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The Origin, Prevalence, and Variety of Superstition--The Belief in Witchcraft the most horrid Form of Superstition--Most flourishing in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries--The Sentiments of Addison, Blackstone, and the Lawyers of the Eighteenth Century upon the Subject--Chaldean and Persian Magic--Jewish Witchcraft--Its important Influence on Christian and Modern Belief--Greek Pharmacy and Sorcery--Early Roman Laws against Conjuration and Magic Charms--Crimes perpetrated, under the Empire, in connection with Sorceric Practices--The general Persecution for Magic under Valentinian and Valens--German and Scandinavian Sagae--Essential Difference between Eastern and Western Sorcery--The probable Origin of the general Belief in an Evil Principle PAGE 3

Compromise between the New and the Old Faiths--Witchcraft under the Early Church--The Sentiments of the Fathers and the Decrees of Councils--Platonic Influences--Historical, Physiological, and Accidental Causes of the Attribution of Witchcraft to the Female Sex--Opinions of the Fathers and other Writers--The Witch-Compact 47

Charlemagne's Severity--Anglo-Saxon Superstition--Norman and Arabic Magic--Influence of Arabic Science--Mohammedan Belief in Magic--Rabbinical Learning--Roger Bacon--The Persecution of the Templars--Alice Kyteler 63

Witchcraft and Heresy purposely confounded by the Church--Mediaeval Science closely connected with Magic and Sorcery--Ignorance of Physiology the Cause of many of the Popular Prejudices--Jeanne d'Arc--Duchess of Gloucester--Jane Shore--Persecution at Arras 84

The 'Discoverie of Witchcraft,' published 1584--Wier's 'De Praestigiis Daemonum,' &c.--Naud?--Jean Bodin--His 'De la D?monomanie des Sorciers,' published at Paris, 1580--His Authority--Nider--Witch-case at Warboys--Evidence adduced at the Trial--Remarkable as being the Origin of the Institution of an Annual Sermon at Huntingdon 144

Astrology in Antiquity--Modern Astrology and Alchymy--Torralvo--Adventures of Dr. Dee and Edward Kelly--Prospero and Comus, Types respectively of the Theurgic and Goetic Arts--Magicians on the Stage in the Sixteenth Century--Occult Science in Southern Europe--Causes of the inevitable Mistakes of the pre-Scientific Ages 157

'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 W?rzburg 186

The Literature of Europe in the Seventeenth Century proves the Universality and Horror of Witchcraft--The most acute and most liberal Men of Learning convinced of its Reality--Erasmus and Francis Bacon--Lawyers prejudiced by Legislation--Matthew Hale's judicial Assertion--Sir Thomas Browne's Testimony--John Selden--The English Church least Ferocious of the Protestant Sects--Jewell and Hooker--Independent Tolerance--Witchcraft under the Presbyterian Government--Matthew Hopkins--Gaule's 'Select Cases of Conscience'--Judicial and Popular Methods of Witch-discovery--Preventive Charms--Witchfinders a Legal and Numerous Class in England and Scotland--Remission in the Severity of the Persecution under the Protectorship 219

Glanvil's Sadducismus Triumphatus--His Sentiments on Witchcraft and Demonology--Baxter's 'Certainty of the World of Spirits,' &c.--Witch Trial at Bury St. Edmund's by Sir Matthew Hale, 1664--The Evidence adduced in Court--Two Witches hanged--Three hanged at Exeter in 1682--The last Witches judicially executed in England--Uniformity of the Evidence adduced at the Trials--Webster's Attack upon the Witch-creed in 1677--Witch Trials in England at the end of the Seventeenth Century--French Parliaments vindicate the Diabolic Reality of the Crime--Witchcraft in Sweden 237

Witchcraft in the English Colonies in North America--Puritan Intolerance and Superstition--Cotton Mather's 'Late Memorable Providences'--Demoniacal Possession--Evidence given before the Commission--Apologies issued by Authority--Sudden Termination of the Proceedings--Reactionary Feeling against the Agitators--The Salem Witchcraft the last Instance of Judicial Prosecution on a large Scale in Christendom--Philosophers begin to expose the Superstition--Meritorious Labours of Webster, Becker, and others--Their Arguments could reach only the Educated and Wealthy Classes of Society--These only partially enfranchised--The Superstition continues to prevail among the Vulgar--Repeal of the Witch Act in England in 1736--Judicial and Popular Persecutions in England in the Eighteenth Century--Trial of Jane Wenham in England in 1712--Maria Renata burned in Germany in 1749--La Cadi?re in France--Last Witch burned in Scotland in 1722--Recent Cases of Witchcraft--Protestant Superstition--Witchcraft in the Extra-Christian World 259

EARLIER FAITH.

