It has been observed that “it is quite impossible to
appreciate and understand the true and inner lives of
men and women in Elizabethan and Stuart England, in the
France of Louis XIII and during the long reign of his
son and successor, in Italy of the Renaissance and the
Catholic Reaction - to name but three European countries
and a few definite periods - unless we have some
realization of the part that Witchcraft played in those
ages amid the affairs of these Kingdoms. All classes
were affected and concerned from Pope to peasant, from
Queen to cottage girl.”
Witchcraft
was inextricably mixed with politics. Matthew Paris
tells us how in 1232 the Chief Justice Hubert de Burgh,
Earl of Kent, (Shakespeare's “gentle Hubert” in King
John), was accused by Peter do Roches, Bishop of
Winchester, of having won the favour of Henry III
through “charms and incantations”. In 1324 there was
a terrific scandal at Coventry when it was discovered
that a number of the richest and most influential
burghers of the town had long been consulting with
Master John, a professional necromancer, and paying him
large sums to bring about by his arts the death of
Edward II and several nobles of the court. Alice Perrers,
the mistress pf Edward III, was not only reputed to have
infatuated the old King by occult spells, but her
physician (believed to be a mighty sorcerer) was
arrested on a charge of confecting love philtres and
talismans. Henry V, in the autumn of 1419, prosecuted
his stepmother, Joan of Navarre, for attempting to kill
him by witchcraft, “in the most horrible manner that
one could devise.” The conqueror of Agincourt was
exceedingly worried about the whole wretched business,
as also was the Archbishop of Canterbury, who ordered
public prayers for the King's safety. In the reign of
his son, Henry VI, in 1441, one of the highest and
noblest ladies in the realm, Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of
Gloucester, was arraigned for conspiring with “a
clerk”, Roger Bolingbroke, “a most notorious evoker
of demons”, and “the most famous scholar in the
whole world in astrology in magic”, to procure the
death of the young monarch by sorcery, so that the Duke
of Gloucester, Henry's uncle and guardian, might succeed
to the crown. In this plot were further involved Canon
Thomas Southwell, and a “relapsed witch”, that is to
say, one who had previously (eleven years before) been
incarcerated upon grave suspicion of black magic,
Margery Jourdemayne. Bolingbroke, whose confession
implicated the Duchess, was hanged; Canon Southwell died
in prison; the witch in Smithfield was “burn'd to
Ashes”, since her offence was high treason. The
Duchess was sentenced to a most degrading public
penance, and imprisoned for life in Peel Castle, Isle of
Man. Richard III, upon seizing the throne in 1483,
declared that the marriage of his brother, Edward IV,
with the Lady Elizabeth Grey, had been brought about by
“sorcery and witchcraft”, and further that
“Edward's wife, that monstrous witch, has plotted with
Jane Shore to waste and wither his body.” Poor Jane
Shore did most exemplary penance, walking the flinty
streets of London barefoot in her kirtle. In the same
year when Richard wanted to get rid of the Duke of
Buckingham, his former ally, one of the chief
accusations he launched was that the Duke consulted with
a Cambridge “necromancer” to compass and devise his
death.
One of the
most serious and frightening events in the life of James
VII of Scotland (afterwards James I of England) was the
great conspiracy of 1590, organized by the Earl of
Bothwell. James with good reason feared and hated
Bothwell, who, events amply proved, was Grand Master of
more than one hundred witches, all adepts in poisoning,
and all eager to do away with the King. In other words,
Francis Stewart, Earl of Bothwell, was the centre and
head of a vast political plot. A widespread popular
panic was the result of the discovery of this murderous
conspiracy.
