358 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



craft and sorcery. It seems a dreadful thing to say, but I believe 

 it is true : all the heathen persecutions of Christians put together 

 are nothing in comparison with the horrors of the crusade against 

 witches set on foot by members of the Christian Church and by 

 civil rulers in sympathy therewith. 



Nor is any single church entirely exempt from this charge. 

 " The Roman Church proclaimed in every way in her power the 

 reality and the continued existence of the crime. She taught, by 

 all her organs, that to spare a witch was a direct insult to the 

 Almighty ; and to her ceaseless exertions is to be attributed by far 

 the greatest part of the blood that was shed/' Bulls were issued 

 by Pope Innocent VIII, who commissioned the inquisitor Spren- 

 ger, whose book was long the standard authority on witchcraft, 

 and who (Sprenger) condemned to death hundreds every year. 

 Bulls were issued also by Pope John II, by Adrian VI, and by 

 many another occupant of the chair of St. Peter. " The universal 

 practice was at service to declare magicians and sorcerers to be ex- 

 communicated, and a form of exorcism was inserted in the ritual 

 of the church. . . . Ecclesiastical tribunals condemned thousands 

 to death ; and countless bishops exerted all their influence to mul- 

 tiply the victims." The same was the case — although not to so 

 great an extent — with the non-Roman churches. Luther said : 

 " I would have no compassion on these witches : I would burn 

 them all." In England the Reformation was marked by a large 

 increase in the number of persecutions; the prominent theolo- 

 gians, both within and without the established Church, holding 

 firmly to the belief in witchcraft. In Scotland persecution was 

 carried on with peculiar atrocity, while the executions in Puritan 

 Massachusetts form one of the darkest pages in the history of 

 America. 



Now, the remarkable thing about witchcraft is that it was be- 

 lieved in not only by the ignorant, but also by the learned ; not 

 only by the clergy, but also by the laity. " The defenders of the 

 belief maintained that no historical fact was more clearly attest- 

 ed. .. . The subject was examined in every European land by tri- 

 bunals which included the acutest lawyers and ecclesiastics of the 

 age, on the scene and at the time of the alleged acts, and with the 

 assistance of innumerable sworn witnesses. The judges had no mo- 

 tive whatever to desire the condemnation of the accused ; indeed, 

 they generally had the strongest motive to proceed with caution 

 and deliberation/' in view of the awful penalties attached to con- 

 viction. Cudworth, one of the most learned theologians the An- 

 glican Church has ever produced ; Bacon, one of the acutest law- 

 yers and philosophers of the age ; Sir Matthew Hale, chief justice 

 toward the end of the seventeenth century — these are only three 

 from a host of names that might be cited of those who believed in 



