lish book, of the contents of the Witch-Hammer; but such may be
found in Roskoff's Geschichte des Teufels, or in Soldan's Geschichte der
Hexenprozesse. Its first dated edition is that of 1489; but Prof. Burr
has shown that it was printed as early as 1486. It was, happily, never
translated into any modern tongue.

With the application of torture to thousands of women, in accordance
with the precepts laid down in the Malleus, it was not difficult to
extract masses of proof for this sacred theory of meteorology. The poor
creatures, writhing on the rack, held in horror by those who had been
nearest and dearest to them, anxious only for death to relieve their
sufferings, confessed to anything and everything that would satisfy the
inquisitors and judges. All that was needed was that the inquisitors
should ask leading questions(251) and suggest satisfactory answers: the
prisoners, to shorten the torture, were sure sooner or later to give the
answer required, even though they knew that this would send them to the
stake or scaffold. Under the doctrine of "excepted cases," there was no
limit to torture for persons accused of heresy or witchcraft; even the
safeguards which the old pagan world had imposed upon torture were thus
thrown down, and the prisoner MUST confess.

(251) For still extant lists of such questions, see the Zeitschrift
fur deutsche Culturgeschichte for 1858, pp. 522-528, or Diefenbach,
Der Hexenwahn in Deutschland, pp. 15-17. Father Vincent of Berg (in his
Enchiridium) gives a similar list for use by priests in the confession
of the accused. Manuscript lists of this sort which have actually done
service in the courts of Baden and Bavaria may be seen in the library of
Cornell University.

The theological literature of the Middle Ages was thus enriched with
numberless statements regarding modes of Satanic influence on the
weather. Pathetic, indeed, are the records; and none more so than the
confessions of these poor creatures, chiefly women and children,
during hundreds of years, as to their manner of raising hailstorms and
tempests. Such confessions, by tens of thousands, are still to be found
in the judicial records of Germany, and indeed of all Europe. Typical
among these is one on which great stress was laid during ages, and for
which the world was first indebted to one of these poor women. Crazed by
the agony of torture, she declared that, returning with a demon through
the air from the witches'