A History of The Inquisition of The Middle Ages Volume III Part 13

Paul, the partisans of the latter were not behindhand in recounting the triumph of their leader over the older thaumaturgists, for when he wrought wonders at Ephesus and the Jewish conjurers were put to shame, then "many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together and burned them before all men; and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver."[421]

Still more convincing was the incident which occurred to Marcus Aurelius in the Marcomannic war when, in the territory of the Quadi, he was cut off from water, so that his army was peris.h.i.+ng from thirst. Though he had persecuted the Christians, he had recourse to the intervention of Christ, when a sudden tempest supplied the Romans abundantly with water, while the lightning slew the Teutons and dispersed them, so that they were readily slaughtered. When, finally, the new faith and the old met in their death-grapple, Eusebius describes Constantine as preparing for the struggle by calling around him his most holy priests and marching under the shade of the sacred Labarum. Licinius on his side collected diviners and Egyptian prophets and magicians. They offered sacrifices and endeavored to learn the result from their deities. Oracles everywhere promised victory; the sacrificial auguries were favorable; the interpreters of dreams announced success. On the eve of the first battle Licinius a.s.sembled his chief captains in a sacred grove where there were many idols, and explained to them that this was to be the decisive test between the G.o.ds of their ancestors and the unknown deity of the barbarians--if they were vanquished it would show that their G.o.ds were dethroned. In the ensuing combat the cross bore down everything before it; the enemy fled when it appeared, and Constantine seeing this sent the Labarum as an amulet of victory, wherever his troops were sore bestead, and at once the battle would be restored. Defeat only hardened the heart of Licinius, and again he had recourse to his magicians.

Constantine, on the other hand, arranged an oratory in his camp, to which before battle he would retire to pray with the men of G.o.d, and then sallying forth would give the signal for attack, when his troops would slay all who dared to stand before them. So complete became the trust enjoined in the efficacy of the invocation of G.o.d, that enthusiasts denounced it as unworthy a Christian to rely upon human prudence and sagacity in trouble. St. Nilus tells us that in cases of sickness recourse is to be had to prayer, rather than to physicians and physic; and St. Augustin, in his recital of miraculous cures beyond the reach of science to effect, evidently regards the appeal to G.o.d and the saints as far more trustworthy than all the resources of the medical art.[422]

It was inevitable that the triumphant theurgy should set to work with remorseless vigor to extirpate its fallen rival, as soon as it could fully control the powers of the State. It was not so much the wors.h.i.+p and propitiation of the pagan G.o.ds that was first attacked, as the thousand methods of divination and devices to avert evil which had become ingrained in daily life--oracles and auguries and portents and omens and soothsaying. Their efficacy was the work of Satan to deceive and seduce mankind, and their use was the direct or indirect invocation of demons. To attempt to foretell the future in any way was sorcery, and all sorcery was the work of the devil; and it was the same with the amulets and charms, the observance of lucky and unlucky days, and the innumerable trivial superst.i.tions which amused the popular imagination.

Zeal for the repression of every species of magic was not only stimulated by the conviction that it was an essential part of the conflict with a personal Satan, but by obedience to the commands of G.o.d in the Mosaic law. The awful words, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch (_Meka.s.shepha_) to live" have rung through the centuries, and have served as a justification for probably more judicial slaughter than any other sentence in the history of human jurisprudence. Rabbinical Judaism enforced this relentlessly in spite of the kindliness of the rabbis and their extreme indisposition to shed human blood. One of the first reforms of the Pharisees on coming into power after the persecution of Alexander Jannai was the abrogation of the Mosaic penal code in favor of milder laws. The leader in the revolution was Simon ben Shetach, who in organizing the Sanhedrin refused the presidency and conferred it on Judah ben Tabbai. The latter chanced to condemn a man for false witness on the testimony of a single person, though the law required two, when Simon reproached him as blood-guilty, and he resigned. Yet this man, so scrupulous about taking life, had no hesitation in hanging at Ascalon eighty witches in a single day. According to the Mishna, the Pithom and the Jiddoni are to be stoned, and false diviners and those who read the future in the name of idols are to be hanged, while the Talmud adds that he who learns a single word from a Magus is to be put to death.

Christianity thus derived from Judaism the complete a.s.surance that in ruthlessly exterminating all thaumaturgy save that of its own priesthood it was obeying the unquestioned command of G.o.d.[423]

The machinery of the Church was therefore early set to work to exhort and persuade the faithful against a sin so unpardonable and apparently so ineradicable; and as soon as it gathered its prelates together in councils it commenced to legislate for the suppression of such practices.[424] When it grew powerful enough to influence the head of the State it procured a series of cruel edicts which doubtless were effective in destroying the remains of tolerated paganism as well as in suppressing the special practices so offensive in the eyes of the orthodox. It was not difficult to commence with the time-honored practices of divination, for, although these had formed part of the machinery of State, yet when the State was centred in the person of its master, any inquiry into the future of public affairs was an inquiry into the fortune and fate of the monarch, and no crime was more jealously repressed and more promptly punished than this. Even so warm an admirer of ancestral inst.i.tutions as Cato the Elder had long before warned his paterfamilias to forbid his _villicus_, or farm-steward, to consult any haruspex or augur. These gentry had a way of breeding trouble, and it boded no good to the master when the slaves were over-curious and too well-informed. In the same spirit Tiberius prohibited the secret consultation of haruspices. Constantine was thus serving a double purpose when, as early as 319, he threatened with burning the haruspex who ventured to cross another's threshold, even on pretext of friends.h.i.+p; the man who called him in was punished with confiscation and deportation, and the informer was rewarded. Priest and augur were only to celebrate their rites in public. Even this was withdrawn by Constantius in 357; any consultation with diviners was punishable with death, and the pract.i.tioners themselves, whether of magic or augury, or the expounding of dreams, when on trial were deprived of exemption from torture and could be subjected to the rack or the hooks to extort confession.[425] Under this Constantius organized an active persecution throughout the East, in which numbers were put to death upon the slightest pretext; pa.s.sing among the tombs at night was evidence of necromancy, and hanging a charm around the neck for the cure of a quartan was proof of forbidden arts. The witch-trials of modern times were prefigured and antic.i.p.ated. Under Julian there was a reaction, and in 364 Valentinian and Valens proclaimed freedom of belief; in 371 they included in this the old religious divination, while capital punishment was restricted to magic arts, but the persecution in the East under Valens in 374, following the conspiracy of Theodore, obliterated all distinction. Commencing with those accused of magic, it extended to all who were noted for letters or philosophy. Terror reigned throughout the East; all who had libraries burned them. The prisons were insufficient to contain the prisoners, and in some towns it was said that fewer were left than were taken. Many were put to death, and the rest were stripped of their property. In the West, under Valentinian, persecution was not so sweeping, but the laws were enforced, at least in Rome, with sufficient energy to reduce greatly the number of sorcerers; and a law of Honorius, in 409, by its reference to the bishops, shows that the Church was beginning to partic.i.p.ate with the State in the supervision over such offenders.[426] Yet that even the faithful could not be restrained from indulging in these forbidden practices is seen in the earnest exhortations addressed to them by their teachers, and the elaborate repet.i.tion of proofs that all such exhibitions of supernatural power were the work of demons.[427]

