A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume III

The fourth was Huguet Aubry, a man of uncommon force and resolution. In spite of the severest and most prolonged torture, he had confessed nothing. He had been accused by nine witnesses, and he was now asked if he would confess under promise of mercy; but he repeated that he knew nothing of Vauderie, and had never been to the Sabbat. Then the inquisitor told him that he had broken jail and been recaptured, which rendered him guilty. He threw himself on his knees and begged for mercy, but was condemned to prison, on bread and water, for twenty years; a most irregular sentence, which could never have been rendered under the perfected system of procedure, for the evidence against him was strong, and his constancy under torture only proved that Satan had endowed him with the gift of taciturnity.

This was the last of the persecution. There had been only thirty-four arrests and twelve burnings; which, in the flourishing times of witchcraft, would have been a trifle, but the novelty of the occurrence in Picardy, the character of the victims, and the subsequent proceedings in the Parlement attracted to it a disproportionate attention. That it came to so early a termination is possibly attributable to the fact that Philippe de Saveuse had directed the torture of the women not only to convict de Beauffort, but to incriminate the Seigneurs de Croy and others, from avaricious and perhaps political motives. The de Croy were at this time all-powerful at the ducal court, and doubtless used their interest to arrest the ecclesiastical machinery which was strong enough to crush even them. It has every appearance of a repetition of the old story of Conrad of Marburg.

Whatever the cause, the inquisitor and the vicars now put a stop to the prosecutions, without calling in the Bishop of Beirut, Jacques du Boys, de Saveuse, and others, who urged them to proceed with the good work. In vain the latter talked of the imminent dangers impending over Christendom from the innumerable multitude of sorcerers, many of whom held high station in the Church and in the courts of princes. Vainly even the last card was played, and the superstitious were frightened by rumors that Antichrist was born, and that the sorcerers would support him.[575]

One by one the accused were discharged, as they were able to raise money to pay the expenses of their prison and of the Inquisition, which was a condition of liberation in all cases except those of utter poverty. Some had to undergo the formality of purging themselves with compurgators. Antoine Sacquespée, for instance, who had been tortured without confession, had to furnish seven, and was not allowed to escape without surrendering a portion of his substance. Others had light penance, like Jennon d’Amiens, a woman who had confessed after being several times tortured, and was now only required to make a five-league pilgrimage to Nôtre Dame d’Esquerchin. This was an admission that the whole affair was a fraud; and even more remarkable was the case of fille de joie named Belotte, who had been repeatedly tortured, and had confessed. She would have been burned with the other women on May 9, but it happened, accidentally or otherwise, that her mitre was not ready, and her execution was postponed, and now she was only banished from the diocese, and ordered to make a pilgrimage to Nôtre Dame de Boulogne. Of the whole number arrested nine had the constancy to endure torture—in most cases long and severe—without confession.

“Then the inquisitor, with his white hood, His shining nose and his repulsive mazzard, Among the foremost in the game has stood To torture these poor folk as witch or wizard. But he knows only what he has been told, For his sole thought throughout has been to hold And keep their goods and chattels at all hazard. But he has failed in this, and been cajoled.”

The prophecy was not wholly unverified. Fortunately there was in France a Parlement which had succeeded in establishing its jurisdiction over both the great vassals and the Inquisition, and the relations between the courts of Paris and Brussels were such as to render it nothing loath to interfere. De Beauffort, before his examination, had made an appeal to this supreme tribunal, which had been disregarded and suppressed, but his son Philippe had carried to Paris the tale of the wrongs committed on his father. The Parlement moved slowly, but on January 16, 1461, Philippe came back with an usher commissioned to bring de Beauffort before it after investigating the case. This official took testimony, and on the 25th, accompanied by de Beauffort’s four sons and thirty well-armed men, he presented himself before the vicars. Frightened by this formidable demonstration, they refused to see him; but he went to the episcopal palace, took the keys of the prison by force, and carried de Beauffort to the Conciergerie in Paris, after serving notice on the vicars to answer before the Parlement on February 25. The matter was now fairly in train for a legal investigation in which both sides could be heard. The convicts who had been condemned to imprisonment were set at liberty and carried to Paris, where their evidence confirmed that of de Beauffort. The conspirators were grievously alarmed.

