History Of The Inquisition - Part 2 by Paul Carus - 1900
Heretics Outlawed. THE saddest side of the Devil's history appears in the persecution of those who were supposed to be adherents of the Devil; namely, sectarians, heretics, and witches. The most ridiculous accusations were made and believed of the Manichees, the Montanists, the Novatian Puritans or Cathari, the Albigenses, and other dissenters. They were said to worship the Devil by most obscene ceremonies, and their intercourse with him was described most minutely as indecent and outrageous. In times of a general belief in witchcraft and the Devil's power, nobody was safe against the accusation of being in the service of Satan. Thus the Stedingers, having effectually resisted the Bishop of Bremen when he tried to take their tithes from them by force of arms, were vanquished and cruelly slaughtered after having been denounced as Devil-worshippers. The order of the Templars, the richest and most powerful and even the most orthodox order of Christianity, was accused of the meanest and most bestial idolatry, simply because an avaricious king of France was anxious to deprive them of their wealth and valuable possessions; and innumerable private citizens, poor people as a rule recklessly and rich people deliberately, were made in some way or other victims of this most shameful superstition, sometimes to benefit ecclesiasticism, sometimes to serve the interests of the powerful, sometimes out of sheer ignorance, and sometimes even with the purest and sincerest intentions of doing the right thing for the best of mankind, and with the pious desire of obeying the word of the Lord, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Exodus xxii. 18). The witch-prosecution mania was a general and a common disease of the age. On the one hand, it cannot (as is often supposed) be attributed to the influence of the Church alone, and it would, on the other hand, be a grave mistake to absolve the ecclesiastical institutions of the fearful crimes of this superstition; for the highest authorities of both Catholic and Protestant Christianity not only upheld the idea of witch-prosecution, but enforced it in the execution of the law in all its most terrible consequences. It was natural that heretics should always be regarded as belonging to the same category as witches and wizards, for they, too, were according to the logic of ecclesiastical reasoning "worshippers of Satan." Deuteronomy commands that prophets and dreamers of dreams, who by signs or wonders that come to pass would persuade Israelites to obey other gods, "shall be put to death" (xiii. 5-11). We read:
Relying on this passage, St. Jerome (340-420 A. D.) did not hesitate to advise the infliction of capital punishment upon heretics; and Leo the Great (Pope, 440-461 A. D.) takes the same view. 1 Priscillian, a bishop of Spain, a man of learning and pure morals, was the first heretic who was put to torture and together with some of his adherents decapitated at Treves in the year 385. The followers of Priscillian revered the memory of their teacher as that of a martyr, and formed a sect which continued to exist for a long time in spite of the excommunication of the Church. Pope Leo the Great justified and praised the condemnation of Priscillian. Under Pope Alexander III., the title "Inquisitor," in the sense of judge in matters of faith, was used for the first time at the council of Tours (in 1163). The synod of Verona (in 1184) cursed all heretics, and ordered them, in case they relapsed, to be handed over to the secular authorities for capital punishment. Pope Innocent III. (1198-1216) for the sake of crushing the Albigenses gave power to papal emissaries to sue the heretics, and enjoined all bishops on penalty of deposition to assist in the discovery and prosecution of unbelievers. Following in the footsteps of Gregory VII., he vindicated the supremacy of the Church over the State; he humiliated Philip Augustus of France, deposed Emperor Otto IV., compelled John of England to acknowledge the feudal sovereignty of the Pope and pay tribute. He instigated the fourth crusade (1202-1204) and exterminated the Albigenses. Under his papacy, at the suggestion of Castilian Dominic and the Bishop of Toulouse, the new order of Dominicans was instituted, which was destined to become the working force of the Inquisition. Pope Gregory IX. pursued the traditional policy with great vigor, establishing a regular inquisitorial office for Italy under the name of the "Holy Office," in 1224. Gregory's policy was codified in an instrument of forty-five articles by the Council of Toulouse, in 1229, and thus the Inquisition became an established Church-institution, the appointment and superintendence of which formed an important prerogative of the Pope. It was not until this period that the Pope became the absolute ruler of the Church, for now even bishops could be cited before the papal tribunal of the Inquisition. Gregory IX. appointed (in 1232) the Dominicans as papal inquisitors, who performed the terrible duties of their office so faithfully that they truly earned the title of Domini canes, "the sleuth-hounds of the Lord," which originated in a word-play on their name. A famous fresco in the Santa Maria Novella at Florence entitled Domini canes, painted by Simone Memmi, represents the inquisitorial idea under the allegory of a pack of hounds chasing off the wolves from the sheepfold. Gregory IX. (1227-1241) sent Conrad of Marburg to Germany and gave him unlimited power of citing before his tribunal all people suspected of witchcraft, commanding him to bring the guilty to the fagot. And this fiendish man obeyed with joy his master, whom he revered as the Vicar of Christ on earth. He encountered much opposition, for the people became rebellious, and even the Archbishops of Cologne, Treves, and Mayence attempted to resist him. But Conrad remained firm; his practices had the unequivocal sanction of his Holiness the Pope, and he did not hesitate to begin proceedings even against these three highest dignitaries of the Church in Germany. Wherever Conrad appeared, the fagots were lit, and many innocent people became the victims of his fanaticism. The Archbishop of Mayence, bent on stopping this fiend, wrote a letter to the Pope, in which he said:
The Archbishop's letter failed to impress his Holiness and did not in the least change the course of things.
