The Literature of Witchcraft

[1] I need not say that the President White Library does not possess them all; its lacunæ are many, and not unimportant. It has, however, the largest collection, private or public, with which I am acquainted. My estimate is a guess, based partly upon it, partly upon the “Bibliotheca magica” of Grässe, partly upon my notes as to the gaps in each; but it is hard to discriminate between books treating mainly of witchcraft and those treating only largely or ostensibly of it.

[2] Notably out of the poetic opening verses of the sixth chapter of Genesis, which always remained the proof-passage for the demonologic system of the Church. On it had been based that mystical “book of Enoch,” which exercised so striking an influence upon Jewish thought during the centuries just before and just after the Christian era, and indeed upon the writers of the New Testament themselves (Jude, for example, cites it largely and by name), and which was treated by the early Christians as wholly canonical. Hence came the legend of the fall of the angels, so familiar to us through Milton, and a commonplace in the older day. Of even more lasting influence was the demonologic romance of Tobias, or Tobit, which is now classed by Protestants as apocryphal, but which was cited by the earliest Christian writers with the same freedom as any part of the Old Testament, and still retains its place in the Catholic Bible. No book was so largely quoted by the later Christian writers on diabolism and witchcraft. The whole theory of exorcism indeed is mainly based on it; and, still more, the horrible belief in incubi. Of importance also (besides all that could be found in the books of our canon) were the demonologic passages of the apocryphal “Wisdom of Solomon” and “Ecclesiasticus.” Tertullian cites the latter, like any other book of Scripture, with the solemn “as it is written” (sicut scriptum est). See Diestel, “Geschichte des Alten Testaments in der christlichen Kirche”; Reuss, “Geschichte des Alten Testaments”; and Emanuel Deutsch, “The Talmud” (in his “Literary remains”).

[3] This impulse must have been powerfully aided by the current translation of a familiar passage in the Psalms. Where we read (Ps. xcvi, 5): “All the gods of the nations are idols,” the early Church read: “All the gods of the nations are devils.” The passage is constantly cited by the Fathers in this sense. Even Wiclif translates: “Alle the goddis of hethene men ben feendis [fiends].”

[4] What could be more vivid than the story of the old hermit who prayed God that he might see the demons, and would not be denied; “and God opened his eyes, and he saw them, for just like bees do they surround man, grating their teeth over him.”—“Verba Seniorum,” lib. vi., libel. i., c. 11 (“Vitæ Patrum,” ii.).

[5] Only Archbishop Agobard, of Lyons (779-c. 841), a man in many ways before his time, went so far as to write a book—what we should call a pamphlet—upon the absurdity of the popular superstitions: his “Liber contra insulsam vulgi opinionem de grandine et tonitruis.” The essay “De magicis artibus” (perhaps the first Christian monograph on the subject) by his learned contemporary and colleague, Archbishop Hrabanus Maurus, of Mainz, is far more credulous, and, like most of that great teacher’s work, mainly a compilation. Not forgotten by him are the Scripture texts against witchcraft, beginning with the terrible “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” He treats the same theme in similar fashion in his encyclopædic “De universo” and in his “Penitentiale.” It was later in the same century that another great Frankish archbishop, Hincmar of Rheims, found himself brought face to face with the problem of magic, in his legal response on the divorce of King Lothaire (“De divortio Lotharii regis et Tetbergae reginae”), three of the thirty questions asked him involving it. He discussed the subject at much length, and, though credulously enough, in the main sensibly.

[6] The source of the canon is, indeed, now a riddle. Its ascription to the synod of Ancyra, which the Middle Age never questioned, is now known to be a mere blunder. But, from its first appearance, in the collection of Regino at the close of the ninth century, it became the recognized dictum of the Canon Law upon this subject, and remained unimpeached, even by those who devoted chapters to explaining it away, until after the Reformation. It surely was no accident that it came to light at the end of the same century in which Agobard wrote. Bishop Burchard, of Worms (d. 1025), who followed Regino as a collector of ecclesiastical law, and gave a whole book of his “Decreta” to decisions “De incantatoribus et auguribus,” sets the canon Episcopi at its head. But this prominence in order it lost in the later compositions.

[7] It is true that the long discourse, put into Antony’s mouth (c. 15-20), on the power and wiles of the Devil and the way to resist him, which may almost be called the first Christian monograph on diabolism, may possibly be an interpolation; but it breathes the very spirit of the Fathers, and the whole narrative is full of the Devil’s doings. The popularity of the book throughout the Christian world is attested by what Augustine tells us in his “Confessions,” and the part there ascribed to it in his own conversion must have tended to increase its influence. What a favorite its story was with the sculptors and painters of the later Middle Ages we all know.

