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

Apparently he became dissatisfied with the response to these appeals, for in 1330 he deplored the continued existence of demon-worship and its affiliated errors; he ordered the prelates and inquisitors to speedily bring to conclusion all cases on hand and send the papers under seal to him for decision, and the inquisitors were commanded to undertake no new cases without a special papal mandate. Whatever may have been the motive of this last prohibition, it was not allowed to take effect in France. We have seen how the royal power about this time was commencing to exercise control over the Inquisition, and we shall see how, at the close of his life, John XXII. was accused of heresy as to the Beatific Vision, and was roundly threatened by Philippe de Valois. It was probably an incident of this quarrel that led the king, in 1334, to assume that the jurisdiction of the Inquisition over idolaters, sorcerers, and heretics had been conferred by the crown, and to order his seneschals to see that no one should interfere with them in its exercise. This royal rescript seems to have been forgotten with the circumstances which called it forth, for in 1374 the Inquisitor of France applied to Gregory XI. to ask whether he should take cognizance of sorcery, and Gregory replied with instructions to prosecute such cases vigorously.[493]

The necessary result of all this bustling legislation was to strengthen the popular confidence in sorcery and to multiply its practice. In Bernard Gui’s book of sentences rendered in the Inquisition of Toulouse from 1309 to 1323, there are no cases of sorcery, but we meet with several, tried in 1320 and 1321 in the episcopal Inquisition of Pamiers, and the fragmentary records of Carcassonne in 1328 and 1329 show quite a number of convictions. Inquisitors, moreover, commenced to insert a clause renouncing sorcery in all abjurations administered to repentant heretics, so that in case they should become addicted to it they could be promptly burned for relapse.[494]

Under the influence of this efficient advertisement the trade of the sorcerer flourished. In 1323 a remarkable case attracted much attention in Paris. The dogs of some shepherds, passing a cross-roads near Chateau-Landon, commenced scratching at a certain spot and could not be driven off. The men’s suspicions were aroused, and they informed the authorities, who, on digging, found a box in which was imprisoned a black cat, with some bread moistened with chrism, blessed oil, and holy water, two small tubes being arranged to reach the surface and supply the animal with air. All the carpenters in the village were summoned, and one identified the box, which he had made for a certain Jean Prevost. Torture promptly brought a confession inculpating the Cistercian abbot of Sarcelles, some canons, a sorcerer named Jean de Persant, and an apostate Cistercian monk, his disciple. The abbot, it seems, had lost a sum of money, and had employed the sorcerer to recover it and find the thief. The cat was to remain three days in the box, to be then killed, and its skin cut into strips, with which a circle was to be made. In this circle a man standing with the remains of the cat’s food thrust into his rectum was to invoke the demon Berich, who would make the desired revelation. The Inquisitor of Paris and the episcopal Ordinary promptly tried the guilty parties. Prevost opportunely died, but his remains were burned with his accomplice de Persant, while the ecclesiastics escaped with degradation and perpetual imprisonment.

It is evident that de Persant was not allowed the benefit of abjuration, while the Cistercians were exposed to a penalty more severe than those imposed by the rules of their Order. These had been defined in the general chapter of 1290 to be merely incapacity for promotion, or for taking any part in the proceedings of the body, the lowest seat in choir and refectory, and Friday fasting on bread and water until released by the general chapter. The intervening quarter of a century had, however, wrought a most significant change in the attitude of the Church towards this class of offences.[495]

The monastic orders evidently contributed their full share to this class of criminals. We happen to have the sentence, in 1329, by Henri de Chamay, of a Carmelite named Pierre Recordi, which illustrates the effectiveness of inquisitorial methods in obtaining avowals. The trial lasted for several years, and though the accused tergiversated and retracted repeatedly, his endurance finally gave way. He adhered at last to the confession that on five occasions, to obtain possession of women, he had made wax figurines with invocations of demons, mixing with them the blood of toads and his own blood and saliva, as a sacrifice to Satan. He would then place the image under the threshold of the woman, and if she did not yield to him she would be tormented by a demon. In three cases this had succeeded; in the other two it would have done so, had he not been suddenly sent by his superiors to another station. On one occasion he pricked an image in the belly, when it bled. After the images had done their work he would cast them into the river and sacrifice a butterfly to the demon, whose presence would be manifested by a breath of air. He was condemned to perpetual imprisonment on bread and water, with chains on hands and feet, in the Carmelite convent of Toulouse; out of respect to the Order he was not subjected to the ceremony of degradation, and the sentence was rendered privately in the episcopal palace of Pamiers. One peculiar feature of the sentence is the apprehension expressed lest the officials of the convent should allow him to escape.[496]

