A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume III

by Henry Charles Lea

The slight attention paid in the thirteenth century by the Church to a crime so abhorrent as sorcery is proved by the fact that when the Inquisition was organized it was for a considerable time restrained from jurisdiction over this class of offences. In 1248 the Council of Valence, while prescribing to inquisitors the course to be pursued with heretics, directs sorcerers to be delivered to the bishops, to be imprisoned or otherwise punished. In various councils, moreover, during the next sixty years the matter is alluded to, showing that it was constantly becoming an object of increased solicitude, but the penalty threatened is only excommunication. In that of Trèves, for instance, in 1310, which is very full in its description of the forbidden arts, all parish priests are ordered to prohibit them; but the penalty proposed for disobedience is only withdrawal of the sacraments, to be followed, in case of continued obduracy, by excommunication and other remedies of the law administered by the Ordinaries; thus manifesting a leniency almost inexplicable. That the Church, indeed, was disposed to be more rational than the people, is visible in a case occurring in 1279 at Ruffach, in Alsace, when a Dominican nun was accused of having baptized a waxen image after the fashion of those who desired either to destroy an enemy or to win a lover. The peasants carried her to a field and would have burned her, had she not been rescued by the friars.[475]

Yet, as the Inquisition perfected its organization and grew conscious of its strength, it naturally sought to extend its sphere of activity, and in 1257 the question was put to Alexander IV. whether it ought not to take cognizance of divination and sorcery. In his bull, Quod super nonnullis, which was repeatedly reissued by his successors, Alexander replied that inquisitors are not to be diverted from their duties by other occupations, and are to leave such offenders to their regular judges, unless there is manifest heresy involved, and this rule, at the end of the century, was embodied in the canon law by Boniface VIII. The Inquisition being thus in possession of a portion of the field, rapidly extended its jurisdiction. There was no limitation expressed when the pious Alfonse of Toulouse and his wife Jeanne, in 1270, at Aigues-mortes, when starting on the crusade of Tunis, issued letters-patent conceding that their servants and household should be answerable to the Inquisition for abjuration of the faith, heresy, magic, sorcery, and perjury. It is doubtless to this extension of the inquisitorial jurisdiction that we may attribute the increasing rigor which henceforth marked the persecution of sorcery.[476]

Alexander’s definition, it is true, had left open for discussion a tolerably wide and intricate class of questions as to the degree of heresy involved in the occult arts, but in time these came all to be decided “in favor of the faith.” It was not simply the worship of demons and making pacts with Satan that were recognized as heretical by the subtle casuistry of the inquisitors. A figurine to be effective required to be baptized, and this argued an heretical notion as to the sacrament of baptism, and the same was the case as to the sacrament of the altar in the various superstitious uses to which the Eucharist was put. Scarce any of the arts of the diviner in forecasting the future or in tracing stolen articles could be exercised without what the inquisitors assumed to be at least a tacit invocation of demons. For this, in fact, they had the authority of John of Salisbury, who, as early as the twelfth century, argued that all divination is an invocation of demons; for if the operator offers no other sacrifice, he sacrifices his body in performing the operation. This refinement was not reduced to practice, but in time the ingenious dilemma was invented that a man who invoked a demon, thinking it to be no sin, was a manifest heretic; if he knew it to be a sin he was not a heretic, but was to be classed with heretics, while to expect a demon to tell the truth is the act of a heretic. To ask of a demon, even without adoration, that which depends upon the will of God, or of man, or upon the future, indicated heretical notions as to the power of demons. In short, as Sylvester Prierias says, it is not necessary to inquire into the motives of those who invoke demons—they are all heretics, real or presumptive. Love-potions and philtres, by a similar system of exegesis, were heretical, and so were spells and charms to cure disease, the gathering of herbs while kneeling, face to the east, and repeating the Paternoster, and all the other devices which fraud and superstition had imposed on popular credulity. Alchemy was one of the sept ars demonials, for the aid of Satan was necessary to the transmutation of metals, and the Philosopher’s Stone was only to be obtained by spells and charms; although Roger Bacon, in his zeal for practical science, assumes that both objects could be obtained by purely natural means, and that human life could be prolonged for several centuries.[477] In 1328 the Inquisition of Carcassonne condemned the Art of St. George, through which buried treasure was sought by spreading oil on a finger-nail with certain conjurations, and making a young child look upon it and tell what he saw. Then there was the Notory Art, communicated by God to Solomon, and transmitted through Apollonius of Tyana, which taught the power of the Names and Words of God, and operated through prayers and formulas consisting of unknown polysyllables, by which all knowledge, memory, eloquence, and virtue can be obtained in the space of a month—a harmless delusion enough, which Roger Bacon pronounces to be one of the figments of the magicians, but Thomas Aquinas and Ciruelo prove that it operates solely through the devil. A monk was seized in Paris in 1323 for possessing a book on the subject; his book was burned, and he probably escaped with abjuration and penance.[478]

