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

by Henry Charles Lea

The prophecy was not wholly unverified. Fortunately there was in France a Parlement which had succeeded in establishing its jurisdiction over both the great vassals and the Inquisition, and the relations between the courts of Paris and Brussels were such as to render it nothing loath to interfere. De Beauffort, before his examination, had made an appeal to this supreme tribunal, which had been disregarded and suppressed, but his son Philippe had carried to Paris the tale of the wrongs committed on his father. The Parlement moved slowly, but on January 16, 1461, Philippe came back with an usher commissioned to bring de Beauffort before it after investigating the case. This official took testimony, and on the 25th, accompanied by de Beauffort’s four sons and thirty well-armed men, he presented himself before the vicars. Frightened by this formidable demonstration, they refused to see him; but he went to the episcopal palace, took the keys of the prison by force, and carried de Beauffort to the Conciergerie in Paris, after serving notice on the vicars to answer before the Parlement on February 25. The matter was now fairly in train for a legal investigation in which both sides could be heard. The convicts who had been condemned to imprisonment were set at liberty and carried to Paris, where their evidence confirmed that of de Beauffort. The conspirators were grievously alarmed. Jacques du Boys, the dean, who had been the prime mover, became insane about the time set for the hearing; and though he recovered his senses, his limbs failed him; he took to his bed, where bed-sores ate great holes in his flesh, and he died in about a year, some persons attributing to sorcery and others to divine vengeance what evidently was mental trouble, causing temporary insanity followed by paresis. The Bishop of Beirut was thrown in prison, charged with having set the affair on foot, but he managed to escape, by miracle as he asserted; he made a pilgrimage to Compostella, and on his return secured the position of confessor to Queen Marie, dowager of Charles VII., where he was safe. Other conspicuous actors in the tragedy left Arras to escape the hatred of their fellow-citizens. Meanwhile the legal proceedings dragged on with the interminable delays for which the Parlement was notorious, enhanced on this occasion by the political vicissitudes of the period, and the final decision was not rendered until 1491, thirty years after its commencement, when all the sufferers had passed off the scene except the indomitable Huguet Aubry, who was still alive to enjoy a rehabilitation celebrated in a manner as imposing as possible. On July 18 the decree was published from a scaffold erected on the spot where the sentences had been pronounced. The magistrates had been ordered to proclaim a holiday, and to offer prizes for the best folie moralisée and pure folie, and to send notice to all the neighboring towns, so that a crowd of eight or nine thousand persons was collected. After a sermon of two hours and a half, preached by the celebrated Geoffroi Broussart, subsequently chancellor of the University, the decree was read, condemning the Duke of Burgundy to pay the costs, and the processes and sentences to be torn and destroyed as unjust and abusive; ordering the accused and condemned to be restored to their good name and fame, all confiscations and payments to be refunded, while the vicars were to pay twelve hundred livres each, Gilles Flameng one thousand, de Saveuse five hundred, and others smaller sums, amounting in all to six thousand five hundred; out of which fifteen hundred were to be applied to founding a daily mass for the souls of those executed, and erecting a cross on the spot where they had been burned. The cruel and unusual tortures made use of in the trials were, moreover, prohibited for the future in all secular and ecclesiastical tribunals. It was probably the only case on record in which an inquisitor stood as a defendant in a lay court to answer for his official action. One cannot help reflecting that, if the Council of Vienne had done its duty as fearlessly as the Parlement, the affair of the Templars, so similar in many of its features, might have had a similar termination; and the contrast between this and the rehabilitation proceedings in the case of Joan of Arc shows how the Inquisition had fallen during the interval.[577]

