Of the Vaudois, or witches of Arras, several persons after being cruelly tortured, were burnt in 1460, a hermit being the first to suffer at Langres; and seven persons were put to death in one _auto de fé_ in July of that year. Many of the leading and wealthiest men of Arras were arrested; confessions, some of them afterwards withdrawn, were wrung from them by torture, and twelve persons in all were burnt out of the thirty-four apprehended. The epidemic of credulity died away after a time, and the Inquisition stopped further prosecutions; but the prosperous city of Arras suffered enormous loss by the confiscations imposed and the panic which dislocated its trade. The return to sanity was chiefly due to the son of one of the victims succeeding in an appeal to the Parliament of Paris (previous appeals had been suppressed), which, after a brief inquiry lasting thirty years, issued a decree rehabilitating some of the accused, and caused the promoters of the prosecutions to be heavily fined. It was decreed that torture should be for the future prohibited. This is “probably the only case on record in which an Inquisitor was brought before a law court to answer for his official actions.”[39] Thus a healthy scepticism was beginning to enter the public mind. Several persons were charged before the Bishop of Amiens, who acquitted them; another was acquitted by the Archbishop of Besançon; while a third was tried by a tribunal consisting of the Archbishop of Rheims, the Bishop of Paris, the Inquisitor of France, and some theological experts. He was not only acquitted, but authorized to prosecute his accusers for reparation and damages. A poor man who went mad on the subject of witchcraft was burnt in August, 1460.