The Trial of Louis Gauffridis. and the gallows defrauded, was threatened with the vengeance of the disappointed crowd; but this ended in talk, and the com munity was not disgraced by any attempt at mob violence. Most of the people of the vil
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lage, I believe, were gratified that the con templated barbarous exhibition did not take place. All these things made an impression upon my boyish mind, which will remain while 1 live."
THE TRIAL OF LOUIS GAUFFRIDIS. BY JOSEPH M. SULLIVAN. IN the early days of the Christian church witchcraft was frequently confounded with heresy, but whether purposely or not, I am unable to say. Pope John XXII. was the first pope to formally condemn the crime of witchcraft, but the famous bill of Innicence VIII. was not proclaimed until the year 1484. This bill marked the most mem orable epoch in the annals of witchcraft, and by its terms the prosecution of witchcraft was formally sanctioned, enforced, and de veloped by the highest authority in the church. The crime of witchcraft was then raging in Germany, and the proclamation of Innocence VIII. empowered the inquisitors to seek out and burn the malefactors "pro strigiatus haresi." The case of Louis Gauffridis gives the reader an adequate idea of the methods re sorted to in the early years of the seven teenth century to obtain convictions in witchcraft trials. Louis Gauffridis, who had debauched several young women, was for mally accused of exercising witchcraft upon one Madeleine, a novice in the Convent of Aix. The facts of the cases are briefly as follows: Madeleine, one of the novices, soon after entering upon her novitiate, was seized with the ecstatic trances, which were speedily
communicated to her companions. These fits, in the judgment of the jurists, were nothing but the effect of witchcraft. Exor cists elicited from the girls that Louis Gauf fridis, a powerful magician having authority over demons throughout Europe, had be witched them. Tht questions and answers were taken down, by order of the judges, by reporters, who, while the jurists were exor cising, committed the results to writing, pub lished afterwards by one of them, Michaelis, in 1613. Among the interesting facts ac quired through these spirit media, the in quisitors learned that Antichrist was already come; that printing, and the inventor of it, were alike accused, and similar information. Madeleine, tortured and imprisoned in the most loathsome dungeon, was reduced to such a condition of extreme horror and dread, that from this time she was the mere instrument of her atrocious judges. Having been intimate with the wizard, she could in form them of the position of -the "secret marks'" on his person; these were ascer tained in the usual way by pricking with needles. Gauffridis, by various tortures, was induced to make the required confession, and was burned alive at Aix, April 30, 1611.