In France as
early as 583, when the infant son and heir of King
Chilperic, died of dysentery, as the doctors diagnosed
it, it came to light that Mumolus, one of the leading
officials of the court, had been secretly administering
to the child medicines, which he obtained from
“certain witches of Paris”. These potions were
pronounced by the physicians to be strong poisons. In
1308, Guichard, Bishop of Troyes, was accused of having
slain by sorcery the Queen of Philip IV of France
(1285-1314), Jeanne of Navarre, who died three years
before. The trial dragged on from 1308 to 1313, and many
witnesses attested on oath that the prelate had
continually visited certain notorious witches, who
supplied him philtres and draughts. In 1315, during the
brief reign (1314-1316) of Louis X, the eldest son of
Philip IV, was hanged Enguerrand de Marigny,
chamberlain, privy councillor, and chief favourite of
Philip, whom, it was alleged, he had bewitched to gain
the royal favour. The fact, however, which sealed his
doom was his consultation with one Jacobus de Lor, a
warlock, who was to furnish a nostrum warranted to put a
very short term to the life of King Louis. Jacobus
strangled himself in prison.
In 1317
Hugues Géraud, Bishop of Cahors, was executed by Pope
John XXII, who reigned 1316-1334, residing at Avignon.
Langlois says that the Bishop had attempted the
Pontiff's life by poison procured from witches.
Perhaps the
most resounding of all scandals of this kind in France
was the La Voison case, 1679-1682, when it was
discovered that Madame de Montespan had for years been
trafficking with a gang of poisoners and sorcerers, who
plotted the death of the Queen and the Dauphan, so that
Louis XIV might be free to wed Athénais de Montespan,
whose children should inherit the throne. The Duchesse
de Fontanges, a beautiful young country girl, who had
for a while attracted the wayward fancy of Louis, they
poisoned out of hand. Money was poured out like water,
and it has been said that “the entire floodtide of
poison, witchcraft and diabolism was unloosed” to
attain the ends of that “marvellous beauty” (so Mme.
de Sévigné calls her), the haughty and reckless
Marquise de Montespan. In her thwarted fury she well
nigh resolved to sacrifice Louis himself to her
overweening ambition and her boundless pride. The
highest names in France - the Princesse de Tingry, the
Duchesse de Vitry, the Duchesse de Lusignan, the
Duchesse de Bouillon, the Comtesse de Soissons, the Duc
de Luxembourg, the Marguis de Cessac - scores of the
older aristocracy, were involved, whilst literally
hundreds of venal apothecaries, druggists,
pseudo-alchemists, astrologers, quacks, warlocks,
magicians, charlatans, who revolved round the ominous
and terrible figure of Catherine La Voisin, professional
seeress, fortune-teller, herbalist, beauty-specialist,
were caught in the meshes of law. No less than eleven
volumes of François Ravaison's huge work, Archives
de la Bastille, are occupied with this evil crew and
their doings, their sorceries and their poisonings.
During the
reign of Urban VIII, Maffeo Barberini, 1623-1644, there
was a resounding scandal at Rome when it was discovered
that “after many invocations of demons” Giacinto
Contini, nephew of the Cardinal d'Ascoli, had been
plotting with various accomplices to put an end to the
Pope's life, and thus make way for the succession of his
uncle to the Chair of Peter. Tommaso Orsolini of
Recanate, moreover, after consulting with certain
scryers and planetarians, readers of the stars, was
endeavouring to bribe the apothecary Carcurasio of
Naples to furnish him with a quick poison, which might
be mingled with the tonics and electuaries prescribed
for the ailing Pontiff, (Ranke, History of the Popes,
ed. 1901, Vol. III, pp. 375-6).
To sum up, as
is well observed by Professor Kittredge, who more than
once emphasized “I have no belief in the black art or
in the interference of demons in the daily life of
mortals”, it makes no difference whether any of the
charges were true or whether the whole affairs were
hideous political chicanery. “Anyhow, it reveals the
beliefs and the practices of the age.”
