The Witch Sabbaths were a well-known institution in the Middle Ages, and it is reported that more than 25,000 persons were sometimes present at these weird gatherings. In view of the danger incurred, such popularity seems unaccountable enough to suggest that the narratives spring from sheer delusion. In the district of Valcamonica an Inquisitor burnt seventy witches and sent as many more to prison, while those suspected or accused numbered 5,000, about one-fourth of the population of the valleys. The Venetian Senate thought this was going too far, but its protest only brought strong remonstrances from the Pope, Leo X, and fresh orders for persecution. The Senate replied by a dignified and rational document, laying it down that the accused were to have a fair trial with legal safeguards, that torture must be discontinued, that the Inquisition’s expenses were to be kept within moderate bounds, that greed for money was not to be the reason for prosecution, and that the excesses alleged against Inquisitors would have to be investigated. This document, “a monument of considerate wisdom and common-sense,” was ignored, and Christendom abandoned itself to a senseless, delirious orgy of superstition and cruelty. Between the madness of the Catholic and the madness of the Protestant there was little to choose. On one point at least they were in accord, and it is significant that Calvin used the arguments of the Inquisitors to justify persecution. In Geneva 500 persons are said to have been burnt within three months, at Toulouse 400 on a single occasion (some say 1,500), at Bamberg 600, at Wurzburg 900 in one year--all in the sixteenth century. The Senate of Savoy condemned 800 at one time. That a cold spring in 1586 was caused by witchcraft was proved by the confessions of the guilty parties, and for this crime 118 women and two men were burnt by the Archbishop of Treves. This city seems to have exceeded all others in its atrocities. According to Lecky, 7,000 persons were burnt there for sorcery, but he does not state over what period these figures extend. The Inquisitor Paramo, who wrote in the sixteenth century, boasts that since 1404 the Holy Office burnt as many as 30,000 persons, who, if let alone, would have “brought the whole world to destruction.”[42] This Paramo defended the secrecy of the Inquisition on the ground that God was the first Inquisitor, and that in secret Adam and Eve had been tried. _Intellect and Faith._