The Origin, Prevalence, and Variety of Superstition--The Belief in Witchcraft the most horrid Form of Superstition--Most flourishing in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries--The Sentiments of Addison, Blackstone, and the Lawyers of the Eighteenth Century upon the Subject--Chaldean and Persian Magic--Jewish Witchcraft--Its important Influence on Christian and Modern Belief--Greek Pharmacy and Sorcery--Early Roman Laws against Conjuration and Magic Charms--Crimes perpetrated, under the Empire, in connection with Sorceric Practices--The general Persecution for Magic under Valentinian and Valens--German and Scandinavian Sagae--The probable Origin of the general Belief in an Evil Principle.

It will appear more philosophic to deplore the imperfection, than to deride the folly of human nature, when the fact that the superstitious sentiment is not only a result of mere barbarism or vulgar ignorance, to be expelled of course by civilisation and knowledge, but is indigenous in the life of every man, barbarous or civilised, pagan or Christian, is fully recognised. The enlightening influence of science, as far as it extends, is irresistible; and its progress within certain limits seems sure and almost omnipotent. But it is unfortunately limited in the extent of its influence, as well as uncertain in duration; while reason enjoys a feeble reign compared with ignorance and imagination. If it is the great office of history to teach by experience, it is never useless to examine the causes and the facts of a mischievous creed that has its roots deep in the ignorant fears of mankind; but against the recurrence of the fatal effects of fanaticism apparent in the earliest and latest records of the world, there can be no sufficient security.

That 'speculation has on every subject of human enquiry three successive stages; in the first of which it tends to explain the phenomena by supernatural agencies, in the second by metaphysical abstractions, and in the third or final state, confines itself to ascertaining their laws of succession and similitude' , is a generalisation of Positive Philosophy, and a theory of the Science of History, consistent probably with the progress of knowledge among philosophers, but is scarcely applicable to the mass of mankind.

Dreams, magic terrors, miracles, witches, ghosts, portents, are some of the various forms superstition has invented and magnified to disturb the peace of society as well as of individuals. The most extravagant of these need not be sought in the remoter ages of the human race, or even in the 'dark ages' of European history: they are sufficiently evident in the legislation and theology, as well as in the popular prejudices of the seventeenth century.

According to Dr. Sprenger . Cicero's observation that there was no people either so civilised or learned, or so savage and barbarous, that had not a belief that the future may be predicted by certain persons , is justified by the faith of Christendom, as well as by that of paganism; and is as true of witchcraft as it is of prophecy or divination.

Those whose reason and humanity alike revolted from a horrible dogma, loudly proclaim the prevailing prejudice. Such protests, however, were, for a long time at least, feeble and useless--helplessly overwhelmed by the irresistible torrent of public opinion. All classes of society were almost equally infected by a plague-spot that knew no distinction of class or rank. If theologians or lawyers are found unmistakably recording their undoubting conviction, they were bound, it is plain, the one class by theology, the other by legislation. Credulity of so extraordinary a kind is sufficiently surprising even in theologians; but what is to be thought of the deliberate opinion of unbiassed writers of a recent age maintaining the possibility, if not the actual occurrence, of the facts of the belief?

