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217
CHAPTER V.
WITCHCRAFT.
Although toward the
beginning of the IV. century, people began to speak of the
nocturnal meeting of witches and sorcerers, under the name of
"Assembly of Diana," or "Herodia," it was not until canon or church
law, had become quite engrafted upon the civil law, that the full
persecution for witchcraft arose. A witch was held to be a woman
who had deliberately sold herself to the evil one; who delighted in
injuring others, and who, for the purpose of enhancing the enormity
of her evil acts, choose the Sabbath day for the performance of her
most impious rites, and to whom 'all black animals had special
relationship; the black cat in many countries being held as her
principal familiar. "To go to the Sabbath" signified taking part in
witch orgies. The possession of a pet of any kind at this period
was dangerous to woman. One who had tamed a frog, was condemned to
be burned in consequence, the harmless amphibian being looked upon
as a familiar of Satan. The devil ever being depicted in sermon or
Satan. The devil ever being depicted in sermon or
story as black, all black animals by an easy transition of ideas,
became associated with evil and witches.
1 Although I
have referred to witchcraft as having taken on a new phase soon
after the confirmation of celibacy as a dogma of the church by
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the Lateran Council of 1215, it yet requires a
chapter by itself, in order to show to what proportions this form
of heresy arose, and the method of the church in its treatment.
This period was the age of supreme despair for woman,
2 death by
fire being the common form of witch punishment. Black cats were
frequently burned with a witch at the stake;
3 during the
reign of Louis XV. of France, sacks of condemned cats were burned
upon the public square devoted to witch torture. Cats and witches
are found depicted together in a curious cut on the title page of a
book printed in 1621. The proverbial 'nine lives' of a cat were
associated in the minds of people with the universally believed
possible metamorphosis of a witch into a cat.
4 So firmly
did the diabolical nature of the black cat impress itself upon the
people, that its effects are felt in business to this day, the skin
of black cats being less prized and of less value in the fur market
than those of other colors. A curious exemplification of this
inherited belief is found in Great Britain. An English taxidermist
who exports thousands of mounted kittens each year to the United
States and other countries, finds the prejudice against black cats
still so great that he will not purchase kittens of this obnoxious
color.
5 In the minds of many
p. 219
people, black seems ineradicably connected with
sorcery.
In the "Folk Lore of
Cats," it is stated that as recently, as 1867 a woman was publicly
accused of witchcraft in the state of Pennsylvania on account of
her administering three drops of a black cat's blood to a child as
a remedy for the croup. She admitted the fact but denied that
witchcraft had anything to do with it, and twenty witnesses were
called to prove its success as a remedy. From an early period the
belief in metamorphosis by means of magical power was common
throughout Christendom. St. Augustine relates
6 that
"hostess or innkeepers sometimes put confections into a kind of
cheese made by them, and travelers eating thereof, were presently
metamorphosed into laboring beasts, as horses, asses or oxen." It
was also believed that the power of changing into various animals
was possessed by witches themselves.
7 At the present day
under certain forms of insanity persons imagine themselves to be
animals, birds, and even inanimate things, as glass; but usually
those hallucinations occur in isolated instances. But among the
strange epidemics which have at various times affected christendom,
none is more singular than that Lycanthropia, or wolf madness,
which attacked such multitudes
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of inhabitants of the Jura in 1600, as to become
a source of great public danger. The affected persons walked upon
their feet and hands until their palms became hard and horny. They
howled like wolves, and as wolves do they hunted in packs,
murdering and devouring many children, nor could the most severe
punishment put an end to this general madness. Six hundred persons
were executed upon their own confessions, which included admissions
of compact with the devil, attendance upon the Sabbath and cannibal
feasting upon a mountain, the devil having used his power for their
transmutation into wolves.
8
![[Witch on Broomstick]](/imgs/pinups/portrait/abbazia.al-abbazia-pinup-photographer-07.jpg)
Witches were believed to ride through the air
upon animals or bits of wood. The fact of their possession of such
powers is asserted by many writers, the usual method of
transportation being a goat, night crow or enchanted staff.
9 The rhyming Mother Goose question:
"Old woman, old woman,
oh whither, oh whither so high?"
And its rhyming
answer:
"To sweep the cobwebs
from the sky,
And I'll be back by and by,"
doubtless owes its origin to the witchcraft
period.
A song said to be in use
during witch dances ran:
"Har, Har, Diabole,
Diabole; Sali huc,
Sali illuc; Lude hic, Lude illic;
Sabaoth, Sabaoth."
Although the
confirmation by the church in the
p. 221
XIII. century of the supreme holiness of
celibacy, inaugurated a new era of persecution for witchcraft, a
belief in its existence had from the earliest times been a doctrine
of the church, Augustine, as shown, giving the weight of his
authority in favor. But to the Christian Emperor Charlemagne, in
the eight century, the first use of torture in accusation of
witchcraft is due. This great emperor while defying the power of
the pope, over whom he even claimed jurisdiction, was himself a
religious autocrat whose severity exceeded even that of the papal
throne. Torture was rapidly adopted over Europe, and soon became
general in the church; the council of Salsburg, 799, publicly
ordering its use in witch trials.
A new era of persecution and increased priestly
power dates to the reign of Charlemagne, who although holding
himself superior to the pope, as regarded independent action,
greatly enlarged the dominion of the church and power of the
priesthood. He forced Christianity upon the Saxons at immense
sacrifice of life, added to the wealth and power of the clergy by
tithe lands, recognized their judicial and canonical authority,
made marriage illegal without priestly sanction and still further
degraded womanhood through his own polygamy. Although himself of
such wanton life, he yet caused a woman of the town to be dragged
naked through the city streets, subject to all the cruel tortures
of an accompanying mob.
In the ninth century the
power of the pope was again greatly increased. Up to this period he
had been elected by the clergy and people of Rome, and the
approbation of the emperor was necessary to confirm it. But Charles
the Bald, 875, relinquished all right of jurisdiction over Rome,
and thereafter the Roman Pontiff became an acknowledged if not
sometimes
p. 222
a supreme power in the appointment of temporal
princes. The power of bishops, clergy, and cardinals diminished as
that of the pope increased.
Notwithstanding her
claims of power through St. Peter, it has been by gradual steps
that Rome has decided upon her policy and established her dogmas.
it is but little over four decades, at the Ecumenical of 1849, that
the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, was
first authoritatively promulgated, although her worship had long
existed, being traceable to the Egyptian doctrine of the trinity,
with the substitution of Mary in place of Isis. It was not until
1085 that Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII, declared matrimony a
sacrament of the church; and not until 1415, at the Council of
Trent, that extreme unction was instituted and defined as a
sacrament. Each of these dogmas threw more power into the hands of
the church, and greater wealth into her coffers. Thus we see the
degeneration of Christianity has had its epochs. One occurred when
the Council of Nice allowed chance to dictate which should be
considered the canonical books of the New Testament, accepting some
theretofore regarded as of doubtful authenticity and rejecting
others that had been universally conceded genuine.
10
Another epoch of degeneration occurs when the State in person of
the great emperor Charlemagne added to the power of the Church by
the establishment of torture, whose extremest use fell upon that
portion of humanity looked upon as the direct embodiment of evil.
The peculiar character attributed to woman by the church, led
to
p. 223
the adoption of torture as a necessary method of
forcing her to speak the truth. The testimony of two, and in some
countries, three women being held as only equal to that of one man.
At first, young children and women expecting motherhood, were
exempted, but afterwards neither age or condition freed from
accusation and torture, and women even in the pangs of maternity
were burned at the stake,
11 Christianity in this respect
showing much more barbarity than pagan nations. In pagan Rome the
expectant mother was held sacred; to vex or disturb her mind was
punishable, to strike her was death. She even possessed a right
pertaining to the Vestal Virgins; if meeting a condemned criminal
on his way to execution, her word sufficed for his pardon. It
scarcely seems possible, yet in some christian countries the most
prominent class subjected to the torture, were women expecting
motherhood. Christianity became the religion of Iceland A. D.,
1000, and by the earliest extant. law, the "Gragas," dating to
1119, we find that while torture was prescribed in but few
instances yet the class principally subjected to it, were women
about to become mothers. But generally throughout Europe, until
about the XIV. century, when priestly celibacy had become firmly
established and the Inquisition connected with the state, a class
consisting of nobles, doctors of the law, pregnant women, and
children under fourteen, were exempt from torture except in case of
high treason and a few other offenses. But at a later period when
these institutions had greatly increased the irresponsible power of
the church,
p. 224
we find neither sex, condition nor age, free
from its infliction, both state and church uniting in. its use.
In Venitian Folk Lore,
it is stated that Satan once became furious with the Lord because
paradise contained more souls than hell, and he determined by fine
promises to seduce human beings to his worship and thus fill his
kingdom. He decided to always tempt women instead of men, because
through ambition or a desire for revenge, they yield more easily.
This legend recalls the biblical story of Satan taunting the Lord
with the selfish nature of job's goodness, and receiving from God
the permission to try him. Witchcraft was regarded as a sin almost
confined to women. The Witch Hammer declared the very word
femina meant one wanting in faith. A wizard was rare; one
writer declaring that to every hundred witches but one wizard was
found. In time of Louis XV. this difference was greatly increased;
"To one wizard 10,000 witches;" another writer asserted there were
100,000 witches in France alone. The great inquisitor Sprenger,
author of the "Witch Hammer" and through whose instrumentality many
countries were filled with victims, largely promoted this belief.
"Heresy of witches, not of wizards
12 must we call it, for
these latter are of very small account." No class or condition of
women escaped him; we read of young children, old people, infants,
witches of fifteen years, and two "infernally beautiful" of
seventeen years. Although the ordeal of the red hot iron fell into
disuse in the secular courts early in the fourteenth century,
(1329),
13 ecclesiasticism preserved it in case of
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women accused of witchcraft for one hundred and
fifty years longer.
14 One of the peculiarities of
witchcraft accusations, was that protestations of innocence, and a
submission to ordeals such as had always vindicated those taking
part in them if passing through unharmed, did not clear a woman
charged with witchcraft, who was then accused with having received
direct help from Satan. The maxim of secular law that the torture
which did not produce confession entitled the accused to full
acquittal was not in force under ecclesiastical indictments, and
the person accused of witchcraft was always liable to be tried
again for the same crime. Every safeguard of law was violated in
case of woman, even Magna Charta forbidding appeal to her except in
case of her husband.
Before the introduction
of Christianity, no capital punishment existed, in the modern
acceptation of the term, except for witchcraft. But pagans unlike
christians, did not look upon women as more given to this practice
than men; witches and wizards were alike stoned to death. But as
soon as a system of religion was adopted which taught the greater
sinfulness of women, over whom authority had been given to man by
God himself, the saying arose "one wizard to 10,000
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witches." and the persecution for witchcraft
became chiefly directed against women. The church degraded woman by
destroying her self-respect, and teaching her to feel consciousness
of guilt in the very fact of her existence.
15 The
extreme wickedness of woman, taught as a cardinal doctrine of the
church, created the belief that she was desirous of destroying all
religion, witchcraft being regarded as her strongest
weapon,
16 therefore no punishment for it was thought too
severe. The teaching of the church, as to the creation of women and
the origin of evil, embodied the ordinary belief of the christian
peoples, and that woman rather than man practiced this sin, was
attributed by the church to her original sinful nature, which led
her to disobey God's first command in Eden.
17
Although witchcraft was treated as a crime
against the state, it was regarded as a greater sin against heaven,
the bible having set its seal of disapproval in the injunction
"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." The church therefore
claimed its control. When coming under ecclesiastical jurisdiction,
witchcraft was much more strenuously dealt with than when it fell
under lay tribunals. It soon proved a great source of emolument to
the church, which grew enormously rich
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by its confiscation to its own use of all
property of the condemned. Sprenger, whose work The Witch
Hammer, was devoted to methods of dealing with this sin, was
printed in size convenient for carrying in the pocket.
18 It based its authority upon the bible,
twenty-three pages being devoted to proving that women were
especially addicted to sorcery. This work was sanctioned by the
pope, but after the reformation became equally authoritative in
protestant as in catholic countries, not losing its power for evil
until the XVIII. century. A body of men known as "Traveling Witch
Inquisitors," of whom Sprenger was chief, journeyed from country to
country throughout christendom, in search of victims for torture
and death. Their entrance into a country or city was regarded with
more fear than famine or pestilence, especially by women, against
whom their malignity was chiefly directed, Sprenger, the great
authority, declaring that her name signified evil; "the very word
femina, (woman), meaning one wanting in faith, for
fe
means faith, and
minus less.
19" The reformation
caused no diminution in its use, the protestant clergy equally with
the Catholic constantly appealing to its pages. Still another class
known as "Witch Finders," or "Witch Persecutors" confined their
work to their own neighborhoods. Of these, Cardan, a famous Italian
physician, said:
"In order to obtain
forfeit property, the same persons act as accusers and judges, and
invent a thousand stories as proof."
20 The love of power,
and the love
p. 228
of money formed a most hideous combination for
evil in the church; not a christian country but was full of the
horrors of witch persecutions and violent deaths. During the reign
of Francis I. more than 100,000 witches were put to death, mostly
by burning, in France alone. Christ was invoked as authority, the
square devoted to Auto da F�, being known as, "The Burning Place of
the Cross."
The Parliament of
Toulouse burned 400 witches at one time. Four hundred women at one
hour on the public square, dying the horrid death of fire for a
crime which never existed save in the imagination of those
persecutors and which grew in their imagination from a false belief
in woman's extraordinary wickedness, based upon a false theory as
to original sin. Remy, judge of Nancy, acknowledged to having burnt
eight hundred in sixteen years; at the rate of half a hundred a
year. Many women were driven to suicide in fear of the torture in
store for them. In 1595 sixteen of those accused by Remy, destroyed
themselves rather than fall into his terrible hands. Six hundred
were burnt in one small bishopric in one year; nine hundred during
the same period in another. Seven thousand lost their lives in
Treves; a thousand in the province of Como, in Italy, in a single
year; five hundred were executed at Geneva, in a single month.
While written history
does not fail to give abundant record in regard to the number of
such victims of the church, largely women whose lives were
forfeited by accusation of witchcraft, hundreds at one time dying
agonizingly by fire, a new and weird evidence as
p. 229
to the innumerable multitude of these martyrs
was of late most unexpectedly brought to light in Spain. During a
course of leveling and excavations for city improvements in Madrid,
recently, the workmen came upon the
Quemadero de la
Cruz.
21 The cutting of a new road
through that part of the city laid bare like geological strata,
long black layers super-imposed one above the other at distances of
one or two feet, in the sandstone and clay. Some of these layers
extended 150 feet in a horizontal direction, and were at first
supposed to be the actual discovery of new geological strata, which
they closely resembled. They proved to be the remains of
inquisitorial burnings, where thousands of human beings of all ages
had perished by the torture of fire.
22 The layers consisted
of coal coagulated with human fat, bones, the remains of singed
hair, and the shreds of burnt garments This discovery created great
excitement, people visiting the spot by thousands to satisfy
themselves of the fact, and to carry away some memento of that dark
age of christian cruelty, a cruelty largely exercised against the
most helpless and innocent, a cruelty having no parallel in the
annals of paganism. Imagination fails to conceive the condensed
torture this spot of earth knew under the watchword of "Christ and
His Cross"; and that was but one of the hundreds, nay, thousands of
similar "Burning Places of the Cross," with which every christian
country, city, and town was provided for many hundreds of years. A
most diabolical custom of the church made these burnings a holiday
spectacle. People thus grew to look unmoved upon
p. 230
the most atrocious tortures, and excited crowds
hung about witch burnings, eagerly listening as the priests
exhorted to confession, or tormented the dying victims with
pictures of an unending fire soon to be their fate.