[8] True, Augustine taught, and the Church after him, that Satan could do nothing save by the tacit consent of God; but the limitation was scarcely more than nominal, since against sinners he was believed to be given free hand, and only the immediate and incessant protection of the Church could ensure safety. The carnal mind was powerless to recognize him: did not the Scripture itself say that he could appear as an angel of light? Nay, he often took the form of Christ himself, as more than one hermit had testified.

[9] Chrysostom’s monograph, “De imbecilitate Diaboli,” is too metaphysical to be reckoned here at all, as likewise is Anselm’s “Dialogus de casu Diaboli” of a half-dozen centuries later.

[10] For illustration of this, one has but to open the “Vitae Patrum” at random. Of the “Collationes” of Cassian, a book of the greatest influence throughout the Middle Ages, especially in the monasteries, “Collatio VII.,” “quae est prima abbatis Sereni,” and “Collatio VIII.,” “quae est secunda abbatis Sereni,” deal mainly with diabolism and are full of anecdote.

[11] Notably, of course, the famous one of Theophilus, ostensibly written by one Eutychianus in the sixth century, but known to the West through a Latin version made by a Naples deacon named Paulus, probably toward the close of the ninth century. (It may be found, with the metrical paraphrase ascribed to Bishop Marbod, in the Bollandist “Acta Sanctorum” for 4th February. Better known in our day, though not in hers, is its dramatization by the nun Hroswitha—one of many.) Another, scarcely less popular in the Middle Ages, though strangely overlooked by later writers, was the tale (first told in the “Life of Basil” ascribed apocryphally to his contemporary, Bishop Amphilochius of Iconium) of the senator’s valet who fell in love with his master’s daughter, won her by signing away his soul to the Devil, and was saved only through the aid of St. Basil, who forced the fiend to surrender the contract. I find the story (it is a long one) first told in the West by Hincmar of Rheims (d. 882) in his response “De divortio Lotharii,” who credits it to Amphilochius. Its influence in the Occident would seem, therefore, to be of about the same age as that of the Theophilus legend, which, in several respects, is less like the later witch-stories. After Hincmar the anecdote appears often. Of modern writers on witchcraft, Roskoff alone mentions it, on the basis of a vague allusion of Schwager’s; and Schwager had evidently sought for it in vain, misunderstanding it to be in Basil’s “Dialogues.” Amphilochius’ “Vita Basilii” may be found in the “Vitae Patrum,” and in the Bollandist “Acta Sanctorum” (June, vol. iii.).

[12] In his “De septem donis,” tit. vii., cap. 34, sp. 5.

[13] In his “Dialogus miraculorum,” distinctio v.

[14] In his “Bonum universale de apibus,” cap. 54-56. The first of these chapters is “De diabolo transfigurantis se in angelum lucis”; the last, “De demonibus aërem perturbantibus.” Thomas was a Dominican, and wrote, as he himself here tells us, in 1258.

[15] His “Liber revelationum de insidiis et versutiis daemonum adversus homines” (in Pez, “Thesaurus,” I., ii.).

[16] E.g., Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, or John of Winterthur (Vitoduranus).

[17] Of Vincent it is especially the “Speculum Historiale” that thus abounds. To this great compilation the earliest writers on witchcraft owed their precedents almost as largely as they owed their arguments to Thomas Aquinas.

[18] “De draconibus” is the usual, but misleading, form of its Latin title.

[19] “De operatione daemonum” it is entitled in the Latin translation of Gaulmin (1615) and in the edition of the Greek original by Boissonade (1837).

[20] “Diabolus simia Dei est,” is the startling formula in which the Middle Age embodied this doctrine and betrayed its source.