Besides the general significance of this transaction in the history of witchcraft and of its persecution, there are several points worthy of attention in their bearing on the practical application of the methods of procedure described above. In the first place, it is evident throughout that no counsel were allowed to the accused. Then, the combined episcopal and inquisitorial court permitted no appeals, even to the Parlement, whose supreme jurisdiction was unquestioned. Not only was the attempt of de Beauffort to interject such an appeal contemptuously suppressed, but when Willaume le Febvre, who had fled to Paris and constituted himself a prisoner there to answer all charges, sent his son Willemet with a notary to serve an appeal, the service was rightly regarded as involving considerable risk. After watching their opportunity, Willemet and the notary served the notice on one of the vicars at church, then leaped on their horses and made all speed for Paris, but the vicars instantly despatched well-mounted horsemen, who overtook them at Montdidier and brought them back. They were clapped in jail, along with a number of friends and kinsmen who had been privy to their intention without betraying it, and were not released until they agreed to withdraw the appeal. Thus, an appeal was treated as an offence justifying vigorous measures. It is more difficult to understand the contemptuous indifference with which a papal bull was treated. Martin Cornille, the other fugitive, had pursued a different policy. He carried with him an ample store of money, part of which he invested in a bull from Pius II. transferring the whole matter to Gilles Charlier and Grégoire Nicolai of Cambrai, and two of the Arras vicars. This was brought to Arras in August, 1460, by the Dean of Soignies, after which we hear nothing more of it, though it may have contributed to cool the ardor of those who were expecting to profit by the prosecutions.[578]

The means employed to obtain confession show that Sprenger only recorded the usage of the period in advising recourse to whatever fraud or force might prove necessary. Promises of immunity or of trifling penance were lavished on those whom it was intended to burn if they yielded to the blandishment, and these were supplemented with threats of burning as the punishment of taciturnity. De Beauffort’s confession without torture excited general astonishment until it was known that, on his arrest, after he had sworn to his innocence, Jacques du Boys entreated him to confess, even kneeling before him and praying him to do so, assuring him that if he refused he could not be saved from the stake, and that all his property would be confiscated, to the beggaring of his children, while, if he would confess, he should be released within four days without public humiliation or exposure; and when de Beauffort argued that this would be committing perjury, du Boys told him not to mind that, as he should have absolution. Those whose constancy was proof against such persuasiveness were tortured without stint or mercy. The women were frightfully scourged. Huguet Aubry was kept in prison for eleven months, during which, at intervals, he was tortured fifteen times, and when the ingenuity of the executioners failed in devising more exquisite forms of torment, he was threatened with drowning and thrown into the river, and then with hanging and suspended from a tree with his eyes duly bandaged. Le petit Henriot’s resolution was tried with seven months’ incarceration, during which he was also tortured fifteen times, fire being applied to the soles of his feet until he was crippled for life. Others are mentioned whose endurance was equally tried, and we hear of such strange devices as pouring oil and vinegar down the throat, and other expedients not recognized by law.[579]

With regard to the death-penalty, it is to be observed that none of these were cases of relapse, and under the old inquisitorial practice they would all have been entitled to the penance of imprisonment. Their burning had not even the pretext of being punishment for injuries inflicted on their neighbors, for, with the exception of Pierre du Carieulx, the only offence assigned to them was attendance at the Sabbat. At the same time there was no resort to the juggle suggested by later authorities, of assigning penance, and then not inquiring what the secular power might see fit to do. The condemned were formally delivered to the magistrates to be burned, and though at the first auto a death-sentence was pronounced by the eschevins, at the second even this formality was omitted, and the victims were dragged directly from the place of sentence to that of execution.[580]