The trade of the magician received a further advertisement in the story current at this time about Frederic of Austria. When, after his defeat at Mühldorf in 1322, by Louis of Bavaria, he lay a prisoner in the stronghold of Trausnitz, his brother Leopold sought the services of an expert necromancer, who promised to release the captive through the aid of the devil. In response to his invocation, Satan came in the guise of a pilgrim, and readily promised to bring Frederic to them if he would agree to follow him; but when he appeared to Frederic and told him to get into a bag which he carried around his neck and he would bring him to his brother in safety, Frederic asked him who he was. “Never mind who I am,” he replied: “Will you leave your prison, as I tell you?” Then a great fear fell upon Frederic; he crossed himself and the devil disappeared.[497]

Even to distant Ireland the persecution of sorcery was brought in 1325 by that zealous Franciscan, Richard Ledrede, Bishop of Ossory. The Lady Alice Kyteler of Kilkenny had had four husbands, and their testamentary dispositions not suiting her children by the last three, the most efficient means of breaking their wills was to accuse her of having killed them by sorcery, after bewitching them to leave their property to her and to her eldest son, William Outlaw. Bishop Ledrede proceeded vigorously to make inquisition, but Lady Alice and William were allied to the leading officials in Ireland, who threw every difficulty in the way, and, as the canons against heresy were unknown in the island, he had an arduous task, being himself at one time arrested and thrown into prison. A less indomitable spirit would have succumbed, but he triumphed at last, though Lady Alice herself escaped his clutches and was conveyed to England. The trials of her assumed accomplices would seem to have been conducted without much respect to form, but with ample energy. Torture being unknown in English law, the bishop might have failed in eliciting confession had he not found an effective, if illegal, substitute in the whip. Petronilla, for instance, one of Lady Alice’s women, after being scourged six times could endure no longer the endless increase of agony, and confessed all that was wanted of her. She admitted that she was a skilful sorceress, but inferior to her mistress, who was equal to any in England, or any in the world.

She told how, at Lady Alice’s command, she had sacrificed cocks in the cross-roads to a demon named Robert Artisson, her mistress’s incubus or lover, and how they made from the brains of an unbaptized child, with herbs and worms, in the skull of a robber who had been beheaded, powders and charms to afflict the bodies of the faithful, to excite love and hatred, and to make the faces of certain women, appear horned in the eyes of particular individuals. She had been the intermediary between her mistress and the demon; on one occasion he had come to Lady Alice’s chamber with two others, black as Ethiopians, when followed love-scenes of which the disgusting details may be spared. The case is interesting as developing a transition state of belief between the earlier magic and the later witchcraft; and it illustrates one of the most important points in the criminal jurisprudence of the succeeding centuries, which explains the unquestioning belief universally entertained as to the marvels of sorcery. Torture administered with unlimited repetition not only brought the patient into a condition in which he would confess whatever was required of him, but the impression produced was such that he would not risk its renewal by retraction even at the last. It was so with this poor creature, who persisted to the end with this tissue of absurdities, and who was burned impenitent.

While Bishop Ledrede was busy at this good work a trial occurred in England which illustrates the difference in efficiency between the ecclesiastical methods of trial by torture and those of the common law. Twenty-eight persons were accused of employing John of Nottingham and his assistant, Richard Marshall of Leicester, to make wax figures for the destruction of Edward II., the two Despensers, and the Prior of Coventry, with two of his officials who had tyrannized over the people and had been sustained by the royal favorites. Richard Marshall turned accuser, and the evidence was complete. The enormous sums of twenty pounds to Master John and fifteen pounds to Richard had been promised, and they had been furnished with seven pounds of wax and two ells of canvas. From September 27, 1324, until June 2, 1325, the two magicians labored at their work. They made seven images, the extra one being experimental, to be tried on Richard de Sowe. On April 27 they commenced operating with this by thrusting a piece of lead into its forehead, when at once Richard de Sowe lost his reason and cried in misery until May 20, when the lead was transferred to his breast, and he died May 23. The accused pleaded not guilty and put themselves on the country. An ordinary jury trial followed, with the result that they were all acquitted. A similar case came to light at Toulouse in June, 1326, when some sorcerers were discovered who had undertaken to make way with King Charles le Bel by means of figurines.

