518 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
Before the close of the 13th century, popes themselves were accused of having familiar spirits and practising sorcery, as John XXI., 1276, and Boniface VIII. Boniface went so far, 1303, as to order the trial of an English bishop, Walter of Coventry and Lichfield, on the charge of having made a pact with the devil and habitually kissing the devil's posterior parts. Under his successor, Clement, the gross charges of wantonness with the devil were circulated against the Knights of the Temple. In his work, De maleficiis, Boniface VIII. 's physician, Arnold of Villanova, stated with scientific precision the Satanic devices for disturbing and thwarting the marital relation. Among the popes of the 14th century, John XXII. is distinguished for the credit he gave to all sorts of malefic arts and his instructions to the inquisitors to proceed against persons in league with the devil. ^
Sideby^^side. with, the paj^al utterances went the authoritative statements of the Schoolmen. Leaning upon Augustiiie, Thomas Aquinas, d. 1274, accepted as real the cohabitation of human beings with demons, and declared that old women had the power by the glance of their eye of injecting into young people a certain evil essence. If the horrible beliefs of the Middle Ages on the subject of witchcraft are to be set aside, then the bulls of Leo XIII. and Pius X.^ pronouncing Thomas the authoritative guide of Catholic theology must be modified.
The definitions of the Schoolmen justified the demand which papal deliverances made, that the Church tribunal has at least equal jurisdiction with the tribunal of the state in ferreting out and prosecuting the adepts of the dark arts. Manuals of procedure in cases of sorcery used by the Inquisition date back at least to 1270.^ The famous Interrogatory of Bernard Guy of 1320 contains formulas on the subject. The canonists, however, had difficulty in defining the point at which maleficium became a capital crime. Oldradus, professor of canon law in turn at Bologna, Padua and Avignon, sought, about
1 So, in 132(5, John inveighed against those who cum morte fi-edus ineunt et pacttim faciunt cum inferno. For tiie text of this and other papal documents, see Hansen, QupUch, pp. 1-37.
2 In hi.s bull Pd.tcendi ijrcaix, li>07.
^ Hansen: Zaubencahu, pp. 241, 203 sq., 271.
§ 59. WITCHCRAFT AND ITS PUNISHMENT. 519
1325, to draw a precise distinction between the two, and gave the opinion that, only when sorcery savors strongly of heresy, should it be dealt with as heresy was dealt with, the position assumed before by Alexander IV., 1258-1260. The final step was taken when Eymericus, in his Inquisitorial Directory and special tracts, 1370-1380, affirmed the close affinity between maleficium and heresy, and threw the door wide open for the most rigorous measures against malefics.
To such threefold authorization was added the weight of the great influence of the University of Paris, which, in 1378, two years after the issue of Eymericus' work, sent out 28 articles affirming the reality of maleficium.
Proceeding to the second period in the history of out" subject, beginning with 1430, it is found to teem with tracts and papal deliverances on witchcraft.
Gerson, the leading theologian of his age, said it was heresy and impiety to question the practice of the malefic arts, and Eugenius IV., in several deliverances, beginning with 1434, spoke in detail of those who made pacts with demons and sacrificed to them.i Witchcraft was about to take the place in men's minds which heresy had occupied in the age of Innocent III. The frightful mania was impending which spread through Latin Christendom under the Renaissance popes, from Pius II. to Clement VII., and without a dissenting voice received their sanction. Of the Humanist, Pius II., better things might have been expected, but he also, in 1459, fulminated against the malefics of Brittany. To what length the Vatican could go in sanctioning the crassest superstition is seen from Sixtus IV.'s bull, 1471, in which that pontiff reserved to himself the right to manufacture and consecrate the little waxen figures of lambs, the touch of which was pronounced to be sufficient to protect against fire and shipwreck, storm and hail, lightning and thunder, and to preserve women in the hour of parturition.^
1 Principis tenebrarum suasus et illusiones coecitate noxia sectantes demonibiis immolant, eos adorant, etc. . . . illis homagmm faciunt, etc, Hansen, Quellen, p. 17.
2 Cereoe formoi innocentissimi agni, Hansen, etc. : Quellen, p. 21 sq.