One of the most terrifying powers of the witch was her fearful cannibalism, a belief which the Teutons shared with the Romans. This is referred to in some of the texts of the Salic law and in the legislation of Charlemagne, and the unlimited extent of popular credulity with regard to it is seen in an adventure of Thorodd, an envoy of St. Olaf, who saw a witch-wife tear eleven men to pieces, throw them on the fire, and commence devouring them, when she was driven off.[446]
The trolla-thing, or nocturnal gathering of witches, where they danced and sang and prepared their unholy brewage in the caldron, was a customary observance of these wise-women, especially on the first of May (St. Walpurgis’ Night), which was the great festival of pagandom.[447] We shall see hereafter the portentous growth of this, which developed into the Witches’ Sabbat. It is a feature common to the superstition of many races, the origin of which cannot be definitely assigned to any.
That the practice of this impious sorcery was deemed infamous is clear from the provision of the Salic law, already alluded to, imposing a fine of eighty-nine sols for calling a free woman a witch without being able to prove it. Yet the mere addiction to it in pagan times was not a penal offence, and penalties were only inflicted for injuries thus committed on person or property. In extreme cases, where death was encompassed, there seems to have been a popular punishment of lapidation, which was the fate incurred, after due sentence, by three noted sorcerers, Katla and Kotkel and Grima. The codified laws of the barbarians, however, never prescribed the death penalty, fines being the universal retribution for crime, and in a later text of the Salic law two hundred sols is designated for the witch who eats a man. Yet individual cases can be found of persecution, such as that by Harald Harfaager, whose early experience had inspired him with intense hatred of the art. One of his sons, Rögnvald Rettilbein, received from him the government of Hadeland, where he learned sorcery and became a great adept; so when Vitgeir, a noted wizard of Hordeland, was ordered by Harald to abandon his evil ways he retorted:
“The danger surely is not great,
From wizard born of mean estate,
When Harald’s son in Hadeland,
King Rögnvald, to the art lays hand.”
Rögnvald’s wrong-doing being thus betrayed, Harald lost no time in despatching Eric Blood-Axe, his son by another wife, who promptly burned his half-brother in a house, along with eighty other sorcerers—a piece of practical justice which we are told met with general popular applause.[448]
Such were the beliefs and practices of the races with which the Church had to do in its efforts to obliterate paganism and sorcery. There was little difference between the provinces which had belonged to the empire and the regions over which Christianity began for the first time to spread, for in the former the conquerors and the conquered were imbued, as we have just seen, with superstitions nearly akin. The exchange of imperial for barbarian rule worked the same result as to sorcery as that related in a former chapter with regard to the persecution of heresy, though it must be borne in mind that, while heresy almost disappeared in the intellectual hebetude of the times, sorcery grew ever more vigorous. Its suppression was practically abandoned. As mentioned above, the earliest text of the Salic law provides no general penalty for it. In subsequent recensions, besides the fine imposed for cannibalism, some MSS. have clauses imposing fines for bewitching with ligatures and killing men with incantations—in the latter case, with the alternative of burning alive—but even these disappear in the Lex Emendata of Charlemagne, possibly in consequence of the legislation of the Capitularies described below. The Ripuarian code only treats murder by sorcery like any other homicide, to be compounded for by the ordinary wer-gild, or blood-money, and for injuries thus inflicted it provides a fine of one hundred sols, to be avoided by compurgation with six conjurators. The other codes are absolutely silent on the subject.[449]
As under the Frankish rule laws were personal and not territorial, the Gallo-Roman population was still governed by the Roman law, but evidently there was no attempt made to enforce it. Gregory of Tours relates for us several miracles to prove the superiority of the Christian magic of relics and invocation of saints over the popular magic of the conjurer, which indicate that the first impulse of the people in case of accident or sudden sickness was to send for the nearest ariolus, or practitioner of forbidden arts, and that the profession was exercised openly and without fear of punishment, in spite of repeated condemnations by the councils of the period. How little such persons had to fear is seen in the case of a woman of Verdun, who professed to be a soothsayer and to discover stolen goods. She was so successful that she drove a thriving trade, purchased her freedom of her master, and accumulated a store of money. At length she was brought before Bishop Ageric, who only treated her for demoniacal possession with exorcisms and inunctions of holy oil, and finally discharged her.[450]
Occasionally, of course, cases occurred in which the unrestrained passions of the Merovingians wreaked savage cruelty on those who had incurred their ill-will, but these were exceptional and outside of the law. When Fredegonda lost two children by pestilence, her stepson Clovis was accused of causing it by sorcery. The woman designated as his accomplice was tortured until she confessed, and was burned, although she retracted her confession, after which Chilperic delivered his son Clovis to Fredegonda, who caused him to be assassinated. When, subsequently, another son, Thierry, died in 584, Mummolus, the royal favorite, whom Fredegonda disliked, was accused of having caused it by incantations. Thereupon she seized some women of Paris, and by scourging and torture forced them to confess themselves sorceresses who had caused numerous deaths, including that of Thierry, whose soul was accepted in place of that of Mummolus. Some of these poor wretches were simply put to death, others she burned, and others she broke on the wheel. Chilperic then caused Mummolus to be tortured by suspension with his arms tied behind his back, but he only confessed to having obtained from the women philtres and ointments to secure the favor of the king and queen. Unluckily he said to the executioner on being taken down, “Tell the king that I feel no ill from what has been done.” On hearing this Chilperic exclaimed, “Is he really a sorcerer that this does not hurt him?” and had him stretched on a rack and scourged with leathern thongs till the executioners were exhausted. Mummolus finally begged his life of Fredegonda, but was stripped of his possessions and sent in a wagon to his native city, Bordeaux, where he died on his arrival. Cases like this throw light on the beliefs of the period, but not upon its judicial routine.[451]
The Lombards in Italy fell to a greater degree under Roman influence, and towards the close of their domination adopted general laws of some severity against the practice of sorcery, irrespective of the injury committed. The sorcerer was to be sold as a slave beyond the province, and the price received was divided between the judge and other officials, according to their respective merits in the prosecution: if through bribes or pity the judge refused to condemn, he was mulcted in his whole wer-gild, or the amount of his blood-money, and half as much if he neglected to discover a sorcerer who was found out by another. The penalty for consulting a sorcerer, or for not informing on him, or for performing incantations, was half the wer-gild of the offender. At the same time the grosser superstitions were rejected, and Rotharis forbade putting sorceresses to death, under the popular belief that they could devour men internally.[452]
In the long anarchy which accompanied the fall of the Merovingians, all respect for the Church, its precepts and observances, was well-nigh lost throughout the Frankish kingdoms. One of the incidents of reconstruction, as the Carlovingian dynasty slowly emerged, and as St. Boniface, under papal authority, sought to restore the Church, was the suppression of Bishop Adalbert, who taught the invocation of the angels Uriel, Raguel, Tubuel, Inias, Tubuas, Sabaoc, and Simiel. Adalbert was venerated as a saint, and the clippings of his nails and hair were treasured as relics. Repeated condemnations at home had no effect on this false worship of angels, and Pope Zachary held, in 745, a synod in Rome which declared it to be a worship of demons, as the only angels whose names are known are Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. Yet this superstition took so firm a hold upon the people that it was long before it could be eradicated; indeed, it seems to be alluded to, even in the middle of the tenth century, by Atto of Vercelli.[453] When such was the condition of the Church, no suppression of sorcery was to be looked for.