ere of the Protestants. Perhaps the most important result of the
former was to withdraw entirely the authorised prosecution and
punishment of the criminals from the civil to the ecclesiastical
tribunals. Formerly they had a divided jurisdiction. At the
same time the fury of popular and judicial fanaticism was
greatly inflamed by this new sanction. Immediately, and almost
simultaneously, in different parts of Europe, heretical witches
were hunted up, tortured, burned, or hanged; and those parts of
the Continent most infected with the widening heresy suffered
most. The greater number in Germany seems to show that the
dissentients from Catholic dogma there were rapidly increasing,
some time before Luther thundered out his denunciations. An
unusual storm of thunder and lightning in the neighbourhood of
Constance was the occasion of burning two old women, Ann Mindelen
and one 'Agnes.'[76] One contemporary writer asserts that 1,000
persons were put to death in one year in the district of Como;
and Remigius, one of the authorised _inquisitores pravitatis
haereticae_, boasts of having burned 900 in the course of fifteen
years. Martin del Rio states 500 were executed in Geneva in
the short space of three months in 1515; and during the next
five years 40 were burned at Ravensburgh. Great numbers suffered
in France at the same period. At Calahorra, in Spain, in 1507,
a vast _auto-da-fe_ was exhibited, when 39 women, denounced
as sorceresses, were committed to the flames--religious
carnage attested by the unsuspected evidence of the judges and
executioners themselves.

[76] Hutchinson's _Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft_,
chap ii.

It is opportune here to examine the common beliefs of demonology
and sorcery as they existed in Europe. Christian demonology is a
confused mixture of pagan, Oriental, and Christian ideas. The
Christian Scriptures have seemed to suggest and sanction a
constant personal interference of the 'great adversary,' who is
always traversing the earth 'seeking whom he may devour;' and his
popular figure is represented as a union of the great dragon,
the satyrs, and fauns. Nor does he often appear without one or
other of his recognised marks--the cloven foot, the goat's
horns, beard, and legs, or the dragon's tail. With young and
good-looking witches he is careful to assume the recommendations
of a young and handsome man, whilst it is not worth while to
disguise so unprepossessing peculiarities in his