WITCHCRAFT IN BAVARIA. 43 



craft disappeared from the Bavarian statute books, and by being 

 thus removed from the jurisdiction of both secular and ecclesias- 

 tical tribunals was robbed of its most baneful character, it has not 

 ceased to haunt the imaginations of men, and the belief in it con- 

 tinues to be fostered by the Catholic Church both in papal encyc- 

 licals and in popular literature.* Perhaps the most recent in- 

 stance of this survival of medievalism in one of the chief centers 

 of modern civilization and scientific culture occurred on March 15, 

 1897, at Munich, Bavaria, where a Catholic priest of St. Bene- 

 dict's Church solemnly went through the ceremony of exorcising 

 a demon that haunted a house at No. 24 Park Street in that city. 

 It seems that the evil spirit had disturbed the pious inmates of the 

 dwelling by gToaning, sighing, and making such a racket generally 

 that it was impossible for them to sleep, and was seen one night by 

 a child passing through the room in the disguise of an old woman 

 dressed in black, evidently a survival of the race of ugly and ill- 

 starred hags who have played such a melancholy part in the tragic 

 annals of witchcraft. On receiving this information the parish 

 priest and his acolytes went at once to the house with aspergills 

 and censers to expel the infernal intruder by the supernal power 

 inherent in holy water and consecrated incense. The event caused 

 considerable sensation in the Bavarian capital and excited mingled 

 feelings of indignation and disgust in the minds of even many 

 good Catholics. 



Lest we should pride ourselves on our superior enlightenment 

 and freedom from the thralls of mediaeval supernaturalism, it would 

 be well to remember that on January 6, 1897, Satan was burned 

 in effigy in New York, to the loud shouting and singing of jubilant 

 Salvationists. Of the two performances, we must confess that the 

 low-toned and almost unintelligible mutterings of the sacerdotal 

 exorcist in Munich, arrayed in gorgeous ecclesiastical robes and 

 armed with the approved apparatus of incantation, was by far the 

 more dignified and impressive, and, considered merely as a pageant, 

 had a certain picturcsqueness which was wholly absent from the 

 crude and vulgar exhibition at the headquarters of the Salvation 

 Army in "West Fourteenth Street. 



One curious and questionable feature of such survivals of 

 medisevalism as that just witnessed in Bavaria, is the kind of evi- 

 dence on which they rest. In most cases it is some child who sees 

 the apparition and reports it, and whose word is accepted as con- 

 clusive. In the forest at Planegg, near Munich, is a little church 



* See, for some examples of this tendency, the Popular Science Monthly for December, 

 1892, and October and November, 1895. 



