spread rinderpest amongst flocks and cattle. None the less it is very evident from many Latin authors and from the historians that Rome swarmed with occultists and diviners, many of whom in spite of the Lex Cornelia almost openly traded in poisons, and not infrequently in assassination to boot. Sometimes, as in the Middle Ages, a circumstance of which the Malleus Maleficarum most

* Aeschylus, “ Choephoroe 631-38. t IV, 30; XXV, 1 ; XXXIX, 16.

particularly complains, the sorcerers were protected by men of wealth and high estate. This was especially the case in the terrible days of Marius and of Catiline, and during the extreme decadence of the latest Caesars. Yet, paradoxical as it may appear, such emperors as Augustus, Tiberius, and Septimius Severus, whilst banishing from their realms all seers and necro¬ mancers, and putting them to death, in private entertained astrologers and wizards among their retinue, consulting their art upon each important occasion, and often even in the everyday and ordinary affairs of life.

Nevertheless it must be noted that all the while normal legislation utterly condemned witchcraft and its works, whilst the laws were not merely carried out to their very letter, but reinforced by such emperors as Claudius, Vitel¬ lius, and Vespasian.

These prosecutions are very signifi¬ cant, and I have insisted upon them in some detail, as I wish to emphasize that stern and constant official opposi¬ tion to witchcraft, and the prohibition under severest penalties, the sentence of death itself, of any practice or pursuit of these dangerous and irreligious arts, was demonstrably not a product of Christianity, but had long and neces¬ sarily been employed in the heathen world and among pagan peoples and among polytheistic societies. More¬ over, there are even yet savage com¬ munities who visit witchcraft with death.

Accordingly, if we cite the Vincent¬ ian canon, quod semper, quod ubique , quod ab omnibus, we might surely say that from the earliest dawn of civilization witchcraft has been prohibited, hated, and feared.

At the time of the triumph of Christianity a decadent Empire in the last throes of paganism was corroded by every kind of superstition and occult art, from the use of petty and harmless sympathetic charms of healing to the darkest crimes of goetic cere¬ monial. Spells, scrying, conjurations, evokings of the dead were never more fashionable and never more keenly explored by every class and every order, from the divine Caesar in his palace to the losel peasant in his humble shed. If the disease is universal, the medicine must be sharp. It was very difficult, when the infection of crime was so

XIV

ft

INTRODUCTION

general, to discriminate and draw the line, to take into consideration relative differences and nice gradations. So much that was heathen, so much that was bad, was mixed up with what might seem to be simple credulity, and the harmless folk-customs of some grandam tradition and immemorial usage, a song or a country dance may¬ hap, innocent enough on the surface, and even pleasing, so often were but the cloak and the mask for something devilish and obscene, that the Church deemed it necessary to forbid and proscribe the whole superstition even when it manifested itself in modest fashion and seemed guileless, innoxious, and of no account. Thus, for example, to make the wind to blow or to drop is a world-wide fantasy which appears harmless enough. The Esthonians when they wish to raise a wind strike a knife into a house-beam in the direction from which they desire the wind to blow, while at the same time they croon an old-time canzonet. The underlying idea is that the gentle wind will not let any innocent thing, not even a beam, suffer without coming swiftly and breathing softly thereon to assuage the pain. But at Constantinople, in the reign of Constantine, a warlock named Sopater was put to death on a charge of binding the winds by magic, which he had at any rate essayed to do, whether or no the fact that the corn- ships of Egypt and Syria were detained on their voyage by calms and head¬ winds was actually due to his inter¬ ference. The city was nearly starved, and the Byzantine mob, clamouring for bread, was ready to break out into the wildest excesses.* In Scotland witches used to raise the wind by dipping the corner of a plaid in water and beating it thrice upon a stone, crooning the following words :

I knok this rag upone this stane

To raise the wind in the divellis name,

It sail not lye till I please againe.f

It will readily be remembered that one of the chief charges brought against the coven of North Berwick witches during the famous trial of 1590 was that they performed incantations to raise a

* Eunapius, “ Uitae sophistarum” : Aede sins (ed. Didot, p. 463) .

f “ The Darker Superstitions of Scotland”: T. G. Dalyell (p. 248).

tempest which might wreck the fleet that was escorting James VI when he brought his queen, Anne of Denmark, from her native country to Scotland. So we see that a superstition which in a little fishing ’ village, when some mother was calling a fair wind for her son, or some lass whistled for a gentle breeze to fill the sails of her sweetheart’s trawler, was simple and kindly enough, might yet become dangerous and deadly at least in intent when launched by malevolent witches who had the will if not the power to destroy, and who if this means failed would hasten to employ other methods that should prove far more resourceful in their means and efficacious in their results.

Accordingly, during the years 319- 2 1 a number of laws were passed which penalized and punished the craft of magic with the utmost severity. A pagan diviner or haruspex could only follow his vocation under very definite restrictions. He was not allowed to be an intimate visitor at the house of any citizen, for friendship with men of this kind must be avoided. “The haruspex who frequents the houses of others shall die at the stake,” such is the tenor of the code.J It is hardly an exaggeration to say that almost every year saw a more rigid application of the laws; although even as to-day, when fortune¬ telling and peering into the future are forbidden by the Statute-Book, diviners and mediums abound, so then in spite of every prohibition astrologers, clair¬ voyants, and palmists had an enormous clientele of rich and poor alike. How¬ ever, under Valens, owing to his dis¬ covery of the damning fact that certain prominent courtiers had endeavoured by means of table-rapping to ascertain who should be his successor upon the throne, in the year 367 a regular crusade, which in its details recalls the heyday of Master Matthew Hopkins, was instituted against the whole race of magicians, soothsayers, mathematici, and theurgists, which perhaps was the first general prosecution during the Christian era. Large numbers of per¬ sons, including no doubt many innocent as well as guilty, were put to death, and a veritable panic swept through the Eastern world.

The early legal codes of most

X “ Codex Theodosianus ,” Lib. IX, tit. xvi,

/, /.

/

INTRODUCTION

xv

European nations contain laws directed against witchcraft. Thus, for example, the oldest document of Frankish legislation, the Salic Law ( Lex salica ), which was reduced to a written form and promulgated under Clovis, who died 27 November, 51 1, mulcts those who practise magic with various fines, especially when it could be proven that the accused launched a deadly curse, or had tied the Witch’s Knot. This latter charm was usually a long cord tightly tied up in elaborate loops, among whose reticulations it was cus¬ tomary to insert the feathers of a black hen, a raven, or some other bird which had, or was presumed to have, no speck of white. This is one of the oldest instruments of witchcraft and is known in all countries and among all nations. It was put to various uses. The wizards of Finland, when they sold wind to sailors who were becalmed in harbour, used to enclose the wind in the three knots of a rope. If the first knot were undone a gentle breeze sprang up; if the second, it blew a mackerel gale ; if the third, a hurricane.* But the Witch’s Ladder, as it was often known, could be used with far more baleful effects. The knots were tied with cer¬ tain horrid maledictions, and then the cord was hidden away in some secret place, and unless it were found and the strands released the person at whom the curse was directed would pine and die. This charm continually occurs during the trials. Thus in the cele¬ brated Island-Magee case, March 171 1, when a coven of witches was discovered, it was remarked that an apron belong¬ ing to Mary Dunbar, a visitor at the house of the afflicted persons, had been abstracted. Miss Dunbar was suddenly seized with fits and convulsions, and sickened almost to death. After most diligent search the missing garment was found carefully hidden away and covered over, and a curious string which had nine knots in it had been so tied up with the folds of the linen that it was beyond anything difficult to separate them and loosen the ligatures. In 1886 in the old belfry of a village church in England there were accident¬

* Olaus Magnus , “ Gentium septentr. hist.” Ill, /5. A Stornoway woman sold a mariner such a cord with three knots. “ Our Highland Folklore Heritage ,” Alexander Poison , Inverness, IQ26, P-73-

b

ally discovered, pushed away in a dark corner, several yards of incle braided with elaborate care and having a number of black feathers thrust through the strands. It is said that for a long while considerable wonder was caused as to what it might be, but when it was exhibited and became known, one of the local grandmothers recognized it as a Witch’s Ladder, and, what is extremely significant, when it was engraved in the Folk Lore Journal an old Italian woman to whom the picture was shown immediately identified it as la ghirlanda delle streghe.

The laws of the Visigoths, which were to some extent founded upon the Roman law, punished witches who had killed any person by their spells with death ; whilst long-continued and obstinate witchcraft, if fully proven, was visited with such severe sentences as slavery for life. In 578, when a son of Queen Fredegonde died, a number of witches who were accused of having contrived the destruction of the Prince were executed. It has been said in these matters that the ecclesiastical law was tolerant, since for the most part it contented itself with a sentence of excommunication. But those who consider this spiritual outlawry lenient certainly do not appreciate what such a doom entailed. Moreover, after a man had been condemned to death by the civil courts it would have been somewhat superfluous to have repeated the same sentence, and beyond the exercise of her spiritual weapons, what else was there left for the Church to do?

In 814 Louis le Pieux upon his accession to the throne began to take very active measures against all sor¬ cerers and necromancers, and it was owing to his influence and authority that the Council of Paris in 829 appealed to the secular courts to carry out any such sentences as the Bishops might pronounce. The consequence was that from this time forward the penalty of witchcraft was death, and there is evidence that if the constituted authority, either ecclesiastical or civil, seemed to slacken in their efforts the populace took the law into their own hands with far more fearful results.

In England the early Penitentials are greatly concerned with the repres¬ sion of pagan ceremonies, which under the cover of Christian festivities were very largely practised at Christmas and

\ •

INTRODUCTION

on New Year’s Day. These rites were closely connected with witchcraft, and especially do S. Theodore, S. Aldhelm, Ecgberht of York, and other prelates prohibit the masquerade as a horned animal, a stag, or a bull, which S. Caesarius of Arles had denounced as a “foul tradition,” an “evil custom,” a “most heinous abomination.” These and even stronger expressions would not be used unless some very dark and guilty secrets had been concealed beneath this mumming, which, how¬ ever foolish, might perhaps have been thought to be nothing worse, so that to be so roundly denounced as devilish and demoniacal they must certainly have had some very grim significa¬ tion which did not appear upon the surface. The laws of King Athelstan (924-40), corresponsive with the early French laws, punished any person casting a spell which resulted in death by exacting the extreme penalty. During the eleventh and twelfth cen¬ turies there are few cases of witch¬ craft in England, and such accusations as were made appeared to have been brought before the ecclesiastical court. It may be remarked, however, that among the laws attributed to King Kenneth I of Scotland, who ruled from 844 to 860, and under whom the Scots of Dalriada and the Pictish peoples may be said to have been united in one kingdom, is an important statute which enacts that all sorcerers and witches, and such as invoke spirits, “and use to seek upon them for helpe, let them be burned to death.” Even then this was obviously no new penalty, but the statutory confirmation of a long- established punishment. So the witches of Forres who attempted the life of King Duffus in the year 968 by the old bane of slowly melting a wax image, when discovered, were according to the law burned at the stake.

The conversion of Germany to Christianity was late and very slow, for as late as the eighth century, in spite of the heroic efforts of S. Columba- nus, S. Fridolin, S. Gall, S. Rupert, S. Willibrod, the great S. Boniface, and many others, in spite of the headway that had been made, various districts were always relapsing into a primitive and savage heathenism. For example, it is probably true to say that the Prussian tribes were not stable in their conversion until the beginning of the

thirteenth century, when Bishop Albrecht reclaimed the people by a crusade. However, throughout the eleventh and the twelfth centuries there are continual instances of persons who had practised witchcraft being put to death, and the Emperor Frederick II, in spite of the fact that he was con¬ tinually quarrelling with the Papacy and utterly indifferent to any religious obligation — indeed it has been said that he was “a Christian ruler only in name,” and “throughout his reign he remained virtually a Moslem free¬ thinker” — declared that a law which he had enacted for Lombardy should have force throughout the whole of his dominions. “Henceforth,” Vacandard remarks, “all uncertainty was at an end. The legal punishment for heresy throughout the empire was death at the stake.” It must be borne in mind that witchcraft and heresy were almost inextricably commingled. It is quite plain that such a man as Frederick, whose whole philosophy was entirely Oriental ; who was always accompanied by a retinue of Arabian ministers, courtiers, and officers; who was per¬ haps not without reason suspected of being a complete agnostic, recked little whether heresy and witchcraft might be offences against the Church or not, but he was sufficiently shrewd to see that they gravely threatened the well¬ being of the State, imperilling the maintenance of civilization and the foundations of society.

This brief summary of early laws and ancient ordinances has been given in order to show that the punishment of witchcraft certainly did not originate in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and most assuredly was not primarily the concern of the Inquisition. In fact, curiously enough, Bernard Gui, the famous Inquisitor of Toulouse, laid down in his Practica Inquisitionis * that sorcery of itself did not fall within the cognizance of the Holy Office, and in every case, unless there were other circumstances of which his tribunal was bound to take notice when witches game before him, he simply passed them on to the episcopal courts.

It may be well here very briefly to consider the somewhat complicated

* “ Practica Inquisitionis haereticae praui- tatisP Document pub lie pour la premiere fois par le chanoine C. Douais. Paris , 4/0, 1886.

INTRODUCTION

XVII

history of the establishment of the In¬ quisition, which was, it must be remem¬ bered, the result of the tendencies and growth of many years, by no means a judicial curia with cut-and-dried laws and a complete procedure suddenly called into being by one stroke of a Papal pen. In the first place S. Dominic was in no sense the founder of the Inquisition. Certainly during the cru¬ sade in Languedoc he was present, reviving religion and reconciling the lapsed, but he was doing no more than S. Paul or any of the Apostles would have done. The work of S. Dominic was preaching and the organization of his new Order, which received Papal confirmation from Honorius III, and was approved in the Bull Religiosam uitam , 22 December, 1216. S. Dominic died 6 August, 1221, and even if we take the word in a very broad sense, the first Dominican Inquisitor seems to have been Alberic, who in Novem¬ ber, 1232, was travelling through Lom¬ bardy with the official title of “Inquisi¬ tor hereticae prauitatis.” The whole question of the episcopal Inquisitors, who were really the local bishop, his archdeacons, and his diocesan court, and their exact relationship with the travelling Inquisitors, who were mainly drawn from the two Orders of friars, the Franciscan and the Dominican, is extremely nice and complicated ; whilst the gradual effacement of the episcopal courts with regard to certain matters and the consequent prominence of the Holy Office were circumstances and conditions which realized themselves slowly enough in all countries, and almost imperceptibly in some districts, as necessity required, without any sud¬ den break or sweeping changes. In fact we find that the Franciscan or Dominican Inquisitor simply sat as an assessor in the episcopal court so that he could be consulted upon certain technicalities and deliver sentence con¬ jointly with the Bishop if these matters were involved. Thus at the trial of Gilles de Rais in October, 1440, at Nantes, the Bishop of Nantes presided over the court with the bishops of Le Mans, Saint-Brieuc, and Saint-Lo as his coadjutors, whilst Pierre de 1’ Hos¬ pital, Chancellor of Brittany, watched the case on behalf of the civil authori¬ ties, and Frere Jean Blouin was present as the delegate of the Holy Inquisition for the city and district of Nantes.

Owing to the multiplicity of the crimes, which were proven and clearly con¬ fessed in accordance with legal require¬ ments, it was necessary to pronounce two sentences. The first sentence was passed by the Bishop of Nantes con¬ jointly with the Inquisitor. By them Gilles de Rais was declared guilty of Satanism, sorcery, and apostasy, and there and then handed over to the civil arm to receive the punishment due to such offences. The second sen¬ tence, pronounced by the Bishop alone, declared the prisoner convicted of sodomy, sacrilege, and violation of ecclesiastical rights. The ban of ex- communication was lifted since the accused had made a clean breast of his crimes and desired to be reconciled, but he was handed over to the secular court, who sentenced him to death, on multiplied charges of murder as well as on account of the aforesaid offences.

