he younger and fairer of the sex were not by any means exempt
from the crime. Young and beautiful women, children of tender
years, have been committed to the rack and to the stake on the
same accusation which condemned the old and the ugly.

[46] _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, part i. sect. 8.

[47] _Grose's Antiquities_, in Brand's _Popular Antiquities
of Great Britain_.

CHAPTER II.

Charlemagne's Severity--Anglo-Saxon Superstition--Norman and
Arabic Magic--Influence of Arabic Science--Mohammedan Belief
in Magic--Rabbinical Learning--Roger Bacon--The Persecution
of the Templars--Alice Kyteler.

Tremendous as was the power of the witch in earlier Christendom,
it was not yet degraded into the thoroughly diabolistic character
of her more recent successors. Diabolism advanced in the same
proportion with the authority of the Church and the ignorant
submission of the people. In the civil law, the Emperor Leo, in
the sixth century, abrogated the Constantinian edict as too
indulgent or too credulous: from that time all sorts of charms,
all use of them, beneficial or injurious, were declared worthy of
punishment. The different states of Europe, founded on the ruins
of the Western Empire, more or less were engaged in providing
against the evil consequences of sorcery. Charlemagne pursued the
criminals with great severity. He 'had several times given orders
that all necromancers, astrologers, and witches should be driven
from his states; but as the number of criminals augmented daily,
he found it necessary at last to resort to severer measures. In
consequence, he published several edicts, which may be found at
length in the "Capitulaire de Baluse." By these every sort of
magic, enchantment, and witchcraft was forbidden, and the
punishment of death decreed against those who in any way evoked
the devil, compounded love-philters, afflicted either man or
woman with barrenness, troubled the atmosphere, excited tempests,
destroyed the fruits of the earth, dried up the milk of cows, or
tormented their fellow-creatures with sores and diseases. All
persons found guilty of exercising these execrable arts were to
be executed immediately upon conviction, that the earth might be
rid of the curse and burden of their presence; and those who
consulted them might also be punished with death.'[48]

[48] M. Garinet's _Histoire de la Magic en France_, quoted
in _Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions_.