in. Not a Christian country but was full of the
horrors of witch persecution and violent death. Remy, Judge of Nancy,
acknowledged to having himself burnt 800 in sixteen years. Many women
were driven to suicide in fear of the torture in store for them. In
1595 sixteen of those accused by Remy, destroyed themselves rather
than fall into his terrible hands. Six hundred were burnt in one small
bishopric in one year; 900 during the same period in another. Seven
thousand lost their lives at Treves; 1,000 in the province of Como in
Italy in a single year; 500 were executed at Geneva in a single month.
Under the reign of Francis I. more than 100,000 witches are said to
have been put to death, and for hundreds of years this superstition
controlled the Church. In Scotland the most atrocious tortures were
invented, and women died "shrieking to heaven for that mercy denied
them by Christian men." One writer casually mentions seeing nine
burning in a single day's journey.

When for "witches" we read "women," we shall gain a more direct idea
of the cruelties inflicted by the Church upon woman. Friends were
encouraged to cast accusations upon friends, and rewards were offered
for conviction. From the pulpit people were exhorted to bring the
witch to justice. Husbands who had ceased to care for their wives, or
in any way found them a burden, or who for any reason wished to
dissolve the marriage tie, now found an easy method. They had but to
accuse them of witchcraft, and the marriage was dissolved by the death
of the wife at the stake. Mention is made of wives dragged by their
husbands before the arch-Inquisitor, Sprenger, by ropes around their
necks. In Protestant, as in Catholic countries, the person accused was
virtually dead. She was excommunicated from humanity; designated and
denounced as one whom all must shun, with whom none must buy or sell,
to whom no one must give food or lodging or speech or shelter; life
was not worth the living.

Besides those committing suicide, others brought to trial, tired of
life amid so many horrors, falsely accused themselves, preferring a
death by the torture of fire to a life of endless isolation and
persecution. An English woman on her way to the stake, with a
greatness of soul all must admire, freed her judges from
responsibility by saying to the people, "Do not blame my judges, I
wished to put an end to my own self. My parents kept aloof from me; my
husband had denied me. I could not live o