igh-mindedness. Young Protestantism was on this point little better
than the old belief. In Protestant countries the ministers of God were
by no means the only persecutors; the civil authorities were also
willing to follow the example of the ecclesiastical courts of the Roman
Catholics, and above all of the Jesuits. The victims were countless;
they amount without doubt to hundreds of thousands. It was first in the
domains of the ecclesiastical princes, that the contagion burst forth,
which devastated whole provinces as in Eichstaedt, Wuertsburg and
Cologne. In twenty villages in the vicinity of Treves, three hundred
and sixty-eight persons were executed in seven years, besides many who
were burnt in the city itself; in Brunswick the burnt stakes stood like
a little forest on the place of execution. In every province hundreds
and thousands might be counted. Every kind of baseness was practised by
the ecclesiastical and temporal judges; the most contemptible grounds
of suspicion sufficed to depopulate whole villages. No position and no
age was a security; children and the aged, learned men and even
councillors, were bound to the stake, but the greater part were
women;--we shudder when we look at the method of these condemnations.
It is not impossible, although it cannot be spoken of with certainty,
that a victim here and there did live in the mad delusion that they
were in union with the devil through magic arts; it is not impossible,
although this cannot be certified, that hurtful mediums, intoxicating
beverages and superstitious medicaments were in some cases used for the
detriment of others. But it is the strongest proof of the infamy of the
whole proceeding, that amidst the monstrous mass of old records
concerning witches, we find no ground of belief that in any case the
judgment was justified by the real misdeeds of the accused, though they
were made the excuse for it; for so great was the degree of fanaticism,
narrow-mindedness, or malice, that the mere accusation was almost
certain to be fatal. Torture was applied on the most frivolous charges;
the capability even of bearing pain was taken as evidence against those
who held out under torture; and every kind of accidental symptom,
disease of the body, outward appearance, or countless fortuitous
circumstances, were also considered as evidence. The possessions of the
condemned were confiscated; the greediness and covetousness of the
judges were united with brutality and