CHAPTER V.

THE LITERATURE OF WITCHCRAFT.


It should teach us humility when we find a belief in witchcraft and
demonology entertained not only by the uneducated and unintelligent
classes, but also by the men of light and leading, the scholar, the
philosopher, the legislator, who might have been expected to have
risen above so degrading a superstition. It would be manifestly unfair
to direct our reproaches at the credulous prejudices of the multitude
when Francis Bacon, the great apostle of the experimental philosophy,
accepts the crude teaching of his royal master's 'Demonologie,' and
actually discusses the ingredients of the celebrated 'witches'
ointment,' opining that they should all be of a soporiferous
character, such as henbane, hemlock, moonshade, mandrake, opium,
tobacco, and saffron. The weakness of Sir Matthew Hale, to which
reference has been made in a previous chapter, we cannot very strongly
condemn, when we know that it was shared by Sir Thomas Browne, who had
so keen an eye for the errors of the common people, and whose fine and
liberal genius throws so genial a light over the pages of the
'Religio Medici.' In his 'History of the World,' that consummate
statesman, poet, and scholar, Sir Walter Raleigh, gravely supports the
vulgar opinions which nowadays every Board School _alumnus_ would
reject with disdain. Even the philosopher of Malmesbury, the sagacious
author of 'The Leviathan,' Thomas Hobbes, was infected by the
prevalent delusion. Dr. Cudworth, to whom we owe the acute reasoning
of the treatises on 'Moral Good and Evil,' and 'The True Intellectual
System of the Universe,' firmly holds that the guilt of a reputed
witch might be determined by her inability or unwillingness to repeat
the Lord's Prayer. Strangest of it all is it to find the pure and
lofty spirit of Henry More, the founder of the school of English
Platonists, yielding to the general superstition. With large additions
of his own, he republished the Rev. Joseph Glanvill's notorious work,
'Sadducismus Triumphatus'--a pitiful example of the extent to which a
fine intellect may be led astray, though Mr. Lecky thinks it the most
powerful defence of witchcraft ever published. And the sober and
fair-minded Robert Boyle, in the midst of his scientific researches,
found time to listen, with breathless interest, to 'stories of witches
at Oxford, and devils at Muston.'

Among the Continental authorities on witchcraft, the chief of those
who may be called its advocates are, _Martin Antonio Delrio_
(1551-1608), who published, in the closing years of the sixteenth
century, his 'Disquisitionarum Magicarum Libri Sex,' a formidable
folio, brimful of credulity and ingenuity, which was translated into
French by Duchesne in 1611, and has been industriously pilfered from
by numerous later writers. Delrio has no pretensions to critical
judgment; he swallows the most monstrous inventions with astounding
facility.

Reference must also be made to the writings of Remigius, included in
Pez' 'Thesaurus Anecdotorum Novissimus,' and to the great work by H.
Institor and J. Sprenger, 'Malleus Maleficarum,' as well as to Basin,
Molitor ('Dialogus de Lamiis'), and other authors, to be found in the
1582 edition of 'Mallei quorundam Maleficarum,' published at
Frankfort.

On the same side we find the great philosophical lawyer and historian
_John Bodin_ (1530-1596), the author of the 'Republicæ,' and the
'Methodus ad facilem Historiarum Cognitionem.' In his 'Demonomanie des
Sorcius' he recommends the burning of witches and wizards with an
earnestness which should have gone far to compensate for his
heterodoxy on other points of belief and practice. He informs us that
from his thirty-seventh year he had been attended by a familiar spirit
or demon, which touched his ear whenever he was about to do anything
of which his conscience disapproved; and he quotes passages from the
Psalms, Job, and Isaiah, to prove that spirits indicate their presence
to men by touching and even pulling their ears, and not only by vocal
utterances.

Also, _Thomas Erastus_ (1524-1583), physician and controversialist,
who took so busy a part in the theological dissensions of his time. In
1577 he published a tract ('De Lamiis') on the lawfulness of putting
witches to death. It is strange that he should have been mastered by
the gross imposture of witchcraft, when he could expose with trenchant
force the pretensions of alchemists, astrologers, and Rosicrucians.

