Among the pagans, witches had shared with prophetesses and priestesses a degree of reverence and veneration. Medea had taught Jason to tame the brazen-footed bulls and dragons which guarded the Golden Fleece. Hecate was skilled in spells and incantations. Horace frequently mentions with respect Canidia, who was a powerful enchantress. Gauls, Britons and Germans had obeyed and venerated women who dealt in charms and incantations. The doctrines of Christianity had changed the veneration into hatred and detestation without eradicating the belief in the power of the witch. It was with the hosts of evil that she was now believed to have her dealings, however. When this notion of the alliance between demons and women had become a commonplace, "the whole tradition was directed against woman as the Devil's instrument, basely seductive, passionate and licentious by nature."[[24]] Man's fear of woman found a frantic and absurd expression in her supposed devil-worship. As a result, the superstitions about witchcraft became for centuries not only a craze, but a theory held by intelligent people.

Among the female demons who were especially feared were: Nahemah, the princess of the Succubi; Lilith, queen of the Stryges; and the Lamiæ or Vampires, who fed on the living flesh of men. Belief in the Vampires still persists as a part of the folklore of Europe. Lilith tempted to debauchery, and was variously known as child-strangler, child-stealer, and a witch who changed true offspring for fairy or phantom children.[[A]] The figure of the child-stealing witch occurs in an extremely ancient apocryphal book called the Testament of Soloman, and dates probably from the first or second century of the Christian Era.[[25]]

[A]

The name of Lilith carries us as far back as Babylon, and in her charms and conjurations we have revived in Europe the reflection of old Babylonian charms.

Laws against the malefici (witches) were passed by Constantine. In the Theodosian Code (Lib. 9. Tit. 16. Leg. 3.) they are charged with making attempts by their wicked arts upon the lives of innocent men, and drawing others by magical potions (philtra et pharmaca) to commit misdemeanours. They are further charged with disturbing the elements, raising tempests, and practising abominable arts. The Council of Laodicea (343-381. Can. 36) condemned them. The Council of Ancyra forbade the use of medicine to work mischief. St. Basil's canons condemned witchcraft. The fourth Council of Carthage censured enchantment.[[26]] John of Salisbury tells of their feasts, to which they took unbaptized children. William of Auverne describes the charms and incantations which they used to turn a cane into a horse. William of Malmesbury gives an account of two old women who transformed the travellers who passed their door into horses, swine or other animals which they sold. From some of the old Teuton laws we learn that it was believed that witches could take a man's heart out of his body and fill the cavity with straw or wood so that he would go on living.

One of the famous witchcraft trials was that of the Lady Alice Kyteler,[[27]] whose high rank could not save her from the accusation. It was claimed that she used the ceremonies of the church, but with some wicked changes. She extinguished the candles with the exclamation, "Fi! Fi! Fi! Amen!" She was also accused of securing the love of her husbands, who left much property to her, by magic charms. These claims were typical of the accusations against witches in the trials which took place.

By the sixteenth century, the cumulative notion of witches had penetrated both cultivated and uncultivated classes, and was embodied in a great and increasing literature. "No comprehensive work on theology, philosophy, history, law, medicine, or natural science could wholly ignore it," says Burr, "and to lighter literature it afforded the most telling illustrations for the pulpit, the most absorbing gossip for the news-letter, the most edifying tales for the fireside."[[28]]

As a result of this belief in the diabolic power of woman, judicial murder of helpless women became an institution, which is thus characterized by Sumner: "After the refined torture of the body and nameless mental sufferings, women were executed in the most cruel manner. These facts are so monstrous that all other aberrations of the human race are small in comparison.... He who studies the witch trials believes himself transferred into the midst of a race which has smothered all its own nobler instincts, reason, justice, benevolence and sympathy."[[24]]

Any woman was suspect. Michelet, after a thirty years' study, wrote: "Witches they are by nature. It is a gift peculiar to woman and her temperament. By birth a fay, by the regular recurrence of her ecstasy she becomes a sibyl. By her love she grows into an enchantress. By her subtlety ... she becomes a witch and works her spells."[[29]]