On the contrary, Rome pursued more vigorously than ever its old policy, which was at last definitely formulated by Pope Urban V. in his bull "In cæna Domini," proclaimed in 1362, which sounded the slogan against all who ventured to dissent from Rome, and solemnly condemned heresy in strong and unequivocal terms. Meanwhile the success of the Inquisition had been greatly imperilled by the opposition which Conrad of Marburg encountered in Germany. When the Inquisitor-General indicted Count Henry of Sayn for heresy, he wag cited before the German Diet that was held in Mayence. The Diet was not inclined to respect Conrad's authority and passed a vote of censure. Bent on vengeance for the insult received, the Inquisitor left for Paderborn, but before he could do further mischief he was overtaken by several noblemen on the 30th of July, 1233, near Marburg, on the Lahn, and slain. 4 Thus he fell a martyr to his bloody profession. The Germans breathed more freely, but Gregory IX. canonised him as a saint and martyr, and ordered that a chapel be built on the spot on which he was killed.
While the establishment of the Holy Office in Germany met with serious difficulties, the inquisitors were welcomed in France by Louis the Pious, Philip the Fair, and Charles IV.
The Inquisitor Hugo de Beniols had a number of prominent people burned alive at Toulouse, in 1275, among them Angèle, Lady of Labarthe, a woman of sixty-five years accused of sexual intercourse with Satan. It is stated that she had borne a monster with a wolf's head and a serpent's tail, whose sole food consisted of babies. Under the rule of Charles IV. the ill-famed Bastile was built, because the prisons no longer sufficed to hold the indicted heretics.
The wealthiest, the most powerful, the most learned, were threatened alike, and even Archbishop Carranza, the primate of the Church of Spain, could not escape the prosecution of the inquisitors. In the beginning of the fifteenth century, Johannes Nider, a German and a Dominican monk, published a book on Witches and Their Deceptions. 7 At the same time Pope Eugene IV. (1431-1447) encouraged the inquisitors in a circular letter to proceed with severity, "summarily, without ado, and without any judiciary form." 8
In
1458 J. Nicolaus Jaquerius appeared in the field with another publication called
the heretics' scourge or Flagellum heriticorum fascinariorum 10
(Frankfort, 1581) in which Edelin's case is reported 11
as one argument among many others for the reality of witchcraft. And now at last
all opposition to the practices of witch-prosecutors were put down. The Inquisitor Pierre le Broussart, member of the Dominican order, cited during the absence of the Bishop of Arras a number of persons before his tribunal and made them confess on the rack that they had been with the Waldenses; he promised to spare their lives if they agreed publicly to confess all the abominable crimes of which the Waldenses had been accused. At a public meeting the accused persons appeared on a scaffold; they wore caps exhibiting pictures of Devil-worship. The various ceremonies of obscene demonolatry were read to them, and they were asked whether they were guilty. All the accused affirmed their guilt, whereupon, in utter neglect of previous promises, they were sentenced and turned over to the secular authorities to be burned alive. In vain did they now shout that they had been cheated, that they knew nothing of the crimes of which they had been accused, and that they had only confessed because they had been promised to be let off with a nominal punishment. Broussart was determined to set an example, and had them executed in 1560 in spite of the protestations of their innocence. The Witch-Hammer. Witch-prosecutions received a new impulse in the year 1484 through . the bull of Pope Innocent VIII., beginning with the words Summis desiderantes affectibus. The inquisitors of Germany, Heinrich Institoris (whose German name was Krämer) and Jacob Sprenger, complained of having met with resistance while attending to their duties, and the Pope afforded them the desired assistance for the sake of strengthening the Catholic faith 12 and of preventing the horrible crimes and excesses of witchcraft. 