[71] A mediæval text-book on theology.—Trans.
[72] “Thinking ill of the faith.”—Trans.
[73] A character in Rabelais. “Date nobis clochas nostras, &c.”—Gargantua, ch. 19.—Trans.
[74] Ulrich von Hutten, friend of Luther, and author of the witty Epistolæ obscurorum virorum.—Trans.
[75] Faustin Hélie, in his learned and luminous Traité de l’Instruction Criminelle (vol. i. p. 398), has clearly explained the manner in which Pope Innocent III., about 1200, suppressed the safeguards theretofore required in any prosecution, especially the risk incurred by prosecutors of being punished for slander. Instead of these were established the dismal processes of Denunciation and Inquisition. The frightful levity of these latter methods is shown by Soldan. Blood was shed like water.
[76] See my Memoirs of Luther, concerning the Kilcrops, &c.
CHAPTER III.
CENTURY OF TOLERATION IN FRANCE: REACTION.
The Church forfeited the wizard’s property to the judge and the prosecutor. Wherever the Canon Law was enforced the trials for witchcraft waxed numerous, and brought much wealth to the clergy. Wherever the lay tribunals claimed the management of these trials they grew scarce and disappeared, at least for a hundred years in France, from 1450 to 1550.
The first gleam of light shot forth from France in the middle of the fifteenth century. The inquiry made by Parliament into the trial of Joan of Arc, and her after reinstalment, set people thinking on the intercourse of spirits, good and bad; on the errors, also, of the spiritual courts. She whom the English, whom the greatest doctors of the Council of Basil pronounced a Witch, appeared to Frenchmen a saint and sibyl. Her reinstalment proclaimed to France the beginning of an age of toleration. The Parliament of Paris likewise reinstalled the alleged Waldenses of Arras. In 1498 it discharged as mad one who was brought before it as a wizard. None such were condemned in the reigns of Charles VIII., Louis XII., and Francis I.