Jacques du Boys, the dean, who had been the prime mover, became insane about the time set for the hearing; and though he recovered his senses, his limbs failed him; he took to his bed, where bed-sores ate great holes in his flesh, and he died in about a year, some persons attributing to sorcery and others to divine vengeance what evidently was mental trouble, causing temporary insanity followed by paresis. The Bishop of Beirut was thrown in prison, charged with having set the affair on foot, but he managed to escape, by miracle as he asserted; he made a pilgrimage to Compostella, and on his return secured the position of confessor to Queen Marie, dowager of Charles VII., where he was safe. Other conspicuous actors in the tragedy left Arras to escape the hatred of their fellow-citizens. Meanwhile the legal proceedings dragged on with the interminable delays for which the Parlement was notorious, enhanced on this occasion by the political vicissitudes of the period, and the final decision was not rendered until 1491, thirty years after its commencement, when all the sufferers had passed off the scene except the indomitable Huguet Aubry, who was still alive to enjoy a rehabilitation celebrated in a manner as imposing as possible. On July 18 the decree was published from a scaffold erected on the spot where the sentences had been pronounced. The magistrates had been ordered to proclaim a holiday, and to offer prizes for the best folie moralisée and pure folie, and to send notice to all the neighboring towns, so that a crowd of eight or nine thousand persons was collected.

After a sermon of two hours and a half, preached by the celebrated Geoffroi Broussart, subsequently chancellor of the University, the decree was read, condemning the Duke of Burgundy to pay the costs, and the processes and sentences to be torn and destroyed as unjust and abusive; ordering the accused and condemned to be restored to their good name and fame, all confiscations and payments to be refunded, while the vicars were to pay twelve hundred livres each, Gilles Flameng one thousand, de Saveuse five hundred, and others smaller sums, amounting in all to six thousand five hundred; out of which fifteen hundred were to be applied to founding a daily mass for the souls of those executed, and erecting a cross on the spot where they had been burned. The cruel and unusual tortures made use of in the trials were, moreover, prohibited for the future in all secular and ecclesiastical tribunals. It was probably the only case on record in which an inquisitor stood as a defendant in a lay court to answer for his official action. One cannot help reflecting that, if the Council of Vienne had done its duty as fearlessly as the Parlement, the affair of the Templars, so similar in many of its features, might have had a similar termination; and the contrast between this and the rehabilitation proceedings in the case of Joan of Arc shows how the Inquisition had fallen during the interval.[577]

Besides the general significance of this transaction in the history of witchcraft and of its persecution, there are several points worthy of attention in their bearing on the practical application of the methods of procedure described above. In the first place, it is evident throughout that no counsel were allowed to the accused. Then, the combined episcopal and inquisitorial court permitted no appeals, even to the Parlement, whose supreme jurisdiction was unquestioned. Not only was the attempt of de Beauffort to interject such an appeal contemptuously suppressed, but when Willaume le Febvre, who had fled to Paris and constituted himself a prisoner there to answer all charges, sent his son Willemet with a notary to serve an appeal, the service was rightly regarded as involving considerable risk. After watching their opportunity, Willemet and the notary served the notice on one of the vicars at church, then leaped on their horses and made all speed for Paris, but the vicars instantly despatched well-mounted horsemen, who overtook them at Montdidier and brought them back. They were clapped in jail, along with a number of friends and kinsmen who had been privy to their intention without betraying it, and were not released until they agreed to withdraw the appeal. Thus, an appeal was treated as an offence justifying vigorous measures. It is more difficult to understand the contemptuous indifference with which a papal bull was treated. Martin Cornille, the other fugitive, had pursued a different policy.