They were promptly despatched to Paris, and the matter was taken in hand by the secular court of the Châtelet. It had all the resources of torture at its command, and its speedy and vigorous justice undoubtedly soon consigned them to the stake, although Pierre de Vic, a favored nephew of John XXII., who had been inculpated in their confessions, was pronounced innocent. It was probably not long after this that a similar attempt was made on the life of John XXII., though the culprits escaped until 1337, when they were tried and executed by Benedict XII. To shield themselves they implicated the Bishop of Béziers as their instigator.[499]

Yet organized persecution seems to have died away with the withdrawal of sorcery from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition by John XXII. in 1330, while the stimulus which his proclamations had given to the trade of the magician continued to extend it and render it profitable. The tendency of popular thought is shown by the attribution, in some places, of the Black Death to the incantations as well as to the poisons of the Jews. Such an expedient as that of the Council of Chartres in 1366, which ordered sorcerers to be excommunicated in mass every Sunday in all parish churches, would only serve to impress the popular mind with the reality and importance of their powers. During this period the study and practice of magic arts were pursued with avidity, and in many cases almost without concealment. Miguel de Urrea, who was Bishop of Tarazona from 1309 to 1316, was honored with the title of el Nigromantico, and his portrait in the archiepiscopal palace of Tarragona bears an inscription describing him as a most skilful necromancer, who even deluded the devil with his own arts. Gerard Groot himself, claimed by the Brethren of the Common Life as their revered founder, was in his youth an earnest student of the occult sciences, but during an illness he solemnly abandoned them before a priest and burned his books. Many years later he turned his knowledge to account by exposing a certain John Heyden, who had long practised on the credulity of the people of Amsterdam and its vicinity.

On his coming to Deventer, Groot examined him and found him ignorant of necromancy and its allied arts, and concluded that he operated through a compact with Satan. Not willing to incur the irregularity of shedding blood, Groot contented himself with driving him away, and then, on learning that he had settled at Harderwick, wrote to the brethren there giving them an account of him; but the whole affair shows that such persons could count on practical toleration unless some zealot chose to set the laws in motion. The extent to which this toleration was carried, and the limitless credulity to which the popular mind had been trained are shown in the accounts given by grave historians of the feats of Zyto, the favorite magician of the Emperor Wenceslas, who, in spite of the repeated condemnation of magic by the Councils of Prague during the latter half of the century, reckoned among his evil qualities a fondness for forbidden arts. When, in 1389, he married Sophia, daughter of the Elector of Bavaria, the latter, knowing his proclivities, brought to Prague a wagon-load of skilful conjurers and jugglers. While the chief of these was giving an exhibition of his marvels Zyto quietly walked up to him, opened his mouth, and swallowed him entire, spitting out his muddy boots, and then evacuated him into a vessel of water and exhibited him dripping to the admiring crowd.

At the royal banquets Zyto would bother the guests by changing their hands into the hoofs of horses or oxen so that they could not handle their food; if something attracted them to look out of the window he would adorn them with branching antlers, so that they could not withdraw their heads, while he would leisurely eat their delicacies and drink their wine. On one occasion he changed a handful of corn into a drove of fat hogs which he sold to a baker, with a caution not to let them go to the river, but the purchaser disregarded the warning and they suddenly became grains of corn floating on the water. Of course such a character could not end well, and Zyto, when his time came, was carried off by his demon. Not only are all these marvels recorded as unquestionable facts by the Bohemian chroniclers, but they are conscientiously copied by the papal historian Raynaldus.[500]

