EVIL SPIRITS. 367 



a crime now is not looked upon as conclusive in law, and the ac- 

 cused is not obliged to confess. But in these trials for witchcraft 

 the whole aim of the court seemed to be to extort a confession. 

 For this object torture was resorted to, with the results that mul- 

 titudes confessed that they were witches and persisted in their 

 confessions until death relieved them. For the confession meant 

 death, its object not being to spare the accused, but to justify the 

 accuser. As a writer has said, " Madness is always particularly 

 prevalent during great religious and political revolutions " — many 

 therefore confessed through madness. Others, of a timid, doubting 

 mind, made themselves believe that, unknown to themselves, they 

 were witches. While " very often the terrors of the trial, the pros- 

 pect of the most agonizing of deaths, and the frightful tortures 

 that were applied to the weak frame of an old and feeble woman, 

 overpowered her understanding ; her brain reeled beneath the ac- 

 cumulated suffering, the consciousness of innocence disappeared, 

 and the wretched victim went raging to the flames, convinced that 

 she was about to sink forever into perdition." 



Another very interesting point discussed at great length in 

 these old books was whether the same body could be in two places 

 at once. That the body might be in one place and the mind in 

 another — this was agreed upon ; but whether the body might be 

 in two places — that was a harder question. However, it was de- 

 cided eventually that this was quite possible, and thereafter the 

 fact that wives were at home with their husbands was not accept- 

 ed as proof that they were not elsewhere in the same form as 

 witches. Indeed, several early saints had this same gift. St. Am- 

 brose celebrated mass in France and Italy at the same time, and St. 

 Clement is well known to have consecrated a church at Pisa while 

 performing mass at Rome. There is no doubt as to this latter 

 point, for there is blood as a proof upon the altar at Pisa ; and if 

 this is not his blood, whose is it ? Closely allied to this was what is 

 called " lycanthropy " — i. e., the taking of the form of an animal 

 by Satan or one of his angels. There are some most wonderful 

 stories of transformation to be found in the old records, all of 

 which are very ludicrous to us in this nineteenth century, but 

 when, three hundred years ago, it was a question of the stake here 

 and everlasting fire hereafter, they did not appear so full of humor. 

 A French judge named Boguet devoted himself especially to this 

 branch of witchcraft, wrote a book upon it, and burned multitudes 

 of these lycanthropes, his rule being to strangle other witches first, 

 but to burn these without strangling. 



So it came to pass that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 

 the skies of continental Europe were lurid with the flames of 

 burning women, and every market place had its fagot and its 

 stake. 



