THE NEW : SCHAFF-HERZOG
ee
but, when the town was captured by General Leslie in 1644, his house was plundered and he was sent a captive to Edinburgh. In 1645, having been sent to the Marquis of Montrose, then everywhere victorious, with other royalist prisoners to plead for royal clemency, he appears to have joined the family of Montrose as chaplain. He continued with him to the close of the campaign, and then accompanied him abroad. After the fall of Montrose (1650), he received protection and favor from Elizabeth, queen of Bohemia, sister of Charles I. At the Restoration he returned to England, obtained the rectory of Newcastle, and in 1662 was promoted to the bishopric of Edinburgh.
Wishart’s character is very differently represented by the Presbyterians and the Episcopalians. Robert Wodrow says he was notoriously profane, a drunkard, and the author of “ lascivious poems ”’ which “ gave scandal to all the world.’”’ Bishop Keith calls him “a person of great religion,” and says that, when the unfortunate rising at Pentland failed, he interested himself to obtain mercy for the taptive insurgents; and, ‘‘ having been a prisoner himself, he was always careful at each dinner to send away the first mess to the prisoners.’’ The “ lascivious poems ”’ referred to by Wodrow, have never been discovered. The bishop was an elegant Latinist and a man of general literary ability. His chief writing was a Latin history of a campaign in Scot-
land under Montrose (composed at the Hague; Amsterdam [?], 1647). He also left in manuscript a second part completing the life of his patron. The work has often been translated and reprinted (text, transl., and notes, by A. D. Murdoch and H. F. M. Simpson, London, 1893). © W. Leet.’ Revised by Henry Cowan. BrsiiocgRAPpHy: On 1 consult: John Knox, Works, ed. D Laing, vol. i: passim, Edinburgh, 1864; T. McCrie, Life of John Knox, Edinburgh, 1841; P. Lorimer, Scottish Reformation, pp. 90-155, London, 1860; D. Hay Fleming, Martyrs and Confessors of St. Andrews, 1887; DNB, lxii. 248-251. For and against Wishart’s complicity in the assassination of Cardinal Beaton, consult: P. F. Tytler, Hist. of Scotland, vol. v., chap. v., Edinburgh, 1834; Weir, in North British Review, 1868; J. H. Burton, Hist. of Scotland, vol. iii., chap. xxxvi., London, 1873; C. Rogers, Life of George Wishart, pp. 82-87, Edinburgh, 1876; J. Cunningham, Church Hist. of Scotland, vol. i., chap. viii., ib. 1882; W. Cramond, The Truth about George Wishart, 1898; A. F. Mitchell, The Scottish Reformation, p. 69, ib. 1900; P. H. Brown, Hist. of Scotland, ii. 20-25, Cambridge, 1902; H. Cowan, John Knox, New York, 1905. On 2 consult his Memoirs of James, Marquis of Montrose, 1639-60, transl. and ed. A. D. Murdoch and H F. M. Simpson, London, 1893; R. Wodrow, Sufferings of the Church of Scotland, vol. i., ib. 1721; R. Keith, Catalogue of the Bishops of . .. Scotland, ib. 1755; DNB, xii. 251-253.
WISLICENUS, GUSTAV ADOLF. CoNGREGATIONS, §§ 1-2.
WISZOWATY, ANDREAS. See Socinus, Faustus, Socrnians, I., § 2.
See FREE
WITCHCRAFT AND WITCH TRIALS,
I. General History.
Official Deliverances Prior to the Reformation (§ 1).
Official Responsibility and Private Discussion (§ 2).
Individual Opposition (§ 3).
aes Abolished; Survivals
§ 4).
Colonies.
craft (§ 1).
I. General History: In primitive belief the witch is a person who by supernatural means injures the possessions of her neighbors or of the inhabitants of a district, directing her destructive activity particularly against the corn and wine and cattle and what nourishes the cattle. Witchcraft is in general the accomplishment of some purpose through the help
of supernatural means, particularly
1. Official through subordinated spirits with
Deliver- which alliance is made. It involves
ances Prior belief in such spirits and in the possito the Ref- bility of entering into association with ormation. them and in a practical philosophy of magic (see Maaic). But these dealings
may upon such grounds as the injury done to others be regarded as punishable offenses, especially under the control of a religion of revelation. But the better ground for interdiction of these practises lies in the essential impiety and idolatry which witchcraft involves. On this ground witchcraft was forbidden by the Mosaic law (Deut. xviii. 10 sqq.), and also by the early Christian Church either on the ground of the emptiness of the practise or of its positive godlessness and commerce with the devil. A less strenuous opposition was begun in the early Middle Ages, as, for example, at the Synod of Reisbach (799 a.p.), where rules of penance were made for women convicted of witchcraft, but capital pun-
II. In Great Britain and the American Legal Provisions against Witch-
Classes Affected by the Belief (§ 2). Prosecutions in Great Britain (§ 3).
Early Prosecutions in the Colonies
4).
The ee Episode; Early Stage ae ae Stages and End (§ 6). The ee and Moral Effects ee Problems (§ 8). ishment was prohibited (Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, iii. 730). John of Damascus occupied a similar standpoint in his writing ‘‘ Concerning Dragons and Witches’ (MPG, xciv. 1599-1604), in treating of the superstitions among Jews and Saracens; and to the same purport may be cited Agobard of Lyon (d. 840 a.p.) and John of Salisbury (d. 1180 a.p.), all holding witchcraft to be a delusion. At the beginning of the thirteenth century at the erection of the Inquisition the use of magic and heresy were regarded as two sides of the same offense and as the desertion of God for the service of evil spirits. Yet this very action of the Inquisition diffused and strengthened the superstition. Gregory IX., drawing his information from Conrad of Marburg, in a bull of the year 1231 invoked the use of civil punishment against heretical associations at the meetings of which the devil appeared as a toad or a ghost or a black cat. Dominican theologians were, however, the principal diffusers of belief in these meetings with the devil and of the superstitions of incubi and succubi, going back to Augustine, ‘“‘ City of God,” xv. 23. The Dominican inquisitor Nicolas Eymericus wrote in 1376 his Directoriwm inquisitorium, setting forth the use of magic as heretical, and stigmatizing those who used it as infideles, swperstitiosi, apostate, and subject to the Inquisition. Innocent VIII. in his bull of 1484 renewed the provi-