WITCHCRAFT IN BAVARIA. 33 



a spy upon his neighbor. The bishop, however, is directed to 

 endeavor " with prudence, zeal, and all love " to convert the ac- 

 cused, but, if unsuccessful, to proceed as provided by the canons of 

 the Church. This procedure evidently involved only the infliction 

 of canonical punishments such as penance, excommunication, and, 

 in the case of a clergyman, degradation or suspension from the 

 performance of sacerdotal functions. A priest who has learned 

 through the confessional, or otherwise, that any person may believe 

 in such things, is to teach him with fatherly affection that they are 

 " nothing but diabolical delusions " ; but if the said person should 

 be " notoriously tainted with wizardry " and should obstinately re- 

 sist good counsel, then the priest is to apply to the bishop or his 

 penitentiary for power to absolve the sinner. It is difficult to 

 determine to what extent the Bavarian clergy, while officially de- 

 claring witchcraft to be a hallucination, believed in the reality 

 of it. Doubtless the opinions on this point were divided, the more 

 enlightened ecclesiastics discarding all stories of satanic compacts 

 and concupiscence as mere illusions, while the lower and more 

 ignorant orders of priests and monks were inclined to accept them 

 as actual occurrences. In the decrees issued by the diocesan coun- 

 cils of Augsburg (1452), Treising (1440), Regensburg (1377 and 

 1512), and Salzburg (1420, 1490, and 1569), they are either not 

 mentioned at all or characterized as errors and delusions, terms 

 which would imply that they have no foundation in fact. But 

 whatever theory of these strange aberrations may have been enter- 

 tained, it is certain that the means employed for correcting them 

 were remarkably humane and even rational as compared with the 

 horrible atrocities and incredible absurdities which characterized 

 the witch trials of the following century. 



The first authentic cases of witch trials in Bavaria occurred 

 under Duke Albrecht V in 1578. With the accession of Wilhelm 

 V, surnamed the Pious, in 1579, persecutions and prosecutions of 

 this kind increased in frequency and severity, and soon becoming 

 epidemic, continued to rage for more than a century in every part 

 of the country. The chief agents and instigators of this dreadful 

 carnival of cruelty were Dominicans and Jesuits acting under in- 

 structions from Rome, and often opposed by the Bavarian clergy 

 BO far as such opposition was possible without coming into direct 

 collision with the Holy See. As early as the third century, Minutius 

 Felix, in his apology for Christianity entitled " Octavius," and writ- 

 ten in the form of a dialogue, makes the pagans accuse the Christians 

 of being worshipers of Satan, and this charge was afterward 

 brought by the Church against gnostics, Manicheans, Cathari, Al- 

 bigenses, Waldenses, German Protestants, Knight Templars, and 

 VOL. Lin. — 4 