It must be continually borne in mind also, and this is a fact which is very often slurred over and forgotten, that the heresies of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, to cope with which the tri¬ bunal of the Inquisition was primarily organized and regularized, were by no means mere theoretical speculations, which, however erroneous and dan¬ gerous in the fields of thought, practi¬ cally and in action would have been arid and utterly unfruitful. To-day the word “heresy” seems to be as obsolete and as redolent of a Wardour-street vocabulary as if one were to talk of a game of cards at Crimp or Incertain, and to any save a dusty mediaevalist it would appear to be an antiquarian term. It was far other in the twelfth century ; the wild fanatics who fostered the most subversive and abominable ideas aimed to put these into actual practice, to establish communities and to remodel whole territories according to the programme which they had so carefully considered in every detail with a view to obtaining and enforcing their own ends and their own interests. The heretics were just as resolute and just as practical, that is to say, just as determined to bring about the domina¬ tion of their absolutism as is any revo¬ lutionary of to-day. The aim and objects of their leaders, Tanchelin, Everwacher, the Jew Manasses, Peter Waldo, Pierre Autier, Peter of Bruys, Arnold of Brescia, and the rest, were exactly those of Lenin, Trotsky, Zino-

xviii INTRODUCTION

viev, and their fellows. There were, of course, minor differences and diverg¬ ences in their tenets, that is to say, some had sufficient cunning to conceal and even to deny the extremer views which others were bold enough or mad enough more openly to proclaim. But just below the trappings, a little way beneath the surface, their motives, their methods, their intentions, the goal to which they pressed, were all the ~£same. Their objects may be summed up as the abolition of monarchy, the aboli¬ tion of private property and of inheri¬ tance, the abolition of marriage, the abolition of order, the total abolition of all religion. It was against this that the Inquisition had to fight, and who can be surprised if, when faced with so vast a conspiracy, the methods em¬ ployed by the Holy Office may not seem — if the terrible conditions are conveniently forgotten — a little drastic, a little severe? There can be no doubt that had this most excellent tribunal continued to enjoy its full prerogative and the full exercise of its salutary powers, the world at large would be in a far happier and far more orderly position to-day. Historians may point out diversities and dissimilarities be¬ tween the teaching of the Waldenses, the Albigenses, the Henricians, the Poor Men of Lyons, the Gathari, the Vaudois, the Bogomiles, and the Mani-' chees, but they were in reality branches and variants of the same dark fraternity, just as the Third International, the Anarchists, the Nihilists, and the Bol¬ sheviks are in every sense, save the mere label, entirely identical.

In fact heresy was one huge revolu¬ tionary body, exploiting its forces through a hundred different channels and having as its object chaos and cor¬ ruption. The question may be asked — What was their ultimate aim in wishing to destroy civilization? What did they hope to gain by it? Precisely the same queries have been put and are put to-day with regard to these political parties. There is an apparent absence of motive in this seemingly aimless cam¬ paign of destruction to extermination carried on by the Bolsheviks in Russia, which has led many people to inquire what the objective can possibly be. So unbridled are the passions, so general the demolition, so terrible the havoc, that hard-headed individuals argue that so complete a chaos and such

revolting outrages could only be effected by persons who were enthusiasts in their own cause and who had some very definite aims thus positively to pur¬ sue. The energizing forces of this fan¬ aticism, this fervent zeal, do not seem to be any more apparent than the end, hence more than one person has hesi¬ tated to accept accounts so alarming of massacres and carnage, of wholesale imprisonments, tortures, and persecu¬ tions, and has begun to suspect that the situation may be grossly exaggerated in the overcharged reports of enemies and the highly-coloured gossip of scare¬ mongers. Nay, more, partisans have visited the country and returned with glowing tales of a new Utopia. It can¬ not be denied that all this is a very clever game. It is generally accepted that from very policy neither an indi¬ vidual nor a junto or confederacy will act even occasionally, much less con¬ tinually and consistently, in a most bloody and tyrannical way, without some very well-arranged programme is being thus carried out and deter¬ minate aim ensued, conditions and objects which in the present case it seems extremely difficult to guess at and divine unless we are to attribute the revolution to causes the modern mind is apt to dismiss with impatience and intolerance.

Nearly a century and a half ago Anacharsis Clootz,* “the personal enemy of Jesus Christ” as he openly declared himself, was vociferating, “God is Evil,” “ To me then Lucifer, Satan ! whoever you may be, the demon that the faith of my fathers opposed to God and the Church.” f This is the credo of the witch.

Although it may not be generally recognized, upon a close investigation it seems plain that the witches were a vast political movement, an organ¬ ized society which was anti-social and anarchical, a world-wide plot against civilization. Naturally, although the Masters were often individuals of high rank and deep learning, the rank and file of the society, that is to say, those who for the most part fell into the hands of justice, were recruited from the least educated classes, the ignorant and the poor. As one might

* Guillotined in 1794.

f Proudhon , “ La Revolution au XIXiime siecle ,” p. 2go.

INTRODUCTION

xix

suppose, many of the branches or covens in remoter districts knew nothing and perhaps could have understood nothing of the enormous system. Never¬ theless, as small cogs in a very small wheel, it might be, they were carrying on the work and actively helping to spread the infection. It is an extremely significant fact that the last regularly official trial and execution for witch¬ craft in Western Europe was that of Anna Goeldi, who was hanged at Glaris in Switzerland, 17 June, 1782.* Seven years before, in 1775, the villain Adam Weishaupt, who has been truly described by Louis Blanc as “the pro- foundest conspirator that has ever existed,” formed his “terrible and for¬ midable sect,” the Illuminati. The code of this mysterious movement lays down: “it is also necessary to gain the common people (das gemeine Volk) to our Order. The great means to that end is influence in the schools.” This is exactly the method of the organiza¬ tions of witches, and again and again do writers lament and bewail the end¬ less activities of this sect amongst the young people and even the children of a district. So in the prosecutions at Wurzburg we find that there were con¬ demned boys of ten and eleven, two choir boys aged twelve, “a boy of twelve years old in one of the lower forms of the school,” “the two young sons of the Prince’s cook, the eldest fourteen, the younger twelve years old,” several pages and seminarists, as well as a number of young girls, amongst whom “a child of nine or ten years old and her little sister” were involved.

The political operations of the witches in many lands were at their trials exposed time after time, and these activities are often discernible even when they did not so publicly and prominently come to light. A very few cases, to which we must make but brief and inadequate reference, will stand for many. In England in the year 1324 no less than twenty-seven defendants were tried at the King’s Bench for plotting against and en¬ deavouring to kill Edward II, together

* The last trial and judicial execution in Europe itself was probably that of two aged beldames, Satanists, who were burned at the stake in Poland, 1793, the year of the Second Partition, during the reign of Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski.

with many prominent courtiers and officials, by the practice of magical arts. A number of wealthy citizens of Coventry had hired a famous “nigro- mauncer,” John of Nottingham, to slay not only the King, but also the royal favourite, Hugh le Despenser, and his father ; the Prior of Coventry ; the monastic steward ; the manciple ; and a number of other important personages. A secluded old manor-house, some two or three miles out of Coventry, was put at the disposal of Master John, and there he and his servant, Robert Mar¬ shall, promptly commenced business. They went to work in the bad old- fashioned way by modelling wax dolls or mommets of those whom they wished to destroy.* Long pins were thrust through the figures, and they were slowly melted before a fire. The first unfortunate upon whom this experi¬ ment was tried, Richard de Sowe, a prominent courtier and close friend of the King, was suddenly taken with agonizing pains, and when Marshall visited the house, as if casually, in order that he might report the results of this sympathetic sorcery to the wizard, he found their hapless victim in a high delirium. When this state of things was promptly conveyed to him,

* This is certainly one of the oldest and most universal of spells. To effect the death of a man, or to injure him by making an image in his like¬ ness, and mutilating or destroying this image, is a practice found throughout the whole wide world from its earliest years. It is common both in Babylon and in the Egypt of the Pharaohs, when magicians kneaded puppets of clay or pitch moistened with honey. If it were possible to mingle therewith a drop of a man’s blood, the parings of his nails, a few hairs from his body, a thread or two from his garments, it gave the warlock the greater power over him. In ancient Greece and Rome precisely the same ideas pre¬ vailed, and allusions may be found in Theocritus (“Idyll” II), Vergil (“Eclogue” VIII, 75-82), Ovid (“Heroides,” VI, 91, sqq.; “Amores,” III, vii, 29, sqq.), and many more. (See R. Wunsch, “ Eine antike Rachepuppe,” “Philo¬ logus,” Ixi, 1902, pp. 26-31.) We find this charm among the Ojebway Indians, the Cora Indians of Mexico, the Malays, the Chinese and Japanese, the aborigines throughout Australia , the Hindoos, both in ancient India and at the present day, the Burmese, many Arab tribes of Northern Africa, in Turkey, in Italy and the remoter villages of France, in Ireland and Scot¬ land, nor is it (in one shape and form or another) yet unknown in the country districts of England.

XX

INTRODUCTION

Master John struck a pin through the heart of the image, and in the morning the news reached them that de Sowe had breathed his last. Marshall, who was by now in an extremity of terror, betook himself to a justice and laid bare all that was happening and had hap¬ pened, with the immediate result that Master John and the gang of conspira¬ tors were arrested. It must be remem¬ bered that in 1324 the final rebellion against King Edward II had openly broken forth on all sides. A truce of thirteen years had been arranged with Scotland, and though the English might refuse Bruce his royal title he was henceforward the warrior king of an independent country. It is true that in May, 1322, the York Parliament had not only reversed the exile of the Despensers, declaring the pardons which had been granted their opponents null and void, as well as voting for the repeal of the Ordinances of 1 3 1 1 , and the Despensers were working for, and fully alive to the necessity of, good and stable government, but none the less the situation was something more than perilous ; the Exchequer was well-nigh drained; there was rioting and blood¬ shed in almost every large town; and worst of all, in 1323 the younger Roger Mortimer had escaped from the Tower and got away safely to the Continent. There were French troubles to boot; Charles IV, who in 1322 had suc¬ ceeded to the throne, would accept no excuse from Edward for any postpone¬ ment of homage, and in this very year, 1324, declaring the English possessions forfeited, he proceeded to occupy the territory with an army, when it soon became part of the French dominion; There can be no doubt that the citizens of Coventry were political intriguers, and since they were at the moment unable openly to rebel against their sovran lord, taking advantage of the fact that he was harassed and pressed at so critical a juncture, they pro¬ ceeded against him by the dark and tortuous ways of black magic.

Very many similar conspiracies in which sorcery was mixed up with treasonable practices and attempts might be cited, but only a few of the most important must be mentioned. Rather more than a century later than the reign of Edward II, in 1441, one of the greatest and most influential ladies in all England, “the Duchesse of

Gloucestre, was arested and put to holt, for she was suspecte of treson.” This, of course, was purely a political case, and the wife of Duke Humphrey had unfortunately by her indiscretion and something worse given her hus¬ band’s enemies an opportunity to attack him by her ruin. An astrologer, attached to the Duke’s household, when taken and charged with “werch- yrye of sorcery against the JCing,” con¬ fessed that he had often cast the horoscope of the Duchess to find out if her husband would ever wear the Eng¬ lish crown, the way to which they had attempted to smooth by making a wax image of Henry VI and melting it before a magic fire to bring about the King’s decease. A whole crowd of witches, male and female, were in¬ volved in the case, and among these was Margery Jourdemain, a known and notorious invoker of demons and an old trafficker in evil charms. Eleanor Cobham was incontinently brought before a court presided over by three Bishops, London, Lincoln, and Norwich. She was found guilty both of high treason and sorcery, and after having been compelled to do public penance in the streets of London, she was imprisoned for life, according to the more authoritative account at Peel Castle in the Isle of Man.* Her accomplices were executed at London.

In the days of Edward IV it was commonly gossiped that the Duchess of Bedford was a witch, who by her spells had fascinated the King with the beauty of her daughter Elizabeth, f whom he made his bride, in spite of the fact that he had plighted his troth to Eleanor Butler, the heiress of the Earl of Shrewsbury. So open did the scandal become that the Duchess of Bedford lodged an official complaint with the Privy Council, and an inquiry was ordered, but, as might have been sus-

* Some of the chronicles say Chester. f This is referred to in Hey wood’s “ King Edward IV fo, 1600, in the opening scene , where the Duchess of York, the King’s mother says:

0 Edward, Edward! fly and leave this place,

Wherein, poor silly King, thou art en¬ chanted.

This is her dam of Bedford’s work, her mother,

That hath bewitch’d thee, Edward, my poor child.

INTRODUCTION

xxi

pected, this completely cleared the lady. Nevertheless, five years later the charges were renewed by the Lord Protector, the Duke of Gloucester. Nor' was this the first time in English history that some fair dame was said to have fascinated a monarch, not only by her beauty but also by unlawful means. When the so-called “Good Par¬ liament” was convened in April, 1376, their first business seemed to be to attack the royal favourite, Alice Per- rers, and amongst the multiplicity of charges which they brought against her, not the least deadly was the accusation of witchcraft. Her ascendancy over the King was attributed to the enchant¬ ments and experiments of a Dominican friar, learned in many a cantrip and cabala, whom she entertained in her house, and who had fashioned two pic¬ tures of Edward and Alice which, when suffumigated with the incense of mys¬ terious herbs and gums, mandrakes, sweet calamus, caryophylleae, storax, benzoin, and other plants plucked be¬ neath the full moon what time Venus was in the ascendant, caused the old King to dote upon his lovely concu¬ bine. With great difficulty by a subtle ruse the friar was arrested, and he thought himself lucky to escape with relegation to a remote house under the strictest observance of his Order, whence, however, he was soon to be Tecalled with honour and reward, since the Good Parliament shortly came to an end, and Alice Perrers, who now stood higher in favour than ever, was not slow to heap lavish gifts upon her supporters, and to visit her enemies with condign punishment.

It is often forgotten that in the troublous days of Henry VIII the whole country swarmed with astrolo¬ gers and sorcerers, to whom high and low alike made constant resort. The King himself a prey to the idlest super¬ stitions, ever lent a credulous ear to the most foolish prophecies and old wives5 abracadabra. When, as so speedily hap¬ pened, he wearied of Anne Boleyn, he openly gave it as his opinion that he had “made this marriage seduced by witchcraft; and that this was evident because God did not permit them to have any male issue.”

There was nobody more thoroughly scared of witchcraft than Henry’s daughter, Elizabeth, and as John Jewel was preaching his famous sermon be¬

fore her in February, 1560,* he de¬ scribed at length how “this kind of people (I mean witches and sorcerers) within these few last years are marvel¬ lously increased within this Y our Grace’s realm ; ” he then related how owing to dark spells he had known many “pine away even unto death.” “I pray God,” he unctuously cried, “they may never practise further than upon the sub¬ jects!” This was certainly enough to ensure that drastic laws should be passed particularly to protect the Queen, who was probably both thrilled and complimented to think that her life was in danger. It is exceedingly doubtful, and more than doubtful, whether there was any conspiracy at all which would have attempted Eliza¬ beth’s personal safety. There were, of course, during the imprisonment of the Queen of Scots, designs to liberate this unfortunate Princess, and Walsingham with his fellows used to tickle the vanity of Gloriana by regaling her with melo¬ dramatic accounts of dark schemes and secret machinations which they had, with a very shrewd knowledge of stage¬ craft, for the most part themselves arranged and contrived, so we may regard the Act of 1581, 23 Eliz., Cap. II, as mere finesse and chicane. That there were witches in England is very certain, but there seems no evidence at all that there were attempts upon the life of Elizabeth. None the less the point is important, since it shows that in men’s minds sorcery was inexplicably mixed up with politics. The statute runs as follows: “That if any person . . . during the life of our said Sovereign Lady the Queen’s Majesty that now is, either within her Highness’ dominions or without, shall by setting or erecting any figure or by casting of nativities or by calculation or by any prophesying, witchcraft, conjurations, or other like unlawful means whatsoever, seek to know, and shall set forth by express words, deeds, or writings, how long her Majesty shall live, or who shall reign a king or queen of this realm of England after her Highness’ decease . . . that then every such offence shall be felony, and every offender therein, and also all his aiders (etc.), shall be judged as felons and shall suffer pain of

* This is probably the exact date. The dis¬ course in question was certainly delivered between November, 1559, and 17 March, i960.

XXII

INTRODUCTION

death and forfeit as in case of felony is used, without any benefit of clergy or sanctuary.”

The famous Scotch witch trial of 1590, when it was proved that upon 31 October in the preceding year, All Hallow E’en, a gang of more than two hundred persons had assembled for their rites at the old haunted church of North Berwick, where they consulted with their Master, “the Devil,” how they might most efficaciously kill King James, is too well known to require more than a passing mention, but it may be remembered that Agnes Samp¬ son confessed that she had endeavoured to poison the King in various ways, and that she also avowed that she had fashioned a wax mommet, saying with certain horrid maledictions as she wrought the work : “This is King James the sext, ordinit to be consumed at the instance of a noble man Francis Erie Bodowell.” The contriver of this far- reaching conspiracy was indeed none other than Francis Stewart, Earl of Bothwell, who, as common knowledge bruited, almost overtly aspired to the throne and was perfectly reckless how he compassed his ends. It was he, no doubt, who figured as “the Devil” at the meeting in the deserted and ill- omened kirkyard. In fact this is almost conclusively shown by a statement of Barbara Napier when she was inter¬ rogated with regard to their objects in the attempted murder of the King. She gave as her reason “that another might have ruled in his Majesty’s place, and the Government might have gone to the Devil.” That is to say, to Francis Bothwell. The birth of Prince Henry at Stirling, 19 February, 1594, and further of Prince Charles at Dunferm¬ line, 19 November, 1600, must have dashed all Bothwell’s hopes to the ground. Moreover, the vast organiza¬ tion of revolutionaries and witches had been completely broken up, and accord¬ ingly there was nothing left for him to do but to seek safety in some distant land. There is an extremely significant reference to him in Sandys,* who, speaking of Calabria in the year 1610, writes : “Here a certaine Calabrian hear¬ ing that I was an English man, came to me, and would needs persuade me that I had insight in magicke : for that Earl Bothel was my countryman, who liues

* “ Relation of a Journey," London , 1632.

at Naples , and is in these parts famous for suspected negromancie.”

