‘When I came to you, most prudent and learned consules, 26th September, there were, two days later on St. Michael’s eve, three witches burnt alive for divers and horrible crimes. The same day three others, denounced by those aforesaid, were arrested, and on the following day about 2 p.m. for further proving of the truth were thrown into water to see whether they would swim or not. Their clothes were removed and they were bound by the right thumb to the left big toe and vice versa, so that they could not move in the least. They were then cast three times into the water in the presence of some thousands of spectators, and floated like logs of wood, nor did one of them sink. And it is also remarkable that almost at the moment they touched the water a shower of rain then falling ceased, and the sun shone, but when they were taken out it started raining as before.’ On request of the burgomaster, he investigated ‘the philosophy’ of this, and, though he could find nothing definite, had no doubt of its value as a test of witchcraft. ‘The physician Weyer rejects it as absurd and fallacious, but he can produce no good arguments or examples against it, and may therefore be ignored.’ Perhaps witches are made lighter because possessed by demons who are ‘powers of the air’ and often carry them through the air. All who float have afterwards confessed, therefore though not scriptural nor of itself sufficient to convict, the swimming test is not to be despised.[307] With regard to the number of victims, even sober historians, such as Soldan, speak of millions, but if we take three-quarters of a million for the two centuries 1500-1700, it will give a rate of ten executions daily, at least eight of which were judicial murders. Even more pathetic than the notice of 800 condemned in one body by the senate of Savoy[308] are the long lists of yearly executions preserved in the fragmentary records of small towns and villages. Thus at Meiningen, between 1610-31 and 1656-85, 106 suffered--in 1610 three, 1611 twenty-two, 1612 four, &c. &c., the intervening records being omitted owing to war. Similar notices have survived at Waldsee, Thun in Alsace, and many other hamlets, where through a long series of years we read of one to twenty persons burnt annually, some of them being previously ‘torn with red-hot pincers’.[309] At Würzburg the Prince-bishop, Philip of Ehrenberg, is said to have burnt 900 in five years (1627-31), and we have terrible lists of twenty-nine of the burnings, almost all of which include young children. Here are two of them: ‘In the thirteenth burning, four persons: the old court smith, an old woman, a little girl of nine or ten years, a younger girl her sister.’