The cruel, crafty politician, the plotting monk, glorified by ecclesiastical history with the aureole of a martyred saint. The despoiled philosophers, the Neo-platonists, and the Gnostics, daily anathematized by the Church all over the world for long and dreary centuries. The curse of the unconcerned Deity hourly invoked on the magian rites and theurgic practice, and the Christian clergy themselves using _sorcery_ for ages. Hypatia, the glorious maiden-philosopher, torn to pieces by the Christian mob. And such as Catherine de Medici, Lucrezia Borgia, Joanna of Naples, and the Isabellas of Spain, presented to the world as the faithful daughters of the Church--some even decorated by the Pope with the order of the “Immaculate Rose,” the highest emblem of womanly purity and virtue, a symbol sacred to the Virgin-mother of God! Such are the examples of human justice! How far less blasphemous appears a total rejection of Mary as an immaculate goddess, than an idolatrous worship of her, accompanied by such practices. In the next chapter we will present a few illustrations of sorcery, as practiced under the patronage of the Roman Church. CHAPTER II. “They undertake by scales of miles to tell The bounds, dimensions, and extent of hell; * * * * * Where bloated souls in smoky durance hung Like a Westphalia gammon or neat’s tongue, To be redeemed with masses and a song.” --OLDHAM: _Satires upon the Jesuits_. “_York._--But you are more inhuman, more inexorable-- O, ten times more--than tigers of Hyrcania.” --_King Henry VI._, Part Third, Act i., Scene iv. “_War._--And hark ye, Sirs; because she is a maid Spare for no faggots, let there be enough; Place barrels of pitch upon the fatal stake.” --_King Henry VI._, Part First, Act v., Scene iv. In that famous work of Bodin, on sorcery,[86] a frightful story is told about Catherine of Medicis. The author was a learned publicist, who, during twenty years of his life, collected authentic documents from the archives of nearly every important city of France, to make up a complete work on sorcery, magic, and the power of various “demons.” To use an expression of Eliphas Levi, his book offers a most remarkable collection of “bloody and hideous facts; acts of revolting superstition, arrests, and executions of stupid ferocity.” “Burn every body!” the Inquisition seemed to say--God will easily sort out His own! Poor fools, hysterical women, and idiots were roasted alive, without mercy, for the crime of “magic.” But, “at the same time, how many great culprits escaped this unjust and sanguinary _justice_! This is what Bodin makes us fully appreciate.”