But these formed but a small minority of the vast army of victims; and even when some real criminal was arrested or some half-insane person voluntarily ‘confessed’, she was encouraged or compelled to denounce her supposed associates, and thus often involved scores of innocent acquaintances in her own awful fate.
The witch-hunters are not to be blamed for believing in witchcraft, or even for carrying out the scriptural injunction ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’. It is the methods they employed, compared with which the procedure of a Jeffreys or a Caiaphas was just and merciful, which cannot be excused by any talk about the spirit of the age, which brought agony and death to many thousands of innocent men, women and little children, and which excited the fiery and righteous indignation of Dr. John Weyer.
According to Pascal, men never do wrong so thoroughly and so cheerfully as when they are obeying the promptings of a false principle of conscience. To which we may add that men are never more cruel and unjust than when they are in a fright. The witch-hunters, most of them at least, were pious and conscientious men. They appeal to God, the Church, and the Bible at every step. Nicholas Remy, for instance, after torturing and burning over 800 of his fellow creatures, retired from work thinking he had done God and man good service. But one thing troubled his conscience. He had spared the lives of certain young children, and merely ordered them to be scourged naked three times round the place where their parents were burning. He is convinced that this was wrong, and that they will all grow up into witches and sorcerers. Besides, if God sent two she-bears to slay the forty and two children who mocked Elisha, of how much greater punishment are those worthy who have done despite to God, His Mother, the saints, and the Catholic religion?[286] He hopes his sinful clemency will not become a precedent—a fear which was quite unnecessary, for scores of children under twelve were burnt for witchcraft; and the one plea which even then respited the most atrocious murderess did not always avail a witch, since it was believed that her future child, if not the actual offspring of the devil, would infallibly belong to his kingdom.
But the witch-hunters were urged on by fear as well as by piety, for not only did they think themselves exposed to personal attacks from the devil and his allies, but they believed there was a vast and increasing society of men and women in league with the evil one, and that the fate of the world depended on its suppression.
All the machinery, therefore, which the Roman emperors had devised for their protection against treason and the Church for the suppression of heresy was brought into action against the witches, for witchcraft was the acme of treason and heresy, a crimen laesae maiestatis divinae.[287]
For a description of the methods employed we cannot do better than go to the Malleus Maleficarum,[288] the guide and handbook of the witch-hunters.
All proceedings in cases of witchcraft, say the reverend authors, must be on the plan recommended by Popes Clement V and Boniface VIII, ‘summarie, simpliciter, et de plano, ac sine strepitu ac figura iudicii’, a harmless looking phrase which swept away at a stroke all the safeguards which the lawyers of pagan Rome and the ruder justice of ancient Gaul and Germany had placed around accused persons. There are, says the Malleus,[289] two forms of criminal procedure: (1) the old legal or accusatorial form where the prosecutor offers to prove his charge and to accept the consequences of failure, which must be carefully avoided as being dangerous and litigious; and (2) the inquisitorial, where a man denounces another either from zeal for the faith, or because called upon to do so, but takes no further part nor offers to prove his charge, or where a man is suspected by common report and the judge makes inquiry, and this method must always be preferred. The inquisitors, on entering a new district, should issue a proclamation calling on all persons to give information against suspected witches on pain of excommunication and temporal penalties. Any one may be compelled, by torture if necessary, to give evidence, and if he refuses must be punished as an obstinate heretic. Other sorcerers, or the man’s wife and family, are lawful witnesses against, but not for, the accused. Criminals and perjured persons, if they show zeal for the faith, may be admitted to give evidence. Priests, nobles, graduates of universities, and others legally exempt from torture are not exempt in the case of witch trials.[290]
‘Delation,’ the scandal of imperial Rome, was not only encouraged but enforced, and in some places, as at Milan, boxes were put in the churches, into which any one might drop an anonymous denunciation of his neighbour.
Names of informers are not to be revealed under penalty of excommunication; the advocate, if there is one, need be told the charges only. This advocate must not be chosen by the accused but by the inquisitor, and he must refuse the case if it seems to him unjust or hopeless. He must not use legal quibbles or make delays or appeals, and is to be specially warned that if he be found a protector of heretics or a hinderer of the inquisition, he will incur the usual penalties for those heinous crimes. If he reply that he defends the person, not the error, this avails not, for he must make no defence which interferes with proceeding summarie, simpliciter, et de plano.[291] After this it is not surprising to find that those accused of witchcraft were rarely defended by an advocate.
Faith need be kept with heretics and sorcerers ‘for a time only’.[292] Therefore an inquisitor may promise not to condemn a person if he confesses, and then pass sentence after a few days, or if of very tender conscience by the mouth of another. It is also lawful to introduce persons, etiam mulieres honestae, to the accused who promise to find means for their escape if they will teach them some form of witchcraft. This, say the authors, is a most successful method for getting convictions.[293]