When, towards the close of the thirteenth century, the Inquisition succeeded in including sorcery within its jurisdiction, its organizing faculty speedily laid down rules and formulas for the guidance of its members which aided largely in shaping the uncertain jurisprudence of the period and gave a decided impulse to the persecution of those who practised the forbidden arts. A manual of practice, which probably bears date about the year 1280, contains a form for the interrogation of the accused covering all the details of sorcery as known at the time. This served as the foundation on which still more elaborate formulas were constructed by Bernard Gui and others. If space permitted, a reproduction of these would present a tolerably complete picture of current superstitions, but I can only pause to call attention to one feature in them. The earliest draught contains no allusion to the nocturnal excursions of the “good women” whence the Witches’ Sabbat was derived, while the later ones introduce an interrogation concerning it, showing that during the interval it was attracting increased attention. It is further noteworthy that none of the formulas embrace questions concerning practices of vulgar witchcraft, which in the fifteenth and succeeding centuries, as we shall see, furnished nearly the whole basis of prosecutions for sorcery.[489]
When sorcery thus came under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition it came simply as heresy, and the whole theory of its treatment was altered. The Inquisition was concerned exclusively with belief; acts were of interest to it merely as evidence of the beliefs which they inferred, and all heresies were equal in guilt, whether they consisted in affirming the poverty of Christ or led to demon-worship, pacts with Satan, and attempts on human life. The sorcerer might, therefore, well prefer to fall into the hands of the Inquisition rather than to be judged by the secular tribunals, for in the former case he had the benefit of the invariable rules observed in dealings with heresy. By confession and abjuration he could always be admitted to penance and escape the stake, which was the customary secular punishment; while, having no convictions such as animated the Cathari and Waldenses, it cost his conscience nothing to make the necessary recantation. In the inquisitorial records, in so far as they have reached us, we meet with no cases of hardened and obdurate demon-worshippers. Inquisitorial methods could always secure confession, and the inquisitorial manuals give us examples of the carefully drawn formulas of abjuration administered and forms for the sentences to be pronounced. It may perhaps be questioned whether the fiery torture of the stake were not preferable to the inquisitorial mercy which confined its penitents to imprisonment for life in chains and on bread and water; but few men have resolution to prefer a speedy termination to their sufferings, and there was always the hope that exemplary conduct in prison might earn a mitigation of the penalty. It was probably in consequence of this apparent lenity that Philippe le Bel, in 1303, forbade the Inquisition to take cognizance of usury, sorcery, and other offences of the Jews; and we shall see hereafter that when it was forced to summon all its energies in the epidemics of witchcraft, it was obliged to abandon the rule and find excuses for delivering its repentant victims to the stake.[490]
About this time Zanghino gives us the current Italian ecclesiastical view of the subject. In his detailed description of the various species of magic, vulgar witchcraft finds no place, showing that it was unknown in Italy as in France. All such matters are under episcopal jurisdiction, and the Inquisition cannot meddle with them unless they savor of manifest heresy. But it is heretical to assert that the future can be foretold by such means, as this belongs to God alone; to receive responses from demons is heretical, or to make them offerings, or to worship sun, moon, or stars, planets or the elements, or to believe that anything is to be obtained except from God, or that anything can be done without the command of God, or that anything is proper and lawful which is disapproved by the Church. All this falls within the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, and it will be seen that the meshes of the net were small enough to let little escape. The penalties of death and confiscation, to be inflicted by the secular judge, doubtless refer to the impenitent and relapsed, as the cases which savored of heresy were punished as heresy by the inquisitor. Magic which did not thus savor of manifest heresy was subject to the episcopal courts, and was punishable by declaring the offender in mortal sin and debarred from communion; he and those who employed him were infamous; he was to be warned to abstain, with excommunication and other penalties, at the episcopal discretion, in case of disobedience. Yet the secular power by no means abandoned its jurisdiction over sorcery, which continued to be subject to the lay as well as to the ecclesiastical courts. The time, moreover, had not come for the pitiless extermination of all who dabbled in forbidden arts. By the Milanese law of the period the punishment of the sorcerer was left to the discretion of the judge, who could inflict either corporal or pecuniary penalties proportioned to the gravity of the offence.[491]
