and should therefore be regarded merely as the principle of unity, the moral worth of which depends upon the nature of its elements. The author of these drawings has in his naive analysis of the human heart, approached a scientific conception of the soul more closely than presumably he was aware of himself.
A Revival of Witch Prosecution.
At the time of the Reformation witch prosecution ceased for a while. It made room for another mania not less ugly and condemnable. Its place was filled by heresy persecution. Not only did Roman Catholic governments worry their Protestant subjects almost to death by confiscating their property, chasing them with hounds to mass, exiling entire districts, and ignominiously executing their leaders; but Protestants in their turn, too, regarded it as their religious duty to do the same to all dissenters. Luther himself, be it said to his everlasting honor, did not persecute; and so long as he lived he succeeded in preventing among his followers all persecutions. Calvin, however, ordered Servetus to be burned alive, because his belief in the trinity differed from his own; and King Henry VIII. of England resolutely suppressed with a high hand all opposition to the religious views he happened to hold at the time; nor did he shrink from shedding blood, although we must grant that he exercised much judgment by confining his persecution to a comparatively few powerful opponents.
While the fear of witchcraft was thus set aside for a time, the dangerous belief in the power of Satan continued and lay bidden like burning coals under ashes. The
religions superstitions remained practically the same, and it is natural that the epidemic reappeared, although in a less virulent form. Even Protestant countries (North Germany, Sweden, England, Scotland, and the English colonies in North America) were visited by this spiritual plague, and a number of lay judges appeared who showed the same zeal as the Dominican inquisitors in Catholic countries.
With the waning of the zeal for burning witches the defenders of witchcraft grew rather more numerous than before. Among them are Dr. Thomas Erastus of Heidelberg, 1 and Jean Bodin, a Frenchman. 2 The Suffragan Bishop Peter Binsfeld 3 and Justice Nicolaus Remigius 4 defended in voluminous books with new arguments the policy of the Witch-Hammer, and King James I. of England wrote a demonology 5 filled with all the superstition of the Middle Ages; Martin Delrio, 6 a Jesuit, deems a revision of the belief in witchcraft in order, but comes to the conclusion that the evil exists and that there is no remedy save the use of relies, holy water, exorcisms, the holy sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church.
The National Museum of Germanic Antiquities at Nuremberg possesses a large poster which contains an account of three women who were burned as witches at Dernburg in the year 1555. Although they were not
burned on the same day, the illustration represents them as standing on the fagots together and the statement is made that in one instance, when the fire was lit, Satan appeared and visibly carried away his paramour through the air.
The tragedy of Dernburg is one case only among many. Mayor Pheringer, of Nördlingen, swore to exterminate the whole brood of sorcerers, and Judge Benedict Carpzov, Jr. (1595-1666), of Leipsic, following in the footsteps of his father, condemned more than a hundred persons to die at the stake for witchcraft.
Sensible Prelates.
The Protestants of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were on the average perhaps more serious in their religious beliefs than the Roman Catholics of the same period, and thus it happened that some French prelates of the Roman Church, being more worldly wise and more deeply imbued with the advancing spirit of the age than many bigoted Protestants, displayed infinitely more common sense than their brethren of the Reformed Churches.
This became particularly patent in the famous case of Martha Brossier, a French peasant girl, who, in 1588, claimed to be possessed of a devil. The excitement was great, and the pulpits resounded with alarming denunciations apt to renew all the terrors of former witch prosecutions. But Bishop Miron of Angers, and Cardinal De Gondi, Archbishop of Paris, retained their tranquillity, and had the case investigated not only according to a truly rational method, but even in a spirit of humor.
When the never-failing tests with exorcisms through sacred books and holy water were administered, Bishop Miron so arranged matters that the possessed girl was induced to draw wrong conclusions, and lo! simple spring-water and the reading of a line from Virgil regularly brought on epileptic fits, while neither the old reliable exorcisms nor the holy water produced any effect when the girl did not apprehend the sacred texts.