He carried with him an ample store of money, part of which he invested in a bull from Pius II. transferring the whole matter to Gilles Charlier and Grégoire Nicolai of Cambrai, and two of the Arras vicars. This was brought to Arras in August, 1460, by the Dean of Soignies, after which we hear nothing more of it, though it may have contributed to cool the ardor of those who were expecting to profit by the prosecutions.[578]

The means employed to obtain confession show that Sprenger only recorded the usage of the period in advising recourse to whatever fraud or force might prove necessary. Promises of immunity or of trifling penance were lavished on those whom it was intended to burn if they yielded to the blandishment, and these were supplemented with threats of burning as the punishment of taciturnity. De Beauffort’s confession without torture excited general astonishment until it was known that, on his arrest, after he had sworn to his innocence, Jacques du Boys entreated him to confess, even kneeling before him and praying him to do so, assuring him that if he refused he could not be saved from the stake, and that all his property would be confiscated, to the beggaring of his children, while, if he would confess, he should be released within four days without public humiliation or exposure; and when de Beauffort argued that this would be committing perjury, du Boys told him not to mind that, as he should have absolution. Those whose constancy was proof against such persuasiveness were tortured without stint or mercy. The women were frightfully scourged. Huguet Aubry was kept in prison for eleven months, during which, at intervals, he was tortured fifteen times, and when the ingenuity of the executioners failed in devising more exquisite forms of torment, he was threatened with drowning and thrown into the river, and then with hanging and suspended from a tree with his eyes duly bandaged.

Le petit Henriot’s resolution was tried with seven months’ incarceration, during which he was also tortured fifteen times, fire being applied to the soles of his feet until he was crippled for life. Others are mentioned whose endurance was equally tried, and we hear of such strange devices as pouring oil and vinegar down the throat, and other expedients not recognized by law.[579]

With regard to the death-penalty, it is to be observed that none of these were cases of relapse, and under the old inquisitorial practice they would all have been entitled to the penance of imprisonment. Their burning had not even the pretext of being punishment for injuries inflicted on their neighbors, for, with the exception of Pierre du Carieulx, the only offence assigned to them was attendance at the Sabbat. At the same time there was no resort to the juggle suggested by later authorities, of assigning penance, and then not inquiring what the secular power might see fit to do. The condemned were formally delivered to the magistrates to be burned, and though at the first auto a death-sentence was pronounced by the eschevins, at the second even this formality was omitted, and the victims were dragged directly from the place of sentence to that of execution.[580]

One specially notable feature of the whole affair was the utter incredulity everywhere excited. Just as the crimes imputed to the Templars found credence nowhere out of France, so, outside of Arras, we are told not one person in a thousand believed in the truth of the charges. This was fortunate, for the victims naturally included in their lists of associates many residents of other places, and the conflagration might readily have spread over the whole country, had it found agents like Pierre le Brousart, who carried the spark from Langres to Arras. On the strength of revelations in the confessions several persons were arrested in Amiens, but the bishop, who was a learned clerk and had long resided in Rome, promptly released them and declared that he would dismiss all brought before him, for he did not believe in the possibility of such offences. At Tournay others were seized, and the matter was warmly debated, with the result that they were set free, although Jean Taincture, a most notable clerk, wrote an elaborate treatise to prove their guilt. It was the same with the accused who managed to fly. Martin Cornille was caught in Burgundy and brought before the Archbishop of Besançon, who acquitted him on the strength of informations made in Arras. Willaume le Febvre surrendered himself to the Bishop of Paris; the Inquisitor of Paris came to Arras to get the evidence concerning him, and the vicars furnished the confessions of those who had implicated him.

The result was that the tribunal, consisting of the Archbishop of Reims, the Bishop of Paris, the Inquisitor of France, and sundry doctors of theology, not only acquitted him, but authorized him to prosecute the vicars for reparation of his honor, and for expenses and damages.[581] Evidently up to this time the excitement concerning witchcraft was to a great extent artificial—the creation of a comparatively few credulous ecclesiastics and judges: the mass of educated clerks and jurists were disposed to hold fast to the definition of the Cap. Episcopi, and to regard it as a delusion. Had the Church resolutely repressed the growing superstition, in place of stimulating it with all the authority of the Holy See, infinite bloodshed and misery might have been spared to Christendom.