The Eastern Empire maintained its severity of legislation and continued with more or less success to repress the inextinguishable thirst for forbidden arts. From some transactions under Manuel and Andronicus Comnenus in the latter half of the twelfth century we learn that blinding was a usual punishment for such offences, that the cla.s.sical forms of augury had disappeared to be replaced by necromantic formulas, and that such accusations were a convenient method of disposing of enemies.[428]

In the West the Barbarian domination introduced a new element. The Ostrogoths, who occupied Italy under Theodoric, were, it is true, so much Romanized that, although Arians, they adopted and enforced the laws against magic. Divination was cla.s.sed with paganism and was capitally punished. About the year 500 we hear of a persecution which drove all the sorcerers from Rome, and Basilius, the chief thaumaturge among them, although he escaped at the time, was burned on venturing to return. When Italy fell back into the hands of the Eastern Empire the prosecution of these offences seems to have been committed to the Church as a part of its ever-widening sphere of influence and jurisdiction.[429]

The Wisigoths who took possession of Aquitaine and Spain, although less civilized than their Eastern brethren, were profoundly influenced by Roman legislation, and their princes issued repeated enactments to discourage the forbidden arts. It is significant of the Barbarian tenderness for human life, however, that the penalties were greatly less than those of the savage Roman edicts. A law of Recared declares magicians and diviners and those who consult them to be incapable of bearing testimony; one of Egiza places these crimes in the cla.s.s for which a slave could be tortured against his accused master; and several edicts of Chindaswind provide, for those who invoke demons or bring hail upon vineyards, or use ligatures or charms to injure men or cattle or harvests, scourging with two hundred lashes, shaving, and carrying around for exhibition in the vicinage, to be followed by imprisonment.

Those who consult diviners about the health of the king or of others are threatened with scourging and enslavement to the fisc, including confiscation, if their children are accomplices; judges who have recourse to divination for guidance in doubtful cases are subjected to the same penalties, while the simple observation of auguries is visited with fifty lashes. These provisions, which were mostly carried with little change into the Fuero Juzgo, remained the law of the Spanish Peninsula until the Middle Ages were well advanced. They show how impossible it had been to eradicate the old superst.i.tions, and that the pagan observances and auguries still flourished among all cla.s.ses, which is confirmed by the denunciations of the Spanish councils and ecclesiastical writers. They have a further significance as presenting a middle term between the severity of Rome and the laxity of the other Barbarian tribes.[430]

These latter were ruder and less amenable to Roman influences. In their conversion the Church rendered an immense service to humanity, and it did not dare to interfere too rudely with the customs and prejudices of its unruly neophytes; in fact, it harmonized its own with them as far as it could, and became considerably modified in consequence. This process is well symbolized in the instructions of Gregory the Great to Augustin, his missionary to England, to convert the pagan temples into churches by sprinkling them with holy water, so that converts might grow accustomed to their new faith by wors.h.i.+pping in the wonted places, while the sacrifices to demons were to be replaced by processions in honor of some saint or martyr, when oxen were to be slaughtered, not to propitiate idols, but in praise of G.o.d, to be eaten by the faithful. In this a.s.similation of Christianity to paganism it is not surprising that Redwald, King of East Anglia, after his conversion set up in his temple two altars, at one of which he wors.h.i.+pped the true G.o.d and at the other offered sacrifices to demons.[431] The similar adoption by Christian magic of elements from that which it supplanted is well ill.u.s.trated by the hymn, or rather incantation, known as the Lorica of St. Patrick, in which the forces of nature and the Deity are both summoned as by an enchanter to the a.s.sistance of the thaumaturge. A MS. of the seventh century a.s.sures us that "Every person who sings it every day with all his attention on G.o.d shall not have demons appearing to his face. It will be a safeguard to him against sudden death. It will be a protection to him against every poison and envy. It will be an armor to his soul after his death. Patrick sang this at the time that the snares were set for him by Loegaire, so that it appeared to those who were lying in ambush that they were wild deer and a fawn after them."[432]

The Barbarians brought with them their own superst.i.tions, whether transmitted from the prehistoric Aryan home, or acquired in the course of their wanderings, and they readily added to these such as they found among their new subjects, whether they were under the ban of the Church or not. They had parted from their brethren before the religious revolution caused by Zoroaster's dualistic conception of Hormazd and Ahriman, and their religions have no trace of a personification of the Evil Principle. Loki, its nearest representative, was rather tricky than incorrigible. It is true that there were evil beings, such as the Hrimthursar, Trolls, or Jotuns, the Jotun-dragon Fafnir, the wolf Fenrir, Beowulf's Grendal and others, but they were none of them a.n.a.logous to the Mazdean Ahriman or the Christian Satan, and when the Teutonic races adopted the latter they came to represent him, as Grimm well points out, rather as the blundering Jotun than as the arch-enemy.

