Josephus (_ob._ A.D. 100) relates that God taught Solomon how demons were to be expelled, a “science useful and sanitative to men.” He also gives an account of Eliezar, a celebrated exorcist of the time, whom, in the presence of the Emperor Vespasian, the historian actually saw casting out evil spirits. The operator applied to the nose of the possessed a ring having attached to it a root which Solomon is said to have prescribed—“Baaras,” a herb of magical properties, and one dangerous for the uninitiate to handle. As the devils came forth Eliezar caused them to pass into a basin filled with water, which was at once poured away. It may be noticed also that demonology plays an important part in the Book of Enoch (before 170 B.C.). Even in the Mishna there are undoubted traces of magic, and in the Gemara demonology and sorcery loom very largely. Throughout the Middle Ages Jewish legend played no insignificant part in the history of Witchcraft, and, especially in Spain, until the nineteenth century at least, there were prosecutions, not so much for the observance of Hebrew ceremonies as is often suggested and supposed, but for the practice of the dark and hideous traditions of Hebrew magic. Closely connected with these ancient sorceries are those ritual murders, of which a learned Premonstratensian Canon of Wilthin, Adrian Kembter, writing in 1745, was able to enumerate no less than two-and-fifty,[37] the latest of these having taken place in 1650, when at Cadan in Bohemia, Matthias, a lad of four years old, was killed by certain rabbis with seven wounds. In many cases the evidence is quite conclusive that the body, and especially the blood of the victim, was used for magical purposes. Thus with reference to little S. Hugh of Lincoln, after various very striking details, the chronicler has: “Et cum exspirasset puer, deposuerunt corpus de cruce, et nescitur qua ratione, euiscerarunt corpusculum; dicitur autem, quod ad magicas artes exercendas.” In 1261 at Forcheim in Bavaria the blood of a murdered boy was used to sprinkle certain thresholds and doors. In 1285 at Munich a witch was convicted of selling Christian children to the Jews, who carefully preserved the blood in curious vessels for secret rites. In 1494 at Tyrnau twelve vampires were executed for having opened the veins of a boy whom they had snared, and having drunk his warm blood thence whilst he was yet alive. A deed of peculiar horror was discovered at Szydlow in 1597 when the victim was put to death in exquisite tortures, the blood and several members of the body being partaken of by the murderers. In almost every case the blood was carefully collected, there can be no doubt for magical purposes, the underlying idea being the precept of the Mosaic law: Anima enim omnis carnis in sanguine est:[38] For the life of all flesh is in the blood thereof. NOTES TO CHAPTER V