There is a most striking illustration of the astonishing efficacy of inquisitorial methods in effectively defeating their purpose, and actually producing the spread of the witchcraft craze, in the famous case of the Vaudois or witches of Arras in the years 1459-1460, when the arrest of a single alleged witch led to the inculpation of one after another, each new victim in her torments naming others, including many of the wealthiest and most important as well as the humblest citizens, so that at length a positive panic was created.[230] Not a single member of the community in Arras could feel himself or herself secure. No one dared leave the city for fear that that innocent act might be seized upon as a confession of guilt, and no one cared to enter for fear of falling into the hands of the tribunal, thus busily engaged in investigating an outburst of heresy of such alarming proportions. To such a pass did things come that the material prosperity of Arras was seriously prejudiced, as people became afraid of having any dealings with the city. One dangerous source of economic disturbance was that all creditors demanded instant payment of their dues, fearing that their debtors might be among those arrested, seeing that conviction involved the confiscation of the victim’s property, and in such a case the creditor was held to have no claim on any part of it. In producing such results as these the inquisitor was no doubt ever most sincere and disinterested, genuinely aghast at the magnitude of the evil he was charged to suppress, wholly blind to the fact that its magnitude was mainly of his own creation. And in the feeling that there could be no security so long as the witch remained alive, he only shared the popular view. It was simply the universal conviction that the appropriate punishment of witchcraft and the only sure remedy against it was death by fire. Nor was the inquisitor alone in bringing offenders to the stake. The civil courts and the ordinary episcopal courts were no more lenient than the Holy Office. Even in Protestant countries, where there was no Inquisition, the lot of the supposed witch in the sixteenth century was no more tolerable than in those countries where the Inquisition still continued to flourish. The belief in the reality of witchcraft had taken firm root everywhere, and Catholic and Protestant were alike in their literal interpretation of the terrible words of Scripture, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,’ which seemed to afford all-sufficient sanction for the inexorable judgments of all tribunals, whether clerical or lay. At the same time the part played by the Inquisition forms one of the most important chapters in the history of witchcraft, as it was the most efficient and energetic tribunal engaged in the prosecution of the heresy in its earlier days, inasmuch especially as it contributed so much to the spread of the belief by the convinced fanaticism of its