To how late a period the ancestral conceptions of the spirit-world prevailed in Germany may be seen in the answers of the learned Abbot John of Trittenheim to the questions of Maximilian I.[433]

The Teutonic tribes had little to learn from the conquered peoples in the wide circle of the magic arts, for in no race, probably, has the supernatural formed a larger portion of daily life, or claimed greater power over both the natural and the spiritual worlds. Divination in all its forms was universally practised. Gifted beings known as _menn forspair_ could predict the future either by second sight, or by incantations, or by expounding dreams. Still more dreaded and respected was the Vala or prophetess, who was wors.h.i.+pped as superhuman and regarded as in some way an embodiment of the subordinate Norns or Fates, as in the case of Veleda, Aurinia, and others who, as Tacitus a.s.sures us, were regarded as G.o.ddesses, in accordance with the German custom of thus venerating their fatidical women; and in the Voluspa the Vala communes on equal terms with Odin himself.[434] For those not thus specially gifted there was ample store of means to forecast the future.

The most ordinary method was by necromancy, either by placing under the tongue of a corpse a piece of wood carved with appropriate runes, or by raising the shades of the dead precisely as the Witch of Endor did with Samuel, or as was practised in Rome.[435] The lot was also used extensively, whether to ascertain the divine will, like the Hebrew Urim and Thummim, or to ascertain the future with a bundle of sticks, apparently almost identical with the Chinese trigrams and hexagrains.[436] As in Greece and Rome, sacrifices were often offered to the G.o.ds in expectation of a response; auguries were drawn from the flight of birds as carefully as by the Roman augurs, while the sacred chickens were replaced with white horses consecrated to the G.o.ds, whose motions and actions when harnessed to the sacred chariot were carefully observed.[437] Saving the Etruscan _haruspicium_ and the omens derived from sacrificial victims, h.e.l.lenic and Italiote divination had little to distinguish it from that of the Teutons.

As regards magic, scarce any limit can be set to the power of the sorcerer. In no literature do his marvels fill a larger s.p.a.ce, nor are the feats of wizard or witch received with more unquestioning faith than in what remains to us of the sagas of the North. Especially were the lands around the Baltic regarded as the peculiar home and nursery of sorcerers, whither people from every land, even from distant Greece and Spain, resorted for instruction or for special aid. In Adam of Bremen's "Churland" every house was full of diviners and necromancers, while the people of northern Norway could tell what every man in the world was doing, and could perform with ease all the evil deeds ascribed to witches in Holy Writ. Both Saxo Grammaticus and Snorri Sturlason, in their widely differing Euhemeristic accounts of the origin of the aesir, or G.o.ds, agree that the founders of the Northern kingdom owed their deification solely to the magic skill which led their subjects and descendants to venerate them as divine.[438]

Norse magic was roughly cla.s.sified into that which was legitimate, or _galder_, and that which was wicked, or _seid_. To the former belonged the infinite powers of runes, whether sung as incantations or carved as talismans and amulets. Their invention was attributed to the ancient Hrimthursar or Jotuns, and it was his profound knowledge of this magic lore which enabled Odin to achieve his supremacy. Runes it was that kept the sun upon his course and maintained the order of nature. All runes were mingled together in the sacred drink of the aesir, whence were derived their supernatural attributes, and some have been allowed to reach man, which were carefully cla.s.sified and studied.[439] As an adjunct of these was the _seidstaf_, or wand, so indispensable to the magician of all races. The Icelandic Yala Thordis had one of these known as Hangnud, which would deprive of memory him whom it touched on the right cheek and restore it with a touch on the left cheek. Philtres and love-potions, causing irresistible desire or indifference or hatred, were among the ordinary resources of Norse magic. p.r.i.c.king with the sleep-thorn produced magic sleep for an indefinite time. Magicians could also throw themselves into a deep trance, while the spirit wandered abroad in some other form: women who were accustomed to do this were called _hamleypur_, and if the _ham_, or a.s.sumed form, were injured, the hurt would be found on the real body--a belief common to almost all races.[440] The adept, moreover, could a.s.sume any form at will, as in the historical case of the wizard who in the shape of a whale swam to Iceland as a spy for Harold Gormsson of Denmark, when the latter was planning an expedition thither; or two persons could exchange appearances, as Signy did with a witch-wife, or Sigurd with Gunnar, when Brynhild was deceived into marrying the latter.[441] Enchanted swords that nothing could resist, enchanted coats that nothing could penetrate, caps of darkness which, like the Greek helm of Pluto, rendered the wearer invisible, are of frequent occurrence in Norse legendary history.[442]

All this was more or less lawful magic, while the impious sorcery known as _seid_ or _trolldom_ was based on a knowledge of the evil secrets of nature or the invocation of malignant spirits, such as the Jotuns and their troll-wives. _Seid_ is apparently derived from _sjoda_, to seethe or boil, indicating that its spells were wrought by boiling in a caldron the ingredients of the witches' h.e.l.l-broth, as we see it done in Macbeth. It was deemed infamous, unworthy of men, and was mostly left to women, known as _seid konur_, or seid wives, and as "riders of the night." In the oldest text of the Salic law, which shows no trace of Christian influence, the only allusion to sorcery is a fine imposed for calling a woman a witch, or for stigmatizing a man as one who carries the caldron for a witch.[443] Scarce any limit was a.s.signed to the power of these sorcerers. One of their most ordinary feats was the raising and allaying of tempests, and to such perfection was this brought that storm and calm could be enclosed in bags for use by the possessor, like those which aeolus gave to Ulysses. As Christianity spread, this power gave rise to trials of strength between the old and the new religion, such as we have seen when Constantine overcame Licinius. St. Olaf's first expedition to Finland barely escaped destruction from a dreadful tempest excited by the Finnish sorcerers. Olaf Tryggvesson was more fortunate in one of his missionary raids, when he defeated Raud the Strong and drove him to his fastness on G.o.do Island in the Salten Fiord--a piece of water whose fierce tidal currents were more dreaded than the Maelstrom itself.

Repeated attempts to follow him were vain, for, no matter how fair was the weather outside, inside Raud maintained a storm in which no s.h.i.+p could live. At length Olaf invoked the aid of Bishop Sigurd, who promised to test whether G.o.d would vouchsafe to overcome the devil.