An accusation of
witchcraft struck all relatives of the accused with terror,
destroying the ordinary virtues of humanity in the hearts of
nearest friends. As it was maintained that devils possessed more
than one in a family, each member sought safety by aiding the
church in accumulating proof against the accused, in hopes thereby
to escape similar charge. It is impossible for us at the present
day to conceive the awful horror falling upon a family into which
an accusation of witchcraft had come. Not alone the shame and
disgrace of such a charge; the terrors of a violent death under the
most painful form; the sudden hurling of the family from ease and
affluence to the most abject poverty; but above all the belief that
unending torment by fire pursued the lost soul throughout eternity,
made a combination of terrors appalling to the stoutest heart. A
Scotch woman convicted as a witch and sentenced to be burned alive
could not be persuaded by either priest or sheriff to admit her
guilt. Suffering the intensest agonies of thirst during her torture
she espied her only son in the surrounding crowd. Imploring him in
the name of her love for him she begged as her last request, that
he should bring her a drink. He shook his head, not speaking; her
fortitude her love, his own most certain conviction of her
innocence not touching him; when she cried again, "Oh, my dear son,
help me any drink, be it never so little, for I am most extremely
drie, oh drie, drie." His answer to her agonizing entreaties could
not be credited were it not a subject of history, and the date so
recent.
p. 231
"By no means dear mother
will I do you the wrong, for the drier you are no doubt you will
burn the better."
23 Under Accadian law 3,000
years before christianity, the son who denied his father was
sentenced to a simple fine, but he who denied his mother was to be
banished from the land and sea;
24 but in the sixteenth
century of the christian era, we find a son under christian laws
denying his mother a drink of water in her death agony by fire.
Erskine says:
It was instituted in
Scotland 1653, "that all who used witchcraft, sorcery, necromancy,
or pretended skill therein, shall be punished capitally; upon which
statute numberless innocent persons were tried and burnt to death,
upon evidence which, in place of affording reasonable conviction to
the judge, was fraught with absurdity and superstition."
25
Thirty thousand persons
accused of witchcraft were burned to death in Germany and Italy
alone, and although neither age nor sex was spared, yet women and
girls were the chief victims. Uncommon beauty was as dangerous to a
woman as the possession of great wealth, which brought frequent
accusations in
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order that the church might seize upon the
witches property for its own use.
Children of the most
tender years did not escape accusation and death. During the height
of witch. craft persecution, hundreds of little ones were condemned
as witches. Little girls of ten, eight, and seven years are
mentioned; blind girls, infants
26 and even young boys
were among the numbers who thus perished. Everywhere the most
helpless classes were the victims.
It was declared that
witches looked no person steadily in the face, but allowed their
eyes to wander from side to side, or kept them fixed upon the
earth. To this assertion that a witch could not look any one in the
face, the present belief of a connection between guilt and a
downcast look, is due; although the church taught that a woman
should preserve a downward look in shame for the sin she had
brought into the world, and to this day, an open, confident look
upon a woman's face is deprecated as evil. Attendance upon
Sabbats
27 and control of the weather were among the
accusations brought against the witch. In Scotland a woman accused
of raising a storm by taking off her stockings, was put to death.
Sprenger tells of a Swiss farmer whose little daughter startled him
by saying she could bring rain, immediately raising a
storm.
28
p. 233
Whatever the pretext
made for witchcraft persecution we have abundant proof that the
so-called "witch" was among the most profoundly scientific persons
of the age. The church having forbidden its offices and all
external methods of knowledge to woman, was profoundly stirred with
indignation at her having through her own wisdom, penetrated into
some of the most deeply subtle secrets of nature: and it was a
subject of debate during the middle ages if learning for woman was
not an additional capacity for evil, as owing to her, knowledge had
first been introduced in the world. In penetrating into these
arcana, woman trenched upon that mysterious hidden knowledge of the
church which it regarded as among its most potential methods of
controlling mankind. Scholars have invariably attributed magical
knowledge and practices to the church, popes and prelates of every
degree having been thus accused. The word "magic" or "wisdom"
simply meaning superior science, was attributed in the highest
degree to King Solomon, who ruled even the Elementals by means of
his magic ring made in accord with certain natural laws. He was
said to have drawn his power directly from God. Magi were known as
late as the X. century of this era. Among their powers were casting
out demons, the fearless use of poisons, control of spirits and an
acquaintance with many natural laws unknown to the world at large.
During the present century, the Abbe Constant (Eliphas Levi),
declared the
Pentagram to be the key of the two worlds, and
if rightly, understood, endowing man with infinite power. The
empire
p. 234
of THE WILL over the astral light is symbolized
in magic by the
Pentagram, the growth of a personal will
being the most important end to be attained in the history of man's
evolution. The opposition of the church to this growth of the human
will in mankind, has ever been the most marked feature in its
history. Under WILL, man decides for himself. escaping from all
control that hinders his personal development.
It is only an innate and
natural tendency of the soul to go beyond its body to find material
with which to clothe the life that it desires to give expression
to. The soul can and must be trained to do this consciously. You
can easily see that this power possessed
consciously will
give its possessor power to work magic.
Ignorance and the
anathemas of the church against knowledge to be gained through an
investigation of the more abstruse laws of nature, have invested
the word "magic" with terror. But magic simply means knowledge of
the effect of certain natural, but generally unknown laws; the
secret operation of natural causes, according to Bacon and other
philosophers; consequences resulting from control of the invisible
powers of nature, such as are shown in the electrical appliances of
the day, which a few centuries since would have been termed
witchcraft. Seeking to compel the aid of spirits, was understood as
magic at an early day. Lenormant says the object of magic in
Chaldea, was to conjure the spirits giving minute description of
the ancient formula. Scientific knowledge in. the hands of the
church alone, was a great element of spiritual and temporal power,
aiding it in more fully subduing the human will. The testimony of
the ages entirely destroys the assertion sometimes made that
witchcraft was merely a species of hysteria. Every discovery of
p. 235
science is a nearer step towards knowledge of
the laws governing "the Accursed Sciences," as everything connected
with psychic power in possession of the laity was termed by the
church. "Her seven evidences for possession" included nearly all
forms of mesmerism. All modern investigations tend to prove what
was called witchcraft, to have been in most instances the action of
psychic laws not yet fully understood. An extremely suggestive
article appeared in the January and February numbers of "The Path"
1887, by C. H. A. Bjerregaard entitled, "The Elementals and the
Elementary Spirits." In it Mr. Bjerregaard referred to the Pacinian
Corpuscles, the discovery of an Italian physician in 1830 and 1840.
He said:
Pacini found in all the
sensible nerves of the fingers many elliptical whitish corpuscles.
He compared them to the electrical organs of the torpedo and
described them as animal magneto-motors, or organs of animal
magnetism, and so did Henle and Holliker, two German anatomists who
have studied and described these corpuscles very minutely.
In the human body they
are found in great numbers in connection with the nerves of the
hand, also in those of the foot * * * The ecstatic dances of the
enthusiasts and the not-sinking of somnambulists in water, or their
ability to use the soles of their feet as organs of perception, and
the ancient art of healing by the soles of the feet-all these facts
explain the mystery.
They are found sparingly
on the spinal nerves, and on the plexuses of the sympathetic, but
never on the nerves of motion * * * Anatomists are interested in
these Pacinian corpuscles because of the novel aspect in which they
present the constituent parts of the nerve-tube, placed in the
heart of a system of concentric membranous capsules with
intervening fluid, and divested of that layer which they (the
anatomists)
p. 236
regard as an isolator and protector of the more
potential central axis within.
This apparatus--almost
formed like a voltaic pile, is the instrument for that peculiar
vital energy, known more or less to all students as Animal
Magnetism.
Since the cat is
somewhat famous in all witchcraft, let me state, that in the
mesentery of the cat, they can be seen in large numbers with the
naked eye, as small oval-shaded grains a little smaller than
hemp-seeds A few have been found in the ox (symbol of the priestly
office,) but they are wanting in all birds, amphibia and
fishes.
"Magic" whether brought
about by the aid of spirits or simply through an understanding of
secret natural laws, is of two kinds, "white" and "black,"
according as its intent and consequences are evil or good, and in
this respect does not differ from the use made of the well known
laws of nature, which are ever of good or evil character, in the
hands of good or evil persons. To the church in its powerful
control of the human will, must be attributed the use of "black
magic," in its most injurious form. Proof that knowledge of the
mysterious laws governing ordinary natural phenomena still exists
even among civilized people, is indubitable. Our American Indians
in various portions of the continent, according to authorities,
also possess power to produce storms of thunder, lightning and
rain
29
A vast amount of
evidence exists, to show that the word "witch" formerly signified a
woman of superior knowledge. Many of the persons called witches
doubtless possessed a super-abundance of the Pacinian corpuscles in
hands and feet, enabling them to swim
p. 237
when cast into water bound, to rise in the air
against the ordinary action of gravity, to heal by a touch, and in
some instances to sink into a condition of catalepsy, perfectly
unconscious of torture when applied. Many were doubtless psychic
sensitives of high powers similar perhaps to the "Seeress of
Prevorst," whose peculiar characteristics were the subject of
investigation by Dr. Kerner, about the end of the witch period, his
report forming one of the most mysteriously interesting portions of
psychic literature. The "Seeress" was able to perceive the hidden
principles of all vegetable or mineral substances, whether
beneficial or injurious. Dr. Kerner stated that her magnetic
condition might be divided into four degrees.
First; that in
which she ordinarily was when she appeared to be awakened but on
the contrary was the first stage of her inner life, many persons of
whom it was not expected and who was not aware of it themselves,
being in this state.
Second; the
magnetic dream, which she believed to be the condition of many
persons who were regarded as insane.
Third; the half
wakening state when she spoke and wrote the inner language, her
spirit then being in intimate conjunction
with her soul.
Fourth; her
clairvoyant state.
With the investigation
of Dr Kerner, the discoveries of Galvani, Pacini, and those more
recently connected with electricity, notably of Edison and Nikolas
Tesla, the world seems upon the eve of important knowledge which
may throw full light upon the peculiar nerve action of the witch
period, when a
holocaust of women were sacrificed, victims
of the ignorance and barbarity of the church, which thus retarded
civilization and delayed spiritual progress for many hundred years.
Besides the natural psychics who formed
p. 238
a large proportion of the victims of this
period, other women with a natural spirit of investigation made
scientific discoveries with equally baleful effect upon themselves;
the one fact of a woman's possessing knowledge serving to bring her
under the suspicion and accusation of the church. Henry More, a
learned Cambridge graduate of the seventeenth century wrote a
treatise on witchcraft explanatory of the term "witch" which he
affirmed simply signified a wise, or learned woman. It meant
"uncommon" but not unlawful knowledge or skill. It will assist in
forming an opinion to know that the word "witch" is from wekken, to
prophesy a direct bearing upon the psychic powers of many such
persons. The modern Slavonian or Russian name for witch, "vj�dma,"
is from the verb "to know" signifying much the same as
Veda.
30 Muller says "Veda" means the same as the wise,
"wisdom." The Sanskrit word "Vidma" answers to the German "wir
wissen," which literally means "we know." A Russian name for the
witch "Zaharku," is derived from the verb "Znat," to know.
31 A curious account of modern Russian belief in
witchcraft is to be found in Madame Blavatsky's "Isis Unveiled."
The German word "Heke," that is, witch, primarily signified
priestess, a wise or superior woman who in a sylvan temple
worshiped those gods and goddesses that together governed earth and
heaven. Not alone but with thousands of the people for whom she
officiated she was found there especially upon Walpurgis Night, the
chief Hexen (witch) Sabbat of the north. A German scholar furnished
this
explanation.
The German word Heke,
(witch) is a compound word from "hag" and "idisan" or "disan." Hag
means
p. 239
a beautiful landscape, woodland, meadow, field,
altogether. Idisen means female deities, wise-women. Hexen-Sabbat,
or Walpurgis Night is May twelfth. Perfume and
avocation--originally the old gods--perverted by the priests. It is
a remnant of the great gathering to worship the old deities, when
Christianity had overshadowed them. A monument of the wedding of
Woden or Odin with Freia--Sun and Earth at spring time.
The Saxon festival
"Eostre," the christian Easter, was celebrated in April, each of
these festivals at a time when winter having released its sway,
smiling earth giving her life to healing herbs and leaves, once
more welcomed her worshipers. In the south of Europe, the month of
October peculiarly belonged to the witches.
32 The
first of May, May-day, was especially devoted by those elementals
known as fairies, whose special rites were dances upon the green sward,
leaving curious mementoes of their visits in the circles known as
"Fairies Rings". In reality the original meaning of
"witch" was a wise woman. So also the word "Sab" means sage or
wise, and "Saba" a host or congregation;
33 while
"Bac," "Boc" and "Bacchus"
34 all originally signified
book.
35 "Sabs" was the name of the day when the Celtic
Druids gave instruction and is the origin of our words Sabbath and
Sunday.
p. 240
But the degradation of learning, its almost
total loss among christian nations, an entire change in the
signification of words, owing to ignorance and superstition led to
the strangest and most infamous results. The earliest doctors among
the common people of christian Europe were women
36 who had
learned the virtues and use of herbs. The famous works of
Paracelsus were but compilations of the knowledge of these "wise
women" as he himself stated. During the feudal ages women were
excellent surgeons, wounded warriors frequently falling under their
care and to the skill of these women were indebted for recovery
from dangerous wounds. Among the women of savage races to much
greater extent than among the men, a knowledge of the healing
powers of plants and herbs is to this day found. But while for many
hundred years the knowledge of medicine, and its practice among the
poorer classes was almost entirely in the hands of women and many
discoveries in science are due to them, yet an acquaintance of
herbs soothing to pain, or healing in their qualities, was then
looked upon as having been acquired through diabolical agency. Even
those persons cured through the instrumentality of some woman, were
ready when the hour came to assert their belief in her indebtedness
to the devil for her knowledge. Not only were the common people
themselves ignorant of all science, but their brains were filled
with superstitious fears, and the belief that knowledge had been
first introduced to the world through woman's obedience to the
devil. In the fourteenth century the church decreed that any woman
who healed
p. 241
others without having duly studied, was a witch
and should suffer death; yet in that same century, 1527, at Basle,
Paracelsus threw all his medical works, including those of
Hippocrates and Galen into the fire, saying that he knew nothing
except what he had learned from witches.
37 As late
as 1736, the persecution of her male compeers cast Elizabeth
Blackwell, an English woman physician, into prison for debt.
Devoting herself even behind the bars to her loved science, she
prepared the first medical botany given to the world. The modern
discovery of anesthetics by means of whose use human suffering can
be so greatly ameliorated, is justly claimed as the greatest boon
that science has conferred upon mankind, yet it must not be
forgotten that this medical art of mitigating pain, is but an olden
one re-discovered. Methods of causing insensibility to pain were
known to the ancient world. During the middle ages these secrets
were only understood by the persecuted women doctors of that
period, subjected under church rule to torture, burning at the
stake or drowning as witches. The use of pain-destroying
medicaments by women, can be traced back from five hundred to a
thousand years. At the time that witchcraft became the great ogre
against which the church expended all its terrific powers, women
doctors employed an�sthetics to mitigate the pains and perils of
motherhood, "throwing the sufferer into a deep sleep when the child
entered the world. They made use of the Solan�, especially
Belladonna.
p. 242
But that woman should find relief at this hour
of intense suffering and peril when a new being entered the world,
provoked open hostility from the church. The use of mitigating
herbs assailed that theory of the church which having placed the
creation of sin upon woman, still further inculcated the doctrine
that she must undergo continual penance, the greatest suffering
being a punishment in nowise equal to her deserts. Its teachings
that she had therefore been especially cursed by her Maker with
suffering and sorrow at this period, rendered the use of mitigating
remedies during childbirth, dangerous alike to the "wise woman" and
the mother for whose relief they were employed.