13 The bull of Pope Innocent VIII. had reference to Germany only; but other popes, Alexander VI., Julius II., Leo X., and Hadrian IV., issued bulls written in the same spirit, instigating the zeal of the inquisitors to do their best for the purification of the faith and the supression of witchcraft. The heinous bull of Pope Innocent VIII. was the immediate cause of the writing of the Malleus Maleficarum, or Witch-Hammer, which received the sanction of the Pope, and a patent from Emperor Maximilian. With the Witch-Hammer in hand, Sprenger and Institoris appeared in 1487 before the theological faculty of Cologne and demanded their approbation, which was given with reluctance and after long hesitation. The original form of the document is very guarded and approves of the principles of punishing witchcraft only "in so far as they do not contradict the sacred canons." This did not appear sufficient and the inquisitors insisted upon a more decisive verdict. There are four further articles which contain an unequivocal request to the secular authorities to assist the inquisition in the interest of the Catholic faith. In addition the inquisitors secured a notary's certificate concerning the Emperor's patent and the approbation of the theological faculty; but it is noteworthy that the Emperor's patent is not literally reproduced; nor has it (according to Soldan's 14 opinion) ever been published. The notary declares merely that the Emperor promises to protect the papal bull and to assist both inquisitors. Such is the first introduction of the Witch-Hammer in Germany, and the book was at once recognised by zealots as the main source of information on witchcraft. Damhouder, the great criminalist of the sixteenth century, esteemed its authority as almost equal to the law; 15 and its baneful influence extends over a period of three centuries. The Malleus Maleficarum, or Witch-Hammer, is one of the most famous and infamous works ever written. Its name indicated that it was intended to crush witchcraft. No author is mentioned but Sprenger's spirit is recognised in both its preface (the Apologia) and the various chapters of the book.' Its style is poor, its ideas are foolish, its intentions are villainous, and the advice given to the inquisitors concerning their procedure betrays a diabolical perfidiousness. The book contains the most confounded nonsense, often self-contradictory, and is throughout irrational and superstitious. The Witch-Hammer advises beginning the trial with the question "whether or not the person on trial believes in witchcraft." The statement is added: "Mind that witches generally deny the question." If the culprit denies, the inquisitor continues: "Well, then, whenever witches are burnt, they are innocently condemned. "A denial of witchcraft sealed the doom of the accused at once, for the Witch-Hammer declares: "The greatest heresy is not to believe in witchcraft" (haeresis est maxima opera maleficarum non credere). However, if the accused affirmed the question, the tortures made him confess all that he knew about it and whether or not he had learned and practised the black art. To plead ignorance would not avail, for the very refusal of a confession was counted a crime under the name maleficium taciturnitatus. There was no escape, and the best course for the victim on the rack was to confess all at once without a relapse into denials, for that at least abbreviated the procedure and ended the tragedy without its incidental terrors. As a rule the prisoners of the inquisition ask for death as a boon and wherever possible commit suicide; for torture made of every one a hopeless cripple unfit for either work or enjoyment of life, even though he might be released. Acquittals, however, were rare and the Witch-Hammer advises the inquisitors never to acquit, but only temporarily to stop proceedings. A nolle pros was recommended as the safer way. The culprit should be handed over to the secular authorities for capital punishment, especially if the sentence of being burned alive was mitigated to decapitation, 16 a penalty which the Church avoided inflicting; for "the Church thirsts not for blood" (ecclesia non sitit sanguinem). A confessor and even the judge himself is advised to speak in private with the prisoner and upon the promise of pardon and mercy to extort a confession. The Witch-Hammer suggests that the judge may say: "'If you confess, I shall not condemn you to death,' for he may at any time call in another judge to take his place, who is at liberty to pronounce the sentence." The victims of the Inquisition were practically without any assistance, for witchcraft was regarded as an exceptional crime (crimen atrocissimum and crimen exceptum) for which the usual rules of procedure were not binding. It belonged before the secular and also the ecclesiastical tribunal (crimen fori mixti). The culprit must be dealt with according to the maxim of Pope Boniface VIII. (1294-1303), "simply and squarely, without the noise and form of lawyers and judges." 17 To us who live in an age of calmer thought and more exact investigation, it is difficult to understand how the Witch-Hammer could ever have been believed. The Torture. Witch-prosecution appears to us as rascality pure and simple, but it was not. It was the result of a firm and deep-seated religious conviction, as may be learned from the Malleus Maleficarum, a work of John Trithemius, Abbot of the Monastery of Spongheim (1442-1516), who at the request of Joachim, Markgrave of Brandenburg, investigated the subject, and after years of conscientious study presented to the world his views in a book of four volumes, which was completed October 16, in the year 1508, when the pious abbot had reached the mature age of sixty-six years. Trithemius