[21] For, strictly speaking, it is only to Thomas of Aquino that this theory can be attributed; but Thomas Aquinas was par excellence the creator of the scholastic theology. It is he who was sainted for his wisdom, who has been raised by the Popes to the rank of a fifth Teacher of the Church (Doctor ecclesiae), the only successor of Athanasius and Ambrose and Jerome and Augustine. How thoroughly he is alone responsible may be seen by comparing his dicta on this topic with those of his great master, Albert of Bollstädt (Albertus Magnus), who still stands fully on the ground of the canon Episcopi. These dicta of Thomas are scattered throughout his works, but were carefully gleaned by all the earlier writers on witchcraft, and may be found bodily in their pages; they cite him more than all other authorities together, save the Bible. Thus, in the midst of his discussion of impediments to matrimony (in his “Quodlibeta,” x., questio 10, “De maleficiatis”), he bursts out: “Of witchcraft, however, be it known: that certain have said that there is no such thing, and that this [idea] proceeded from infidelity, because they would have it that there are no demons, save by the imagination of men—inasmuch, that is, as men imagined them, and, terrified by that imagining, were distressed. But the Catholic faith teaches, both that there are demons and that by their doings they can distress men.” ... (“Fides autem catholica vult: et quod daemones sint et possint eorum operationibus laedere et impedire carnalem copulam.” I quote from the edition of Nuremberg, 1474.) Of the dogmas that cluster about the terrible word incubus,—not to be uttered without a blush or heard without a shudder,—let me not speak.
His fellow-Dominicans followed him at once, and gradually brought the Church to their side, but not without opposition. The Franciscans, especially, long stood out. Their great summist, Astexanus de Ast, writing in 1317, will go no whit beyond the canon Episcopi. Even Alfonso de Spina, in 1459, refused to believe in the witch-flight; and men like Samuel de Cassinis and Franciscus à Victoria carried the Franciscan protest far into the sixteenth century. But this, of course, only intensified the Dominican championship of the dogma.

[22] A little later the same Pope issued a general bull (an extravagans) “contra magos magicasque superstitiones.” It may be found in Eymeric’s “Directorium inquisitorum” (pars ii., qu. 43) or in Binsfeld’s “De confessionibus maleficorum.” It is undated, but Janus (Döllinger and Huber) puts it “about 1330.”

[23] It was about 1350 when the inquisitors fortified themselves by taking the advice of the most eminent jurist of the day, the Italian professor Bartolo, as to the punishment to be inflicted on the witches. His opinion is still extant (in Ziletti, “Consilia selecta,” 1577, i., 8). On the strength of the words of Jesus, “If a man abide not in me [i.e., said Bartolo and the inquisitors, in the Church], he is cast forth as a branch, ... and men gather them and cast them into the fire, and they are burned;” he approved their burning alive. (See Janus, i.e., Döllinger and Huber, “The Pope and the Council,” London, 1869, pp. 254, 255.)

[24] And what wonder, when even a reformer like John Wesley, late in the enlightened eighteenth century, still thought that “the giving up of witchcraft is in effect giving up the Bible”? (In his “Journal,” 1768,—cited by Mr. Lecky.)

[25] The book, though existing in sundry MSS. (see Quétif and Échard, “Script. Ord. Pred.,” and Antonio, “Bibl. Script. Hispan.”), has never been printed, and I have not seen it; but its attitude may be guessed from Eymeric’s treatment of the subject in the “Directorium.” The statement (made by Antonio and others) that he was led to write it by the denial of his jurisdiction in the case of a certain Barcelonese Jew, can hardly be true, since the “Directorium” (pars ii., qu. 46) puts this episode “in the time of Pope Urban V.,” whose papacy began in 1362. A better explanation is suggested by Mr. Lea, when he tells us (“The Inquisition of the Middle Ages,” ii., 175) that “the sum of Eymerich’s activity during his long career is so small that it shows how little was left of heresy by this time. Occasional Fraticelli and Waldenses and renegade Jews or Saracens were all that rewarded the inquisitor, with every now and then some harmless lunatic whose extravagance unfortunately took a religious turn, or some over-subtle speculator on the intricacies of dogmatic theology.”
A Paris MS. of Eymeric’s book begins (according to Quétif): “Incipit prologus in tractatum super daemonum invocatione, an scilicet daemones invocare sapiat haeresim manifeste, editum et confectum a F. Nicolas Eymerici ord. FF. Prædic.,” and bears at end its date: “perfectus anno D[omi]ni MCCCLIX.” The latter may refer only to the MS.; but the book must of course be at least as old. The title of the work is elsewhere given as “Contra adoratores et advocatores daemonum”; and the Escurial catalogue (cited by Antonio) calls it: “De jurisdictione Inquisitorum in et contra Christianos daemones invocantes.” Eymeric would seem to have completed or supplemented this by another: “De jurisdictione ecclesiae et inquisitorum contra infideles daemones invocantes” (see Quétif and Échard), and it is perhaps the latter that was called forth by the case of the Barcelona Jew.

