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53,266 published records with substantive text · Page 980 of 1,110
The ever-increasing prestige of witchcraft in time raised it to a point where it could be made an apt weapon for political intrigues
Read record →I have elsewhere in this volume attempted to show that, even in our own days, there is nothing particularly incredible about a witch--and that the disrespect into which she has fallen is due rather to our modern lack of any sense of proportion in our beliefs,
Read record →As we have seen the severest period of witch-persecution commences from their definite classification as heretics by the Bull of Innocent VIII
Read record →The Inquisitor, Sprenger, lost little time in making use of this delegated authority--and such was his zeal and so many his opportunities of acquiring knowledge that within two years after the issue of the Bull he gave to the world his famous "Witch's Hammer,"
Read record →The effects of the Witch-Bull were immediate and in every way satisfactory to its authors--a perfect frenzy of witch-finding resulting
Read record →Calvin, again, says of Psalm v., 6, "If there were no charms of sorcery, this were but a childish and absurd thing which is here written." It is true that Protestant and Catholic regarded the witchcraft question from diametrically opposite standpoints
Read record →However enduring might be the enthusiasm of the judges, the commonalty in time grew sated with the spectacle of their own and their friends' aunts and grandmothers being burned to ashes for the glory of God
Read record →Not content with stirring up doubt as to the spiritual nature of witchcraft, Wierus has the audacity to question the motives of some of its judges
Read record →Wierus had studied the natural history of the witch no less closely than his predecessor, the Inquisitor Sprenger
Read record →Fifteen years after the publication of "De Præstigiis," appeared Jean Bodin's counterblast
Read record →f a neighbour's goods or person, the making of images or pictures of men, women, children, angels, devils, beasts and fowls for magical purposes, were declared felony without benefit of clergy, was repealed in the reign of Edward VI
Read record →As against his contemporary, Holland, who, writing in 1590, urges that since witches were in the Bible, "shall Satan be less cruel now?", Scot, in "The Discoverie of Witchcraft," scoffs at "Sprenger's fables and Bodin's bables"--a conceit that must have afford
Read record →To this no less than to his desire for literary laurels, is to be ascribed his painstaking--not to say pedantic--"Dæmonologia," published in 1597, which the loyal Hutchinson excuses in his "Historical Essay on Witchcraft"--excuses on the ground of his youth an
Read record →He is fearfully and wonderfully theological--and occasionally indulges in touches of elephantine lightness such as might well have given pause to the most obstinate sorcerer
Read record →Such august patronage of their efforts served the ever-increasing tribe of professional witch-finders in good stead, and the Act of 1563 was enforced more stringently than ever
Read record →Accordingly, we find the inquisitor or judge always ultra-punctilious in bringing all due form and ceremony to bear upon a witch-trial
Read record →A host of precautionary measures to be taken by the judge when the witch was brought into court, have been recorded
Read record →Before burning the witch, it was, however, necessary to catch her
Read record →Gaule, however ill-advised, proved himself no despicable antagonist
Read record →Be that as it may, his fall, when it came, was heavy
Read record →That Matthew Hopkins initiated new methods of witch-finding by no means implies that there was any lack of such before his time
Read record →Most popular test of all, as taking place in the open and thus providing a general holiday, was witch-ducking or "swimming." So near was it to the great heart of the British public that its celebration continued informally well into the nineteenth century
Read record →Of how it might be obtained Reginald Scot gives us a vivid example
Read record →Blackstone, indeed, one of the greatest of English lawyers, went so far as to declare that "to deny the possibility, nay, the actual existence of witchcraft is at once flatly to contradict the revealed Word of God." The attitude of Sir Matthew Hale, Lord Chief
Read record →It would be both tedious and unprofitable to trace out the whole long history of witch-persecution in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
Read record →And instead of the brown one a little Boy, whom this Informer knoweth not." Dickenson's wife offered him a shilling as the price of his silence, but he answered, "Nay, thou art a witch." Whereupon she put her hand into her pocket and pulled out something like
Read record →In the same year Margaret Elmore was tried at the Ipswich Assizes before the same judge
Read record →This," she said, "she did five or six times, and laughed and said Bess Horner held her up." Poor Elizabeth had a wart on her shoulder, which the children said was a witch-mark, and was sucked by her toad
Read record →Thenceforward the law of England had no more terrors for the witch, though she was not yet quite out of danger
Read record →[Footnote 1: "If any person, or persons, shall use, practise, or exercise any invocation or conjuration of any evil and wicked spirit, or shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, find, or reward any evil and wicked spirit, to or for any intent or purpo
Read record →Just as the gods of Valhalla ever looked forward to the day of their destruction, so Hell rather than Heaven has always held the leading place in the Scottish imagination
Read record →As in Rome and Greece, the witch was firmly settled in Scotland centuries before the coming of Christianity
Read record →In due time the witches began their work of ṻbag, obag and gisreag (charm, incantation and chanting), but with little initial effect
Read record →Against witches of such prowess he must be a powerful man--saint or king--who would gainsay them
Read record →Indeed, the whole family of this peccant nobleman proved, on investigation, to be tarred with the same magical brush
Read record →In the following year occurred a witch-trial of interest in itself, and the cause of the great outburst of persecution which for the next century makes the annals of Scottish justice run red with innocent blood--that of Dr
Read record →It is, perhaps, only characteristic of the national attitude towards the whole subject that the "White," or amiable, witch was held in as great detestation as her "Black," or malignant, sister
Read record →Such is the similarity of the various Scottish witch-trials that too-detailed recapitulation would be tedious and unprofitable
Read record →Two of the accused were domestic servants in service at Edinburgh, and with that love of finery which even now attends their kind
Read record →Political ups and downs, whomever else they might affect, made no difference in the hard lot of the witch--save, indeed, that she was regarded as belonging to the opposite party by that in power
Read record →Search being made, his image was found up the chimney
Read record →The universality of the belief in witchcraft carried in its train international belief in the efficacy of persecution as its cure
Read record →In France, as elsewhere, the seventeenth century saw the witch-fever rise to its most extravagant height
Read record →The same causes which rendered the French persecutions more severe while they lasted, also brought it about that any relaxation of the Governmental attitude diminished them to a greater extent than was the case in England, where witchcraft had a more personal
Read record →Germany--the land of sentiment, no less than of common sense--was not different from her neighbours in her method of regarding the witch
Read record →A pathetic incident is recorded of another formidable outburst of the witch-mania--at Bamberg in 1628
Read record →There were besides six-and-thirty children that ran the gauntlet and twenty were whipt on the hands at the Church-door every Sunday for three weeks together." The whole proceedings were, indeed, almost a children's drama and no emanation of childish imaginatio
Read record →The precarious existence of the infant State also gave its leaders every ground for taking the severest measures towards anything considered to be dangerous to its welfare
Read record →