material has been collected, but the key to the dark mystery could not be found.
Yet, as our investigations have shown, it was not so far to seek. In the succinct phrase of that profound and prolific scholar Thomas Stapleton95: Crescit cum magia hæresis, cum hæresi magia.” (The weed heresy grows alongside the weed witchcraft, the weed witchcraft alongside the weed heresy.)
NOTES TO CHAPTER I.
1 Paris. Jacques du Puys. 4to. 1580. The preface, addressed to De Thou, is signed: “De Laon, ce xx iour de Decembre, M.D.LXXIX.” There were nine editions before 1604. The most complete is Paris, 4to. 1587. In addition to the text it contains ten extra pages only found here giving the trial of a sorcerer, Abel de la Rue, executed in 1582.
2 The first Papal bull dealing with sorcery was issued by Alexander IV, 13 December, 1258. The last Papal Constitution concerned with this crime is that of Urban VIII, Inscrutabilis iudiciorum Dei altitudo, 1 April, 1631. The last regular English trial seems to have been that of an old woman and her son, acquitted at Leicester in 1717. In 1722 the last execution of a Scottish witch took place at Loth; both English and Scottish statutes were repealed in 1735. The Irish Statute was not repealed until 1821. At Kempten in Bavaria, a mad heretic, a woman, was executed for sorcery in 1775. In the Swiss canton of Glaris, a wench named Anna Goeldi, was hanged as a witch, 17 June, 1782. Two hags were burned in Poland on the same charge as late as 1793.
3 Roland Brévannes. Les Messes Noires, Iier tableau, scène vii.
4 I have actually heard it categorically laid down by a speaker in Shakespearean debate, a litterateur of professed culture, that the Elizabethans could not, of course, really have believed in witchcraft.
5 In the Exhibition of this artist’s work at the Leicester Galleries, London, in March, 1925.
6 . . . qu’elle, & sa mère montoient sur vne ramasse, & que sortans le contremont de la cheminée elles alloient par l’air en ceste façon au Sabbat. Boguet, Discours, p. 104.
7 Glanvill, Part II. p. 194.
8 Julius Wellhausen. Reste arabischen Heidenthums, p. 159. Berlin, 1897.
9 Apud Miss Murray’s The Witch-Cult. (1921). Appendix V. pp. 279–80.
10 Boguet, Discours, XVI. 4.
11 Benjamin Thorpe, Monumenta Ecclesiastica, II. p. 34. London, 1840. The Liber Poenitentialis was first published complete by Wasserschleben in 1851; a convenient edition is Migne, P.L. XCIX.
12 Calendar of State Papers. Domestic, 1584.
13 Sir Walter Scott, Demonology and Witchcraft, Letter V, gives the narrative of this case, but in the light of later research his version must be slightly corrected.
14 Pitcairn. I. pt. ii. p. 162.
15 Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, New Series, vol. X. Edinburgh.
16 Sir James Melville, Memoirs. Bannatyne Club, Edinburgh. pp. 395–6.
17 London. “for William Wright.” N.D. [1591]. The woodcut is on the title-page verso, and signatures [c.ij.] verso. The pages are not numbered.
18 Flying Ointments. Apud Miss Murray’s Witch-Cult in Western Europe, p. 279. It may be noted that the scandals of the Black Mass under Louis XIV were closely concerned with wholesale accusations of poisoning. La Voisin was a notorious vendor of toxic philtres. The possibility of poisoning the King, the Dauphin, Colbert and others was frequently debated.
