The next was the rich eschevin, Jean Tacquet. He admitted that he had been to the Sabbat ten times or more. He had endeavored to withdraw his allegiance from Satan, who had forced him to continue it by beating him cruelly with a bull’s pizzle. He was now condemned to scourging, administered as in the case of de Beauffort, to ten years’ prison, and to fines amounting to one thousand four hundred livres, of which two hundred went to the Inquisition; but, as in de Beauffort’s case, there were secret contributions exacted from him.
The third was Pierre du Carieulx, another rich citizen. His sentence recited that he had been to the Sabbat innumerable times; holding a lighted candle he had kissed, under the tail, the devil in the shape of a monkey; he had given him his soul in a compact written with his own blood; he had thrice given to the Abbé-de-peu-de-sens consecrated wafers received at Easter, out of which, with the bones of men hanged, which he had picked up under the gallows, and the blood of young children, of whom he had slain four, he had helped to make the infernal ointment and certain powders, with which they injured men and beasts. When asked to confirm this he denied it, saying that it had been forced from him by torture; and he would have added much more, but he was silenced. Abandoned to secular justice, the eschevins demanded him as their bourgeois, and on their paying his prison expenses he was delivered to them. They allowed him to talk in the town-hall, when he disculpated all whom he had accused, of whom he said there were many present, eschevins and others, adding that, under torture, he had accused every one he knew, and if he had known more he would have included them. He was burned the same day.
The fourth was Huguet Aubry, a man of uncommon force and resolution. In spite of the severest and most prolonged torture, he had confessed nothing. He had been accused by nine witnesses, and he was now asked if he would confess under promise of mercy; but he repeated that he knew nothing of Vauderie, and had never been to the Sabbat. Then the inquisitor told him that he had broken jail and been recaptured, which rendered him guilty. He threw himself on his knees and begged for mercy, but was condemned to prison, on bread and water, for twenty years; a most irregular sentence, which could never have been rendered under the perfected system of procedure, for the evidence against him was strong, and his constancy under torture only proved that Satan had endowed him with the gift of taciturnity.
This was the last of the persecution. There had been only thirty-four arrests and twelve burnings; which, in the flourishing times of witchcraft, would have been a trifle, but the novelty of the occurrence in Picardy, the character of the victims, and the subsequent proceedings in the Parlement attracted to it a disproportionate attention. That it came to so early a termination is possibly attributable to the fact that Philippe de Saveuse had directed the torture of the women not only to convict de Beauffort, but to incriminate the Seigneurs de Croy and others, from avaricious and perhaps political motives. The de Croy were at this time all-powerful at the ducal court, and doubtless used their interest to arrest the ecclesiastical machinery which was strong enough to crush even them. It has every appearance of a repetition of the old story of Conrad of Marburg.
Whatever the cause, the inquisitor and the vicars now put a stop to the prosecutions, without calling in the Bishop of Beirut, Jacques du Boys, de Saveuse, and others, who urged them to proceed with the good work. In vain the latter talked of the imminent dangers impending over Christendom from the innumerable multitude of sorcerers, many of whom held high station in the Church and in the courts of princes. Vainly even the last card was played, and the superstitious were frightened by rumors that Antichrist was born, and that the sorcerers would support him.[575]
One by one the accused were discharged, as they were able to raise money to pay the expenses of their prison and of the Inquisition, which was a condition of liberation in all cases except those of utter poverty. Some had to undergo the formality of purging themselves with compurgators. Antoine Sacquespée, for instance, who had been tortured without confession, had to furnish seven, and was not allowed to escape without surrendering a portion of his substance. Others had light penance, like Jennon d’Amiens, a woman who had confessed after being several times tortured, and was now only required to make a five-league pilgrimage to Nôtre Dame d’Esquerchin. This was an admission that the whole affair was a fraud; and even more remarkable was the case of fille de joie named Belotte, who had been repeatedly tortured, and had confessed. She would have been burned with the other women on May 9, but it happened, accidentally or otherwise, that her mitre was not ready, and her execution was postponed, and now she was only banished from the diocese, and ordered to make a pilgrimage to Nôtre Dame de Boulogne. Of the whole number arrested nine had the constancy to endure torture—in most cases long and severe—without confession.
As the terror passed away the feelings of the people expressed themselves sportively in some verses scattered through the streets, lampooning the principal actors in the tragedy. The stanza devoted to Pierre le Brousart runs thus:
“Then the inquisitor, with his white hood,
His shining nose and his repulsive mazzard,
Among the foremost in the game has stood
To torture these poor folk as witch or wizard.
But he knows only what he has been told,
For his sole thought throughout has been to hold
And keep their goods and chattels at all hazard.
But he has failed in this, and been cajoled.”
The vicars and their advocates and the assembly of experts are all held guilty, and the verses conclude by threatening them:
“But you shall all be punished in a mass,
And we shall learn who caused the wondrous tale
Of Vaudois in our city of Arras.”[576]