gnificant legend, "_Not to believe in
witchcraft is the greatest of heresies_"); the Canon Episcopi; the bulls
of Popes John XXII, 1330, Innocent VIII, 1484, Alexander VI, 1494, Leo
X, 1521, and Adrian VI, 1522; the Decretals of the canon law; the
exorcisms of the Roman and Greek churches, all hinged on scriptural
precedents; the Roman law, the Twelve Tables, and the Justinian Code,
the last three imposing upon the crimes of conjuring, exorcising,
magical arts, offering sacrifices to the injury of one's neighbors,
sorcery, and witchcraft, the penalties of death by torture, fire, or
crucifixion.

Add to these classics some of the later authorities: the _Daemonologie_
of the royal inquisitor James I of England and Scotland, 1597; Mores'
_Antidote to Atheism_; Fuller's _Holy and Profane State_; Granvil's
_Sadducismus Triumphatus_, 1681; _Tryal of Witches at the Assizes for
the County of Suffolk before Sir Matthew Hale, March, 1664_ (London,
1682); Baxter's _Certainty of the World of Spirits_, 1691; Cotton
Mather's _A Discourse on Witchcraft_, 1689, his _Late Memorable
Providences Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions_, 1684, and his
_Wonders of the Invisible World_, 1692; and enough references have been
made to this literature of delusion, to the precedents that seared the
consciences of courts and juries in their sentences of men, women, and
children to death by the rack, the wheel, the stake, and the gallows.

Where in history are the horrors of the curse more graphically told than
in the words of Canon Linden, an eye witness of the demonic deeds at
Trier (Treves) in 1589?

"And so, from court to court throughout the towns and villages of all
the diocese, scurried special accusers, inquisitors, notaries, jurors,
judges, constables, dragging to trial and torture human beings of both
sexes and burning them in great numbers. Scarcely any of those who were
accused escaped punishment. Nor were there spared even the leading men
in the city of Trier. For the Judge, with two Burgomasters, several
Councilors and Associate Judges, canons of sundry collegiate churches,
parish-priests, rural deans, were swept away in this ruin. So far, at
length, did the madness of the furious populace and of the courts go in
this thirst for blood and booty that there was scarcely anybody who was
not smirched by some suspicion of this crime.

"Meanwhile notaries, copyists, and innkeepers grew rich. The executioner
rode a blooded horse, like a