Although Gregory XI., in 1374, had authorized the Inquisition to prosecute in all cases of sorcery, in France the Parlement included the subject within its policy of encroachment upon the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. In 1390 an occurrence at Laon, where a secular official named Poulaillier arrested a number of sorcerers, gave it occasion to intervene. As Bodin says, at that time Satan managed to have it believed that the stories of sorcery were false, so the Parlement stopped the proceedings, and thus having its attention drawn to the matter, decreed that in future cognizance of such offences should be confined to the secular tribunals, to the exclusion of the spiritual courts.[501] Secular judges, however, were ready to treat these cases with abundant sharpness. A case occurring at the Paris Châtelet in 1390 has much interest as affording us an insight into the details of procedure, and as illustrating the efficacy of torture in securing conviction. Except as regards the use of this expedient, now universal in all criminal cases, we see that the process is much fairer to the accused than that of the Inquisition, and we observe once more the ineffaceable impression produced by torture, which leads the despairing victim to adhere to the self-condemnation conducting him inevitably to the stake. Marion l’Estalée was a young fille de folle vie, madly in love with a man named Hainsselin Planiete, who deserted her, and, about July 1, 1390, married a woman named Agnesot.

Eager to prevent this, if her confession is to be believed, she had applied to an old procuress named Margot de la Barre, for a philtre to fix his wandering affection, and when this failed Margot made for her two enchanted chaplets of herbs, which she threw where the bride and groom would tread on them during the festivities of the wedding-day, assured that this would prevent the consummation of the marriage. The plot was unsuccessful, but Hainsselin and Agnesot fell sick, leading to the arrest of the two women.

On July 30 Margot was examined and denied all complicity. She was promptly tortured on le petit et le grand tresteau—which I conjecture to mean, the former, pouring water down the throat till the stomach was distended and then forcing it out by paddling the belly; the latter, the rack. This reduplicated torture produced no confession, and she was remanded for further hearing. August 17 Marion was taken in hand, when she denied, and was similarly tortured without result. On the 3d she was again examined and denied, and on being again ordered to the torture, she appealed to the Parlement; the appeal was promptly heard and rejected, and she was tortured as before, then taken to the kitchen and warmed, after which she was tortured a third time, but to no effect. On the 4th she was brought in and refused to confess, but the indefinite repetition of torment without prospect of cessation had produced its effect on body and mind; the torture had been pitiless, for she is subsequently alluded to as much crippled and weakened by it, and when she was again bound on the tresteau, and the executioner was about to commence his work, she yielded and agreed to confess. On being unbound she detailed the whole story, and in the afternoon, on being brought in again, she confirmed it “sans aucune force ou constrainte.” Then Margot was introduced, and Marion repeated her confession, which Margot denied and offered the wager of battle, of which no notice was taken. Margot then asserted her ability to prove an alibi on the day when she was said to have made the chaplets.

The parties whom she named as witnesses were looked up for her and brought in the next day, when the evidence proved rather incriminating than otherwise. Marion was then made to repeat her confession, and not till then was Margot tortured a second time, but still without result. On the 6th Marion was again made to repeat her confession, after which Margot was brought in and bound to the tresteau. Marion’s youthful vigor had enabled her to endure the torture thrice. Margot’s age had diminished her power of resistance, and the two applications sufficed. Her resolution gave way, and before the torture commenced she promised to confess. Her story agreed with that of Marion, except in some embellishments, which serve to show how thoroughly untrustworthy were all such confessions, of which the sole object was to satisfy the merciless ministers of justice. When she enchanted the chaplets she invoked the demon by thrice repeating “Ennemi je te conjures au nom du Père, du Fils et du Saint Esperit que tu viegnes a moy icy;” then an “ennemi,” or demon, promptly appeared, like those she had seen in the Passion-play, and after she had instructed him to enter into the bodies of Hainsselin and Agnesot he flew out of the window in a whirlwind, making a great noise and throwing her into mortal fear. The evidence was thus complete, and there would seem to be nothing left but prompt sentence, yet the tribunal manifested commendable desire to avoid precipitate judgment. Assessors and experts were called in.

On August 7, 8, and 9 Marion was thrice made to repeat her confession, and Margot twice. On the latter day a consultation was held, and the decision was unanimous against Margot, who was pilloried and burned the same day; but three of the experts thought that the pillory and banishment would suffice for Marion. Her case was postponed till the 23d, when another consultation was held; opinions remained unaltered, and as the majority was in favor of condemnation theprévôt condemned her, and she was burned the next day. Both the victims may have been innocent, and the whole story may have been invented to avoid the repetition of the intolerable torture; but, inevitable as was the result under the conditions of the trial, the judges manifested every disposition to deal fairly with the unfortunates in their hands, and could entertain no possible doubt as to the reality of the offence and of the apparition of the demon as described by Margot.[502] It is necessary to bear this in mind when estimating the conduct of the judges and inquisitors who sent thousands of unfortunates to the stake in the next two centuries, for offences which to a modern mind are purely chimerical, for, according to the jurisprudence of the age, no evidence could be more absolute than that on which rested the cruelly punished absurdities of witchcraft.