The development of the witchcraft epidemic, in fact, had not been rapid. The earliest detailed account which we have of it is that of Nider, in his Formicarius, written in 1337. Although Nider himself seems to have sometimes acted as inquisitor, he tells us that his information is principally derived from the experience of Peter of Berne, a secular judge, who had burned large numbers of witches of both sexes, and had driven many more from the Bernese territory, which they had infested for about sixty years. This would place the origin of witchcraft in that region towards the close of the fourteenth century, and Silvester Prierias, as we have seen, attributes it to the first years of the fifteenth. Bernardo di Como, writing about 1510, assigns to it a somewhat earlier origin, for he says the records of the Inquisition of Como showed that it had existed for a hundred and fifty years. It is quite likely, indeed, that the gradual development of witchcraft from ordinary sorcery commenced about the middle of the fourteenth century. The great jurist Bartolo, who died in 1357, when acting as judge at Novara, tried and condemned a woman who confessed to having adored the devil, trampled on the cross, and killed children by touching and fascinating them. This approach to the later witchcraft was so novel to him that he appealed to the theologians to explain it.

In this there seems no reference to the distinctive feature of the Sabbat, but the popular beliefs concerning Holda and Dame Habonde and their troop were rife, and the coalescence of the various superstitions was only a question of time. As early as 1353 an allusion to the witches’ dance occurs in a trial at Toulouse. Thus the stories grew, under the skilful handling of such judges as Peter of Berne, until they assumed the detailed and definite shape that we find in Nider. The latter also acknowledges his obligation to the Inquisitor of Autun, which would indicate that witchcraft was prevalent in Burgundy at a comparatively early period. In 1424 we hear of a witch named Finicella burned in Rome for causing the death of many persons and bewitching many more. According to Peter of Berne, the evil originated with a certain Scavius, who openly boasted of his powers, and always escaped by transforming himself into a mouse, until he was assassinated through a window near which he incautiously sat. His principal disciple was Poppo, who taught Staedelin; the latter fell into the hands of Peter, and, after four vigorous applications of torture, confessed all the secrets of the diabolical sect. The details given are virtually those described above, showing that the subsequent inquisitors who drew their inspiration from Nider were skilled in their work and knew how to extract confessions in accordance with their preconceived notions.

There are a few unimportant variants, of course; infants, as already stated, when killed, were boiled down, the soup being used to procure converts by its magic power, while the solid portion was worked up into ointment required for the unholy rites. Apparently, moreover, the theory had not yet established itself that the witch was powerless against officers of public justice, for the latter were held to incur great dangers in the performance of their functions. It was only by the most careful observance of religious duties and the constant use of the sign of the cross that Peter of Berne escaped, and even he once, at the castle of Blankenburg, nearly lost his life when, going up a lofty staircase at night in such haste that he forgot to cross himself, he was precipitated violently to the bottom—manifestly the effect of sorcery, as he subsequently learned by torturing a prisoner.[582]

Although, in 1452, a witch tried at Provins declared that in all France and Burgundy the total number of witches did not exceed sixty, no believer contented himself with figures so moderate. In 1453 we hear of an epidemic of witchcraft in Normandy, where the witches were popularly known as Scobaces, from scoba, a broom, in allusion to their favorite mode of equitation to the Sabbat. The same year occurred the case of Guillaume Edeline, which excited wide astonishment from the character of the culprit, who was a noted doctor of theology and Prior of St. Germain-en-Laye. Madly in love with a noble lady, he sought the aid of sorcery. He doubtless fell victim to some sharper, for on his person was found a compact with Satan, formally drawn up with reciprocal obligations, one of which was that in his sermons he should assert the falsity of the stories told of sorcerers, and this, we are told, greatly increased their number, for the judges were restrained from prosecuting them. Another condition was that he should present himself before Satan whenever required. The methods of his examination must have been sharp, for he confessed that he performed this obligation by striding a broomstick, when he would be at once transported to the Sabbat, where he performed the customary homage of kissing the devil, in the form of a white sheep, under the tail. Prosecuted before Guillaume de Floques, Bishop of Evreux, he persuaded the University of Caen to defend him; but the bishop procuring the support of the University of Paris, he was forced to confess and was convicted.