Happily, the cause of humanity, truth and tolerance was not without
its eager and capable defenders. The earliest I take to have been the
Dutch physician, _Wierus_, who, in his treatise 'De Præstigiis,'
published at Basel in 1564, vigorously attacked the cruel prejudice
that had doomed so many unhappy creatures to the stake. He did not,
however, deny the _existence_ of witchcraft, but demanded mercy for
those who practised it on the ground that they were the devil's
victims, not his servants. That he should have been wholly devoid of
credulity would have been more than one could rightly have expected of
a disciple of Cornelius Agrippa.

A stronger and much more successful assailant appeared in _Reginald
Scot_ (died 1599), a younger son of Sir John Scot, of Scot's Hall,
near Smeeth, who published his celebrated 'Discoverie of Witchcraft'
in 1584--a book which, in any age, would have been remarkable for its
sweet humanity, breadth of view, and moderation of tone, as well as
for its literary excellencies. One wonders where this quiet Kentish
gentleman, whose chief occupations appear to have been gardening and
planting, accumulated his erudition, and how, in the face of the
superstitions of his contemporaries, he arrived at such large and
liberal conclusions. The scope of his great work is indicated in its
lengthy title: 'The Discoverie of Witchcraft, wherein the lewd dealing
of Witches and Witchmongers is notablie detected, the knaverie of
conjurers, the impietie of enchanters, the follie of soothsaiers, the
impudent falsehood of couseners, the infidelitie of atheists, the
pestilent practices of Pythonists, the curiositie of figure-casters
[horoscope-makers], the vanitie of dreamers, the beggarlie art of
Alcumystrie, the abhomination of idolatrie, the horrible art of
poisoning, the vertue and power of naturall magike, and all the
conveyances of Legierdemain and juggling are deciphered: and many
other things opened, which have long lain hidden, howbeit verie
necessarie to be knowne. Heerevnto is added a treatise upon the Nature
and Substance of Spirits and Devils, etc.: all latelie written by
Reginald Scot, Esquire. 1 John iv. 1: "Believe not everie spirit, but
trie the spirits, whether they are of God; for many false prophets are
gone out into the world."'

From a book so well known--a new edition has recently appeared--it is
needless to make extracts; but I transcribe a brief passage in
illustration of the vivacity and manliness of the writer:

'I, therefore (at this time), do only desire you to consider of my
report concerning the evidence that is commonly brought before you
against them. See first whether the evidence be not frivolous, and
whether the proofs brought against them be not incredible, consisting
of guesses, presumptions, and impossibilities contrary to reason,
Scripture, and nature. See also what persons complain upon them,
whether they be not of the basest, the unwisest, and the most
faithless kind of people. Also, may it please you, to weigh what
accusations and crimes they lay to their charge, namely: She was at my
house of late, she would have had a pot of milk, she departed in a
chafe because she had it not, she railed, she cursed, she mumbled and
whispered; and, finally, she said she would be even with me: and soon
after my child, my cow, my sow, or my pullet died, or was strangely
taken. Nay (if it please your Worship), I have further proof: I was
with a wise woman, and she told me I had an ill neighbour, and that
she would come to my house ere it was long, and so did she; and that
she had a mark about her waist, and so had she: God forgive me, my
stomach hath gone against her a great while. Her mother before her was
counted a witch; she hath been beaten and scratched by the face till
blood was drawn upon her, because she hath been suspected, and
afterwards some of those persons were said to amend. These are the
certainties that I hear in their evidences.

'Note, also, how easily they may be brought to confess that which they
never did, nor lieth in the power of man to do; and then see whether I
have cause to write as I do. Further, if you shall see that
infidelity, popery, and many other manifest heresies be backed and
shouldered, and their professors animated and heartened, by yielding
to creatures such infinite power as is wrested out of God's hand, and
attributed to witches: finally, if you shall perceive that I have
faithfully and truly delivered and set down the condition and state of
the witch, and also of the witchmonger, and have confuted by reason
and law, and by the Word of God itself, all mine adversary's
objections and arguments; then let me have your countenance against
them that maliciously oppose themselves against me.