Sorcery was one of the aberrations certain to respond to persecution by more abundant development. So long as its reality was acknowledged and its professors were punished, not as sharpers, but as the possessors of evil powers of unknown extent, the more public attention was drawn to it the more it flourished. As soon as the Inquisition had systematized its suppression, we begin to find it occupy a larger and larger share of public attention. In 1303 one of the charges brought against Boniface VIII., in the Assembly of the Louvre, was that he had a familiar demon who kept him informed of everything, and that he was a sorcerer who consulted diviners and soothsayers. About the same time the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, treasurer of Edward I., was accused of murder, simony, and adultery, to which was added that he consulted the devil, to whom he had rendered homage and kissed on the posteriors. King Edward intervened energetically in his behalf, and an inquisition ordered upon him by Boniface reported that the common fame existing against him proceeded from his enemies, so that he was allowed to purge himself with thirty-seven compurgators. In 1308 the Sire d’Ulmet was brought to Paris on the charge of endeavoring to kill his wife by sorcery, and the women whom he had employed were burned or buried alive. We have seen how nearly akin to these accusations were the charges brought against the Templars, and the success of that attempt was suggestive as to the effectiveness of the methods employed. When, after the death of Philippe le Bel, Charles of Valois was resolutely bent on the destruction of Enguerrand de Marigny, and the long proceedings which he instituted threatened to prove fruitless, it was opportunely discovered that Enguerrand had instigated his wife and sister to employ a man and woman to make certain waxen images which should cause Charles, the young King Louis Hutin, the Count of Saint-Pol, and other personages to wither and die. As soon as Charles reported this to Louis, the king withdrew his protection and the end was speedy. April 26, 1315, Enguerrand was brought before a selected council of nobles at Vincennes and was condemned to be hanged, a sentence which was carried out on the 30th; the sorcerer was hanged with him and the sorceress was burned, the images being exhibited to the people from the gallows at Montfaucon, which Enguerrand himself had built, while the Dame de Marigny and her sister, the Dame de Chantelou, were condemned to imprisonment. Thus Enguerrand perished by the methods which he and his brother, the Archbishop of Sens, had used against the Templars, and the further moral of the story is seen in the remorse of Charles of Valois, ten years later, when he lay on his death-bed and sent almoners through the streets of Paris to distribute money among the poor, crying, “Pray for the soul of Messire Enguerrand de Marigny, and of Messire Charles de Valois!” One of the accusations against Bernard Délicieux was that he had attempted the life of Benedict XI. by magic arts, and although this failed of proof, he confessed under torture that a book of necromancy found in his chest belonged to him, and that certain marginal notes in it were in his own handwriting. In this he could not have been alone among his brethren, for in the general chapter of the Franciscans in 1312 a statute was adopted forbidding, under penalty of excommunication and prison, any member of the Order from possessing such books, and dabbling in alchemy, necromancy, divination, incantation, or the invocation of demons.[492]
The growing importance of sorcery in popular belief received a powerful impetus from John XXII., who in so many ways exercised on his age an influence so deplorable. As one of the most learned theologians of the day, he had full convictions of the reality of all the marvels claimed for magic, and his own experience led him to entertain a lively dread of them. The circumstances of his election were such as to render probable the existence of conspiracies for his removal, and he lent a ready ear to suggestions concerning them. His barbarity towards the unfortunate Hugues, Bishop of Cahors, has been already alluded to, and before the first year of his reign was out he had another group of criminals to dispose of. In 1317 we find him issuing a commission to Gaillard, Bishop of Reggio, and several assessors to try a barber-surgeon named Jean d’Amant and sundry clerks of the Sacred Palace on the charge of attempting his life. Under the persuasive influence of torture they confessed that they had at first intended to use poison, but finding no opportunity for this they had recourse to figurines, in the fabrication of which they were skilled. They had made them under the invocation of demons; they could confine demons in rings and thus learn the secrets of the past and of the future; they could induce sickness, cause death, or prolong life by incantations, charms, and spells consisting simply of words. Of course they were condemned and executed, and John set to work vigorously to extirpate the abhorred race of sorcerers to which he had so nearly fallen a victim. We hear of proceedings against Robert, Bishop of Aix, accused of having practised magic arts at Bologna; and John, regarding the East as the source whence this execrable science spread over Christendom, sought to attack it in its home. In 1318 he ordered the Dominican provincial in the Levant to appoint special inquisitors for