39 Although
the present century has shown similar opposition by the church to
the use of an�sthetics for women at this time, it is almost
impossible to depict the sentiment against such relief which made
the witchcraft period one of especial terror to womankind--an age
that looked upon the slightest attempt at such alleviation as proof
of collusion with the devil. So strong was the power of the church,
so universal the belief in the guilt of all women, that even those
sufferers who had availed themselves of the knowledge of the "wise
woman" did so in fear as calling in the aid of evil, and were ready
to testify against her to whom they had been indebted for
alleviation of pain, whenever required by the dread mandate of the
church. A strong natural bias toward the study of medicine,
together with deepest sympathy for suffering humanity, were
required in order to sustain the wise woman' amid the perils
constantly surrounding her; many such women losing their lives as
witches simply because of their superior medical and surgical
knowledge. Death by
p. 243
torture was the method of the church for the
repression of woman's intellect, knowledge being held as evil and
dangerous in her hands. Ignorance was regarded as an especial
virtue in woman, and fear held her in this condition. Few women
dared be wise, after thousands of their sex had gone to death by
drowning or burning because of their knowledge. The superior
learning of witches was recognized in the widely extended belief of
their ability to work miracles. The witch was in reality the
profoundest thinker, the most advanced scientist of those ages. The
persecution which for ages waged against witches was in reality an
attack upon science at the hands of the church. As knowledge has
ever been power, the church feared its use in woman's hands, and
leveled its deadliest blows at her. Although the church in its myth
of the fall attributes knowledge to woman's having eaten of its
tree, yet while not scrupling to make use of the results of her
disobedience for its own benefit, it has been most earnest in its
endeavors to prevent her from like use. No less to-day than during
the darkest period of its history, is the church the great opponent
of woman's education, every advance step for her having found the
church antagonistic.
Every kind of
self-interest was brought into play in these accusations of
witchcraft against women physicians: greed, malice, envy, hatred,
fear, the desire of clearing one's self from suspicion, all became
motives. Male physicians not skillful enough to cure disease would
deliberately swear that there could be but one reason for
their failure--the use of witchcraft against them. As the charge of
witchcraft not only brought disrepute but death upon the "wise
woman" at the hands of the church, she was soon compelled to
abandon both the practice of medicine and surgery, and for many
hundred
p. 244
years but few women doctors were to be found in
christian countries. It is, however, a noticeable fact that Madam
La Chapelle, an eminent woman accoucher of France, during the
present century, and M. Chaussure revived the use of
Belladonna
40 during parturition, thus
acknowledging the scientific acquirements of serf women and
"witches." Since the re-entrance of woman into the medical
profession within the past few years, the world has been indebted
for a knowledge of the cause and cure of certain forms of disease
peculiar to woman, to the skill of those physicians of her own sex
whom the church so long banished from practice.
Through its opposition
to the use of an�sthetics by the women physicians of the witch
period, the church again interposed the weight of her mighty arm to
crush science, leaving the load of preventable suffering of all
kinds upon the world for many hundred years longer, or until the
light of a scientific civilization threw discredit upon her
authority. History proves that women were the earliest chemists.
The witch period also shows us the germs of a medical system, the
Homeopathic, supposed to be of modern origin, in
similia
similibus curantur. Among the strange epidemics of these ages,
a dancing mania appeared; Belladonna among whose effects is the
desire of dancing, was employed as a cure of the "Dancing Mania,"
and thus the theory of Hahnemann was forestalled. During the witch
period these sages or wise-women were believed to be endowed with a
supernatural or magical power of curing diseases. They were also
regarded as prophets to whom the secrets of the future were known.
The women of ancient Germany, of Gaul and among the Celts were
especially famous for their
p. 245
healing powers,
41 possessing knowledge
by which wounds and diseases that baffled the most expert male
physicians were cured. The women of a still more ancient period,
the fame of whose magical powers has descended to the present time,
Circe, Medea and Thracia, were evidently physicians of the highest
skill. The secret of compounding herbs and drugs left by Circe to
her descendants, gave them power over the most poisonous serpents.
Chief among the many herbs, plants and roots whose virtues were
discovered by Medea, that of Aconite stands pre-eminent. The
Thracian nation took its name from the famous Thracia whose medical
skill and knowledge of herbs was so great that the country deemed
it an honor to thus perpetuate her name.
Aside from women of
superior intelligence who were almost invariably accused of
witchcraft, the old, the insane, the bed-ridden, the
idiotic,
42 also fell under condemnation.
The first investigation by Rev. Cotten Mather in America resulted
in the hanging of a half-witted Quaker woman. Later still, an
Indian woman, an insane man, and another woman who was bed-ridden
were also accused. Under the present theories regarding human
rights, it seems scarcely possible that less than two hundred years
ago such practices were not only common in England, but had also
been brought into America by the Puritan Fathers. The humiliation
and tortures of women increased in proportion to
p. 246
the spread of christianity,
43 and the
broader area over which man's sole authority in church and state
was disseminated. As the supreme extent of spiritual wrong grew out
of the bondage of the church over free thought, so the extreme of
physical wrong rose from the growth of the inquisitional or
paternal spirit, which assumed that one human being possessed
divine authority over another human being. Paternalism, a species
of condensed patriarchism, runs through ecclesiastical, civil, and
common law. Down to the time of the American revolution,
individuality was an uncomprehended word; many hundred crimes were
punishable by death. That of pressing to death,
peine-fort-et-dure, the strong and hard pain, was practiced
upon both men and women in England for five hundred years and
brought by the pilgrims to New
p. 247
England. The culprit was placed in the dark
lower room of some prison, naked, upon the bare ground without
clothing on rushes underneath or to cover him. The legs and arms
were extended toward the four corners of the room and as great a
weight placed upon the body as could be supported.
"The first day he (or she) is to have three
morsels of barley bread; upon the second day three draughts of
water standing next to the door of the prison, without bread, and
this to be his (or her) diet till he (or she) die."
It is computed from
historical records that nine millions of persons were put to death
for witchcraft after 1484, or during a period of three hundred
years, and this estimate does not include the vast number who were
sacrificed in the preceding centuries upon the same accusation. The
greater number of this incredible multitude were women. Under
catholicism, those condemned as sorcerers and witches, as
"heretics," were in reality the most advanced thinkers of the
christian ages. Under that protestant pope, the Eighth Henry, an
Act of Parliament condemning witchcraft as felony was confirmed.
Enacted under Henry V, it had fallen into disuse, but numerous
petitions setting forth that witches and sorcerers were "wonderful
many," and his majesty's subjects persecuted to death by their
devices, led to its re-enactment. The methods used to extort
confession without which it was impossible in many cases to convict
for witchcraft, led to the grossest outrages upon woman. Searching
the body of the suspected witch for the marks of Satan, and the
practice of shaving the whole body before applying torture were
occasions of atrocious indignities. It was asserted that all who
consorted
p. 248
with devils had some secret mark about them, in
some hidden place of their bodies; as the inside of the lip, the
hair of the eyebrows, inside of the thigh, the hollow of the arm or
still more private parts, from whence Satan drew nourishment. This
originated a class of men known as "Witch Prickers" who divesting
the supposed witch, whether maid, matron, or child, of all clothing
minutely examined all parts of her body for the devil's sign. Woe
to the woman possessing a mole or other blemish upon her person; it
was immediately pointed to as Satan's seal and as undeniable proof
of having sold herself to the devil. Belief in this sign existed
among the most educated persons. Albertus Pictus, an advocate in
the Parliament of Paris, declared he himself had seen a woman with
the devil's mark on her shoulders, carried off the next day by the
devil. Many authors affirmed the trustworthiness of witch-marks. It
was supposed that upon touching the place the witch would be unable
to speak. If under the torture of having every portion of her body
punctured by a sharp instrument, the victim became no longer able
to cry out, her silence was an accepted proof of finding the
witch-mark and her condemnation was equally certain. So great was
the number of accused, that these men found profitable employment.
The depth of iniquity to which greed of money leads was never more
forcibly shown than during witchcraft. One Kincaid, a New England
Witch Pricker, after stripping his victims of all clothing, bound
them hand and foot, then thrust pins into every part of their
bodies until exhausted and rendered speechless by the torture, they
were unable to scream, when he would triumphantly proclaim that be
had found the witch mark. Another confessed on the gallows, to
p. 249
which a just fate finally condemned him, that he
had illegally caused the death of one hundred and twenty women whom
he had thus tortured. No means were considered too severe in order
to secure conviction. The Jesuit, Del Rio, said torture could
scarcely be properly administered without more or less dislocation
of the joints, and persons escaping conviction were frequently
crippled for life.
44 The church declared the
female sex had always been most concerned in the crime of christian
witchcraft and as it was its aim to separate woman from all
connection with its ordinances, it also asserted that the
priestesses of antiquity held their high places by means of
witchcraft.
Trials for witchcraft
filled the coffers of the church, as whenever conviction took
place, the property of the witch and her family was confiscated to
that body. The clergy fattened upon the torture and burning of
women. Books giving directions for the punishment to be inflicted
upon them bore the significant titles of "Scourge", "Hammer"' "Ant
Hills," "Floggings," etc. During the middle ages the devil was a
personal being to the church with power about equal to that of God,
his kingdom maintaining its equilibrium with the Father, Son and
Holy Ghost of Heaven, by means of three persons in Hell; Lucifer,
Beelzebub and Leviathan. In this era of christian devil-worship the
three in hell equipoised the three in the Godhead. Marriage with
devils was one of the most ordinary accusation in witch trials.
Such connections were sometimes regarded with pride; the celebrated
marshall de Bassompierre boasting that the founder of his family
was engendered from communion with a spirit. It was reported of the
mother of Luther that she was
p. 250
familiar with an Incubus. During this period
many nuns and married women confessed to having been visited by
Incubi of whose visits no spiritual efforts could rid them. Church
history also proves that young girls and boys, many under ten years
of age were tried for intercourse with such spirits. Those
infesting men were known as Succubi. Lady Frances Howard, daughter
of the earl of Suffolk, obtained a divorce from her husband because
of his connection with a Succubus.
One of the most notable
things connected with such accusation was the frequent confession
of its truthfulness. In 1459, a great number of witches and wizards
were burned,
45 who publicly confessed to
their use of ungents, to their dances, feasts, and their consort
with devils. A Vicar General
46 among the
Laodunenses, at his death left confession of his witch-rides, his
copulation with devils, etc. Nor is the present age free from
similar confessions. Tales of marriage with spirits; of dead lovers
paying nightly visits to the living betrothed--of Incubi consorting
with willing or unwilling victims;--all those medi�val statements
regarding the intercourse of spirits of the dead with the living,
all the customs of witchcraft and sorcery are paralleled in our
midst to-day; and such statements do not come from the ignorant and
superstitious, but are made by persons of intelligence as within
their own personal experience. During the witchcraft period
familiarity of this nature with Incubi or Succubi was punished with
death. Occasionally a person was found of sufficient saintliness to
exorcise them as
p. 251
Elementals are said to have been exorcised
during the last half of the present century.
47 Devils
were said to be very fond of women with beautiful hair and the
direction of St. Paul in regard to woman's keeping her head
covered, was not always regarded as a sign of inferiority, but
sometimes believed to be a precautionary admonition intended for
the safety of christian women.
48 To this day the
people of some eastern countries, men and women alike, will not
expose the head uncovered, because of the danger of thus giving
entrance to certain invisible beings of an injurious character; the
Persians in particular, wearing a turban or cloth of peculiar
appearance called Mathoomba. Confessions of magical and witchcraft
practices were by no means rare even among the highest church
dignitaries who implicated themselves by such avowals. It was
customary to attribute the practice of magic to the most holy
fathers of the church. The popes from Sylvester II. to Gregory VII.
were all believed to have been magicians Benedict IX. was also thus
accused. The difference between the practices of men and of women
existed only in name. What was termed magic, among men, was called
witchcraft in woman. The one was rarely, the other invariably,
punished.
The practice of magic by the holy fathers was in
furtherance of private or ecclesiastical advancement and therefore
legitimate in the eye of the church. Yet, death-bed repentance was
by no means infrequent. Of Pope Sylvester, it is said, that
convinced of his sinfulness in having practiced magic, upon his
deathbed
p. 252
he ordered his tongue to be torn out and his
hands cut off because he had sacrificed to the devil; having
learned the art when Bishop of Rheims. The significant question as
to whether magnetism or hypnotism was not a custom of the church
during the middle ages, as part of the "magic" practiced by
illustrious ecclesiastical dignitaries, is one of importance in
view of recent hypnotic experiments. The fact that by means of
"suggestion" the responsibility for crime and the perpetration of
overt criminal acts, can be made to fall upon persons entirely
innocent of criminal intention, who, at the time are in a condition
of irresponsibility, while the actual felon, the person who incited
the act remains unknown and unsuspected, exceeds in malign power
all that christendom has taught regarding the evil one. Science
trembles on the verge of important discoveries which may open the
door for a full understanding of medi�val witchcraft. The Scotch
woman who asked if a person could not be a witch without knowing
it, had intuitive perception that by the action of one person upon
another, consequences could be induced of which the perpetrator was
entirely guiltless.
49 Doubtless the
p. 253
strange power which certain persons are capable
of wielding over others, at present calling the attention of
scientific investigators, was very common during the witchcraft
period. Of this power the church as self-constituted guardian of
the esoteric sciences was fully aware, frequently making it the
method through which envy, greed and revenge, satisfied themselves
while throwing the external appearance of guilt upon others. The
most complete protection against such powers,--a strong will,--it
has ever been the aim of the church to destroy. Freedom of the will
has ever held place in clerical denunciation by side of "original
sin," and punished as sorcery.
50
A reminiscence of olden
magic--far older than the witchcraft period is found in the Masonic
lamentation over the "lost word." This "lost word," the "supreme
word," by whose use all things can be subdued, is still the quest
of a certain portion of the world; and sorcerers are still
mentioned, who cannot die until a certain mysterious word is passed
from "mouth to ear." One of the latest occult societies extant, its
membership widely extended, claims its origin from a mysterious
word similarly passed. The Lord's Prayer demands the making whole
(hallowed), of the Father's name, evidently in the esoteric sense
referring to that loss which dwells in the minds of men through
tradition, a species of unwritten history. With the restoration of
the feminine in all its attributes to its rightful place
everywhere, in realms seen and unseen, the lost power will have
been restored, the "lost name" have been found. Numbers are closely
connected with names, their early knowledge not
p. 254
only having preceded letters, but having been of
much greater value, although after a time, letters and numbers
became interchangeable. Certain persons devoted to the
consideration of occult subjects therefore claim the lost power to
abide in a number rather than in a word; sounds possessing great
and peculiar influence in all magical formulas, their power largely
depending upon inflection and tone or vibration; color and light
are also called in aid during magical formulas.