Tapers and vestments and holy water and sacred texts were too much for the evil spirits; the king's s.h.i.+ps sailed into the fiord with smooth water around them, though everywhere else the waves ran high enough to hide the mountains: Raud was captured, and, as he obstinately refused baptism, Olaf put him to the most cruel death that his ingenuity could devise.[444]

The sorcerer also had endless power of creating illusions. A beleaguered wizard could cause a flock of sheep to appear like a band of warriors hastening to his a.s.sistance. Yet this would appear superfluous, since by his glances alone he could convulse nature and cause instant death.

Gunhild, who married King Eric Blood-Axe, says of the two Lap sorcerers who taught her magic: "When they are angry the very earth turns away in terror and whatever living thing they look upon falls dead." When she betrayed them to Eric she cast them into a deep sleep and drew sealskin bags over their heads, so that Eric and his men could despatch them in safety. Similarly when Olaf Pa surprised Stigandi asleep he drew a skin over the wizard's head. There chanced to be a small hole in it through which Stigandi's glance fell upon the gra.s.sy slope of an opposite mountain, whereupon the spot was torn up with a whirlwind and living herb never grew there again.[445]

One of the most terrifying powers of the witch was her fearful cannibalism, a belief which the Teutons shared with the Romans. This is referred to in some of the texts of the Salic law and in the legislation of Charlemagne, and the unlimited extent of popular credulity with regard to it is seen in an adventure of Thorodd, an envoy of St. Olaf, who saw a witch-wife tear eleven men to pieces, throw them on the fire, and commence devouring them, when she was driven off.[446]

The _trolla-thing_, or nocturnal gathering of witches, where they danced and sang and prepared their unholy brewage in the caldron, was a customary observance of these wise-women, especially on the first of May (St. Walpurgis' Night), which was the great festival of pagandom.[447]

We shall see hereafter the portentous growth of this, which developed into the Witches' Sabbat. It is a feature common to the superst.i.tion of many races, the origin of which cannot be definitely a.s.signed to any.

That the practice of this impious sorcery was deemed infamous is clear from the provision of the Salic law, already alluded to, imposing a fine of eighty-nine sols for calling a free woman a witch without being able to prove it. Yet the mere addiction to it in pagan times was not a penal offence, and penalties were only inflicted for injuries thus committed on person or property. In extreme cases, where death was encompa.s.sed, there seems to have been a popular punishment of lapidation, which was the fate incurred, after due sentence, by three noted sorcerers, Katla and Kotkel and Grima. The codified laws of the barbarians, however, never prescribed the death penalty, fines being the universal retribution for crime, and in a later text of the Salic law two hundred sols is designated for the witch who eats a man. Yet individual cases can be found of persecution, such as that by Harald Harfaager, whose early experience had inspired him with intense hatred of the art. One of his sons, Rognvald Rettilbein, received from him the government of Hadeland, where he learned sorcery and became a great adept; so when Vitgeir, a noted wizard of Hordeland, was ordered by Harald to abandon his evil ways he retorted:

"The danger surely is not great, From wizard born of mean estate, When Harald's son in Hadeland, King Rognvald, to the art lays hand."

Rognvald's wrong-doing being thus betrayed, Harald lost no time in despatching Eric Blood-Axe, his son by another wife, who promptly burned his half-brother in a house, along with eighty other sorcerers--a piece of practical justice which we are told met with general popular applause.[448]

Such were the beliefs and practices of the races with which the Church had to do in its efforts to obliterate paganism and sorcery. There was little difference between the provinces which had belonged to the empire and the regions over which Christianity began for the first time to spread, for in the former the conquerors and the conquered were imbued, as we have just seen, with superst.i.tions nearly akin. The exchange of imperial for barbarian rule worked the same result as to sorcery as that related in a former chapter with regard to the persecution of heresy, though it must be borne in mind that, while heresy almost disappeared in the intellectual hebetude of the times, sorcery grew ever more vigorous.

Its suppression was practically abandoned. As mentioned above, the earliest text of the Salic law provides no general penalty for it. In subsequent recensions, besides the fine imposed for cannibalism, some MSS. have clauses imposing fines for bewitching with ligatures and killing men with incantations--in the latter case, with the alternative of burning alive--but even these disappear in the _Lex Emendata_ of Charlemagne, possibly in consequence of the legislation of the Capitularies described below. The Ripuarian code only treats murder by sorcery like any other homicide, to be compounded for by the ordinary wer-gild, or blood-money, and for injuries thus inflicted it provides a fine of one hundred sols, to be avoided by compurgation with six conjurators. The other codes are absolutely silent on the subject.[449]

As under the Frankish rule laws were personal and not territorial, the Gallo-Roman population was still governed by the Roman law, but evidently there was no attempt made to enforce it. Gregory of Tours relates for us several miracles to prove the superiority of the Christian magic of relics and invocation of saints over the popular magic of the conjurer, which indicate that the first impulse of the people in case of accident or sudden sickness was to send for the nearest _ariolus_, or pract.i.tioner of forbidden arts, and that the profession was exercised openly and without fear of punishment, in spite of repeated condemnations by the councils of the period. How little such persons had to fear is seen in the case of a woman of Verdun, who professed to be a soothsayer and to discover stolen goods. She was so successful that she drove a thriving trade, purchased her freedom of her master, and acc.u.mulated a store of money. At length she was brought before Bishop Ageric, who only treated her for demoniacal possession with exorcisms and inunctions of holy oil, and finally discharged her.[450]

Occasionally, of course, cases occurred in which the unrestrained pa.s.sions of the Merovingians wreaked savage cruelty on those who had incurred their ill-will, but these were exceptional and outside of the law. When Fredegonda lost two children by pestilence, her stepson Clovis was accused of causing it by sorcery. The woman designated as his accomplice was tortured until she confessed, and was burned, although she retracted her confession, after which Chilperic delivered his son Clovis to Fredegonda, who caused him to be a.s.sa.s.sinated. When, subsequently, another son, Thierry, died in 584, Mummolus, the royal favorite, whom Fredegonda disliked, was accused of having caused it by incantations. Thereupon she seized some women of Paris, and by scourging and torture forced them to confess themselves sorceresses who had caused numerous deaths, including that of Thierry, whose soul was accepted in place of that of Mummolus. Some of these poor wretches were simply put to death, others she burned, and others she broke on the wheel.

