578 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



than one poor victim had to bear alternately Lutheran, Romish, 

 and perhaps Calvinistic exorcism.* 



But far more serious in its consequences was another rivalry 

 to which in the sixteenth century the clergy of all creeds found 

 themselves subject. The revival of the science of medicine, under 

 the impulse of the new study of antiquity, suddenly bade fair to 

 take out of the hands of the Church the profession of which she 

 had enjoyed so long and so profitable a monopoly. Only one 

 class of diseases remained unquestionably hers — those which were 

 still admitted to be due to the direct personal interference of 

 Satan — and foremost among these was insanity, f It was surely 

 no wonder that an age of religious controversy and excitement 

 should have been exceptionally prolific in ailments of the mind ; 

 and to men who mutually taught the utter futility of that bap- 

 tismal exorcism by which the babes of their misguided neighbors 

 were made to renounce the Devil and his works, it ought not to 

 have seemed strange that his victims now became more numer- 

 ous. J But so simple an explanation did not satisfy these physi- 

 cians of souls, or, rather, they devised a simpler one : their pa- 

 tients, they alleged, were bewitched, and their increase was due to 

 the growing numbers of those human allies of Satan known as 

 witches. 



Already, before the close of the fifteenth century. Pope Inno- 

 cent VIII had issued the startling bull by which he called on the 

 archbishops, bishops, and other clergy of Germany to join hands 

 with his inquisitors in rooting out these willing bond-servants of 

 Satan, who were said to swarm throughout all that country, and 

 to revel in the blackest crimes. A half-dozen popes had since re- 

 iterated the appeal ; and, though none of these documents touched 

 on the blame of witchcraft for diabolic possession, the inquisitors 

 charged with their execution pointed it out most clearly in their 

 infamous hand-book, the " Witch-Hammer," and prescribed the 

 special means by which possession thus caused should be met. 

 These teachings took firm root in religious minds everywhere ; 

 and, during the great age of witch-burning that followed the 

 Reformation — when, in Germany alone, according to the most 



* For instances of this competition, see Freytag, "Aus dem. Jahrh. d. Reformation," 

 pp. 359-375. The Jesuit Stengel, in his "De judiciis divinis" (Ingolstadt, 1G51), devotes a 

 whole chapter to an exorcism, by the great Canisius, of a spirit that had baffled Protestant 

 conjuration. Among the most jubilant Catholic satires of the time are those exulting in 

 Luther's own alleged failure as an exorcist. 



f For the attitude of the Catholic clergy, the best sources are the confidential Jesuit 

 " Litterte Annuaj." To this day the numerous treatises on " pastoral medicine " in use in 

 the older Church devote themselves mainly to this sort of warfare with the devil. 



\ Baptismal exorcism continued in use among the Lutherans till in the eighteenth cent- 

 ury, though the struggle over its abandonment had been long and sharp. See Krafft, 

 " Historic vom Exorcismo " (Hamburg, 1750). 