the purpose in all places subject to the Latin rite, and he called upon the Doge of Venice, the Prince of Achaia, and the Latin barons to lend their effective aid. He even wrote to the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Oriental archbishops, urging them to assist in the good work. Not satisfied with the implied jurisdiction conferred on the Inquisition by Alexander IV., in 1320 he had letters sent out by the Cardinal of S. Sabina formally conferring it fully on inquisitors and urging them to exercise it actively. Subsequent bulls stimulated still further the growing dread of magic by expressing his grief at the constant increase of the infection which was spreading throughout Christendom, and by ordering sorcerers to be publicly anathematized and punished as heretics and all books of magic lore to be burned. When he warned all baptized Christians not to enter into compacts with hell, or to imprison demons in rings or mirrors so as to penetrate the secrets of the future, and threatened all guilty of such practices that, if they did not reform within eight days, they should be subject to the penalties of heresy, he took the most effective means to render the trade of the sorcerer profitable and to increase the number of his dupes. Apparently he became dissatisfied with the response to these appeals, for in 1330 he deplored the continued existence of demon-worship and its affiliated errors; he ordered the prelates and inquisitors to speedily bring to conclusion all cases on hand and send the papers under seal to him for decision, and the inquisitors were commanded to undertake no new cases without a special papal mandate. Whatever may have been the motive of this last prohibition, it was not allowed to take effect in France. We have seen how the royal power about this time was commencing to exercise control over the Inquisition, and we shall see how, at the close of his life, John XXII. was accused of heresy as to the Beatific Vision, and was roundly threatened by Philippe de Valois. It was probably an incident of this quarrel that led the king, in 1334, to assume that the jurisdiction of the Inquisition over idolaters, sorcerers, and heretics had been conferred by the crown, and to order his seneschals to see that no one should interfere with them in its exercise. This royal rescript seems to have been forgotten with the circumstances which called it forth, for in 1374 the Inquisitor of France applied to Gregory XI. to ask whether he should take cognizance of sorcery, and Gregory replied with instructions to prosecute such cases vigorously.[493]
The necessary result of all this bustling legislation was to strengthen the popular confidence in sorcery and to multiply its practice. In Bernard Gui’s book of sentences rendered in the Inquisition of Toulouse from 1309 to 1323, there are no cases of sorcery, but we meet with several, tried in 1320 and 1321 in the episcopal Inquisition of Pamiers, and the fragmentary records of Carcassonne in 1328 and 1329 show quite a number of convictions. Inquisitors, moreover, commenced to insert a clause renouncing sorcery in all abjurations administered to repentant heretics, so that in case they should become addicted to it they could be promptly burned for relapse.[494]
Under the influence of this efficient advertisement the trade of the sorcerer flourished. In 1323 a remarkable case attracted much attention in Paris. The dogs of some shepherds, passing a cross-roads near Chateau-Landon, commenced scratching at a certain spot and could not be driven off. The men’s suspicions were aroused, and they informed the authorities, who, on digging, found a box in which was imprisoned a black cat, with some bread moistened with chrism, blessed oil, and holy water, two small tubes being arranged to reach the surface and supply the animal with air. All the carpenters in the village were summoned, and one identified the box, which he had made for a certain Jean Prevost. Torture promptly brought a confession inculpating the Cistercian abbot of Sarcelles, some canons, a sorcerer named Jean de Persant, and an apostate Cistercian monk, his disciple. The abbot, it seems, had lost a sum of money, and had employed the sorcerer to recover it and find the thief. The cat was to remain three days in the box, to be then killed, and its skin cut into strips, with which a circle was to be made. In this circle a man standing with the remains of the cat’s food thrust into his rectum was to invoke the demon Berich, who would make the desired revelation. The Inquisitor of Paris and the episcopal Ordinary promptly tried the guilty parties. Prevost opportunely died, but his remains were burned with his accomplice de Persant, while the ecclesiastics escaped with degradation and perpetual imprisonment. It is evident that de Persant was not allowed the benefit of abjuration, while the Cistercians were exposed to a penalty more severe than those imposed by the rules of their Order. These had been defined in the general chapter of 1290 to be merely incapacity for promotion, or for taking any part in the proceedings of the body, the lowest seat in choir and refectory, and Friday fasting on bread and water until released by the general chapter. The intervening quarter of a century had, however, wrought a most significant change in the attitude of the Church towards this class of offences.[495]
