38 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lie obtained from the sovereign permission to visit tliis witcli and 

 the promise that her life should be spared if she would teach how 

 these meteorological phenomena could be effected, but the process 

 involved such denial of God, the Virgin Marj, and the saints, 

 repudiation of the holy sacraments and dedication of soul and body 

 to sundry devils, that Hartlieb declined to become her pupil, and 

 broke off the interview in horror at what he heard. The poor 

 woman, who appears to have imagined that such things were pos- 

 sible, was given over to the executioner and burned. 



It is hardly necessary to describe in detail the epidemic of witch 

 persecution, which raged in Bavaria especially from 1589 to 1631. 

 It ran its fatal course and was characterized by the same exhibition 

 of credulity, cruelty, and gross perversions of justice as in other 

 European countries. How any person possessing the least common 

 sense or the most superficial knowledge of human nature, to say 

 nothing of legal training, could expect to extort a confession of the 

 truth by physical torture is to us an insoluble psychological problem. 

 No sooner did the zeal of the authorities begin to relax than it was 

 stimulated anew by the religious orders and the secular clergy, and 

 especially by the chaplains and confessors of the rulers. One of 

 the most bigoted and brutal of these ghostly functionaries was 

 Mathias von Kemnat, court preacher of Friedrich I of the Palati- 

 nate. His chronicle of the reign of this monarch is an important 

 but hitherto scarcely heeded contribution to the witchcraft litera- 

 ture of the fifteenth century, and anticipates many of the absurdi- 

 ties and atrocities of the Malleus Maleficarum. He witnessed with 

 extreme satisfaction the burning of many witches in Heidelberg 

 and other places, and records the most disgusting mass of drivel con- 

 cerning the orgies of Satan and his female worshipers in what he 

 calls the " synagogue of the sorcerers." Each novice, he says, as 

 she joins this diabolical congregation, is instructed how to invest 

 her staff with necromantic qualities by smearing it with a salve 

 prepared from the fat of roasted children, venomous serpents, liz- 

 ards, toads, and spiders. The witches kill people by rubbing them 

 with this ointment, and with a powder made from entrails they 

 produce epidemics and cause great mortality. " This is the reason," 

 adds the learned divine, " why pestilence prevails in certain villages, 

 while the inhabitants of other villages in the neighborhood remain 

 strong and healthy." In view of these facts he urges that many 

 fires be kindled and kept burning. Meanwhile he advises people 

 to " carry with them quicksilver in a tube or quill as a good pre- 

 servative against sorcery." * 



* The recently canonized Jesuit Canisius wrote in 1563 to Lajnez, the friend and aspo- 

 ciate of Loyola, complaining of the increase of witches in Bavaria and accusing them of 



