TABOO AND GENETICS 165 



by nature. It is a gift peculiar to woman and 

 her temperament. By birth a fay, by the 

 regular recurrence of her ecstasy she becomes a 

 sibyl. By her love she grows into an enchant- 

 ress. By her subtlety . . . she becomes a witch 

 and works her spells." (29.) 



Just how many victims there were of the 

 belief in the power of women as witches will 

 never be known. Scherr thinks that the per- 

 secutions cost 100,000 lives in Germany alone. 

 (30.) Lord Avebury quotes the estimate of the 

 inquisitor Sprenger, joint author of the " Witch 

 Hammer," that during the Christian period 

 some 9,000,000 persons, mostly women, were 

 burned as witches. (31.) Seven thousand 

 victims are said to have been burned at Treves, 

 600 by a single bishop of Bamburg, 800 in a 

 single year in the bishopric of Wurtzburg. At 

 Toulouse 400 persons perished at a single 

 burning. (29 : ch. i.) (20 : v. i. ch. i.) One 

 witch judge boasted that he executed 900 

 witches in fifteen years. The last mass burning 

 in Germany was said to have taken place in 

 1678, when 97 persons were burned together. 

 The earliest recorded burning of a witch in 

 England is in Walter Mapes' De Nugis Curi- 

 alium, in the reign of Henry II. An old black 

 letter tract gloats over the execution at North- 

 ampton, 1612, of a number of persons convicted 

 of witchcraft. (32.) The last judicial sentence 



