XIII. 2nd. The worship of the devil and sorcery. Articles

XIY. — LVII. Amongst many books, there ■ is one pre- eminently severe against the Templars, — " The Proceedings against the Order of Templars, and the Original of the Papal Commission in France," by Dr. G. Moldenhawer, Hamburg, 1792, and a profound essay on the abolition of the Order by Fr. Munter in Henke's N. Magazine, Vol. 5. Without the fact having been proved, it was taken for granted against the Templars that they were enemies of God ; and it was thence argued that their external Christianity was bias-
THE DAKK AGES. 151
phemoua hypocrisy, and that they worshipped the devil in the shape of a black cat like their fellows the Manicheans, Stedingenses, etc. Against these last Gregory IX. had al- ready, as against heretics, deists, and sorcerers, issued an interdict in the year 1232 (Henke's Magazine, Yol. iv.) They were from the village of Steding, and also called the heretics of Osterstedten. (See Halen's " History of the Dukedom of Oldenburg," Yol. i. ; and " Eitter de page Steding et Stedingis," Yiterb. 1751.)
After the witch-faith had thus adapted itself to all forms, and spread itself in all directions, it rose to its complete height and growth in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The black mystery now rested on authority and law, on the spiritual and secular powers ; superstition sacrificed to the devil, and absurdity persecuted the miserable lunatic witches, and burnt them as heretics. Thenceforward, from the four- teenth century, were witchcraft and heresy put into the same category, by which means the devil was kept in ascendant, and was worshipped under various forms of animals and of grotesque idols. An accusation made out of suspicion or enmity was held to be sufficient impeachment ; this was followed by the criminal trial, and the trial by the fire-death. It mattered not whether the accused confessed or not. In the first case he was guilty ; in the second he was punished as a hardened sinner. AYe see here the truth of the sentiment already expressed, that when the perception of the laws of nature fails, man hastens rapidly into thick intel- lectual darkness and heathenism. Never, probably, was the darkening of the mind so universal and so deep as in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries ; and never was there such a destitution of all talent for the observation of nature, for her language, and the constitution of her laws. All countries, all conditions, all intellects, were en- tangled in an indescribable manner in the logic of the devil, possessed with his fear, and driven to counsel and action by frenzy and fatuity, by policy and the thirst of vengeance, till the social abode of the earth was converted into an actual hell.
From the thirteenth century downwards, southern France was regarded as the nursery of heresy and the Black Art, to which its location on the Mediterranean and in the
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152 HISTOEX OF MAGIC.
vicinity of Spain particularly contributed, — Spain being re • garded as the proscribed land of magic and Saracenic heresy. Thus the oldest relation of the Witch-Sabbath lays the scene of it in southern France ; and Alphons. de Spina (Fortalitii fidei, lib. v., of which Wolff's Bibliotheca Hebraica gives a full account) records as contemporary very important wit- nesses and later Inquisitor hcereticce pravlatis — properly, a baptized Jew, that proselyted women, mulieres perversce, in Dauphine, were seduced by the devil, " qaomodo dsemones illudunt foeminas, quae Bruxe vel Kurgone vocantur," by night into a wilderness, "ubi est caper quidam in rupe," where they worshipped a he-goat upon a rock, by torch- light, " adorant ilium caprum, osculantes in ano suo. Idque plures earum ab inquisitoribus fidei set convictse ignibus comburuntur."
The notorious Witch-Sabbath of Arras, in 1459, about which time A. de Spina lived, was frequented by men (Hauber, Biblioth. Mag. i. St. S. 85 ; Cove, historia liter, script, ec- clesiast. vol. ii. p. 177) ; while in the more ancient times it was only resorted to by women. This celebration continued in France, especially in the southern provinces, till the seven- teenth century. In the reign of Charles IX. the great sorcerer so much dreaded as Einaldo des trois Eckelles was executed, and he said undauntedly before the king that in ^ France he had three hundred thousand confederates, all of ) whom they could not commit to the flames as they did him (Hauber. ii. p. 454).