'My greatest adversaries are young ignorance and old custom. For what
folly soever tract of time hath fostered, it is so superstitiously
pursued of some, as though no error could be acquainted with custom.
But if the law of nations would join with such custom, to the
maintenance of ignorance and to the suppressing of knowledge, the
civilest country in the world would soon become barbarous. For as
knowledge and time discovereth errors, so doth superstition and
ignorance in time breed them.'

In another fine passage Scot says:

'God that knoweth my heart is witness, and you that read my book shall
see, that my drift and purpose in this enterprise tendeth only to
these respects. First, that the glory and power of God be not so
abridged and abused, as to be thrust into the hand or lip of a lewd
old woman, whereby the work of the Creator should be attributed to the
power of a creature. Secondly, that the religion of the Gospel may be
seen to stand without such peevish trumpery. Thirdly, that lawful
favour and Christian compassion be rather used towards these poor
souls than rigour and extremity. Because they which are commonly
accused of witchcraft are the least sufficient of all other persons to
speak for themselves, as having the most base and simple education of
all others; the extremity of their age giving them leave to dote,
their poverty to beg, their wrongs to chide and threaten (as being
void of any other way of revenge), their humour melancholical to be
full of imaginations, from whence chiefly proceedeth the vanity of
their confessions, as that they can transform themselves and others
into apes, owls, asses, dogs, cats, etc.; that they can fly in the
air, kill children with charms, hinder the coming of butter, etc.

'And for so much as the mighty help themselves together, and the poor
widow's cry, though it reach to heaven, is scarce heard here upon
earth, I thought good (according to my poor ability) to make
intercession, that some part of common rigour and some points of hasty
judgment may be advised upon. For the world is now at that stay (as
Brentius, in a most godly sermon, in these words affirmeth), that
even, as when the heathen persecuted the Christians, if any were
accused to believe in Christ, the common people cried _Ad leonem_; so
now, of any woman, be she never so honest, be she accused of
witchcraft, they cry _Ad ignem_.'

* * * * *

Scot's attack upon the credulity of his contemporaries, strenuous and
capable as it was, did not bear much fruit at the time; while it
exposed him to charges of Atheism and Sadduceeism from several small
critics, who were supported by the authority of James I., and, at a
later date, of Dr. Meric Casaubon. He found a fellow-labourer,
however, in his work of humanity, in the _Rev. George Gifford_, of
Maldon, Essex, who in 1593 published 'A Dialogue concerning Witches
and Witchcraft,' in which 'is layed open how craftily the Divell
deceiveth not only the Witches but Many other, and so leadeth them
awaie into Manie Great Errours.' It will be seen from the title that
the writer does not adopt the uncompromising line of Reginald Scot,
but inclines rather to the standpoint of Wierus. There is, however, a
good deal of ability in his treatment of the question; and some
account of the 'Dialogue' reprinted by the Percy Society in 1842,
should be interesting, I think, to the reader.

* * * * *

The interlocutors are named Samuel, Daniel, Samuel's wife, M. B., a
schoolmaster, and the goodwife R.

The dialogue opens with Samuel and Daniel, the former of whom is a
fanatical believer in witches. 'These evil-favoured old witches,' he
says, 'do trouble me.' He repeats the common rumour that there is
scarcely a town or village in the shire but has one or two witches in
it. 'In good sooth,' he adds, 'I may tell it to you as to my friend,
when I go but into my closes, I am afraid, for I see now and then a
hare, which my conscience giveth me is a witch, or some witch's
spirit, she stareth so upon me. And sometime I see an ugly weasel run
through my yard; and there is a foul, great cat sometimes in my barn,
which I have no liking unto.' Having introduced his friend, who is
less credulous than himself, to his wife and his home, he promotes an
argument between him and another friend, M. B., a schoolmaster, on
this _quæstio vexata_.