While, for the most part, the so-called confessions of witches under trial were the result of the torture so unsparingly employed, there can be little doubt that at least a portion were truthful accounts of illusions really entertained. Even as the trances and visions of the mystics, such as Santa Teresa and the Venerable María de Agreda, are attributable to auto-hypnotism and auto-suggestion so, when the details of the Sabbat were thoroughly established and became as much a part of popular belief as the glories seen in mystic ecstasy, it is easy to understand how certain temperaments, seeking escape from the sordid miseries of laborious poverty, might acquire the power of inducing trances in which the transport to the meeting-place, the devil-worship and the sensual delights that followed, were impressed upon the imagination as realities. The demonographers give us ample accounts of experiments in which the suspected witch was thrown into a trance by the inunction of her ointment and, on awaking, gave a detailed account of her attendance on the Sabbat and of what she did and saw there. This should be borne in mind when following the long debate between those who upheld the reality of the Sabbat and those who argued that it was generally or always a delusion. [Sidenote: _THE SABBAT_] To appreciate the attitude of the Spanish Inquisition in this debate the origin of the myth must be understood. The flying by night of female sorcerers to places of assemblage was an ancient belief, entertained by Hindus, Jews and the classical nations. This was handed down through the middle ages, but was regarded by the Church as a relic of paganism to be suppressed. There was an utterance, not later than the ninth century, which denounced as an error, induced by the devil, the popular belief that wicked women ride through the air at night under the leadership of Diana and Herodias, wherefore priests everywhere were commanded to disabuse the faithful and to teach that those who professed to take part in these nocturnal excursions were deluded by dreams inspired by the demon, so that he who believed in their reality entertained the faith of the devil and not that of God. This utterance was ascribed to an otherwise unknown Council of Anquira; it passed through all the collections of canons--Regino, Burchard and Ivo--found a place finally in the authoritative Decretum of Gratian, where it became known to canonists as the _canon Episcopi_.[462]