51
The three most
distinguishing features of the history of witchcraft were its use
for the enrichment of the church; for the advancement of political
schemes; and for the gratification of private malice. Among these
the most influential reason was the emolument it brought to the
church. Although inquisitors and the clergy were the principal
prosecutors, this period gave opportunity for the gratification of
private malice, and persons imbued with secret enmity towards
others, or who coveted their property, found ready occasion for the
indulgence of that malice of covetousness; while the church always
claimed one-half, it divided the remainder of the accused's
possessions between the judge and the prosecutor. Under these
circumstances accusation and conviction became convertible terms.
The pretense under which the church confiscated to itself all
property of the accused was in line with its other sophistical
teaching. It declared that the taint of witchcraft hung to all that
had belonged to the condemned, whose friends were not safe with
p. 255
such property in their possession. To make this
claim more effective, it was also asserted that the very fact of
one member of a family having fallen into the practice of this sin
was virtual proof that all were likewise attainted. Under this
allegation of the church, a protest against such robbery was held
as proof of the witchcraft in the person so protesting. For the
purpose of getting the property of the accused admission of the
crime was strenously pressed. In some countries the property was
not forfeited unless such confession took place. Persecution for
witchcraft was if possible more violent in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries than at any previous date. By this period it
had been introduced into America through the instrumentality of the
Puritan Fathers. It was no less wide-spread in Calvinistic
Scotland, while it re-appeared with renewed vigor in Catholic
countries. In the State of Venice it caused open rebellion against
church authority, the Council forbidding the sentence of the
Inquisition to be carried out.
52
While only Venice in the
whole of Europe defied the church upon this point, emphatically
protesting against such robbery of her citizens, she ultimately
succeeded in establishing a treaty with the pope whereby the
inheritance of the condemned was retained in the family. The
rebellion of Venice against the church upon the question of
property belonging to its subjects, a question upon which the state
held itself
p. 256
pre-eminent, soon effected a radical change and
had remarkable effect in lessening the number of accusations in
that state.
51 Theft by the church in that
direction, no longer possible, accusations of witchcraft soon
ceased; being no longer recognized as sin, after ceasing to bring
money into the coffers of the church.
It is a fact noted by
very many authorities that when witchcraft fell under control of
the state, its penalties were greatly lessened while accusations
grew fewer. Yet for a period, even the civil power aided in
spreading this belief, offering rewards for conviction; and as the
church had grown immensely rich by means of witch persecution, so
the state increased its own power and wealth through similar means.
The theory of Bishop Butler that whole communities at times become
mad, seems proven by the experience of this period. Upon no other
ground but that of universal insanity can excusable explanation be
offered. But for the church no such exculpation is possible, her
teachings and her acts having created this wholesale madness of
communities. Experience of her course during preceding centuries
shows us that the persecution of the witchcraft period was but a
continuation of her policy from the moment of her existence--that
of universal dominion over the lives, the property, and the
thoughts of mankind. Neither rank, nor learning, age, nor goodness
freed a woman from accusation.
54 The mother of the
great astronomer, Kepler, a woman
p. 257
of noble family, died in chains having been
accused of witchcraft. The council of Bourges tortured a reputed
witch who was only known for her good works. A determined effort
for the destruction of every virtue among women seemed made at this
period. In the middle of the XIII. century, the Emperor Theodore
Lascarius caused a noble lady of his court to be entirely stripped
of her clothing, and placed thus nude in a sack with cats, but even
this torture failed to extort a confession from her innocent lips.
Even in America, women of the purest lives, all of whose years had
been given to good works, met with death from like accusation.
Soon after the
confirmation of celibacy as a dogma of the church, at the time when
the persecution for witchcraft so rapidly increased, which was also
the period of the greatest oppression under feudalism-a peculiar
and silent rebellion against both church and state took place among
the peasantry of Europe, who assembled in the seclusion of night
and the forest, their only place of safety in which to speak of
their wrongs. Freedom for the peasant was found only at night.
Known as "Birds of the Night," "Foxes," "Birds of Prey," it was
only at night assemblages that they enjoyed the least happiness or
freedom. Here with wives and daughters, they met to talk over the
gross outrages perpetrated upon them. Out of their foul wrongs grew
the sacrifice of the "Black Mass" with women as officiating
priestess, in which the rites of the church were travestied in
solemn mockery, and defiance cast at that heaven which permitted
the priest and the lord alike to trample upon all the sacred rights
of womanhood, in the name of religion and law. During this mocking
service a true sacrifice of wheat
p. 258
was offered to the "Spirit of the Earth" who
made wheat to grow, and loosened birds bore aloft to the "God of
Freedom" the sighs and prayers of the serfs asking that their
descendants might be free. We can but regard this sacrifice as the
most acceptable offering made in that day of moral degradation; a
sacrifice and a prayer more holy than all the ceremonials of the
church. This service where woman by virtue of her greater despair
acted both as altar and priest, opened with the following address
and prayer. "I will come before Thine altar, but save me, O, Lord,
from the faithless and violent man!" (from the priest and the
baron.)
56 From these assemblages known as "Sabbat" or "the
Sabbath" from the old Pagan midsummer-day sacrifice to "Bacchus
Sabiesa" rose the belief in the "Witches Sabbath," which for
several hundred years formed a source of accusation against women,
sending tens of thousands to most horrible deaths. The thirteenth
century was about the central period of this rebellion of the serfs
against God and the church when they drank each other's blood as a
sacrament, while secretly speaking of their oppression.
57 The officiating priestess was usually about
thirty years old, having experienced all the wrongs that woman
suffered under church and state. She was entitled "The Elder" yet
in defiance of that God to whom the serfs under church teaching
ascribed all their wrongs, she was also called "The Devil's bride."
This period was especially that of woman's rebellion
p. 259
against the existing order of religion and
government in both church and state. While man was connected with
her in these ceremonies as father, husband, brother, yet all
accounts show that to woman as the most deeply wronged, was
accorded all authority. Without her, no man was admitted to this
celebration, which took place in the seclusion of the forest and
under the utmost secrecy. Offerings were made to the latest dead
and the most newly born of the district, and defiance hurled
against that God to whose injustice the church had taught woman
that all her wrongs were due.
Woman's knowledge of
herbs was made use of in a preparation of Solan� which mixed with
mead, beer, cider, or farcy,--the strong drink of the
west--disposed the oppressed serfs to joyous dancing and partial
forgetfulness of their wrongs during these popular night gatherings
of the Sabbath.
58 It became "the comforter"
throwing the friendly mantle of partial oblivion over the mental
suffering of "him who had been so wronged" as it had done for the
mother's physical pain. "The Sabbath" was evidently the secret
protest of men and women whom church and state in combination had
utterly oppressed and degraded. For centuries there seemed no hope
for this class of humanity--for this degraded portion of
christendom--yet, even then women held position of superiority in
these night assemblages. Among the "Papers of the Bastile," a more
extended account of woman officiating as her own altar, is to be
found.
59
p. 260
The injustice of man
towards woman under the laws of both Church and State engrafted
upon society, have resulted in many evils unsuspected by, the
world, which if known would strike it with amazement and terror.
Even Louis Lingg, one of the condemned Chicago anarchists, young,
handsome, of vigorous intellect, who uncomplainingly accepted for
himself that death he had decreed to the representatives to law;
even he, who neither asked mercy nor accepted the death decreed
him, was the outgrowth of woman's wrongs. His mother with whom his
fate was thrown, a woman of the people in Hungary, belonging to a
powerless class crushed for centuries, the plaything of those above
them;--his father, a representative of the aristocracy descended
from a long line of military ancestors, leaving him, as the church
had taught him, to the sole care of the mother he had betrayed, it
was impossible for this boy not to find in his breast a turmoil of
conflicting emotions, but above all, ruling all, a hatred of
entrenched oppression; nor did his father's military blood fail to
play its part, leading to the final result which affrighted a city
and closed his young life.
In looking at the
history of witchcraft we see three striking points for
consideration:
First; That women
were chiefly accused.
Second; That men
believing in woman's inherent wickedness, and understanding neither
the mental nor the physical peculiarities of her being, ascribed
all her idiosyncrasies to witchcraft.
Third; That the
clergy inculcated the idea that woman was in league with the devil,
and that strong intellect, remarkable beauty, or unusual sickness
were in themselves proof of this league.
p. 261
Catholics and
protestants yet agree in holding Women as the chief accessory of
the devil.
60
The belief in witches
indeed seemed intensified after the reformation. Luther said: "I
would have no compassion for a witch, I would burn them all." He
looked upon those who were afflicted with blindness, lameness, or
idiocy from birth,
61 as possessed of demons and
there is record of his attempt to drown an afflicted child in whom
he declared no soul existed, its body being animated by the devil
alone. But a magistrate more enlightened or more humane than the
great reformer, interfered to save the child's life. Were Luther on
earth again to-day with the sentiments of his lifetime, he would
regard the whole community as mad. Asylums for the blind, the dumb
and idiots, curative treatment for cripples and all persons
naturally deformed, would be to him a direct intervention with the
ways of providence. The belief of this great reformer proves the
folly of considering a man wise, because he is pious. Religion and
humanity were as far apart with him after the reformation as while
he was yet a monk. The fruits of monasticism continued their
effects, and his latter life showed slight intellectual or
spiritual advancement. As late as 1768 John Wesley declared the
giving up of witchcraft to be in effect giving up the Bible. Such
was
p. 262
his low estimate of woman that he regarded his
own wife as too sinful to conduct family prayers, although to
Susannah, equally with John, is Methodism indebted for its
existence. In Great Britain, the rapid increase of belief in
witchcraft after the reformation was especially noticeable. The act
of Parliament which declared witchcraft to be felony; confirmed
under Henry VIII. was again confirmed under Elizabeth. In England
the reformation brought with it great increase of tyranny both
civil and ecclesiastical. Under Henry VIII. many new treasons were
created. This king who sent the largest proportion of his six wives
to the headsman's block, who neither hesitated at incest or at
casting the taint of illegitimacy upon the daughter who succeeded
him upon the throne, could not be expected to show justice or mercy
to subject women. The penal laws of even celibate Elizabeth were
largely the result of the change in religion of the realm.
62 The queen, absolute in Church as in State, who
"bent priest and prelate to her fiery will," caused the laws to
bear with equal severity upon protestant and catholic. Under her "A
Statute of Uniformity for abolishing Diversity of Opinions," was
enacted, and the clergy were continued in the enjoyment of secular
power. Women received no favor. The restrictions of the catholic
church in regard to the residence of a priest's mother or sister in
his house were now extended to the laity. No man was permitted to
give his widowed mother or orphan sister a home in his house
without permission from the authorities, and then but for a limited
time. Single women were allowed no control over their own actions.
Twelve years was the legal marriageable age for a girl, after which
period if still unmarried
p. 263
she could be bound out at the option of the
court.
63 Nor did the Cromwellian period lessen woman's
persecution. The number of witches executed under the Presbyterian
domination of the Long Parliament according to a list
64 that has been preserved, amounted to between
three and four thousand persons. The legal profession no less than
the clerical asserted its belief in witchcraft, referring to the
Bible in confirmation. Blackstone said:
"To deny the
possibility, nay the actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery is
at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God, in various
passages of the Old and New Testament; and the thing itself is a
truth to which every nation in the world hath in its turn borne
testimony, either by examples seemingly well attested, or by
prohibiting laws."
The protestant clergy
equally with the catholic priesthood, were charged with fostering a
belief in witchcraft for the purpose of gain. At no period of the
world has a more diabolical system of robbery existed. For the sake
of a few pounds or pence, the most helpless of human beings, made
helpless through church teaching as to their unworthiness, were by
the church daily brought under accusation, exposing them to a cruel
death at the hand of irresponsible tyranny. The system of thugery
in India, shines white by side of this christian system of robbery,
inaugurated by the church and sustained by the state. In the name
of religion, the worst crimes against humanity have ever been
perpetrated. On the accession of James I. he ordered the learned
work of Reginald Scott against witchcraft, to be burned.
65
p. 264
This was in accordance with the act of
Parliament 1605-9 which ratified a belief in witchcraft in the
three kingdoms. At this date the tragedy of Macbeth appeared,
deeply tinged with the belief of the times. A few persons
maintaining possession of their senses, recognized the fact that
fear, apprehension and melancholy gave birth to the wildest
self-delusions; medical experience recording many instances of this
character. In an age when ignorance and superstition prevailed
among the people at large, while vice, ignorance, and cupidity were
in equal force among those in power, the strangest beliefs became
prevalent.
Sir George Mackenzie, the eminent king's
advocate of Scotland, conducting many trials for witchcraft, became
convinced it was largely a subject of fear and delusion. He
said:
Those poor persons who
are ordinarily accused of this crime are poor ignorant creatures,
and ofttimes women who understood not the nature of what they are
accused of, and many mistake their own fears and apprehensions for
witchcraft, of which I shall give you two instances; one of a poor
man, who after he had confessed witchcraft being asked how he saw
the devil, he answered "like flies dancing about a candle." Another
of a woman who asked sincerely; when accused, "if a woman might be
a witch and not know it?" And it is dangerous then. Those who of
all others are the most simple should be tried for a crime which of
all others is the most mysterious. Those poor creatures when
defamed became so confused with fear and the close prison in which
they were kept, and so starved for want of meals and sleep (either
of which wants is enough to destroy the strongest reason), when men
are confounded with fear and apprehension they will imagine things
very ridiculous and
p. 265
absurd. Melancholy often makes men imagine they
are horses. Most of these poor creatures are tortured by their
keepers who are persuaded they do God good service. Most of all
that were taken were tortured In this manner and this usage was the
ground of their complaints.
To such an extent was
this persecution carried even in protestant Scotland that accused
women sometimes admitted their guilt that they might die and thus
escape from a world where even if cleared, they would ever after be
looked upon with suspicion. Sir George Mackenzie visiting some
women who had confessed, one of them told him "under secrecie"
that:
She had not confessed
because she was guilty but being a poor creature who wrought for
her meat and being defined for a witch, she knew she would starve,
for no person thereafter would give her either meat or lodging, and
that all men would beat her and hound dogs at her and therefore she
desired to be out of the world, whereupon she wept bitterly and
upon her knees called upon God to witness what she said.
Even under all the
evidence of the persecution and cruel tortures that innocent women
endured during the witchcraft period, no effort of the imagination
can portray the sufferings of an accused woman. The death this poor
woman chose, in voluntarily admitting a crime of which she was
innocent, rather than to accept a chance of life with the name of
"witch" clinging to her, was one of the most painful of which we
can conceive, although in the diversity of torture inflicted upon
the witch it is scarcely possible to say which one was the least
agonizing. In no country has the devil ever been more fully
regarded as a real personage, ever on the watch for souls, than in
Christian Scotland. Sir George says:
Another told me she was
afraid the devil would
p. 266
challenge a right to her soul as the minister
said when he desired her to confess; and therefore she desired to
die.
66
The following is an
account of the material used and the expenses attending the
execution of two witches in Scotland.
|
For 10 loads of coal to
burn the witches
|
3 06.8
|
|
A tar barrel
|
0 14.0
|
|
towes
|
0 06.0
|
|
hurdles to be jumps
for them
|
3 10.0
|
|
making of them
|
0 08.0
|
|
one to go to Tinmouth
for the lord to sit upon the assize as judge
|
0 06.0
|
|
the executioner for
his pains
|
8 14.0
|
|
his expenses there
|
0 16.4
|
What was the special
office of the executioner does not appear; whether to drag the
victims upon hurdles, to the places of burning, to light the fire,
to keep it well blazing, is not mentioned although his office was
important and a well paid one; eight pounds and fourteen shillings
above his expenses, sixteen shillings and four pence more; in all
nine pounds, ten shillings and four pence, a sum equal to one
hundred and fifty or two hundred dollars of the present day. At
these rates it was easy to find men for the purpose desired. It is
worthy of note that under the frequency of torture the payment
lessened. Strange experiences sometimes befell those who were
tortured: a cataleptic or hypnotic state coming on amid their most
cruel sufferings causing an entire insensibility to pain. To the
church this condition was sure evidence of help from Satan and
caused a renewal of torture as soon as sensibility returned. In the
year 1639 a poor widow called Lucken, who
p. 267
was accused of being a witch and sentenced to
the rack at Helmstadt having been cruelly tortured by the screw,
was seized with convulsions, spoke high German and a strange
language and then fell asleep on the rack and appeared to be dead.