One specially notable feature of the whole affair was the utter incredulity everywhere excited. Just as the crimes imputed to the Templars found credence nowhere out of France, so, outside of Arras, we are told not one person in a thousand believed in the truth of the charges. This was fortunate, for the victims naturally included in their lists of associates many residents of other places, and the conflagration might readily have spread over the whole country, had it found agents like Pierre le Brousart, who carried the spark from Langres to Arras. On the strength of revelations in the confessions several persons were arrested in Amiens, but the bishop, who was a learned clerk and had long resided in Rome, promptly released them and declared that he would dismiss all brought before him, for he did not believe in the possibility of such offences. At Tournay others were seized, and the matter was warmly debated, with the result that they were set free, although Jean Taincture, a most notable clerk, wrote an elaborate treatise to prove their guilt. It was the same with the accused who managed to fly. Martin Cornille was caught in Burgundy and brought before the Archbishop of Besançon, who acquitted him on the strength of informations made in Arras. Willaume le Febvre surrendered himself to the Bishop of Paris; the Inquisitor of Paris came to Arras to get the evidence concerning him, and the vicars furnished the confessions of those who had implicated him. The result was that the tribunal, consisting of the Archbishop of Reims, the Bishop of Paris, the Inquisitor of France, and sundry doctors of theology, not only acquitted him, but authorized him to prosecute the vicars for reparation of his honor, and for expenses and damages.[581] Evidently up to this time the excitement concerning witchcraft was to a great extent artificial—the creation of a comparatively few credulous ecclesiastics and judges: the mass of educated clerks and jurists were disposed to hold fast to the definition of the Cap. Episcopi, and to regard it as a delusion. Had the Church resolutely repressed the growing superstition, in place of stimulating it with all the authority of the Holy See, infinite bloodshed and misery might have been spared to Christendom.

The development of the witchcraft epidemic, in fact, had not been rapid. The earliest detailed account which we have of it is that of Nider, in his Formicarius, written in 1337. Although Nider himself seems to have sometimes acted as inquisitor, he tells us that his information is principally derived from the experience of Peter of Berne, a secular judge, who had burned large numbers of witches of both sexes, and had driven many more from the Bernese territory, which they had infested for about sixty years. This would place the origin of witchcraft in that region towards the close of the fourteenth century, and Silvester Prierias, as we have seen, attributes it to the first years of the fifteenth. Bernardo di Como, writing about 1510, assigns to it a somewhat earlier origin, for he says the records of the Inquisition of Como showed that it had existed for a hundred and fifty years. It is quite likely, indeed, that the gradual development of witchcraft from ordinary sorcery commenced about the middle of the fourteenth century. The great jurist Bartolo, who died in 1357, when acting as judge at Novara, tried and condemned a woman who confessed to having adored the devil, trampled on the cross, and killed children by touching and fascinating them. This approach to the later witchcraft was so novel to him that he appealed to the theologians to explain it. In this there seems no reference to the distinctive feature of the Sabbat, but the popular beliefs concerning Holda and Dame Habonde and their troop were rife, and the coalescence of the various superstitions was only a question of time. As early as 1353 an allusion to the witches’ dance occurs in a trial at Toulouse. Thus the stories grew, under the skilful handling of such judges as Peter of Berne, until they assumed the detailed and definite shape that we find in Nider. The latter also acknowledges his obligation to the Inquisitor of Autun, which would indicate that witchcraft was prevalent in Burgundy at a comparatively early period. In 1424 we hear of a witch named Finicella burned in Rome for causing the death of many persons and bewitching many more. According to Peter of Berne, the evil originated with a certain Scavius, who openly boasted of his powers, and always escaped by transforming himself into a mouse, until he was assassinated through a window near which he incautiously sat. His principal disciple was Poppo, who taught Staedelin; the latter fell into the hands of Peter, and, after four vigorous applications of torture, confessed all the secrets of the diabolical sect. The details given are virtually those described above, showing that the subsequent inquisitors who drew their inspiration from Nider were skilled in their work and knew how to extract confessions in accordance with their preconceived notions. There are a few unimportant variants, of course; infants, as already stated, when killed, were boiled down, the soup being used to procure converts by its magic power, while the solid portion was worked up into ointment required for the unholy rites. Apparently, moreover, the theory had not yet established itself that the witch was powerless against officers of public justice, for the latter were held to incur great dangers in the performance of their functions. It was only by the most careful observance of religious duties and the constant use of the sign of the cross that Peter of Berne escaped, and even he once, at the castle of Blankenburg, nearly lost his life when, going up a lofty staircase at night in such haste that he forgot to cross himself, he was precipitated violently to the bottom—manifestly the effect of sorcery, as he subsequently learned by torturing a prisoner.[582]