Chilperic then caused Mummolus to be tortured by suspension with his arms tied behind his back, but he only confessed to having obtained from the women philtres and ointments to secure the favor of the king and queen. Unluckily he said to the executioner on being taken down, "Tell the king that I feel no ill from what has been done." On hearing this Chilperic exclaimed, "Is he really a sorcerer that this does not hurt him?" and had him stretched on a rack and scourged with leathern thongs till the executioners were exhausted. Mummolus finally begged his life of Fredegonda, but was stripped of his possessions and sent in a wagon to his native city, Bordeaux, where he died on his arrival. Cases like this throw light on the beliefs of the period, but not upon its judicial routine.[451]

The Lombards in Italy fell to a greater degree under Roman influence, and towards the close of their domination adopted general laws of some severity against the practice of sorcery, irrespective of the injury committed. The sorcerer was to be sold as a slave beyond the province, and the price received was divided between the judge and other officials, according to their respective merits in the prosecution: if through bribes or pity the judge refused to condemn, he was mulcted in his whole wer-gild, or the amount of his blood-money, and half as much if he neglected to discover a sorcerer who was found out by another. The penalty for consulting a sorcerer, or for not informing on him, or for performing incantations, was half the wer-gild of the offender. At the same time the grosser superst.i.tions were rejected, and Rotharis forbade putting sorceresses to death, under the popular belief that they could devour men internally.[452]

In the long anarchy which accompanied the fall of the Merovingians, all respect for the Church, its precepts and observances, was well-nigh lost throughout the Frankish kingdoms. One of the incidents of reconstruction, as the Carlovingian dynasty slowly emerged, and as St.

Boniface, under papal authority, sought to restore the Church, was the suppression of Bishop Adalbert, who taught the invocation of the angels Uriel, Raguel, Tubuel, Inias, Tubuas, Sabaoc, and Simiel. Adalbert was venerated as a saint, and the clippings of his nails and hair were treasured as relics. Repeated condemnations at home had no effect on this false wors.h.i.+p of angels, and Pope Zachary held, in 745, a synod in Rome which declared it to be a wors.h.i.+p of demons, as the only angels whose names are known are Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. Yet this superst.i.tion took so firm a hold upon the people that it was long before it could be eradicated; indeed, it seems to be alluded to, even in the middle of the tenth century, by Atto of Vercelli.[453] When such was the condition of the Church, no suppression of sorcery was to be looked for.

Among the instructions to Boniface and his fellow-missionaries was the eradication of all pagan observances, including divination, sorcery, and cognate superst.i.tions. As the Church became reorganized, councils were held in 742 and 743, in which Church and State united in prohibiting them, although only a moderate fine was threatened, but the ecclesiastical jurisdiction over such offences was established by ordering the bishops to make yearly visitations of their sees to suppress paganism and the forbidden arts. Boniface, however, complained to Zachary that when the Frank or German visited Rome he saw there, openly practised, the things which they were laboriously endeavoring to suppress at home. The first of January was celebrated with pagan dances; women wore amulets and ligatures, and publicly offered them for sale.

The pope could only reply that these things had long ago been prohibited, but as they had broken out afresh he had forbidden them again--but we may be a.s.sured without success.[454]

In the Carlovingian reconstruction which followed, efforts were made to suppress all superst.i.tious arts, and they were treated with gradually increasing severity, but still with comparative lenity. The most vigorous legislation was an edict of Charlemagne in 805, which confides the matter to the Church, and orders the archpriest of each diocese to investigate all who were accused of divination or sorcery, apparently permitting moderate torture to obtain confession, and keeping the culprits in prison until they amend. In his efforts to christianize Saxony, on the one hand Charlemagne punished with death all who burned witches and ate them, under the belief so widely spread that they ate men, and on the other hand all soothsayers and sorcerers were made over to the Church as slaves. During this period, moreover, and for a couple of centuries following, the parallel legislation of the Church, inflicting spiritual penalties, was singularly mild, although the different penitentials vary so much that it is impossible to deduce any system from them. That which pa.s.ses under the name of Theodore of Canterbury, and was of general authority, only prescribes a penance of twoscore days or a year for sorcery, or, if the offender is an ecclesiastic, three years, but it orders seven years for placing a child on a roof or in an oven to cure it of fever, and Ecbert of York indicates five years for the same practice. There evidently was no settled rule, but the most systematic code is that of Gaerbald, who was Bishop of Liege about the year 800. He orders all offenders to be brought before him for trial, and enacts seven years' penance and liberal almsgiving for committing homicide by means of sorcery, seven years without almsgiving for rendering the victim insane, five years and almsgiving for consulting diviners or practising augury from birds, seven years for sorcerers who bring on tempests, three years and almsgiving for honoring sorcerers, one year for sorcery to excite love, provided it did not result in death, but if the offender was a monk, the penalty was increased to five years. Another penitential of the period prescribes twoscore days or a year for divination or diabolical incantations, but seven years if a woman threatens another with sorcery, to be reduced to four if she is poor. In 829 the Council of Paris attributes the misfortunes of the empire to the prevalence of crime, and especially of sorcery; it quotes the savage provisions of the Mosaic law, and enumerates at considerable length the evil deeds of the offenders--how men are rendered insane by philtres and love-potions, how tempests and hail are induced, how harvests and milk and fruits are transferred from their lawful owners, and how the future is predicted, but it indicates no penalties, and only asks the secular rulers to punish these crimes sharply. Similarly Erard, Archbishop of Tours, in 838 uttered a general prohibition, but only threatened public penance without indicating details. All that we can gather from this confused legislation, from the collections known as the Capitularies, and from the speculations and arguments of Raba.n.u.s Maurus and Hincmar of Reims, is that every species of divination and sorcery, Roman and Teutonic, was rife; that it was held to derive its power directly from Satan; that the Church was wholly unable to deal with it; that secular legislation threatened only moderate penalties, and that these were for the most part wholly unenforced.[455]