The most prominent and most puzzling to the lawgiver of all the occult arts was astrology. This was a purely Eastern science—the product of the Chaldean plains and of the Nile valley, unknown to any of the primitive Aryan races, from Hindostan to Scandinavia. When the dominion of Rome spread beyond the confines of Italy it was not the least of the Orientalizing influences which so profoundly modified the original Roman character; and after a struggle it established itself so firmly that in great measure it superseded the indigenous auguries and haruspicium, and by the early days of the empire some knowledge of the influences of the stars formed an ordinary portion of liberal education. The same motives which led to the prohibition of haruspicium—that the death of the emperor was the subject most eagerly inquired into—caused the Chaldeans or astrologers to be the objects of repeated savage edicts, issued even by monarchs who themselves were addicted to consulting them, but it was in vain. Human credulity was too profitable a field to remain uncultivated, and, as Tacitus says, astrologers would always be prohibited and always retained. Although the complexity of the science was such that it could be grasped in its details only by minds exceptionally constituted, through lifelong application, it was brought in homely fashion within the reach of all by restricting it to the observation of the moon, and applying the results by means of the diagram and tables known as the Petosiris, a description of which, attributed to the Venerable Bede, shows how the superstitions of pagandom were transmitted to the Northern races, and were eagerly accepted in spite of the arguments of St. Augustin to prove the nullity of the influence ascribed to the heavenly bodies.[479]

