t they
were old, were held as most susceptible to the assaults of the devil,
and most especially endowed with supernatural powers for evil, to
doubt which was equivalent to doubting the Bible. We see a reason for
this hatred of old women, in the fact that woman was chiefly viewed
from a sensual stand-point, and when by reason of age or debility, she
no longer attracted the physical admiration of man, he looked upon her
as of no farther use to the world, and as possessing no right to life.
At one period it was very unusual for an old woman in the north of
Europe to die peaceably in her bed. The persecution against them raged
with special virulence in Scotland, where upon the act of the British
Parliament in 17--, abolishing the burning and hanging of witches, the
assembly of the Calvinistic Church of Scotland "confessed" this act of
Parliament "as a great national sin." Looked upon as a sin rather than
a crime, the Church sought its control, and when coming under its
power, witchcraft was punished with much greater severity than when
falling under lay tribunals. It proved a source of great emolument to
the Church, which was even accused of fostering it for purposes of
gain. A system of "witch finders" or "witch persecutors" arose.
Cardan, a famous Italian physician, said of them: "In order to obtain
forfeit property, the same persons acted as accusers and judges, and
invented a thousand stories as proof."

Witchcraft was as a sin almost confined to woman; a wizard was rare,
one writer saying: to every 100 witches, we find but one wizard. In
the time of Louis XIII. this proportion was greatly increased; "to one
wizard, 10,000 witches," another person declared there were 100,000
witches in France alone. Sprenger, the great Inquisitor, author of
"The Witch Hammer,"[194] through whose persecutions many countries
were flooded with victims, said, "Heresy of witches, not of wizards,
must we call it, for these latter are of very small account." No class
or condition escaped Sprenger; we read of witches of fifteen years,
and two "infernally beautiful"[195] of seventeen years.

The Parliament of Toulouse burned 400 witches at one time. Four
hundred women at one hour on the public square, dying the horrid death
of fire, for a crime which never existed save in the imagination of
those persecutors, and which grew in their imagination from a false
belief in woman's extraordinary wickedness, based upon a false theory
as to original s