Yet, outside of the organized machinery of the Church and State, there was a rough popular justice--a sort of Lynch law--which handled individual offenders with scant ceremony. A chance allusion about this period to Gerberga, who was drowned by the Emperor Lothair in the river Arar, "as is customary with sorcerers," indicates that much was going on not provided for in the Capitularies. The same is seen in a curious statement by St. Agobard, Archbishop of Lyons, who waged such ineffectual battle with many of the superst.i.tions of the time. One of these, as we have seen, was that tempests could be caused by sorcery--a belief which the Church at first p.r.o.nounced heretical because it inferred the Manichaean dualistic theory, which placed the visible world under the control of Satan, but which it finally accepted as orthodox, and Thomas Aquinas proved that, with the permission of G.o.d, demons could bring about perturbations of the air. Agobard tells us that the belief in his province was universal, among all ranks, that there was a region named Magonia, whence s.h.i.+ps came in the clouds and carried back thither the harvests destroyed by hail, the Tempestarii, as these sorcerers were called, being paid by the Magonians for bringing on the storms. Whenever the rumbling of thunder was heard it was a customary remark that a sorcerer's wind was coming. These Tempestarii carried on their nefarious trade in secrecy, but there was a recognized cla.s.s of pract.i.tioners who professed to be able to neutralize them, and were regularly paid for doing so with a portion of the crops, which came to be known as the "canonical portion," and men who paid no t.i.thes and gave nothing in charity were regular in contributing to these impostors. On one occasion three men and a woman were seized, charged with being Magonians who had fallen from one of their aerial s.h.i.+ps. A meeting of the people was summoned, before whom the prisoners were brought in chains, and they were promptly condemned to be stoned to death, when Agobard himself came to the rescue, and after prolonged argument succeeded in procuring their liberation. A similar instance of extra-judicial action was seen when a destructive murrain invaded the herds, and the story spread that it was caused by Grimoald, Duke of Benevento, who, out of enmity to Charlemagne, sent emissaries to scatter a magic powder on the mountains and fields and streams. As Agobard says, every inhabitant of Benevento, with three wagons apiece, could not have sprinkled a territory so extensive as that affected, but nevertheless large numbers of wretches were captured and put to death on the charge of being concerned in the matter. When he adds that it was marvellous that these persons confessed their pretended crime, and could not be prevented from bearing false witness against themselves, either by scourging, torture, or the fear of death, we learn the means adopted to secure conviction; and in this early and irregular instance of the use of torture we see a foreshadowing of the time when all the extravagant absurdities of the Witches' Sabbat were, by the same efficacious methods, eagerly confessed, and the confessions persisted in to the stake. We see also what an atmosphere of superst.i.tious terror pervaded the life of Europe.[456]

Carlovingian civilization was but a brief episode in the darkness of those dreary centuries. In the disorder which accompanied the breaking-up of the empire, the organization of feudalism, and the founding of the European monarchies, although the Church was quietly attributing to itself the functions and the jurisdiction on which were based its subsequent claims of theocratic supremacy, it took no efficient steps to destroy the kingdom of Satan, though his agents the diviners and sorcerers were as numerous as ever. The Council of Pavia in 850 merely prescribed penance during life for sorceresses who undertook to provoke love and hatred, leading to the death of many victims. There may have been an occasional explosion of popular cruelty, such as indicated by the brief mention in a doubtful MS. of the burning of a number of sorcerers in Saxony in 914, but in fact the Church came almost virtually to tolerate them. About the middle of the tenth century Bishop Atto of Vercelli felt it necessary to revive and publish anew a forgotten canon of the Fourth Council of Toledo, which threatened with degradation and perpetual penance in a monastery any bishop, priest, deacon, or other ecclesiastic who should consult magicians or sorcerers or augurs. Atto, however, was a puritan, who endeavored to resist the general demoralization of the age. How little repugnance was felt for the forbidden arts is seen in the fact that the reputation for necromantic skill gained in Spain did not prevent the election of Gerbert of Aurillac to the archiepiscopal sees of Reims and Ravenna, and finally to the papacy itself; while as late as 1170 we have seen an archbishop of Besancon have recourse to an ecclesiastic skilled in necromancy to aid him in detecting some heretics.[457]

In fact, the Church occupied an inconsistent att.i.tude. Occasionally it took the enlightened view that these beliefs were groundless superst.i.tions. An Irish council of the ninth century anathematizes any Christian who believes in the existence of witches, and forces him to recant before admitting him to reconciliation. Similarly, in 1080, Gregory VII. in writing to Harold the Simple of Denmark, strongly reproves the custom of attributing to priests and women all tempests, sickness, and other bodily misfortunes: these are the judgments of G.o.d, and to wreak vengeance for them on the innocent is only to provoke still more the divine wrath. More generally, however, the Church admitted their truth and sought, though with little energy, to repress them with spiritual censures. This halting position is well ill.u.s.trated by the canons of Burchard, Bishop of Worms, in the early part of the eleventh century, where sometimes it is the belief in the existence of sorcery that is penanced, and sometimes it is the practice of the art. If confessors, moreover, followed Burchard's instructions and interrogated their penitents in detail as to the various magic processes which they might have performed, it could only result in disseminating a knowledge of those wicked arts in a most suggestive way. At the same time Burchard, like the other canonists, Regino of Pruhm and Ivo of Chartres, gave an ample store of prohibitory canons drawn from the early councils and the writings of the fathers, showing that the reality of sorcery was freely admitted as well as the duty of the Church to combat it. So implicit was the belief in magic powers that the Church conceded the dissolution of the indissoluble sacrament of matrimony when the consummation of marriage was prevented by the arts of the sorcerer, and exorcisms and prayers and almsgiving and other ecclesiastical remedies proved powerless for three years to overcome the power of Satan. Guibert of Nogent relates, with pardonable pride, that although this occurred when his father and mother were married, through the malice of a stepmother, yet his mother resisted all persuasion to avail herself of a divorce, although the impediment continued for seven years, and the spell was broken at last, not by priestly ministrations, but by an ancient wise-woman. Such a cause was alleged when Philip Augustus abandoned his bride, Ingeburga of Denmark, on their marriage-day, and Bishop Durand, in his _Speculum Juris_, tells us that these cases were of daily occurrence. Even so enlightened a man as John of Salisbury airs his learning in describing all the varieties of magic, and is careful to define that if sorcerers kill men with the violence of their spells it is through the permission of G.o.d; while Peter of Blois, if he shows himself superior to the vulgar belief in omens, admits the potency of Satanic suggestiveness in the darker forms of magic.[458]

With this universal belief in sorcery and in its diabolic origin, there seems to have been no thought of enforcing the severity of the laws.

