40 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



because his personal feeling was strongly involved, inasmucli as 

 lie firmly believed that the barrenness of his first wife Elizabeth 

 was due to magic influences. The court exorcist, a Barnabite named 

 Marrano, tried his powers of disenchantment, but did not succeed 

 in breaking the satanic spell, since the duchess died childless. 



A tragi-comical feature of these witch trials was the prominence 

 they gave to the hangman or headsman. Usually this public func- 

 tionary was despised as a pariah, with whom no respectable person 

 would associate; but in these topsy-turvy times he became one of 

 the most conspicuous and influential members of the community. 

 Thus Meister Jorg Abriel, the executioner of Schongau, is described 

 in contemporary records as driving three horses tandem through 

 the country, like a fine gentleman, accompanied by his wife and 

 two apparitors as attendants. Everywhere he was warmly greeted 

 and hospitably entertained, and on one occasion on leaving Gar- 

 misch his health was drunk in eight gallons of wine. The reason 

 for this distinction was that the executioner as an expert in the 

 detection of " witch marks " on the bodies of the accused held the 

 fate of hundreds of persons in his hands, since it depended upon 

 his decision whether they should be tortured or not. Once he re- 

 marked that he had found no " devil's signs," but that the woman 

 had " the look' of a witch," and this observation sufficed to have the 

 woman thrown into prison and put to the rack. 



A new era of enlightenment began in Bavaria with the found- 

 ing of the Academy of Sciences by the Elector Max Joseph on 

 March 28, 1759, the aim of which, as he expressed it, was to " purify 

 all departments of philosophy from unprofitable pedantries and 

 23rejudices." The motto of the institution, '■ Tendit ad cequum/' 

 would imply an endeavor to be not only just and equitable, but 

 also level-headed generally; in other words, it was the intention to 

 cultivate the moral and mental characteristics, in which the fore- 

 most men of learning had hitherto shown themselves lamentably 

 deficient. Although the character of the academy forbade the dis- 

 cussion of matters of faith, this prohibition was fortunately so in- 

 terpreted as not to include the question of witchcraft, which seems 

 to have been placed by common consent in the category of " preju- 

 dices." Accordingly, on October 13, 1766, one of the academicians, 

 Don Ferdinand Sterzinger, the superior of the Theatine Cloister in 

 Munich and an acknowledged authority in ecclesiastical history, 

 delivered an address on the common prejudice concerning witch- 

 craft: Von dem gemeinen Vorurtheil der wirkenden und thdtigen 

 Hexerei. " Our enlightened times," he began, " in which the sci- 

 ences seem to have reached the highest point, no longer tolerate 

 any prejudices." He confesses, however, that he himself had not 