In French history even more notori¬ ous than the case of the Berwick witches were the shocking scandals involving both poisoning and witchcraft that came to light and were being investi¬ gated in 1679-82. At least two hundred and fifty persons, of whom many were the representatives and scions of the highest houses in the land, were deeply implicated in these abominations, and it is no matter for surprise that a vast number of the reports and several en¬ tire dossiers and registers have com¬ pletely disappeared. The central figures were the Abbe Guibourg and Catherine Deshayes, more generally known as La Voisin, whose house in the Rue Beaure¬ gard was for years the rendezvous of a host of inquirers drawn from all classes of society, from palaces and prisons, from the chambers of the King and from the lowest slums of the vilest underworld. That it was a huge and far-reaching political conspiracy is patent from the fact that the lives of Louis XIV, the Queen’ the Dauphin, Louise de la Valliere, and the Duchesse de Fontanges had been attempted secretly again and again, whilst as for Colbert, scores of his enemies were con¬ stantly entreating for some swift sure poison, constantly participating in un¬ hallowed rites which might lay low the all-powerful Minister. It soon came to light that Madame de Montespan and the Comtesse de Soissons (Olympe Mancini) were both deeply implicated, whilst the Comtesse de Rouse and Madame de Polignac in particular, coveting a lodging in the bed royal, had persistently sought to bring about the death of Louise de la Valliere. It is curious indeed to recognize the author of The Rehearsal in this train, but there flits in and out among the witches and anarchists a figure who can almost cer¬ tainly be identified with George Vil- liers, Duke of Buckingham. Yet this is the less surprising when we remember how very nearly he stirred up a mutiny, if not an insurrection, against the King who had so particularly favoured and honoured him, but who, in the words of a contemporary, “knew him to be capable of the blackest designs.” Of Buckingham it has been written with¬ out exaggeration: “As to his personal character it is impossible to say any¬ thing in its vindication ; for though his

INTROD

severest enemies acknowledge him to have possessed great vivacity and a quickness of parts peculiarly adapted to the purposes of ridicule, yet his warmest advocates have never attributed to him a single virtue. His generosity was pro¬ fuseness, his wit malevolence, the grati¬ fication of his passions his sole aim through life.”* When we consider the alliance of Buckingham with the in¬ famous Shaftesbury, we need hardly wonder that whilst in Paris he fre¬ quented the haunts of this terrible society, and was present at, nay, even participated in the Satanic mass and other of their horrible mysteries. At the house of La Voisin necromancy was continually practised, poisons were brewed, the liturgy of hell was cele¬ brated, and it was undoubtedly the hub of every crime and every infamy. Other instances, and not a few, might be quoted from French history to show how intimately politics were connected with witchcraft. Here Madame de Montespan, aiming at the French throne, an ambition which involved the death of the Queen, Maria Theresa of Austria, at once resorts to black magic, and attempts to effect her pur¬ pose by the aid of those who were in¬ famous as past adepts in this horrid craft.

Even in the Papal States themselves such abominations were not unknowm, and in 1633 Rome was alarmed and confounded by an attempt upon the life of Urban VIII. It seems that some charlatan had announced to Giacinto Gentini, nephew of the Cardinal d’Ascoli, that his uncle would succeed the reigning Pontiff in the Chair of S. Peter. The rash and foolish young man promptly attempted to hasten the event, and did not hesitate to resort to certain professors of occult arts to in¬ quire when the next conclave would take place. He was so incredibly foolish that, far from attempting any subter¬ fuge or disguise, he seems to have resorted to the houses of astrologers and other persons, who were already sus¬ pected of necromancy in the most open way, and further to have boasted among his intimates of the high honours which he expected his family would shortly enjoy. He first applied to one Fra Pietro, a Sicilian, who belonged to the Order of Augustinian Eremites. This

* "Bio graphia Dramatica,” Vol. /, p. J2g.

U G T I O N xxiii

occultist told him that the Cardinal d’Ascoli would be elected at the next conclave, but that the present Pope had many years to live. Upon seeing the young man’s bitter disappointment the cunning mage whispered that it was in his power to bring about the event much sooner than it would happen in the ordinary course of affairs. Needless to say, the proposition was taken up with alacrity, but it was necessary to employ the services of two other diviners, and they accordingly selected for the task Fra Cherubino of Ancona, a Franciscan, and Fra Domenico of the Eremite monastery of S. Agostino at Fermo. The friars then diligently set to work to carry out their murderous projects. A number of ceremonies and incantations were performed which entailed consider¬ able expense, and for which it was need¬ ful to procure exotic herbs and drugs and rare instruments of goetry that could not readily be had without attracting considerable curiosity. It appeared, however, as if all their charms and spells, their demoniac eucharists and litanies, were quite ineffective, since Urban at sixty- rive years of age remained perfectly hale and hearty and was indeed extraordinarily active in his pontificate. Young Gentini became manifestly impatient and spurred the wizards on to greater efforts. It really seems as if, vexed beyond measure and goaded to exasperation by his impor¬ tunities, they flung all caution to the winds, whilst he himself proclaimed so magnificently what he would do for his friends in a few weeks or months after he had assumed the authority of Papal nephew, that it was hardly a matter of surprise when the Holy Office suddenly descended upon the four accomplices and brought them to the bar. Amongst the many charges which were put forward was one of causing “a statue of wax to be made of Urban VIII, in order that its dissolution might ensure that of the Pope.” This in itself would have been sufficiently damning, but there were many other criminal accounts all tending to the same end, all proven up to the hilt. The result was that Centini, Fra Pietro, and Fra Cherubino were executed in the Gampo di Fiore, on Sunday, 22 April, 1634, whilst Fra Domenico, who was less desperately involved, was relegated for life to the galleys.

These few instances I have dwelt upon

XXIV

INTRODUCTION

in detail and at some length in order to show how constantly and continually in various countries and at various times witchcraft and magical practices were mixed up with political plots and anarchical agitation. There can be no doubt — and this is a fact which is so often not recognized (or it may be for¬ gotten) that one cannot emphasize it too frequently — that witchcraft in its myriad aspects and myriad ramifica¬ tions is a huge conspiracy against civilization. It was as such that the Inquisitors knew it, and it was this which gave rise to the extensive litera¬ ture on the subject, those treatises of which the Malleus Maleficarum is per¬ haps the best known among the other writers. As early as 600 S. Gregory I* had spoken in severest terms, enjoining the punishment of sorcerers and those who trafficked in black magic. It will be noted that he speaks of them as more often belonging to that class termed serui , that is to say, the very people from whom for the most part Nihilists and Bolsheviks have sprung in modern days. Writing to Januarius, Bishop of Cag¬ liari, the Pope says : “Contra idolorum cultores, uel aruspices atque sortilegos, fraternitatem uestram uehementius pastorali hortamur inuigilare custodia . . . et si quidem serui sunt, uerberibus cruciatibusque, quibus ad emenda¬ tionem peruenire ualeant, castigare, si uero sunt liberi, inclusione digna dis- trictaque sunt in poenitentiam redi¬ gendi. ...” But the first Papal ordi¬ nance directly dealing with witchcraft may not unfairly be said to be the Bull addressed in 1233 by Pope Gregory IX (Ugolino, Count of Segni) f to the famous Conrad of Marburg, bidding him proceed against the Luciferians, who were overtly given over to Satan¬ ism. If this ardent Dominican must not strictly be considered as having intro¬ duced the Inquisition into Germany, he at any rate employed Inquisitorial methods. Generally, perhaps, he is best known as the stern and unbending spiritual director of that gentle soul S. Elizabeth of Hungary. Conrad of Marburg is certainly a type of the strictest and most austere judge, but it should be remembered that he spared himself no more than he spared others,

* Reigned 590-604.

t Reigned 1227-41. He was almost one hundred years old at the time of his death.

that he was swayed by no fear of persons or danger of death, that even if he were inflexible and perhaps fanatical, the terrible situation with which he had to deal demanded such a man, and he was throughout supported by the supreme authority of Gregory IX. That he was harsh and unlovable is, perhaps, true enough, but it is more than doubtful whether a man of gentler disposition could have faced the difficulties- that presented themselves on every side. Even his most prejudiced critics have never denied the singleness of his con¬ victions and his courage. He was murdered on the highway, 30 July, 1233, in the pursuit of his duties, but it has been well said that “it is, perhaps, significant that the Church has never set the seal of canonization upon his martyrdom.”|

On 13 Decenlber, 1258, Pope Alex¬ ander IV (Rinaldo Conti) § issued a Bull to the Franciscan Inquisitors bid¬ ding them refrain from judging any cases of witchcraft unless there was some very strong reason to suppose that heretical practice could also be amply proved. On 10 January, 1260, the same Pontiff addressed a similar Bull to the Dominicans. But it is clear that by now the two things could not be dis¬ entangled.

The Bull Dudum ad audientiam nostram peruenit of Boniface VIII (Benedetto Gaetani) || deals with the charges against Walter Langton, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield,.^ but it may be classed as individual rather than general.

Several Bulls were published by John XXII (Jacques d’Euse)** * * § ** and by Benedict XII (Jacques Fournier, O. Cist),!! both Avignon Popes, and these weighty documents deal with witch¬ craft in the fullest detail, anathematiz¬ ing all such abominations. Gregory XI (Pierre Roger de Beaufort) ;tt Alex¬ ander V (Petros Filartis, a Cretan), who ruled but eleven months, from June 1409 to May 1410; and Martin V

X A. L. Maycock , “ The Inquisition,” 1926,

P ■ 235 •.

§ Reigned 1254-61.

|| 24 December, 1 294-11 October, 1303.

A close investigation was made, but the Bishop completely cleared himself of the charges.

**7 August, 1316-4 December, 1334. ft 20 December, 1334-25 April, 1342. it 30 December, 1370-27 March, 1378.

INTRODUCTION

XXV

(Ottone Colonna) ;* each put forth one Bull on the subject. To Eugenius IV (Gabriello Condulmaro)f we owe four Bulls which fulminate against sorcery and black magic. The first of these, 24 February, 1434, is addressed from Florence to the Franciscan Inquisitor, Pontius Fougeyron. On 1 August, 1451, the Dominican Inquisitor Hugo Niger received a Bull from Nicholas V (Tom- maso Parentucelli).^ Callistus III (Alfonso de Borja)§ and Pius II (Enea Silvio de’ Piccolomini)|| each issued one Bull denouncing the necromantic crew.

On 9 August, 1471, the Franciscan friar, Francesco della Rovere, ascended the throne of Peter as Sixtus IV. His Pontificate has been severely criticized by those who forget that the Pope was a temporal Prince and in justice bound to defend his territory against the con¬ tinual aggression of the Italian despots. His private life was blameless, and the stories which were circulated by such writers as Stefano Infessura in his Diarium ^ are entirely without founda¬ tion. Sixtus was an eminent theologian, he is the author of an admirable treatise on the Immaculate Conception, and it is significant that he took strong measures to curb the judicial severities of Tomas de Torquemada, whom he had appointed Grand Inquisitor of Castile, 11 February, 1482. During his reign he published three Bulls directly attacking sorcery, which he clearly identified with heresy, an opinion of the deepest weight when pronounced by one who had so penetrating a knowledge of the political currents of the day. There can be no doubt that he saw the society of witches to be nothing else than a vast international of anti-social revolution¬

* 11 November, 1417-20 February, 1431.

t 3 March, 1431-23 February, 1447.

X 6 March, 1447-24 March, 1455.

§ 8 April , 1455-6 August, 1458.

|| ig August , 1458-15 August, 1464.

Stefano Infessura was born at Rome circa 1435 and died there circa 1500. This turbulent spirit was entangled in the con¬ spiracy of Stefano Porcaro against Nicholas - V (I453), which aimed at overturning the Papal government and making Rome a republic. His violent bias wakes his “ Diarium urbis Romae,” a chronicle from 1234 to 1434 ( written partly in Latin and partly in Italian ), of little value, as he did not hesitate to reproduce any idle scandal, and even to invent notorious calumnies, con¬ cerning such Pontiffs as Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII.

aries. The first Bull is dated 17 June, 1473; the second 1 April, 1478; and the last 21 October, 1483.

It has been necessary thus briefly to review this important series of Papal documents to show that the famous Bull Summis desiderantes affectibus , 9 De¬ cember, 1484, which Innocent VIII addressed to the authors of the Malleus Maleficarum, is no isolated and extra¬ ordinary document, but merely one in the long and important record of Papal utterances, although at the same time it is of the greatest importance and supremely authoritative. It has, how¬ ever, been very frequently asserted, not only by prejudiced and unscrupulous chroniclers, but also by scholars of standing and repute, that this Bull of Innocent VIII, if not, as many appear to suppose, actually the prime cause and origin of the crusade against witches, at any rate gave the prosecu¬ tion an energizing power and an authority which hitherto they had not, and which save for this Bull they could not ever have, commanded and pos¬ sessed.

It will not be impertinent then here very briefly to inquire what authority Papal Bulls may be considered to enjoy in general, and what weight was, and is, carried by this particular document of 9 December, 1484.

To enter into a history of Bulls and Briefs would require a long and elabor¬ ate monograph, so we must be content to remind ourselves that the term bulla, which in classical Latin meant a water- bubble, a bubble* * * § * ** then came to mean a boss of metal, such as the knob upon a door.ft (By transference it also implied a certain kind of amulet, generally made of gold, which was worn upon the neck, especially by noble youths.) Hence in course of time the word bulla indicated the leaden seals by which Papal (and even royal) documents were authenti¬ cated, and by an easy transition we recognize that towards the end of the twelfth century a Bull is the document itself. Naturally very many kinds of edicts are issued from the Cancellaria, but a Bull is an instrument of especial

** Cf. Ovid, “ Metamorphoseon,” x, 734-35: ut pluuio per lucida caelo Surgere bulla solet.

f| Cf. Cicero, “ In Uerrem,” II, iv, 56: “ Bullas aureas omnes ex his ualuis, quae erant et multae, et graues, non dubitauit auferre.”

XXVI

INTRODUCTION

weight and importance, and it differs both in form and detail from constitu¬ tions, encyclicals, briefs, decrees, privi¬ leges, and rescripts. It should be re¬ marked, however, that the term Bull has conveniently been used to denote all these, especially if they are Papal letters of any early date. By the fifteenth cen¬ tury clearer distinctions were insisted upon and maintained.

A Bull was written in Latin and as late as the death of Pope Pius IX, 1878, the scrittura bollatica, an archaic and difficult type of Gothic characters much contracted and wholly unpunc¬ tuated, was employed. This proved often well-nigh indecipherable to those who were not trained to the script, and accordingly there accompanied the Bull a transsumptum in an ordinary plain hand. The seal, appended by red and yellow (sometimes white) laces, gener¬ ally bore on one side the figures of SS. Peter and Paul; on the other a medallion or the name of the reigning Pontiff.

A Bull begins thus : “N. Episcopus Seruus seruorum Dei ad perpetuam rei memoriam.” It is dated “Anno incarnationis Domini,” and also “Ponti¬ ficatus Nostri anno primo (uel secundo, tertio, etc.).” Those Bulls which set forth and define some particular state¬ ment will be found to add certain minatory clauses directed against those who obstinately refuse to accept the Papal decision.

It should be remembered that, as has already been said, the famous Bull of Pope Innocent VIII is only one in a long line of Apostolic Letters dealing with the subject of witchcraft.

On 18 June, 1485, the Pontiff again recommended the two Inquisitors to Berthold, Archbishop of Mainz, in a Bull Pro causa jidei; upon the same date a similar Bull was sent to the Archduke Sigismund, and a Brief to Abbot John of Wingarten, who is highly praised for his devotion and zeal. On 30 Septem¬ ber, i486, a Bull addressed to the Bishop of Brescia and to Antonio di Brescia, O.P., Inquisitor for Lombardy, emphasizes the close connexion, nay, the identity of witchcraft with heresy.

Alexander VI published two Bulls upon the same theme, and in a Bull of Julius II there is a solemn description of that abomination the Black Mass, which is perhaps the central feature of the worship of Satanists, and which is un¬

happily yet celebrated to-day in Lon¬ don, in Paris, in Berlin, and in many another great city.

Leo X, the great Pope of Humanism, issued one Bull on the subject; but even more important is the Bull Dudum uti nobis exponi fecisti, 20 July, 1 523, which speaks of the horrible abuse of the Sacra¬ ment in sorceries and the charms con¬ futed by witches.

We have two briefs of Clement VII ; and on 5 January, 1586, was published that long and weighty Constitution of Sixtus V, Coeli et Terrae Creator Deus, which denounces all those who are de¬ voted to Judicial Astrology and kindred arts that are envenomed with black magic and goetry. There is a Constitu¬ tion of Gregory XV, Omnipotentis Dei, 20 March, 1623 > and a Constitution of Urban VIII, Inscrutabilis iudiciorum Dei altitudo, 1 April, 1631, which — if we except the recent condemnation of Spiritism in the nineteenth century* — may be said to be the last Apostolic document directed against these foul and devilish practices.!