We have seen astrology classed as one of the liberal arts by Alonso the Wise of Castile, and the implicit belief universally accorded to it throughout the Middle Ages caused it to be so generally employed that its condemnation was difficult. I have alluded above to the confidence reposed by Frederic II. in the science, and to the Dominican astrologer who accompanied the Archbishop of Ravenna when as papal legate he led the crusade against Ezzelin da Romano. Ezzelin himself kept around him a crowd of astrologers, and was led to his last disastrous enterprise by their mistaken counsel. So thoroughly accepted were its principles that when, in 1305, the College of Cardinals wrote to Clement V. to urge his coming to Rome, they reminded him that every planet is most powerful in its own house. Savonarola assures us that at the end of the fifteenth century those who could afford to keep astrologers regulated every action by their advice: if the question were to mount on horseback or to go on board ship, to lay the foundation of a house or to put on a new garment, the astrologer stood by with his astrolabe in hand to announce the auspicious moment—in fact, he says that the Church itself was governed by astrology, for every prelate had his astrologer, whose advice he dared not disregard. It is observable that astrology is not included, as a forbidden practice, in the inquisitorial formulas of interrogation during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. No books on astrology seem to be enumerated in the condemnation pronounced in 1290 by the Inquisitor and Bishop of Paris and the Archbishop of Sens, aided by the Masters of the University, on all books of divination and magic—treatises on necromancy, geomancy, pyromancy, hydromancy, and chiromancy, the book of the Ten Rings of Venus, the books of the Greek and German Babylon, the book of the Four Mirrors, the book of the Images of Tobias ben Tricat, the book of the Images of Ptolemy, the book of Hermes the Magician to Aristotle, which they say Aros, or Gabriel, had from God, containing horrible incantations and detestable suffumigations. Astrology does not appear for condemnation in the Articles of the University of Paris in 1398, and the great learning of the irreproachable Cardinal Peter d’Ailly was employed in diffusing belief in its truths. On the other hand, as early as the twelfth century John of Salisbury, while asserting that the power of the stars was grossly exaggerated, declares that astrology was forbidden and punished by the Church, that it deprived man of free-will by inculcating fatalism, and that it tended to idolatry by transferring omnipotence from the Creator to his creations. He adds that he had known many astrologers, but none on whom the hand of God did not inflict divine vengeance. These views became virtually the accepted doctrine of the Church as expounded by Thomas Aquinas in the distinction that when astrology was used to predict natural events, such as drought or rain, it was lawful; when employed to divine the future acts of men dependent on free-will, it involved the operation of demons, and was unlawful. Zanghino says that though it is one of the seven liberal arts and not prohibited by law, yet it has a tendency to idolatry, and is condemned by the canonists. There was, in fact, much in both the theories and practice of astrologers which trenched nearly upon heresy, not only through demoniac invocations, but because it was impossible that astrology could be cultivated without denying human free-will and tacitly admitting fatalism. The very basis of the so-called science lay in the influence which the signs and planets exercised on the fortunes and characters of men at the hour of birth, and no ingenious dialectics could explain away its practical denial of supervision to God and of responsibility to man. Even Roger Bacon failed in this. He fully accepted the belief that the stars were the cause of human events, that the character of every man was shaped by the aspect of the heavens at his birth, and that the past and future could be read by tables which he repeatedly and vainly sought to construct, yet he was illogical enough to think that he could guard against it by nominally reserving human free-will.[480] All astrologers thus practised their profession under liability of being at any moment called to account by the Inquisition. That this did not occur more often may be attributed to the fact that all classes, in Church and State, from the lowest to the highest, believed in astrology and protected astrologers, and some special inducement or unusual indiscretion was required to set in motion the machinery of prosecution.

We can thus understand the case of the celebrated Peter of Abano or Apono, irrespective of his reputation as the greatest magician of his age, earned for him among the vulgar by his marvellous learning and his unsurpassed skill in medicine. We have no details of the accusations brought against him by the Inquisition, but we may reasonably assume that there was little difficulty in finding ample ground for condemnation. In his Conciliator Differentium, written in 1303, he not only proved that astrology was a necessary part of medicine, but his estimate of the power of the stars practically eliminated God from the government of the world. The Deluge took place when the world was subject to Mars, in consequence of the conjunction of the planets in Pisces; it was under the lead of the moon when occurred the confusion of tongues, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the exodus from Egypt. Even worse was his Averrhoistic indifference to religion manifested in the statement that the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the head of Aries, which occurs every nine hundred and sixty years, causes changes in the monarchies and religions of the world, as appears in the advent of Nebuchadnezzar, Moses, Alexander the Great, Christ, and Mahomet—a speculation of which the infidelity is even worse than the chronology.[481] It is not surprising that the Inquisition took hold of one whose great name was popularizing such doctrines in the University of Padua, especially as there was a large fortune to be confiscated. We are told that he at first escaped its clutches, but this probably was only through confession and abjuration, so that when he was prosecuted a second time it was for relapse. That he would have been burned there can be little doubt, had he not evaded the stake by opportunely dying in 1316, before the termination of his trial, for he was posthumously condemned: according to one account his bones were burned; according to another his faithful mistress Marietta conveyed them secretly away, and an effigy was committed to the flames in his place. If Benvenuto da Imola is to be believed, he lost his faith in the stars on his death-bed, for he said to his friends that he had devoted his days to three noble sciences, of which philosophy had made him subtle, medicine had made him rich, and astrology had made him a liar. His name passed into history as that of the most expert of necromancers, concerning whom no marvels were too wild to find belief. It mattered little that Padua erected a statue to him as to one of her greatest sons, and that Frederic, Duke of Urbino, paid him the same tribute. Like Solomon and Hermes and Ptolemy, so long as magic flourished his name served as an attractive frontispiece to various treatises on incantations and the occult sciences.[482]

