89, is almost a solitary example of a return to
reason. Fourteen persons, condemned to death for witchcraft, appealed
against the judgment to the Parliament of Paris, which for political
reasons had been exiled to Tours. The Parliament named four
commissioners, Pierre Pigray, the King's surgeon, and Messieurs Leroi,
Renard, and Falaiseau, the King's physicians, to visit and examine
these witches, and see whether they had the mark of the devil upon
them. Pigray, who relates the circumstance in his work on Surgery, book
vii, chapter the tenth, says the visit was made in presence of two
counsellors of the court. The witches were all stripped naked, and the
physicians examined their bodies very diligently, pricking them in all
the marks they could find, to see whether they were insensible to pain,
which was always considered a certain proof of guilt. They were,
however, very sensible of the pricking, and some of them called out
very lustily when the pins were driven into them. "We found them,"
continues Pierre Pigray, "to be very poor, stupid people, and some of
them insane; many of them were quite indifferent about life, and one or
two of them desired death as a relief for their sufferings. Our opinion
was, that they stood more in need of medicine than of punishment, and
so we reported to the Parliament. Their case was, thereupon, taken into
further consideration, and the Parliament, after mature counsel amongst
all the members, ordered the poor creatures to be sent to their homes,
without inflicting any punishment upon them."

Such was the dreadful state of Italy, Germany, and France, during the
sixteenth century, which was far from being the worst crisis of the
popular madness with regard to witchcraft. Let us see what was the
state of England during the same period. The Reformation, which in its
progress had rooted out so many errors, stopped short at this, the
greatest error of all. Luther and Calvin were as firm believers in
witchcraft as Pope Innocent himself, and their followers showed
themselves more zealous persecutors than the Romanists. Dr. Hutchinson,
in his work on Witchcraft, asserts that the mania manifested itself
later in England, and raged with less virulence than on the Continent.
The first assertion only is true; but though the persecution began
later both in England and Scotland, its progress was as fearful as
elsewhere.

It was not until more than fifty years after the issuing of the Bull of
Innocen