Part 17 (1/2)

[78] A famous Italian physician, who lived through the greater part of the sixteenth century.--TRANS.

That apostle of toleration, Chatillon, who maintained against Catholics and Protestants both, that heretics should not be burnt, though he said nothing about wizards, put men of sense in a better way. Agrippa,[79] Lavatier, above all, Wyer[80]] the ill.u.s.trious physician of Cleves, rightly said that if those wretched witches were the Devil's plaything, we must lay the blame on the Devil, not on them; must cure, instead of burning them. Some physicians of Paris soon pushed incredulity so far as to maintain that the possessed and the witches were simply knaves. This was going too far. Most of them were sufferers under the sway of an illusion.

[79] Cornelius Agrippa, of Cologne, born in 1486, sometime Secretary of the Emperor Maximilian, and author of two works famous in their day, _Vanity of the Sciences_, and _Occult Philosophy_.--TRANS.

[80] A friend of Sir Philip Sydney, who sent for him when dying.--TRANS.

The dark reign of Henry II. and Diana of Poitiers ends the season of toleration. Under Diana, they burn heretics and wizards again. On the other hand, Catherine of Medici, surrounded as she was by astrologers and magicians, would have protected the latter. Their numbers increased amain. The wizard Trois-Ech.e.l.les, who was tried in the reign of Charles IX., reckons them at a hundred thousand, declaring all France to be one Witch.

Agrippa and others affirm, that all science is contained in magic. In white magic undoubtedly. But the fears of fools and their fanatic rage, put little difference between them. In spite of Wyer, in spite of those true philosophers, Light and Toleration, a strong reaction towards darkness set in from a quarter whence it was least expected.

Our magistrates, who for nearly a century, had shown themselves enlightened and fair-dealing, now threw themselves into the Spanish Catholicon[81] and the fury of the Leaguists,[82] until they waxed more priest-like than the priests themselves. While scouting the Inquisition from France, they matched, and well-nigh eclipsed it by their own deeds: the Parliament of Toulouse alone sending four hundred human bodies at one time to the stake. Think of the horror, the black smoke of all that flesh, of the frightful melting and bubbling of the fat amidst those piercing shrieks and yells! So accursed, so sickening a sight had not been seen, since the Albigenses were broiled and roasted.

[81] Catholicon, or purgative panacea: _i. e._ the Inquisition.--TRANS.

[82] The wars of the Catholic League against Henry of Navarre began in 1576.--TRANS.

But this is all too little for Bodin, lawyer of Angers, and a violent adversary to Wyer. He begins by saying that the wizards in Europe are numerous enough to match Xerxes' army of eighteen hundred thousand men. Then, like Caligula, he utters a prayer, that these two millions might be gathered together, so as he, Bodin, could sentence and burn them all at one stroke.

The new rivalry makes matters worse. The gentry of the Law begin to say that the priest, being too often connected with the wizard, is no longer a safe judge. In fact, for a moment, the lawyers seem to be yet more trustworthy. In Spain, the Jesuit pleader, Del Rio; in Lorraine, Remy (1596); Boguet (1602) on the Jura; Leloyer (1605) in Anjou; are all matchless persecutors, who would have made Torquemada[83] himself die of envy.

[83] The infamous Spanish Inquisitor, who died at the close of the fifteenth century, after sixteen years of untold atrocities against the heretics of Spain.--TRANS.

In Lorraine there seemed to be quite a dreadful plague of wizards and visionaries. Driven to despair by the constant pa.s.sing of troops and brigands, the mult.i.tude prayed to the Devil only. They were drawn on by the wizards. A number of villagers, frightened by a twofold dread of wizards on the one hand, and judges on the other, longed to leave their homes and flee elsewhither, if Remy, Judge of Nancy, may be believed. In the work he dedicated (1596) to the Cardinal of Lorraine, he owns to having burnt eight hundred witches, in sixteen years. ”So well do I deal out judgements,” he says, ”that last year sixteen slew themselves to avoid pa.s.sing through my hands.”