It shows the uncertainty of procedure as yet that he was not burned, but was allowed to abjure, and was penanced with perpetual imprisonment on bread and water. At the auto de fé the inquisitor dwelt upon his former high position and the edification of his teaching, when the unfortunate man burst into tears and begged mercy of God. He was thrown into a basse-fosse at Evreux, where he lingered for four years, showing every sign of contrition, and at last he was found dead in his cell in the attitude of prayer. The epidemic was spreading, for in 1446 several witches were burned in Heidelberg by the inquisitor, and in 1447 another, who passed as their teacher; but there was as yet no uniform practice in such cases, for in this same year, 1447, at Braunsberg, a woman convicted of sorcery was only banished to a distance of two (German) miles, and three securities were required for her in the sum of ten marks.[583]

It was probably about this time that the inquisitors of Toulouse were busy with burning the numerous witches of Dauphiné and Gascony, as related by Alonso de Spina, who admired on the walls of the Toulousan Inquisition pictures painted from their confessions, representing the Sabbat, with the votaries adoring, with lighted candles, Satan in the form of a goat. The allusions of Bernardo di Como show that at the same period persecution was busy in Como. In 1456 we hear of two burned at Cologne. They had caused a frost so intense in the month of May that all vegetation was blasted, without hope of recovery. The steward of the archbishop asked one of them to give him an example of her art, when she took a cup of water, and muttering spells over it for the space of a couple of Paternosters, it froze so solidly that the ice could not be broken with a dagger. In this case, at least, the hand of justice had not weakened her power, though why she allowed herself to be burned is not recorded. In 1459 Pius II. called the attention of the Abbot of Tréguier to somewhat similar practices in Britanny, and gave him papal authority for their suppression, showing how vain had been the zeal of Duke Artus III., of whom, at his death in 1457, it was eulogistically declared that he had burned more sorcerers in France, Britanny, and Poitou than any man of his time.[584]

These incidents will show the growth and spread of the belief throughout Europe, and it must be borne in mind that they are but the indications of much that never attracted public attention or came to be recorded in history. A chance allusion, in a pleading of 1455, shows what was working under the surface in probably every corner of Christendom. In the parish of Torcy (Normandy) there had been for forty years a belief that a family of laborers—Huguenin de la Meu and his dead father before him, and Jeanne his wife—were all sorcerers who killed or sickened many men and beasts. An appeal to the Inquisition would doubtless have extracted from them confessions of the Sabbat and devil-worship, with lists of accomplices leading to a widespread epidemic, but the simple peasants found a speedier remedy in beating Huguenin and his wife, when the person or animal whom they had bewitched would recover. A certain André suspected them of causing the death of some of his cattle, and Jeanne said to his wife, Alayre, “Your husband has done ill in saying that I killed his cattle, and he will find it so before long.” That same day Alayre fell sick and was not expected to survive the night. To cure her André went next morning to Jeanne, and threatened that if she did not restore Alayre he would beat her so that she would never be well again—and Alayre recovered the next day.[585]

