The True Story vs. Myth of Witchcraft. William Godwin

of any evil or wicked spirit, or shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward any evil or cursed spirit to or for any intent or purpose, or take up any dead man, woman, or child out of the grave—or the skin, bone, or any part of the dead person, to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment; or shall use, exercise, or practice any sort of witchcraft, &c., whereby any person shall be destroyed, killed, wasted, consumed, pined or lamed in any part of the body; that every such person being convicted shall suffer death.' Twelve bishops sat in the Committee of the Upper House.116

      The Scottish Parliament, during Queen Mary's reign, anathematised the papistical practices; and from that time the annals of Scottish judicature are filled with records of trials and convictions. James was educated among the stern adherents of Calvin. In whatever matters of ecclesiastical faith and rule the countryman of Knox may have deviated from the teaching of his preceptors, he maintained with constant zeal his faith in the devil's omnipotence; and we may be disposed to concede the title of 'Defender of the Faith' (so confidently prefixed to successive editions of the Authorised Version) to his activity in the extermination of witches, rather than to his hatred of priestcraft. While monarch only of the Northern kingdom, he published a denunciation of the damnable infidelity of the 'Witch Advocates,' and his own unhesitating belief. James VI. and his clerical advisers were persuaded, or affected to be persuaded, that the devil, with all his hellish crew, was conspiring to frustrate the beneficial intentions of a pious Protestant prince. Infernal despair and rage reached the climax when the marriage with the Danish princess was to be effected. But, far from being terrified by so formidable a conspiracy, he gloried in the persuasion that he was the devil's greatest enemy; and the man who shuddered at the sight of a drawn sword was not afraid to enter the lists against the invisible spiritual enemy.

The 'Demonologie' was published at Edinburgh in 1597. The author introduces his book with these words: 'The fearful abounding at this time in this country of these detestable slaves of the devil, the witches or enchanters, hath moved me (beloved reader) to despatch in post this following treatise of mine, not in any wise (as I protest) to serve for a show of my learning and ingine, but only moved of conscience to press thereby so far as I can to resolve the doubting hearts of many; both that such assaults of Sathan are most certainly practised, and that the instruments thereof merits most severely to be punished: against the damnable opinions of two principally in our age, whereof the one called Scot, an Englishman, is not ashamed in public print to deny that there can be such a thing as witchcraft, and so maintains the old error of the Sadducees in denying of spirits. The other, called Wierus, a German physician, sets out a public apology for all these crafts-folks, whereby procuring for their impunity, he plainly bewrays himself to have been one of that profession. And for to make this treatise the more pleasant and facile, I have put it in form of a dialogue, which I have divided into three books: the first speaking of magic in general, and necromancy in special; the second, of sorcery and witchcraft; and the third contains a discourse of all those kinds of spirits and spectres that appears and troubles persons, together with a conclusion of the whole work. My intention in this labour is only to prove two things, as I have already said: the one, that such devilish arts have been and are; the other, what exact trial and severe punishment they merit; and therefore reason I what kind of things are possible to be performed in these arts, and by what natural causes they may be. Not that I touch every particular thing of the devil's power, for that were infinite; but only, to speak scholasticly (since this cannot be spoken in our language), I reason upon genus, leaving species and differentia to be comprehended therein.'117

      The following injunction is characteristic of all persecuting maxims, and is worthy of the disciple of Bodin: 'Witches ought to be put to death according to the law of God, the civil and the imperial law, and the municipal law of all Christian nations. Yea, to spare the life and not to strike whom God bids strike, and so severely in so odious a treason against God, is not only unlawful but doubtless as great a sin in the magistrate as was Saul's sparing Agag.' It is insisted upon by this sagacious author (echoing the rules laid down in the 'Malleus'), that any and every evidence is good against an exceptional crime: that the testimony of the youngest children, and of persons of the most infamous character, not only may, but ought to be, received.

This mischievous production is a curious collection of demonological learning and experience, exhibiting the reputed practices and ceremonies of witches, the mode of detecting them, &c.; but is useless even for the purpose of showing the popular Scottish or English notions, being chiefly a medley of classical or foreign ideas, inserted apparently (spite of the royal author's assurance to the contrary) to parade an array of abstruse and pedantic learning. That some of the excessive terror said to have been exhibited was simulated to promote his pretensions to the especial hostility of Satan, is probable: but that also he was impressed, in some degree, with a real and lively fear scarcely admits of doubt. The modern Solomon might well have blushed at the superior common sense of a barbaric chief; and the 'judges of the seventeenth century might have been instructed and confounded at the superior wisdom of Rotharis (a Lombardic prince), who derides the absurd superstition and protects the wretched victims of popular or judicial cruelty.'118

      Previously to the 'Witch Act,' the charge of sorcery was, in most cases, a subordinate and subsidiary one, attached to various political or other indictments. Henceforward the practice of the peculiar offence might be entirely independent of any more substantial accusation. In England, compared with the other countries of Europe, folly more than ferocity, perhaps, generally characterises the proceedings of the tribunals. During the pre-Reformation ages, France, even more than her island neighbour, suffered from the crime. The fates of the Templars, of Jeanne d'Arc, of Arras, of those suspected of causing the mad king's, Charles VI., derangement (when many of the white witches, or wizards, 'mischievously good,' suffered for failing, by a pretended skill, to effect his promised cure) are some of the more conspicuous examples. But in France, as in the rest of Europe, it was in the post-feudal period that prosecutions became of almost daily occurrence.

A prevalent kind of sorcery was that of lycanthropy, as it was called, a prejudice derived, it seems, in part from the Pythagorean metempsychosis. A few cases will illustrate the nature of this stupendous transformation. That it is mostly found to take place in France and in the southern districts, the country of wolves, that still make their ravages there, is a fact easily intelligible; and if the devil can enter into swine, he can also, in the opinion of the demonologists, as easily enter into wolves. At Dôle, in 1573, a loup-garou, or wehr-wolf (man-wolf), was accused of devastating the country and devouring little children. The indictment was read by Henri Camus, doctor of laws and counsellor of the king, to the effect that the accused, Gilles Garnier, had killed a girl twelve years of age, having torn her to pieces, partly with his teeth, and partly with his wolf's paws; that having dragged the body into the forest, he there devoured the larger portion, reserving the remainder for his wife; also that, by reason of injuries inflicted in a similar way on another young girl, the loup-garou had occasioned her death; also that he had devoured a boy of thirteen, tearing him limb by limb; that he displayed the same unnatural propensities even in his own proper shape. Fifty persons were found to bear witness; and he was put to the rack, which elicited an unreserved confession. He was then brought back into court, when Dr. Camus, in the name of the Parliament of Dôle, pronounced the following sentence: 'Seeing that Gilles Garnier has, by the testimony of credible witnesses and by his own spontaneous confession, been proved guilty of the abominable crimes of lycanthropy and witchcraft, this court condemns him, the said Grilles, to be this day taken in a cart from this spot to the place of execution, accompanied by the executioner, where he, by the said executioner, shall be tied to a stake and burned alive, and that his ashes be then scattered to the winds. The court further condemns him, the said Gilles, to the costs of this prosecution. Given at Dôle this 18th day of January, 1573.' Five years later a man named Jacques Rollet was burned alive in the Place de Grêve for the same crime, having been tried and condemned by the Parliament of Paris.119

Several witches