In some passages he, like others too, is reluctant to accept the theory that afterwards grew so prevalent, particularly during the witch persecutions in the 17th century, viz. that the witches were in the habit of flying through the air. In 1540 he says that this, like the changes mentioned above, was merely conjured up before the mind by the devil, and was thus a delusion of the senses and a Satanic deception.[1169] Yet in 1538 he assumes that it was in Satan’s power to carry those who had surrendered themselves to him bodily through the air;[1170] he had heard of one instance where even repentance and confession could not save such a man, when at the point of death, from being carried off by the devil. At an earlier date he had spoken without any hesitation of the witches who ride “on goats and broom-sticks and travel on mantles.”[1171]
The witches are the most credulous and docile tools of the devil; they are his hand and foot for the harm of mankind. They are “devil’s own whores who give themselves up to Satan and with whom he holds fleshly intercourse.”[1172]
“Such persons ought to be hurried to justice (‘supplicia’). The lawyers want too much evidence, they despise these open and flagrant proofs.” When questioned on the rack they answer nothing, “they are dumb, they despise punishment, the devil will not let them speak. Such deeds are, however, evidence enough, and for the sake of frightening others they ought to be made an example.”[1173]
“Show them no mercy!” so he has it on another occasion. “I would burn them myself, as we read in the Law [of Moses] that the priests led the way in stoning the evildoer.”[1174] And yet here all the ado was simply about ... a theft of milk! But sorcery as such was regarded by him as “lèse majesté” [against God], as a rebellion, a crime whereby the Divine Majesty is insulted in the worst possible of ways. “Hence it is rightly punished by bodily pains and death.”[1175] He first expresses himself in favour of the death-penalty in a sermon in 1526,[1176] and to this point of view he adhered to the end.[1177]
Luther’s words and his views on witches generally became immensely popular. The invitation to persecute the witches was read in the German Table-Talk compiled by Aurifaber and published at Eisleben in 1566. It reappeared, together with the rest of the contents, in the two reprints published at Frankfurt in 1567, also in the new edition which Aurifaber himself undertook in 1568, as well as in the Frankfurt and Eisleben editions of 1569.[1178] Not only were the people exhorted to persecute the witches, but, intermixed with the other matter, we find all sorts of queer witch-stories just of the type to call up innumerable imitations. He relates, for instance, the experiences of his own mother with a neighbour who was a “sorceress,” who used to “shoot at her children so that they screamed themselves to death”; also the tale told him by Spalatin, in 1538, of a little maid at Altenburg over whom a spell had been cast by a witch and who “shed tears of blood.”
The demonological literature which soon assumed huge proportions and of which by far the greater part emanated from the pen of Protestant writers, appealed constantly to Luther, and reproduced his theories and stories, and likewise his demands that measures should be taken for the punishment of the witches. It may suffice to draw attention to the curious book entitled “Pythonissa, i.e. twenty-eight sermons on witches and ghosts,” by the preacher Bernard Waldschmidt of Frankfurt. He demonstrates from Luther’s Table-Talk that the devil was able to assume all kinds of shapes, for instance, of “cats, goats, foxes, hares, etc.,” just as he had appeared at Wittenberg in Luther’s presence, first as Christ, and then as a serpent.[1179]
Many Lutheran preachers and religious writers were accustomed to remind the people not only of the tales in the Table-Talk, but also of what was contained in the early exposition of the Ten Commandments, in the Prayer-book of 1522 and in the Church-postils, Commentary on Galatians, etc. Books of instances such as those of Andreas Hondorf in 1568 and Wolfgang Büttner in 1576 made these things widely known. David Meder, Lutheran preacher at Nebra in Thuringia, in his “Eight witch-sermons” (1605), referred in the first sermon to the Table-Talk, also to Luther’s exposition of the Decalogue, to his Commentary on Genesis and his work “Von den Conciliis und Kirchen.” Bernard Albrecht, the Augsburg preacher, in his work on witches, 1628, G. A. Scribonius, J. C. Gödelmann and N. Gryse all did the same.
In what esteem Luther’s sayings were held by the Protestant lawyers is plain from certain memoranda of the eminent Frankfurt man of law, Johann Fischart, dating from 1564 and 1567. Fischart was against the “Witches’ Hammer” and the other Catholic productions of an earlier day, such as Nider’s “Formicarius,” yet he expresses himself in favour of the burning of witches and appeals on this point to Luther and his interpretation of Holy Scripture.
Holy Scripture and Luther were as a rule appealed to by the witch-zealots on the Protestant side, as is proved by the writings of Abraham Saur (1582) and Jakob Gräter (1589), of the preacher Nicholas Lotichius and Nicholas Krug (1567), of Frederick Balduin of Wittenberg (1628)—whose statements were accepted by the famous Saxon criminalogist Benedict Carpzov, who signed countless death sentences against witches—and by J. Volkmar Bechmann, the opponent of the Jesuit Frederick von Spee. We may pass over the many other names cited by N. Paulus with careful references to the writings in question.[1180]
It must be pointed out, however, that an increase in the severity of the penal laws against witches is first noticeable in the Saxon Electorate in 1572, when it was decreed that they should be burnt at the stake, even though they had done no harm to anyone, on account of their wicked compact with the devil.[1181] As early as 1540, at a time when elsewhere in Germany the execution of witches was of rare occurrence, four persons were burnt at Wittenberg on June 29 as witches or wizards.[1182] Shortly before this Luther had lamented that the plague of witches was again on the increase.[1183]