[26] “De maleficis et eorum deceptionibus.” This essay was early detached from the rest of the book and appended to the editions of the “Witch-Hammer,” and it became an inseparable addition to that work. The title-page of these reprints always calls Nider an inquisitor, and the statement has also the high authority of Trithemius. His latest German biographers deny (as do Quétif and Échard) that there is any evidence of his having been one. Mr. Lea, however, still thinks that he “seems sometimes to have acted as inquisitor”; and, in any case, all his sympathies were with this work of his order. Nider (according to Quétif and Échard) kept his book in hand for several years, and its various MSS. are of different dates; but that of 1437 seems to have been its last revision.

[27] How powerful this argument was to the men of that time may be inferred from the words of the eminent Italian theological professor Isolani, who in 1506 published an argument (“Libellus adversus magos,” etc.) to prove that men cannot be bewitched into taking religious vows, and who, though a Dominican, was not an inquisitor, and was by no means prone to superstition. “Querant qui haec vana fictaque judicaverint processus totis Cristiani imperii finibus apprime notos, quos virieruditissimi, omnium virtutum genere preclarissimi, reis narrantibus composuere. His minime assentiant, qui Demonas ... esse nequaquam opinantur.”
There are not wanting still good people who marvel at what they call the “agreement” in the testimony of the witches. To such may be commended the prescribed lists of interrogatories, which from more than one “Instruction to Judges” are now making their way to light. And, even where these were not used, leading questions were the rule, and the victim had little more to do than answer yes or no. Only here and there in the trials do we find some poor quivering woman begging her judges to tell her what she must confess. The confession was a criterion, not of the guilt of the witch, but of the learning of her inquisitors. It is rather a marvel that there should ever be disagreement, when the victim not only had such prompters, but must herself time and again have heard just such confessions read, as the custom was, to the crowd gathered about the stake.
And if any are puzzled that the confessions should be persisted in after the torture and in the face of death (which, in countless cases, they were not), they should remember that persistence in confession was long a condition of that “forbearance of the Court” which suffered the prisoner to be first strangled or beheaded, instead of being burned alive. Only the Church always burned alive.

[28] Or Jacquier (Latin, Jaquerius or Jacquerius).

[29] I.e., On the treading-under-foot of demons. (Calcatio, a mediæval word, means usually threshing, i.e., by treading out; but Jaquier must have had in view its literal sense.) The book has never been printed, but exists in MS. (according to Quétif and Échard) at Louvain and elsewhere. A copy at St. Omer is entitled: “De calcatione malignorum spirituum.” The book begins: “Duo magna incommoda inter caetera incurrit genus humanum.”

[30] The rod (flagellum) was meant to scourge out of God’s temple, the Church, certain “perverse dogmas and stolid assertions,” to wit: that witches are victims of delusion. Jaquier tells us himself (pp. 39, 56, of the first printed ed., of 1581) the year in which he writes.

[31] Mr. Lea writes “Alonso,” and I defer to his high authority, though I have not else met that form. As “Alphonsus à Spina” he is known to his Latin-writing contemporaries.

[32] In his book itself the name is spelled Viueti; but Quétif and Échard, who know of him from other sources, write Vineti, and the other may well be a misprint, though Viveti has been adopted by the few bibliographers who know of the book. The impression is undated; but Quétif and Échard ascribe it to 1483. V. was inquisitor at Carcassonne from 1450 to about 1475.

[33] His “Tractatus de magicis artibus ac magorum maleficiis.” According to the title of an edition described by Hain, it was written by Basin in 1482 “in suis vesperis,” and the first dated impression is of Paris, 1483; but it is quite clear from his opening words that it was an address, on some formal occasion, before a theological faculty—doubtless at Paris, where Basin was a doctor of theology,—and there is an undated Paris impression (put first by Hain), which was very probably printed at once. Basin was a speaker of some note, for we find him in 1481 (according to Burchard’s “Diarium”) preaching before the cardinals at Rome.

[34] His “Flagellum maleficorum,” written probably soon after the middle of the century (he mentions nothing later than 1453), but not printed till about 1490.

[35] His “Lamiarum sive strigarum opusculum,” printed in 1490. Quétif and Échard, who know it only in MS., give its title as “De lamiis et strigibus ad Franciscum Sfortiam Vicecomitem,” which would seem to prove it written before 1465, since Francesco Sforza died in that year. I hold in my hand a manuscript of what is perhaps the same, but is quite as possibly a different treatise by the same author. It is entitled: “Opusculum Magistri Hieronymi Vicecomitis [i.e., Visconti—the inquisitor is said to have been a member of the great Milanese family of that name] ordinis praedicatorum in quo probatur Lamias esse haereticas et non laborare humore melancholico.” It is apparently contemporary, and may be the autograph of its author, though the marginal corrections and annotations are in differing hands of the same period. It is directed mainly against the canon Episcopi, and shows no knowledge either of witch-bull or of “Witch-Hammer.” Date it has none. The White Library is indebted for it to Dr. Hennen, of Düsseldorf, to whom it came from the collection of the musician Tosi.