distinguishes four classes of wizards and witches: Trithemius believes that there is no other way of protecting the commonwealth against the obnoxious influence of these malefactors than by extirpating them, but best by burning them alive. He says:
And in another passage the abbot utters the complaint:
The great dangers of witchcraft seemed to demand extraordinary means for combating its evils; and thus the torture, which had formerly been applied only in exceptional and special cases, began to be developed in a most formidable and barbaric way. Suspected persons were subjected to fire and water ordeals, but the latter test was preferred; and this is the reason, as we read in König's work on the subject:
Concerning the water ordeal the same author says:
The Mirror of the Swabians, also of the thirteenth century, contains the same proposition. In the sixteenth century the practice was almost universally established. As to the underlying idea, König says:
Who can contemplate without indignation and holy wrath the instruments of torture used by inquisitors in their infamous vocation? There are thumbscrews, there are blacksmith's tongs and pincers to tear out the fingernails or to be used red-hot for pinching; there is the rack, Spanish boots, collars, chains, etc., there are boards and rollers covered with sharp spikes; there is the "Scavenger' s Daughter," also the "Iron Virgin," a hollow instrument the size and figure of a woman, with knives inside which are so arranged that, when closing, the victim would be lacerated in its deadly embrace. Incredible ingenuity was displayed in the invention of these instruments of torture; and one of the executioner's swords, which still hangs in the Torturers' Vault at Nuremberg on the left side of the entrance, exhibits in bad Latin the blasphemous inscription, "Solo Deo Gloria!" 18
The hangmen took pride in their profession and regarded themselves as disgraced if they could not make their victims confess whatever the inquisitors wanted. Their usual threat, when a heretic, a wizard, or a witch was handed over to them, was: "You will be tortured until you are so thin that the sun will shine through you." The instruments look horrible enough, but the practice was more horrible than the wildest imagination can depict. Before the torture began, the accused were forced to drink the witch-broth, a disgusting concoction mixed with the ashes of burnt witches, and supposed to protect the torturers against the evil influence of witchcraft. The filth 19 of the dungeons was a very effective means of making the prisoner despondent and preparing him for any confession upon which he could be condemned. He was frequently secured by iron manacles fixed in the wall or placed under heavy timbers which prevented the free use of his limbs, rendering him a helpless prey to rats, mice, and vermin of all sorts. Consider only the fiendish details of the torture applied to a woman in the year 1631 on the first day of her trial: 20
This is not barbarous, this is not bestial, it is satanic. And such deeds could be done in the name of God, for the sake of the religion of Jesus, and by the command of the highest authorities of the Christian Church! From the great number of prosecutions for witchcraft we select one instance only, which, however, is neither typical nor extraordinary in its horrors. We read in Konig's popular exposition of human superstitions, 21 p. 240:
