JEROME CARDAN 209 



if he had been a soothsayer, and not a teacher of 

 medicine, but he would have nothing to say to them. 1 



It is somewhat strange that Cardan should have 

 detected no trace of the snare of the enemy in this 

 manoeuvre. Bearing in mind the character of the 

 request made, and the fact that Cardan was by no 

 means a persona grata to the petitioners, it seems highly 

 probable that they might have been more anxious to 

 draw from Cardan a profession of his disbelief in witch- 

 craft, than to procure the enlargement of the accused 

 persons whose cause they had nominally espoused. At 

 this period it was indeed dangerous to be a wizard, but 

 it was perhaps still more dangerous to pose as an avowed 

 sceptic of witchcraft. At the end of the fifteenth century 

 the frequency of executions for sorcery in the north of 

 Italy had provoked a strong outburst of popular feeling 

 against this wanton bloodshed ; but Spina, writing in 

 the interest of orthodox religion, deplores that disbelief 

 in the powers of Evil and their manifestations, always 

 recognized by the Church, should have led men on to 

 profess by their action any doubt as to the truth of 

 witchcraft. But in spite of the fulminations of men 

 of this sort, from this time onwards the more enlightened 

 scholars of Europe began to modify their opinions on 

 the subject of demoniac possession, and of witchcraft in 

 general. The first book in which the new views were 

 enunciated was the treatise De Prcestigiis Damonum, 

 by Johann Wier, a physician of Cleves, published in 

 1563. The step in advance taken by this reformer was 

 not a revolutionary one. He simply denied that witches 

 were willing and conscious instruments of the malefic 

 powers, asserting that what evil they wrought came 

 about by reason of the delusions with which the evil 

 1 De Vita Propria^ ch. xxiii. p. 104. 



