[101] To avoid all possibility of misapprehension I shall venture to express my own feelings. The two men who appeal to me most in the whole affair of witchcraft are Friedrich Spee, the Jesuit, and Balthasar Bekker, the “intolerable” pastor of Amsterdam. But what I feel, and what all of us feel, is not to the purpose. There has been too much feeling in modern discussions of witchcraft already.
[102] Sigmund Riezler, Geschichte der Hexenprozesse in Bayern, Stuttgart, 1896, p. 143.
[103] Ibid.
[104] Soldan, Geschichte der Hexenprozesse, revised by Heppe, II, 37; cf. G. L. Burr, The Fate of Dietrich Flade, 1891 (reprinted from the Papers of the American Historical Association, V).
[105] Jean d’Espaignet and Pierre de Lancre, the special commissioners, are said to have condemned more than 600 in four months (Soldan, ed. Heppe, II, 162; cf. Baissac, Les Grands Jours de la Sorcellerie, 1890, p. 401). I have no certain evidence of the accuracy of these figures, for I have seen only one of de Lancre’s two books, and I find in it no distinct statement of the number of witches convicted. He makes various remarks, however, which seem to show that 600 is no exaggeration. Thus he says that the Parliament of Bordeaux, under whose authority he acted, condemned “an infinity” of sorcerers to death in 1609 (Tableau de l’Inconstance des Mauvais Anges et Demons, Paris, 1613, p. 100). “On fait estat qu’il y a trente mille ames en ce pays de Labourt, contant ceux qui sont en voyage sur mer, & que parmy tout ce peuple, il y a bien peu de familles qui ne touchent au Sortilege par quelque bout” (p. 38). The commission lasted from July to November (pp. 66, 456, 470); besides those that the two commissioners tried during this period, they left behind them so many witches and wizards that the prisons of Bordeaux were crowded and it became necessary to lodge the defendants in the ruined château du Hâ (pp. 144, 560). Cf. pp. 35 ff., 64, 92, 114, 546. The panic fear that witchcraft excites is described by de Lancre in a striking passage:—“Qu’il n’y ayt qu’vne seule sorciere dans vn grand village, dans peu de temps vous voyez tant d’enfans perdus, tant de femmes enceintes perdãs leur fruit, tant de haut mal donné à des pauures creatures, tant d’animaux perdus, tant de fruicts gastes, que le foudre ni autre fleau du ciel ne sont rien en comparaison” (pp. 543-544).
[106] An Account of what Happened in the Kingdom of Sweden, in the Years 1669, 1670 and Upwards, translated from the German by Anthony Horneck, and included in Glanvill’s Saducismus Triumphatus, ed. 1682 (ed. 1726, pp. 474 ff.). Horneck’s version is from a tract entitled, Translation ... Der Königl. Herren Commissarien gehaltenes Protocol uber die entdeckte Zauberey in dem Dorff Mohra und umbliegenden Orten, the Hague, 1670. Cf. Thomas Wright, Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, II, 244 ff.; Soldan, ed. Heppe, II, 175 ff.; Vilhelm Bang, Hexevæsen og Hexeforfølgelser især i Danmark, Copenhagen, 1896, pp. 48 ff. This is what Mr. Upham calls Cotton Mather’s “favorite Swedish case” (Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather, Morrisania, 1869, p. 20). It was, in a manner, “Leonato’s Hero, your Hero, every man’s Hero” toward the end of the seventeenth century, since it was one of the most recent instances of witchcraft on a large scale. The good angel in white who is one of the features of the Mohra case appears much earlier in England: see Potts, Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches, 1613, Chetham Society reprint, sig. L (a reference which may serve as a note to Mr. Upham’s essay, just cited, p. 34).
[107] Frans Volk, Hexen in der Landvogtei Ortenau und Reichsstadt Offenburg, Lahr, 1882, pp. 24-25, 58 ff.
[108] Scot, Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584, p. 543; F. Hutchinson, Historical Essay, 2d ed., p. 38; W. W., A True and Just Recorde, of the Information [etc.] of all the Witches, taken at S. Oses (London, 1582). For extracts from W. W.’s book I am indebted to Mr. Wallace Notestein, of Yale University.
[109] F. Legge, The Scottish Review, XVIII, 261 ff.
[110] Thomas Potts, The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster (London, 1613), reprinted by the Chetham Society, 1845; Thomas Wright, Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, Chap. xxiii.