y certain
Byzantine traditions were being introduced into the West. There were
legends of men who had made written compacts with the Devil, men whom he
promised to assist in this world in return for their souls in the
next.[2] But, while such stories were current throughout the Middle
Ages, the notion behind them does not seem to have been connected with
the other features of what was to make up the idea of witchcraft until
about the middle of the fourteenth century. It was about that time that
the belief in the "Sabbat" or nocturnal assembly of the witches made its
appearance.[3] The belief grew up that witches rode through the air to
these meetings, that they renounced Christ and engaged in foul forms of
homage to Satan. Lea tells us that towards the close of the century the
University of Paris formulated the theory that a pact with Satan was
inherent in all magic, and judges began to connect this pact with the
old belief in night riders through the air. The countless confessions
that resulted from the carefully framed questions of the judges served
to develop and systematize the theory of the subject. The witch was much
more than a sorcerer. Sorcerers had been those who, through the aid of
evil spirits, by the use of certain words or of representations of
persons or things produced changes above the ordinary course of nature.
"The witch," says Lea, "has abandoned Christianity, has renounced her
baptism, has worshipped Satan as her God, has surrendered herself to
him, body and soul, and exists only to be his instrument in working the
evil to her fellow creatures which he cannot accomplish without a human
agent."[4] This was the final and definite notion of a witch. It was the
conception that controlled European opinion on the subject from the
latter part of the fourteenth to the close of the seventeenth century.
It was, as has been seen, an elaborate theological notion that had grown
out of the comparatively simple and vague ideas to be found in the
scriptural and classical writers.

It may well be doubted whether this definite and intricate theological
notion of witchcraft reached England so early as the fourteenth century.
Certainly not until a good deal later--if negative evidence is at all
trustworthy--was a clear distinction made between sorcery and
witchcraft. The witches searched for by Henry IV, the professor of
divinity, the friar, the clerk, and the witch of Eye, who were hurried
before the Council of Henry