] Reason was hopelessly
oppressed by faith. In the presence of universal superstition, in
the absence of the modern philosophy, escape seemed all but
impossible.

[94] Sir W. Scott's _Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft_,
chap. vi.

If preeminence in this particular prejudice can be assigned to
any single region or people, perhaps Germany more than any other
land was subject to the demonological fever. A fact to be
explained as well by its being the great theatre for more than a
hundred years of the grand religious struggle between the
opposing Catholics and Protestants, as by its natural fitness.
The gloomy mountain ranges--the Hartz mountains are especially
famous in the national legend--and forests with which it abounds
rendered the imaginative minds of its peoples peculiarly
susceptible to impressions of supernaturalism.[95] France
takes the next place in the fury of the persecution. Danaeus
('Dialogue') speaks of an innumerable number of witches. England,
Scotland, Spain, Italy perhaps come next in order.

[95] How greatly the imagination of the Germans was
attracted by the supernatural and the marvellous is plainly
seen both in the old national poems and in the great work of
the national mythologist, Jacob Grimm (_Deutsche
Mythologie_).

Spain, the dominion of the Arabs for seven centuries, was
naturally the land of magic. During the government of Ferdinand
I., or of Isabella, the inquisition was firmly established. That
numbers were sent from the dungeons and torture-chambers to the
stake, with the added stigma of dealing in the 'black art,' is
certain; but in that priest-dominated, servilely orthodox
southern land, the Church was not perhaps so much interested in
confounding the crimes of heresy and sorcery. The first was
simply sufficient for provoking horror and hatred of the
condemned. The South of France is famous for being the very nest
of sorcery: the witch-sabbaths were frequently held there. It was
the country of the Albigenses, which had been devastated by De
Montfort, the executioner of Catholic vengeance, in the twelfth
century, and was, with something of the same sort of savageness,
ravaged by De Lanere in the seventeenth century. Scotland, before
the religious revolution, exhibits a few remarkable cases of
witch-persecution, as that of the Earl of Mar, brother of James
III. He had been suspected of calling in the aid of sorcery to
ascertain the term of the king's life: the ea