ndemnation of an immoral priest, who was punished by the
Inquisitors not for his licentiousness, but because he said Mass
every day in a state of sin, and urged in excuse that he considered
himself pardoned by the mere fact of putting on the sacred
vestments.[1]

[1] _Tractat. de Haeret_., cap. ii.

The Jews, as such, were never regarded as heretics. But the usury
they so widely practiced evidenced an unorthodox doctrine on
thievery, which made them liable to be suspected of heresy. Indeed,
we find several Popes upbraiding them "for maintaining that usury is
not a sin." Some Christians also fell into the same error, and
thereby became subject to the Inquisition. Pope Martin V, in his bull
of November 6, 1419., authorizes the Inquisitors to prosecute these
usurers.[1]

[1] Bull _Inter caetera_, sent to the Inquisitor Pons Feugeyron.

Sorcery and magic were also put on a par with heresy. Pope Alexander
IV had decided that divination and sorcery did not fall under the
jurisdiction of the Inquisition, unless there was manifest heresy
involved.[1] But casuists were not wanting to prove that heresy was
involved in such cases. The belief in the witches' nightly rides
through the air, led by Diana or Herodias of Palestine, was very
widespread in the Middle Ages, and was held by some as late as the
fifteenth century. The question whether the devil could carry off men
and women was warmly debated by the theologians of the time. "A case
adduced by Albertus Magnus, in a disputation on the subject before
the Bishop of Paris, and recorded by Thomas of Cantimpre, in which
the daughter of the Count of Schwalenberg was regularly carried away
every night for several hours, gave immense satisfaction to the
adherents of the new doctrine, and eventually an ample store of more
modern instances was accumulated to confirm Satan in his enlarged
privileges."[2] Satan, it seems, imprinted upon his clients an
indelible mark, the _stigma diabolicum_.

[1] Bull of December 9, 1257.

[2] Lea, op. cit., vol. iii, p. 497.

"In 1458, the Inquisitor Nicholas Jaquerius remarked reasonably
enough that even if the affair was an illusion, it was none the less
heretical, as the followers of Diana and Herodias were necessarily
heretics in their waking hours."[1]

[1] Lea, op. cit., pp. 497, 498.

About 1250, the Inquisitor Bernard of Como taught categorically that
the phenomena of witchcraft, especially the attendance at the
witches' Sabbath, were