The priests felt humbled. Could they have done better than the laity?

Nay, even the monkish lords of Saint Claude asked for a layman, honest Boguet, to sit in judgment on their own people, who were much given to witchcraft. In that sorry Jura, a poor land of firs and scanty pasturage, the serf in his despair yielded himself to the Devil. They all wors.h.i.+pped the Black Cat.

Boguet's book had immense weight. This Golden Book, by the petty judge of Saint Claude, was studied as a handbook by the wors.h.i.+pful members of Parliament. In truth, Boguet is a thorough lawyer, is even scrupulous in his own way. He finds fault with the treachery shown in these prosecutions; will not hear of barristers betraying their clients, of judges promising pardon only to ensure the death of the accused. He finds fault with the very doubtful tests to which the witches were still exposed. ”Torture,” he says, ”is needless: it never makes them yield.” Moreover, he is humane enough to have them strangled before throwing them to the flames, always except the werewolves, ”whom you must take care to burn alive.” He cannot believe that Satan would make a compact with children: ”Satan is too sharp; knows too well that, under fourteen years, any bargain made with a minor, is annulled by default of years and due discretion.” Then the children are saved? Not at all; for he contradicts himself, and holds, moreover, that such a leprosy cannot be purged away without burning everything, even to the cradles. Had he lived, he would have come to that. He made the country a desert: never was there a judge who destroyed people with so fine a conscience.

But it is to the Parliament of Bourdeaux that the grand hurrah for lay jurisdiction is sent up in Lancre's book on _The Fickleness of Demons_. The author, a man of some sense, a counsellor in this same Parliament, tells with a triumphant air of his fight with the Devil in the Basque country, where, in less than three months, he got rid of I know not how many witches, and, better still, of three priests. He looks compa.s.sionately on the Spanish Inquisition, which at Logrono, not far off, on the borders of Navarre and Castille, dragged on a trial for two years, ending in the poorest way by a small _auto-da-fe_, and the release of a whole crowd of women.

CHAPTER IV.

THE WITCHES OF THE BASQUE COUNTRY: 1609.[84]

[84] The Basques of the Lower Pyrenees, the Aquitani of Caesar, belonged to the old Iberian race which peopled Western Europe before the Celtic era.--TRANS.

That strong-handed execution of the priests shows M. Lancre to have been a man of independent spirit. In politics he is the same. In his book on _The Prince_ (1617), he openly declares ”the law to be above the King.”

Never was the Basque character better drawn than in his book on _The Fickleness of Demons_. In France, as in Spain, the Basque people had privileges which almost made them a republic. On our side they owed the King no service but that of arms: at the first beat of drum they were bound to gather two thousand armed men commanded by Basque captains. They were not oppressed by their clergy, who seldom prosecuted wizards, being wizards themselves. The priests danced, wore swords, and took their mistresses to the Witches' Sabbath. These mistresses acted as their s.e.xtonesses or _benedictes_, to keep the churches in order. The parson quarrelled with n.o.body, offered the White Ma.s.s to G.o.d by day, the Black by night to the Devil, and sometimes, according to Lancre, in the same church.

The Basques of Bayonne and St. Jean de Luz, a race of men quaint, venturesome, and fabulously bold, left many widows, from their habit of sailing out into the roughest seas to harpoon whales. Leaving their wives to G.o.d or the Devil, they threw themselves in crowds into the Canadian settlements of Henry IV. As for the children, these honest worthy sailors would have thought about them more, if they had been clear as to their parentage. But on their return home they would reckon up the months of their absence, and they never found the reckoning right.

The women, bold, beautiful, imaginative, spent their day seated on tombs in the grave-yards, talking of the Sabbath, whither they expected to go in the evening. This was their pa.s.sion, their craze.