This shows the material which existed everywhere for development into organized persecution when properly handled by the Inquisition, and the Flagellum Hæreticorum Fascinariorum of the Inquisitor, Nicholaus Jaquerius, in 1458, indicates that the Holy Office was beginning to appreciate the necessity of organizing its efforts for systematic work. Perhaps the untoward result of the affair at Arras may have retarded this somewhat by the over-zeal and unscrupulous greed of its manipulators, but if there was a reaction it was limited, both in extent and duration. All the accumulated beliefs in the occult powers of demonic agencies inherited from so many creeds and races still flourished in their integrity. In the existing wretchedness of the peasantry throughout the length and breadth of Europe, recklessness as to the present and hopelessness as to the future led thousands to wish that they could, by transferring their allegiance to Satan, find some momentary relief from the sordid miseries of life. The tales of the sensual delights of the Sabbat, where exquisite meats and drink were furnished in abundance, had an irresistible allurement for those who could scantily reckon on a morsel of black bread, or a turnip or a few beans, to keep starvation at bay. Sprenger, as already stated, tells us that the attraction of intercourse with incubi and succubi was a principal cause of luring souls to ruin.

The devastating wars, with bands of écorcheurs and condottieri pillaging everywhere with savage cruelty, reduced whole populations to despair, and those who fancied themselves abandoned by God might well turn to Satan for help. According to Sprenger, a prolific source of witches was the seduction of young girls who when refused marriage had nothing more to hope for, and sought to avenge themselves on society by acquiring at least the power of evil.[586] Not only thus was there on the part of many a desire to enter the abhorred sect of Satan-worshippers, which the Church declared to be so numerous and powerful, but doubtless not a few performed the ceremonies to effect it, when perhaps some evil wish which chanced to be realized would convince them that Satan had really accepted their allegiance, and granted them the power which they sought. Certain minds might, in moments of high-wrought exaltation, even imagine that they had obtained admission to the foul mysteries whose reality was rapidly becoming an article of orthodox belief. Others again, in weakness and poverty, found that the reputation of possessing the power of evil was a protection and a support, and they encouraged rather than repressed the credulity of their neighbors. To these must be added the multitudes who derived a source of gain from curing the sorcery which the Church was confessedly unable to relieve, and there was ample material in the despised and lower stratum of society for the innumerable army of witches conjured up by the heated imaginations of the demonographers.

Unfortunately the Church, in its alarm at the development of this new heresy, stimulated it to the utmost in the endeavor to repress it. Every inquisitor whom it commissioned to suppress witchcraft was an active missionary who scattered the seeds of the belief ever more widely. We have seen what a brood of witches Pierre le Brousart hatched at Arras out of the single one burned at Langres, and how Chiabaudi succeeded in infecting the valleys of the Canavese. It mattered little in the end that le Brousart overreached himself and that Chiabaudi was outwrangled. The minds of the people became more and more familiarized with the idea that witches were everywhere around them, and that every misfortune and accident was the result of their malignity. Every man was thus assiduously taught, when he lost an ox or a child, or a harvest, or was suddenly prostrated with illness, to suspect his neighbors and look for evidence to confirm his suspicions, so that wherever an inquisitor passed he was overwhelmed with accusations against all who could be imagined to be guilty, from children of tender years to superannuated crones. When Girolamo Visconti was sent to Como he speedily raised such a storm of witchcraft that in 1485 he burned no less than forty-one unfortunates in the little district of Wormserbad in the Grisons—an exploit repeatedly referred to by Sprenger with honest professional pride.[587]

A special impulse was given to this development when Innocent VIII., December 5, 1484, issued his Bull Summis desiderantes, in which he bewailed the deplorable fact that all the Teutonic lands were filled with men and women who exercised upon the faithful all the malignant power which we have seen ascribed to witchcraft, and of which he enumerates the details with awe-inspiring amplification. Henry Institoris and Jacob Sprenger had for some time been performing the office of inquisitors in those regions, but their commissions did not specially mention sorcery as included in their jurisdiction, wherefore their efforts were impeded by over-wise clerks and laymen who used this as an excuse for protecting the guilty. Innocent therefore gives them full authority in the premises and orders the Bishop of Strassburg to coerce all who obstruct or interfere with them, calling in, if necessary, the aid of the secular arm. After this, to question the reality of witchcraft was to question the utterance of the Vicar of Christ, and to aid any one accused was to impede the Inquisition. Armed with these powers the two inquisitors, full of zeal, traversed the land, leaving behind them a track of blood and fire, and awakening in all hearts the cruel dread inspired by the absolute belief thus inculcated in all the horrors of witchcraft. In the little town of Ravenspurg alone they boast that they burned forty-eight in five years.[588]

