[587] Mall. Malef. P. I. Q. xi.; P. II. Q. i. c. 4, 12; P. III. Q. 15.
[588] Mall. Malef. P. II. Q. i. c. 4.
Innocent’s bull was not confined to Germany alone, but was operative everywhere. In an Italian inquisitorial manual of the period it is included in a collection of bulls “contra hereticam pravitatem,” which also contains a letter on the subject from the future Emperor Maximilian, dated Brussels, November 6, 1486.—Molinier, Études sur quelques MSS. des Bibliothèques d’Italie, Paris, 1887, p. 72.
[589] Rapp, Die Hexenprocesse und ihre Gegner aus Tirol, pp. 5-8, 12-13, 143 sqq.—Mall. Maleficar. P. II. Q. 1, c. 12; P. III. Q. 15.
[590] Molitoris Dial. de Pythonicis Mulieribus c. 1, 10.
The absurd contrast between the illimitable powers ascribed to the witch and her personal wretchedness was explained under torture by the victims as the result of the faithlessness of Satan, who desired to keep them in poverty. When steeped in misery he would appear to them and allure them into his service by the most attractive promises, but when he had attained his end those promises were never kept. Gold given to them would always disappear before it could be used. As one of the Tyrolese witches in 1506 declared, “The devil is a Schalk (knave).” (Rapp, Die Hexenprocesse und ihre Gegner aus Tirol, p. 147.)
[591] Diefenbach, the latest writer on witchcraft (Die Hexenwahn, Mainz, 1886). sees clearly enough that the witch-madness was the result of the means adopted for the suppression of witchcraft, but in his eagerness to relieve the Church from the responsibility he attributes its origin to the Carolina, or criminal code of Charles V., issued in 1531, and expressly asserts that ecclesiastical law had nothing to do with it (p. 176). Other recent writers ascribe the horrors of the witch-process to the bull of Innocent VIII., and the Malleus Maleficarum (Ib. pp. 222-6). We have been able to trace, however, the definite development of the madness and the means adopted for its cure from the beliefs and the practice of preceding ages. It was, as we have seen, a process of purely natural evolution from the principles which the Church had succeeded in establishing.
[592] Fontanon, Edicts et Ordonnances, IV. 237.—Isambert, XI. 190, 253.
[593] Cornel. Agrippa de Occult. Philos. Lib. I. c. 40; Lib. III. c. 33; Epistt. II. 38, 39, 40, 59; De Vanitate Scientiarum c. xcvi.
[594] Raynald. ann. 1457, No. 90.—P. Vayra, Le Streghe nel Canavese, op. cit. p. 250.—Mall. Maleficar. P. II. Q. i. c. 1, 12.—Ripoll IV. 190.—Pegnæ Append. ad Eymeric. p. 105.—G.F. Pico, La Strega, p. 17.—Prieriat. de Strigimag. Lib. II. c. 1, 5.—Ang. Politian. Lamia, Colon. 1518.