We may now consider the exact force of the Apostolic Bull Summis deside¬ rantes affectibus issued on 9 December, 1484, by Innocent VIII to Fr. Henry Kramer and Fr. James Sprenger.

In the first place, it is superfluous to say that no Bull would have been pub¬ lished without the utmost deliberation, long considering of phrases, and above all earnest prayer. This document of Pope Innocent commences with the set grave formula of a Bull of the greatest weight and solemnity. “ Innocentius Episcopus Seruus seruorum Dei ad perpetuam rei memoriam.” It draws to its conclusion with no brief and suc¬ cinct prohibitory clauses but with a solemn measured period : “Non obstan¬ tibus praemissis ac constitutionibus et ordinationibus Apostolicis contrariis quibuscunque. . . .” The noble and momentous sentences are built up word by word, beat by beat, ever growing more and more authoritative, more and more judicial, until they culminate in the minatory and imprecatory clauses which are so impressive, so definite, that no loophole is left for escape, no turn

* There are also decrees of the Holy Office of 1856; 30 March, i8g8; 24 April , 1317, etc.

t For a full account of the Papal Bulls see my “ Geography of Witchcraft ,” 1927, c. vii, “ Italy,” pp. 524-46.

INTRODUCTION

XXVll

for evasion. “Nulli ergo omnino homi¬ num liceat hanc paginam nostrae declarationis extensionis concessionis et mandati infringere uel ei ausu temeraris contrarie Si quis autem attentare prae¬ sumpserit indignationem omnipotentis Dei ac beatorum Petri et Pauli Aposto¬ lorum eius se nouerit incursurum.” If any man shall presume to go against the tenor let him know that therein he will bring down upon himself the wrath of Almighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.

Could words weightier be found?

Are we then to class this Bull with the Bulla dogmatica Ineffabilis Deus wherein Pope Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception? Such a position is clearly tenable, but even if we do not insist that the Bull of Innocent VIII is an infallible utterance, since the Summis desiderantes affectibus does not in set terms define a dogma although it does set forth sure and certain truths, it must at the very least be held to be a document of supreme and absolute authority, of dogmatic force.* It be¬ longs to that class of ex cathedra utter¬ ances “for which infallibility is claimed on the ground, not indeed of the terms of the Vatican definition, but of the constant practice of the Holy See, the consentient teaching of the theologians, as well as the clearest deductions of the principles of faith.” Accordingly the opinion of a person who rashly impugns this Bull is manifestly to be gravely cen¬ sured as erronea , sapiens haeresim , captiosa , subuersiua hierarchiae ; erroneous, savour¬ ing of heresy, captious, subversive of the hierarchy.

Without exception non-Catholic his¬ torians have either in no measured language denounced or else with sorrow deplored the Bull of Innocent VIII as a most pernicious and unhappy docu¬ ment, a perpetual and irrevocable mani¬ festo of the unchanged and unchange¬ able mind of the Papacy. From this point of view they are entirely justified, and their attitude is undeniably logical

* Similarly, Leo XIII undoubtedly meant the Bull “ Apostolicae Curae,” 18 September, i8g6, to fix the belief and practice of the Catholic Church for ever. In a letter to Cardinal Richard, 5 November, i8g6, the Pope declared that his intention has been absolute iudicare et penitus dirimere, and that all Catholics must receive his judgement as perpetuo firmam, ratam, irreuocabilem.

and right. The Summis desiderantes affectibus is either a dogmatic exposition by Christ’s Vicar upon earth or it is altogether abominable.

Hansen, either in honest error or of intent, wilfully misleads when he writes, “it is perfectly obvious that the Bull pronounces no dogmatic decision.” f As has been pointed out, in one very narrow and technical sense this may be correct — yet even here the opposite is arguable and probably true — but such a statement thrown forth without qualification is calculated to create, and undoubtedly does create, an entirely false impression. It is all the more amazing to find that the writer of the article upon “Witchcraft” in the Catholic Encyclopaedia J quotes Hansen with complete approval and gleefully adds with regard to the Bull of Inno¬ cent VIII, “neither does the form sug¬ gest that the Pope wishes to bind any¬ one to believe more about the reality of witchcraft than is involved in the utter¬ ances of Holy Scripture,” a statement which is essentially Protestant in its nature, and, as is acknowledged by every historian of whatsoever colour or creed, entirely untrue. By its appear¬ ance in a standard work of reference, which is on the shelves of every library, this article upon “Witchcraft” acquires a certain title to consideration which upon its merits it might otherwise lack. It is signed Herbert Thurston, and turning to the list of “Contributors to the Fifteenth Volume” we duly see “Thurston, Herbert, S.J., London.” Since a Jesuit Father emphasizes in a well-known (and presumably authorita¬ tive) Catholic work an opinion so derogatory to the Holy See and so definitely opposed to all historians, one is entitled to express curiosity concern¬ ing other writings which may have come from his pen. I find that for a considerable number of years Fr. Thurston has been contributing to The Month a series of articles upon mystical phenomena and upon various aspects of mysticism, such as the Incorruption of the bodies of Saints and Beati, the Stigmata, the Prophecies of holy per¬ sons, the miracles of Crucifixes that bleed or pictures of the Madonna which

f “ Zauberwahn . . . im Mittelalter ,” Munich, igoo.

X New York, The Encyclopaedic Press, Inc., Copyright, igig, Vol. XV, pp. 674-77.

XXV111

INTRODUCTION

move, famous Sanctuaries, the inner life of and wonderful events connected with persons still living who have acquired a reputation for sanctity. This busy writer directly or incidentally has dealt with that famous ecstatica Anne Catherine Emmerich;* the Cruci¬ fix of Limpias; Our Lady of Campo- cavallo; S. Januarius; the Ven. Maria d’Agreda ; Gemma Galgani ; Padre Pio Pietralcina; that gentle soul Teresa Higginson, the beauty of whose life has attracted thousands, but whom Fr. Thurston considers hysterical and masochistic and whose devotions to him savour of the “snowball” prayer; Pope Alexander VI ; the origin of the Rosary ; the Carmelite scapular ; and very many themes beside. Here we have a mass of material, and even a casual glance through these pages will suffice to show the ugly prejudice which informs the whole. The intimate discussions on miracles, spiritual graces and physical phenomena, which above all require faith, reverence, sympathy, tact and understanding, are conducted with a roughness and a rudeness infinitely regrettable. What is worse, in every case Catholic tradition and loyal Catholic feeling are thrust to one side ; the note of scepticism, of modernism, and even of rationalism is arrogantly dominant. Tender miracles of healing wrought at some old sanctuary, the records of some hidden life of holiness secretly lived amongst us in the cloister or the home, these things seem to pro¬ voke Fr. Thurston to such a pitch of annoyance that he cannot refrain from venting his utmost spleen. The obses¬ sion is certainly morbid. It is reason¬ able to suppose that a lengthy series of papers all concentrating upon certain aspects of mysticism would have col¬ lected in one volume, and it is extremely significant that in the autumn of 1923 a leading house announced among Forthcoming Books: “The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism. By the Rev. Herbert Thurston, SJ.” Although in active preparation, this has never seen the light. I have heard upon good authority that the ecclesiastical superiors took exception to such a publication. I

* Concerning whom he xmote no less than four highly controversial articles, '“The Month,” September to December, 1921, and in a fresh fit of exacerbation returned to the attack, “ The Month,” January, 1324.

may, of course, be wrong, and there can be no question that there is room for a different point of view, but I cannot divest my mind of the idea that the exaggerated rationalization of mystical phenomena conspicuous in the series of articles I have just considered may be by no means unwelcome to the Father of Lies. It really plays into his hands : first, because it makes the Church ridiculous by creating the impression that her mystics, particularly friars and nuns, are for the most part sickly hysterical subjects, deceivers and de¬ ceived, who would be fit inmates of Bedlam ; that many of her most reverend shrines, Limpias, f Campocavallo, and the sanctuaries of Naples, are frauds and conscious imposture ; and, secondly, because it contemns and brings into ridicule that note of holiness which theologians declare is one of the dis¬ tinctive marks of the true Church.

There is also evil speaking of digni¬ ties. In 1924 the Right Rev. Mgr. Peter de Roo published an historical work in five volumes, Materials for a History of Pope Alexander VI, his Relatives and his Time , wherein he demonstrates his thesis that Pope Alexander VI was “a man of good moral character and an excellent Pope.” This is quite enough for Fr. Thurston to assail him in the most vulgar and ill-bred way. J The his¬ torian is a “ crank,” “constitutionally incapable,” “extravagant,” one who writes “queer English,” and by re¬ habilitating Alexander VI has “wasted a good deal of his own time.” “One would be loath to charge him with deliberate suggestio falsi,” smugly re¬ marks Fr. Thurston, and of course directly conveys that impression. As to Pope Alexander, the most odious charges are once more hurled against that maligned Pontiff, and Fr. Thurston for fifteen nauseating pages insists upon “the evil example of his private life.” This is unnecessary; it is untrue; it shows contempt of Christ’s Vicar on earth.

The most disquieting of all Fr. Thurston’s writings that I know is without doubt his article upon the Holy House of Loreto, which is to be found

f One may contrast the beautiful and most devotional study of this shrine by my friend Pro¬ fessor Allison Peers with the cold sneers of Fr. Thurston's articles upon the miraculous Crucifix. f “The Month,” April, 1925.

INTRODUCTION

XXIX

in the Catholic Encyclopaedia , Vol. XIII, pp. 454-56, “Santa Casa di Loreto.” Here he jubilantly proclaims that “the Lauretan tradition is beset with diffi¬ culties of the gravest kind. These have been skilfully presented in the much- discussed work of Canon Chevalier, ‘Notre Dame de Lorette’ (Paris, 1906).

. . . His argument remains intact and has as yet found no adequate reply.” This last assertion is simply incorrect, as Canon U. Chevalier’s theories have been answered and demolished both by Father A. Eschbach, Procurator- General of the Congregation of the Holy Ghost, in his exhaustive work La Verite sur le Fait de Lorette * and by the Rev. G. E. Phillips in his excellent study Loreto and the Holy House, f From a care¬ ful reading of the article “Santa Casa di Loreto” it is obvious that the writer does not accept the fact of the Trans¬ lation of the Holy House ; at least that is the only impression I can gather from his words as, ignoring an unbroken tradition, the pronouncements of more than fifty Popes, the devotion of innu¬ merable saints, the piety of countless writers, he gratuitously piles argument upon argument and emphasizes objec¬ tion after objection to reduce the Translation of the House of Nazareth from Palestine to Italy to the vague story of a picture of the Madonna brought from Tersato in Illyria to Loreto. With reference to Canon Chevalier’s work, so highly applauded by Fr. Thurston, it is well known that the late saintly Pontiff Pius X openly showed his great displeasure at the book, and took care to let it be widely understood that such an attack upon the Holy House sorely vexed and grieved him.J In a Decree, 12 April, 1916, Benedict XV, ordering the Feast of the Translation of the Holy House to be henceforward observed every year on the 10th De¬ cember, in all the Dioceses and Religious Congregations of Italy and the adjacent Isles, solemnly and decisively declares that the Sanctuary of Loreto is “the

* I9°9-

f igiy. There are, it should be remarked, many other writers of authority who conclusively traverse Canon Chevalier's thesis, but these are dismissed by Fr. Thurston as “ comparatively few and unimportant .” One would be loath to charge him with deliberate suggestio falsi.

% “ Loreto and the Holy House,” by the Rev. G. E. Phillips, p. 6.

House itself — translated from Palestine by the ministry of Angels — in which was born the Blessed Virgin Mary, and in which the Word was made Flesh.” In the face of this pronouncement it is hard to see how any Catholic can regard the Translation of the Holy House as a mere fairy tale to be classed with Jack and the Beanstalk or Hop o' my Thumb. It is certain that Fr. Thurston’s disedifying attack has given pain to thousands of pious souls, and in Italy I have heard an eminent theologian, an Archbishop, speak of these articles in terms of unsparing condemnation.

Father Thurston is the author of a aper upon the subject of Pope Joan, ut I am informed that it is no longer in print, and as I have not thought it worth while to make acquaintance with this lucubration I am unable to say whether he accepts the legend of this mythical dame as true or no.

His bias evidently makes him incap¬ able of dealing impartially with any historical fact, and even a sound and generally accepted theory would gain nothing by the adherence of so pre¬ judiced an advocate. It has seemed worth while to utter a word of caution regarding his extraordinary output, and especially in our present connexion with reference to the article upon “Witchcraft,” which appears to me so little qualified to furnish the guidance readers may require in this difficult subject, and which by its inclusion in a standard work of reference might be deemed trustworthy and reliable.

It is very certain then that the Bull of Pope Innocent VIII, Summis deside¬ rantes affectibus, was at least a document of the highest authority, and that the Pontiff herein clearly intended to set forth dogmatic facts, although this can be distinguished from the defining of a dogma. A dogmatic fact is not indeed a doctrine of revelation, but it is so intimately connected with a revealed doctrine that it would be impossible to deny the dogmatic fact without con¬ tradicting or seriously impugning the dogma. It would not be very difficult to show that any denial of the teaching of Pope Innocent VIII must traverse the Gospel accounts of demoniacs, the casting out of devils by Our Saviour, and His Divine words upon the activi¬ ties of evil spirits.

Giovanni Battista Cibo, the son of Arano Cibo and Teodorina de’ Mare,

XXX

INTRODUCTION

was born at Genoa in 1432. His father, a high favourite with Callistus III (Alfonso de Borja), who reigned from 8 April, 1455, to 6 August, 1458, had filled with distinction the sena¬ torial office at Rome in 1455, and under King Rene won great honour as Viceroy of Naples. Having entered the household of Cardinal Calandrini, Gio¬ vanni Battista Cibo was in 1467 created Bishop of Savona by Paul II, in 1473 Bishop of Molfetta by Sixtus IV, who raised him to the cardinalate in the following year. In the conclave which followed the death of this Pontiff, his great supporter proved to be Guiliano della Rovere, and on 29 August, 1484, he ascended the Chair of S. Peter, taking the name of Innocent VIII in memory, it is said, of his countryman, the Genoese Innocent IV (Sinibaldo de’ Fieschi), who reigned from 25 June, 1243, to 7 December, 1254. The new Pope had to deal with a most difficult political situation, and before long found himself involved in a conflict with Naples. Innocent VIII made the most earnest endeavours to unite Chris¬ tendom against the common enemy, the Turk, but the unhappy indecision among various princes unfortunately precluded any definite result, although the Rhodians surrendered to the Holy Father. As for Djem, the younger son of Mohammed II, this prince had fled for protection to the Knights of S. John, and Sultan Bajazet pledged him¬ self to pay an annual allowance of 35,000 ducats for the safe-keeping of his brother. The Grand Master handed over Djem to the Pope and on 13 March, 1489, the Ottoman entered Rome, where he was treated with signal respect and assigned apartments in the Vatican itself.

Innocent VIII only canonized one Saint, the Margrave Leopold of Aus¬ tria,* who was raised to the Altar 6 January, 1485. However, on 31 May, 1492, he received from Sultan Bajazet the precious Relic of the Most Holy Lance f with which Our Redeemer had

* Feast, /5 November. In Austria Duplex primae classis cum octaua.

f On the second Friday in Lent was formerly kept the Feast of the Spear and Nails first granted by Innocent VI, 13 February, 1353, for Germany and Bohemia at the request of Charles IV. In some places the Feast was kept on the Friday after Low Sunday. It is now observed by certain religious families.

been wounded by S. LonginusJ upon the Cross. A Turkish emir brought the Relic to Ancona, whence it was con¬ veyed by the Bishop to Narni, when two Cardinals took charge of it and carried it to Rome. On 31 May Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere solemnly handed it in a crystal vessel to the Pope during a function at S. Maria del Popolo. It was then borne in proces¬ sion to S. Peter’s, and from the loggia of the portico the Holy Father bestowed his blessing upon the crowds, whilst the Cardinal della Rovere standing at his side exposed the Sacred Relic to the veneration of the thronging piazza. The Holy Lance, which is accounted one of the three great Relics of the Passion, is shown together with the Piece of the True Cross and S. Veron¬ ica’s Veil at S. Peter’s after Matins on Spy Wednesday and on Good Friday evening; after High Mass on Easter Day, and also several times during the course of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. The Relics are exposed from the balcony over the statue of S. Veronica to the left of the Papal Altar. The strepitaculum is sounded from the balcony and then all present venerate the Lance, the Wood of the Cross, and the Volto Santo.

One of the most important exterior events which marked the reign of Inno¬ cent was undoubtedly the fall of Granada, the last stronghold of the Moors in Spain, which city surrendered to Ferdinand of Aragon, who thereby with his Queen Isabella won the name of “Catholic,” on 2 January, 1492. The conquest of Granada was cele¬ brated with public rejoicings and the most splendid fetes at Rome. Every house was brilliant with candles; the expulsion of the Mohammedans was represented upon open stages in a kind of pantomime; and long processions visited the national church of Spain in the Piazza Navona, San Giacomo degli Spagnuoli, which had been erected in I45°-§

On 25 July, 1492, Pope Innocent, who had long been sickly and ailing so that almost his only nourishment for

J Feast, /5 March. He is especially venerated at Mantua.