Volumes might be filled with accounts of the many thousand various instances of witch-prosecutions, and every single case is so soul-harrowing that we prefer to pass them by in silence. The accusations are almost always very circumstantial and definite, mostly of brutal indecency and ridiculously impossible. The Angel of Augsburg. Witch-prosecution was a convenient weapon in the bands of unscrupulous men for accomplishing crooked ends or satisfying some private vengeance. One of the most tragic and pathetic cases is the sad death of Agnes Bernauer, a beautiful woman, the daughter of a barber and the sweetheart of Albrecht, Duke of Bavaria. Agnes was born about 1410 in Biberach, and it appears that she was a mere servant girl in Augsburg at the time Duke Albrecht of Würtemberg, the son of Duke Ernest, made her acquaintance. The story that Agnes was of patrician birth and that the lovers met at the great tournament is mere legend, but this much is sure that Agnes was extraordinarily beautiful, with golden hair, and delicate, noble features. Even her enemies could not help praising the nobility of her appearance. We know little or nothing about the relations between Duke Albrecht and Agnes, except that he courted her and took her with him to his residence in the County Vohnburg. Duke Ernest, Albrecht's father, knew about Agnes's presence at Vohnburg but he cared little, until he became anxious about having a legal heir to his duchy. Then he requested his soil to marry the daughter of Duke Erik of Brunswick, but Albrecht refused on account of the love he bore to Agnes. When persuasion appeared to be without avail, Duke Ernest thought of other means to separate his son from the lowly-born maiden. At a public tournament, he ordered the judges to refuse admittance to Albrecht on the ground that for the sake of a concubine he neglected his filial duties. Albrecht was greatly exasperated and as soon as he returned to Vohnburg he recognised Agnes as his wife. With the consent of his uncle, Duke William, he moved to the castle Straubing, which he donated to her and surrounding her with a ducal court, called her henceforth Duchess Agnes. The poor woman did not enjoy the splendor of the court. She feared the wrath of the old Duke, and built, in a melancholy presentiment of her sad fate, her own burial chapel, in the monastery of the Carmelites at Straubing. Her happiness was of short duration. In Albrecht's absence, Duke Ernest seized Agnes, had her imprisoned and denounced her as a witch. Her condemnation had been decided upon before the trial began, and the verdict pronounced her guilty of having bewitched Duke Albrecht and thus committed a criminal offence against Duke Ernest. The judgment ordered her to be drowned in the river, and Duke Ernest signed the verdict. The hangmen carried the young woman to the bridge at Straubing and thrust her, in the presence of a multitude of spectators, into the water. But the current drifted her ashore and she held up her white arms appealing to the people for help. The people were moved and she might have been saved, had not one of the hangmen, fearing the wrath of the old duke, seized a pole and catching her long golden hair held her under water until she expired. This happened in the year 1435. She was buried in St. Peter's cemetery of Straubing.
When the young Duke on his return was informed of the terrible death of his beloved Agnes he swore vengeance, and in alliance with his cousin Duke Ludwig of Bavaria-Ingolstadt, began to wage a vigorous war against his own father. Through the mediation of the Emperor, however, he was reconciled with his father at the council of Basel. Duke Ernest built a chapel over the grave of his innocent victim and had an annual mass read over her for the welfare of her soul. Duke Albrecht thereupon agreed to marry Anna, Princess of Brunswick, by whom he had ten children, although it cannot be said that his married life was a happy one. In 1447 Duke Albrecht had the body of Agnes transferred to the chapel which she had built for herself in the Carmelite monastery; and he had the resting-place of her remains adorned with a beautiful marble image of her in full figure with the simple inscription: "Obiit Agnes Bernauerin. Requiescat in pace." Poets who have immortalised her name, 22 and the people of Bavaria among whom her memory is still cherished, call her "the angel of Augsburg." * * * One of the most comical witch-prosecutions took place in 1474 against a diabolical rooster who had been so presumptuous as to lay an egg. The poor creature was solemnly tried, whereupon he was condemned to die at the stake and publicly burned by order of the authorities of the good city of Basel. We abstain from entering further into the details of the prosecution of witches, which gradually developed into a systematic business involving great emoluments to judges, torturers, hangmen, inquisitors, denouncers, witnesses, and all persons connected with the process. It is a doleful work to go over the mere statistics of the autos-da-fé, and every single story of a trial for witchcraft cannot but rouse our deepest indignation; and even now the belief in witchcraft is not yet extinct among the so-called civilised races of mankind. Footnotes
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