It is not necessary to trace the oriental creeds of magic further than they affected modern beliefs; but in the divinities and genii of Persia are more immediately traced the spiritual existences of Jewish and Christian belief. From the Persian priests are derived both the name and the practice of magic. The Evil Principle of the Magian, of the later Jewish, and thence of the western world, originated in the system , which taught a duality of Gods. The philosophic lawgiver, unable to penetrate the mystery of the empire of evil and misery in the world, was convinced that there is an equal and antagonistic power to the representative of light and goodness. Hence the continued eternal contention between Ormuzd with the good spirits or genii, Amchaspands, on one side, and Ahriman with the Devs on the other. Egypt, in the Mosaic and Homeric ages, seems to have attained considerable skill in magic, as well as in chymistry and astrology. As an abstruse and esoteric doctrine, it was strictly confined to the priests, or to the favoured few who were admitted to initiation. The magic excellence of the magicians, who successfully emulated the miracles of Moses, was apparently assisted by a legerdemain similar to that of the Hindu jugglers of the present day.

The names of two of these magicians, Jannes and Jambres, have been preserved by revelation or tradition.

Yet if we may credit the national historian , the Chaldean monarch might have justly envied, if he could scarcely hope to emulate, the excellence of a former prince of his now obscure province. Josephus says of Solomon that, amongst other attainments, 'God enabled him to learn that skill which expels demons, which is a science useful and sanative to men. He composed such incantations also by which distempers are alleviated, and he left behind him the manner of using exorcisms by which they drive away demons so that they never return.' The story of Daniel is well known. In the captivity of the two tribes carried away into an honourable servitude he soon rose into the highest favour, because, as we are informed, he excelled in a divination that surpassed all the art of the Chaldeans, themselves so famous for it. The inspired Jew had divined a dream or vision which puzzled 'the magicians, and the astrologers, and the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans,' and immediately was rewarded with the greatest gift at the disposal of a capricious despot. Most of the apologetic writers on witchcraft, in particular the authors of the 'Malleus Maleficarum,' accept the assertion of the author of the history of Daniel that Nebuchadnezzar was 'driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen,' in its apparent sense, expounding it as plainly declaring that he was corporeally metamorphosed into an ox, just as the companions of Ulysses were transformed into swine by the Circean sorceries.

The common belief of the people of Palestine in the transcendent power of exorcism is illustrated by a miracle of this sort, gravely related by Josephus. It was exhibited before Vespasian and his army. 'He put a ring that had a root of one of those sorts mentioned by Solomon to the nostrils of the demoniac; after which he drew out the demon through his nostrils: and when the man fell down immediately he adjured him to return into him no more, making still mention of Solomon, and reciting the incantations which he composed. And when Eleazar would demonstrate to the spectators that he had such power, he set a little way off a cup or basin full of water, and commanded the demon as he went out of the man to overturn it, and thereby to let the spectators know he had left the man.' This performance was received with contempt or credulity by the spectators according to their faith: but the credulity of the believers could hardly exceed that of a large number of educated people, who in our own generation detect in the miracles of animal magnetism, or the legerdemain of jugglers, an infernal or supernatural agency.

That witchcraft, or whatever term expresses the criminal practice, prevailed among the worshippers of Jehovah, is evident from the repeated anathemas both in their own and the Christian scriptures, not to speak of traditional legends; but the Hebrew and Greek expressions seem both to include at least the use of drugs and perhaps of poison. The Jewish creed, as exposed in their scriptures, has deserved a fame it would not otherwise have, because upon it have been founded by theologians, Catholic and Protestant, the arguments and apology for the reality of witchcraft, derived from the sacred writings, with an ingenuity only too common and successful in supporting peculiar prejudices and interests even of the most monstrous kind.

In examining the phenomenon as it existed among the Greeks and Romans, it will be remarked that, while the Greeks seem to have mainly adopted the ideas of the East, the Roman superstition was of Italian origin. Their respective expressions for the predictive or presentient faculty , as Cicero is careful to explain, appear to indicate its different character with those two peoples: the one being the product of a sort of madness, the other an elaborate and divine skill. Greek traditions made them believe that the magic science was brought from Egypt or Asia by their old philosophic and legislating sages. Some of the most eminent of the founders of philosophic schools were popularly accused of encouraging it. Pythagoras is said to have introduced to his countrymen an art derived from his foreign travels; a charge which recalls the names of Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Galileo, and others, who had to pay the penalty of a premature knowledge by the suspicion of their cotemporaries. Xenophanes is said to be the only one of the philosophers who admitted the existence or providence of the gods, and at the same time entirely discredited divination. Of the Stoics, Panaetius was the only one who ventured even to doubt. Some gave credit to one or two particular modes only, as those of dreams and frenzy; but for the most part every form of this sort of divine revelation was implicitly received.

