on of
certain districts was suspected. So frequently did they accuse their
judges or their sovereign of having assisted at the witches' sabbath,
that this came to be discounted as a regular trick of the devil.

Persecution raged in some places, chiefly in Germany, like a visitation
of pestilence or war. Those who tried to stop it fell victims to their
own courage, and, unless they recanted, languished for years in prison,
or were executed as possessed by devils themselves. At Treves the
persecution was encouraged by the cupidity of the magistrates who
profited by confiscation of the property of those sentenced. At Bonn
schoolboys of nine or ten, fair young maidens, many priests and scores of
good women were done to death.

[Sidenote: Numbers executed]

No figures have been compiled for the total number {658} of victims of
this insanity. In England, under Elizabeth, before the craze had more
than well started on its career, 125 persons are known to have been tried
for witchcraft and 47 are known to have been executed for the crime. In
Venice the Inquisition punished 199 persons for sorcery during the
sixteenth century. In the year 1510, 140 witches were burned at Brescia,
in 1514, 300 at Como. In a single year the bishop of Geneva burned 500
witches, the bishop of Bamberg 600, the bishop of Wuerzburg 900. About
800 were condemned to death in a single batch by the Senate of Savoy. In
the year 1586 the archbishop of Treves burned 118 women and two men for
this imaginary crime. Even these figures give but an imperfect notion of
the extent of the midsummer madness. The number of victims must be
reckoned by the tens of thousands.

Throughout the century there were not wanting some signs of a healthy
skepticism. When, during an epidemic of St. Vitus's dance at Strassburg,
[Sidenote: 1588] the citizens proposed a pilgrimage to stop it, the
episcopal vicar replied that as it was a natural disease natural remedies
should be used. Just as witches were becoming common in England, Gosson
wrote in his _School of Abuse_: [Sidenote: 1578] "Do not imitate those
foolish patients, who, having sought all means of recovery and are never
the nearer, run into witchcraft." Leonardo da Vinci called belief in
necromancy the most foolish of all human delusions.

As it was dangerous to oppose the popular mood at its height, the more
honor must go to the few who wrote _ex professo_ against it. The first
of these, of any note, w