| | | [230] “Das dich Sanct Veitstanz ankomme.” May you be seized with | | St. Vitus’s Dance. _Joh. Agricola_, Sybenhundert und fünffzig | | Teutscher Sprichwörter. Hagenau, 1537, 8. No. 497. p. 268. | | | | [231] _Spangenberg_ (Adels-Spiegel. Mirror of Nobility, loc. cit.) | | in his own forcible manner, thus expresses himself on this subject: | | “It was afterwards pointed out by some, that these people could not | | have been properly baptized, or at all events, that their baptism | | was ineffectual, because they had received it from priests who | | shamelessly lived in open cohabitation with unchaste harlots. Upon | | this the lower classes rose in rebellion, and would have killed all | | the priests.” Compare Appendix, No. I. | | | | [232] _Bzovii_ Annal. ecclesiastic. loc. cit. 1468. | | | | [233] See Appendix, Nos. III. and IV. | | | | [234] _Theophrasti Bombast von Hohenheym_, 7 Buch in der Artzney. | | Von den Krankheiten, die der Vernunft berauben. 7th Book on | | Medicine. Of the diseases which produce insanity. Tract I. chap. 3, | | p. 491. Tract II. chap. 3, p. 501. Opera. Strassburg, 1616. fol. | | Tom. I. | | | | [235] Chorea procursiva of the moderns. _Bernt_, Monographia Choreæ | | Sti. Viti. Prag. 1810. p. 25. | | | | [236] This proceeding was, however, no invention of his, but an | | imitation of a usual mode of enchantment by means of wax figures | | (peri cunculas). The witches made a wax image of the person who | | was to be bewitched; and in order to torment him, they stuck it | | full of pins, or melted it before the fire. The books on magic, | | of the middle ages, are full of such things; though the reader | | who may wish to obtain information on this subject, need not go | | so far back. Only eighty years since, the learned and celebrated | | _Storch_, of the school of _Stahl_, published a treatise on | | witchcraft, worthy of the fourteenth century. “Abhandlung von | | Kinderkrankheiten.” Treatise on the Diseases of Children. Vol. IV. | | p. 228. Eisenach, 1751–8. | | | | The ancients were in the habit of employing wax in incantations. |