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cattus niger, retorta cauda, quem a posterioribus primo novitius (thus the bishop first, infecting the others) post magister, deinde singuli per ordinem osculantur, qui tamen digni sunt et perfecti. Et tunc per loca sua positis, dictisque quibusdam carminibus, ac versus cattum capitibus inclinatis-parce nobis, dicit magister, etc. Is ita peractis, extinguuntur can dela et proceditur foetidissimum opus luxuriæ," etc. (Horst, a. a. O. S. 94 and iii.)

Towards the end of the thirteenth century there existed already many books on witchcraft in various languages, especially in the Netherlands and in Germany, the essential contents of which consisted in the art of expelling the devil. By this means the fear of the devil, superstition, and belief in the apparition of spirits, became universal. As the ceremonies of religion were abused by their almost entire application to controlling of spirits, so did the discharge of justice consist chiefly in the Inquisition. In the growing ascendancy of monastic life, fanaticism and the world of dreams flourished luxuriantly, and the phenomena of saints and devils reached their widest development. According to the accounts of Raynald, Aimericus, Param, etc., the absurdities of that period stood on a very broad and lofty platform. A nun named Marcella, for instance, was extremely persecuted by the devil, but the angel Gabriel brought her a piece of wood out of Paradise, with the smoke of which she drove away the devil. The Arhbishop Edmund of Canterbury was greatly persecuted by the devil, when a child appeared to him with the inscription on its brow,-JESUS NAZAR: REX JUDÆORUM. There are no end of such stories told by the monks. It is remarkable that the visions of saints and angels diffused an odour of sanctity; but those of bestial shapes and devils, on the contrary, brought with them a certain falling away from God. How widely diffused witchcraft then was, is evinced by the account of Raynald, who says, "that in Germany and Italy especially, such numbers of men were seduced to sorcery that the whole earth was overflowed by it, and would have been laid waste by the devil, had they not in both countries burnt some thirty thousand heretics."

It may here be seen that the witch persecution has been falsely attributed to the later Pope Innocent VIII. and his witch-bull; which accusation in part Thomasius and Becker

have themselves brought forward as the most hardy antagonists of the witch-faith. That the process of persecution already in the fourteenth century, when the faith in witchcraft was very common, was considered a valid and, as it were, a Christian right, is proved amongst other things, by the acts of the Templars in the beginning of the fourteenth century; and many writers, as Semler, Becker, Gottfried Wahrlieb, in his "Justice of the supposed Witchcraft and of the Witch-trials," Halle, 1720: by Kohler, in the "Trial of Joh. Faust," Leipzig, 1791; and especially by Tiedemann in his learned Inquiry, "Disputatio de quæstione quæ fuerit artium magic. origo," Marb. 1784.

From this time forward heresy and witchcraft were placed in the same category. Seeing or having a vision of the devil was deemed the same as having intercourse with him, and a falling from the faith. Raynald has a remarkable passage on this head :-" Valde rationabiliter posset ecclesia statuere, quod talia facientes, etsi non haberent errorem fidei in intellectu, si facerent hæc præcise propter aliquod pactum cum dæmone habitum, velut hæretici punirentur, et forsitan expediret, et propter gravitatem pone homines a talibus.

arcerentur."

Any deviation from the orthodox faith was sufficient to class a person amongst the heretics, as the Albigenses, the Waldenses, the Stedingses, the Manicheans, etc.; under which all varieties of opinion were placed. To these belongs the persecution of the Templars, and their judicial arraignment, which was the cause of the annihilation of this celebrated order. There were two principal classes of accusations brought forward, which had the effect of abolishing the order. 1st. The denial of God and of Christ, in the articles I.— XIII. 2nd. The worship of the devil and sorcery, Articles XIV.—LVII. Amongst many books, there is one preeminently severe against the Templars," The Proceedings against the Order of Templars, and the Original of the Papal Commission in France," by Dr. G. Moldenhawer, Hamburg, 1792, and a profound essay on the abolition of the Order by Fr. Munter in Henke's N. Magazine, Vol. 5. Without the fact having been proved, it was taken for granted against the Templars that they were enemies of God; and it was thence argued that their external Christianity was blas

phemous hypocrisy, and that they worshipped the devil in the shape of a black cat like their fellows the Manicheans, Stedingenses, etc. Against these last Gregory IX. had already, as against heretics, deists, and sorcerers, issued an interdict in the year 1232 (Henke's Magazine, Vol. iv.) They were from the village of Steding, and also called the heretics of Osterstedten. (See Halen's "History of the Dukedom of Oldenburg," Vol. i.; and "Ritter de pago Steding et Stedingis," Viterb. 1751.)

