Torture was used thoroughly where witches were concerned, and no doubt the delirium thus occasioned, the victim being willing to put an end to her torments by saying what she knew her judge wanted her to say or imagined he would like to hear, was productive of many of the most marvellous witch stories to be found in inquisitorial archives. But the severity of the torture administered in these cases was due to the extraordinary obduracy frequently shown by the victims. Such obstinacy was taken as proof positive of Satanic assistance afforded to these servants of hell, and the inquisitor was therefore goaded to greater and greater cruelty, because he felt himself put upon his mettle. The silence of the accused thus became positive evidence of guilt, as damning as confession under the pains of rack or pulley—perhaps even more so.[226] The gift of taciturnity, it was conjectured, might be due to the wearing of a charm somewhere on the person, so that as a preliminary to the application the alleged witch had to be divested of all her clothing for thorough investigation to be made.[227] It was held that a witch was unable to shed tears under torment, whereas—as Sprenger urges sententiously—it is natural for women to weep. It was desirable therefore to adjure the accused to shed tears.[228] If this solemn exhortation was successful and the victim did cry and lament under torture, she was not necessarily the better off; for this might well be a device to deceive, a wile of the Devil’s to defeat the ends of justice. The inquisitor, ever on the alert to discover such signs of Satanic intervention, was apt to disbelieve in the genuineness of the witch’s tears accordingly. Thus, whether it produced confession or only obduracy, lamentation or silence, torture was in any event practically certain to be successful. Indeed anyone defamed of witchcraft before the Inquisition became so inextricably enmeshed in the toils that escape from conviction was hardly possible save in the event of being able to prove that the accuser was actuated by mortal enmity.[229] And even the most persistent silence must, one imagines, practically always in the end have been overborne. A sufficiently prolonged continuance of torture must have produced the desired result—answers to leading questions about the Sabbat, detailed descriptions culled from the imagination of demon orgies, confessions as to the invocation of evil spirits and malpractices carried on by their help, finally the incrimination of others. So the witchcraft legend grew in substance, in precision, in lurid picturesqueness. From the lips of the witches themselves came the authentic particulars of the Sabbat, the flittings through the air on broomsticks, the blasting of human lives by foul spells, the inculpation of ever-increasing numbers in the guilt and the heresy of witchcraft.
There is a most striking illustration of the astonishing efficacy of inquisitorial methods in effectively defeating their purpose, and actually producing the spread of the witchcraft craze, in the famous case of the Vaudois or witches of Arras in the years 1459-1460, when the arrest of a single alleged witch led to the inculpation of one after another, each new victim in her torments naming others, including many of the wealthiest and most important as well as the humblest citizens, so that at length a positive panic was created.[230] Not a single member of the community in Arras could feel himself or herself secure. No one dared leave the city for fear that that innocent act might be seized upon as a confession of guilt, and no one cared to enter for fear of falling into the hands of the tribunal, thus busily engaged in investigating an outburst of heresy of such alarming proportions. To such a pass did things come that the material prosperity of Arras was seriously prejudiced, as people became afraid of having any dealings with the city. One dangerous source of economic disturbance was that all creditors demanded instant payment of their dues, fearing that their debtors might be among those arrested, seeing that conviction involved the confiscation of the victim’s property, and in such a case the creditor was held to have no claim on any part of it.
In producing such results as these the inquisitor was no doubt ever most sincere and disinterested, genuinely aghast at the magnitude of the evil he was charged to suppress, wholly blind to the fact that its magnitude was mainly of his own creation. And in the feeling that there could be no security so long as the witch remained alive, he only shared the popular view. It was simply the universal conviction that the appropriate punishment of witchcraft and the only sure remedy against it was death by fire. Nor was the inquisitor alone in bringing offenders to the stake. The civil courts and the ordinary episcopal courts were no more lenient than the Holy Office. Even in Protestant countries, where there was no Inquisition, the lot of the supposed witch in the sixteenth century was no more tolerable than in those countries where the Inquisition still continued to flourish. The belief in the reality of witchcraft had taken firm root everywhere, and Catholic and Protestant were alike in their literal interpretation of the terrible words of Scripture, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,’ which seemed to afford all-sufficient sanction for the inexorable judgments of all tribunals, whether clerical or lay. At the same time the part played by the Inquisition forms one of the most important chapters in the history of witchcraft, as it was the most efficient and energetic tribunal engaged in the prosecution of the heresy in its earlier days, inasmuch especially as it contributed so much to the spread of the belief by the convinced fanaticism of its members and those methods of obtaining evidence, which not only led to sure conviction and constant incriminations, but actually provided the raw material of supposed fact on which credulity was based. The voluminous records of the holy tribunal, the learned treatises of its members are the great repositories of the true and indisputable facts concerning the abominable heresies of sorcery and witchcraft.
PART II - THE INQUISITION
CHAPTER I - ATTITUDE OF THE CHURCH TOWARDS HERESY PRIOR TO THE INSTITUTION OF THE INQUISITION
The literal and fundamental meaning of the word Heresy is choosing. The heretic is the man who selects certain doctrines, discards others, giving rein to individual preference in the realm of religious belief. Such an attitude is essentially incompatible with the conception that the truth has once and for all been delivered to the saints, that the faith is indivisible and unalterable, to be accepted in its entirety. It is easily understood that eclecticism should be regarded as a danger in the earliest days of a new religion by its adherents. The first proselytes are anxious to define those distinctive features which mark it off from other religions: for all religions have certain elements in common. It was thus in the early stages of Christianity, which shared certain characteristics with such beliefs as Mithraism, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism. The idea of man’s need of a mediator with heaven was abroad in the Roman world before the Messiah was proclaimed to it. There thus existed a danger of confusion, that alien shoots of dogma might be grafted upon the pure and original stock of Christianity. The influence of such extraneous sources is apparent in the fourth gospel. Even in the very earliest days when the body of Christian belief consisted of little more than the disciples’ recollections of the sayings and actions of their Founder, when the simplest conception of pure and undefiled religion was being taught,[231] even then the faithful were warned to beware of ‘false prophets,’ ‘false teachers’ who ‘privily shall bring in damnable heresies.’[232] As the fabric of dogma began to be woven, the note became vehement. St. Paul denounces ‘false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.’[233] In another place he declares, ‘But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.’[234] So far, however, even the idea of what constitutes heresy is vague, and the spirit of tolerance and of brotherliness is strong. The offender is not to be counted as an enemy, but admonished as a brother.[235] The fact is that the flock is so small and the pagan world outside so powerful that internal dissensions cannot be permitted. But the new faith surviving, doctrine becomes more stereotyped, the feeling of later generations more confident. Polycarp finds the heretic to be antichrist, who belongs to the Devil and is the oldest son of Satan,[236] and Tertullian in one passage recommends the employment of compulsion against the heretic.[237]
Such language is not common among the early Fathers. They are themselves members of a society liable to persecution, and they do not preach coercion. Lactantius urges that the only weapon for Christians to use is their reason; they must defend their faith not by violence, but persuasion.[238] The Church in those days had not the opportunity to use force, even if it had wished to: and this fact must be borne in mind in connection with Tertullian’s enunciation of the principle of tolerance, when he declares that the selection of his mode of worship is a man’s natural right, the exercise of which cannot be either harmful or profitable to his neighbour, and that it is not the part of a religion to compel men to embrace it.[239] In the (only apparent) contradiction between this ruling and the counsel given regarding the treatment of heretics, Tertullian laid down a principle of momentous consequence for the future, namely, that while force should not be applied to the unbeliever, its use is legitimate in the case of the man who has once accepted the faith and erred in it.