WITCH. 



83 



crime of witchcraft, so often referred to in the 

 Scriptures, both of the Old and New Testament. 

 Among the early Christians, the belief in the active 

 agency of the spirit of evil in human affairs be- 

 came more fully developed than it had previously 

 been ; and it has been a familiar notion with Chris- 

 tian writers, from an early period, that the gods of 

 the ancients were actually wicked spirits, who had 

 led the nations astray from God, and blinded them 

 to destroy them. Hence they have attributed to 

 the heathen oracles the character of prophecy, but 

 ascribed their prophetic powers to the devil; and 

 it is well known that the Sibylline oracles have been 

 quoted, by Christian theologians, in proof of the 

 divine character of the Saviour. " There appears 

 nothing," says Sir Walter Scott (Demonology and 

 Witchcraft) " inconsistent in the faith of those, 

 who, believing that, in the elder time, fiends and 

 demons were permitted an enlarged degree of 

 power in uttering predictions, may also give credit 

 to the proposition, that, at the divine advent, that 

 power was restrained, the oracles silenced, and 

 those demons who had aped the divinity of the 

 place, were driven from their abode on earth, 

 honoured as it was by a guest so awful." The 

 opinion here alluded to is the commonly-received 

 opinion that the heathen oracles were struck silent 

 at the time of the coming of Jesus Christ. (See 

 Demon, and Devil.) The legends of the saints, 

 the tales of the trials and temptations of holy 

 anchorites, in many of which the devil plays so im- 

 portant a part, contributed to extend and confirm 

 the popular notions ; and, a direct diabolical agency 

 being once assumed and allowed, there was nothing 

 too absurd to be engrafted on it. The insane fan- 

 cies of diseased minds, unusual phenomena of na- 

 ture, and the artful machinery of designing malig- 

 nity, ambition, or hypocrisy, were all laid at Satan's 

 door. In the Sachsenspiegel (q. v.) of the thir- 

 teenth century, the sorcerer and the witch are 

 ordered to be burned; bat it was not until the 

 fifteenth century that the proceedings against witch- 

 craft assumed their most hideous form. In 1484, 

 Innocent VIII. issued a bull directing the inquisi- 

 tors to be vigilant in searching out and punishing 

 those guilty of this crime ; and the form of proceed- 

 ing in the trial of the offence was regularly laid 

 down in the Malleus Maleficorum (Hammer of 

 Witches), which was issued soon after by the Ro- 

 man see. The bull of Innocent was enforced by 

 the successive bulls of Alexander VI. (1494), Leo 

 X. (1521), and Adrian VI. (1522). Of the ex- 

 tent of the horrors which followed, during two cen- 

 turies and a half, history gives us her record. We 

 are told that 500 witches were burned at Geneva, 

 in three months, about the year 1515; that 1000 

 were executed in one year in the diocese of Como; 

 in Wiirtzburg, from 1627 to 1629, 157 persons 

 were burned for witchcraft ; and it has been calcu- 

 lated that not less than 100,000 victims must have 

 suffered, in Germany alone, from the date of Inno- 

 cent's bull to the final extinction of the prosecu- 

 tions. The last execution in Wiirtzburg took 

 place so late as 1749, and a witch was burned in 

 the Swiss canton of Glarus in 1780. Bamberg, 

 Paderborn, Wiirtzburg and Treves were the chief 

 seats of this delusion in Germany. In England, the 

 state of things was no better ; and even the refor- 

 mation, which exploded so many other errors, 

 seems to have had no influence upon this. Indi- 

 vidual cases of trial for witchcraft occur in this 

 country previous to the enactment of any penal 



statute against it ; and the successive statutes of 

 Henry VI. Henry VII. (1541), Elizabeth (1562), 

 and James I. (1603), the last passed when lord 

 Bacon was a member of the house of commons, and 

 not repealed until 1736, show the extent of the 

 legislative proceedings in regard to this imaginary 

 crime here.* The judicial proceedings were 

 checked chiefly by the firmness of Holt, who, in 

 about ten trials, from 1694 to 1701, charged the 

 juries in such a manner as to -cause them to bring 

 in verdicts of acquittal. Yet, in 1716, Mrs Hickes 

 and her daughter, nine years of age, were hanged 

 for selling their souls to the devil, and raising a 

 storm by pulling off stockings and making a lather 

 of soap. The number of those put to death in 

 England has been estimated at about 30,000 ! The 

 last victim executed in Scotland perished in the 

 eighteenth century (1722). "Shewas," accordingto 

 Sir Walter Scott, " an insane old woman, who had so 

 little idea of her situation as to rejoice at the sight 

 of the fire which was destined to consume her. 

 She had a daughter lame both of hands and feet 

 a circumstance attributed to the witch's having 

 been used to transform her into a pony, and get her 

 shod by the devil." America furnishes a chapter 

 in this dreadful history of human folly. In 1692, 

 nineteen persons were executed, and one pressed to 

 death, in Salem and its vicinity, for the crime of 

 witchcraft; but, though several were condemned 

 and many accused, there were no executions sub- 

 sequent to that year See, on this subject, Horst's 

 Zauber-Bibliothek, &c. i. e. Magical Library, or 

 of Magic, Theurgy and Necromancy; Magicians, 

 Witches, and Witch-Trials, Demons, Ghosts, and 

 Spectral Appearances (Mentz, 6 vols., 8vo., 1826) ; 

 and his Damonomagie, or History of the Belief in 

 Magic, &c. (2 vols., 1818). 



According to the notions of the times above in- 

 dicated, witches were able, with the assistance of 

 the devil, not only to foretel events, but to pro- 

 duce mice and vermin ; to deprive men and animals, 

 by touching them, or merely breathing upon them, 

 of their natural powers, and to afflict them with 

 diseases ; to raise storms ; to change themselves 

 into cats, and other beasts ; &c. The compact with 

 the devil was sometimes express, whether oral or 

 written, when the witch abjured God and Christ, 

 and dedicated herself wholly to the evil one, or 

 only implied, when she actually engaged in his ser- 

 vice, practised infernal arts, and renounced the 

 sacraments of the church. The express compact 

 was sometimes solemnly confirmed at a general 

 meeting, over which the devil presided, and some- 

 times privately made by the witch signing the 

 articles of agreement with her own blood, or by 

 the devil writing her name in his black book. 

 The contract was sometimes of indefinite dura- 

 tion, and, at others, for a certain number of 

 years. 1 he witch was bound to be obedient to the 

 devil in every thing, while the other party to the 

 act promised her wealth and treasures; but the 

 gold thus obtained usually turned into some worth- 

 less material in the hands of its possessor. These 

 and similar facts were gathered from the voluntary 

 confessions of persons accused of this crime, whose 



* " To deny the possibility, imy, actual existence, of itch- 

 craft and sorcery," says Blackstone (Commentary on the Laws 

 of Kntflmul, B iv., ch. 4, sec 6), "is at once flatly to contra- 

 dict the revealed word of God in various passages both of the 

 Old and New Testament; and the thingr itself is a truth to 

 which every nation in the world hath in its turn borne testi- 

 mony, either by examples seemingly well attested, or by pro- 

 hibitory laws ; which, at least, suppose the possibility of a com- 

 merce with evil spirits." 



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