Witchcraft in America. Charles Wentworth Upham

      Chapter I.

       Table of Contents

      The Bull of Innocent VIII.—A new Incentive to the vigorous Prosecution of Witchcraft—The 'Malleus Maleficarum'—Its Criminal Code—Numerous Executions at the Commencement of the Sixteenth Century—Examination of Christian Demonology—Various Opinions of the Nature of Demons—General Belief in the Intercourse of Demons and other non-human Beings with Mankind.

      Perhaps the most memorable epoch in the annals of witchcraft is the date of the promulgation of the bull of Pope Innocent VIII., when its prosecution was formally sanctioned, enforced, and developed in the most explicit manner by the highest authority in the Church. It was in the year 1484 that Innocent VIII. issued his famous bull directed especially against the crime in Germany, whose inquisitors were empowered to seek out and burn the malefactors pro strigiatûs hæresi. The bull was as follows: 'Innocent, Bishop, servant of the servants of God, in order to the future memorial of the matter.... In truth it has come to our ears, not without immense trouble and grief to ourselves, that in some parts of Higher Germany ... very many persons of both sexes, deviating from the Catholic faith, abuse themselves with the demons, Incubus and Succubus; and by incantations, charms, conjurations, and other wicked superstitions, by criminal acts and offences have caused the offspring of women and of the lower animals, the fruits of the earth, the grape, and the products of various plants, men, women, and other animals of different kinds, vineyards, meadows, pasture land, corn, and other vegetables of the earth, to perish, be oppressed, and utterly destroyed; that they torture men and women with cruel pains and torments, internal as well as external; that they hinder the proper intercourse of the sexes, and the propagation of the human species. Moreover, they are in the habit of denying the very faith itself. We therefore, willing to provide by opportune remedies according as it falls to us by our office, by our apostolical authority, by the tenor of these presents do appoint and decree that they be convicted, imprisoned, punished, and mulcted according to their offences.... By the apostolic rescript given at Rome.'

This, in brief, is an outline of the proclamation of Innocent VIII., the principles of which were developed in the more voluminous work of the 'Malleus Maleficarum,'73 or Hammer of Witches, five years later. In the interval, the effect of so forcible an appeal from the Head of the Church was such as might be expected. Cumanus, one of the inquisitors in 1485, burned forty-one witches, first shaving them to search for 'marks.' Alciatus, a lawyer, tells us that another ecclesiastical officer burned one hundred witches in Piedmont, and was prevented in his plan of daily autos-da-fé only by a general uprising of the people, who at length drove him out of the country, when the archbishop succeeded to the vacant office. In several provinces, even the servile credulity of the populace could not tolerate the excesses of the judges; and the inhabitants rose en masse against their inquisitorial oppressors, dreading the entire depopulation of their neighbourhood. As a sort of apology for the bull of 1484 was published the 'Malleus'—a significantly expressive title.74 The authors appointed by the pope were Jacob Sprenger, of the Order of Preachers, and Professor of Theology in Cologne; John Gremper, priest, Master in Arts; and Henry Institor. The work is divisible, according to the title, into three parts—Things that pertain to Witchcraft; The Effects of Witchcraft; and The Remedies for Witchcraft.

      In this apology the editors are careful to affirm that they collected, rather than furnished, their materials originally, and give as their venerable authorities the names of Dionysius the Areopagite, Chrysostom, Hilary, Augustin, Gregory I., Remigius, Thomas Aquinas, and others. The writers exult in the consciousness of security, in spite of the attempts of the demons, day and night, to deter them from completing their meritorious labours. Stratagems of every sort are employed in vain. In their judgment the worst species of human wickedness sink into nothing, compared with apostasy from the Church and, by consequence, alliance with hell. A genuine or pretended dread of sorcery, and an affected contempt for the female sex, with an extremely low estimate of its virtues (adopting the language of the Fathers), characterises the opinions of the compilers.

      Ennemoser has made an abstract from the 'Demonomagie' of Horst (founded on Hauber's original work), of the 'Hexenhammer,' under its three principal divisions. The third part, which contains the Criminal Code, and consists of thirty-five questions, is the most important section. It is difficult to decide which is the more astonishing, the perfect folly or the perfect iniquity of the Code: it is easier to understand how so many thousands of victims were helplessly sacrificed. The arrest might take place on the simple rumour of a witch being found somewhere, without any previous denunciation. The most abandoned and the most infamous persons may be witnesses: no criminal is too bad. Even a witch or heretic (the worst criminal in the eye of ecclesiastical law) is capable of giving evidence. Husbands and wives may witness one against the other; and the testimony of children was received as good evidence.

The ninth and tenth chapters consider the question 'whether a defence was to be allowed; if an advocate defended his client beyond what was requisite, whether it was not reasonable that he too should be considered guilty; for he is a patron of witches and heretics.... Thirteenth chapter: What the judge has to notice in the torture-chamber. Witches who have given themselves up for years, body and soul, to the devil, are made by him so insensible to pain on the rack, that they rather allow themselves to be torn to pieces than confess. Fourteenth chapter: Upon torture and the mode of racking. In order to bring the accused to voluntary confession, you may promise her her life; which promise, however, may afterwards be withdrawn. If the witch does not confess the first day, the torture to be continued the second and third days. But here the difference between continuing and repeating is important. The torture may not be continued without fresh evidence, but it may be repeated according to judgment. Fifteenth chapter: Continuance of the discovery of a witch by her marks. Amongst other signs, weeping is one. It is a damning thing if the accused, on being brought up, cannot shed tears. The clergy and judges lay their hands on the head of the accused, and adjure her by the hot tears of the Most Glorified Virgin that in case of her innocence, she shed abundant tears in the name of God the Father.'75

The 'Bull' and 'Malleus' were the code and textbook of Witchcraft amongst the Catholics, as the Act and 'Demonologie' of James VI. were of the Protestants. Perhaps the most important result of the former was to withdraw entirely the authorised prosecution and punishment of the criminals from the civil to the ecclesiastical tribunals. Formerly they had a divided jurisdiction. At the same time the fury of popular and judicial fanaticism was greatly inflamed by this new sanction. Immediately, and almost simultaneously, in different parts of Europe, heretical witches were hunted up, tortured, burned, or hanged; and those parts of the Continent most infected with the widening heresy suffered most. The greater number in Germany seems to show that the dissentients from Catholic dogma there were rapidly increasing, some time before Luther thundered out his denunciations. An unusual storm of thunder and lightning in the neighbourhood of Constance was the occasion of burning two old women, Ann Mindelen and one 'Agnes.'76 One contemporary writer asserts that 1,000 persons were put to death in one year in the district of Como; and Remigius, one of the authorised inquisitores pravitatis hæreticæ, boasts of having burned 900 in the course of fifteen years. Martin del Rio states 500 were executed in Geneva in the short space of three months in 1515; and during the next five years 40 were burned at Ravensburgh. Great numbers suffered in France at the same period. At Calahorra, in Spain, in 1507, a vast