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6,852 published records with substantive text · Page 29 of 143
Camus, in the name of the Parliament of Dole, 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 witch
Read record →In 1564, three witches and a wizard were executed at Poictiers: on the rack they declared that they had destroyed numbers of sheep by magical preparations, attended the Sabbaths, &c
Read record →The formal trial and sentence to death of La Marechale de l'Ancre in 1617 was perhaps more political than superstitious, but witchcraft was introduced as one of the gravest accusations
Read record →Evidence of the appearance of the devil was various and contradictory
Read record →Demoniacal possession was a phase of witchcraft which obtained extensively in France during the seventeenth century: the victims of this hallucination were chiefly the female inmates of religious houses, whose inflamed imaginations were prostituted by their pr
Read record →To such an extent went the audacity of the exorcists, and the credulity of the people, that the enceinte condition of one of the sisters, which at the end of five or six months disappeared, was explained by the malicious slander of the devil, who had caused th
Read record →Madeleine, one of the novices, soon after entering upon her noviciate, was seized with the ecstatic trances, which were speedily communicated to her companions.[124] These fits, in the judgment of the priests, were nothing but the effect of witchcraft
Read record →This weakness of the champion of Protestantism is at least more excusable than the pedantic folly of the head of the English Church
Read record →Fires were kindled almost simultaneously in two different places, at Bamburg and Wuerzburg; and seldom, even in the annals of witchcraft, have they burned more tremendously
Read record →Scotland one of the most Superstitious Countries in Europe--Scott's Relation of the Barbarities perpetrated in the Witch-trials under the auspices of James VI.--The Fate of Agnes Sampson, Euphane MacCalzean, &c.--Irrational Conduct of the Courts of Justice--Ca
Read record →At length his constancy, hitherto sustained, as the bystanders supposed, by the help of the devil, was fairly overcome; and he gave an account of a great witch-meeting at North Berwick, where they paced round the church withershins--i
Read record →Two facts eminently illustrate the barbarous iniquity of the Courts of Justice when dealing with their witch prisoners
Read record →Sir George Mackenzie, Lord Advocate of Scotland during the period of the greatest fury, and himself president at many of the trials, a believer, among other cases in his Criminal Law, 1678, relates that of a condemned witch who had confessed judicially to him
Read record →In the southern part of the island witch-hanging or burning proceeded with only less vehemence than in Scotland
Read record →Turner had in her custody; enchanted paps and other pictures [as well as a list of some of the devil's particular names used in conjuration], suddenly was heard a crack from the scaffold, which carried a great fear, tumult, and commotion amongst the spectators
Read record →The Literature of Europe in the Seventeenth Century proves the Universality and Horror of Witchcraft--The most acute and most liberal Men of Learning convinced of its Reality--Erasmus and Francis Bacon--Lawyers prejudiced by Legislation--Matthew Hale's judicia
Read record →The works of the great dramatists, the writings of men of every class, continually suppose the universal power and horror of witchcraft
Read record →Edmund's, carefully weighing evidence, and, summing up, assures them he did 'not in the least doubt there are witches: first, because the Scriptures affirmed it; secondly, because the wisdom of all nations, particularly of our own, had provided laws against wi
Read record →parties, the reformed English Church was not so much interested in identifying her crimes with sorcerers as in maintaining the less tremendous formulae of Divine right, Apostolical succession, and similar pretensions
Read record →During the ascendency of the Presbyterian party from 1640 to the assumption of the Protectorship by Cromwell, witches and witch-trials increased more than ever; and they sensibly decreased only when the Independents obtained a superiority
Read record →[144] The author of Hudibras, in the interview of the Knight and Sidrophel (William Lilly), enumerates the various practices and uses of astrology and witchcraft in vogue at this time, and employed by Court and Parliament with equal eagerness and emulation
Read record →The pious Baxter, an eyewitness, thus commemorates the event: 'The hanging of a great number of witches in 1645 and 1646 is famously known
Read record →ike John Cotta before him and others of that class, was provoked to challenge the propriety of the ordinary prosecutions, not so much from incredulity as from humanity, which revolted at the extravagance of the judges' cruelty