Throughout
the centuries witchcraft was universally held to be a
dark and horrible reality; it was an ever-present,
fearfully ominous menace, a thing most active, most
perilous, most powerful and true. Some may consider
these mysteries and cantrips and invocations, these
sabbats and rendezvous, to have been merest mummery and
pantomime, but there is no question that the
psychological effect was incalculable, and harmful in
the highest degree. It was, to use a modern phrase, “a
war of nerves”. Jean Bodin, the famous juris-consult
(1530-90) whom Montaigne acclaims to be the highest
literary genius of his time, and who, as a leading
member of the Parlement de Paris, presided over
important trials, gives it as his opinion that there
existed, no only in France, a complete organization of
witches, immensely wealthy, of almost infinite
potentialities, most cleverly captained, with centres
and cells in every district, utilizing an espionage in
ever land, with high-placed adherents at court, with
humble servitors in the cottage. This organization,
witchcraft, maintained a relentless and ruthless war
against the prevailing order and settled state. No
design was too treacherous, no betrayal was too
cowardly, no blackmail too base and foul. The Masters
lured their subjects with magnificent promises, they
lured and deluded and victimized. Not the least dreaded
and dreadful weapon in their armament was the ancient
and secret knowledge of poisons (veneficia), of
herbs healing and hurtful, a tradition and a lore which
had been handed down from remotest antiquity.
Little
wonder, then, that later social historians, such as
Charles Mackay and Lecky, both absolutely impartial and
unprejudiced writers, sceptical even, devote many pages,
the result of long and laborious research, to
witchcraft. The did not believe in witchcraft as in any
sense supernatural, although perhaps abnormal. But the
centuries of which they were writing believed intensely
in it, and it was their business as scholars to examine
and explain the reasons for such belief. It was by no
means all mediæval credulity and ignorance and
superstition. MacKay and Lecky fully recognized this, as
indeed they were in all honesty bound to do. They met
with facts, hard facts, which could neither have been
accidents nor motiveless, and these facts must be
accounted for and elucidated. The profoundest thinkers,
the acutest and most liberal minds of their day, such
men as Cardan; Trithemius; the encylcopædic Delrio;
Bishop Binsfeld; the learned physician, Caspar Peucer;
Jean Bodin; Sir Edward Coke, “father of the English
law”; Francis Bacon; Malebranche; Bayle; Glanvil; Sir
Thomas Browne; Cotton Mather; all these, and scores
besides, were convinced of the dark reality of
witchcraft, of the witch organization. Such a consensus
of opinion throughout the years cannot be lightly
dismissed.
The
literature of the subject, discussing it in every
detail, from every point of view, from every angle, is
enormous. For example, such a Bibliography as that of
Yve-Plessis, 1900, which deals only with leading French
cases and purports to be no more than a supplement to
the Bibliographies of Græsse, the Catalogues of the Abbé
Sépher, Ouvaroff, the comte d'Ourches, the forty-six
volumes of Dr. Hoefer, Shieble, Stanislas de Guaita, and
many more, lists nearly 2,000 items, and in a note we
are warned that the work is very far from complete. The Manuel
Bibliographique, 3 vols., 1912, of Albert L. Caillet,
gives 11,648 items. Caillet has many omissions, some
being treatises of the first importance. The library of
witchcraft may without exaggeration be said to be
incalculable.
It is hardly
disputed that in the whole vast literature of
witchcraft, the most prominent, the most important, the
most authorative volume is the Malleus Maleficarum
(The Witch Hammer) of Heinrich Kramer (Henricus
Institoris) and James Sprenger. The date of the first
edition of the Malleus cannot be fixed with
absolute certainty, but the likeliest year is 1486.
There were, at any rate, fourteen editions between 1487
and 1520, and at least sixteen editions between 1574 and
1669. These were issued from the leading German, French
and Italian presses. The latest reprint of the original
text of the Malleus is to be found in the noble
four volume collection of Treatises on Witchcraft,
“sumptibus Claudii Bourgeat”, 4to., Lyons, 1669.
There is a modern German translation by J.W.R. Schmidt, Der
Hexehammer, 3 vols., Berlin, 1906; second edition,
1922-3. There is also an English translation with
Introduction, Bibliography, and Notes by Montague
Summers, published John Rodker, 1928.