§ It was restored rather less than fifty years ago. S. Maria di Monserrato, of which church S. Giacomo is Contitolare is now served by Spanish priests.

INTRODUCTION

XXXI

many weeks was woman’s milk, passed away in his sleep at the Vatican. They buried him in S. Peter’s, this great and noble Pontiff, and upon his tomb, a work in bronze by Pollaiuolo, were in¬ scribed the felicitous words : Ego autem in Innocentia mea ingressus sum.

The chroniclers or rather scandal¬ mongers of the day, Burchard and In- fessura, have done their best to draw the character of Innocent VIII in very black and shameful colours, and it is to be regretted that more than one historian has not only taken his cue from their odious insinuations and evil gossip, but yet further elaborated the story by his own lurid imagination. When we add thereto and retail as sober evidence the venom of contem¬ porary satirists such as Marullo and the fertile exaggerations of melodra¬ matic publicists such as Egidio of Viterbo, a very sensational grotesque is the result. During his youth Giovanni Battista Cibo had, it seems, become enamoured of a Neapolitan lady, by whom he was the father of two children, Franceschetto and Teodorina. As was proper, both son and daughter were provided for in an ample and munificent manner; in 1488* his father married Franceschetto to Maddalena, a daugh¬ ter of Lorenzo de’ Medici. The lady Teodorina became the bride of Messer Gherardo Uso de’ Mare, a Genoese merchant of great wealth, who was also Papal Treasurer. The capital that has been made out of these circumstances is hardly to be believed. It is admitted that during his earlier years Giovanni Battista Cibo had indulged in an amour with a fair Neapolitan; it is admitted that this is contrary to strict morality and to be reasonably blamed. But this intrigue has been taken as the grounds for accusations of the most unbridled licentiousness, the tale of a lewd and lustful life. So far as I am aware the only other evidence for anything of the kind is the mud thrown by obscure writersf at a great and truly Christian,

* The bride, her mother Clarice Orsini, and a magnificent retinue entered Rome on 3 November , 1487; the marriage was celebrated at the Vatican , Sunday , 20 January, 1488.

f Burchard was only aware of two children of Innocent VIII. But Egidio of Viterbo wrote: “ Primus pontificum filios filiasque palam osten~ tauit, primus eorum apertas fecit nuptias .” And there are the Epigrams of Marullo: c

if not wholly blameless, successor of S. Peter.

In spite of these few faults Innocent VIII was a Pontiff who at a most difficult time worthily filled his Apos¬ tolic dignity. In his public office his constant endeavours for peace ; his tire¬ less efforts to unite Christendom against their common foe, the Turk ; his opposi¬ tion to the revolutionary Hussites in Bohemia and the anarchical Waldenses, two sources of the gravest danger, must be esteemed as worthy of the highest praise. Could he have brought his labours to fruition Europe would in later ages have been spared many a conflict and many a disaster.

Roscoe in reference to Innocent remarks: “The urbanity and mildness of his manners formed a striking con¬ trast to the inflexible character of his predecessor.”! And again : “If the character of Innocent were to be im¬ partially weighed, the balance would incline, but with no very rapid motion, to the favourable side. His native dis¬ position seems to have been mild and placable; but the disputed claims of the Roman See, which he conceived it to be his duty to enforce, led him into embarrassments, from which he was with difficulty extricated, and which, without increasing his reputation, de¬ stroyed his repose. ”§ We have here the judgement of a historian who is inclined to censure rather than to de¬ fend, and who certainly did not recog¬ nize, because he was incapable of appreciating, the almost overwhelming difficulties with which Innocent must needs contend if he were, as in con¬ science bound, to act as the chief Pastor of Christendom, a critical position which he needs must face and endeavour to control, although he were well aware that humanly speaking his efforts had no chance of success, whilst they cost him health and repose and gained him oppugnancy and misunderstanding.

Immediately upon the receipt of the Bull, Summis desiderantes affectibus, in 1485, Fr. Henry Kramer commenced

Quid quaeris testes, sit mas anfoemina Cibo? Respice natorum, pignora certa, gregem.

Octo Nocens pueros genuit, totidemque puellas, Hunc merito poterit dicere Roma patrem.

It is hardly to be believed that these libels have been accepted as actual fact.

f “ Lorenzo de ’ Medici,” c. vi.

§ “ Leo the Tenth,” c. iii.

xxxn

INTRODUCTION

his crusade against witches at Inns¬ bruck, but he was opposed on certain technical grounds by the Bishop of Brixen, nor was Duke Sigismund so ready to help the Inquisitors with the civil arm.* In fact the prosecutions were, if not actually directed, at least largely controlled, by the episcopal authority nor did the ordinary courts, as is so often supposed, invariably carry out the full sentence of the Holy Office. Not so very many years later, indeed, the civil power took full cognizance of any charges of witchcraft, and it was then that far more blood was spilled and far more fires blazed than ever in the days when Kramer and Sprenger were directing the trials. It should be borne in mind too that frequent dis¬ turbances, conspiracies of anarchists, and nascent Bolshevism showed that the district was rotted to the core, and the severities of Kramer and Sprenger were by no means so unwarranted as is generally supposed.

On 6 June, 1474, Sprenger (Mag. Jacobus Sprenger) is mentioned as Prior of the Dominican house at Cologne, and on 8 February, 1479, he was present, as the socius of Gerhard von Elten, at the trial of John von Ruchratt of Wesel, who was found guilty of pro¬ pagating the most subversive doctrines, and was sentenced to seclusion in the Augustinian monastery at Mainz, where he died in 1481.

Unfortunately full biographies of these two remarkable men, James Sprenger and Henry Kramer, have not been transmitted to us, but as many details have been succinctly collected in the Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum of Quetif and Echard, Paris, 1719, I have thought it convenient to transcribe the following accounts from that monu¬ mental v/ork.

F. Jacobus Sprenger {sub anno 1494). Fr. James Sprenger, a German by birth and a member of the community of the Dominican house at Cologne, greatly distinguished himself in his academic career at the University of that city. His name was widely known in the year 1468, when at the Chapter

* Janseen, “ History of the German People English translation, XVI, 24.9-51.

I In November 1485 the Bishop required Fr. Kramer to leave the diocese of Brixen. At the beginning of Lent, i486, the Bishop insists that Fr. Kramer shall no longer delay his departure.

General of the Order which was held at Rome he was appointed Regent of Studies at the Formal House of Studies at Cologne, and the following is recorded in the statutes : Fr. James Sprenger is officially appointed to study and lecture upon the Sentences so that he may proceed to the degree of Master. A few years later, although he was yet quite a young man, since he had already proceeded Master, he was elected Prior and Regent of this same house, which important offices he held in the year 1475, and a little after, we are told, he was elected Provincial of the whole German Province. It was about this date that he was named by Sixtus IV General Inquisitor for Germany, and especially for the dioceses of Cologne and Mainz. His coadjutor was a Master of Sacred Theology, of the Cologne Convent, by name Fr. Gerard von Elten, who unfortunately died within a year or two. Pope Innocent VIII confirmed Fr. Sprenger in this office, and appointed Fr. Henry Kramer as his socius. Fr. Sprenger was especially distinguished on account of his burning and fearless zeal for the old faith, his vigilance, his constancy, his singleness and patience in correcting novel abuses and errors. We know that he was living in our house at Cologne at least as late as the year 1494, since the famous Benedictine Abbot John Trithemius* refers to him in this year. It is most probable that he died and was buried among his brethren at Cologne. The following works are the fruit of his pen :

1 . The Paradoxes of John of Westphalia , which he preached from the pulpit at Worms , disproved and utterly refuted by two Masters of Sacred Theology , Fr. Gerard von Elten of Cologne and Fr. James Sprenger. Printed at Mainz, 1479.

2. Malleus Maleficarum Maleficas & earum haeresim , ut framea potentissima con¬ terens per F. Henricum Institoris & Jacobum

* Born at Trittenheim on the Moselle, 1 February, 1462; died at Wurzburg, 15 December, 1518. He took the monastic habit in 1482 at Sponheim, and here, owing to his love of books , he built up the renowned library. Having ruled as abbot for twenty-three years he sought a more retired and peaceful life, which he enjoyed as head of the Scottish house of S. James at Wiirzburg. Here he died aged fifty-five years. Only a part of his works, numbering more than eighty, have appeared in print. Many treat of the ascetical life, but some deal with classical literature and natural science.

INTRODUCTION xxxiii

Sprengerum Ord. Praedic. Inquisitores * * * § which has run into many editions (see the notice of Fr. Henry Kramer). This book was translated into French as Le Maillet des Sorderes, Lyons, Stephanus Gueynard, 4to.f See the Bibliotheque Franfoise du Verdier.

3. The institution and approbation of the Society or Confraternity of the Most Holy Rosary which was first erected at Cologne on 8 September in the year 1475, with an account of many graces and Miracles, as also of the indulgences which have been granted to this said Confraternity. I am uncertain whether he wrote and issued this book in Latin or in German, since I have never seen it, and it was cer¬ tainly composed for the instruction and edification of the people. Moreover, it is reported that the following circum¬ stances were the occasion of the found¬ ing of this Society. In the year 1475, when Nuess was being besieged by Charles, Duke of Burgundy, J with a vast army, and the town was on the very point of surrender, the magistrates and chief burghers of Cologne, fearing the danger which threatened their city, resorted in a body to Fr. James, who was then Prior of the Convent, and besought him that if he knew of any plan or device which might haply ward off this disaster, he would inform them of it and instruct them what was best to be done. Fr. James, having seriously debated the matter with the senior members of the house, replied that all were agreed there could be no more unfailing and present remedy than to fly to the help of the Blessed Virgin, and that the very best way of effecting this would be if they were not only to honour the Immaculate Mother of God by means of the Holy Rosary which had been propagated several years ago by Blessed Alan de la Roche, § but that

* “ The Hammer of Witches which destroy eth Witches and their heresy as with a two-edged sword,” by Fr. Henry Kramer and Fr. James Sprenger, of the Order of Preachers, Inquisitors.

f An edition which cannot be traced. See the Note upon the Bibliography.

+ I433~77' In T4^7 he succeeded to the Duke¬ dom of Burgundy on the death of his father, Philip the Good.

§ Alanus de Rupe, born about 1428; died at Zwolle in Holland, 8 September, 1475. Early in life he entered the Dominican Order, and after a distinguished academic career, preached

throughout Northern France, Flanders, and the Netherlands with intensest enthusiasm, his

they should also institute and erect a Society and Confraternity, in which every man should enrol himself with the firm resolve of thenceforth zealously and exactly fulfilling with a devout mind the obligations that might be required by the rules of membership. This excellent plan recommended itself to all. On the feast of the Nativity of Our Lady (8 September) the Society was inaugurated and High Mass was sung; there was a solemn procession throughout the city ; all enrolled them¬ selves and were inscribed on the Regis¬ ter;. they fulfilled their duties con¬ tinually with the utmost fervour, and before long the reward of their devotion was granted to them, since peace was made between the Emperor Frederick IV and Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. In the following year, 1476, Alexander Nanni de Maltesta, Bishop of Forli and legatus a latere\\ from Sixtus IV, who was then residing at Cologne, solemnly approved the Con¬ fraternity and on 10 March enriched it with many indulgences. And this is the first of those societies which are known as the Rosary Confraternity** to be erected and approved by the Apostolic authority. For in a short time, being

special mission being the re-establishment every¬ where of the Holy Rosary. His vision of the Rosary is generally assigned to the year 1460. The “ Petite Annie Dominic aine” {Rome, 1911, p. gog) says: ‘Tl fut le grand pridicateur des vertus de la T.-Ste-Vierge au XV e siecle et le restaurateur du St. Rosaire. Car . . . une divotion si rationnelle, si facile, si attrayante, si utile, inaugurie par un aussi grand saint que Dominique itait tombee presque partout dans Voubli. Alain se mit a V oeuvre . . . faisant renaitre avec la culture du Rosaire, les fruits de grdce. . . . Sa mort etait celle d’un saint, et son tombeau devint glorieux par de nombreux miracles. Un autel lui etait didii dans le couvent de Dinan, et le B. Grignon de Montefort aimait dy dire la messe.”

|| The legati a latere are cardinals sent by the Pope on extraordinary missions or as temporary representatives.

The Archbishop Rupprecht von der Pfalz ( 1469-80 ) was forcibly pressing his rights as temporal lord, an action which gave rise to considerable violence and much fighting through¬ out the territory.

** The Devotion itself was revealed by Our Lady to S. Dominic. Although perhaps no actual Confraternities had been granted indulgences before 1479-6, yet there were Dominican Guilds and Fraternities which fostered this Crown of Prayers.

XXXIV

INTRODUCTION

enriched with so many indulgences, and new privileges and benefice being be¬ stowed upon them almost daily, they have spread everywhere and they are to be found in almost every town and city throughout the whole of Christen¬ dom.* * * § * * It is worthy of remark that on the very same day that this Confra¬ ternity was erected at Cologne, Blessed Alan de la Roche of blessed memory, the most eminent promoter of the devo¬ tion of the Holy Rosary, died at Ros¬ tock and his beloved disciple, Fr. Michel Francis de l’lsle, who was sometime Master of Sacred Theology at Cologne, J gave Fr. Sprenger the most valuable assistance when the Rosary was being established, as we have related above. The works of Fr. James Sprenger are well approved by many authors as well as Trithemius; since amongst others who have praised him highly we may mention Albert Leander, O.P. ; § Antony of Siena, O.P. ; || Fernandez in his Concert. & Istor. ■del Rosar, Lib. 4, cap. 1, fol. 127; Fon¬ tana in his Theatro & Monum. published at Altamura, 1481 ; and, of authors not belonging to our Order, Antonius Pos- sevinus, S.J.,^J Miraeus,** Aegidius

* In i486 a priest in London writes to his patron in Yorkshire: * T send a paper of the Rosary of Our Lady of Coleyn, and I have registered your name with both my Ladis names, as the paper expresses, and ye be acopled as brethren and sisters .” “Plump ton Correspon¬ dence ” ( Camden Society, p. go).

f Later authorities say Jwolle in Holland.

£ Michel Frangois de VIsle, O.P. , Bishop of Selymbria, born circa /455 ; died 2 June, 1502. In 1488 this famous theologian was Regent of Studies at Cologne. An ample biography may be found in Quetif-Echard, “Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum,” Paris, 1719, sub anno 1502, Vol. II. pp. 7-9. Selymbria, or Selybria, is a ■titular see in Thracia Prima, suffragan of Heraclea.

§ He was the socius of Francis Silvester, O.P., ■of Ferrara, a celebrated theologian, who was born circa 1474, and died at Rennes, 19 September, 1526.

|| Lusitanus, born near Braga in Portugal; died at Naples, 2 January, 1383. The praise of Sprenger may be found, in his “Bibliotheca Ordinis Praedicatorum.” He is called “of Siena” because of his great devotion to S. Catharine of Siena.

Theologian and papal envoy. Born at Mantua in 1333 or 1934; died at Ferrara, 26 February, 1611. His many writings include “Moscovia,” Vilna, 1986, an important work on Russian history; “Del Sacrificio della Messa,”

Gelenius in his De admiranda Coloniae Agrippinae urbis Ubiorum Augustae magni¬ tudine sacra & ciuili. Coloniae, 1645, 4to, p. 430 ; Dupin, ff and very many more.

Of Henry Kramer, Jacques Quetif and Echard, Scriptores Ordinis Praedica¬ torum, Paris, 1719, Vol. I, pp. 896-97, sub anno 1500, give the following account: Fr. Henry Kramer (F. Hen- ricus Institoris) was of German nation¬ ality and a member of the German Province. It is definitely certain that he was a Master of Sacred Theology, which holy science he publicly professed, al¬ though we have not been able to dis¬ cover either in what town of Germany he was born, in what Universities he lectured, or in what house of the Order he was professed. He was, however, very greatly distinguished by his zeal for the Faith, which he most bravely and most strenuously defended both by his eloquence in the pulpit and on the printed page, and so when in those dark days various errors had begun to penetrate Germany, and witches with their horrid craft, foul sorceries, and devilish commerce were increasing on every side, Pope Innocent VIII, by Letters Apostolic which were given at Rome at S. Peter’s in the first year of his reign, 1484, appointed Henry Kramer and James Sprenger, Professors of Sacred Theology, general Inquisitors for all the dioceses of the five metro¬ politan churches of Germany, that is to say, Mainz, Cologne, Treves, Salzburg, and Bremen. They showed them¬ selves most zealous in the work which they had to do, and especially did they

Lyons, 1963; “Apparatus sacer ad Scripturam Ueteris et Noui Test.,” Venice, 1603-6; “II soldato cristiano,” Rome, 1369; and a “Biblio¬ theca Selecta,” Rome, 1393.