Simultaneous with this case was the burning of a sorceress named Jeanette Neuve or Revergade, August 6, 1390, in Velay. Although she was tried and executed by the court of the Abbey of Saint-Chaffre, this was in its capacity as haut-justicier, and not as a spiritual tribunal. A century later we should have found the case embroidered with full accounts of the Sabbat and of demon-worship, but the time had not yet arrived for this. Jeanette was a poor wandering crone who had come to Chadron, within the abbatial jurisdiction, and earned a livelihood by curing diseases with charms, to which she usually added the prescription of a pilgrimage to some shrine of local renown. She must have gained reputation as a wise-woman, for the Sire de Burzet, quarrelling with his wife and desiring reconciliation, came to her for a philtre. She gave him a potion of which he died, and her fate was sealed.[503]

About this period may be dated a fresh impulse given to the belief in sorcery, whose continued growth during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was destined to produce results so deplorable, and to present one of the most curious problems in the history of human error. The first indication of this new development is found in the action of the University of Paris. September 19, 1398, the theological faculty held a general congregation in the Church of St. Mathurin, and adopted a series of twenty-eight articles which thenceforth became a standard for all demonologists, and were regarded as an unanswerable argument to sceptics who questioned the reality of the wickedness of the arts of magic. The preamble recites that action was necessary in view of the active emergence of ancient errors which threatened to infect society; the old evils, which had been well-nigh forgotten, were reviving with renewed vigor, and some positive definition was required to guard the faithful from the snares of the enemy.

The University then proceeded to declare that there was an implied contract with Satan in every superstitious observance, of which the expected result was not reasonably to be anticipated from God and from Nature, and it condemned as erroneous the assertion that it was permissible to invoke the aid of demons or to seek their friendship, or to enter into compacts with them, or to imprison them in stones, rings, mirrors, and images, or to use sorcery for good purposes or for the cure of sorcery, or that God could be induced by magic arts to compel demons to obey invocations, or that the celebration of masses or other good works used in some forms of thaumaturgy was permissible, or that the prophets and saints of old performed their miracles by these means which were taught by God, or that by certain magic arts we can attain to the sight of the divine essence. These latter clauses point to a dangerous tendency of coalescence between the arts of the sorcerer and of the theurgist, and indicate that in the higher magic of the day there was a claim to be considered as penetrating to the ineffable mysteries which surrounded the throne of God; in fact, these adepts declared that their arts were lawful, and they sought to prove their origin in God by pointing out that good flowed from them, and that the wishes and prophecies of those using them were fulfilled.

All this the University condemned, and while on the one hand it denied that images of lead or gold or wax, when baptized, exorcised, and consecrated on certain days, possessed the powers ascribed to them in the books of magic, on the other hand it was equally emphatic in animadverting on the incredulity of those who denied that sorcery, incantations, and the invocation of demons possessed the powers claimed for them by sorcerers.[504]

Like all other efforts to repress sorcery, this of course only served to give it fresh significance and importance. The declaration that it was erroneous to doubt the reality of sorcery and its effects became a favorite argument of the demonologists. Gerson declared that to call in question the existence and activity of demons was not only impious and heretical, but destructive to all human and political society. Sprenger concludes that the denial of the existence of witchcraft is not in itself heresy, as it may proceed from ignorance, but such ignorance in an ecclesiastic is in itself highly culpable; such denial is sufficient to justify vehement suspicion of heresy, calling for prosecution, and we have seen what was the significance of “vehement suspicion” in inquisitorial practice.[505]