Believers in Satanic possession were not satisfied with Bishop Miron's experiments, for they regarded them as a proof of the cunning of the Devil who thus slyly deceived his enemies. The case was brought before the Archbishop De Gondi, but he, too, proved sceptical and declared after some judicious experiments that the demeanor of the possessed girl was a mixed result of insanity and simulation.
Urban Grandier.
In spite of the sound judgment shown by these and other prelates, the prosecutions of witches continued. In the case of Urban Grandier, a priest, who was accused by the Ursuline nuns at Loudun in Western France of having exercised Satanic powers upon their minds, the Archbishops of Bordeaux recognised the malicious hostility and hysterical bitterness with which the nuns bore witness against their preacher. Grandier was not innocent in other respects, but there were many priests whose morals were no better. Considering the innumerable contradictions in the statements of his enemies, the Archbishop dismissed the case and he was honorably reinstalled in his position. But that was not the end of it.
It happened that M. de Laubordemont, a cousin of the prioress, while attending to some business of the French Government in Loudun, heard of the story and gave a highly colored report to Cardinal Richelieu, at whose instance the investigation was renewed. In the second trial Grandier had no chance; for Laubordemont was appointed judge. He accepted the most ridiculous evidence. The devils who spoke out of the mouths of the obsessed nuns were called upon as witnesses, and two documents were produced which purported to be the original pact of Grandier with Satan. One of them is signed by Grandier, the other bears the signature of six devils, the authenticity of which is vouched for by Baalbarith, the Secretary of his Satanic Majesty. The script is in mirror writing. Four expert Doctors of the Sorbonne, although they never doubted either the documents or the reality of the devils of the obsessed nuns, saw fit to caution the judges not to admit the testimony of Satan, because the slanderer and liar could not be a trustworthy witness. But the exorcising fathers, all of whom were Carmelite monks, laid down the principle that a properly exorcised devil cannot help confessing the truth. Grandier was cruelly tortured and executed on August 18; but Peter Lactantius, the chief exorcist whom the dying Grandier had challenged to appear before the tribunal of God, died a raving maniac exactly one month after the death of his victim, on September 18.
A Protestant Witch-Execution.
Much has been said and written about the cruelty of the Roman Catholic methods of witch-prosecution, but
the Protestants were not a whit better, except perhaps that they added to the proceedings a good deal more of pious cant and accompanied executions with a religious unction which made their conduct the more detestable. As a typical case we quote an abbreviated report of the execution of three witches, Susanna, Ilse, and their mother Catharine, which took place at Arendsee, 1687, August 5: 1
"The case was submitted for another revision, during which time six clergymen attended daily upon the three prisoners and exhorted them to pray and sing and repent. Then they were cited before the court one after the other and the clergymen stood behind them. The president of the court asked them once more, first Susanna, whether she had received an incubus; (answer: Yes!) Secondly Ilse, whether her mother had given her an incubus; (answer: Yes!) and thirdly Catharine, whether she had given an incubus to Ilse; (answer: Yes!) Thereupon the Notary, Mr. Anton Werneccius, read the judgment, and the executioner went to the court and asked for mercy in case he should not succeed at once in decapitating Susanna and Ilse. The question was asked whether there was any additional grievance. Then the rod was broken, table and chairs of the court upset, and the procession moved out to the Köppenberg, the place of execution.
"Part of the guards opened the way. Each one of the three witches was accompanied on either side by a clergyman and led with a rope by a hangman. At the same time six armed citizens surrounded her. Another part of the guard closed the procession.
"On the way prayers alternated with exhortations and singing of hymns.
"Before the Seehausen gate a circle was made and Susanna was led round until the public had finished singing the hymn 'God our father, dwell with us.'
'When her head was taken off, the people sang, 'To thee we pray, O Holy Ghost.' 1
"Next came Ilse who was killed in the same way, accompanied by the singing of the same hymns.
"While the singing continued Catharine was placed upon the fagots and her neck fastened with an iron chain, which was drawn so tight that her face swelled and became suffused with a brown color. The fagots were lit and all present, clergy, school-children, and spectators sang until her body was consumed in the fire."
Witch-Prosecution in America.