After the witch-faith had thus adapted itself to all forms, and spread itself in all directions, it rose to its complete height and growth in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The black mystery now rested on authority and law, on the spiritual and secular powers; superstition sacrificed to the devil, and absurdity persecuted the miserable lunatic witches, and burnt them as heretics. Thenceforward, from the fourteenth century, were witchcraft and heresy put into the same category, by which means the devil was kept in ascendant, and was worshipped under various forms of animals and of grotesque idols. An accusation made out of suspicion or enmity was held to be sufficient impeachment; this was followed by the criminal trial, and the trial by the fire-death. It mattered not whether the accused confessed or not. In the first case he was guilty; in the second he was punished as a hardened sinner. We see here the truth of the sentiment already expressed, that when the perception of the laws of nature fails, man hastens rapidly into thick intellectual darkness and heathenism. Never, probably, was the darkening of the mind so universal and so deep as in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries; and never was there such a destitution of all talent for the observation of nature, for her language, and the constitution of her laws. All countries, all conditions, all intellects, were entangled in an indescribable manner in the logic of the devil, possessed with his fear, and driven to counsel and action by frenzy and fatuity, by policy and the thirst of vengeance, till the social abode of the earth was converted into an actual hell.

From the thirteenth century downwards, southern France was regarded as the nursery of heresy and the Black Art, to which its location on the Mediterranean and in the

vicinity of Spain particularly contributed, Spain being regarded as the proscribed land of magic and Saracenic heresy. Thus the oldest relation of the Witch-Sabbath lays the scene of it in southern France; and Alphons. de Spina (Fortalitii fidei, lib. v., of which Wolff's Bibliotheca Hebraica gives a full account) records as contemporary very important witnesses and later Inquisitor hæretica praviatis-properly, a baptized Jew, that proselyted women, mulieres perversa, in Dauphiné, were seduced by the devil, "quomodo dæmones illudunt fœminas, quæ Bruxe vel Kurgone vocantur," by night into a wilderness, "ubi est caper quidam in rupe,' where they worshipped a he-goat upon a rock, by torchlight, "adorant illum caprum, osculantes in ano suo. Idque plures earum ab inquisitoribus fidei æt convictæ ignibus comburuntur."

Thenotorious Witch-Sabbath of Arras, in 1459, about which time A. de Spina lived, was frequented by men (Hauber, Biblioth. Mag. i. St. S. 85; Cove, historia liter. script. ecclesiast. vol. ii. p. 177); while in the more ancient times it was only resorted to by women. This celebration continued in France, especially in the southern provinces, till the seventeenth century. In the reign of Charles IX. the great sorcerer so much dreaded as Rinaldo des trois Echelles was executed, and he said undauntedly before the king that in France he had three hundred thousand confederates, all of whom they could not commit to the flames as they did him (Hauber. ii. p. 454).

Love affairs between spirits and men are, however, of more ancient origin. Elves stole away maidens, and men lived in secret love with female elves. But the coarse conception of Incubus and Succubus is of uncertain origin. although it is mixed up with the later alp and nightmare. The idea of lascivious intercourse of witches is later and of foreign derivation; according to this, free power was conferred on the devil over the witches. The devil was generally called the Bachelor. The witch-compacts had their origin in France or Italy. The devil generally appeared in the shape of a handsome young man, or in a dark and terrible form. The witches also represented him in an animal shape. He was called the Black One in human shape: the Black He-Goat was of high antiquity. The

oaths and wishes of the sixteenth century are a very common formula-may the He-Goat shame him! or by the He-Goat's skull! He was called also the Wolf, the Dog or Cat, thence the Hell-hound, the Black Raven, the Snake, Worm, Dragon, or in the shape of a Fly, as the Caterpillar, the Fly-god. Legends speak of spirits which were inclosed in glass like flies. They were also in earlier times compared to two instruments-the hammer and bolt. According to Grimm, this was derived from the heathen gods, where Hamar, the hammer, was equivalent to death and the devil, thunder and the devil. Little Master Hammer is the same as the Foul Fiend, Hell-bolt, Hell-hand, etc. St. Jerome in his time used malleus for devil in a letter to Damascus. By the by, how excellently the Hexen-hammer and the Sorcery-bull agree with the Hell-bolt, for they, in fact, bar the doors of hell, and keep the devil out in the world. The best known marks of the devil are the cloven foot, the goat's beard, the cock's feather, and the ox's tail.

Narbonne, in the south of France, was especially the magic region of Europe, while the Saracens were in Spain, and as there had always been there a number of Manicheans. According to the statements of those times, the magic of Spain had thoroughly fathomed the lowest depths of sorcery; and what the magic practices of Spain failed to effect was supplied by the more irritable temperament of the French, in whose songs, romances, and spiritual comedies, enchanted princes, black charcoal-burners, and bewitched vine-dressers ! played their part. From the south of France the belief in magic diffused itself in two principal directions; the one towards Italy, the other towards Paris, the north of France and Lothringen. From Italy, where the witch-mania raged towards the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, and especially in Upper Italy, and where Verona was particularly mentioned in a pope's bull, the witchfever extended itself into the Tyrol and Upper Germany. The first fires for burning witches here were lighted in Baden and Würtemberg, in Alsace, and the country around Spire and Worms, The metamorphoses of the devil and of sorcerers into beasts, such as dogs, cats, goats, and toads, were very frequent in the south of France; and the Inquisition took down the most crazy statements and accusations as

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