About 1030, Poppo, Archbishop of Treves, sent to a nun a piece of his cloak of which to make him a pair of shoes to be worn in saying ma.s.s.

She bewitched them so that when he put them on he found himself dying of love for her. He resisted the desire and gave the shoes to one of his chief ecclesiastics, who experienced the same effect. The experiment was tried with like result on all the princ.i.p.al clergy of the cathedral, and when the evidence was overwhelming the fair offender was condemned simply to expulsion from the convent, while Poppo himself expiated his transient pa.s.sion by a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. It was felt, however, that the discipline of the nunnery must be dangerously lax, and the other nuns were given the option of adopting a stricter rule or of dispersion. They chose the latter, and were replaced with a body of monks. When, in 1074, a revolt in Cologne forced the archbishop to fly, it is related among the excesses of the triumphant rebels that they threw from the walls and killed a woman defamed for having crazed a number of men by magic arts. That was regarded as a crime which three centuries later would have been a manifestation of praiseworthy zeal.

About the same time a council in Bohemia warns the faithful not to have recourse in their troubles to sorcerers; but it only prescribes confession and repentance and to abstain from a repet.i.tion of the offence.[459]

Still, the accusation of sorcery was felt to be damaging, and as it was easy to bring and hard to disprove, it was bandied about somewhat recklessly. It was not enough for Berenger of Tours to be compelled to abjure his notions concerning transubstantiation, but he was stigmatized as the most expert of necromancers. In the bitter strife of Gregory VII., with the empire, when, in 1080, the Synod of Brescia deposed him and elected Wiberto of Ravenna as antipope, one of the reasons alleged against him was that he was a manifest necromancer--an art which he was supposed to have learned in Toledo. The manner in which partisans.h.i.+p availed itself of this method of attack is curiously ill.u.s.trated by the opposing accounts given of Liutgarda, niece of Egilbert, Archbishop of Treves, at this period. He was a resolute imperialist, and accepted his pallium from Wiberto, after which he made Liutgarda abbess of a convent in his diocese. The account of his episcopate is written by a contemporary; one MS., which is doubtless the genuine one, describes her as a cultured and exemplary woman, who ruled her nunnery in the service of G.o.d for forty years, leaving a happy memory behind her; another MS. of the same chronicle calls her a blasphemous witch and sorceress, under whose government the convent was almost ruined. After the Church had triumphed over the empire, it is easy to understand why such an interpolation should have been made.[460]

While thus the ancient laws against sorcery were practically falling into desuetude on the Continent, the legislation of the Anglo-Saxons shows that in England _lyblac_ or witchcraft was the object of greater solicitude. About the year 900 the laws of Edward and Guthrum cla.s.s witches and diviners with perjurers, murderers, and strumpets, who are ordered to be driven from the land, with the alternatives of reforming, of being executed, or of paying heavy fines--a provision which was repeatedly re-enacted by succeeding monarchs to the time of c.n.u.t.

Athelstan soon after decreed that when death was caused by _lyblac_, and the perpetrator confessed it, he should pay with his life; if he denied, he underwent the triple ordeal: failing in this he was imprisoned for four months, after which his kinsmen could release him on paying the wer-gild of the slain, the heavy fine of one hundred and twenty s.h.i.+llings to the king, and giving security for his good behavior.

Towards the middle of the tenth century, Edward the Elder denounced perpetual excommunication for _lyblac_ unless the offender repented. In the compilation known as the Laws of Henry I. murder by sorcery forfeited the privilege of redemption by paying wer-gild, and the perpetrator was handed over to the kinsmen of the slain, to be dealt with at their pleasure. For minor injuries thus caused, redemption was allowed as in other cases. When the accused denied, he was tried before the bishop, thus subjecting this offence to ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

This severity seems to have changed with the Norman Conquest, for William the Conqueror, when besieging the Island of Ely, by advice of Ivo Taillebois placed at the head of his army a sorceress whose incantations were expected to paralyze the resistance of the defenders.

Unluckily for the scheme, Hereward of Burgh made a flank attack on the invaders, and, setting fire to the reeds, burned the sorceress and all who were with her.[461]

When Olaf Tryggvesson, early in the eleventh century, endeavored to christianize Norway, he recognized the sorcerers as the most formidable enemies of the faith, and handled them unsparingly. At a Thing, or a.s.sembly, in Viken, he proclaimed that he would banish all who could be proved to deal with spirits or in witchcraft, and this he followed up with proceedings somewhat rigorous. He ransacked the district and had all the sorcerers brought together; he gave them a great feast with plenty of liquor, and when they were drunk he had the house fired, so that none escaped save Eyvind Kellda, a grandson of Harald Harfaager, and a peculiarly obnoxious wizard, who climbed through the smoke-hole in the roof. In the spring Olaf celebrated Easter on Kormt Island, when thither came Eyvind in a long s.h.i.+p fully manned with sorcerers. Landing, they put on caps of darkness, which rendered them invisible, and surrounded themselves with a thick mist, but when they came to Augvaldsness, where King Olaf lay, it became clear day and they were stricken with blindness, so that they wandered helplessly around till the king's men seized them and brought them before him. He had them bound and placed on a rock which was bare only at low water, and Snorri Sturlason says that in his time it was still known as the Skerry of Shrieks. Another pious act related of Olaf ill.u.s.trates both the methods requisite to spread the gospel among the rugged heroes of Norway and one of the explanations given by the Christians of the powers of sorcerers.

Olaf captured Eyvind Kinnrif, a noted sorcerer, and sought to convert him, but in vain. Then a pan of fire was placed upon his belly, which he stoically endured until he burst asunder before asking its removal.

