§ 136. DEMON OLOGY AND THE DARK ARTS. 887
Heisterbach gives many stories of the cohabitation of demons with priests and women.1
This malign activity upon the marital relation was made by Thomas Aquinas a proper ground of divorce.2 The trans port of men and women through the air is also vouched for by this theologian, and as far back as the twelfth century the Patarenes were accused of practices, as by Walter Map, which were at a later period associated with witches. They held their meetings or synagogues behind closed doors and after the lights were put out the devil descended in the shape of a cat, holding on to a rope. Scenes of indiscriminate lust followed. Map was even willing to believe that the heretics kissed the cat under the tail.3
The mind of Europe did not become seriously exercised on the subject of demonic possession until after heresy made its appearance and the measures to blot it out were in an advanced stage. The Fourth Lateran did not mention the dark arts, and its failure to do so can only be explained on the ground that the mind of Christendom was not yet aroused. It was not long, however, before violent incur sions of the powers of darkness, as they were supposed to be, rudely awakened the Church, and from the time of Gregory IX. the agency of evil spirits and heresy were closely asso ciated. In one of his deliverances against the Stedinger, this pope vouched for the belief that he re tics consulted witches, held communion with demons, and indulged in orgies with the-rn and the devil who, as he said, met with them in the forms of a great toad and black cat. Were the stars in heaven and the elements to combine for the destruction of such people without reference to their age or sex, it would be an inadequate punishment.4
1 Sometimes demons took the place of loose women with whom priests had made assignations, Dial., III. 10. Csesar tells of a woman who had committed whoredom with a demon for seven years and, while confessing her sin to the priest, fell dead.
a He gives a full chapter to the subject. In Sent., IV. 34, 1.
1 Wright's ed., p. 61. plurimi sub cauda, plerlque pudenda.
4 A translation of the bull dated June, 1233, 1'otthast, I. no. 9230, is given by Hoensbroech, I. 215 sqq.
THE MIDDLE AGES. A. D. 1049-1294.
After 1250 the persecution of heretics for -doctrinal error diminishes and the trials for sorcery, witchcraft, and other demonic iniquity become frequent.1 In his bull, ad exstirpanda, 1252, Innocent IV. called upon princes to treat heretics as though they were sorcerers, and in 1258 Alexander JV. spoke of sorcerers as savoring of heresy.2 Before this, magic and sor cery had come exclusively under the jurisdiction of the state,
At this juncture came the indorsement of Thomas Aquinas, and his great theological contemporaries. There was noth ing left for the ecclesiastical and civil authorities to do but to ferret out sorcerers, witches, and all who had; habitual secret dealings with the devil. A craze seized upon the Church to clear the Christian world of imaginary armies of evil spirits, demonizing men and especially women. Pope after pope issued orders not to spare those who were in league with the devil, but to put them to torture and cast them into the flames.3 The earliest trials for sorcery by the Inquisition were held in Southern France about 1250, and the oldest Interrogatories of the Inquisition on the subject elate twenty-five years later.4 These prosecutions reached their height in the fifteenth century, and the papal fulminations found their ultimate expression in the bull of Innocent VIII. against witches, 1484. |.
Men like Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon were popu larly charged with being wizards. Bacon, enlightened beyond his age, pronounced some of the popular beliefs delusions, but, far from denying the reality of sorcery and magic, he tried to explain the efficacy of spells and charms by their being made at seasons when the heavens were propitious.
1 Hansen dates the new treatment of sorcery by the Church with 1230 and carries the period on to 1430, when he dates the period of witchcraft and its punishment by the Church. 2 Hansen, Quellen, p. 1.
8 Hansen gives a number of such bulls and quotes an author who speaks of 1Q3 papal bulls directed against sorcery, a number Hansen doubts. Quellen,. p. 1.
4 Hansen, Quellen, pp. 43 sqq., gives it under the title forma et modus interrogandi augures et ydolatras, and assigns it to . 1270, Gesch.^ p.:243. Douais places it a little earlier. A portion of Bernard Gui's Practica inquisitionis (1320) is an interrogatory .-.of practisere of the occult arts, interrog.- ad sortileges et divinos ei invocatores d&monum. See J>ouais' ed;, Paris, 1886,