With popular credulity thus stimulated, the insanity of Charles VI. afforded a tempting opportunity for charlatans to market their wares. In 1397 the Maréchal de Sancerre sent to Paris from Guyenne two Augustinian hermits who had great reputation for skill in the occult sciences, and who promised relief. They pronounced the royal patient a victim of sorcery, and after some incantations he recovered his senses, but it proved only a lucid interval, and in a week he relapsed. This they charged upon the royal barber and a porter of the Duke of Orleans, who were arrested, but nothing could be proved against them, and they were discharged. For months the two impostors led a joyous life with ample fees, but at last they were compelled to name the author of the sorceries, and this time they had the audacity to pitch upon the king’s brother, Louis of Orleans himself. This grew serious, and on being threatened with torture they confessed themselves sorcerers, apostates, and invokers of demons. They were accordingly tried, condemned, degraded from the priesthood, and mercifully beheaded and quartered. Undeterred by this example, in 1403 a priest named Ives Gilemme, who boasted that he had three demons in his service, with some other invokers of demons, the Demoiselle Marie de Blansy, Perrin Hemery, a locksmith, and Guillaume Floret, a clerk, offered to cure the king, and were given a trial.

They asked to have twelve men loaded with iron chains placed at their disposal; these they surrounded with an enclosure, and, after telling them not to be afraid, proceeded with all the invocations they could muster, but accomplished no results. They excused their failure by alleging that the men had crossed themselves, but this availed them nothing. Floret confessed to the Prévôt of Paris that the whole affair was a deception, and on March 24, 1404, they were all duly burned. It was probably this case which induced Cardinal Louis of Bourbon, in his provincial synod of Langres, in 1404, to prohibit strictly all sorcery and divination, and to warn his flock to place no trust in such arts, as their practitioners were mostly deceivers whose only object was to trick them out of their money. Priests, moreover, were strictly ordered, as had already been done by the Council of Soissons the year before, to report to the episcopal ordinaries all cases coming to their knowledge and all persons defamed for such practices. Had this policy been carried out, of treating sorcerers as sharpers, and of instituting an episcopal police to replace the Inquisition, at this time rapidly falling into desuetude, it might have averted the evils which followed, but the well-meant effort of Cardinal Louis was followed by no results.

The belief in sorcery continued to strengthen, and when Jean Petit undertook to justify Jean sans Peur for the assassination of the Duke of Orleans, it was almost a matter of course that he should accuse the murdered prince of encompassing the king’s insanity by magic, of which the most minute details were given, including the names of the two demons, Hynars and Astramein, whose assistance had been successfully invoked.[506]

In England, sorcery, as we have seen, had thus far attracted little attention. Even as late as 1372 a man was arrested in Southwark with the head and face of a corpse in his possession, and a book of magic was found in his trunk. Tried before the Inquisition he would infallibly have confessed under torture a series of misdeeds and have ended at the stake; but he was brought before Sir J. Knyvet, in the King’s Bench. No indictment even was found against him; he was simply sworn not to practise sorcery and was discharged, but the head and book were burned at Tothill at his expense. To the fair and open character of English law is doubtless to be attributed the comparative exemption of the island from the terror of sorcery, but when, at last, persecuting excitement arose in the Lollard troubles, the Church used its influence with the new Lancastrian dynasty to suppress the emissaries of Satan. In 1407 Henry IV. issued letters to his bishops reciting that sorcerers, magicians, conjurers, necromancers, and diviners abounded in their dioceses, perverting the people and perpetrating things horrible and detestable. The bishops, therefore, were commissioned to imprison all such malefactors, either with or without trial, until they should recant their errors or the king’s pleasure could be learned respecting them.

The placing of the matter thus in the hands of the Church, and depriving the accused of all legal safeguards, is most significant as a recognition that the ordinary forms of English law were not to be depended upon in such cases, and that public opinion as yet was too unformed for juries to be trusted. Under the regency the royal council seems to have assumed jurisdiction over the matter. In 1432 a Dominican of Worcester, Thomas Northfield, suspected of sorcery, was summoned before it with all his books of magic. A few days later it heard the celebrated Witch of Eye, Margery Jourdemayne, with the Dominican John Ashewell and John Virby, a clerk, who had been confined at Windsor under charge of sorcery, but they were discharged on giving bonds for good behavior. The Witch of Eye did not fare so well when, in 1441, she was implicated in the accusation brought against the Duchess of Gloucester, of making and melting a wax figurine of Henry VI. The duchess confessed and escaped with the penance of walking bareheaded thrice through the streets with wax tapers of two pounds each, and offering them at the shrines of St. Paul’s, Christ Church, and St. Michael’s in Cornhill, after which she was imprisoned and finally banished to Chester. Her secretary, Roger, was hanged, drawn, and quartered, and Margery was burned—the whole affair being political.