Love affairs between spirits and men are, however, of more ancient origin. Elves stole away maidens, and men lived in secret love with female elves. But the coarse con- ception of Incubus and Succubus is of uncertain origin, although it is mixed up with the later alp and nightmare. The idea of lascivious intercourse of witches is later and of foreign derivation ; according to this, free power was con- ferred on the devil over the witches. The devil was gene- rally called the Bachelor. The witch-compacts had their origin in France or Italy. The devil generally appeared in the shape of a handsome young man, or in a dark and terrible form. The witches also represented him in an animal shape. He was called the Black One in human shape : the Black He-Goat was of high antiquity. The
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oaths and wislies of the sixteenth century are a very \ common formula — may the He- Goat shame him ! or by the \ He-Groat's skull ! He was called also the "VYolf, the Dog or Cat, thence the Hell-hound, the Black Haven, the Snake, Worm, Dragon, or in the shape of a Fly, as the Caterpillar, ' the Fly-god. Legends speak of spirits which were inclosed in glass like flies. They were also in earlier times com- pared to two instrnments — the hammer and bolt. Accord- ing to G-rimm, this was derived from the heathen gods, where Hamar, the hammer, was equivalent to death and the devil, thunder and the devil. Little Master Hammer is the same as the Foul Fiend, Hell-bolt, Hell-hand, etc. St. Jerome in his time used malleus for devil in a letter to Damascus. By the by, how excellently the Hexen-hammer and the Sorcery-bull agree with the Hell-bolt, for they, in fact, bar the doors of hell, and keep the devil out in the world. The best known marks of the devil are the cloven foot, the goat's beard, the cock's feather, and the ox's tail. \ Narbonne, in the south of France, was especially the J magic region of Europe, while the Saracens were in Spain, and as there had always been there a number of Manicheans. Accordinoj to the statements of those times, the mamc of Spain had thoroughly fathomed the lowest depths of sorcery ; and what the magic practices of Spain failed to effect was sup- plied bythe more irritabletemperamentoftheFrench, in whose songs, romances, and spiritual comedies, enchanted princes, black charcoal-burners, and bewitched vine-dressers ! played their part. From the south of France the belief in magic diffused itself in two principal directions ; the one towards Italy, the other towards Paris, the north of France and Lothringen. From Italy, where the witch-mania raged towards the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the six- teenth centuries, and especially in Upper Italy, and where Verona was particularly mentioned in a pope's bull, the witch- fever extended itself into the Tyrol and Upper Germany. The first fires for burning witches here were lighted in Baden and AVurtemberg, in Alsace, and the country around Spire and Worms, The metamorphoses of the devil and of sor- cerers into beasts, such as dogs, cats, goats, and toads, were very frequent in the south of France ; and the Inquisition took down the most craijy statements and accusations as
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formal indictments. (Linsborgh, Hist. Inquisit. lib. i. Also Menard, Histoire de la Yille de Nismes.)
Pcpe John XXII. complains bitterly in a buU of 1317 that a number of his own courtiers, and even his own physician, had given themselves over to the devil, and had conjured evil spirits into rings, looking-glasses, and circles, in order to influence men both at a distance and also near at hand, " nefariis operationibus, magicis artibus horrenda maleficia, incantationes et convocationes dsemonum ;" yes, that his enemies even had availed themselves of means of sorcery in order to dispatch him out of the world. This bull contains the commission for the appointment of judges to inquire into these alleged crimes, by which it appears that those sorcerers had little pictures and mirrors, " Conflari imagines plumbeas vel etiam lapideas fabricarunt, malignos spiritus invocarunt, ut per eos contra salutem hominum molirentur, aut eos interimendo violentia carminis," etc. Ten years later the same pope complained of the unholy tendency of men towards the magic arts. " There prevails," he says, " such a darkness, that many solo nomine Christianos have forsaken the true light, and have made a compact with hell, and demand of the demons speech and answer — dsemones nempe immolant, hos adorant, fabricant imagines vel spe- culum, vel phialam, magice daemones illibi alligantes : ab his petunt responsa, recipiunt et pro implendis pravis suis desideriis auxilia postulant." (Horst, Dsemonomagie, i. 115 : according to Eaynald, ab anno 1327.) Pope John had occasion to complain, for at that time men employed not merely the means of superstition and sorcery, but actual poison for devilish crimes, especially amongst the great, and at court, of which Tiedemann, Meiner in the Historical Comparison of the Middle Ages, Th. iii. p. 254, and Horst, give many examples. These crimes and superstitions rose 80 much into the ascendancy, that the Sarbonne, at the suggestion of the excellent Chancellor G-erson, in the year 1398 published seven-and-twenty articles against sorcery, superstition, and pictures in glasses and stones of demons and spirits, Grerson's own essay bears the title " De error- ibus circa artem magicam." At Langres also there was a Synod held in 1404, especially to devise means for checking the progress of sorcery.
THE SOECEET-BULL OF POPE IXXOCENT Till. 155
FinalJy, the belief in witchcraft reached its acme iu the fifteenth century; so that afterwards it only the more strengthened itself by diffusion, and had its dignity aug- mented by the sacred sanction. The distinction of this cen- tury is, that from this time forward they were chiefly women who were accused of witchcraft, after some few, and those men of high rank, had been executed in 1440 on such charges ; namely, the minister of Philip the Handsome, Enguerrand de Maigny, and Aegid de Eez, Marshal of Trance, who had himself destroyed a hundred and sixty children and as many pregnant women. Amongst the women burnt at that period for sorcery was the Maid of Orleans. The prosecution of witches was now formally sanctioned by the sorcery-bull of Innocent Till. ; and, finally, through the Hexenhammer, the tyranny of the Court of Heresy received authority to whirl the whip of destruction, and left the leadership of the world entirely to the devil.