** Aubert Le Mire, ecclesiastical historian, born at Brussels, 30 November , 1373; died at Antwerp, 19 October, 1640. He was a canon of Antwerp Cathedral, and in 1624 he became Dean of the chapter and Vicar-general of the diocese. He has left thirty-nine vast works on profane, ecclesiastical, and monastic history. See De Bidder's “Aubert Le Mire, sa vie, ses Merits, memoire historique et critique,” Paris, 1863.

1 1 Louis-Ellies Dupin, born 17 June, 1637; died 6 June, 1719. He wrote at great length upon the Fathers, many of whose works he edited with commentaries. Some of his statements involved him in disputes with Dom. Petit-Didier and later with Bossuet. Dupin is an extremely prolific author, but several of his propositions were regarded as suspect in orthodoxy.

INTRODUCTION

XXXV

make inquisition for witches and for those who were gravely suspect of sor¬ cery, all of whom they prosecuted with the extremest rigour of the law. Maxi¬ milian I, Emperor of Germany and King of the Romans, by royal letters patent which he signed at Brussels on 6 November, i486, bestowed upon Fr. Kramer and Fr. Sprenger the enjoy¬ ment of full civil powers in the perform¬ ance of their duties as Inquisitors, and he commanded that throughout his do¬ minions all should obey the two dele¬ gates of the Holy Office in their busi¬ ness, and should be ready and willing to help them upon every occasion. For several years Fr. Henry Kramer was Spiritual Director attached to our Church at Salzburg, which important office he fulfilled with singular great commendation. Thence he was sum¬ moned in the year 1495 to Venice by the Master- General of the Order, Fr. Joaquin de Torres, in order that he might give public lectures, and hold disputations concerning public worship and the adoration of the Most Holy Sacrament. For there were some theo¬ logians about this date who taught that the Blessed Sacrament must only be worshipped conditionally, with an implicit and intellectual reservation of adoring the Host in the tabernacle only in so far as It had been duly and exactly consecrated. Fr. Kramer, whose dis¬ putations were honoured by the pres¬ ence of the Patriarch of Venice,* with the utmost fervour publicly confronted those who maintained this view, and not infrequently did he preach against them from the pulpit. The whole ques¬ tion had recently arisen from a certain circumstance which happened in the vicinity of Padua. When a country fel¬ low' was collecting wood and dry leaves in a little copse hard by the city he found, wrapped up in a linen cloth be¬ neath some dry brambles and bracken and dead branches of trees, two pyxes or ciboria containing particles which some three years before had been stolen from a neighbouring village

* In 1457 Pope Nicholas V, upon the death of Domenico Michel, Patriarch of Grado, suppressed the Patriarchate and the Bishopric of Castello, incorporating them both by the terms of the Bull “ Regis aeterni ” in the new Patriarchate of Venice, and thus Venice succeeded to the whole metropolitan jurisdiction of Grado, including the sees of Dalmatia.

church, the one of which was used to carry the Lord’s Body to the sick, the other being provided for the exposition of the Sanctissimum on the feast of Corpus Christi. The rustic immedi¬ ately reported what he had discovered to the parish priest of the chapel hard by the spinney. The good Father immedi¬ ately hastened to the spot and saw that it was exactly as had been told him. When he more closely examined the vessels he found in one pyx a number of Hosts, and so fetching thither from the church a consecrated altar-stone which it was the custom to carry when the Viaticum was taken to the dying in order that the ciborium might be de¬ cently set thereon, he covered the stone with a corporal or a fair linen cloth and reverently placed it beneath the pyx. He built all around a little wooden baldaquin or shrine, and presently put devout persons to watch the place so that no indignity might be done. Meanwhile the incident had been noised abroad and vast throngs of people made their way to the place where the thicket was; candles were lighted all around ; “Christ’s Body,” they cry, “is here” ; and every knee bent in humblest adoration. Before long news of the event was reported to the Bishop of Padua, f who, having sent thither two or three priests, inquired most carefully into every detail. Since in the other ciborium they only found some corrupted particles of the Sacra¬ mental Species, in the sight of the whole multitude the clerics who had come from the Bishop broke down the tiny tabernacle that had been improvised, scattered all the boughs and leafery which were arranged about it, ex¬ tinguished the tapers, and carried the sacred vessels away with them. Imme¬ diately after it was forbidden under severest penalties of ecclesiastical cen¬ sures and excommunication itself for anyone to visit that spot or to offer devotions there. Moreover, upon this occasion certain priests preached openly that the people who resorted thither had committed idolatry, that they had wor¬ shipped nothing else save brambles and decay, trees, nay, some went so far as to declare that they had adored the devil himself". As might be supposed, very grave contentions were set astir between

f Jacopo Zeno, nephew and biographer of the famous Venetian admiral, Carlo Zeno-

XXXVI

INTRODUCTION

the parish priests and their flocks, and it was sharply argued whether the people had sinned by their devotion to Christ’s Body, Which they sincerely believed to be there, but Which (it seems) perhaps was not there: and the question was then mooted whether a man ought not to worship the Blessed Sacrament, ay, even when Christ’s Body is consecrated in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and elevated and carried as Viaticum in procession to the sick, only condition¬ ally, that is to say, since he does not erhaps know if It is actually Christ’s ody (or whether some accident may not have occurred), since no man can claim to be individually enlightened by God on this point and desire to have the Mystery demonstrated and proved to him.* It was much about the same time that Fr. Kramer under¬ took to refute and utterly disprove the bold and wicked theories put forward by another preacher who at Augsburg dared to proclaim from the pulpit that the Catholic Church had not definitely laid down that the appearances of Christ in His human body, and some¬ times bleeding from His Sacred Wounds, in the Blessed Sacrament f

* It is remarkable that at the very moment similar controversies are raised about the Blessed Sacrament. The words “ Real Presence ” are freely bandied. This is a popular phrase, since it may mean anything or nothing. It is far better to save all ambiguity, and to say “ The Blessed Sacrament is God.” One writer, professing him¬ self a Christian, declares that it is at least doubt¬ ful whether Our Lord instituted The Holy Sacrifice of the Altar. This, of course, is tanta¬ mount to a denial of Christ.

f It must suffice to mention only a few of the many Saints who have seen Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. S. Veronica of Binasco, the Augustinian, saw Him there with her bodily eyes, whilst the Host was environed by adoring Angels. Vaulem the Cistercian saw in the Host the Infant Jesus, Who held a crown of gold adorned with precious stones. When Peter of Toulouse was holding the Host over the chalice at Mass the Bambino of marvellous beauty appeared between his fingers. The same thing happened every morning for two or three months. Similarly Our Lord was seen by S. Angela of Foligno; S. Hugh of Cluny; S. Lydwine; S. Ignatius; S. Joseph of Cupertino; Domenica of Paradise; Teresa de la Cerda, O.S.D., who saw the Infant Jesus lying on the corporal; and very many more. S. Catharine of Siena saw Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament under different forms, and at the fraction of the Host she saw how He remained entire in each part. Mary of Oignies at

are real and true manifestations of Our Saviour, but that it may be disputed whether Our Lord is truly there and truly to be worshipped by the people. This wretch even went so far as to say that miracles of this kind should be left as it were to the good judgement of God, inasmuch as with regard to these miraculous appearances nothing has been strictly defined by the Church, nor yet do the Holy Fathers or Doctors lay down any sure and certain rule. These doctrines Fr. Kramer opposed with the utmost zeal and learning, de¬ livering many an eloquent sermon against the innovator and utterly con¬ demning the theories which had been thus put forth and proclaimed. Nay, more, by virtue of his position and his powers as delegate of the Holy Office he forbade under the pain of excom¬ munication that anyone should ever again dare to preach such errors. Fr. Kramer wrote several works, of which some have been more than once re¬ printed :

i. Malleus Maleficarum Maleficas & earum haeresim , ut framea potentissima conterens per F. Henricum Institorem & Jacobum Sprengerum ord. Praed. Inquisi¬ tores, Lyons, Junta, 1484.J This edition is highly praised by Fontana in his work De Monumentis. Another edition was published at Paris, apud Joannem Paruum , 8vo ; also at Cologne, apud Joannem Gymnicium , 8vo, 1520; and another edition apud Nicolaum Bassaeum at Frankfort, 8vo, 1580 and 1582 (also twovols., i2mo, 1588). The editions of 1520, 1580, and 1582 are to be found in the Royal Library, Nos. 2882, 2883, and 2884. The editions printed at Venice in 1576 and at Lyons in 1620 are highly praised by Dupin. The latest edition is published at Lyons, Sumptibus Claudii Bourgeat , 4 vols., i66g.§

the elevation in Passion-Tide saw Our Lord upon the Cross; at Christmas Our Lady appeared in the Host carrying the Infant Jesus in her arms. In the Cathedral at Orvieto I have venerated the Corporale which is stained with blood that fell from the Host when a young priest who doubted was saying Mass. This happened in the days of Pope Urban IV, who reigned 1261-64.

f This can hardly be correct.

§ The contents of this valuable collection are as follows:

* Vol. I:

Nider, O.P., John. Fornicarius de maleficiis.

INTRODUCTION

XXXVll

The Malleus Maleficarum when sub¬ mitted by the authors to the University of Cologne was officially approved by all the Doctors of the Theological Faculty on 9 May, 1487.

2. Several Discourses and various ser¬ mons against the four errors which have newly arisen with regard to the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist , now collected and brought together by the Professor of Scripture of the Church of Salzburg , Brother Henry Kramer, of the Order of Preachers, General Inquisitor of heretical pravity. Pub¬ lished at Nuremberg by Antony Ko- berger, 4to, 1496. This work is divided into three parts:

1. The First Part. A Tractate against the errors of the preacher who taught that Christ was only to be con¬ ditionally worshipped in the Blessed Sacrament : A Reply to the objection raised by this preacher, and XI sermons on the Blessed Sacrament.

The Second Part. XIX Sermons on the Blessed Sacrament.

Sprenger and Kramer. Malleus Male¬ ficarum.

Vol. II:

Anania, Giovanni Lorenzo. De Natura Daemonum.

Basin, Bernard. De Artibus magicis.

Bernard of Como, O.P. De Strigibus. ( With the annotations of Francesco Pena.)

Castro, O. M., Alfonso A. De impia Sortilegarum haeresi.

De Vignate, Ambrose. Quaestio de Lamiis. ( With a commentary by Pena.)

Gerson, John. De Probatione Spirituum. De erroribus circa artem magicam repro¬ batis.

Grilland, Paul. De Sortilegiis.

Leone, Giovanni Francesco. De Sortilegiis.

Molitor, Ulrich. De Pythonicis mulieribus.

Murner, O.M., Thomas. De Pythonico Contractu.

Simancus, I ago. De Lamiis.

Spina, O.P., Bartolomeo. De Strigi¬ bus. In Ponginibium de Lamiis Apologia.

Vol. Ill:

Gorichen, Heinrich de. De super¬ stitionis quibusdam casibus.

Mamor, Pietro. Flagellum maleficorum.

Menghi, Girolamo, Capuchin. Flagellum Daemonum. Fustis Dae¬ monum.

Stampa, Pietro Antonio. Fuga Satanae.

Vol. IV:

Ars exorcistica tribus partibus.

The Third Part. i. Further Six Sermons on the Sacrament.

2. Advice and cautels for priests.

3. A little Treatise concerning the miracu¬ lous Host and the species of Blood which have been reserved for the space of 300 years at Augsburg, or a sharp confutation of the error which asserts that the miraculous Sacrament of the Eucharist, whilst there is the appearance in the Host of Blood or Human Flesh or the form of a Figure, is not truly the Blessed Sacrament, with the pro¬ mulgation of the Ban of Excommunication against all and sundry who dare to entertain this opinion. A copy of this book may be found at Paris in the library of our monastery of S. Honorat.*

It 'was about the same time, 1497-98, that certain refractory and unruly spirits took great exception against the censure which the Bishop of Treves, J who was a legatus de latere from the Apostolic See, and the Patriarch of Venice had pronounced on Antonio degli Roselli of Arezzo and his book De Monarchia siue de potestate imperatoris, and since these rash men openly averred that the censure and condemnation of this work had not been brought about in any just or legal way, Fr. Henry was requested by Don Antonio de’ Piza- manni, a patrician of Venice, who was also a Doctor of Sacred Theology, to write a tractate impugning this said book of Antonio degli Roselli. Accord¬ ingly Fr. Kramer composed his opus¬ cule with the following title :

3. Here beginneth a Tractate confuting the errors of Master Antonio degli Roselli of Padua, jurisconsult, concerning the plen¬ ary power of the Supreme Pontiff and the power of a temporal monarch. The conclu¬ sion is as follows : Here endeth the Reply of the Inquisitor-General of Germany, Fr. Henry Kramer, in answer to the erroneous and mistaken opinions of Antonio degli Ro¬ selli. Printed at Venice, at the Press of Giacomo de Lencho, at the charge of Peter Liechtenstein, 27 July, 1499.

4. The Shield of Defence of the Holy Roman Church against the Picards % and

* This great Saint is much honoured in France. He was Archbishop of Arles, and founder of the monastery of Lerins. Born about 350, he died in January, 423.

I John II, Margrave of Baden. j The extremer Picards seem to have been an offshoot of the Behgards and to have professed the Adamite heresy. They called their churches Paradise and whilst engaged in common worship

XXXV111

INTRODUCTION

Waldenses. This was published when Fr. Kramer was acting as Censor of the Faith under Alexander VI * * * * § in Bo¬ hemia and Moldavia. This work is praised by the famous Dominican writer Noel Alexandre f in his Selecta his¬ toriae ecclesiasticae capita et in loca eiusdem insignia dissertationes historicae , criticae , dogmaticae. In dealing with the fif¬ teenth century he quotes passages from this work. The bibliographer Beug- heim catalogues an edition of this work among those Incunabula the exact date of which cannot be traced. Georg Sim- ler, who was Rector of the University of Pforzheim, and afterwards Professor of Jurisprudence of Tubingen in the early decades of the sixteenth century, also mentions this work with commendation. Odorico Rinaldi J quotes from this work in his Annales under the year 1500. The Sermons of 1496 are highly praised by Antony of Siena, O.P.§ Antonius Possevinus, SJ., speaks of a treatise Against the Errors of Witches. This I

stripped themselves quite nude. Shameful dis¬ orders followed. A number of these fanatics took possession of an island in the river Nezarka and lived in open communism. In 1421 Jiska, the Hussite leader , practically exterminated the sect. There have, however, been sporadic outbreaks of these Neo-Adamites. Picards was also a name given to the “ Bohemian Brethren ,” who may be said to have been organized in 1457 by Gregory, the nephew of Rokyzana. They held very extreme views, denying that the Blessed Sacrament is the Body of Christ, advocating the abolition of all distinctions of rank and fortune and the living in community. In the course of time these views were practically modified, and to-day they may be said to be represented by the Moravian Body.

* Reigned from n August, 1492, to 18 August, 1503.

4 Born at Rouen ig January, 1633; he entered the Dominican Order in that city, g May, 1633. His literary labours were very vast, and in 1677 he published at Paris the first volume of his huge “History.” Some passages were very sharply criticized, and even censured, but in the preface to the third edition (Paris, i6gg, 8 volumes, folio ) the author, whilst fully sub¬ mitting to the Holy See, tactfully defends himself He died of old age in the convent of S. Jacques at Paris, 21 August, 1724.

4 Oratorian, born at Treviso, 1333; died at Rome, 22 January, 1671. This eminent his¬ torian occupied himself with the continuation of the “ Annales ” of the Ven. Cesar e Baronio, and his work, which covers the years from ug8 to 1363, was published at Rome, 1646-77.

§ In his “ Bibliotheca Ordinis Praedic¬ atorum.”

have never seen, but I feel very well assured that it is no other work than the Malleus Maleficarum, which was written in collaboration with Fr. James Sprenger, and of which we have spoken above in some detail.

In what year Fr. Henry Kramer died and to what house of the Order he was then attached is not recorded, but it seems certain that he was living at least as late as 1500.

Thus Quetif-Echard, but we may not impertinently add a few, from several, formal references which occur in Dominican registers and archives. James Sprenger was born at Basel (he is called de Basilea in a MS. belonging to the Library of Basel), probably about 1 436-38, and he was admitted as a Dominican novice in 1452 at the con¬ vent of his native town. An extract “ex monumentis conuent. Coloniens.” says that Sprenger “ beatus anno 1495 obiit Argentinae ad S. Nicolaum in Undis in conuentu sororum ordinis nostri.” Another account relates that he did not die at Strasburg on 6 December, 1495, but at Verona, 3 February, 1503, and certainly Jacobus Magdalius in his Stichologia has “In mortem magistri Iacobi Sprenger, sacri ordinis praedicatorii per Theutoniam prouincialis, Elegia,” which com¬ mences :

O utinam patrio recubassent ossa sepulchro

Quae modo Zenonis || urbe sepulta iacent.

Henry Kramer, who appears in the Dominican registers as “Fr. Henricus Institoris de Sletstat,” was born about 1430. His later years were distinguished by the fervour of his apostolic missions in Bohemia, where he died in 1505.

