422 SORCERY AND OCCULT ARTS. have a child, and with that he died. Yet in the earliest Icelandic code, the Gragas, compiled probably in 11 IS, there is no mention of sorcery, which seems to have been left to the spiritual courts; while in the contemporary ecclesiastical body of law the punish- ment of magic arts is only three years' exile, unless injury or death to man or beast has been wrought, when it is perpetual. In either case the accused is entitled to trial before twelve good men and true.* Elsewhere thoughout Europe, by the end of the twelfth cen- tury, the repression of sorcery seems to have been well-nigh aban- doned by both secular and ecclesiastical authorities. This was not because its practice had been either given up or rendered law- ful. In 1149 we find Abbot Wibald of Corvey accusing AValter, one of his monks, of using diabolical incantations. The cause which led Alexander III., in 1181, to monopolize for the Holy See the canonization of saints was that the monks of the Xorman abbey of Gristan were addicted to magic, and by its means en- deavored to gain the reputation of working miracles ; during the absence in England of the abbot, the prior one day got drunk at dinner and struck with a table-knife two of his monks, who retali- ated by beating him to death, and he perished unhouselled, yet by evil arts the monks succeeded in inducing the people to adore him as a saint until Bishop Arnoul of Lisieux reported the truth to Alexander. So easily were such offences condoned that in the case of a priest who, to recover something stolen from his church, em- ployed a magician and looked into an astrolabe, Alexander only ordered the punishment of a year's suspension, and this decision was embodied by Gregory IX. in the canon law as a precedent to be followed. This method of divination involved the invocation of spirits, and was wholly unlawful, yet it was employed without scruple. John of Salisbury, who died in 11 SI, relates that when he was a boy he was given to a priest to be taught the psalms. His instructor mingled with his sacred functions the practice of ca- toptromancy, and once made use of his pupil and an older scholar
- Olaf Trycrorvesson's Saga, 69. 70, 83 (Laing's Heiinskringla). — Kristinrettr
Thorlaks oc Ketils, c. xvi. For the intimate connection between sorcery and malignant spirits, see Finn ^Iagnusen's Priscae Yet. Boreal. Mythologiae Lexicon, s. v. Troll, pp. 474 sqq.
