530 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
The judgments passed upon witches were whipping, banishment and death by fire, or, as in Cologne, Strassburg and other places, by drowning. The most common forms of torture were the thumb-screw and the strappado. In the latter the prisoner's hands were bound behind his back with a rope which was drawn through a pulley in the ceiling. The body was slowly lifted up, and at times left hanging or allowed to suddenly drop to the floor. In our modern sense, there was no protection of law for the accused. The suspicion of a,n ecclesiastical or civil court was sufficient to create an almost insurmountablejH-esuniption of ^uilt. Made frantic by the torture, the victims were willing to confess to anything, however untrue and repulsive it might be. Death at times must have seemed, even with the Church's ban, preferable to protracted agonies, for the pains of death at best lasted a few hours and might be reduced to a few minutes. As Lecky has said, these unfortunate people did not have before them the prospect of a martyr's crown and the glory of the heavenly estate. They were not buoyed up by the sympathies and prayers of the Church. Unpitied and unprayed for, they yielded to the cold scrutiny of the inquisitor and were consumed in the flames.
Persons who took the part of the supposed witch, or ventured to lift up their voices against the trials for witchcraft, did so at the risk of their lives. Jn_j^593^he Dutch priestj Cornelius^iOps Callidu,'^, was imprisoned at Treves for declaring that women, making confession under torture to witch devices, confessed to what was not triif. And four years before, 1589, Dr. Dietrich Flade, a councillor of Treves, watg burnt for attacking the prosecution of witchcraft. ^
The belief in demonology and all nuinner of malefic arts was a legacy^luiiidcd down to the Church from llu; old Roman
1 Dollinger-Friedricli, pp. 130, 447. For Loos' recantation a.s given by Delrio, see Phil. Trsll. and Eepi-ints, III. In a letter, written in 1020, the chancellor of the bishop of Wiirzburg states that the week before a beautiful maiden of 19 had been executed as a witch. Children of three and four years, he adds, to the number of 300, were reported to have had intercourse with the devil. He himself had seen children of seven and promising students of 12 and 15 put to death. Fhil. Trsll.., etc., III.
§ 59. WITCHCRAFT AND ITS PUNISHMENT. 531
world and, where the influence of the Northern mythologies^ WIS felt, the belief took still deeper roots. But it cannot be (Tenied that cases and passages taken from the Scriptures, especially the Old Testament, were adduced to justify the wild dread of malign spirits in the Middle Ages. Saul's experience with the witch of Endor, the plagues brought by the devil upon Job, the representations in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, incidents from the Apocrypha and the cases of demonic agency in the New Testament were dwelt upon and applied with literal and relentless rigor.
It is a long chapter which begins with the lonely contests the old hermits had with demons, recounts the personal encounters of medieeval monks in chapel and cell and relates the horrors of the inquisitorial process for heresy. Our more rational processes of thought and our better understanding of the Christian law of love happily have brought this chapter to a close in enlightened countries. The treatment here given has been in order to show how greatly a Christian society may err, and to confirm in this generation the feeling of gratitude for the better sentiments which now prevail. It is perhaps also due to those who suffered, that a general description of the injustice done them should be given. The chapter may not unfitly be brought to a close by allowing one of the victims to speak again from his prison-cell, the burgomaster of Bamberg, though he suffered a century after the Middle Ages had closed, 1628. After being confronted by false witnesses he confessed, under torture, to having indulged in the practices ascribed to the bewitched and he thus wrote to his daughter: —
Many hundred good nights, dearly beloved daughter, Veronica. Innocent have I come into prison, innocent must I die. For whoever comes into a v?itchprison must become a witch or be tortured till he invents something out of his head and — God pity him — bethinks himself of something. I will tell you how it has gone with me. . . . Then came the executioner and put the thumbscrews on me, both hands bound together, so that the blood ran out at the nails and everywhere, so that for four weeks I could not use my hands, as you can see from the writing. . . . Then they stripped me, bound my hands behind my back and drew me up. I thought heaven and earth were at an end. Eight times did they do this and let me drop again so that I suffered terrible agony. . . . [Here follows a rehearsal of the confessions he was induced to make.] . . . Now, dear child, you have all my confessions for which I must