Although, as we have seen, Fr. Henry Kramer and Fr. James Sprenger were men of many activities, it is by the Malleus Maleficarum that they will chiefly be remembered. There can be no doubt that this work had in its day and for a full couple of centuries an enormous influence. There are few demonologists and writers upon witch-

11 S. Jem, Martyr, is the Patron of Verona, in which city a basilica, San Jenone, is dedicated in his honour. His feast is kept 12 April, and the Roman Martyrology tells us that he was a Bishop of Verona, put to death under the Emperor Gallienus .

INTRODUCTION

XXXIX

craft who do not refer to its pages as an ultimate authority. It was continually quoted and appealed to in the witch- trials of Germany, France, Italy, and England ; whilst the methods and ex¬ amples of the two Inquisitors gained an even more extensive credit and sanction owing to their reproduction (sometimes without direct acknowledgement) in the works of Bodin, De Lancre, Boguet, Remy, Tartarotti, Elich, Grilland, Pons, Godelmann, de Moura, Oberlal, Cigogna, Peperni, Martinus Aries, Anania, Binsfeld, Bernard Basin, Men- ghi, Stampa, Clodius, Schelhammer, Wolf, Stegmann, Neissner, Voigt, Cat- tani, Ricardus, and a hundred more. King James has drawn (probably in- direcdy) much of his Daemonologie, in Forme of a Dialogue , Divided into three Bookes * * * § from the pages of the Malleus; and Thomas Shadwell, the Orange laureate, in the “Notes upon the Magick” of his famous play, The Lan¬ cashire Witches ,f continually quotes from the same source.

To some there may seem much in the Malleus Maleficarum that is crude, much that is difficult. For example, the etym¬ ology will provoke a smile. The deriva¬ tion of Femina% from fe minus is no¬ torious, and hardly less awkward is the statement that Diabolus § comes “a Dia, quod est duo, et bolus, quod est mor- sellus ; quia duo occidit, scilicet corpus et animam.” Yet I venture to say that these blemishes — such gross blunders, if you will — do not affect the real con¬ texture and weight of this mighty treatise.

Possibly what will seem even more amazing to modern readers is the misogynic trend of various passages, and these not of the briefest nor least pointed. However, exaggerated as these may be, I am not altogether certain that they will not prove a wholesome and needful antidote in this feministic age, when the sexes seem confounded, and

* Edinburgh, 1597.

f ^to, 1682. Produced at the Duke's Theatre, Dorset Garden, in the autumn ( probably September) of 1681.

I The word is from fe — , feu — , — Grk. <f>v — <0, to produce; whence fetus, fecundus, etc. Cfi Sanscrit bhuas, bhavas, to become. Also fi — 0; fu — turus.

§ The word is from traducere.

So 8ux(3oXr;, slander, enmity. 6 8ta|3oXo<;, the slanderer, the enemy; hence, Satan, the devil.

it appears to be the chief object of many females to ape the man, an in¬ decorum by which they not only divest themselves of such charm as they might boast, but lay themselves open to the sternest reprobation in the name of sanity and common-sense. For the Apostle S. Peter says : “Let wives be subject to their husbands: that if any believe not the word, they may be won without the word, by the conversation of the wives, considering your chaste conversation with fear. Whose adorn¬ ing let it not be the outward plaiting of the hair, or the wearing of gold, or the putting on of apparel; but the hidden man of the heart is the incorruptibility of a quiet and meek spirit, which is rich in the sight of God. For after the manner heretofore the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned them¬ selves, being in subjection to their own husbands: as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord : whose daughters you are, doing well, and not fearing any disturbance.”

With regard to the sentences pro¬ nounced upon witches and the course of their trials, we may say that these things must be considered in reference and in proportion to the legal code of the age. Modern justice knows sen¬ tences of the most ferocious savagery, punishments which can only be dealt out by brutal vindictiveness, and these are often meted out to offences con¬ cerning which we may sometimes ask ourselves whether they are offences at all; || they certainly do no harm to society, and no harm to the person. Witches were the bane of all social order; they injured not only persons but property. They were, in fact, as has previously been emphasized, the active members of a vast revolutionary body, a conspiracy against civilization. Any other save the most thorough measures must have been unavailing ; worse, they must have but fanned the flame.

And so in the years to come, when the Malleus Maleficarum was used as a standard text-book, supremely authoritative practice winnowed the little chaff, the etymologies, from the wheat of wisdom. Yet it is safe to say that the book is to-day scarcely known

|| For an excellent study of this most difficult and most painful subject see a valuable work by George Ives, “ The History of Penal Methods ,” 1914.

xl

INTRODUCTION

save by name. It has become a legend. Writer after writer, who had never turned the pages, felt himself at liberty to heap ridicule and abuse upon this venerable volume. He could quote — though he had never seen the text — an etymological absurdity or two, or if in more serious vein he could prate glibly enough of the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum as a “most dis¬ astrous episode.” He did not know very clearly what he meant, and the humbug trusted that nobody would stop to in¬ quire. For the most part his confidence was respected ; his word was taken.

We must approach this great work — admirable in spite of its triflings blemishes — with open minds and grave intent ; if we duly consider the world of confusion, of Bolshevism, of anarchy and licentiousness all around to-day, it should be an easy task for us to picture the difficulties, the hideous dangers with which Henry Kramer and James Sprenger were called to combat and to cope ; we must be prepared to discount certain plain faults, certain awkward¬ nesses, certain roughnesses and even severities; and then shall we be in a

position dispassionately and calmly to pronounce opinion upon the value and the merit of this famous treatise.

As for myself, I do not hesitate to record my judgement. Literary merits and graces, strictly speaking, were not the aim of the authors of the Malleus Maleficarum , although there are felicities not a few to be found in their admirable pages. Yet I dare not even hope that the flavour of Latinity is preserved in a translation which can hardly avoid being jejune and bare. The interest, then, lies in the subject-matter. And from this point of view the Malleus Maleficarum is one of the most pregnant and most interesting books I know in the library of its kind — a kind which, as it deals with eternal things, the eternal conflict of good and evil, must eternally capture the attention of all men who think, all who see, or are endeavouring to see, reality beyond the accidents of matter, time, and space.

Montague Summers.

In Festo Expectationis B.M.V.,

1927.

NOTA. — To Dr. H. J. Norman I wish to express my grateful thanks for his kindness in having read through the proofs of the Malleus Maleficarum. Those who realize the labour and sacrifice of time such a task demands will best appreciate the value of such generous assistance.

M. S.

A NOTE UPON THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE MALLEUS MALEFICARUM

The Bibliography of the Malleus Maleficarum is extremely intricate and difficult, as many of the earlier editions both folio and quarto are without place or date. Thus the British Museum possesses a copy (Press-Mark I B, 1606), folio, which in the catalogue stands as “1485?”, but this can hardly be correct. The British Museum has five editions of the fifteenth century: 4to, 1490? (I A 8634) ; folio, 1490 (IB 8615); 4to, 1494 (IA 7468); folio, 1494 (IB 5064); 4to, 1496 (IA 75°3)-*

Graesse, Bibliotheca Magica , Leipzig, 1843, gives the editions of the fifteenth century as Nuremberg, both 4to and folio, 1494 and 1496. He also mentions an early folio and an early 4to without date or place. He further records a 4to published at Cologne in 1489, and a folio published at Cologne, 1494.

Malleus Maleficarum, 8vo, Paris, an edition to which the British Museum cata¬ logue assigns the date “1510?”.

Malleus Maleficarum, 8vo, “Colonie. Per me Henricu de Nussia,” 1511.

Malleus Maleficarum, 8vo, Coloniae, J. Gymnicus, 1520. (Copies of these two Cologne editions are in the British Museum.)

Malleus Maleficarum . . . per F. Raffaelem Majfeum Venetum et D. Jacobi a Judeca instituti Seruorum summo studio illustratus et a multis erroribus vindicatus . . . Venetiis Ad Candentis Salamandrae insigne. MD. LXXVI, 8vo. (This is a disappointing reprint, and it is difficult to see in what consisted the editorial care of the Servite Raffaelo Maffei, who may or may not have been some relation of the famous humanist of the same name (d. 25 January, 1522), and who was of the monastery of San Giacomo della Guidecca. He might have produced a critical edition of the greatest value, but as it is there are no glosses, there is no excursus, and the text is poor. For example, in a very difficult passage, Principalis Quaestio II, Pars II, where the earliest texts read “die dominico sotularia iuuenum fungia . . . perun¬ gunt,” Venice, 1576, has “ die dominica solutaria iuuenum fungia . . . perungunt.”)

Malleus Maleficarum, Impressum Francofurti ad Moenum apud Nicolaum Bassaeum . . . 8vo, 1580.

Malleus Maleficarum, . . . Francofurti . . . apud Nicolaum Bassaeum . . . 8vo, 1582.

Malleus Maleficarum, . . . Francofurti . . . apud Nicolaum Bassaeum, 2 vols., 8vo, 1588. This edition also contains in Vol. I extracts from Nider’s Formicarius. Vol. II, which is dedicated to John Miindzenberg, Prior of the Carmelite House at Frankfort, contains the following nine Tractates:

Bernard Basin, De artibus magicis. (1482.)

Ulrich Molitor, De lamiis. (1489.)

Girolamo Menghi, O.S.F.C., Flagellum Daemonum. (1578.)

John Gerson, De probatione Spirituum. ( circa 1404.)

Thomas Murner, O.M., De Pythonico contractu. (1499.)

Felix Hemmerlin, De exorcismis. ( circa 1445.)

Eiusdem, De credulitate Daemonibus adhibenda. (1454.)

Bartolomeo Spina, O.P., De strigibus. (1523.)

Eiusdem, Apologiae III aduersus Ioann. Franc. Ponzinibium. (1525.)

The title-page announces that these works are “Omnes de integro nunc demum in ordinem congestos, notis & explicationibus illustratos, atque ab innumeris quibus ad nauseam usque scatebant mendis in usum communem uindicatos.” It is true that the earlier editions did swarm with errors, and some of

* Jules Baissac, “Les grands Jours de la Sorcellerie ,” i8go, p. ig, says — I do not know on what authority — -“La 1™ edition du ‘ Malleus Maleficarum' est de i48g, in — 4, Cologne, cinq ans apr'es la publication de la Bulle Summis desiderantes .”

xli

xlii

A NOTE UPON THE BIBLIOGRAPHY

these blemishes have been duly corrected, but there still remains much to be done in the way of emendation. It is to be wished that even the little care given to Vol. II had been bestowed on the text of the Malleus Maleficarum in Vol. I, for this is very poor and faulty.

Malleus Maleficarum , Lyons, 8vo, 1595. (Graesse.)

Malleus Maleficarum , Friburg, 1598.

Malleus Maleficarum , Lyons, 8vo, 1600.

Malleus Maleficarum, Lyons, “multo auctior,” 8vo, 1620.

Malleus Maleficarum, Friburg, 8vo, 1660.

Malleus Maleficarum, 4X0, Lyons, 1666. (Graesse.)

Malleus Maleficarum, 4 vols., “sumptibus Claudii Bourgeat,” 4to, Lyons, 1669. This would appear to be the latest edition of the Malleus Maleficarum, and the text has here and there received some revision. For example, in the passage to which reference has already been made, Principalis Quaestio II, Pars II, where the former reading was “sotularia iuuenum fungia . . . perungunt,” we have the correct “axungia”* instead of “fungia.” I have given in the Introduction a list of the collections contained in these four noble volumes.

Quetif-Echard, Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum, 2 vols., Paris, 1719, Vol. I, p. 881, mention a French translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, Le Maillet des Sorderes, as having been published, quarto, at Lyons by Stephanus Gueynard. No date, however, is given, and as this book cannot be traced, it seems highly probable that one of the many Lyons reprints of the Malleus Maleficarum was mistakenly supposed to be a French rendering of the original. In answer to my inquiries M. le Directeur of the Bibliotheque Nationale has kindly informed me : “L’ouv- rage de Sprenger, Le Maillet des Sorderes, edition de Lyon, ne se trouve point a la Bibliotheque Nationale. Mais, de plus, je me suis reporte a l’excellente biblio¬ graphic lyonnaise de Baudrier, XIe serie, 1914, et la non plus, l’edition de Stephanus Gueynard ne se trouve point.” Le Maillet des Sorderes, 4to, Lyons, by Stephanus Gueynard, does not occur in the valuable Essai dime Bibliographic Frangaise meth- odique et raisonnee de la Sorcellerie of R. Yve-Plessis, Paris, 1900.

There is a modern German translation of the Malleus Maleficarum by J. W. R. Schmidt, Der Hexenhammer, 3 vols., Berlin, 1906; second edition,

I922_3-

In 1912 Oswald Weigel, the famous “Antiquariat & Auktions-Institut” of Leipzig, sold an exceptionally fine, if not — should it be once permissible to use a much over- worked word — a unique collection of books dealing with witchcraft. This Library contained no fewer than twenty-nine exemplars of the Malleus Maleficarum , of which the dates were catalogued as follows: (1) Argentorati (Strasburg), J. Priiss, ca. 1487. (2) Spirae, Peter Drach, ca. 1487. (3) Spirae, Peter Drach, ca. 1490; or Basle, J. von Amorbach, ca. 1490?. (4) No place nor date. With inscription “Codex moasterij scti Martini prope Treuirim.” (5) Koln, J. Koelhoff, 1494. (6) Niirnberg, Anton Koberger, 1494. (7) Niirnberg, Anton Koberger, 1496. (8) [Paris], Jehan Petit, ca. 1497. (9) Coin, Henricus de Nussia, 1 5 1 1 . (10) [Paris, Jehan Petit, no date.] (n) Lyon, J. Marion, 1519. (12) Niirn- berg, Frederick Peypus, 1519. (13) Koln, J. Gymnicus, 1520. (14) Venetiis, Io. Antonius Bertanus, 1574. (15) Venetiis, ibid., 1576. (16) Francofurti, apud Nicolaum Bassaeum, 1580. (17) Francofurti, ibid., 1582. (18) Lugduni, apud Ioannam Iacobi Iuntae, 2 tomi, 1584. In this edition the title is misprinted Malleus Maleficorum. (19) Francofurti, Sumptibus Nicolai Bassaei, 1588. (20) Duplicate of 19. (21) Lugduni, Petri Landry, 2 tomi, 1595. (22) Francofurti, Sumptibus Nicolai Bassaei, 2 tomi, 1600. (23) Lugduni, Sumptibus Petri Landry, 3 tomi, 1604. (24) Lugduni, ibid., 1614. (25) Lugduni, ibid., 1615. (26) Lug¬ duni, Sumptibus Clavdii Landry, 3 tomi, 1620. (27) Lugduni, 3 tomi,

1620-21. (28) Lugduni, 4 tomi, 1669. (29) The modern German translation of the Malleus Maleficarum by J. W. R. Schmidt, Der Hexenhammer, 3 vols., Berlin, 1906.

* Axis-ungo. See Palladius, I, xvii, 3. Also Vegetius, (‘De Arte Veterinaria fi IV, x, 3 ; also IV, xii, 3.

THE BULL OF INNOCENT VIII

Innocent, Bishop, Servant of the servants of God, for an eternal

remembrance.

DESIRING with the most heartfelt anxiety, even as Our Apostle- ship requires, that the Catholic Faith should especially in this Our day increase and flourish everywhere, and that all heretical depravity should be driven far from the frontiers and bournes of the Faithful, We very gladly proclaim and even restate those particular means and methods whereby Our pious desire may obtain its wished effect, since when all errors are uprooted by Our diligent avocation as by the hoe of a provident husbandman, a zeal for, and the regular observ¬ ance of, Our holy Faith will be all the more strongly impressed upon the hearts of the faithful.

It has indeed lately come to Our ears, not without afflicting Us with bitter sorrow, that in some parts of Northern Germany, as well as in the provinces, townships, territories, districts, and dioceses of Mainz, Cologne, Treves, Salzburg, and Bremen, many persons of both sexes, unmindful of their own salvation and straying from the Catholic Faith, have abandoned themselves to devils, incubi and succubi, and by their incantations, spells, conjurations, and other accursed charms and crafts, enormities and horrid offences, have slain infants yet in the mother’s womb, as also the offspring of cattle, have blasted the produce of the earth, the grapes of the vine, the fruits of trees, nay, men and women, beasts of burthen, herd-beasts, as well as animals of other kinds, vineyards, orchards, meadows, pasture- land, corn, wheat, and all other cereals; these wretches furthermore afflict and torment men and women, beasts of burthen, herd-beasts, as well as animals of other kinds, with terrible and piteous pains and sore diseases, both internal and external; they hinder men from performing the sexual act and women from conceiving, whence husbands cannot know their wives nor wives receive their husbands ; over and above this, they blasphemously renounce that Faith which is theirs by the Sacra¬ ment of Baptism, and at the instigation of the Enemy of Mankind they do not shrink from committing and perpetrating the foulest abominations and filthiest excesses to the deadly peril of their own souls, whereby they outrage the Divine Majesty and are a cause of scandal and danger to very many. And although Our dear sons Henry Kramer and James Sprenger, Professors of Theology, of the Order of Friars Preachers, have been by Letters Apostolic delegated as Inquisitors of these heretical pravities, and still are Inquisitors, the first in the aforesaid parts of Northern Ger¬ many, wherein are included those aforesaid townships, districts, dioceses, and other specified localities, and the second in certain territories which lie along the borders of the Rhine, nevertheless not a few clerics and lay folk of those countries, seeking too curiously to know more than concerns them, since in the aforesaid delegatory letters there is no express and specific mention by name of these provinces, townships, dioceses, and

xliii

xliv

THE BULL OF INNOCENT VIII

districts, and further since the two delegates themselves and the abomina¬ tions they are to encounter are not designated in detailed and particular fashion, these persons are not ashamed to contend with the most unblush¬ ing effrontery that these enormities are not practised in those provinces, and consequently the aforesaid Inquisitors have no legal right to exercise their powers of inquisition in the provinces, townships, dioceses, districts, and territories, which have been rehearsed, and that the Inquisitors may not proceed to punish, imprison, and penalize criminals convicted of the heinous offences and many wickednesses which have been set forth. Accordingly in the aforesaid provinces, townships, dioceses, and districts, the abominations and enormities in question remain unpunished not without open danger to the souls of many and peril of eternal damnation.

