"Hast thou believed or taken part in the credence that there be women who, by certain charms or incantations, can change men's minds, that is to say, from hatred to love, or from love to hatred, or can injure or abstract men's goods by their charms? If thou hast believed or been partaker, one year, etc.
"Hast thou believed that there be women who can do this, according to the saying of certain women beguiled by the devil, who maintain that they must of necessity and of precept so do—that is to say, must ride upon certain beasts, with a great multitude of fiends transformed into the semblance of women, which the foolish call Holda, and have been bound in fellowship with them? If thou hast been partaker in that belief, one year, etc."
The following points have to be considered in estimating the controversial value of this chapter as used by Janus: 1st. How far do its enunciations necessarily represent the theology of the universal church? 2d. Do the beliefs which the chapter condemns, or do they not, involve something more than the attribution of "supernatural powers and effects to the aid of demons"? As to the first, this chapter is no utterance of a council representing the church universal; for, even supposing it really to belong to the Council of Ancyra, this was not a general council. But, as Janus admits, the chapter is first quoted without any title by the Benedictine, Regino, Abbot of Prumium, in the diocese of Treves, who wrote about 906. It was first called a canon of Ancyra by Burchard, another Benedictine (1020), who extracted it from Regino's collection, and inadvertently headed it with the title belonging to another passage. There is no trace to be found of it in the early MSS. of either the Greek or Latin acts of the Council of Ancyra. It is not to be met with in any collection of canons previous to the XIth century. Baluze was no doubt right in suggesting that it was part of some old Frank capitulary as yet undiscovered.
Janus[96] says that Regino compiled the chapter in question from passages in the pseudo-Augustinian writing, De Spiritu et Anima—a sufficiently remarkable statement, if we consider that Regino wrote early in the Xth century, and that the De Spiritu et Anima, which contains passages from S. Bernard and Hugo of S. Victor, was certainly not composed before the XIIth century.[97]
But, it may be urged, on the strength of the passages from Burchard's Roman Penitentiary, the Roman Church had given its sanction to this chapter, and had embodied it in its practice, even before Burchard had assigned it its imposing title. To this I reply that the brothers Ballerini[98] produce an XIth century MS. of a Roman Penitentiary (Vatican Codex, 3830) identical with Burchard's, save that it is without certain passages, and among them this very interrogatory on magic. The Ballerini remark that the expression, "were-wolf," which occurs in a passage of the interrogatory which I have not quoted, evidently marks it as belonging to some local German council. I may add that the expression, "Holda," indubitably indicates the same nationality; Holda, or Holle, being the wandering moon-goddess of the Teutons.
As to the second point, the beliefs condemned clearly involve something more than the attribution of supernatural power to the devil—viz., the acknowledgment that there is something "divine and godlike beside the one God"; whence it follows that the fiend can exercise his power independently of God; can force the wills of men to his service "by necessity and precept"; and can change one thing into another wholly different. Now, all these points have been persistently condemned by the church of all ages. That this is the one admissible interpretation of the chapter will become more and more evident as we examine the teaching of previous and contemporaneous theology.
If it be urged that, anyhow, this chapter represents a more civilized legislation, one more consonant in its wise leniency with the sentiments of to-day, than that which prevailed in the last half of the middle ages, and, indeed, for some centuries longer, I must remind my readers that I have been engaged in refuting a specific allegation of Janus, to the effect that the theology of the church had undergone a substantial change on the subject of witchcraft. I admit, of course, fully that the system which prevailed for some centuries in church and state was calculated by its extravagant severity to provoke the evil it was intended to repress. This has been often admitted by Catholic writers. Cardinal de Cusa, in the first half of the XVth century, when legate a latere in the German Empire, used these weighty words: "Where men believe that these witchcrafts do produce their effect, there are found many witches; neither can they be exterminated by fire and sword; for the more diligently this sort of persecution is waged, so much the stronger grows the delusion; for the persecution argues that the devil is feared more than God, and that, in the midst of the wicked, he can work evil; and so the devil is feared and propitiated, and thus gains his end; and though, according to human law and divine sanction, they deserve to be utterly extirpated, yet we must act cautiously and with great prudence, lest worse come of it."[99] He goes on to say that he himself examined two witches, and found them to be half mad. He shut them up, and made them do penance. The name of the Westphalian Jesuit, F. Spee (A.D. 1631), is identified with the relaxation of the penalties against witches, as completely as that of Wilberforce with the abolition of slavery, or that of Howard with the reformation of prisons; although he was unable to accept the rationalist thesis, "It is impossible for one person to influence another, except through sensible mediums; and the devil is an absurdity." The rationalist text is, no doubt, the sovereignest remedy on earth for cruelty to witches; but in the same sense is the tenet, "All worship is absurd," the most effectual bar to idolatry; and there are other less costly remedies. Whatever may be said on the score of prudence, it cannot be denied that such witches as deliberately produced fatal mischief by acting upon the excited imaginations of their victims were justly put to death, and that the formal transference of allegiance from Christ to the devil was formal high treason against the constitution of Christendom. Abuses of justice had no doubt crept into local practice, such as that of putting the possessed person—that is to say, the devil within him—into the witness-box, in order to discover the witch. This arose from the delusion that the devil might, by certain formulas, be bound over to speak the truth. It is vehemently denounced by all the standard writers on the subject—i.e. Delrio and Carena. Pegna (De Cffic. Inquis., pars ii. tit. xii. §§ 26 and 27) points out that the Roman inquisition, contrary to the practice elsewhere, has always refused to submit a witch to the question on the evidence of a companion, or to accept the testimony of one witch as to another's presence at the "Sabbath," because of the great likelihood of delusion. Indeed, Rome seems to have been always comparatively just and moderate in her practice, and often singularly lenient. It was such specimens of provincial ecclesiasticism as the Spanish inquisition, in which the secular interest had the lion's share, that went furthest in active persecution; and these, again, in their cruel persecution of witches, as the learned editor of Hudibras, Dr. Zachary Grey, confesses, the sectaries of England and Scotland "much exceeded."[100] Perhaps this was owing to their still further separation from the centre of Christendom.
The arguments against execution for witchcraft of Spee and De Cusa come pretty much to this: 1st. The imaginations of these unhappy people are in such a condition that you cannot make out how much is reality, how much delusion, nor, again, how far they are free agents. 2d. The whole subject is one on which people's imaginations are so excitable, and imagination has so large a share in the productions of witchcraft, that fire-and-sword persecution breeds more mischief than it destroys.
If ever a belief in the substantial reality of spiritualism becomes established as of old, and—as will inevitably happen—spiritualism is used, not merely for amusement, but for mischief, the champions of civilization may be glad to avail themselves of these almost forgotten Catholic arguments against persecution.