[36] Of these I have already mentioned the books of Eymeric and Jaquier. Mr. Lea (“The Inquisition of the Middle Ages,” iii., 533) says that when (about 1460) certain witches were arrested at Tournay, Jean Taincture, a clerk, “wrote an elaborate treatise to prove their guilt,” which still exists in MS. in the National Library at Brussels. Mr. Lecky’s statement that the famous Spanish inquisitor-general Thomas of Torquemada wrote a book on witchcraft must, however, be a confusion of him with his namesake Antonio, who lived a century later. Still in MS. is also the “Buch von allerhand verbotenen Künsten, Unglauben und Zauberey” written about 1455, in a very different spirit—doubtless for the amusement of his ducal patrons—by the versatile Dr. Hartlieb, of Munich.

[37] So, at least, (according to Soldan-Heppe) replied Archbishop Johann of Trier.

[38] Better known by his Latin name of Institor, or Institoris.

[39] The statement, made by nearly all authorities on this subject, that the “Witch-Hammer” was first printed in 1489, is a manifest error. True, its first dated edition is of that year. But Hain (“Repertorium Bibliographicum,” Nos. 9238-9241) chronicles no less than four undated (and presumably earlier) editions. All of these I have examined. One alone—that to which Hain wisely gives the first place—lacks both the Cologne theological faculty’s approval of May, 1487, and the commendatory letters of Maximilian of Austria, of 6 Nov., 1486, both of which appear in all other editions, and were not likely to be omitted when once obtained. The first impression can hardly, therefore, be of later date than 1486. That it is not earlier is clear from the evidence of the book itself. It begins with a commentary on the bull of 5 Dec., 1484 (the bull itself is not printed in this first edition), which must have required a little time to make. That the book was not completed in the year of its beginning may perhaps be inferred from the phrase “anno eodem quo hic liber est inchoatus,” used to date a certain anecdote. That at least a part of it was written in 1486 is sure from the fact that an incident (the burning of forty-one witches in a single year by the inquisitor Cumanus) is in one place (pars I., qu. 11) said to have happened “last year,” in another (pars II., qu. 1, cap. ii.) “in the year 1485,” and still again (pars III., qu. 15) “anno elapso, qui fuit 1485.” 1486, then, was almost unquestionably the year of its publication. The suggestion of Stanonik (“Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie,” s. v. Krämer) that it may have appeared in the same year with the bull is therefore untenable (the edition mentioned by Quétif and Échard, following Fontana, as of “Lugduni, Juntarum, 1484,” was probably printed in 1584); and 1486 was, almost unquestionably, the year of its publication. The copy of the editio princeps examined by me is in the City Library of Trier; the White Library has what seems the second (Hain, 9239).

[40] “Haeresis est maxima, opera maleficarum non credere.”

[41] In his “History of the rise and influence of the spirit of rationalism in Europe,” i. It is by all odds the best survey of the field in English. Admirable in its insight, though less ambitious in its scope, is also Mr. Lowell’s essay on witchcraft (first published in the North American Review, then reprinted in the first series of his “Among my books”).

[42] Soldan’s “Geschichte der Hexenprozesse, neu bearbeitet von Heinrich Heppe,” Stuttgart, 1880.

[43] “Geschichte des Teufels,” Leipzig, 1869.

[44] “Religion und Hexenprozess,” Leipzig, 1888.

[45] Or Molitoris (Müller’s Ulrich?). In his “De lamiis et phitonicis [pythonicis] mulieribus,” Cologne, 1489.

[46] In his “Parerga juris” (to be found in his “Opera”).

[47] In his “De lamiis” (to be found in Ziletti).

[48] In his “De vanitate scientiarum”; but even more boldly in his fiery defence and rescue of a witch indicted by the Dominicans at Metz in 1519.

[49] Notably in his “Ein wunderlich gesprech von fünff unhulden,” 1531.

