of the extermination of the Templars exemplifies
in an eminent manner the political uses made by the highest in
office of a prevalent superstition, the story of Alice Kyteler
illustrates equally the manner in which it was prostituted to the
private purposes of designing impostors. The scene is in Ireland,
the period the first half of the fourteenth century; Richard de
Ledrede, Bishop of Ossory, being the principal prosecutor, and a
lady, Alice Kyteler, the defendant. The details are too tedious
to be repeated here;[63] but the articles upon which the
conviction of Alice Kyteler and her accomplices was sought are
not dissimilar to those just narrated. To give effect to their
sorcery they were in the habit of denying the faith for a year,
or shorter period, as the object to be attained was greater or
less. Demons were propitiated with sacrifices of living animals,
torn limb by limb and scattered (a Hecatean feast) about
cross-roads. It was alleged that by sorceries they obtained help
from the devil; that they impiously used the ceremonies of the
Church in nightly conventicles, pronouncing with lighted candles
of wax excommunication against the persons of their own husbands,
naming expressly every member from the sole of the foot to the
top of the head. Their compositions are of the Horatian and
Shakspearian sort. With the intestines of cocks were sacrificed
various herbs, the nails of dead men, hair, brains, and clothes
of children dying unbaptized, with other equally efficacious
ingredients, boiled in the skull of a certain famous robber
recently beheaded: powders, ointments, and candles of fat boiled
in the same skull were the intended instruments for exciting love
or hatred, and in affecting the bodies of the faithful. An unholy
connection existed between the Lady Alice and a demon in the form
sometimes of a black dog, sometimes of a cat. She was possessed
of a secret ointment for impregnating a piece of wood, upon
which, with her companions, she was carried to any part of the
world without hurt or hindrance: in her house was found a wafer
of consecrated bread inscribed with the name of the devil. The
event of this trial was the conviction and imprisonment of the
criminals, with the important exception of the chief object of
the bishop's persecution, who contrived an escape to England.
Petronilla de Meath was the first to suffer the extreme penalty.
This lady, by order of the bishop, had been six times flogged,
when