The Malleus
acquired especial weight and dignity from the famous
Bull of Pope Innocent VIII, Summis desiderantes
affectibus of 9 December, 1484, in which the
Pontiff, lamenting the power and prevalence of the witch
organization, delegates Heinrich Kramer and James
Sprenger as inquisitors of these pravities throughout
Northern Germany, particularly in the provinces and
dioceses of Mainz, Cologne, Tréves, Salzburg, and
Bremen, granting both and either of them an exceptional
authorization, and by Letters Apostolic requiring the
Bishop of Strasburg, Albrecht von Bayern (1478-1506),
not only to take steps to publish and proclaim the Bull,
but further to afford Kramer and Sprenger every
assistance, even calling in, if necessary, the help of
the secular arm.
This Bull,
which was printed as the Preface to the Malleus,
was thus, comments Dr. H.C. Lea, “spread broadcast
over Europe”. In fact, “it fastened on European
jurisprudence for nearly three centuries the duty of
combating” the Society of Witches. The Malleus
lay on the bench of every magistrate. It was the
ultimate, irrefutable, unarguable authority. It was
implicitly accepted not only by Catholic but by
Protestant legislature. In fine, it is not too much to
say that the Malleus Maleficarum is among the
most important, wisest, and weightiest books of the
world.
It has been
asked whether Kramer or Sprenger was principally
responsible for the Malleus, but in the case of
so close a collaboration any such inquiry seems
singularly superflous and nugatory. With regard to
instances of jointed authorship, unless there be some
definite declaration on the part of one of the authors
as to his particular share in a work, or unless there be
some unusual and special circumstances bearing on the
point, such perquisitions and analysis almost inevitably
resolve themselves into a cloud of guess-work and
bootless hazardry and vague perhaps. It becomes a game
of literary blind-man's-bluff.
Heinrich
Kramer was born at Schlettstadt, a town of Lower Alsace,
situated some twenty-six miles southwest of Strasburg.
At an early age he entered the Order of S. Dominic, and
so remarkable was his genius that whilst still a young
man he was appointed to the position of Prior of the
Dominican House at his native town, Schlettstadt. He was
a Preacher-General and a Master of Sacred Theology. P.G.
and S.T.M., two distinctions in the Dominican Order. At
some date before 1474 he was appointed an Inquisitor for
the Tyrol, Salzburg, Bohemia, and Moravia. His eloquence
in the pulpit and tireless activity received due
recognition at Roma, and for many years he was Spiritual
Director of the great Dominican church at Salzburg, and
the right-hand of the Archbishop of Salzburg, a
munificent prelat who praises him highly in a letter
which is still extant. In the late autumn or winter of
1485 Kramer had already drawn up a learned instruction
or treatise on the subject of witchcraft. This
circulated in manuscript, and is (almost in its
entirety) incorporated in the Malleus. By the
Bull of Innocent VIII in December, 1484, he had already
been associated with James Sprenger to make inquisition
for and try witches and sorcerers. In 1495, the Master
General of the Order, Fr. Joaquin de Torres, O.P.,
summoned Kramer to Venice in order that he might give
public lectures, disputations which attracted crowded
audiences, and which were honoured by the presence and
patronage of the Patriarch of Venice. He also
strenuously defended the Papal supremacy, confuting the De
Monarchia of the Paduan jurisconsult, Antonio degli
Roselli. At Venice he resided at the priory of Santi
Giovanni e Paolo (S. Zanipolo). During the summer of
1497, he had returned to Germany, and was living at the
convent of Rohr, near Regensburg. On 31 January, 1500,
Alexander VI appointed him as Nuncio and Inquisitor of
Bohemia and Moravia, in which provinces he was deputed
and empowered to proceed against the Waldenses and
Picards, as well as against the adherents of the
witch-society. He wrote and preached with great fervour
until the end. He died in Bohemia in 1505.