[50] Erasmus, alas, is hardly to be reckoned among them. The letter, of the year 1500, to Abbot Antonius à Bergis, in which he gives an account of a witch prosecution, and which has been too hastily cited by Soldan (and by so many on his authority) as showing his skepticism, is rather an evidence of his credulity. The “novum et inauditum portentum” at which he pretends to shudder is not the witch-trial, but the alleged crime itself. Nor is there any thing in his “Praise of Folly” that can prove him incredulous on this point. Yet, is Mr. Lecky quite right in thinking that “Erasmus was an equally firm believer in witchcraft” with Luther? Even in his letter to the Abbot he scores the meanness, the duplicity, and the vanity of the Dominican tale-bearer; if he does not share, he certainly does not censure, the hesitation of his friend the Official to believe the astounding things revealed under the torture; and the holy horror which he displays to his clerical patron has a factitious ring. Certainly he was as far from defending as from denying the inquisitorial theory; and the whole tenor of his pen toward monkish superstitions must have strengthened the courage of those who questioned this one also.

[51] In his “De strigiis,” written about 1510.

[52] In his “Tractatus declarans quam graviter peccent quaerentes auxilium a maleficiis,” Cologne, 1510.

[53] I know of these only through Quétif and Échard. Were their treatises ever printed?

[54] In his “Liber octo quaestionum ad Maximilianum Caesarem” (it was very probably his powerful advocacy that won the persecution the support of that prince, his pupil and friend), Oppenheim, 1515; and in his “Antipalus maleficiorum,” not printed till 1555.

[55] In his “Opus de magica superstitione,” Alcala, 1521, better known in its later Spanish version.

[56] I.e., Silvestro Mazolini, of Prierio. In his “De strigimagorum daemonumque mirandis,” Rome, 1521.

[57] In his “Quaestio de strigibus,” 1523; and in his “In Ponzinibium de lamiis apologia,” 1525.

[58] In his “Strix, seu de ludificatione daemonum,” Bologna, 1523.

[59] Not, of course, that there were in this time no new books on witchcraft; but they were few and unimportant.

[60] As a crime in itself, independently of the material injury alleged to be caused by it. Thus, notably, the “Carolina” (the great new criminal code of the Empire, 1532), which became a model for all Europe. The first English statute (in 1541), more conservative, took cognizance of the intent of the witch, and the “Carolina” required proof of actual damage before inflicting death. But the courts were not fastidious as to sort or amount.

[61] Or Weier, Wier (Latin, Wierus or Piscinarius). As to Weyer, his opponents, and his followers, the scholarly and admirable biography by Professor Binz (“Doctor Johann Weyer,” Bonn, 1885), a model for others of its kind, has opened a whole new field.

[62] “De sagarum natura,” Bremen, 1584.

[63] “Exegesis expurgationis sagarum super aquam frigidam,” Helmstadt, 1584.

[64] “Christlich Bedencken und Erinnerung von Zauberey,” Heidelberg, 1585. He was a professor at Heidelberg, but wrote under the pseudonym of “Augustin Lercheimer of Steinfeld”; and so carefully was his secret kept that it has but just been ferreted out. A critically edited reprint of his book was last year published by Professors Binz and Birlinger, of Bonn.

[65] “De vera et falsa magia,” partially printed at Cologne, 1592. Loos’s book, long supposed to have been destroyed by the Inquisition at the time of his forced recantation, I had the good fortune, in 1886, to find in MS. (apparently his own copy) on the shelves of the City Library at Trier (see the Nation for 11 Nov., 1886), and brought away a fac-simile. Since that time printed pages of it (so much as had been completed before its seizure) have been unearthed at the City Library of Cologne (see the Centralblatt für Bibliothekswesen, 1888, p. 455). The minutes of the trial of Loos’s compatriot and fellow-martyr, Dr. Dietrich Flade, of Trier, the most eminent victim of the persecution in Germany, which had also long been thought lost, are in the President White Library.

[66] “De magis, veneficis et lamiis,” Frankfurt a. M., 1591.

[67] “Γυναικόλουσις, seu mulierum lavatio, quam purgationem per aquam frigidam vocant; item vulgaris de potentia lamiarum opinio, quod utraque Deo, naturae omni juri et probatae consuetudini sit contraria. Candida, brevis et dilucida oratio,” Lubeck, 1590. The book is overlooked even by Binz.

[68] “The discoverie of witchcraft,” London, 1584. This first edition is so rare that the British Museum itself has not a perfect copy (our own collection is more fortunate); but there is now an admirable reprint (edited by Brinsley Nicholson, London, 1886). Scot is bolder and more rational than Weyer himself.