It is true that they were not everywhere so successful. In the Tyrol the Bishop of Brixen published Innocent’s bull July 23, 1485, and on September 21 he issued to the inquisitor Henry Institoris a commission granting him full episcopal jurisdiction, but recommending him to associate with him a secular official of the suzerain, Sigismund of Austria. The latter, however, ordered the bishop to appoint a commissioner, and he named Sigismund Samer, pastor of Axams near Innsbruck. The pair commenced operations October 14, but their career, though vigorous, was short and inglorious. It chanced that some of the archduke’s courtiers desired to separate him from his wife, Catharine of Saxony, and spread reports that she had endeavored to poison him; and they followed this up by placing in an oven a worthless woman who personated an imprisoned demon and denounced a number of people. Institoris at once seized the accused and applied torture without stint. Then the bishop interposed, and by the middle of November ordered him to leave the diocese and betake himself to his convent, the sooner the better. Institoris, however, was loath to abandon his duty, and drew upon himself a sharper reproof on Ash Wednesday, 1486; he was told that he had nought to do there, that the bishop would attend to all that was necessary through the exercise of the ordinary jurisdiction, and he was warned that if he persisted in remaining he was in danger of assassination from the husbands or kinsmen of the women whom he was persecuting.

He finally withdrew to Germany, richly rewarded for his labor by Sigismund, and from his account of the matter it is easy to see that all the sick and withered of Innsbruck had flocked to him with complaints of their neighbors so detailed that he was justified in regarding the place as thoroughly infected. The next year the Tyrolese Landtag complained to the archduke that recently many persons, on baseless denunciations, had been imprisoned, tortured, and disgracefully treated, and we can readily understand the complaint of the Malleus Maleficarum that Innsbruck abounded in witches of the most dangerous character, who could bewitch their judges and could not be forced to confess. Still, the seeds of superstition were scattered to fructify in due time. Although in the Tyrolese criminal ordinance issued by Maximilian I., in 1499, there is no allusion to sorcery and witchcraft, yet in 1506 we find the craze fully developed. Some records which have been preserved show trials before secular judges with juries of twelve men, in which the unfortunate women accused, after due torture, confess all the customary horrors.[589]

One result of this campaign of Institoris in the Tyrol was that it left Sigismund of Austria in a condition of perplexity as to the reality of witchcraft. His judges had apparently been inexperienced in such matters, the confessions of the accused had varied greatly, and the inquisition had been cut short before they could be forced to consentaneous avowals. To satisfy his mind, in 1487, he consulted on the subject two learned doctors of the law, Ulric Molitoris and Conrad Stürtzel, and the result was published at Constance in 1489 by Ulric, in the form of a discussion between the three. Sigismund is represented as urging the natural argument that the results obtained by witchcraft were so wofully inadequate to the powers ascribed to it as to cast doubt upon the reality of those powers—if they were real, a conqueror would only have, like William the Manzer at Ely, to put a witch at the head of his army to overcome all opposition. Against this view the customary texts and citations were alleged, and the conclusions reached represent very fairly the moderate opinions of the conservatives, who had not as yet yielded fully to the witchcraft craze, but who shrank from a rationalistic denial of that which had been handed down by the wisdom of ages. These are summed up in eight propositions:

8. Finally, they should therefore be put to death. In this cautious endeavor to harmonize the old school and the new, the witch thus gained nothing; everything was conceded, that had a practical bearing on the tribunals, and it was a mere matter of speculation whether the Sabbat was a dream or a reality, and whether the evil she wrought was the result of a special or a general concession of power by God to Satan. Thus the work of Molitoris is important as showing how feeble were the barriers which intelligent and fair-minded men could erect against the prevailing tendencies so sedulously fostered by popes and inquisitors.[590]