His chief
works, in addition to the Malleus, are: Several
Discourses and Various Sermons upon the Most Holy
Sacrament of the Eucharist; Nuremberg, 1496; A
Tract Confuting the Errors of Master Antonio degli
Roselli; Venice, 1499; and The Shield of Defence
of the Holy Roman Church Against the Picards and
Waldenses; an incunabulum, without date, but almost
certainly 1499-1500. Many learned authors quote and
refer to these treatises in terms of highest praise.
James
Sprenger was born in Basel, 1436-8. He was admitted a
novice in the Dominican house of this town in 1452. His
extraordinary genius attracted immediate attention, and
his rise to a responsible position was very rapid.
According to Pierre Hélyot, the Fransican (1680-1716), Histoire
des Ordres Religieux, III (1715), ch. XXVI, in 1389
Conrad of Prussia abolished certain relaxations and
abuses which had crept into the Teutonic Province of the
Order of S. Dominic, and restored the Primitive and
Strict Obedience. He was closely followed by Sprenger,
whose zealous reform was so warmly approved that in 1468
the General Chapter ordered him to lecture on the
sentences of Peter Lombard at the University of Cologne,
to which he was thus officially attached. A few years
later he proceeded Master of Theology, and was elected
Prior and Regent of Studies of the Cologne Convent, one
of the most famous and frequented Houses of the Order.
On 30 June, 1480, he was elected Dean of the Faculty of
Theology at the University. His lecture-room was
thronged, and in the following year, at the Chapter held
in Rome, the Master General of the Order, Fra Salvo
Cusetta, appointed him Inquisitor Extraordinary for the
Provinces of Mainz, Trèves, and Cologne. His activities
were enormous, and demanded constant journeyings through
the very extensive district to which he had been
assigned. In 1488 he was elected Provincial of the whole
German Province, an office of the first importance. It
is said that his piety and his learning impressed all
who came in contact with him. In 1495 he was residing at
Cologne, and here he received a letter from Alexander VI
praising his enthusiasm and his energy. He died rather
suddenly, in the odour of sanctity - some chronicles
call him “Beatus” - on 6 December, 1495, at
Strasburg, where he is buried.
Among
Sprenger's other writings, excepting the Malleus,
are The Paradoxes of John of Westphalia Refuted,
Mainz, 1479, a closely argued treatise; and The
Institution and Approbation of the Confraternity of the
Most Holy Rosary, which was first erected at Cologne on
8 September in the year 1475, Cologne, 1475.
Sprenger may well be called the “Apostle of the
Rosary”. None more fervent than he in spreading this
Dominican elevation. His zeal enrolled thousands,
including the Emperor Frederick III, in the
Confraternity of the Most Holy Rosary, which was
enriched with many indulgences by a Bull of Sixtus IV.
It has been observed that the writings of Father James
Sprenger on the Rosary are well approved by many learned
men, Pontiffs, Saints and Theologians alike. There can
be no doubt that Sprenger was a mystic of the highest
order, a man of most saintly life.
The Dominican
chroniclers, such as Quétif and Echard, number Kramer
and Sprenger among the glories and heroes of their
Order.
Certain it is
that the Malleus Maleficarum is the most solid,
the most important work in the whole vast library of
witchcraft. One turns to it again and again with
edification and interest: From the point of psychology,
from the point of jurisprudence, from the point of
history, it is supreme. It has hardly too much to say
that later writers, great as they are, have done little
more than draw from the seemingly inexhaustible wells of
wisdom which the two Dominicans, Heinrich Kramer and
James Sprenger, have given us in the Malleus
Maleficarum.
What is most
surprising is the modernity of the book. There is hardly
a problem, a complex, a difficulty, which they have not
foreseen, and discussed, and resolved.
Here are
cases which occur in the law-courts to-day, set out with
the greatest clarity, argued with unflinching logic, and
judged with scrupulous impartiality.
It is a work
which must irresistibly capture the attention of all
mean who think, all who see, or are endeavouring to see,
the ultimate reality beyond the accidents of matter,
time and space.
The Malleus
Maleficarum is one of the world's few books written sub
specie aeternitatis.
Montague
Summers.
7 October,
1946.
In Festo SS. Rosarii. |