negotiations were going on at Bologna for the
further regulation of his position as a teacher, he tells a strange story
how, on three or four different occasions, certain men came to him by
night, in the name of the Senate and of the Judicial officers, and tried
to induce him to recommend that a certain woman, who had been condemned
for blasphemy, and for poisoning or witchcraft as well, should be
pardoned, both by the temporal and spiritual authorities, bringing forward
specially the argument that, in the sight of philosophers, such things as
demons and spirits did not exist. They likewise urged him to procure the
release from prison of another woman, who had not yet been condemned,
because a certain sick man had died under the hands of some other doctors.
They brought also a lot of nativities for him to read, as if he had been
a soothsayer, and not a teacher of medicine, but he would have nothing to
say to them.[217]

It is somewhat strange that Cardan should have detected no trace of the
snare of the enemy in this manoeuvre. Bearing in mind the character of the
request made, and the fact that Cardan was by no means a _persona grata_
to the petitioners, it seems highly probable that they might have been
more anxious to draw from Cardan a profession of his disbelief in
witchcraft, than to procure the enlargement of the accused persons whose
cause they had nominally espoused. At this period it was indeed dangerous
to be a wizard, but it was perhaps still more dangerous to pose as an
avowed sceptic of witchcraft. At the end of the fifteenth century the
frequency of executions for sorcery in the north of Italy had provoked a
strong outburst of popular feeling against this wanton bloodshed; but
Spina, writing in the interest of orthodox religion, deplores that
disbelief in the powers of Evil and their manifestations, always
recognized by the Church, should have led men on to profess by their
action any doubt as to the truth of witchcraft. But in spite of the
fulminations of men of this sort, from this time onwards the more
enlightened scholars of Europe began to modify their opinions on the
subject of demoniac possession, and of witchcraft in general. The first
book in which the new views were enunciated was the treatise _De
Praestigiis Daemonum_, by Johann Wier, a physician of Cleves, published in
1563. The step in advance taken by this reformer was not a revolutionary
one. He simply denied that witches were willing and c