[1] In Baluze-Mansi, Miscellanea, vol. ii. p. 275.
Superstition was also classed under the heading of heresy. The canonist Zanchino Ugolini tells us that he was present at the condemnation of an immoral priest, who was punished by the Inquisitors not for his licentiousness, but because he said Mass every day in a state of sin, and urged in excuse that he considered himself pardoned by the mere fact of putting on the sacred vestments.[1]
[1] Tractat. de Hæret., cap. ii.
The Jews, as such, were never regarded as heretics. But the usury they so widely practiced evidenced an unorthodox doctrine on thievery, which made them liable to be suspected of heresy. Indeed, we find several Popes upbraiding them "for maintaining that usury is not a sin." Some Christians also fell into the same error, and thereby became subject to the Inquisition. Pope Martin V, in his bull of November 6, 1419., authorizes the Inquisitors to prosecute these usurers.[1]
[1] Bull Inter cætera, sent to the Inquisitor Pons Feugeyron.
Sorcery and magic were also put on a par with heresy. Pope Alexander IV had decided that divination and sorcery did not fall under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, unless there was manifest heresy involved.[1] But casuists were not wanting to prove that heresy was involved in such cases. The belief in the witches' nightly rides through the air, led by Diana or Herodias of Palestine, was very widespread in the Middle Ages, and was held by some as late as the fifteenth century. The question whether the devil could carry off men and women was warmly debated by the theologians of the time. "A case adduced by Albertus Magnus, in a disputation on the subject before the Bishop of Paris, and recorded by Thomas of Cantimpré, in which the daughter of the Count of Schwalenberg was regularly carried away every night for several hours, gave immense satisfaction to the adherents of the new doctrine, and eventually an ample store of more modern instances was accumulated to confirm Satan in his enlarged privileges."[2] Satan, it seems, imprinted upon his clients an indelible mark, the stigma diabolicum.
[1] Bull of December 9, 1257.
[2] Lea, op. cit., vol. iii, p. 497.
"In 1458, the Inquisitor Nicholas Jaquerius remarked reasonably enough that even if the affair was an illusion, it was none the less heretical, as the followers of Diana and Herodias were necessarily heretics in their waking hours."[1]
[1] Lea, op. cit., pp. 497, 498.