The science of magic proper is developed in the later schools of philosophy, in which Oriental theology or demonology was largely mixed. Apollonius of Tyana, a modern Pythagorean, is the most famous magician of antiquity. This great miracle-worker of paganism was born at the commencement of the Christian era; and it has been observed that his miracles, though quite independent of them, curiously coincide both in time and kind with the Christian. According to his biographer Philostratus, this extraordinary man must have been in possession of a scientific knowledge which, compared with that of his cotemporaries, might be deemed almost supernatural. Extraordinary attainments suggested to him in later life to excite the awe of the vulgar by investing himself with magical powers. Apollonius is said to have assisted Vespasian in his struggle for the throne of the Caesars; afterwards, when accused of raising an insurrection against Domitian, and when he had given himself up voluntarily to the imperial tribunal at Rome, he escaped impending destruction by the exertion of his superhuman art.

'Nor uglier follow the night-hag when, called In secret, riding through the air she comes Lured with the smell of infant blood to dance With Lapland witches--.'

An exceptional case, on the authority of Demosthenes, is that of a woman condemned in the year, or within a year or two, of the execution of Socrates.

A general degradation of morals is often accompanied, it has been justly remarked, by a corresponding increase of the wildest credulity, and by an abject subservience to external religious rites in propitiation of an incensed deity. It was thus at Rome when the eloquence of Cicero, and afterwards the indignant satire of Juvenal or the calm ridicule of the philosophic Lucian, attempted to assert the 'proper authority of reason.' To speak the truth, says Cicero, superstition has spread like a torrent over the entire globe, oppressing the minds and intellects of almost all men and seizing upon the weakness of human nature. The historian of 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' justifies and illustrates this lament of the philosopher of the Republic in the particular case of witchcraft. 'The nations and the sects of the Roman world admitted with equal credulity and similar abhorrence the reality of that infernal art which was able to control the eternal order of the planets, and the voluntary operations of the human mind. They dreaded the mysterious power of spells and incantations, of potent herbs and execrable rites, which could extinguish or recall life, influence the passions of the soul, blast the works of creation, and extort from the reluctant demons the secrets of Futurity. They believed with the wildest inconsistency that the preternatural dominion of the air, of earth, and of hell, was exercised from the vilest motives of malice or gain by some wrinkled hags or itinerant sorcerers who passed their obscure lives in penury and contempt. Such vain terrors disturbed the peace of society and the happiness of individuals; and the harmless flame which insensibly melted a waxen image might derive a powerful and pernicious energy from the affrighted fancy of the person whom it was maliciously designed to represent. From the infusion of those herbs which were supposed to possess a supernatural influence, it was an easy step to the case of more substantial poison; and the folly of mankind sometimes became the instrument and the mask of the most atrocious crimes.'

Not many years after the death of Julian the Christian Empire witnessed a persecution for witchcraft that for its ferocity, if not for its folly, can be paralleled only by similar scenes in the fifteenth or seventeenth century. It began shortly after the final division of the East and West in the reigns of Valentinian and Valens, A.D. 373. The unfortunate accused were pursued with equal fury in the Eastern and Western Empires; and Rome and Antioch were the principal arenas on which the bloody tragedy was consummated. Gibbon informs us that it was occasioned by a criminal consultation, when the twenty-four letters of the alphabet were ranged round a magic tripod; a dancing ring placed in the centre pointed to the first four letters in the name of the future prince. 'The deadly and incoherent mixture of treason and magic, of poison and adultery, afforded infinite gradations of guilt and innocence, of excuse and aggravation, which in these proceedings appear to have been confounded by the angry or corrupt passions of the judges. They easily discovered that the degree of their industry and discernment was estimated by the imperial court according to the number of executions that were furnished from their respective tribunals. It was not without extreme reluctance that they pronounced a sentence of acquittal; but they eagerly admitted such evidence as was stained with perjury or procured by torture to prove the most improbable charges against the most respectable characters. The progress of the inquiry continually opened new subjects of criminal prosecution; the audacious informers whose falsehood was detected retired with impunity: but the wretched victim who discovered his real or pretended accomplices was seldom permitted to receive the price of his infamy. From the extremity of Italy and Asia the young and the aged were dragged in chains to the tribunals of Rome and Antioch. Senators, matrons, and philosophers expired in ignominious and cruel tortures. The soldiers who were appointed to guard the prisons declared, with a murmur of pity and indignation, that their numbers were insufficient to oppose the flight or resistance of the multitude of captives. The wealthiest families were ruined by fines and confiscations; the most innocent citizens trembled for their safety: and we may form some notion of the magnitude of the evil from the extravagant assertion of an ancient writer , that in the obnoxious provinces the prisoners, the exiles, and the fugitives formed the greatest part of the inhabitants. The philosopher Maximus,' it is added, 'with some justice was involved in the charge of magic; and young Chrysostom, who had accidentally found one of the proscribed books, gave himself up for lost.'