The circumstance related to the juricounsul at Helmstadt she was
ordered to be again submitted to the torture. Then protesting she
was a good Christian while the executioner stretched her on the
rack, whipt her with rods and sprinkled her with burning brimstone,
she fell again fast asleep and could not by any means be
awakened.
67
Boiling heretics and
malefactors alive, commonly in oil but occasionally in water, was
practiced throughout Europe until a comparatively late period. In
fact as a civil punishment in England it dates only to 1531 under
Henry VII. The "Chronicle of the Gray Friars" mentioned a man let
down by a chain into a kettle of hot water until dead. We have
expense items of this form of torture, in the boiling of Friar
Stone of Canterbury.
|
Paid two men that sat by
the kettle and boiled him
|
1s
|
|
To three men that
carried his quarters to the gate and set them up
|
1s
|
|
For a woman that scoured
the kettle
|
2d
|
Boiling was a form of
torture frequently used for women. The official records of Paris
show the price paid for torture in France was larger than in
England; boiling in oil in the former country costing forty eight
francs as against one shilling in the latter. It must be remembered
these official prices for torture, are not taken from the records
of China or Persia, two thousand years ago, nor from among the
savages of Patagonia, Australia or Guinea, but two European
countries
p. 268
of highest Christian civilization within the
last three hundred years.
The following list of
prices for dealing with criminals is taken from the official
records in Paris:
|
For boiling a criminal
in oil, francs
|
48
|
|
For tearing a living man
in four quarters with horses
|
30
|
|
Execution with the
sword
|
20
|
|
Breaking on the
wheel
|
10
|
|
Mounting the head on a
pole
|
10
|
|
Quartering a man.
|
36
|
|
Hanging a man.
|
29
|
|
Burying a man
|
2
|
|
Impaling a man alive
|
14
|
|
Burning a witch
alive
|
28
|
|
Flaying a man alive
|
28
|
|
Drowning an infanticide
in a sack
|
24
|
|
Throwing a suicide's
body among the offal
|
20
|
|
Putting to the
torture
|
4
|
|
For applying the
thumb-screw
|
2
|
|
For applying the
boot
|
4
|
|
Torture by fire
|
10
|
|
Putting a man in the
pillory
|
2
|
|
Whipping a man
|
4
|
|
Branding with a red-hot
iron
|
10
|
|
Cutting off the tongue,
the ears and the nose
|
10
|
Burning a witch,
probably because of its greater frequency, cost, but little over
one-half as much as boiling in oil. The battle of gladiators with
wild beasts in the Coliseum at Rome in reign of Nero, had in it an
element of hope. Not the priesthood but the populace were the
arbiters of the gladiator's destiny, giving always a chance for
life in cases of great personal bravery. But in France and England
the ecclesiastical code was so closely united with the civil as to
be one with it; compassion equally with justice was forgotten,
despair taking their place. Implements of torture were of frequent
invention, the thought of the
p. 269
age turning in the direction of human suffering,
new methods were continually devised. Many of these instruments are
now on exhibition in foreign museums. One called "The Spider" a
diabolical iron machine with curved claws, for tearing out a
woman's breasts was shown in the United States but a few years
since. In Protestant Calvinistic Scotland, where hatred of "popery"
was most pronounced, the persecution of witches raged with the
greatest violence, and
multitudes of women died shrieking to heaven
for that mercy denied them by Christian men upon Ea-Rth. It was in
Scotland after the reformation that the most atrocious tortures for
the witch were invented, one of most diabolical being known as "the
Witches' Bridle." By means of a loop passed about the head, this
instrument of four iron prongs was fastened in the mouth. One of
the prongs pressed down the tongue, one touched the palate, the
other two doing their barbarous work upon the inner side of the
cheeks. As this instrument prevented speech thus allowing no
complaint upon the part of the victim, it was preferred to many
other methods of torture.
68 The woman upon
p. 270
whom it was used was suspended against a wall by
a loop at the back, barely touching the floor with her toes. The
iron band around her neck rendered her powerless to move, she was
unable to speak or scarcely to breathe. Every muscle was strained
in order to sustain herself and prevent entire suffocation, the
least movement causing cruel wounds by means of the prongs in her
mouth.
The victims were mostly
aged women who having reared a family, spending their youth and
beauty in this self-denying work, had lived until time threading
their hair with silver had also robbed cheek and lip of their rosy
hue, dimmed the brilliancy of the eye and left wrinkles in place of
youthful dimples. Such victims were left for hours, until the
malignity of their persecutors was satisfied, or until death after
long torture released them from a world where under the laws of
both Church and State they found their sex to be a crime. Old women
for no other reason than that they were old, were held to be the
most susceptible to the assaults of the devil, and the persons most
especially endowed with supernatural powers for evil. Blackstone
refers to this persecution of aged women in his reference to a
statute of the Eight Henry.
69 We discover a reason for this
intense hatred of old women in the fact that woman has chiefly been
looked upon from
p. 271
a sensual view by christian men, the church
teaching that she was created solely for man's sensual use. Thus
when by reason of declining years she no longer attracted the
sensual admiration of man, he regarded her as having forfeited all
right to life. England's most learned judge, Sir Mathew Hale,
declared his belief in the agency of the devil in producing
diseases through the aid of old women.
The prosecution against this class raged with unusual
violence in Scotland under the covenanters.
To deny the existence of
especially evil supernatural powers, in old women, was held as an
evidence of skeptism exposing the doubting person to like
suspicion. Great numbers of women were put to death at a time; so
common indeed was the sight as to cause but little comment. A
Scotch traveler casually mentioned having seen nine women burning
together at Bath in 1664. Knox himself suffered a woman to be
burned at St. Andrews, whom one word from him would have saved.
Father Tanner speaks of "the multitude" of witches who were daily
brought under the torture that was constantly practiced by the
church.
The reformers were more
cruel than those from whose superstitious teachings they professed
to have escaped. All the tortures of the old church were repeated
and an unusual number of new and diabolical ones invented to induce
confession. Nor were these tortures applied to the suspected witch
alone; her young and tender children against whom no accusation has
been brought, were sometimes tortured in her presence in order to
wring confession from the mother. Towards the end of the sixteenth
century, a woman accused of witchcraft endured the most intense
torture,
p. 272
constantly asserting her innocence. Failing to
secure confession, her husband, her son, and finally her young
daughter of seven short years were tortured in her presence, the
latter being subjected to a species of thumb-screw called "the
pinniwinkies" which brought blood from under the finger nails with
a pain terribly severe. When these were applied to the baby hands,
to spare her innocent child, the mother confessed herself a witch;
but after enduring all the agonies of torture upon herself and all
she was made to suffer in the persons of her innocent family,
confession having been obtained through this diabolical means, she
was still condemned to the flames, undergoing death at the stake a
blazing torch of fire, and died calling upon God for that mercy she
could not find at the hands of Christian men.
70 In
p. 273
protestant Scotland as in catholic countries,
witchcraft was under control of the clergy. When a woman fell under
suspicion of being a witch, the minister denounced her from the
pulpit, forbade any one to harbour or shelter her and exhorted his
parishoners to give evidence against her.
71 She was
under ban similar to the excommunicate of the catholic church, a
being outside of human help or sympathy. In protestant as in
catholic countries the woman accused was virtually dead. She was
excommunicated from humanity; designated and denounced as one whom
all must shun, to whom no one must give food or lodging or speech
or shelter; life was not worth the living. To afford such a one aid
was to hazard accusation as a confederate. The first complaint was
made to the clergy and Kirk Sessions.
72
Notwithstanding two
hundred years of such experience, when by ail act of parliament in
1784, the burning and hanging of witches was abolished, the General
Assembly of the Calvinistic church of Scotland "confessed" this act
"as a great national sin." Not only were the courts and the church
alert for the detection of alleged witches, but the populace
persecuted many to death.
73 Deserted by her friends, the
suspected
p. 274
witch was beaten, worried by dogs, denied food
and prevented from sleeping.
74 Contrary to equity
and the principles of modern law, the church sought in every way to
entrap victims into giving evidence against themselves. Once a
person was accused, no effort was spared to induce confession.
Holding control over the soul as well as the body, enquiry into
these crimes was pushed by every method that human ingenuity could
devise. The kirk became the stronghold of superstition; both
rewards and punishments were used as inducements towards ferreting
out witches. All ties of natural affection were ignored, the kirk
preaching it to be a matter of greater duty to inform against one's
nearest relatives than against strangers. Unlike the theory of
Roman civil law which held the accused innocent until proven
guilty, ecclesiastical law everywhere produced a condition under
which the accused was held guilty from the moment of accusation.
During the witchcraft period the minds of people were trained in a
single direction. The chief lesson of the church that betrayal of
friends was necessary to one's own salvation, created an intense
selfishness. All humanitarian feeling was lost in the effort to
secure heaven at the expense of others, even those most closely
bound by ties of nature and affection. Mercy, tenderness,
compassion were all obliterated. Truthfulness escaped from the
Christian world; fear, sorrow and cruelty reigned pre-eminent. All
regard that existed for others grew up outside of church teaching
and was shown at the hazard of life.
p. 275
Contempt and hatred of woman was inculcated with
greater intensity; love of power and treachery were parts of the
selfish lessons of the church. All reverence for length of years
was lost. The sorrows and sufferings of a long life appealed to no
sympathetic cord in the heart. Instead of the tenderness and care
due to aged women, they were so frequently accused of witchcraft
that for years it was an unusual thing for an old woman in the
north of Europe to die in her bed. Besides the thousands of accused
who committed suicide in order to escape the horrors incident upon
trial, many others tired of life amid so much humiliation and
suffering, falsely accused themselves, preferring a death by the
torture of fire to a life of endless isolation and persecution. An
English woman on her way to the stake, with a greatness of soul
born of despair, freed her judges from responsibility, by saying to
the people, "Do not blame my judges. I wished to put an end to my
own self. My parents keep aloof from me; my own husband has denied
me. I could not live on without disgrace. I longed for death and so
I told a lie." The most eminent legal minds became incompetent to
form correct judgment. Having received the church as of divine
origin, and its priesthood as the representatives of the divinity,
they were no longer capable of justice. Old and ignorant women upon
the most frivolous testimony of young children were condemned to
death. One of the most notable examples of the power of
superstitious belief to darken the understanding, is that of Sir
Mathew Hale, living in the seventeenth century. He was spoken of by
his contemporaries as one of the most eminent jurists of the world,
whose integrity, learning and knowledge of law were scarcely to be
paralleled
p. 276
in any age, and yet he became so entirely
convinced of the diabolism of two women as to condemn them to death
while sitting at Bury St. Edmunds, without even summing up the
evidence. The learned and famous Sir Thomas Browne, who was
present, coincided in the justice of this decision, although but a
short time previously he had published a work against superstition.
The testimony upon which these women were condemned was of the most
petty and worthless character, yet among all the persons present at
the trial, but one or two seemed inclined to doubt the sufficiency
of the evidence.
The records of this
remarkable trial were preserved to the world by a gentleman who
privately took a report for his own use, which was Published in
pamphlet form a number of years afterwards. This extremely rare
book is not to be found even in the Congressional Library at
Washington, but the Supreme Court Library owns a copy from which
this report is taken:
Trial March 10, 1664 by
Sir Matthew Hale, Knight, Lord Chief Baron of his Majesty's Court
of Exchequer held before a judge who for his integrity, learning
and wisdom hardly any age before or since could parallel; he not
only took a great deal of pains and spent much time in this trial
himself, but had the assistance and opinion of several other very
eminent and learned persons; so that this was the most perfect
narrative of anything of this nature hitherto extant.
The persons tried were
Ann Durant, or Drury, Susan Chander, Elizabeth Pacy. The celebrated
Dr. Brown of Norwich who had written a work against witchcraft, was
present and after hearing the evidence expressed himself as clearly
of the opinion the persons were bewitched, and said in Denmark
lately there had been
p. 277
a great discovery of witches who used the same
way of afflicting persons by the agency of pins. This trial took
place in the sixteenth year of Charles II. The witnesses were two
children of eleven and nine years who fell into fits, vomiting pins
and nails. Sargeant Keeling asserted deception on part of the
witnesses. The Court appointed Lord Cornwallis, Sir Edmund Bacon
and Sargeant Keeling as committee to examine the girl alone, when
they became fully satisfied of her imposture but without convincing
the learned judge who contrary to all justice and law did not sum
up the evidence, but gave the great weight of his opinion in favor
of their guilt saying: "That there are such creatures as witches, I
have no doubt at all. For First, Scripture has offered so much.
Second, the wisdom of all nations has propounded laws against such
persons, which is an argument of their confidence of such a crime.
And such has been the judgment of this kingdom as appears by that
Act of Parliament which hath provided punishments proportionate to
the guilt of this offense, and desired them strictly to observe the
evidence; and desired the great God of Heaven to direct their
hearts in the weighty things they had so heard. For to condemn the
innocent and to let the guilty go free, were both an abomination to
the Lord. Within half an hour the jury returned a verdict of guilty
on thirteen counts. The judge and all the court were fully
satisfied with the verdict and therefore gave judgment against the
witches that they should be hanged.
The evidence was of the
most paltry character; as when out of door a little thing like a
bee flew upon the witness face, putting a ten penny nail with a
broad head into her mouth. Lath nails and pins said to have been
vomited by the children were produced in court. When arraigned the
accused pleaded not guilty nor did they ever change this plea.
Great pressure was upon them to induce confession, but they could
not be prevailed upon to thus criminate themselves and were
executed the seventeenth of March, just one week after trial,
confessing nothing.
p. 278
This trial is the more
remarkable that confessions usually deemed the best of evidence,
were not obtained, these poor illiterate, persecuted women braving
all the learning of the great judge and power of the kingdom in
maintaining to the last the assertion of their innocence. The
minutes of this trial were taken by a gentleman in attendance upon
the court and were not published until 1716 when the record fell
into the hands of a person who saw its value "so that," he says,
"being the most complete minutes of anything of this nature
hitherto extant, made me unwilling to deprive the world of it;
which is the sole motive that induced me to publish it."
Not alone the clergy and
the legal fraternity wrought in unison, but the medical as well,
gave the weight of their authority in favor of witchcraft; and many
persons needing the wisest medical appliance for their relief from
disease were executed as witches. Half-witted and insane persons
met with the same persecution as old women. It was an era of the
strong against the weak, the powerful against the helpless. Even
Sir Thomas Browne, himself a physician, regarded the fainting fits
to which one of the accused women had long been subject as fuller
evidence of her guilt. In his character of medical examiner he
asserted that the devil had taken opportunity of her natural fits,
to operate with her malice.