A similar endeavor to take political advantage of the belief in sorcery occurred in 1464, in connection with the marriage of Edward IV. and Elizabeth Woodville, when his constancy to her was attributed to the magic arts of her mother, Jacquette, widow of the Regent Bedford in first marriage. Jacquette did not wait to be attacked, but turned upon her accusers, Thomas Wake and John Daunger, who had talked about her using leaden images of the king and queen, and had shown one of them broken in two and wired together. They disclaimed responsibility, and endeavored to shift the burden each on the other; but in 1483 Richard III. did not fail to make the most of the matter, and in the act for the settlement of the crown described Edward’s “pretensed marriage” as brought about by “sorcerie and witchcraft committed by the said Elizabeth and her moder, Jacquette duchesse of Bedford.” Thus England was gradually prepared to share in the horrors of the witchcraft delusions.[507]

Perhaps the most remarkable trial for sorcery on record is that of the Maréchal de Rais, in 1440, which has long ranked as a cause celébre, although it is only of late that the publication of the records has enabled it to be properly understood. The popular belief at the time is indicated by Monstrelet, who tells us that the marshal was accustomed to put to death pregnant women and children in order with their blood to write the conjurations which secured him wealth and honors; Jean Chartier alludes to his putting children to death and performing strange things contrary to the faith to attain his ends, and in the next century Gaguin speaks of his slaying children in order with their blood to divine the future.[508] Curious as is the case in many aspects, perhaps its chief interest lies in the psychological study which it affords as an illustration of the extreme development of the current ecclesiastical teaching with regard to the remission of sins.

In the France of the fifteenth century there was no career more promising than that of Gilles de Rais. Born in 1404 of the noble stock of Montmorency and Craon, grandson of the renowned knight, Brumor de Laval, grandnephew of du Guesclin, of kindred with the Constable Clisson, and allied with all that was illustrious in the west of France, his barony of Rais rendered him the head of the baronage of Britanny. His territorial possessions were ample, and when, while still a youth, he married the great heiress, Catharine de Thouars, he might count himself among the wealthiest nobles of France. His bride is said to have brought him one hundred thousand livres in gold and movables, and his revenue was reckoned at fifty thousand. At the age of sixteen he won the esteem of his suzerain, Jean V., Duke of Britanny, by his courage and skill in the campaign which ended the ancient rivalry between the houses of de Montfort and de Penthièvre. At twenty-two, following the duke’s brother, the Constable Artus de Richemont, he entered the desperate service of Charles VII., with a troop maintained at his own expense, and he distinguished himself in the seemingly hopeless resistance to the English arms. When Joan of Arc appeared he was charged with the special duty of watching over her personal safety, and, from the relief of Orleans to the repulse at the gates of Paris, he was ever at her side.

In the coronation ceremonies at Reims he received, though but twenty-five years old, the high dignity of Marshal of France, and in the September following he was honored with permission to add to his arms a border of the royal fleurs-de-lis. There was no dignity beneath the crown to which his ambition might not aspire, for he maintained himself so skilfully between the opposing factions of the constable and of the royal favorite, La Trémouille, that when the latter fell, in 1433, his credit at the court was unimpaired.[509]

He was, moreover, a man of unusual culture. His restless curiosity and thirst for knowledge led him to accumulate books at a time when it was rare for knights to be able to sign their names. Chance has preserved to us the titles of St. Augustin’s “City of God,”—“Valerius Maximus,” Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” and “Suetonius,” as fragments of his library; and on his trial one of the reasons he gave for liking an Italian necromancer was the choice Latinity of his speech. He delighted in rich bindings and illuminations. On one occasion he is described, but a few months before his arrest, as engaged in his study in ornamenting with enamels the cover of a book of ceremonies for his chapel. Of music and the drama he was also passionately fond. In these pursuits he was a fit comrade for the good King René, as in the field he was the mate of Dunois and La Hire.[510]

Yet the life which promised so much in camp and court was blighted by the fatal errors of his training. The death of his father while he was a child of eleven left him to the care of a weak and indulgent grandfather, Jean de Craon, whose authority he soon shook off. His fiery nature ran riot, and he grew up devoured with the wildest ambition, abandoned to sensual excesses of every kind, and with passions unrestrained and untamable. When on trial he repeatedly addressed the wondering crowd, urging all parents to train their children rigidly in the ways of virtue, for it was his unbridled youth that had led him to crime and a shameful death.[511]