Very similar, but even more illustrative, is the case of Cecco d’Ascoli. He early distinguished himself as a student of the liberal arts, and devoted himself to astrology, in which he was reckoned the foremost man of his time. His vanity led him to proclaim himself the profoundest adept since Ptolemy, and his caustic and biting humor made him abundance of enemies. Regarding astrology as a science, he inevitably brought it within Aquinas’s definition of heresy. In his conception the stars ruled everything. A man born under a certain aspect of the heavens was doomed to be rich or poor, lucky or unlucky, virtuous or vicious, unless God should interfere specially to turn aside the course of nature. Cecco boasted that he could read the thoughts of a man or tell what he carried in his closed hand by knowing his nativity and comparing it with the position of the stars at the moment, for no one could help doing or thinking what the stars at the time rendered inevitable. All this was incompatible with free-will, it limited the intervention of God, it relieved man from responsibility for his acts, and it thus was manifestly heretical. So his numerous predictions, which we are told were verified, as to the fortunes of Louis of Bavaria, of Castruccio Castrucani, of Charles of Calabria, eldest son of Robert of Naples, won him great applause in that stirring time, yet, as they were not revealed by the divine spirit of prophecy, but were foreseen by astrologic skill, they implied the forbidden theory of fatalism. Cecco became official astrologer to Charles of Calabria, but his confidence in his science and his savage independence unfitted him for a court. On the birth of a princess (presumably the notorious Joanna I.), he pronounced that the stars in the ascendant would render her not only inclined, but absolutely constrained, to sell her honor. The unwelcome truth cost him his place, and he betook himself to Bologna, where he publicly taught his science. Unluckily for him, he developed his theories in commentaries on the Sphæra of Sacrobosco.[483] Villani tells us that in this he taught how, by incantations under certain constellations, malignant spirits could be constrained to perform marvels, but this manifestly is only popular rumor; such practices were wholly inconsistent with his conceptions, and there is no allusion to them in the inquisitorial proceedings. Cecco’s audacity, however, rendered the book amply offensive to pious ears. To illustrate his views he cast the horoscope of Christ, and showed how Libra, ascending in the tenth degree, rendered his crucifixion inevitable; as Capricorn was at the angle of the earth, he was necessarily born in a stable; as Scorpio was in the second degree, he was poor; while Mercury in his own house in the ninth section of the heavens rendered his wisdom profound. In the same way he proved that Antichrist would come two thousand years after Christ, as a great soldier nobly attended, and not surrounded by cowards as was Christ. This was almost a challenge to the Inquisition, and Frà Lamberto del Cordiglio, the Bolognese inquisitor, was not slow to take it up. Cecco was forced to abjure, December 16, 1324, and was mercifully treated. He was condemned to surrender all his books of astrology and forbidden to teach the science in Bologna, publicly or privately; he was deprived of his Master’s degree and subjected to certain salutary penance of fasting and prayer, together with a fine of seventy-five lire, which latter may possibly explain the lightness of the rest of the sentence. The most serious feature of the affair for him was that now he was a penitent heretic who could expect no further mercy; it behooved him to walk warily, for in case of fresh offence he would be a relapsed, doomed inevitably to the stake. Cecco’s temperament, however, was not one to brook such constraint. He came to Florence, then under the rule of Charles of Calabria, and resumed the practice of his art. He circulated copies of his forbidden work, which he claimed had been corrected by the Bolognese inquisitor, but which contained the same erroneous doctrines; he advanced them anew in his philosophical poem, L’Acerba, and he employed them in the responses given to his numerous clients. In May, 1327, when all Italy was excited at the coming of Louis of Bavaria, he predicted that Louis would enter Rome and be crowned, he announced the time and manner of his death, and gave advice, which was followed, not to attack him when he passed by Florence. Perhaps all this might have escaped animadversion but for the personal enmity and jealousy of Charles of Calabria’s chancellor, the Bishop of Aversa, and of Dino del Garbo, a renowned doctor of philosophy, esteemed the best physician in Italy. Be this as it may, in July, 1327, Frà Accursio, the Inquisitor of Florence, arrested him. There was ample evidence that he had continued to teach and act on the fatalistic theories which were subversive of free-will, but the Inquisition as usual required a confession, and torture was freely used to obtain it. A copy of the sentence and abjuration of 1324 was furnished by the Inquisitor of Bologna, and there was no question as to his relapse. From the beginning the end was inevitable, but there was a mockery of opportunity for defence allowed him, and it was not until December 15 that sentence was pronounced. In accordance with rule, the Bishop of Florence sent a delegate to act with the inquisitor, and an assembly of high dignitaries and experts was assembled to participate, including the Cardinal-legate of Tuscany, the Bishop of Aretino, and Cecco’s enemy, the chancellor of Duke Charles. He was abandoned to the secular arm and delivered to Charles’s vicar, Jacopo da Brescia. All his books and astrological writings were further ordered to be surrendered within twenty-four hours to the bishop or inquisitor. Cecco was forthwith conducted to the place of execution beyond the walls. Tradition relates that he had learned by his art that he should die between Africa and “Campo Fiore,” and so sure was he of this that on the way to the stake he mocked and ridiculed his guards; but when the pile was about to be lighted he asked whether there was any place named Africa in the vicinage, and was told that that was the name of a neighboring brook flowing from Fiesole to the Arno. Then he recognized that Florence was the Field of Flowers and that he had been miserably deceived.[484]