[69] “A discourse of the subtill practises of devilles by witches,” London, 1557. “A dialogue concerning witches and witchcrafts,” London, 1603.

[70] “A declaration of egregious popish impostures,” London, 1603. Harsnet, who at the time of writing this was only chaplain to the Bishop of London, but who became successively Master of Pembroke Hall, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, Bishop of Chichester, Bishop of Norwich, and Archbishop of York, was one of the most rational and outspoken men of his time. It was in 1599, as it seems, that he first took ground against the belief in demoniacal possession, in his book against the Anglican exorcist, John Darrell, whom he virtually drove from the realm. His “Declaration of popish impostures,” written against the Jesuit Edmunds, or Weston, and his exorcisms, appeared in 1603. In it Harsnet shows himself a thorough-going disciple of Reginald Scot (whom he cites), and scoffs openly at the whole body of witchcraft superstition, declaring it delusion and humbug.

[71] “The triall of witchcraft,” London, 1616.

[72] “Les sorciers,” 1574. In Latin, as “De veneficis,” in 1575.

[73] “De la démonomanie des sorciers,” Paris, 1580. More widely read in its Latin translation of the following year.

[74] “De la haine de Satan et malins esprits contre l’homme,” Paris, 1590.

[75] Or Lancre. “Tableau de l’inconstance des mauvais anges et démons, où il est ... traicté des sorciers,” Paris, 1612. “L’incrédulité et mescréance du sortilège,” Paris, 1622.

[76] “De lamiis, seu strigibus,” Basel, 1577.

[77] “De confessionibus maleficorum et sagarum,” Trier, 1589. “Commentarius in Tit. de Maleficis et Mathematicis,” Trier, 1592.

[78] “De examine et purgatione sagarum per aquam frigidam epistola,” [1583]. “De sagarum natura et potestate,” Marburg, 1588. “Responsio ad examen ignoti patroni veritatis de purgatione sagarum,” Frankfurt a. M., 1590.

[79] Latin, Remigius. “Daemonolatreia,” Lyons, 1595.

[80] “Discours exécrable des sorciers,” Paris, 1602.

[81] Or del Rio. “Disquisitiones magicae,” Louvain, 1599-1601. The edition ascribed by Grässe (and by others following him) to 1593 is a myth. If this were not abundantly proved by Delrio’s own prefaces and by the approbations of the censors, we have in the correspondence of Justus Lipsius (in his letters to Delrio) conclusive testimony. Lipsius himself suggested the title of the book, in whose progress he took the liveliest interest. In the National Library at Brussels (where I have examined it) is an earlier and much briefer draft of Delrio’s book, dated 1596 and bearing the title “De superstitione et malis artibus.”

[82] Or Villalpando. In his “Epitome delictorum, sive De magia,” Seville, 1618, and in his “Daemonologia,” Mainz, 1623.

[83] “A discourse of the damned art of witchcraft,” Cambridge, 1610.

[84] “Daemonologie,” Edinburgh, 1597. James was undoubtedly the prime author of the new and harsher English statute against witchcraft, which, with a fresh edition of his “Daemonologie,” appeared in the year (1603) of his accession to the English throne.

[85] It was the day of the “Theatrum diabolorum,” of the “Theatrum de veneficis,” of the “Mallei maleficarum”—now swollen by supplements to thrice the bulk of the original “Malleus,” and growing every year.

[86] True, there was still, in many quarters, an unreconciled public sentiment, and even now and then an open though unpublished deprecation. It has long struck the attention of historians that, even in witch-ridden Germany, the great imperial city of Nuremberg seems free from the persecution. Its criminal code was the Carolina; yet a contemporary manuscript copy of its executioner’s records, from 1600 to 1692, in the possession of the President White Library, shows not a single execution for witchcraft proper. I hold in my hand a document—so far as I know unprinted, and certainly unknown to the historians of witchcraft—which may partially explain this. It is a manuscript, in a sixteenth century hand, on whose cover I read, “Der Nürnbergischen Theologen Ainhellige Antwort, über etliche Puncten, die Unhulden betreffent”; and at the head of its first page, more explicitly, “Ainhellige Antwort der Hochgelerten Theologi unnd Predicanten zu Nürnberg: auff die Suplication des Raths zu Weisenburg an die Eltern herren dess geheimen Raths alhie zu Nürnberg: umb unterichtung: Wie sie sich mit iren Hexen undt Unhulden verhalden sollen, unnd wass in Göttlicher heiliger Schrifft darvon gegründett sey.” At the end are the signatures of the six pastors of Nuremberg, and the date—1590. Through thirty weary pages the city clergy wrestle with the problem set them; and superstitious enough seems their answer. They believe fully in witchcraft and in its punishment—nay, they establish both in all their horrible detail out of Holy Writ. And yet (the influence of the canon Episcopi is clearly not dead, even for Protestants) they deny that the witches can transform themselves, or ride through the air, or cause wind or hail-storm; all this is mere illusion. And so do they fence about the prescribed procedure with their cautions against trusting the testimony of the witches themselves or the word of the executioner or charges against persons of else unblemished reputation; that, seeing the most prolific sources of the spread of the persecution thus cut off, one no longer wonders, if such were the spirit of even her theologians, at Nuremberg’s own immunity.

