bject--Chaldean and Persian Magic--Jewish
Witchcraft--Its important Influence on Christian and
Modern Belief--Greek Pharmacy and Sorcery--Early Roman
Laws against Conjuration and Magic Charms--Crimes
perpetrated, under the Empire, in connection with
Sorceric Practices--The general Persecution for Magic
under Valentinian and Valens--German and Scandinavian
Sagae--Essential Difference between Eastern and Western
Sorcery--The probable Origin of the general Belief in an
Evil Principle PAGE 3

PART II.

CHAPTER I.

Compromise between the New and the Old Faiths--Witchcraft
under the Early Church--The Sentiments of the Fathers and
the Decrees of Councils--Platonic Influences--Historical,
Physiological, and Accidental Causes of the Attribution
of Witchcraft to the Female Sex--Opinions of the Fathers
and other Writers--The Witch-Compact 47

CHAPTER II.

Charlemagne's Severity--Anglo-Saxon Superstition--Norman
and Arabic Magic--Influence of Arabic Science--Mohammedan
Belief in Magic--Rabbinical Learning--Roger Bacon--The
Persecution of the Templars--Alice Kyteler 63

CHAPTER III.

Witchcraft and Heresy purposely confounded by the
Church--Mediaeval Science closely connected with Magic and
Sorcery--Ignorance of Physiology the Cause of many of the
Popular Prejudices--Jeanne d'Arc--Duchess of
Gloucester--Jane Shore--Persecution at Arras 84

PART III.

CHAPTER I.

The Bull of Innocent VIII.--A new Incentive to the vigorous
Prosecution of Witchcraft--The 'Malleus Maleficarum'--Its
Criminal Code--Numerous Executions at the Commencement of
the Sixteenth Century--Examination of Christian
Demonology--Various Opinions of the Nature of
Demons--General Belief in the Intercourse of Demons and
other non-human Beings with Mankind 101

CHAPTER II.

Three Sorts of Witches--Various Modes of Witchcraft--Manner
of Witch-Travelling--The Sabbaths--Anathemas of the Popes
against the Crime--Bull of Adrian VI.--Cotemporary
Testimony to the Severity of the Persecutions--Necessary
Triumph of the Orthodox Party--Germany most subject to
the Superstition--Acts of Parliament of Henry VII