Not less terrible fruit than in Europe did the belief in witchcraft bear on the free soil of Protestant America. Death-sentences for witchcraft occurred several times after the foundation of the New England colonies; but the last and most terrible outbreak took place in Salem, Massachusetts, as recorded in Upham's History of Salem Witchcraft, and in Drake's Witchcraft Delusion in New England. Under the baneful influence of the religious teachings of Increase Mather and his son, Cotton Mather, 2 two Boston clergymen, the Rev. Samuel Parris, minister of the Church in Salem, began to have a case of witchcraft investigated, which, as says President Andrew Dickson White, 3 "would have been the richest
of farces had they not led to events so tragical." The possessed behaved like maniacs in court and charged a poor old Indian woman with having bewitched them. Her husband, an ignorant fool, was induced to testify against her. This easy success emboldened the believers in witchcraft, among whom the Putnam family played a prominent part. They began to prosecute some of the foremost people of New England; several men and women were executed, many fled for their lives, and a reign of terror ensued. Any person once suspected and accused was doomed. As an instance we quote the case of Mr. Burroughs, a clergyman, who on account of petty parish quarrels with the Putnam family had been dismissed from the ministry. President White says:
"Mr. Burroughs had led a blameless life, the only thing ever charged against him by the Putnams being that he insisted strenuously that his wife should not go about the parish talking of her own family matters. He was charged with afflicting the children, convicted, and executed. At the last moment he repeated the Lord's Prayer solemnly and fully, which it was supposed no sorcerer could do, and this, together with his straightforward Christian utterances at the execution, shook the faith of many in the reality of diabolical possession."
President White continues:
"Ere long it was known that one of the girls had acknowledged that she had belied some persons who had been executed, and especially Mr. Burroughs, and that she had begged forgiveness; but this for a time availed nothing. Persons who would not confess were tied up and put to a sort of torture which was effective in securing new revelations.
"In the case of Giles Cory the horrors of the persecution culminated. Seeing that his doom was certain, and wishing to preserve
his family from attainder and their property from confiscation, he refused to plead. He was therefore pressed to death, and, when in his last agonies his tongue was pressed out of his mouth, the sheriff with his walking-stick thrust it back again."
Increase and Cotton Mather were the last defenders of diabolical possession and witchcraft on American soil; the latter saw in his later years a new era dawning upon his country. Vigorously and successfully censured by Robert Calef, a courageous Boston merchant, he bemoaned the decay of the religious spirit among the growing generation, and even to his dying hour regarded the mere unbelief in witchcraft as an attack upon the glory of the Lord.
The present generation may well smile at his mistaken religious notions; but granting him that the old conception of God as a miracle-worker and an individual ego-being after the fashion of pagan personifications be right, his idea of the importance of a belief in witchcraft is logically correct. If witchcraft is impossible, then there can be no wizard-god who changes sticks into serpents, who stops the sun in his course, reverses the shadow of the dial, is jealous of other gods and of the familiar spirits of witches. The abandonment of the belief in witchcraft tacitly implied the abandonment of a belief in God as a miracle-worker, and prepared the way for a nobler religious faith which surrendered the idea of seeking God in the suppositions possibility of breaking the laws of nature, and finally found him in the cosmic order itself, i. e., in the unity, the harmony, the rightness of those eternal factors of existence which are the conditions of reason, of truth, and of justice.
Footnotes
339:1 The Hortus Deliciarum was written in the latter part of the twelfth century for the edification of monks, and the present picture illustrates the various temptations which lure them away from the crown of life: city life and precious garments; or the military power of abbots in monasteries with its worldly comforts; further money, the couch of laziness, the joy of gardening.
340:1 "The building representing the Empire bears the inscription "The gates of hell shall not prevail against it." The German princes of the Reformed Faith are pictured in effigy in the company of devils. The Count Palatine Frederick V, son-in-law of the King of England, who had just lost the crown of Bohemia, is seen falling down. On the right-hand the Prince Elector of Saxony, a Lutheran, and on the left hand the city of Venice are represented as refusing to join the Calvinists. The picture purports to elucidate to the common man what scholars can learn by studying scripture.
"Was Glerte durch die Schrift verstahn,
Das lehrt das Gmähl den gmainen Mann."