Regarding this tardy request as a sign of yielding, Olaf asked him "Eyvind, wilt thou now believe in Christ?" "No," replied Eyvind, "I can take no baptism, for I am an evil spirit placed in a man's body by Lapland sorcery, because in no other way could my father and mother have a child," and with that he died. Yet in the earliest Icelandic code, the Gragas, compiled probably in 1118, there is no mention of sorcery, which seems to have been left to the spiritual courts; while in the contemporary ecclesiastical body of law the punishment of magic arts is only three years' exile, unless injury or death to man or beast has been wrought, when it is perpetual. In either case the accused is ent.i.tled to trial before twelve good men and true.[462]

Elsewhere throughout Europe, by the end of the twelfth century, the repression of sorcery seems to have been well-nigh abandoned by both secular and ecclesiastical authorities. This was not because its practice had been either given up or rendered lawful. In 1149 we find Abbot Wibald of Corvey accusing Walter, one of his monks, of using diabolical incantations. The cause which led Alexander III., in 1181, to monopolize for the Holy See the canonization of saints was that the monks of the Norman abbey of Gristan were addicted to magic, and by its means endeavored to gain the reputation of working miracles; during the absence in England of the abbot, the prior one day got drunk at dinner and struck with a table-knife two of his monks, who retaliated by beating him to death, and he perished unhouselled, yet by evil arts the monks succeeded in inducing the people to adore him as a saint until Bishop Arnoul of Lisieux reported the truth to Alexander. So easily were such offences condoned that in the case of a priest who, to recover something stolen from his church, employed a magician and looked into an astrolabe, Alexander only ordered the punishment of a year's suspension, and this decision was embodied by Gregory IX. in the canon law as a precedent to be followed. This method of divination involved the invocation of spirits, and was wholly unlawful, yet it was employed without scruple. John of Salisbury, who died in 1181, relates that when he was a boy he was given to a priest to be taught the psalms. His instructor mingled with his sacred functions the practice of catoptromancy, and once made use of his pupil and an older scholar to look into the polished basin, after due conjurations and the use of the holy chrism. John could see nothing, and was relieved from further service of the kind, but his comrade discerned shadowy forms and thus was a more useful subject. Thus the forbidden arts flourished with but slender repression, and in this period of virtual toleration they worked little evil, save perhaps an occasional case of poisoning in a love-potion.[463]

It might be expected that this toleration would cease as the human mind awakened and in its gropings began to cultivate with increased a.s.siduity the occult sciences, in the endeavor to penetrate the secrets of nature; as scholastic theology developed itself into a system which sought to frame a theory of the universe; as the revived study of the Roman law brought again into view the imperial edicts against sorcery, and as the spiritual courts became effectively organized for their enforcement. Yet the development of persecution was wonderfully slow. The Church had a real and a dangerous enemy to combat in the threatening growth of heresy, and had little thought to bestow on a matter which did not endanger the power and privileges of the hierarchy. An occasional council, like those of Rouen in 1189 and of Paris in 1212, denounced the pract.i.tioners of magic, but there was no defined penalty, and only excommunication was threatened against them. Yet there was a popular idea that, like heresy, burning was the appropriate punishment, as in the case, about the same period, of a young cleric of Soest named Hermann, who, when vainly tempted by an unchaste woman, was accused by her of magic arts, was condemned and burned. In the flames he sang the Ave Maria until silenced by a blazing stick thrust into his mouth by a kinsman of the accuser; but his innocence shone forth in the miracles wrought at his grave, and a chapel was built over it which stood as a warning against such inconsiderate zeal.[464]

Caesarius of Heisterbach, to whom we owe this incident, has an ample store of marvels which show that superst.i.tion was as active as ever, that men were eager to gain what advantage they could from intercourse with Satan, and that such practices were virtually unrepressed. He tells of a certain ecclesiastic named Philip, a celebrated necromancer, dead only a few years previous, apparently without trouble from Church or State. A knight named Henry of Falkenstein, who disbelieved in demons, applied to him to satisfy his doubts. Philip obligingly drew a circle with a sword at a cross-roads and muttered his spells, when, with a tumult like rus.h.i.+ng waters and roaring tempests, the demon came, taller than the trees, black, and of a most fearful aspect. The knight kept within the charmed circle and escaped immediate ill, but lost his color, and remained pallid during the few years in which he survived. A priest undertook the same experience, but became frightened and allowed himself to be dragged out of the circle; he was so injured that he died on the third day, whereupon Waleran of Luxembourg piously confiscated his house, showing that immunity was not always to be reckoned on.[465]

Compacts with Satan were also not infrequent. The heretics burned at Besancon in 1180 were found to have such compacts inscribed on little rolls of parchment under the skin of their armpits. It would be difficult to find any historical fact of the period apparently resting on better authority than the story of Everwach, who was still living as a monk of St. Nicholas at Stalum when Caesarius described his adventures as related by eye-witnesses. He had been steward of Theodoric, Bishop of Utrecht, whom he served faithfully. Accused of malversation, he found some of his accounts missing, and in despair he invoked the devil, saying, "Lord, if thou wilt help me in my necessity I will do homage to thee and serve thee in all things." The devil appeared, and Everwach accepted his conditions of renouncing Christ and the Virgin and paying him homage, after which the accounts were proved without difficulty.

Thenceforth Everwach was in the habit of openly saying, "Those who serve G.o.d are wretched and poor, but they who believe in the devil are prosperous," and he devoted himself to the study of magic arts. It shows how lax was the discipline of the time, when, in his zeal for Satan, he bitterly opposed Master Oliver, the Scholasticus of Cologne, who preached the cross in Utrecht, and on being reproved sought to slay him, being only prevented by a sickness of which he died. He was plunged into h.e.l.l and subjected to the indescribable torments of the d.a.m.ned, but the Lord pitied him, and he returned to life on the bier at his own funeral.

Thenceforth he was a changed man. In company with Bishop Otto of Utrecht he made the pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, inflicting on himself all manner of austerities, and on his return gave his property to the Church and entered the convent at Stalum. There is another story, of a spendthrift young knight near Liege, who, after squandering his fortune, was induced by one of his peasants to appeal to Satan. On the promise of wealth and honors he renounced allegiance to G.o.d and rendered regular feudal homage to Satan; the latter, however, required him to also renounce the Virgin, and this he refused to do, wherefore, on his repenting, he was pardoned at her intercession.[466]