INCONSISTENCY OF THE CHURCH. 417 archbishop of Besancon have recourse to an ecclesiastic skilled in necromancy to aid him in detecting some heretics.* In fact, the Church occupied an inconsistent attitude. Occa- sionally it took the enlightened view that these beliefs were groundless superstitions. An Irish council of the ninth century anathematizes any Christian who believes in the existence of witches, and forces him to recant before admitting him to reconcil- iation. Similarly, in 1080, Gregory VII. in writing to Harold the Simple of Denmark, strongly reproves the custom of attributing to priests and women all tempests, sickness, and other bodily misfor- tunes : these are the judgments of God, and to wreak vengeance for them on the innocent is only to provoke still more the divine wrath. More generally, however, the Church admitted their truth and sought, though with little energy, to repress them with spiritual censures. This halting position is well illustrated by the canons of Burchard, Bishop of Worms, in the early part of the eleventh century, where sometimes it is the belief in the existence of sorcery that is penanced, and sometimes it is the practice of the art. If confessors, moreover, followed Burchard' s instructions and interro- gated their penitents in detail as to the various magic processes which they might have performed, it could only result in dissemi- nating a knowledge of those wicked arts in a most suggestive way. At the same time Burchard, like the other canonists, Kegino of Pruhm and Ivo of Chartres, gave an ample store of prohibitory canons drawn from the early councils and the writings of the fathers, showing that the reality of sorcery was freely admitted as well as the duty of the Church to combat it. So implicit was
- Concil. Ticinens. ann. 850 c. 25.— Annal. Corbeiens. ann. 914 (Leibnit. S. R.
Brunsvic. II. 299).— Atton. Vercell. Capit. c. 48.— Sigebert. Gemblacens. ami. 995.— Alberic. Trium Font. ann. 998, 999, 1002.— Caesar. Heisterbach. Dist. v. c. 18. For the acquirements of Gerbert of Aurillac see Richeri Hist. Lib. 11. c. xliii. sqq. A man capable of making, in the tenth century, a sphere to represent the earth, with the Arctic Circle and Tropic of Cancer traced on it, might well pass for a magician, although the sphericity of the earth was no secret to the Arabic philosophers (Avicenna de Ccelo et Mundo c. x). How durable was Gerbert's unsavory reputation is seen in the retention of the stories concerning him by the mediaeval historians down to the time of Platina (Ptol. Lucens. Hist. Eccles. Lib. xviii. c. vi.-viii.— Platinae Vit. Pontif. s. v. Silvest. II.). III.— 27