An almost equally
notable trial as that of Bury St. Edmunds before Sir Matthew Hale,
was known as the Sommers Trial, or that of the "Lancashire
Witches," in 1612. Among the accused were two extremely aged women
decrepit and nearly blind, tottering into second childhood,
incapable of understanding whereof they were accused, or the
evidence against them which, as in the case argued before Sir
Matthew Hale, was of the most worthless character. One needs but
refer to
p. 279
the records in order to learn the extreme age,
ignorance and many infirmities of these women. But as was the case
in Scotland, these weaknesses were used as evidences of guilt. The
feeble mental and physical condition of "the Lancashire witches,"
their great age and failing power were used as evidence for their
condemnation. From published accounts of this trial, we learn
that:
This Annie Whittle,
alias Chattox, was a very old withered and decrepit creature, her
sight almost gone, a dangerous witch of very long continuance, her
lips ever chattering and walking (talking)? but no one knew what.
She was next in order to that wicked, fierce bird of mischief, old
Demdike.
This poor old creature
"confessed" that Robert Mutter had offered insult to her married
daughter; and the court decreed this was a fair proof of her having
bewitched him to his death. No condemnation of the man who had thus
insulted her daughter, but death for the aged mother who had
resented this insult. Designated as "Old Demdike, a fierce bird of
mischief" this woman of four score years of age, had not only
brought up a large family of her own, but her grand children had
fallen to her care. She had lived a blameless life of over eighty
years, much of it devoted to the care of children and children's
children. But when decrepit and almost blind she fell under
suspicion of a crime held by Church and State as of the most
baleful character, her blameless and industrious life proved of no
avail against this accusation. She seems to have originally been a
woman of great force of character and executive ability, but
frightened at an accusation she could not understand and
overpowered by all the dread majesty of the law into whose
merciless power she had fallen, she "confessed" to communion
p. 280
with a demon spirit which appeared to her in the
form of a brown dog." From a work entitled The Sommers Trials, the
form of indictment is learned.
76
INDICTMENT.
This Annie Whittle,
alias Chattox, of the Forest of Pendle, in the countie of
Lancaster, widow, being indicted for that she feloniously had
practiced, used and exercised divers wicked and divelish artes,
called witchcraftes, inchantments, charms and sorceries, in and
upon one Robert Mutter of Greenhead, in the Forest of Pendle, in
the countie of Lane; and by force of the same witchcraft,
feloniously the sayed Robert Mutter had killed, contra pacem, etc.
Being at the barre was arraigned. To this indictment, upon her
arraignment, she pleaded, not guiltie; and for the tryall of her
life put herself upon God and her country.
One of the chief
witnesses at this trial was a child of nine years.
77 Upon
seeing her own daughter arraigned against her, the mother broke
into shrieks and lamentations pleading with the girl not to falsify
the truth and thus condemn her own mother to death. The judges
instead of seeing in this agony a proof of the mother's innocence
looked upon it as an attempt to thwart the ends of justice by
demoniac influence, and the child having declared that she could
not confess in her mother's presence, the latter was removed from
the room, and as under the Inquisition, the testimony was given in
the absence of the accused. The child then said that her mother had
been a witch for three or four years, the devil appearing in the
form
p. 281
of a brown dog, Bill. These trials taking place
in protestant England, two hundred years after the reformation,
prove the worthless nature of witchcraft testimony, as well as the
superstition, ignorance and entire unfitness for the bench of those
men called the highest judicial minds in England. The church having
almost entirely destroyed freedom of will and the expression of
individual thought, men came to look upon authority and right as
synonymous. Works bearing the stamp of the legal fraternity soon
appeared. in 1618 a volume entitled, "The County Justice," by
Michal Dalton, Gentleman of Lincoln Inn, was published in London,
its chief object to give directions, based upon this trial, for the
discovery of witches.
Now against these
witches the justice of the peace may not always expect direct
evidence, seeing all their works are works of darkness and no
witness permitted with them to accuse them, and therefore for their
better discovery I thought good here to set down certain
observations out of the methods of discovery of the witches that
were arraigned at Lancaster, A. D. 1612 before Sir James Altham and
Sir Edward Bromley, judges of Assize there.
1. They have ordinarily a familiar or spirit
which appeareth to them.
2. The said familiar hath some bigg or place
upon their body where he sucketh them.
3. They have often pictures of clay or wax (like
a man, etc.) found in their house.
4. If the dead body bleed upon the witches
touching it.
5. The testimony of the person hurt upon his
death.
6. The examination and confession of the
children or servants of the witch.
7. Their own voluntary confession which exceeds
all other evidence.
At this period many
persons either in hope of a
p. 282
reward
78 or because they believed they
were thus aiding the cause of justice, kept private note books of
instruction in the examination of witches, and new varieties were
constantly discovered. When witchcraft by Act of Parliament was
decreed felony this statute gave the legal fraternity double
authority for a belief in its existence. Even Sir George Mackenzie
although convinced by his own experience that many persons were
wrongfully accused of witchcraft, still declared that its existence
could not be doubted, "seeing that our law ordains it to be
punished with death." The most fatal record the world possesses of
the plague is that of the fourteenth century, known as the "Black
Death," when whole villages were depopulated and more than half the
inhabitants of Europe were destroyed. It will aid in forming our
judgment as to the extent of woman's persecution for witchcraft, to
remember it has been estimated that the number of deaths from this
cause equalled those of the plague.
The American Colonies
adopted all the unjust previsions of European christianity as parts
of their own religion and government. Fleeing from persecution, the
Puritans yet brought with them the spirit of persecution in the
belief of woman's inferiority and wickedness, as taught by the
church from whence they had fled. The "Ducking Stool" for women who
too vigorously protested against their wrongs, and the "Scarlet
Letter" of shame for the woman who had transgressed the moral law,
her companion in sin going free, or as in England, sitting as juror
in the box, or judge upon the bench. With them also came a belief
in witchcraft, which soon caused Massachusetts Colony
p. 283
to enact a law ordering suspected women to be
stripped naked their bodies to be carefully examined by a male
"witch pricker" to see if there was not the devil's mark upon them.
The public whipping of half naked women at the cart's tail for the
crime of religious free thought soon followed, a union of both
religious and judicial punishment; together with banishment of
women from the Colony for daring to preach Christ as they
understood his doctrines. These customs more barbarous than those
of the savages whose home they had invaded, were the pleasing
welcome given to the pioneer woman settlers of America by the
husbands and fathers, judges and ministers of that period, with
which the words "Plymouth Rock," "May Flower" and "Pilgrim Fathers"
are so intimately associated. The same persecution of aged women
took place in New England as in old England, while children of even
more tender years were used as witnesses against their mothers if
accused of witchcraft, or were themselves imprisoned upon like
suspicion. The village of Salem, Massachusetts, is indissolubly
connected with witchcraft, for there the persecution raged most
fiercely, involving its best women in ruin. One of the oldest
buildings still extant in the United States is "The Witch House" of
that place, erected in 1631, although it was sixty one years later
before this persecution reached its height.
A terrible summer for
Salem village and its vicinity was that of 1692--a year of worse
than pestilence or famine. Bridget Bishop was hanged in June; Sarah
Good, Sarah Wilder, Elizabeth Howe, Susanna Martin and Rebecca
Nurse in July; George Burroughs, John Proctor, George Jacobs, John
Willard and Martha Carrier in August; Martha Corey, Mary Easty,
Alice Parker, Ann Pudeator, Margaret Scott, Wilmit Reed,
p. 284
Samuel Wordwell, and
Mary Baker in September; in which last month Giles Corey eighty-one
years of age, was pressed to death under a board loaded with heavy
stones, not heavy enough however to crush out life until a day or
two of lingering torture had intervened. Sarah Good's daughter
Dorcas between three and four years old, orphaned by her mother's
execution, was one of a number of children who with several hundred
other persons were imprisoned on suspicion of witchcraft; many of
these sufferers remained in a wretched condition, often heavily
ironed for months, some upwards of a year; and several dying during
this time. A child of seven, Sarah Carrier, was called upon to
testify as witness against her mother.
Some of the condemned,
especially Rebecca Nurse, Martha Corey, and Mary Easty, were aged
women who had led unblemished lives and were conspicuous for their
prudence, their charities and all domestic virtues.
79
So extended became the
persecution for witchcraft that the king was at last aroused to the
necessity of putting a stop to such wholesale massacre of his
subjects, issued a mandate forbidding the putting of any more
persons to death on account of witchcraft.
80 A
remarkable family gathering took place at Salem, July 18, 1883, of
two hundred persons who met to celebrate their descent from Mrs.
Rebecca Nurse, who was executed as a witch at that place in 1692.
The character and life of Mrs. Nurse were unimpeachable. She was a
woman seventy years of age, the mother of eight children, a church
member of unsullied reputation and devout habit; but all these
considerations did not prevent her accusation, trial, conviction
and death, although she solemnly asserted her innocence to the
last. A reprieve granted by the governor was
p. 285
withdrawn through the influence of the church,
and she was hung by the neck till she was dead. In order to give
her body burial, her sons were obliged to steal it away by night,
depositing it in a secret place known but to the family. Forty
persons at the hazard of their own lives testified to the goodness
and piety of Mrs. Nurse. Their names were inscribed upon the
monument erected by her descendants, in 1892, to her
memory.
81 The Rev. Cotton Mather and the Rev. Samuel
Parrish are indissolubly connected with this period, as both were
extremely active in fomenting a belief in witchcraft. Richard
Baxter, known as the "greatest of the Puritans" condemned those who
expressed a disbelief in witchcraft as "wicked Sadducees." Increase
Mather, president of Harvard College, was one of the most bitter
persecutors of witches in New England. The dangerous spirit of a
religious autocracy like the priesthood, was forcibly shown by a
paper read by Rev. Dr. George E. Ellis, a few years since, before
the Massachusetts Historical Society, in which he excused the act
of stripping women naked in order to search for a witch mark, upon
the ground of its being a judicial one by commissioned officers and
universally practiced in Christendom.
Boston as "The Bloody
Town" rivalled Salem in its persecution of women who dared express
thoughts upon religious matters in contradiction to the Puritanic
belief; women were whipped because of independent religious belief,
New England showing itself as strenuous for "conformity" of
religious opinion as
p. 286
Old England under Queen Elizabeth. The cruelties
of this method of punishing free thought, culminated in the
Vagabond Law of Massachusetts Colony, passed May 1661.
The first ecclesiastical convocation in America
was a synod especially convened to sit in judgment upon the
religious views of Mistress Anne Hutchinson, who demanded that the
same rights of individual judgment upon religious questions should
be accorded to woman which the reformation had already secured to
man. Of the eighty-two errors canvassed by the synod, twenty nine
were charged to Mistress Hutchinson, and retraction of them was
ordered by the church. The State united with the Church in
opposition to Mistress Hutchinson, and the first real struggle for
woman's religious liberty, (not yet at an end), began upon this
side of the Atlantic. The principal charge brought against Mistress
Hutchinson was that she had presumed to instruct men. Possessed of
a fine intellect and strong religious fervor, she had inaugurated
private meetings for the instruction of her own sex; from sixty to
a hundred women regularly gathering at her house to hear her
criticism upon the Sunday sermon and Thursday lectures. These
meetings proved so interesting that men were soon found also in
attendance and for these reasons she was arbitrarily tried in
November 1637, before the Massachusetts General Court upon a joint
charge of sedition and heresy. In May of the same year a change had
taken place in the civil government of the colony. Sir Henry Vane,
who like herself, believed in the supreme authority of the
in-dwelling spirit, having been superseded by John Winthrop as
governor, the latter sustaining the power of the clergy and himself
taking
p. 287
part against her. Two days were spent by him and
prominent clergymen in her examination, resulting in a sentence of
imprisonment and banishment from the colony for having "traduced
the ministers" and taught men against the direct authority of the
Apostle Paul, who declared "I suffer not a woman to teach."
Thus the old world
restrictions upon woman, and their persecutions, were soon
duplicated in the new world. Liberty of opinion became as serious a
crime in America as in England, and here as in Europe, the most
saintly virtue and the purest life among women were not proof
against priestly attack. While Mistress Hutchinson was the first
woman thus to suffer, many others were also persecuted. When Mary
Fisher and Anne Austin, two Quaker women who had become famous for
their promulgation of this heretical doctrine in many parts of the
world, arrived in Boston harbor, July 1656, they were not at first
permitted to land, but were ultimately transferred to the Boston
jail, where they were closely confined, and notwithstanding the
heat of the weather their one window was boarded up. Their persons
were also stripped and examined for signs of witchcraft, but
fortunately not a mole or a spot could be found. Boston--"The
Bloody Town"--was the center of this persecuting spirit and every
species of wanton cruelty upon woman was enacted. Stripped nude to
the waist they were tied to a whipping-post on the south side of
King Street and flogged on account of their religious opinions; but
it was upon the famous "Common" that for the crime of free speech,
a half nude woman with a new born babe at her breast was thus
publicly whipped; and it was upon the "Common" that Mary Dyer,
another Quaker woman, was hung in 1659.
p. 288
Both she and Anne Hutchinson prophesied calamity
to the colony for its unjust course, which was fulfilled, when in
1684 it lost its charter in punishment for its intolerance. No
Christian country offered a refuge for woman, as did Canada the
colored slave. But the evils of woman's persecution by the church,
did not end with the wrongs inflicted upon her; they were widely
extended, affecting the most common interests of the world. While
famines were unknown among the ancient Romans in the first period
of their history, yet Christendom was early and frequently
afflicted with them. While the operations of nature were sometimes
the cause, the majority of famines were the result of persecutions,
or of christian wars, especially the crusades which took such
immense numbers of men from the duties of agriculture at home,
making them a prey upon the scanty resources of the countries
through which these hordes passed. As was seen in the Irish famine
of 1847-8 and at the present moment as result of a scanty food
supply in Russia, pestilence of various kinds followed famine
years. But the crusades in which the church attempted to wrest the
holy sepulchre from Turkish hands, were scarcely more productive of
famines than its persecuting periods when mankind lost hope in
themselves and the future. Our own country has shown the effect of
fear and persecution upon both business and religion, as during the
witchcraft period of New England, scarcely two hundred years since,
all business of whatever nature in country and in town was
neglected, and even the meeting house was allowed to fall out of
repair. Nor was this ruin of a temporary nature, as many people
left the Colony and its effects descended to those yet unborn. Both
Bancroft's History
p. 289
of the United States, and Lapham's History of
the Salem Witchcraft, paint vivid pictures of the effects following
the different church persecutions of woman. Of the Hutchinson
trial, Bancroft says:
This dispute infused its
spirit into everything. It interferred with the levy of troops for
the Pequot war; it influenced the respect shown to magistrates; the
distribution of town lots; the assessment of rates and at last the
continued existence of the two parties was considered inconsistent
with public peace.
Of the witchcraft
period, Upham says:
It cast its shadows over
a broad surface and they darkened the condition of generations * *
* The fields were neglected; fences, roads, barns, even the meeting
house went into disrepair * * * A scarcity of provisions nearly
amounting to a famine continued for some time. Farms were brought
under mortgage, or sacrificed, and large numbers of people were
dispersed. The worst results were not confined to the village but
spread more or less over the country.
Massachusetts was not
the only colony that treated witchcraft as a crime. Maryland, New
Jersey and Virginia possessed similar enactments. Witchcraft was
considered and treated as a capital offense by the laws of both
Pennsylvania and New York, trials taking place in both colonies not
long before the Salem tragedy. The peaceful Quaker, William Penn,
presided upon the bench in Pennsylvania at the trial of two Swedish
women accused of witchcraft The Grand jury acting under instruction
given in his charge, found true bills against these women, and
Penn's skirts were only saved from the guilt of their blood by some
technical irregularity in the indictment.