[87] “Instructio pro formandis processibus in causis strigum, sortilegiorum, et maleficiorum,” Rome, 1657.

[88] In his “Philosophical considerations touching witches and witchcraft,” 1666, which, enlarged, was reprinted (1668) as “A blow at modern sadducism,” and (1681) as “Sadducismus triumphatus.”

[89] In his “Select cases of conscience touching witches and witchcraft,” 1646. I have not seen the book, and copy its title from Wright (“Narratives of sorcery and witchcraft”).

[90] In his “An advertisement to the jurymen of England, touching witches,” London, 1653.

[91] In his “A candle in the dark; or, A treatise concerning the nature of witches and witchcraft,” London, 1656.

[92] In his “The question of witchcraft debated; or, A discourse against their opinion that affirm witches,” London, 1669.

[93] In his “The displaying of supposed witchcraft,” London, 1677.

[94] And if it surprise any that, in a paper before the American Historical Association, I say nothing of the literature of American witchcraft, I can reply only that it seemed to me a work of supererogation, if not an impertinence, to treat that literature in this presence with the brevity its place in the history of the delusion would demand.

[95] In his “Tribunal reformatum,” Hamburg, 1624.

[96] That Thomasius was himself their author was, indeed, clearly stated in a letter appended to the “Theses,” wherein he says to the respondent: ...“In chartam conjeci breves has Theses, quae in perlectione prolixioris dissertationis Tuae in mentem venerunt.”... They were published the next year (and often thereafter) in German translation, under his own name, as “Kurtze Lehr-Sätze von dem Laster der Zauberey.” But this was only a beginning of Thomasius’ share in the crusade. He gathered, or led his students to gather, all that could be found written against the persecution (among the rest Spee’s book) and issued it afresh in German; he translated, with preface of his own, every new book upon it that appeared abroad; he encouraged his pupils to discuss it in their dissertations, or did so in their names; he assailed it in lecture and review and editorial; and he kept up the warfare till his death. An utterance of his even earlier than the “Theses” I find in his “Dissertatio ad Petri Poireti libros de Eruditione,” 1694 (reprinted in his “Programmata Thomasiana,” 1724), where he already takes strong ground against the persecution, though not wholly against the superstition.

[97] “Disputatio juris canonici de origine ac progressu processus inquisitorii contra sagas, quam ... praeside Dn. Christiano Thomasio ... subjicit ... Johannes Paulus Ipsen.” That Thomasius, and not Ipsen, is its author, is abundantly clear from internal evidence; and Thomasius himself claims it as his own in subsequent writings. We have, by the way, from Thomasius’s own lips (in his “Programma invitatorium” to “Dodecas quaestionum promiscuarum,” Halle, 1694—cited by A. Roquette in the Centralblatt für Bibliothekswesen, 1887), an ironical discussion of this prevalent fashion of writing for one’s pupils disputations which one afterward collected and published under one’s own name. “Neque falsum committitur,” he thinks, “dum quis se auctorem scribit disputationis, cujus nec lineam saepius elaboravit, saepius nec intelligit.”

[98] “An historical essay concerning witchcraft,” London, 1718.

[99] “Bibliotheca, acta et scripta magica: Gründliche Nachrichten und Urtheile von solchen Büchern und Handlungen, welche die Macht des Teufels in leiblichen Dingen betreffen,” Lemgo, 1739-45.

[100] “Versuch einer Geschichte der Hexenprozesse,” i., Berlin, 1784. It unfortunately remained a fragment—in fact, as the author himself calls it, only an introduction.

[101] In the “literarisch-kritischer Anhang über die Quellen und Bearbeitungen der Hexenprozesse,” appended to his little study on “Die gegenwärtige Wiederbelebung des Hexenglaubens” (Berlin, 1875).