To resist such powerful arguments by such powerful men was dangerous
indeed. In 1513, Pomponatius, professor at Padua, published a volume
of Doubts as to the Fourth Book of Aristotle's Meteorologica, and also
dared to question this power of devils; but he soon found it advisable
to explain that, while as a PHILOSOPHER he might doubt, yet as
a CHRISTIAN he of course believed everything taught by Mother
Church--devils and all--and so escaped the fate of several others
who dared to question the agency of witches in atmospheric and other
disturbances.

A few years later Agrippa of Nettesheim made a somewhat similar effort
to breast this theological tide in northern Europe. He had won a great
reputation in various fields, but especially in natural science,
as science was then understood. Seeing the folly and cruelty of the
prevailing theory, he attempted to modify it, and in 1518, as Syndic of
Metz, endeavoured to save a poor woman on trial for witchcraft. But the
chief inquisitor, backed by the sacred Scriptures, the papal bulls, the
theological faculties, and the monks, was too strong for him; he was not
only forced to give up his office, but for this and other offences of a
similar sort was imprisoned, driven from city to city and from country
to country, and after his death his clerical enemies, especially the
Dominicans, pursued his memory with calumny, and placed over his grave
probably the most malignant epitaph ever written.

As to argument, these efforts were met especially by Jean Bodin in his
famous book, the Demonomanie des Sorciers, published in 1580. It was a
work of great power by a man justly considered the leading thinker in
France, and perhaps in Europe. All the learning of the time, divine
and human, he marshalled in support of the prevailing theory. With
inexorable logic he showed that both the veracity of sacred Scripture
and the infallibility of a long line of popes and councils of the Church
were pledged to it, and in an eloquent passage this great publicist
warned rulers and judges against any mercy to witches--citing the
example of King Ahab condemned by the prophet to die for having pardoned
a man worthy of death, and pointing significantly to King Charles IX of
France, who, having pardoned a sorcerer, died soon afterward.(253)

(253) To the argument cited above, Bodin adds: "Id certissimam daemonis
praesentiam significat; nam ubicunque daemones cum hominibus nefaria
societatis fide cop