The history of these mental epidemics is easier to trace than their causes. Certainly, reason does nothing to control them. In almost every case there are a few sane men to point out, with perfect rationality, the nature of the folly to their contemporaries, but in all cases their words fall on deaf ears. They are mocked, imprisoned, sometimes put to death for their pains, whereas any fanatical fool that adds fuel to the flame of current passion is listened to, rewarded and followed.
[Sidenote: Ancient magic]
The original stuff from which the mania was wrought is a savage survival. Hebrew and Roman law dealt with witchcraft. The Middle Ages saw the survival of magic, still called in Italy, "the old religion," and new superstitions added to it. Something of the ancient enchantment still lies upon the {652} fairylands of Europe. In the Apennines one sometimes comes upon a grove of olives or cypresses as gnarled and twisted as the tortured souls that Dante imagined them to be. Who can wander through the heaths and mountains of the Scotch Highlands, with their uncanny harmonies of silver mist and grey cloud and glint of water and bare rock and heather, and not see in the distance the Weird Sisters crooning over their horrible cauldron? In Germany the forests are magic-mad. Walking under the huge oaks of the Thuringian Forest or the Taunus, or in the pine woods of Hesse, one can see the flutter of airy garments in the chequered sunlight falling upon fern and moss; one can glimpse goblins and kobolds hiding behind the roots and rocks; one can hear the King of the Willows[1] and the Bride of the Wind moaning and calling in the rustling of the leaves. On a summer's day the calm of pools is so complete that it seems as if, according to Luther's words, the throwing of a stone into the water would raise a tempest. But on moonlit, windy, Walpurgis Night, witches audibly ride by, hooted at by the owls, and vast spectres dance in the cloud-banks beyond the Brocken.
[Sidenote: The witch]
The witch has become a typical figure: she was usually a simple, old woman living in a lonely cottage with a black cat, gathering herbs by the light of the moon. But she was not always an ancient beldam; some witches were known as the purest and fairest maidens of the village; some were ladies in high station; some were men. A ground for suspicion was sometimes furnished by the fact that certain charletans playing upon the credulity of the ignorant, professed to be able by sorcery to find money, "to provoke persons to love," or to consume the body and goods of a client's enemy. Black magic was occasionally resorted to to get rid {653} of personal or political enemies. More often a wise woman would be sought for her skill in herbs and her very success in making cures would sometimes be her undoing.
[Sidenote: The devil]
If the witch was a domestic article in Europe, the devil was an imported luxury from Asia. Like Aeneas and many another foreign conqueror, when he came to rule the land he married its princess—in this case Hulda the pristine goddess of love and beauty—and adopted many of the native customs. It is difficult for us to imagine what a personage the devil was in the age of the Reformation. Like all geniuses he had a large capacity for work and paid great attention to detail. Frequently he took the form of a cat or a black dog with horns to frighten children by "skipping to and fro and sitting upon the top of a nettle"; again he would obligingly hold a review of evil spirits for the satisfaction of Benvenuto Cellini's curiosity. He was at the bottom of all the earthquakes, pestilences, famines and wars of the century, and also, if we may trust their mutual recriminations, he was the special patron of the pope on the one hand and of Calvin on the other. Luther often talked with him, though in doing so the sweat poured from his brow and his heart almost stopped beating. Luther admitted that the devil always got the best of an argument and could only be banished by some unprintably nasty epithets hurled at his head. Satan and his satellites often took the form of men or women and under the name of incubi and succubi had sexual intercourse with mortals. One of the most abominable features of the witch craze was that during its height hundreds of children of four or five years old confessed to being the devil's paramours.
So great was the power of Satan that, in the common belief, many persons bartered their souls to him {654} in return for supernatural gifts in this life. To compensate them for the loss of their salvation, these persons, the witches, were enabled to do acts of petty spite to their neighbors, turning milk sour, blighting crops, causing sickness to man and animals, making children cry themselves to death before baptism, rendering marriages barren, procuring abortion, and giving charms to blind a husband to his wife's adultery, or philters to compel love.
[Sidenote: Witches' Sabbath]
On certain nights the witches and devils met for the celebration of blasphemous and obscene rites in an assembly known as the Witches' Sabbath. To enable themselves to ride to the meeting-place on broomsticks, the witches procured a communion wafer, applied a toad to it, burned it, mingled its ashes with the blood of an infant, the powdered bones of a hanged man and certain herbs. The meeting then indulged in a parody of the mass, for, so the grave doctors taught, as Christ had his sacraments the devil had his "unsacraments" or "execrements." His Satanic Majesty took the form of a goat, dog, cat or ape and received the homage of his subjects in a loathsome ceremony. After a banquet promiscuous intercourse of devils and witches followed.