The similarity of this to the horrible catastrophe of Arras, recorded by the chroniclers of the fifteenth century, excepting the grosser absurdities of the latter, is almost perfect. Valentinian and Valens, who seem to have emulated the atrocious fame of the Caesarean family, with their ministers, concealed, it is probable, under the disguise of a simulated credulity the real motives of revenge and cupidity.

The Roman world, Christian and pagan, was subject to the prevailing fear. That portion of the globe, however, comprehended but a small part of the human race. The records of history are incomplete and imperfect; nor are they more confined in point of time than of extent. History is little more at any period than an imperfect account of the life of a few particular peoples. Necessarily limited almost entirely to an acquaintance with the history of that portion of the globe included in the 'Roman Empire,' we almost forget our profound ignorance of that vastly larger proportion of the earth's surface, the extra-Roman world, embracing then, as now, civilised as well as barbarous nations. The Chinese empire , comprehending within its limits two-thirds of the population of the globe; the refined and ingenious people of Hindustan, an immense population, in the East: in the Western hemisphere nations in existence whose remains excited the admiration of the Spanish invaders; the various savage tribes of the African continent; the nomad populations of Northern Asia and Europe; nearly all these more or less, on the testimony of past and present observation, experienced the tremendous fears of the vulgar demonism.

It may be safely affirmed, according to a celebrated modern philosopher, that popular religions are really, in the conception of their more vulgar votaries, a species of demonism. 'Primus in orbe deos fecit timor,' or, in the fuller expression of a modern, 'Fear made the devils, and weak Hope the gods.'

The magic system--interesting to us as having influenced the later Jewish creed and mediately the Christian--referred like most developed creeds to a particular founder, Zerdusht , may have thus originated. Mankind, in seeking a solution for that most interesting but unsatisfactory problem, the cause of the predominance of evil on the earth, were obliged by their ignorance and their fears to imagine, in addition to the idea of a single supreme existence, the author and source of good, antagonistic influence--the source and representative of evil. Physical phenomena of every day experience; the alternations of light and darkness, of sunshine and clouds; the changes and oppositions in the outer world, would readily supply an analogy to the moral world. Thus the dawn and the sun, darkness and storms, in the wondering mind of the earlier inhabitants of the globe, may have soon assumed the substantial forms of personal and contending deities. Such seems to be the origin of the personifications in the Vedic hymns of Indra and Vritra with their subordinate ministers , and of the first religious conceptions of other peoples. After this attempt to reconcile the contradictions, the irregularities of nature, by establishing a duality of gods whose respective provinces are the happiness and unhappiness of the human race, the step was easy to the conviction of the superior activity of a malignant god. The benevolent but epicurean security of the first deity might seem to have little concern in defeating or preventing the malicious schemes of the other. All the infernal apparatus of later ages was easy to be supplied by a delusive and an unreasoning imagination.

The despotism of language and its immense influence on the destiny, as well as on the various opinions, of mankind, is well shown by Professor Max M?ller. 'From one point of view,' he declares, 'the true history of religion would be neither more nor less than an account of the various attempts at expressing the Inexpressible' . The witch-creed may be indirectly referred, like many other absurdities, to the perversion of language.

MEDIAEVAL FAITH.

Compromise between the New and the Old Faiths--Witchcr

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