CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



life. Now, however, it was only the power to 

 work evil ; and merely to be a witch was in itself 

 a sin and crime that filled the pious mind with 

 "horror. This feeling, zealously fostered, first by 

 the Catholic clergy, and then no less by the Prot- 

 estant, rose to a frenzy that for four centuries 

 filled Europe with the most shocking bloodshed 

 .and cruelty. 



We must here notice, however, that the demon 

 or master-fiend of the witchcraft legends was a 

 very different being from that great fallen spirit, 

 Tield, in a graver view of things, so deeply to 

 influence the best interests of humanity. As this 

 superstition gained force in the Christian world, 

 which it did by slow and successive steps through 

 the whole of the middle ages, or from the fifth 

 -century till about the fifteenth, the devil gradually 

 lost many of the former features of his character ; 

 or, rather, a different being was substituted for 

 "him, combining the characteristics of the Scan- 

 dinavian Loki with those of a satyr of the heathen 

 mythology a personage equally wicked and mali- 

 -cious, as the sterner spirit of evil, but rendered 

 ludicrous by a propensity for petty trickery, and 

 "by such personal endowments as a pair of horns, 

 a cow's tail, and cloven feet We are told, it is 

 true, that he could at will assume any specious 

 disguise that suited him, but the eye of the 

 initiated observer could readily detect the ' cloven 

 foot' or, in other words, penetrate his true 

 character. Such as he was, he played an im- 

 portant part in the annals of modern witchcraft, 

 -which was supposed to rest entirely on the direct 

 and personal agency of himself and the imps 

 -commissioned by him. Nor was this supposition 

 confined to the illiterate, or to persons of peculiarly 

 credulous temperament. Authors, distinguished 

 for sense and talent, record with great seriousness 

 that the devil once delivered a course of lectures 

 -on magic at Salamanca, habited in a professor's 

 gown and wig ; and that at another time he took 

 up house in Milan, lived there in great style, and 

 assumed, rather imprudently one would say, the 

 suspicious, yet appropriate title of the ' Duke of 

 Mammon.' 



The powers ascribed to this debased demon 

 were exceedingly great The general belief was, 

 that through his agency storms at sea and land ; 

 could at all seasons be raised ; that crops could 

 be blighted and cattle injured ; that bodily ill- 

 nesses could be inflicted on any person who was 

 the object of secret malice ; that the dead could 

 T)e raised to life ; that witches could ride through 

 the air on broomsticks, and transform themselves 

 into the shapes of cats, hares, or other animals, at 

 pleasure. 



The superstition seems to have approached its 

 height about the end of the fifteenth century. In 

 Tils bull of 1484, Pope Innocent charged inquisitors 

 and others to discover and destroy all such as 

 were guilty of witchcraft. This commission was 

 put into the hands of a wretch called Sprenger, 

 with directions that it should be put in force to 

 .its fullest extent. Immediately there followed a 

 icgular form of process and trial for suspected 

 witches, entitled Malleus Maleficarum, or a 

 Hammer for Witches, upon which all judges were 

 called scrupulously to act. The edict of 1484 was 

 subsequently enforced by a bull of Alexander VI. i 

 in 1494, of Leo X. in 1521, and of Adrian VI. in j 

 .1522 each adding strength to its predecessor, j 



and the whole serving to increase the agitation of 

 the public mind upon the subject. The results 

 were dreadful. A panic fear of witchcraft took 

 possession of society. Every one was at 

 mercy of his neighbour. If any one felt an unac 

 countable illness, or a peculiar pain in any part of 

 his body, or suffered any misfortune in his family 

 or affairs, or if a storm arose, and committed any 

 damage by sea or land, or if any cattle died sud- 

 denly, or, in short, if any event, circumstance, 

 or thing occurred out of the ordinary routine of 

 daily experience, the cause of it was witchcraft. 

 To be accused, was to be doomed ; for it rarely 

 happened that proof was wanting, or that condem- 

 nation was not followed by execution. Armed 

 with the Malleus Maleficarum, the judge had no 

 difficulty in finding reasons for sending the most 

 innocent to the stake. If the accused did not at 

 once confess, they were ordered to be shaved and 

 closely examined for the discovery of devil's 

 marks ; it being a tenet in the delusion that the 

 devil, on inaugurating any witch, impressed 

 certain marks on her person ; and if any strange 

 mark was discovered, there remained no longer 

 any doubt of the party's guilt Failing this kind 

 of evidence, torture was applied, and this seldom 

 failed to extort the desired confession from the 

 unhappy victim. A few extracts from the work of 

 Dr Hutchinson will shew the extent of these 

 miserable proceedings : 



'1485 A.D. Cumanas, an Inquisitor, burned 

 forty-one poor women for witches, in the county 

 of Burlia, in one year. He caused them to be 

 shaven first, that they may be searched for marks. 

 He continued the prosecutions in the year follow- 

 ing, and many fled out of the country. 



' 1488 A.D. A violent tempest of thunder and 

 lightning in Constance destroyed the corn for four 

 leagues round. The people accused one Anne 

 Mindelin, and one Agnes, for being the cause of 

 it They confessed, and were burned. 



'About this time, H. Institor says, one of the 

 inquisitors came to a certain town that was 

 almost desolate with plague and famine. The 

 report went that a certain woman, buried not long 

 before, was eating up her winding-sheet, and that 

 the plague would not cease till she had made an 

 end of it. This matter being taken into consid- 

 eration, Scultetus, with the chief-magistrate of the 

 city, opened the grave, and found that she had 

 indeed swallowed and devoured one-half of her 

 winding-sheet Scultetus, moved with horror at 

 the thing, drew out his sword and cut off her 

 head, and threw it into a ditch, and immediately 

 the plague ceased ! and the inquisition sitting 

 upon the case, it was found that she had long 

 been a reputed witch. 



' 1524 A.D. About this time a thousand were 

 burned in one year, in the diocese of Como, and 

 a hundred per annum for several years together.' 



From other authorities, it is learned that the 

 devastation was as great in Spain, France, and 

 Northern Germany, as it was in the Italian states. 

 About the year 1515, five hundred witches were 

 burned in Geneva in three months, and in France 

 many thousands. An able writer in the Foreign, 

 Quarterly Review (No. XI. 1830), sums up the 

 following particulars respecting the executions 

 for witchcraft in some of the German states : 



' In Germany, to which indeed the bull of 

 Innocent bore particular reference, this plague 



