[47] Many etymologies as profound occur in the “Witch-hammer.” The word diabolus (devil) is derived from duo, “two,” and bolus, “morsel,” which is thus explained, that the devil fishes at the same time after two morsels, the soul and the body.
[48] This deduction, replete with indecencies which can not be handled, occupies thirty-three pages of the “Witch-hammer.” It pretends to be very convincing. It has also sent women by hundreds of thousands to death.
[49] To give the reader a clearer idea of the really diabolical blindness and brutality which characterizes the terrible book we are giving an account of, we quote the following statement from the “Witch-hammer,” p. 223: “We (the inquisitors Sprenger and his colleagues) find that of all women that we have condemned to the flames very few have voluntarily done harm by sorcery. They have generally been forced by the devil to do it. After having confessed every thing (on the rack) they generally attempt suicide before being taken to the stake. It is the devil who tempts them thus, for he is afraid that by repentance and confession they will receive the pardon of God. If this wily trick is not successful, and if they are prevented from destroying themselves, he knows how to rob them of the chance of grace by other means, namely, by smiting them with fury, madness or sudden death!”—Behold a sample of how theological arguments founded on superior natural influences can be used!
[50] Horst: “Demonomagie,” I.
[51] Colquhoun.
[52] Μῆλα Μανδραγόρου (in Hebrew dudaim) is in the Septuagint a name for the love-apples with which Leah regaled her husband (Gen. xxx. 14). Pliny speaks of the mandragora as a poisonous herb, dangerous to dig; now already Columella knows the mandragora as a half-human being—“semihomo mandragoras.”
[53] Man sagt: wenn ein Erbdieb, dem, wie den Ziguenern das Stehlen angeboren ist, oder dessen Mutter, als sie mit ihm schwanger ging, gestohlen, oder doch gross Gelüsten dazu gehabt—nach Einigen; auch ein Unschuldiger, welcher in der Tortur sich für einen Dieb bekennt—und der ein reiner Junggeselle ist, gehänkt wird, und das Wasser lässt, oder sein Same auf die Erde fällt, so wächst an solchem Ort der Alraun.—“Nork: Sitten und Gebräuche der Deutschen und ihrer Nachbarvölker.”
[54] So Propertius and Plinius. Virgil (eclog. VIII.) makes a shepherd sing:
Has herbas, atque hæc Ponto mihi lecta venena,
Ipse dedit Mœris: nascuntur plurima Ponto.
His ego sæpe lupum fieri, et se condere selvis
Mœrim ... vidi.
[55] Melancthon, who firmly believed in the were-wolf, reasoned in the same way.