Virginia, Delaware,
Maryland, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts
and New York, eight of the thirteen colonies recognized
witchcraft
p. 290
as a capital crime. Margaret M------ was
indicted for witchcraft in Pennsylvania in 1683, the law against it
continuing in force until September 23, 1794. By law of the
Province of East New Jersey, 1668, any person found to be a witch,
either male or female, was to suffer death. In that state the right
of complaining against a child who should smite or curse either
parent, pertained to both father and mother; the penalty was death.
As late as 1756, Connecticut recognized the right of parents to
dispose of children in marriage. In Maryland 1666 the commission
given to magistrates for Somerset county directed them under oath
to make enquiries in regard to witchcraft, sorcery, and magic arts.
In 1706 Grace Sherwood of Princess Anne County, Virginia, was tried
for witchcraft. The records of the trial show that the court after
a consideration of the charges, ordered the sheriff to take the
said Grace into his custody and to commit her body to the common
jail, there to secure her with irons or otherwise, until brought to
trial.
82
In 1692, the Grand jury
brought a bill against Mary Osgood of the Province of Massachusetts
Bay, as follows:
The powers for our
sovereign lord and lady, the king and queen, present that Mary
Osgood, wife of Captain John Osgood in the county of Essex, about
eleven years ago in the town of Andover aforesaid, wickedly,
maliciously and feloniously a covenant with the devil did make and
signed the devil's book, and took the devil to be her God, and
consented to serve and worship him and was baptized by the devil
and renounced her former Christian baptism and promised to the
devil both body and soul, forever, and to serve him; by which
diabolical covenant by her made with the devil; she, the said Mary
Osgood is become a detestable witch against the peace of our
sovereign
p. 291
lord and lady, the king and queen, their crown
and dignity and the laws in that case made and provided. A true
bill.
83
When for "witches" we
read "women," we gain fuller comprehension of the cruelties
inflicted by the church upon this portion of humanity. Friends were
encouraged to cast accusation upon their nearest and dearest,
rewards being offered for conviction. Husbands who had ceased to
care for their wives or who by reason of their sickness or for any
cause found them a burden, or for reasons of any nature desired to
break the indissoluble bonds of the church, now found an easy
method They had but to accuse the wife of witchcraft and the
marriage was dissolved by her death at the stake. Church history is
not silent upon such instances, and mention is made of a husband
who by a rope about the neck dragged his wife before that
Arch-Inquisitor, Sprenger, making accusation of witchcraft against
her. No less from protestant than from catholic pulpits were people
exhorted to bring the witch, even if of one's own family, to
justice.
In 1736, the statute
against witchcraft was repealed by the English Parliament, yet a
belief in witchcraft is still largely prevalent even among educated
people. Dr. F. G. Lee the vicar of an English church, that of All
Saints in Lambeth, a few years since publicly deprecated the
abolition of its penalties in a work entitled "Glimpses of the
Twilight," complaining that the laws against witchcraft had been
"foolishly and short-sightedly repealed." A remarkable case
occurred in Prussia 1883 when the father of a bed-ridden girl,
having become persuaded that his daughter was bewitched by a woman
who had occasionally given her apples and pears, was advised the
child would be
p. 292
cured if she drank some of the blood of the
supposed witch. The woman was therefore entrapped into a place
where some of the chief men of the commune had assembled to receive
her. She was seized, one of her fingers pricked with a needle and
her blood given to the sick child. In 1885 a case of slander based
upon alleged witchcraft came before Justice Randolphs, District
Court of Jersey City. The justice listened to the evidence for
several hours before recalling the fact that there was no law upon
which he could base his decision, the latest legislation being the
law of 1668 repealed 1795 (twenty years after our Declaration of
Independence), the crime was no longer officially
recognized.
84 It is curious to note the
close parallel between accusations during the witchcraft period and
those against the New Jersey suspect of 1885. It was said of her
that during the night she accomplished such feats by supernatural
power as jumping from a third story window, alighting upon a gate
post as gently as a falling feather. It was also asserted that
people whom she was known to dislike became gradually ill, wasting
away until they died. The accused woman declared it was her
superior knowledge that was feared, and thus again the middle ages
are paralleled, as the witches of that period were usually women of
superior knowledge. In 1882, a Wisconsin farmer was put under bonds
to keep the peace, on account of his attempts to assault an old
lady who he averred was a witch, who injured his cattle, and
entered his house through the chimney or key hole, to his great
terror and distress. The state of Indiana about sixty years ago
possessed
p. 293
a neighborhood where the people believed in
witchcraft. If the butter failed to come, or the eggs to hatch, or
a calf got choked, or even if the rail fences fell down when
covered with sleet and snow, the whole trouble was attributed to
the witches, who were also believed to have the remarkable power of
saddling and bridling a man and with sharp spurs riding him over
the worst roads imaginable, to his great harm and fatigue. Even the
great Empire State, as late as January 1892, had within its borders
a case of murder where an inoffensive old man lost his life because
he was believed to be a wizard; and this occurred in the center of
a prosperous farming country where money is liberally expended for
educational purposes, this being one of the rare instances where a
man fell under suspicion.
It is but a few years
since the great and enlightened city of Paris caused the arrest,
under police authority, of fourteen women upon charge of sorcery;
and it is but little more than twenty years since a woman in the
state of Puebla, Mexico, was hung and burned as a witch, because
unable to reveal the whereabouts of a lost animal. She was seized,
hung to a tree shot at and then plunged into fire until she
expired.
85 The body at first buried in
the cemetery, was exhumed the following day by order of the priest,
who refused to allow the remains of a witch to be buried in
consecrated ground. The state, in person of the mayor of the city,
authorized the proceedings by taking part in them as principal
persecutor. In the same province another woman was severely flogged
as a witch, by four men, one of them her own son. Thus
p. 294
now, as in its earlier ages, wherever the light
of civilization has not overcome the darkness of the church, we
find woman still a sufferer from that ignorance and superstition
which under Christianity, teaches that she brought sin into the
world.
Next:
Chapter VI. Wives.
Footnotes
p. 217
1. Black was hated as the colors of the devil. In
the same manner red was hated in Egypt as the color of Typhon.
p. 218
2. At what date then did the witch appear? In the
age of despair, of that deep despair which the guilt of the church
engendered. Unfalteringly I say, the witch is a crime of their own
making.--
Michelet.
3. "It is not a little remarkable, though
perfectly natural, that the introduction of the cat gave a new
impulse to tales and fears of ghosts and enchantments. The sly,
creeping, nocturnal grimalkin took rank at once with owls and bats,
and soon surpassed them both as an exponent of all that is weird
and supernatural. Entirely new conceptions of witchcraft were
gained for the world when the black cat appeared upon the scene
with her swollen tail, glistening eyes and unearthly
yell."--Ex.
4. Steevens says it was permitted to a witch to
take on a cattes body nine times.-Brand 3, 89-90.
5. Mr. E, F. Spicer, a taxidermist of Birmingham,
whose great specialty is
p. 219 the
artistic preparation of kittens for sale, will not purchase black
ones, as he finds the superstition against black cats interferes
with their sale.--"Pall Mall Gazette," Nov. 13, 1886. But the
United States, less superstitious, has recently witnessed the
formation of a "Consolidated Cat Company" upon Puget Sound for the
special propagation of black cats to be raised for their fur.
p. 219
6.
City of God, Lib. XVIII. Charles F.
Lummis, in a recent work,
Some Strange Corners of Our Country,
the Wonderland of the Southwest, refers to the power of the
shamans to turn themselves at will into any animal shape, as
a wolf, bear or dog.
7. Italian women usually became cats. The Witch
Hammer mentioned a belief in Lycanthropy and Metamorphosis. It gave
the story of a countryman who was assaulted by three cats. He
wounded them, after which three infamous witches were found wounded
and bleeding.
p. 220
8. For a full account of this madness, and other
forms that sometimes attacked whole communities during the middle
Christian ages, see "Hecker.--
Epidemics of the Middle
Ages."
9. The conventicle of witches was said to be held
on Mt. Atlas, "to which they rode upon a goat, a night crow, or an
enchanted staff, or bestriding a broom staff. Sundry speeches
belonged to these witches, the words whereof were neither Hebrew,
Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, nor indeed deriving their
Etymology from any known language."
p. 222
10.
St. Gregory, of Nyassa, a canonized
saint, the only theologian to whom the church (except St. John) has
ever allowed the title of "The Divine," was a member of that
council, aiding in the preparation of the Nicene Creed. it is a
significant fact that a great number of public women, "an immense
number," congregated at Nice during the sessions of this
council.
p. 223
11. In Guernsey a mother and her two daughters
were brought to the stake; One of the latter, a married woman with
child, was delivered in the midst of her torments, and the infant,
just rescued, was tossed back into the flames by a priest with the
cry, "One heretic the less."
p. 224
12. "Old writers declared that women have been
more addicted to those devilish arts than men, was manifest by
'many grave authors,' among whom Diodorus, Sindas, Pliny and St.
Augustine were mentioned. Quintillian declared theft more prevalent
among men, but witchcraft especially a sin of omen."
13. Lea.--
Superstition and Force.
p. 225
14. Certain forms of ordeal, such as the
ordinary ones of fire and water, seem to have owed their origin to
the trials passed by the candidate for admission into the ancient
mysteries as Lea, has also conjectured. During the mysteries of
Isis, the candidate was compelled to descend into dark dungeons of
unknown depth, to cross bars of red-hot iron, to plunge into a
rapid stream at seeming hazard of life, to hang suspended in
mid-air; while the entrance into other mysteries confronted the
candidate with howling wild beasts and frightful serpents. All who
passed the ancient ordeals in safety, were regarded as holy and
acceptable to the Deity, but not so under Christian ordeal, its
intention being conviction of the accused. Those who proved their
innocence by carrying red-hot iron uninjured for three paces and
the court was thus forced to acquit, or who passed through other
forms of torture without confession were still regarded with
suspicion as having been aided by Satan, and the sparing of their
lives was to the scandal of the faithful.
p. 226
15. Woman was represented as the door of hell,
as the mother of all human ill. She should be ashamed at the very
thought she is a woman. She should live in continual penance on
account of the curses she has brought upon the world. She should be
ashamed of her dress, for it is the memorial of her fall. She
should be especially ashamed of her beauty, for it is the most
potent instrument of the demon.--
Hist. European Morals, Vol.
2, p. 358.
16. Witchcraft was supposed to have power of
subverting religion.--
Montesquieu.
17. The question why the immense majority of
those who were accused should be women, early attracted attention;
it was answered by the inherent wickedness of the sex, which had
its influence in pre-disposing men to believe in witches, and also
in producing the extreme callousness with which the sufferings of
the victims were contemplated.--
Rationalism in Europe I,
88.
p. 227
18. 18 mo. An unusually small size for that
period.
19. (
Witch Hammer.)
20. The Court of Rome was fully apprized that
power cannot be maintained without property, and thereupon its
attention began very early to be riveted upon every method that
promised pecuniary advantage. All the wealth of Christendom was
gradually drawn by a thousand channels into the coffers of the Holy
See. Blackstone.--
Commentaries 4, 106. "The church forfeited
the wizard's
p. 228 property to the judge and the
prosecutor, Wherever the church law was enforced, the trials for
witchcraft waxed numerous and brought much wealth to the clergy.
Wherever the lay tribunal claimed the management of those trials,
they grew scarce and disappeared."
p. 229
21. Burning Place of the Cross.
22. A MS. upholding the burning of witches as
heretics, written in 1450 by the Dominican Brother
Hieronymes
Visconti, of Milan, is among the treasures of the
White
Library, recently presented to Cornell University.
p. 231
23. It shall not be amiss to insert among these
what I have heard concerning a witch of Scotland: One of that
countrie (as by report there are too many) being for no goodness of
the judges of Assize, arrayed, convicted and condemned to be burnt,
and the next day, according to her judgment, brought and tied to
the stake, the reeds and fagots placed round about her, and the
executioner ready to give fire (for by no persuasion of her ghostly
fathers, nor importunities of the sheriff, she could be wrought to
confess anything) she now at the last cast to take her farewell of
the world, casting her eye at one side upon her only sonne, and
calls to him, desiring him verie earnestly as his last dutie to her
to bring her any water, or the least quantity of licuor (be it
never so small), to comfort her, for she was so extremely athirst;
at which he, shaking his head, said nothing; she still importuned
him in these words: "Oh, my deere sonne helpe me to any drinke, be
it never so little, for I am most extremely drie, oh drie, drie;"
to which the young fellow answered, "by no means, deere mother will
I do you that wrong;
for the drier you are (no doubt) you will
burne the better." Heywoode--
History of Women, Lib. 8,
p. 06.
24. Lenormant.--
Chaldean Magic and
Sorcery, 385.
25.
Institutes of Scotland.
p. 232
26. At
Bamburg, Germany an original
record of twenty-nine burnings in nineteen months, 162 persons in
all, mentions the infant daughter of Dr. Schutz as a victim of the
twenty-eighth burning. Hauber.--
Bibliotheca Magica.
27. In those terrible trials presided over by
Pierre de Lancre, it was asserted that hundreds of girls and boys
flocked to the indescribable Sabbats of Labourd. The Venitians
record the story of a little girl of nine years who raised a great
tempest, and who like her mother was a witch. Signor
Bernoni,--
Folk Lore.
28. Some very strange stories of such power at
the present time have become known to the author, one from the lips
of a literary gentleman in New York City, this man of undoubted
veracity declaring that he had seen his own father extend
p.
233 his hand under a cloudless sky and produce rain. A
physician of prominence in a western city asserts that a most
destructive cyclone, known to the Signal Service Bureau as "The
Great Cyclone," was brought about by means of magical formula, made
use of by a school girl in a spirit of ignorant bravado.
p. 236
29. These and similar powers known as magical,
are given as pertaining to the Pueblo Indians, by Charles F.
Lummis, in
Some Strange Corners of Our Country, pub. 1892. A
friend of the author witnessed rain thus produced by a very aged
Iowa Indian a few years since.
p. 238
30. A
Hindoo Scripture whose name
signifies knowledge.--Max Muller.
31.
Isis Unveiled, I, 354.
p. 239
32. of which the tricks of Halloween may be a
memento.
33.
Anacalypsis, Vol. I, p. 35.
34. Bacchus was not originally the god of wine,
but signified books. Instruction of old, when learning was a secret
science, was given by means of leaves. "Bacchus Sabiesa" really
signified "book wise" or learned, and the midsummer-day festival
was celebrated in honor of learning. In the Anacalypsis Higgins
says: "From Celland I learn that in Celtic, Sab means wise, whence
Saba and Sabasius, no doubt wise in the stars. From this comes the
Sab-bath day, or day dedicated to wisdom, and the Sabbat, a species
of French masonry, an account of which may be seen in
Dulare's
History of Paris. Sunday was the day of instruction of the
Druids, whence it was called Sabs.--
Ibid I, 716.
35. From the preachment of the Sabs, or Sages,
or wise Segent Sarcedos.--
Ibid I, 716.
p. 240
36. The only physician of the people for a
thousand years was the witch. The emperors, kings, popes and richer
barons had indeed the doctors of Salermo, then Moors and Jews, but
the bulk of the people in every state; the world, it might as well
be called, consulted none but the Sages or wise women.
Michelet,--
La Sorciere.
p. 241
37. I make no doubt that his (Paracelsus)
admirable and masterly work on the Diseases of Women, the first
written on this theme, so large, so deep, so tender, came forth
from his special experience of those women to whom others went for
aid, the witches, who acted as midwives, for never in those days
was a male physician admitted to the women.--
Ibid.