Although, in the charges preferred against him, his aberrations are said to have commenced in 1426, he himself asserted that the fatal plunge was not made until 1432, after the death of his grandfather. About that time he began to withdraw from active life, and after 1433 he is no longer heard of in the field, although the war of liberation offered its prizes as abundantly as ever.[512]

Then commenced a strange and unexampled dual existence. To the outward world he was the magnificent seigneur, intent only on display and frivolity. His immeasurable ambition, diverted from its natural career, found unworthy gratification in making the vulgar stare with his gorgeous splendor. He affected a state almost royal. A military household of over two hundred horsemen accompanied him wherever he went. He founded a chapter of canons, with service and choir fit for a cathedral, and this was his private chapel, likewise attached to his person, costing him immense sums, including portable organs carried on the shoulders of six stout serving-men. Not less extravagant was his passion for theatrical displays. The drama of the age, though rude, was costly, and when he exhibited freely to the multitude spectacular performances, there were immense structures to be built and hundreds of actors to be clad in cloths of gold and silver, silks and velvets, and handsome armor, the whole followed by public banquets to the spectators, in which rich viands were served in profusion and rare wines and hippocras flowed like water. These were only items in his expenditure; his purse and table were open to all and his artistic tastes were gratified without regard to cost. In one visit to Orleans, where his retinue filled every inn in the city, he was said to have squandered eighty thousand gold crowns between March and August, 1435. This ruinous prodigality was accompanied with the utmost disorder in his affairs.

It was beneath the dignity of a great seigneur to attend to business, and all details were abandoned to the crowd of pimps and parasites and flatterers attracted by his lavish recklessness, among whom the principal were Roger de Briqueville and Gilles de Sillé. Gold must be raised at any price; his revenues were farmed out in advance, the produce of field and forest and salt-works was disposed of at low prices, and he soon began to sell his estates at less than their value, usually reserving a right of redemption within six years. In a short time he is estimated to have consumed from this source alone not less than two hundred thousand crowns. Already, in 1435 or 1436, his family became alarmed at his mad career; they appealed to Charles VII., who issued letters, in accordance with a legal custom of the time, interdicting him from alienating lands and revenues, and all persons from contracting with him. This was published with sound of trump in Orleans, Angers, Blois, Machecoul, and elsewhere outside of Britanny. Within the duchy, Jean V. prohibited its publication. Notwithstanding his surname of le Bon and le Sage, he was a greedy and unscrupulous prince, who, as one of the chief purchasers of the marshal’s estates, was interested in the ruin of his subject. He continued to secure profitable bargains, subject always to the right of redemption, and manifested for his dupe the greatest friendship, appointing him lieutenant-general of the duchy, and entering into a brotherhood of arms with him, while privately mocking and ridiculing him as a fool.

As a last resort, Gilles’s younger brother, René de la Suze, and his cousin, the Admiral de Loheac, captured and garrisoned the castles of Champtocé and Machecoul, but in 1437 and 1438 Gilles retook them, with the aid of the duke, to whom he had sold the former.[513]

Such was the external life of Gilles de Rais, to all appearance that of a liberal, pious noble, whose worst foible was thoughtless extravagance. Beneath the surface, however, lay an existence of crime more repulsive than anything chronicled by Tacitus or Suetonius. There are some subjects so foul that one shrinks from the barest allusion to them, and of such are the deeds of Gilles de Rais. For the sake of human nature one might hope that the charges which brought him to the gallows and stake were invented by those who plotted his ruin, but an attentive examination of the evidence brings conviction that amid manifest exaggeration there was substantial foundation of fact. Ordinary indulgence having palled upon the senses of the youthful voluptuary, about the year 1432 he abandoned himself to unnatural lusts, selecting as his victims children, whom he promptly slew to secure their silence. At first their bodies were thrown into oubliettes at the bottom of towers in his ordinary places of residence. When Champtocé was about to be surrendered to the duke, the bones of about forty children were hastily gathered together and carried off; when René de la Suze was advancing on Machecoul, the same number were extracted from their hiding-place and burned. Scared by this narrow escape from detection, Gilles subsequently had the bodies burned at once in the fireplace of his chamber and the ashes scattered in the moats.