Although, in 1452, a witch tried at Provins declared that in all France and Burgundy the total number of witches did not exceed sixty, no believer contented himself with figures so moderate. In 1453 we hear of an epidemic of witchcraft in Normandy, where the witches were popularly known as Scobaces, from scoba, a broom, in allusion to their favorite mode of equitation to the Sabbat. The same year occurred the case of Guillaume Edeline, which excited wide astonishment from the character of the culprit, who was a noted doctor of theology and Prior of St. Germain-en-Laye. Madly in love with a noble lady, he sought the aid of sorcery. He doubtless fell victim to some sharper, for on his person was found a compact with Satan, formally drawn up with reciprocal obligations, one of which was that in his sermons he should assert the falsity of the stories told of sorcerers, and this, we are told, greatly increased their number, for the judges were restrained from prosecuting them. Another condition was that he should present himself before Satan whenever required. The methods of his examination must have been sharp, for he confessed that he performed this obligation by striding a broomstick, when he would be at once transported to the Sabbat, where he performed the customary homage of kissing the devil, in the form of a white sheep, under the tail. Prosecuted before Guillaume de Floques, Bishop of Evreux, he persuaded the University of Caen to defend him; but the bishop procuring the support of the University of Paris, he was forced to confess and was convicted. It shows the uncertainty of procedure as yet that he was not burned, but was allowed to abjure, and was penanced with perpetual imprisonment on bread and water. At the auto de fé the inquisitor dwelt upon his former high position and the edification of his teaching, when the unfortunate man burst into tears and begged mercy of God. He was thrown into a basse-fosse at Evreux, where he lingered for four years, showing every sign of contrition, and at last he was found dead in his cell in the attitude of prayer. The epidemic was spreading, for in 1446 several witches were burned in Heidelberg by the inquisitor, and in 1447 another, who passed as their teacher; but there was as yet no uniform practice in such cases, for in this same year, 1447, at Braunsberg, a woman convicted of sorcery was only banished to a distance of two (German) miles, and three securities were required for her in the sum of ten marks.[583]

It was probably about this time that the inquisitors of Toulouse were busy with burning the numerous witches of Dauphiné and Gascony, as related by Alonso de Spina, who admired on the walls of the Toulousan Inquisition pictures painted from their confessions, representing the Sabbat, with the votaries adoring, with lighted candles, Satan in the form of a goat. The allusions of Bernardo di Como show that at the same period persecution was busy in Como. In 1456 we hear of two burned at Cologne. They had caused a frost so intense in the month of May that all vegetation was blasted, without hope of recovery. The steward of the archbishop asked one of them to give him an example of her art, when she took a cup of water, and muttering spells over it for the space of a couple of Paternosters, it froze so solidly that the ice could not be broken with a dagger. In this case, at least, the hand of justice had not weakened her power, though why she allowed herself to be burned is not recorded. In 1459 Pius II. called the attention of the Abbot of Tréguier to somewhat similar practices in Britanny, and gave him papal authority for their suppression, showing how vain had been the zeal of Duke Artus III., of whom, at his death in 1457, it was eulogistically declared that he had burned more sorcerers in France, Britanny, and Poitou than any man of his time.[584]

These incidents will show the growth and spread of the belief throughout Europe, and it must be borne in mind that they are but the indications of much that never attracted public attention or came to be recorded in history. A chance allusion, in a pleading of 1455, shows what was working under the surface in probably every corner of Christendom. In the parish of Torcy (Normandy) there had been for forty years a belief that a family of laborers—Huguenin de la Meu and his dead father before him, and Jeanne his wife—were all sorcerers who killed or sickened many men and beasts. An appeal to the Inquisition would doubtless have extracted from them confessions of the Sabbat and devil-worship, with lists of accomplices leading to a widespread epidemic, but the simple peasants found a speedier remedy in beating Huguenin and his wife, when the person or animal whom they had bewitched would recover. A certain André suspected them of causing the death of some of his cattle, and Jeanne said to his wife, Alayre, “Your husband has done ill in saying that I killed his cattle, and he will find it so before long.” That same day Alayre fell sick and was not expected to survive the night. To cure her André went next morning to Jeanne, and threatened that if she did not restore Alayre he would beat her so that she would never be well again—and Alayre recovered the next day.[585]