the fifteenth century, innumerable victims were arraigned on the double charge of heresy and sorcery—for the crimes ran in couples, both being children and sworn servants of the Devil. Would that the historian could say that with the era of the Reformation these abominations ceased! The Roman Hierarchy, with her bulls and inquisitors, had sown a bitter crop, which both she and the Protestant Churches were destined to reap; but in no part of the world were the labourers more eager and willing, when the fields were "black" to harvest, than in those very reformed communities which had just shaken off the yoke of Rome, and which had sprung in many cases from the very heretics whom she had persecuted and burnt, accusing them, at the same time, of the most malignant sorceries.[1] Their excuse is, that no
- ↑ How strangely full of common sense sounds the following article from the Capitularies of Charlemagne, De part. Sax. 5: "Si quis a diabolo deceptus crediderit secundum morem Paganorum, virum aliquem aut fœminam strigam esse et homines comedere, et propter hoc ipsum incenderit, vel carnem ejus ad comedendum dederit, capitis sententiâ punietur." And this of Rotharius, Lex. Roth., 379: "Nullus præsumat aldiam alienam aut ancillam quasi strigam occidere, quod Christianis mentibus nullatenus est credendum nee possibile est, ut hominem mulier vivum intrinsecus possit comedere." Here the law warns the common people from believing in witches, and from taking its functions into their own hands, and reasons with them against the absurdity of such delusions. So, too, that reasonable parish priest who thrashed the witch, though earlier in time, was far in advance of Gregory and his inquisitors, and even of our wise King James.