Astrology continued to hold its doubtful position with a growing tendency to its condemnation. There were few who could take the common-sense view of Petrarch, that astrologers might be useful if they confined themselves to predicting eclipses and storms, and heat and cold, but that when they talked about the fate of men, known only to God, they simply proved themselves to be liars. Eymerich tells us that if a man was suspected of necromancy and was found to be an astrologer it went far to prove him a necromancer, for the two were almost always conjoined. Gerard Groot denounced astrology as a science hostile to God and aiming to supersede his laws. In Spain, in the middle of the fourteenth century, both Pedro the Cruel of Castile and Pedro IV. of Aragon kept many astrologers whom they constantly consulted, but in 1387 Juan I. of Castile included astrology among other forms of divination subject to the penalties of the Partidas. Yet it continued to number its votaries among high dignitaries of both State and Church. The only shade on the lustre of Cardinal Peter d’Ailly’s reputation was his earnest devotion to the science, and it would have gone hard with him had justice been meted out to him as to Cecco d’Ascoli, for it was impossible for the astrologer to avoid fatalism. It was a curiously erroneous prediction of his, uttered in 1414, that, in consequence of the retrogression of Jupiter in the first house, the Council of Constance would result in the destruction of religion, and peace in the Church would not be obtained; that, in fact, the Great Schism was probably the prelude to the coming of Antichrist. More fortunate was the computation by which he arrived at the date of 1789 as that which would witness great perturbations if the world should so long endure. The tolerance which spared Cardinal d’Ailly did not proceed from any change in the theory of the Church as to the heresy of interfering with the doctrine of free-will. Alonso de Spina points out that the astrological belief that men born under certain stars cannot avoid sinning is manifestly heretical. None the less so was the teaching that when the moon and Jupiter were in conjunction in the head of the Dragon any one praying to God could obtain whatever he wanted, as Peter of Abano found when he used this fortunate moment to secure stores of knowledge beyond the capacity of the unassisted human mind. Sprenger, the highest authority on demonology, held that in astrology there was a tacit pact with the demon.[485] All this shows that in the increasing hostility to occult arts astrology had gradually come under the ban, and the disputed question as to its position was finally brought to a decision, at least for France, by the case of Simon Pharees in 1494. He had been condemned by the archiepiscopal court of Lyons for practising astrology, and was punished with the light penance of Friday fasting for a year, with the threat of perpetual imprisonment for relapse, and his books and astrolabe had been detained. He had the audacity to appeal to the Parlement, which referred his books to the University. The report of the latter was that his books ought to be burned, even as others had recently been to the value of fifty thousand deniers. All astrology pretending to be prophetic, or ascribing supernatural virtue to rings, charms, etc., fabricated under certain constellations, was denounced as false, vain, superstitious, and condemned by both civil and canon law, as well as the use of the astrolabe for finding things lost or divining the future, and the Parlement was urged to check the rapid spread of this art invented by Satan. The Parlement accordingly pronounced a judgment handing over the unlucky Simon to the Bishop and Inquisitor of Paris, to be punished for his relapse. Astrology, which is described as practised openly everywhere, is condemned. All persons are prohibited from consulting astrologers or diviners about the future, or about things lost or found; all printers are forbidden to print books on the subject, and are ordered to deliver whatever copies they may have to their bishops, and all bishops are instructed to prosecute astrologers. This was a very emphatic condemnation, but, in the existing condition of human intelligence, it could do little to check the insatiable thirst for impossible knowledge. Yet there were some superior minds which rejected the superstition. The elder Pico della Mirandola and Savonarola were of these, and Erasmus ridiculed it in the Encomium Moriæ.[486]

