E-text prepared by Julie Barkley, Suzan Flanagan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) Transcriber's notes The "oe" ligature is represented as [oe]. The footnotes have been moved and renumbered for easier reading. A list of corrections is included at the end of the book. SUPERSTITIONS OF WITCHCRAFT. London Printed by Spottiswoode and Co. New-Street Square THE SUPERSTITIONS OF WITCHCRAFT. by HOWARD WILLIAMS, M.A. St. John's College, Cambridge. 'Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas, Nocturnos lemures, portentaque Thessala rides?' London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green. 1865. PREFACE. 'THE SUPERSTITIONS OF WITCHCRAFT' is designed to exhibit a consecutive review of the characteristic forms and facts of a creed which (if at present apparently dead, or at least harmless, in Christendom) in the seventeenth century was a living and lively faith, and caused thousands of victims to be sent to the torture-chamber, to the stake, and to the scaffold. At this day, the remembrance of its superhuman art, in its different manifestations, is immortalised in the every-day language of the peoples of Europe. * * * * * The belief in Witchcraft is, indeed, in its full development and most fearful results, modern still more than mediaeval, Christian still more than Pagan, and Protestant not less than Catholic. CONTENTS. PART I. CHAPTER I. The Origin, Prevalence, and Variety of Superstition--The Belief in Witchcraft the most horrid Form of Superstition--Most flourishing in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries--The Sentiments of Addison, Blackstone, and the Lawyers of the Eighteenth Century upon the Subject--Chaldean and Persian Magic--Jewish Witchcraft--Its important Influence on Christian and Modern Belief--Greek Pharmacy and Sorcery--Early Roman Laws against Conjuration and Magic Charms--Crimes perpetrated, under the Empire, in connection with Sorceric Practices--The general Persecution for Magic under Valentinian and Valens--German and Scandinavian Sagae--Essential Difference between Eastern and Western Sorcery--The probable Origin of the general Belief in an Evil Principle PAGE 3 PART II. CHAPTER I. Compromise between the New and the Old Faiths--Witchcraft under the Early Church--The Sentiments of the Fathers and the Decrees of Councils--Platonic Influences--Historical, Physiological, and Accidental Causes of the Attribution of Witchcraft to the Female Sex--Opinions of the Fathers and other Writers--The Witch-Compact 47 CHAPTER II.