It is easy to understand that the prosecution of sorcery constituted a not inconsiderable portion of the duties of the Inquisition, at least during the later stages of its career. Cases were comparatively few as long as only serious matters were held to fall within its jurisdiction but, with the extended definition of pact, they increased considerably and, as the business of prosecuting Moriscos and Judaizers declined, its energies were more largely directed to the wise-women and the sharpers who found a precarious livelihood in the vulgar superstitions pervading the community. Thus, in the Toledo record, from 1575 to 1610, out of a total of 1172 cases, there are only eighteen of sorcery, or a trifle over one and a half per cent., while, in the same tribunal from 1648 to 1794 there are a hundred out of a total of 1205, or about eight and one-third per cent.[455] Occasionally they furnish the chief part of the business of a tribunal. In the Valencia auto of July 1, 1725, fifteen of the eighteen penitents were sorcerers and, in that of Córdova, December 5, 1745, there were five out of eight.[456] A record of the business of all the tribunals, from 1780 to the suppression in 1820, furnishes a total of four hundred and sixty-nine cases of which a hundred and sixteen may be classed as maleficent and three hundred and fifty-three as merely superstitious.[457] Belief in the powers of sorcery had been too strongly inculcated to disappear with the cessation of persecution. A modern writer assures us that all the old superstitions flourish as vigorously as ever--conjurations and formulas to cure or to kill, to foretell the future, to create love or hatred, to render men impotent and women barren, to destroy the flocks and herds and harvests, to bring tempests and hail-storms. The wise-woman is as potent as of yore in her control of the forces of nature and the passions of man, and the profession is as well filled and as well paid as in the sixteenth century.[458] We can readily believe this when Padre Cappa, S. J., in his defence of the Inquisition, gravely assures us that communications and compacts with the demon are incontestable and are as frequent as formerly.[459] * * * * * We have still to consider a further development of the belief in the malignant power of the demon working through human instruments, in which the Inquisition of Spain rendered a service of no little magnitude. CHAPTER IX. WITCHCRAFT.