WITCHCRAFT IN BAVARIA. 35 



most preposterous and at the same time most pernicioiis book ever 

 printed " ; and the Spanish Dominican Nicholas Cymericus, who 

 composed a systematic manual for the use of persecutors entitled 

 Directoriwn Inquisitorum (first printed at Rome in 1503); and a 

 treatise, Tractatus contra Dcemotium Invocatores, in which he 

 maintained that sorcery is heresy and should be punished by the 

 Court of Inquisition. Works of a like character were Flagellum 

 HcerefAcorum Fascinariorum, by the Dominician Nicholas Jaquier; 

 De Strigiis, by the Dominican Bernard of Como; De Strigima- 

 garum Dcemonumque Mirandis, by the master of the holy apos- 

 tolical palace and general of the Dominicans, Silvester Mazzolino 

 Prierias; Novus Malleus Maleficarum (New Witches' Hammer), by 

 the Dominican Bartholomew de Spina; Disquisitiones Magicce, 

 by the Spanish Jesuit Martin Delrio; and Processus Juridicus 

 contra Sagas, by the Munich Jesuit Paul Laymann.* 



Equally untenable is the statement that no person was ever 

 burned as a witch in Rome. The Roman chronicler Stefano In- 

 fessura, in his Diariuni Urhis Romw, describes the burning of a 

 witch named Finicella, for having " in a diabolical manner killed 

 many creatures and injured others." The execution took place 

 on June 8, 1424, and " all Rome went to see it." Again, in the 

 CJironicon Generale of Andreas von Regensburg it is recorded 

 that during the pontificate of Martin Y a cat killed several infants 

 in their cradles. A shrewd man wounded the cat with a sword, 

 and, following the traces of its blood, discovered that the animal 

 was really an old woman, who lived in the house of a chiromancer 

 and changed herself into a- cat in order to suck the blood of chil- 

 dren and thus prolong her own life. This anticipation of the 

 modem theory of the transfusion of blood caused the old hag to be 

 tried for witchcraft and burned at the stake. The Munich occultist 

 and alchemist Dr. Joliann Hartlieb, in the thirty-third chapter of 

 his Buck alter verhotenen Kunst, Unglaubens und der Zauherei,j- 



* One of the severest charges brought by the Dominican friar Father Concinna against 

 "Luther, Melanchthon, and their confederates" was that they did not believe in the exist- 

 ence of witches ; unfortunately, the accusation is untrue, but it proves the strong desire of 

 Catholic writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to claim for the papacy the sole 

 honor of being sound on the witchcraft question. In the early part of the sixteenth century 

 the jurist Franz Fonzimibius wrote a treatise, in which he ventured to utter opinions of hie 

 own concerning witches. Bartholomew de Spina, in the work above mentioned (page 202), 

 takes him to task for his impudence. " That a mere lawyer," he says, " should discuss a 

 theological subject and set himself in opposition to profound theologians, such as the in- 

 quisitors commonly are, betrays extreme arrogance and can excite only the scorn and deri- 

 sion of all persons of discernment. I wonder at the effrontery of this man, and shudder." 



f This book, written in 1456, has been handed down to us in three manuscripts, one in 

 Wolfenbiittel, a second (incomplete) in Dresden, and a third in Heidelberg. This last con- 

 sists of seventy-eight sheets in octavo, and bears the date 1558; at the end is the name of 