The question of oneiroscopy, or divination by dreams, was a puzzling one. On the one hand there was the formal prohibition of the Deuteronomist (XVIII. 10), which in the Vulgate included the observer of dreams in its denunciations; on the other there were the examples of Joseph and Daniel, and the formal assertion of Job “when deep sleep falleth upon man, in slumberings upon the bed, then he openeth the ears of men and sealeth their instruction” (Job XXXIII. 15, 16). In the twelfth century the expounding of dreams was a recognized profession which does not seem to have been forbidden. John of Salisbury endeavors to prove that no reliance is to be placed on them; Joseph and Daniel were inspired, and short of inspiration no divination from dreams is to be trusted. This, at least, was a more sensible and practical solution than the conclusion reached by Thomas Aquinas that divination from dreams produced by natural causes or divine revelation is licit, but if the dreams proceed from dæmonic influence it is illicit. Tertullian had long before ascribed to the pagans the power of sending prophetic dreams through the agency of demons, but unfortunately, no one could furnish a criterion to distinguish between the several classes of visions, and as a rule the dream-expounders were regarded as harmless.[487]

There was another class of cases which puzzled the casuists, for the bounds which divided sacred from goetic magic were very vague. There was a practice of celebrating mortuary masses in the name of a living man, under the belief that it would kill him. As early as 694 the seventeenth Council of Toledo prohibits this, under pain of degradation for the officiating priest and perpetual exile for him and for his employer; and in the middle of the fifteenth century the learned Lope Barrientos, Bishop of Cuenca, condemns it unreservedly. Yet a MS. of uncertain date, printed by Wright, while pronouncing it sin if done through private malice, for which the officiating priest should be deposed unless he purge himself with due penance, states that for a public object it is not a sin, because it manifests humility in placating God. Somewhat similar was a question which arose during a quarrel between Henry, Bishop of Cambrai, and his chapter in 1500. As a mode of revenge the dean, provost, and canons suspended divine service, for which they were excommunicated by the Archbishop of Reims. Under this pressure they resumed their holy functions, but varied them by introducing in the canon of the mass a sort of imprecatory litany, composed of comminatory fragments from the psalms and prophets, recited by the officiating priest with his back to the altar, while the responses were given by the boys in the choir. The frightened bishop appealed to the University of Paris, which, after many months’ deliberation, gravely decided that the position of the priest and the responses of the boys rendered the services suspect of incantation; that imprecatory services are to be dreaded by those who give cause for them; that they are not lightly to be used, especially against a bishop who is ready for settlement in the courts, and that they ought not to be employed even against a contumacious bishop except in case of necessity arising from extreme peril.[488]