Read record →'Swimming' and 'pricking' were the approved modes of discovery
Read record →These marks were considered to be teats at which the demons or imps were used to be suckled
Read record →Matthew Hopkins pursued a lucrative trade in witch-hunting for some years with much applause and success
Read record →This was followed two years later by a similar protest by one Thomas Ady, called, 'A Candle in the Dark; or, a Treatise concerning the Nature of Witches and Witchcraft: being Advice to Judges, Sheriffs, Justices of the Peace and Grand Jurymen, what to do befor
Read record →nd ill-concealed scepticism of Charles II
Read record →tch all occasions to get us within their envious reach, are more constant attenders and careful spies upon the actions and inclinations of such whose genius and designs prepare them for their temptations
Read record →And if it be supposed that the imps of witches are sometimes wicked spirits of our own kind and nature, and possibly the same that have been witches and sorcerers in this life: this supposal may give a fairer and more probable account of many of the actions of
Read record →eat toad which ran up and down the hearth; and she, having a young youth only with her in the house, desired him to catch the toad and throw it into the fire, which the youth did accordingly, and held it there with the tongs; and as soon as it was in the fire
Read record →The suspicion of imposture thus raised was quickly silenced by fresh proof
Read record →The year before, a woman named Julian Coxe was hanged at Taunton on the evidence of a hunter that a hare, which had taken refuge from his pursuit in a bush, was found on the opposite side in the likeness of a witch, who had assumed the form of the animal, and
Read record →Attacks upon the superstition of varying degrees of merit were not wanting during any period of the seventeenth century
Read record →most of the Governments of Europe were now content to leave sorcerers and witches to the irregular persecutions of the people, tacitly abandoning to the mob the right of proceeding against them as they pleased, without the interference of the law, in a remote
Read record →While engaged at this work he threw down the unfinished house about their ears, to the consternation, and sometimes injury, of his vassals.[155] Some of the witnesses spoke of a great dragon encircled with flames, and an iron chair; of a vision of a burning pi
Read record →All the persuasive arguments of the examiners could not induce the witches to repeat before them their well-known tricks: because, as they affirmed, 'since they had confessed all they found all their witchcraft was gone: and the devil at this time appeared ver
Read record →Witchcraft in the English Colonies in North America--Puritan Intolerance and Superstition--Cotton Mather's 'Late Memorable Providences'--Demoniacal Possession--Evidence given before the Commission--Apologies issued by Authority--Sudden Termination of the Proce
Read record →A review of the superstitions of witchcraft would be incomplete without some notice of the Salem witches in New England
Read record →Mather received one of them into his house for the purpose of making experiments, and, if possible, to exorcise the evil spirits
Read record →As a result of this diagnosis appeared the publication of 'Late Memorable Providences relating to Witchcraft and Possession,' which, together with Baxter's 'Certainty of the World of Spirits,' a work Mather was careful to distribute and recommend to the people
Read record →On July 19 five women, and on August 19, six persons, were sent to the gallows, among whom was Mr
Read record →So ended the last of public and judicial persecutions of considerable extent for witchcraft in Christendom
Read record →The usually candid Mosheim notices, apparently with contempt, '"The World Bewitched," a prolix and copious work, in which he perverts and explains away, with no little ingenuity indeed, but with no less audacity, whatever the sacred volume relates of persons p
Read record →ocedure against witches was negative rather than positive: the enactments in the statute-books were left unrepealed, and so seemed not to altogether discountenance a still somewhat doubtful prejudice
Read record →f the prince, the proper death by burning alive was remitted to the milder sentence of beheading, and afterwards burning the corpse to ashes: for no vestige of such an accursed criminal should be permitted to remain after death
Read record →[164] Without noticing other equally notorious instances of recent years, it may be enough (to dispel any such possible illusion) to transcribe a paragraph from an account in The Times newspaper of Sept
Read record →er of the infernal arts is remembered by the higher classes of society of the present age only in their proverbial language, but it is indelibly graven in the common literature of Europe
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