38. Within the past fifty years the death rate
in childbirth was forty in a thousand, an enormous mortality, and
although the advances in medical knowledge have somewhat lessened
the rate, more women still lose their lives during childbirth than
soldiers in battle.
p. 242
39. In childbirth a motherly hand instilled the
gentle poison, casting the mother herself into a sleep, and
soothing the infant's passage, after the manner of modern
chloroform, into the world.--
Michelet.
p. 244
40.
Pouruchet Solenasaes.
p. 245
41. Alexander.--
History of Women.
42. You will hardly believe it, but I saw a real
witch's skull, the other evening, at a supper party I had the
pleasure of attending it was at the house of Dr. Dow, a medical
gentleman of culture and great skill in his profession here. You
will admit that a skull is not a pleasant thing to exhibit in a
parlor, and some of the ladies did not care about seeing it; but
the majority did, and you know one cannot see a witch's skull every
day. So, after a little hesitation and persuasion on the part of
the doctor, he produced the uncanny thing and gave us its history,
or rather that of the witch. She lived at Terryburn, a little place
near here.
p. 246 One day it came to the ears of the
kirk session of the parish that she had had several interviews with
his Satanic Majesty. Strange enough, when the woman was brought
before that body--which seems to have been all-powerful in the
several parishes in those days--and accused of it, she at once
admitted the charge to be true. The poor soul, who could have been
nothing else than an idiot, as the doctor pointed out from the very
low forehead and small brain cavity, was sentenced to be prevented
from going to sleep; or in other words, tortured to death, and the
desired end was attained in about five days, her body being buried
below high-water mark.
Her name was Lillas Adie, and there is no doubt
that she was only a harmless imbecile. The skull. and also a piece
of the coffin, were presented to the doctor by a friend who had
read in the kirk session records an account of the trial, and went
to the spot stated as being the place of burial. The remains were
found by him exactly as indicated, although there was nothing to
mark their resting place, One would have thought that after the
lapse of so many years it would be exceedingly difficult to find
them, but you know things do not undergo such radical changes in
this country as they do in America.--From a traveler's letter in
the "Syracuse Journal," August 22, 1881.
Almost indistinguished from the belief in
witchcraft was the belief that persons subject to epilepsy, mania
or any form of mental weakness, were possessed of a devil who could
be expelled by certain religious ceremonies. Pike.--
History of
Crime in England, Vol. pp. 7-8.
p. 246
43. The mysteries of the human conscience and of
human motives are well nigh inscrutable, and it may be shocking to
assert that these customs of unmitigated wrong are indirectly
traceable to that religion of which the two great commandments were
that man should love his neighbor as himself. Lea.--
Superstition
and Force, 53.
p. 249
44. Fox's
Book of Martyrs, gives account
of persons brought into court upon
p. 250
litters six months after having been subjected to the rack.
p. 250
45. In this case both men and women says
Johannus Megerus, author of a History of Flanders.
46. Adrianus Ferrens.
p. 251
47. St. Bernard exorcised a demon Incubus, who
for six years maintained commerce with a woman, who could not get
rid of him. Lea.--
Studies in Church History.
48. It was observed they (devils) had a peculiar
attachment to women with beautiful hair, and it was an old Catholic
belief that St. Paul alluded to this in that somewhat obscure
passage in which he exhorts women to cover their heads because of
the angels.--
Sprangler.
p. 252
49. The attention of scientific men and
governments has recently been directed to what are now called
"
The Accursed Sciences," under whose action certain crimes
have been committed from "suggestion," the hand which executed
being only that of an irresponsible automaton, whose memory
preserves no traces of it. The French Academy has just been
debating the question--how far a hypnotized subject from a mere
victim can become a regular tool of crime.--
Lucifer, October
1887.
"Merck's Bulletin," New York medical journal, in
an editorial entitled
Modern Witchcraft, December, 1892,
relates some astonishing experiments recently made at the
Hopital de la Charit�, Paris, in which the power to
"exteriorize sensibility" has been discovered, reproducible at
will; suggestion through means of simulated pinching producing
suffering; photographs sensitive to their originals even having
produced. Thus modern science stamps with truthfulness the power
asserted as pertaining to black magicians, of causing suffering or
death through means of a waxen image of a person. "
The Accursed
Sciences," although brought to the bar of modern investigating
knowledge, seem not yet to have yielded the secrets of the law
under which they are rendered possible.
p. 253
50. In 1609 six hundred sorcerers were convicted
in the Province of Bordeaux, France, most of whom were
burned.--
Dr. Priestly. Within the last year fourteen women
have been tried in France for sorcery.
p. 254
51. The supreme end of magic is to conjure the
spirits. The highest and most inscrutable of all the powers dwells
in the divine and mysterious name, "The Supreme Name," with which
Hea alone is acquainted. Before this name everything bows in heaven
and earth, and in hades, and it alone can conquer the Maskim and
stop their ravages. The great name remained the secret of Hea; if
any man succeeded in divining it, that alone would invest him with
a power superior to the gods.--
Chaldean Magic and
Sorcery.
p. 255
52. Venitians concluded not unreasonably that
the latter ran no more risk from the taint of witchcraft attached
to their inheritance than did the clergy or the church. Where
profits were all spiritual their ardor soon cooled. Thus it
happened as the inevitable result of the peoples attitude in
religious matters, that while in Venice there were representatives
of the vast sisterhood, which extended from the Blockula of Sweden
to the walnut tree of Beneveuto, sorcery there never became the
terrible scourge that it was in other lands where its victims at
times threatened to outnumber those of the Black Death.--
The
Witches of Venice.
p. 256
53. One of the most powerful features of the
belief in witchcraft was the power that greed had in producing
belief and causing persecution. The church had grown rich from such
trials, and the state was now to take its turn. By the public
offering of a reward for the finding of witches, their numbers
greatly increased.
54. The most exceptional conduct, the purest
morals in constant practice of every day life, are not sufficient
security against the suspicion of errors like
these.--
Montesquieu.
p. 257
55. For a number of years her celebrated son
struggled amid his scientific studies for the
preservation
of her life.
p. 258
56. Michelet.--
Le Sorcerie 151. See
Papers on the Bastile.
57. In its earliest phase the Black Mass seemed
to betoken the redemption of Eve, so long accused by Christianity.
The woman filled every place in the Sabbath. Following its
celebration was the denial of Jesus, by whose authority the priests
and barons robbed the serf of human hope--the paying of homage to
the new master--the feudal kiss. To the closing ceremonies, "The
Feast of Peace," no man was admitted unaccompanied by a
woman.--
La Sorcerie.--Ibid.
p. 259
58. "This word at different times clearly meant
quite different things. In the 14th century, under the Avignon
popes, during the great schism when the church with two heads seems
no longer a church, the Sabbath took the horrible form of the Black
Mass."
59. This important part of the woman being her
own altar, is known to us by the trial of La Voisin, which M.
Revanna
Sen. published with other
Papers of the
Bastile.--Ibid.
p. 261
60. That women have been more addicted to this
devilish art than man, is manifest by the approbation of many grave
authority. Diodorus, in his fifth book, speaks of Hecate.
Heywood.--
History of Women, London, 1624. St. Augustine, in
his City of God, declared that women are more prone to these
unlawful acts, for so we read of Medea, Cyrce and others. Suidas,
speaking of witches, cites an old proverb, declaring witchcraft
peculiar to woman and not to man. Quintillian, referring to this
statement, says: Theft is more common with man, but witchcraft with
woman.
61. Idiots, the lame, the blind and the dumb,
are men in whom devils have established themselves, and all the
physicians who heal these infirmities as though they preceded from
natural causes are ignorant blockheads, who know nothing about the
power of the demons.--
Tishreden, p. 202.
p. 262
62. See
Reeves, and
Hume.
p. 263
63.
The Statute of Labourers (5 Eliz. C.
4) enacted that unmarried women between twelve and forty years old
may be appointed by two justices to serve by the year, week, or
day, for such wages and in such reasonable sort and manner as they
shall think meet.--
Reeves 3, 591-8.
64. Seen by
Dr. Gray.
65. James believing in their (witches)
influence, and Bacon partly sharing in
p. 264 the
belief. Macbeth appeared in this year mixed up with Bacon's
inquiries into witchcraft. Ignatius Donnelly.--
The
Cryptogram. From the accession of James I., witchcraft became
the master superstition of the age. The woman accused of witchcraft
was practically beyond the pale of the law; the mere fact of
accusation was equal to condemnation.
p. 266
66.
Laws and Customs of Scotland, 2;
56
p. 267
67.
The Seeress of Prevorst.
p. 269
68. Iron collars, or Witches' Bridles, are still
preserved in various parts of Scotland, which had been used for
such iniquitous purposes. These instruments were so constructed
that by means of a loop which passed over the head, a piece of iron
having four points or prongs, was forcibly thrust into the mouth,
two of these being directed to the tongue and palate, the others
pointing outward to each cheek. This infernal machine was secured
by a padlock. At the back of the collar was fixed a ring, by which
to attach the witch to a staple in the wall of her cell. Thus
equipped, and day and night waked and watched by some skillful
person appointed by her inquisitors, the unhappy creature, after a
few days of such discipline, maddened by the misery of her forlorn
and helpless state, would be rendered fit for confessing anything
in order to be rid of the dregs of her life. At intervals fresh
examinations took place, and they were repeated from time to time
until her "contumacy," as it was termed, was subdued. The clergy
and Kirk Sessions appear to have been the unwearied instruments of
"purging the land of witchcraft," and to them,
in the first
instance, all the complaints and informations were
made.--
Pitcairn, Vol. I., Part 2, p. 50.
"Who has not heard of the Langholm witches, and
'the branks' to subdue them? This was a simple instrument formed so
as to fit firmly on the head, and
p. 270 to
project into the mouth a sharp spike for subjugating the tongue. It
was much preferred to the ducking-stool, 'which not only endangered
the health of the patient, but also gave the tongue liberty betwixt
every dip!' Scores of these 'patients' were burned alongside
Langholm castle; and the spot is fully as interesting as our own
reminder of the gentle days, Gallows Hill, at Salem."
p. 270
69. By statute 33 of Henry VIII., C. 8, all
witchcraft and sorcery was to be felony without benefit of clergy.
This act continued in force till lately to the terror of all
ancient females in the kingdom.--
Commentaries. As bad as the
Georges are depicted, thanks are due to two of them from women. By
statute of George II., C. 5, no future prosecution was to be
carried on against any person for conjuration, witchcraft, sorcery
or enchantment.
p. 272
70. Towards the end Of 1593 there was trouble in
the family of the Earl of Orkney. His brother laid a plot to murder
him, and was said to have sought the help of a notorious witch
called "Allison Balfour." No evidence could be found connecting her
with this particular offense or with witchcraft in general, but it
was enough in these matters to be a woman and to be accused. She
swore she was innocent, but she was looked upon as a pagan who thus
aggravated her guilt. She was tortured again and again, but being
innocent she constantly declared her innocence. Her legs were put
into the Casctulars--an iron which was gradually heated until it
burned into the flesh, but no confession could be wrung from her.
The Casctulars having utterly failed to make her tell a lie, "the
powers that be," whom Paul tells us "are of God," tortured her
husband, her son and her daughter, a little child of only seven
years. The "powers" knew the tenderness and love of a wife and
mother, so they first brought her husband into court and placed by
her side. He was placed in the "long irons," some accursed
instrument. She did not yield. Then her son was tortured; the poor
boy's legs were set in "the boot," the iron boot, and wedges were
driven in, which forced home crushed the very bone and marrow.
Fifty-seven mallet strokes were delivered upon the wedges, yet this
failed. This innocent tortured heroic woman would not confess to a
lie. So last of all her baby daughter was brought in, the fair
child of seven short years. There was a machine called the
pinniwinkies, a kind of thumb screw which brought blood from under
the finger nails with a pain terribly severe. These tortures were
applied to the baby hands, and the mother's fortitude broke down
and she would admit anything they wished. She confessed the
witchcraft. So tried she would have confessed the seven deadly
sins, but this suffering did not save her to her family. She was
burned alive, with her last suffering breath protesting her
innocence. This account is perfectly well authenticated and taken
from the official report of the proceedings. Froude.--
Short
Stories on Great Subjects.
p. 273
71. The same dark superstition shared the civil
councils of Scotland as late as the beginning of the 18th century,
and the convictions which then took place are chiefly to be
ascribed to the ignorance and fanaticism of the clergy.
72. Excommunication was both of temporal and
spiritual effect, the person under ban not only being deprived of
absolution, extreme unction, consecrated burial, etc, but all
persons were forbidden to deal with the recalcitrant. Under the
strictest protestantism in Scotland, the clergy held almost entire
control. When a woman fell under suspicion of being a witch, the
minister denounced her from the pulpit, forbade any one harboring
or sheltering her, and exhorted his parishoners to give evidence
against her. To the clergy and Kirk Sessions were the first
complaints made. It is scarcely more than 150 years since the last
witch was burned in Scotland, having been accused of raising a
thunder storm by pulling off her stockings.--
Witchcraft Under
Protestantism.
73. Many witches lost their lives in every part
of England, without being brought to trial at all, from injuries
received at the hands of the populace. Mackay.--
Memoirs of
Extraordinary Popular Delusions.
p. 274
74. One of the most powerful incentives to
confession was to systematically deprive the suspected witch of her
natural sleep. It was said who but witches can be present and so
witness of the doings of witches, since all their meetings and
conspiracies are the habits of darkness. "The voluntarie confession
of a witch doth exceede all other evidence. How long she has been a
witch the devil and she knows best."
p. 280
75. Among the Lancashire witches was Old
Demedike, four score years old, who had been a witch fifty years,
and confessed to possessing a demon which appeared to her in the
form of a brown dog.--Sommer's Trials.
76.
Ibid.
77. Which examination, although she was but very
young, yet it was wonderful to the Court in so great a presence and
audience.--
Ibid. Ties of the tenderest nature did not
restrain the inquisitors. Young girls were regarded as the best
witnesses against their mothers, and the oaths of children of
irresponsible age were received as evidence against a
parent.--Superstition and Force, p. 93.
p. 282
78. When a reward was publicly offered
there seemed to be no end of finding witches,
and many kept with great care their note book of
"Examination of Witches",
and were discovering "hellish kinds of them".
p. 284
79.
Salem Witchcraft I, 393-4; 2,
373.
80. I seemed to have stepped back to Puritan time,
when an old gentleman said to me.
"I am descended from that line of witches;
my grandmother and 120 others were under condemnation of death at New Bedford,
when an order came from the king prohibiting farther executions."
p. 285
81. SALEM, Mass., July 30, 1892. --
The 200th anniversary of the hanging of Rebecca Nurse of Salem village for witchcraft,
was commemorated in Danvers Centre, old Salem village, by the Nurse Monument Association.
The distinct feature of the occasion was the dedication of a granite tablet
to commemorate the courage of forty men and women,
who at the risk of their lives gave written testimony
in favor of Rebecca Nurse in 1692.
p. 290
82. Howes.--
Historical Collection of Virginia, p. 438.
p. 291
83.
Collection Massachusetts Historical Society for the year 1800. p. 241.
p. 292
84. No prosecution, suit or proceedings
shall be commenced or carried on in any court of this state
against any person for conjuration or witchcraft,
sorcery or enchantment or for charging another with such offense.
p. 293
85. Under the church theory that
all members of the witch's family are tainted,
the husband of this unfortunate woman hid himself,
fearing the same fate. -- Telegram.
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