As we have seen, the belief in witchcraft, the witch- trials, and the execution of conjurers, had already preceded this period, so that Innocent was not precisely the originator, but the estabUsher and promulgator of the witch-prosecutions, and of the now established faith in the arts and devilish doings. The sorcery-bull introduced the coui'ts extra- ordinary, in which those accused of witchcraft were no longer examined as to their innocence or guilt, but in which consternation and horror followed the accusation, and the punishment was nearly on their heels. Terrible institution ! Horrible time! Spectacle of despair for Europe, and especially for Germany ! Certainly no other enactment in history can be placed in comparison with this, by which such a multitude of absurdities have been showered down on the human mind — no such ridiculous and yet ferocious historical document.
The contents of the bull of the 4th December, 1484, the work and creation of Innocent YIIL, are as follows : — The Pope expresses his grief that, in many parts of Ger- many, particularly in Upper Germany, Salzburg and Mainz, Cologne, Trier, and Bremen, many persons of both sexes, forgetful of their salvation, and falling away from the
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Catholic faitb, mingle themselves with demons and para- mour-devils (Incubus et succubus abuti), and then by their aid and magical means use devilish arts to torment men and animals, effect unspeakably numerous evils, and destroy the fruits of the earth, as vineyards, gardens, and mea- dows ; disastrously affect both men and women (reactus conjugales reddere valeant), and perpetrate incalculable crimes (quam plurima nefanda excessus et crimina). The Pope conferred, by virtue of this bull, power on three appointed preachers to expound the word of Grod in those countries to the faithful, to hunt out the heretics, and to punish them by excommunication, censure, and chastise- ment, by interdict and suspension, and even to hang them without any power of appeal — " ac alias etiam formid- abiliores sententias omni appellatione postposita." He commanded the right reverend brother the Bishop of Stras- burg, not by any means, either of himself or by others, to make known publicly to the accused the charge against him ; he was not allowed to wea]:en or restrict the power of the said apostolic letters by any means whatsoever ; nor to contradict nor resist the orders of the commissioners, let the rank, office, privileges, nobility, or consideration of the accused be whatsoever they might. "Si quis autem haec attentare prsesumpserit, indignationem omnipotentis Dei ac beatorum Petri et Pauli apostolorum ejus se noverit incur- surum." The bull is abridged from the original in Hauber's Bibliotheca Mag. vol. i. ; and in Horst's Dsemonomagie, vol. ii.
Through this ordnance the inquisitors had an easy game of it, for no one dared to contradict their opinion. It ex- pressly treats of " people who pretend to know more than others, and does not hesitate to assert that such crimes ought to be punished." Thus, there was to be contradiction ; every objection which necessity and justice, sagacity and truth, might advocate, was beaten down beforehand ; and there could be no appeal whatever to any higher tribunal ! General as the belief in witches then w^as, there were people enough who saw deeper ; who had understanding and feeling enough to deny the benefit of so much nonsense, and to deplore the misery and the horrors which must thus
MALLEUS MALEFICAEUM. 157
be poured upon mankind. Hitherto tlie people and the magistracy had only acknowledged the authority of the Pope in matters of faith, but not over offenders of the kind here indicated. Men had, indeed, for some centuries prosecuted heresy, and charged many of the accused with sorcery ; for, as we have said, heresy and sorcery were now placed in the same category. But the witch-prosecutions hitherto had not been formally recognised ; and the judge might be summoned to a higher tribunal to answer for his judgment ; as it happened to the judges of sorcery cases at Arras, who were summoned before the parliament of Paris. The secular magistracy had hitherto had the deciding judgment. By the present bull, heresy and sorcery were linked together. " He who believes otherwise is a sorcerer ; and he who is bewitched is a heretic, or a confe- derate of the devil." Through this change of authority a terrible innovation was made, and the secular power was placed in subjection to that of the inquisitors. 'No wonder that this bull was regarded by the sensible people of all conditions, even by clergymen and preachers, with the most decided repugnance ; as we find expressly stated in the introduction to the Hexenhammer. " Even preachers of the Divine AVord did not hesitate to assure the people that there were no such things as witches ; that they had no arts by which they could injure men and animals ; by which imprudent language the secular arm was not unfrequently restrained from punishing such sorceries ; and thus they became amazingly increased, and heresy became enormously strengthened."
Malleus maleficarum, in German the Hexenhammer, in plain English the Witch-hammer, expresses admirably in each language the nature of the instrument. A hammer is made for striking ; it crushes what it strikes. Here was the hammer for the heretics, who were held to be synony- mous with evil-doers ; and indeed, as the book expressed, maleficarum. Thus the witches were the wicked, heretical women (haereticae pravitatis) whom the hammer was to demolish, and which we must examine more closely.
This ominous book appeared first, probably, in 1489, and consisted of G25 pages in quarto. This was the original edition as quoted by Hauber. There were subsequent
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editions, but they were never translated into G-erman. The complete title stands thus : —
MALLEUS MALEFICAEUM
In tres partes divisus, in quibus