Sorcerers and witches are, above all, experienced in the sexual province; popular belief always turns first to this subject. The witches of ancient Rome resemble those of the middle ages in respect of their evil practices in sexual relations. According to J. Frank, the word “hexe” (witch) is derived from “hagat”--that is, “vagabond woman.” The ascetic view of the middle ages, formulated principally by men, saw in woman one who seduced man to sensual, sinful lust, the personification of the Evil One, the “janua diaboli,” and, ultimately, a female demon and a witch, whose very being is an impersonation of the obscene and the sexual. The doctrines of Original Sin and of the Immaculate Conception had unquestionably an important share in this conception of woman. The idea of woman as a witch turned almost exclusively on the sexual, and the witch was for the most part represented as a “=mistress of the devil=” (_cf._ W. G. Soldan, “History of Witch-Trials,” pp. 147-159; Stuttgart, 1843), in which sexual perversion plays the principal part, since, instead of simple sexual intercourse, the most horrible unnatural vice was assumed to occur. Holzinger, in his valuable lecture on the “Natural History of Witches,” characterized the spiritual and moral condition of the time, which brought forth such an idea, in a few apt words: “Whilst in the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, as those well acquainted with the state of morals during this period can all confirm, a most unbounded freedom was dominant in sexual relations, the State and the Church were desirous of compelling the people to keep better order by the use of actual force, and by religious compulsion. So forced a transformation in so vital a matter necessarily resulted in a reaction of the worst kind, and forced into secret channels the impulse which it had attempted to suppress. This reaction occurred, moreover, with an elemental force. There resulted widespread sexual violence and seduction, hesitating at nothing, often insanely daring, in which everywhere the devil was supposed to help; every one’s head was turned in this way, the uncontrolled lust of debauchees found vent in secret bacchanalian associations and orgies, wherein many, with or without masquerade, played the part of Satan; shameful deeds were perpetrated by excited women and by procuresses and prostitutes ready for any kind of immoral abomination; add to these sexual orgies the most widely diffused web of a completely developed theory of witchcraft, and the systematic strengthening by the clergy of the widely prevalent belief in the devil--all these things woven in a labyrinthine connexion, made it possible for thousands upon thousands to be murdered by a disordered justice and to be sacrificed to delusion.”