The parliament of James I. would have done wisely to have embraced the philosophic sentiment of a Hungarian prince (1095-1114) who is said to have dismissed the absurd superstition with laconic brevity: 'De strigis vero, quæ non sunt, nulla quæstio fiat.'
117. Speculating on the manner of witches' aerial travels, he thinks, 'Another way is somewhat more strange, and yet it is possible to be true: which is, by being carried by the force of their spirit, which is their conductor, either above the earth or above the sea swiftly to the place where they are to meet: which I am persuaded to be likewise possible, in respect that as Habakkuk was carried by the angel in that form to the den where Daniel lay, so think I the devil will be ready to imitate God as well in that as in other things, which is much more possible to him to do, being a spirit, than to a mighty wind, being but a natural meteor to transport from one place to another a solid body, as is commonly and daily seen in practice. But in this violent form they cannot be carried but a short bounds, agreeing with the space that they may retain their breath; for if it were longer their breath could not remain unextinguished, their body being carried in such a violent and forcible manner.... And in this transporting they say themselves that they are invisible to any other, except amongst themselves. For if the devil may form what kind of impressions he pleases in the air, as I have said before, speaking of magic, why may he not far easier thicken and obscure so the air that is next about them, by contracting it straight together that the beams of any other man's eyes cannot pierce through the same to see them?' &c.—Cyclopædia of English Literature, edited by Robert Chambers.
118. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, xlv. It would have been well for his subjects if he could have congratulated himself, like Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (the model of philosophic princes, and a more practically virtuous, if not wiser, philosopher than the proverbial Solomon, and of whom Niebuhr, History of Rome, v., asserts, 'If there is any sublime human virtue, it is his'), that he had learnt from his instructors to laugh at the bugbears of witches and demons.—Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν.—The Meditations of M. A. Antoninus.
119. A still more sensational case happened at a village in the mountains of Auvergne. A gentleman while hunting was suddenly attacked by a savage wolf of monstrous size. Impenetrable by his shot, the beast made a spring upon the helpless huntsman, who in the struggle luckily, or unluckily for the unfortunate lady, contrived to cut off one of its fore-paws. This trophy he placed in his pocket, and made the best of his way homewards in safety. On the road he met a friend to whom he exhibited a bleeding paw, or rather a woman's hand (so it was produced from the hunter's pocket) upon which was a wedding ring. His wife's ring was at once recognised by the other. His suspicions aroused, he immediately went in search of his wife, who was found sitting by the fire in the kitchen, her arm hidden beneath her apron: when the husband seizing her by the arm found his terrible suspicions verified. The bleeding stump was there, evidently just fresh from the wound. She was given into custody, and in the event was burned at Riom in presence of thousands of spectators. Among some of the races of India, among the Khonds of the mountains of Orissa, a superstition obtains like that of the loup-garou of France. In India the tiger takes the place of the wolf, and the metamorphosed witch is there known as the Pulta-bag.
A kindred prejudice, Vampirism, has still many adherents in Eastern Europe. The vampire is a human being who in his tomb maintains a posthumous existence by ascending in the night and sucking the bodies of the living. His punishment was necessarily less tremendous than that of the witch: the dead body only being burned to ashes. An official document, quoted by Horst, narrates the particulars of the examination and burning of a disinterred vampire.
120. Montaigne, one of the few Frenchmen at this time who seemed to discredit the universal creed, in one of his essays ventures to think 'it is very probable that the principal credit of visions, of enchantments, and of such extraordinary effects, proceeds from the power of the imagination acting principally upon the more impressible minds of the vulgar.' He is inclined to assign the prevalent 'liaisons' (nouements d'aiguillettes) to the apprehensions of a fear with which in his age the French world was so perplexed (si entravé). Essais, liv. i. 20.
121. Extraordinary Popular Delusions, by Mackay, whose authorities are Tablier, Boguet (Discours sur les Sorciers), and M. Jules Garinet (Histoire de la Magie).
122. In the Nacimiento de Christo of Lope de Vega the devil appears in his popular figure of the dragon. Calderon's Wonder-Working Magician, relating the adventures of St. Cyprian and the various temptations and seductions of the Evil Spirit, like Goethe's Faust, introduces the devil in the disguise of a fashionable and gallant gentleman.—Ticknor's History of Spanish Literature.
Chapter VI.
'Possession' in France in the Seventeenth Century—Urbain Grandier and the Convent of Loudun—Exorcism at Aix—Ecstatic Phenomena—Madeleine Bavent—Her cruel Persecution—Catholic and Protestant Witchcraft in Germany—Luther's Demonological Fears and Experiences—Originated in his exceptional Position and in the extraordinary Circumstances of his Life and Times—Witch-burning at Bamburg and at Würzburg.
Demoniacal possession was a phase of witchcraft which obtained extensively in France during the seventeenth century: the victims of this hallucination were chiefly the female inmates of religious houses, whose inflamed imaginations were prostituted by their priestly advisers to the most atrocious purposes. Urbain Grandier's fate was connected with that of an entire convent. The facts of this celebrated sorcerer's history are instructive. He was educated in a college of the Jesuits at Bordeaux, and presented by the fathers, with whom his abilities and address had gained much applause, to a benefice in Loudun. He provoked by his haughtiness the jealousy of his brother clergy, who regarded him as an intruder, and his pride and resentment increased in direct proportion to the activity of his enemies, who had conspired to effect his ruin. Mounier and Mignon, two priests whom he had mortally offended, were most active. Urbain Grandier was rash enough to oppose himself alone to the united counsels of unscrupulous and determined foes. Defeated singly in previous attempts to drive him from Loudun, the two priests combined with the leading authorities of the place. Their haughty and careless adversary had the advantage or disadvantage of a fine person and handsome face, which, with his other recommendations, gained him universal popularity with the women; and his success and familiarities with the fair sex were not likely to escape the vigilance of spies anxious to collect damaging proofs. What inflamed to the utmost the animosities of the two parties was the success of Canon Mignon in obtaining the coveted position of confessor to the convent of Ursulines in Loudun, to the exclusion of Grandier, himself an applicant. This convent was destined to assume a prominent part in the fate of the curé of the town. The younger nuns, it seems, to enliven the dull monotony of monastic life, adopted a plan of amusing their leisure by frightening the older ones in making the most of their knowledge of secret passages in the building, playing off ghost-tricks, and raising unearthly noises. When the newly appointed confessor was informed of the state of matters he at once perceived the possibility, and formed the design, of turning it to account. The offending nuns were promised forgiveness if they would continue their ghostly amusement, and also affect demoniacal possession; a fraud in which they were more readily induced to participate by an assurance that it might be the humble means of converting the heretics—Protestants being unusually numerous in that part of the country.
As soon as they were sufficiently prepared to assume their parts, the magistrates were summoned to witness the