The monastic orders evidently contributed their full share to this class of criminals. We happen to have the sentence, in 1329, by Henri de Chamay, of a Carmelite named Pierre Recordi, which illustrates the effectiveness of inquisitorial methods in obtaining avowals. The trial lasted for several years, and though the accused tergiversated and retracted repeatedly, his endurance finally gave way. He adhered at last to the confession that on five occasions, to obtain possession of women, he had made wax figurines with invocations of demons, mixing with them the blood of toads and his own blood and saliva, as a sacrifice to Satan. He would then place the image under the threshold of the woman, and if she did not yield to him she would be tormented by a demon. In three cases this had succeeded; in the other two it would have done so, had he not been suddenly sent by his superiors to another station. On one occasion he pricked an image in the belly, when it bled. After the images had done their work he would cast them into the river and sacrifice a butterfly to the demon, whose presence would be manifested by a breath of air. He was condemned to perpetual imprisonment on bread and water, with chains on hands and feet, in the Carmelite convent of Toulouse; out of respect to the Order he was not subjected to the ceremony of degradation, and the sentence was rendered privately in the episcopal palace of Pamiers. One peculiar feature of the sentence is the apprehension expressed lest the officials of the convent should allow him to escape.[496]
The trade of the magician received a further advertisement in the story current at this time about Frederic of Austria. When, after his defeat at Mühldorf in 1322, by Louis of Bavaria, he lay a prisoner in the stronghold of Trausnitz, his brother Leopold sought the services of an expert necromancer, who promised to release the captive through the aid of the devil. In response to his invocation, Satan came in the guise of a pilgrim, and readily promised to bring Frederic to them if he would agree to follow him; but when he appeared to Frederic and told him to get into a bag which he carried around his neck and he would bring him to his brother in safety, Frederic asked him who he was. “Never mind who I am,” he replied: “Will you leave your prison, as I tell you?” Then a great fear fell upon Frederic; he crossed himself and the devil disappeared.[497]
Even to distant Ireland the persecution of sorcery was brought in 1325 by that zealous Franciscan, Richard Ledrede, Bishop of Ossory. The Lady Alice Kyteler of Kilkenny had had four husbands, and their testamentary dispositions not suiting her children by the last three, the most efficient means of breaking their wills was to accuse her of having killed them by sorcery, after bewitching them to leave their property to her and to her eldest son, William Outlaw. Bishop Ledrede proceeded vigorously to make inquisition, but Lady Alice and William were allied to the leading officials in Ireland, who threw every difficulty in the way, and, as the canons against heresy were unknown in the island, he had an arduous task, being himself at one time arrested and thrown into prison. A less indomitable spirit would have succumbed, but he triumphed at last, though Lady Alice herself escaped his clutches and was conveyed to England. The trials of her assumed accomplices would seem to have been conducted without much respect to form, but with ample energy. Torture being unknown in English law, the bishop might have failed in eliciting confession had he not found an effective, if illegal, substitute in the whip. Petronilla, for instance, one of Lady Alice’s women, after being scourged six times could endure no longer the endless increase of agony, and confessed all that was wanted of her. She admitted that she was a skilful sorceress, but inferior to her mistress, who was equal to any in England, or any in the world. She told how, at Lady Alice’s command, she had sacrificed cocks in the cross-roads to a demon named Robert Artisson, her mistress’s incubus or lover, and how they made from the brains of an unbaptized child, with herbs and worms, in the skull of a robber who had been beheaded, powders and charms to afflict the bodies of the faithful, to excite love and hatred, and to make the faces of certain women, appear horned in the eyes of particular individuals. She had been the intermediary between her mistress and the demon; on one occasion he had come to Lady Alice’s chamber with two others, black as Ethiopians, when followed love-scenes of which the disgusting details may be spared. The case is interesting as developing a transition state of belief between the earlier magic and the later witchcraft; and it illustrates one of the most important points in the criminal jurisprudence of the succeeding centuries, which explains the unquestioning belief universally entertained as to the marvels of sorcery. Torture administered with unlimited repetition not only brought the patient into a condition in which he would confess whatever was required of him, but the impression produced was such that he would not risk its renewal by retraction even at the last. It was so with this poor creature, who persisted to the end with this tissue of absurdities, and who was burned impenitent. Some others involved in the accusation likewise perished at the stake, while some were permitted to abjure and were punished with crosses—probably the only occasion in which this penance was administered in the British Isles.[498]