Wherefore We, as is Our duty, being wholly desirous of removing all hindrances and obstacles by which the good work of the Inquisitors may be let and tarded, as also of applying potent remedies to prevent the disease of heresy and other turpitudes diffusing their poison to the destruc¬ tion of many innocent souls, since Our zeal for the Faith especially incites us, lest that the provinces, townships, dioceses, districts, and territories of Germany, which We have specified, be deprived of the benefits of the Holy Office thereto assigned, by the tenor of these presents in virtue of Our Apostolic authority We decree and enjoin that the aforesaid In¬ quisitors be empowered to proceed to the just correction, imprisonment, and punishment of any persons, without let or hindrance, in every way as if the provinces, townships, dioceses, districts, territories, yea, even the persons and their crimes in this kind were named and particularly desig¬ nated in Our letters. Moreover, for greater surety We extend these letters deputing this authority to cover all the aforesaid provinces, townships, dioceses, districts, and territories, persons, and crimes newly rehearsed, and We grant permission to the aforesaid Inquisitors, to one separately or to both, as also to Our dear son John Gremper, priest of the diocese of Constance, Master of Arts, their notary, or to any other public notary, who shall be by them, or by one of them, temporarily delegated to those provinces, townships, dioceses, districts, and aforesaid territories, to pro¬ ceed, according to the regulations of the Inquisition, against any persons of whatsoever rank and high estate, correcting, mulcting, imprisoning, punishing, as their crimes merit, those whom they have found guilty, the penalty being adapted to the offence. Moreover, they shall enjoy a full and perfect faculty of expounding and preaching the word of God to the faithful, so often as opportunity may offer and it may seem good to them, in each and every parish church of the said provinces, and they shall freely and lawfully perform any rites or execute any business which may appear advisable in the aforesaid cases. By Our supreme authority We grant them anew full and complete faculties.

At the same time by Letters Apostolic We require Our venerable Brother, the Bishop of Strasburg,* that he himself shall announce, or by some other or others cause to be announced, the burthen of Our Bull, which he shall solemnly publish when and so often as he deems it neces¬ sary, or when he shall be requested so to do by the Inquisitors or by one of them. Nor shall he suffer them in disobedience to the tenor of these presents to be molested or hindered by any authority whatsoever, but he shall threaten all who endeavour to hinder or harass the Inquisitors, all who oppose them, all rebels, of whatsoever rank, estate, position, pre-

* Albrecht von Bayern, 1478-1506.

THE BULL OF INNOCENT VIII

xlv

eminence, dignity, or any condition they may be, or whatsoever privilege of exemption they may claim, with excommunication, suspension, inter¬ dict, and yet more terrible penalties, censures, and punishment, as may seem good to him, and that without any right of appeal, and if he will he may by Our authority aggravate and renew these penalties as often as he list, calling in, if so please him, the help of the secular arm.

Non obstantibus . . . Let no man therefore . . . But if any dare to do so, which God forbid, let him know that upon him will fall the wrath of Almighty God, and of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.

Given at Rome, at S. Peter’s, on the 9 December of the Year of the Incarnation of Our Lord one thousand four hundred and eighty-four, in the first Year of Our Pontificate.

The translation of this Bull is reprinted by permission from “ The Geography of Witchcraft by

Montague Summers, pp. 533-6 (. Kegan Paul).

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'7V

MALLEUS

MALEFIC

ARUM

THE FIRST PART TREAT¬ ING OF THE THREE NECES¬ SARY CONCOMITANTS OF WITCHCRAFT, WHICH ARE THE DEVIL, A WITCH, AND THE PERMISSION OF ALMIGHTY GOD

☆

PART I

QUESTION I

Here beginneth auspiciously the first part of this work. Question the First.

HETHER the belief that there are such beings as witches is so essential a part of the Catholic faith that obstinately to maintain the oppo¬ site opinion manifestly savours of heresy. And it is argued that a firm belief in witches is not a Catholic doctrine : see chapter 26, question 5, of the work of Episcopus. Whoever

believes that any creature can be changed for the better or the worse, or transformed into another kind or likeness, except by the Creator of all things, is worse than a pagan and a heretic. And so when they report such things are done by witches it is not Catholic, but plainly heretical, to maintain this opinion.

Moreover, no operation of witchcraft has a permanent effect among us. And this is the proof thereof: For if it were so, it would be effected by the opera¬ tion of demons. But to maintain that the devil has power to change human bodies or to do them permanent harm does not seem in accordance with the teaching of the Church. For in this way they could destroy the whole world, and bring it to utter confusion.

Moreover, every alteration that takes place in a human body — for example, a state of health or a state of sickness — can be brought down to a question of natural causes, as Aristotle has shown in his 7th book of Physics. And the greatest of these is the influence of the stars. But the devils cannot interfere with the movement of the stars. This is the opinion of Dionysius in his epistle to S. Polycarp. For this alone God can do. Therefore it is evident the demons

2

MALLEUS

Part. I. Question i.

cannot actually effect any permanent transformation in human bodies ; that is to say, no real metamorphosis. And so we must refer the appearance of any such change to some dark and occult cause.

And the power of God is stronger than the power of the devil, so divine works are more true than demoniac operations. Whence inasmuch as evil is powerful in the world, then it must be the work of the devil always conflicting with the work of God. Therefore as it is un¬ lawful to hold that the devil’s evil craft can apparently exceed the work of God, so it is unlawful to believe that the noblest works of creation, that is to say, man and beast, can be harmed and spoiled by the power of the devil.

Moreover, that which is under the influence of a material object cannot have power over corporeal objects. But devils are subservient to certain influences of the stars, because magicians observe the course of certain stars in order to evoke the devils. Therefore they have not the power of effecting any change in a corporeal object, and it follows that witches have even less power than the demons possess.

For devils have no power at all save by a certain subtle art. But an art cannot permanently produce a true form. (And a certain author says : Writers on Alchemy know that there is no hope of any real transmutation.) Therefore the devils for their part, making use of the utmost of their craft, cannot bring about any permanent cure — or permanent disease. But if these states exist it is in truth owing to some other cause, which may be un¬ known, and has nothing to do with the operations of either devils or witches.

But according to the Decretals (33) the contrary is the case. “If by witch¬ craft or any magic art permitted by the secret but most just will of God, and aided by the power of the devil, etc. . . .” The reference here is to any act of witchcraft which may hinder the end of marriage, and for this impediment to take effect three things can concur, that is to say, witchcraft, the devil, and the permission of God. Moreover, the stronger can influence that which is less strong. But the power of the devil is stronger than any human power ( Job xl). There is no power upon earth which can be compared to him, who was created so that he fears none.

Answer. Here are three heretical errors which must be met, and when they have been disproved the truth will be plain. For certain writers, pretending to base their opinion upon the words of S. Thomas (iv, 24) when he treats of impediments brought about by magic charms, have tried to maintain that there is not such a thing as magic, that it only exists in the imagination of those men who ascribe natural effects, the causes whereof are not known, to witch¬ craft and spells. There are others who acknowledge indeed that witches exist, but they declare that the influence of magic and the effects of charms are purely imaginary and phantasmical. A third class of writers maintain that the effects said to be wrought by magic spells are altogether illusory and fanci¬ ful, although it may be that the devil does really lend his aid to some witch.

The errors held by each one of these persons may thus be set forth and thus confuted. For in the very first place they are shown to be plainly heretical by many orthodox writers, and especi¬ ally by S. Thomas, who lays down that such an opinion is altogether contrary to the authority of the saints and is founded upon absolute infidelity. Be¬ cause the authority of the Holy Scrip¬ tures says that devils have power over the bodies and over the minds of men, when God allows them to exercise this power, as is plain from very many passages in the Holy Scriptures. Therefore those err who say that there is no such thing as witchcraft, but that it is purely imaginary, even although they do not believe that devils exist except in the imagination of the ignorant and vulgar, and the natural accidents which happen to a man he wrongly attributes to some supposed devil. For the imagina¬ tion of some men is so vivid that they think they see actual figures and appear¬ ances which are but the reflection of their thoughts, and then these are believed to be the apparitions of evil spirits or even the spectres of witches. But this is contrary to the true faith, which teaches us that certain angels fell from heaven and are now devils, and we are bound to acknowledge that by their very nature they can do many wonderful things which we cannot do. And those who try to induce others to perform such evil wonders are called witches. And because infidelity in a person who has been baptized is technically called

Part I. Question i.

MALEFICARUM

3

heresy, therefore such persons are plainly heretics.

As regards those who hold the other two errors, those, that is to say, who do not deny that there are demons and that demons possess a natural power, but who differ among themselves con¬ cerning the possible effects of magic and the possible operations of witches : the one school holding that a witch can truly bring about certain effects, yet these effects are not real but phantas- tical, the other school allowing that some real harm does befall the person or persons injured, but that when a witch imagines this damage is the effect of her arts she is grossly deceived. This error seems to be based upon two pas¬ sages from the Canons where certain women are condemned who falsely imagine that during the night they ride abroad with Diana or Herodias.* This may be read in the Canon. Yet because such things often happen by illusion

* “ Diana or Herodias ." This decree, which was often attributed to a General Council of Ancyra, but which is now held to be of a later date, was in any case authoritative, since it passed into the “De ecclesiasticis disciplinis " ascribed to Regino of Prum ( go6 ), and thence to the canonists S. Ivo of Chartres and Johannes Gratian. Section 364 of the Benedictine Abbot's work relates that “ certain abandoned women turning aside to follow Satan, being seduced by the illusions and phantasms of demons, believe and openly profess that in the dead of night they ride upon certain beasts with the pagan goddess Diana and a countless horde of women, and that in these silent hours they fly over vast tracks of country and obey her as their mistress, while on other nights they are sullen to pay her homage ." John of Salisbury, who died in 1180, in his “ Policraticus ," I, xvii, speaks of the popular be¬ lief in a witch-queen named Herodias, who called together the sorcerers to meeting at night. In a MS., “De Sortilegis ," the following passage occurs: “We next inquire concerning certain wicked crones who believe and profess that in the night-time they ride abroad with Diana, the heathen goddess, or else with Herodias, and an innumerable host of women, upon certain beasts, and that in a silent covey at the dead of night they pass over immense distances, obeying her commands as their mistress, and that they are summoned by her on appointed nights, and they declare that they have the power to change human beings for better or for worse, ay, even to turn them into some other semblance or shape. Concerning such women I answer according to the decrees of the Council of Alexandria, that the minds of the faithful are disordered by such fantasies owing to the inspiration of no good spirit but of the devil:'

and merely in the imagination, those who suppose that all the effects of witchcraft are mere illusion and im¬ agination are very greatly deceived. Secondly, with regard to a man who believes or maintains that a creature can be made, or changed for better or for worse, or transformed into some other kind or likeness by anyone save by God, the Creator of all things, alone, is an infidel and worse than a heathen. Wherefore on account of these words “ changed for the worse ” they say that such an effect if wrought by witchcraft cannot be real but must be purely phantastical.

But inasmuch as these errors savour of heresy and contradict the obvious meaning of the Canon, we will first prove our points by the divine law, as also by ecclesiastical and civil law, and first in general.

To commence, the expressions of the Canon must be treated of in detail (although the sense of the Canon will be even more clearly elucidated in the following question). For the divine law in many places commands that witches are not only to be avoided, but also they are to be put to death, and it would not impose the extreme penalty of this kind if witches did not really and truly make a compact with devils in order to bring about real and true hurts and harms. For the penalty of death is not inflicted except for some grave and notorious crime, but it is otherwise with death of the soul, which can be brought about by the power of a phantastical illusion or even by the stress of temptation. This is the opinion of S. Thomas when he discusses whether it be evil to make use of the help of devils (ii. 7). For in the 1 8th chapter of Deuteronomy it is commanded that all wizards and charmers are to be destroyed. Also the 19th chapter of Leviticus says : The soul which goeth to wizards and sooth¬ sayers to commit fornication with them, I will set my face against that soul, and destroy it out of the midst of my people. And again, 20 : A man, or woman, in whom there is a pythonical or divining spirit dying, let them die: they shall stone them. Those persons are said to be pythons in whom the devil works extraordinary things.

Moreover, this must be borne in mind, that on account of this sin Ochozias fell sick and died, IV. Kings 1. Also Saul, 1 Paralipomenon, 10. We have,

4

MALLEUS

Part I. Question i.

moreover, the weighty opinions of the Fathers who have written upon the scriptures and who have treated at length of the power of demons and of magic arts. The writings of many doctors upon Book 2 of the Sentences may be consulted, and it will be found that they all agree, that there are wizards and sorcerers who by the power of the devil can produce real and ex¬ traordinary effects, and these effects are not imaginary, and God permits this to be. I will not mention those very many other places where S. Thomas in great detail discusses operations of this kind. As, for example, in his Summa contra Gentiles , Book 3, c. 1 and 2, in part one, question 114, argument 4. And in the Second of the Second , questions 92 and 94. We may further consult the Com¬ mentators and the Exegetes who have written upon the wise men and the magicians of Pharao, Exodus vii. We may also consult what S. Augustine says in The City of God* Book 18, c. 17. See further his second book On Christian Doctrine.] Very many other doctors advance the same opinion, and it would be the height of folly for any man to contradict all these, and he could not be held to be clear of the guilt of heresy. For any man who gravely errs in an exposition of Holy Scripture is rightly considered to be a heretic. And who¬ soever thinks otherwise concerning these matters which touch the faith that the Holy Roman Church holds is a heretic. There is the Faith.

That to deny the existence of witches is contrary to the obvious sense of the Canon is shown by ecclesiastical law. For we have the opinions of the com¬ mentators on the Canon which com¬ mences: If anyone by magic arts or witchcraft . . . And again, there are those writers who speak of men im¬ potent and bewitched, and therefore by this impediment brought about by witchcraft they are unable to copulate, and so the contract of marriage is rendered void and matrimony in their cases has become impossible. For they say, and S. Thomas agrees with them,

* “ The City of God." S. Augustine's great work " De Ciuitate Dei " was written 413-26.

f 11 On Christian Doctrine ." The '''‘De Doc¬ trina Christiana " was originally written in 337, but S. Augustine revised his work with addition in 427, leaving a monument of hermeneutics.

that if witchcraft takes effect in the event of a marriage before there has been carnal copulation, then if it is lasting it annuls and destroys the con¬ tract of marriage, and it is quite plain that such a condition cannot in any way be said to be illusory and the effect of imagination.

Upon this point see what Blessed Henry of Segusio £ has so fully written in his Summa : also Godfrey of Fon¬ taines § and S. Raymond of Penafort,|| who have discussed this question in detail very clearly, not asking whether such a physical condition could be thought imaginary and unreal, but taking it to be an actual and proven fact, and then they lay down whether it

] " Blessed Henry." Blessed Henry of Segusio, usually called Hostiensis, the famous Italian canonist of the thirteenth century, was born at Susa, and died at Lyons, 23 October, 1271. After a most distinguished career , on 4 December, 1261, he became Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia and Velletri, whence his name Hostiensis. His " Summa super titulis Decretalium " ( Stras - burg, 1312; Cologne, 1612; Venice, 1603), which was also known as " Summa aurea," or " Summa archiepiscopi," since it was written whilst he was Archbishop of Embrun, won for its author the title "Monarcha iuris, lumen lucidis¬ simum Decretorum." One portion of this work, the "Summa, siue Tractatus de poenitentia et remissionibus," was very popular, and is con¬ tinually referred to as of high authority. The book was written between 1230 and 1261.

§ "Godfrey." Godfrey of Fontaines, Doctor Venerandus, scholastic philosopher and theo¬ logian, was born near Liege within the first half of the thirteenth century; he became a canon of his native diocese, and also of Paris and Cologne. In 1300 he was elected to the See of Tournai, which he declined. During the last quarter of the century he taught theology with great distinction at the University of Paris. His vast work, "XIV Quodlibeta," which in manuscript was exten¬ sively studied in the mediaeval schools, has