fluence of the Church, and no teaching was tolerated
that conflicted with her doctrines. And it was to the interest of the
Church perpetually to emphasise the reality of either angelic or
diabolic activity. Even in the case of those who showed a tendency to
revolt against Church rule there was no exception to this. If anything,
the belief was more pronounced. Next, the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries saw a rising tide of heresy against which the Church was
compelled to battle; and to ascribe this alleged perversion of Christian
doctrines to the malevolence of Satan offered the line of least
resistance--just as the heretics attributed the power of the Church
itself to the same source. Whatever diminution ensued in the general
flood of superstition, as a consequence of the quarrel between
Protestant and Catholic, was, so far as the disputants were concerned,
incidental and even undesired. On the one point of demonism there
existed complete unanimity, and the sceptic fared equally hard with both
parties. In such an environment the wildest tales of sorcery became
credible; and nothing illustrates this more forcibly than the fact that
many of those tortured and condemned for sorcery actually believed
themselves capable of performing the marvels laid to their charge. Added
to these factors, we have to note that social conditions were also
extremely favourable. Moral ties were as loose as they could reasonably
be; and the attitude of the Church towards the sexual relation had
forced both the religious and the non-religious mind into wholly
unhealthy channels. This last aspect of the subject has been little
dealt with, but it is unquestionably a very real one. A German writer
says:--

"Whilst in the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries,
as those well acquainted with the state of morals during this period can
all confirm, a most unbounded freedom was dominant in sexual relations,
the State and the Church were desirous of compelling the people to keep
better order by the use of actual force, and by religious compulsion. So
forced a transformation in so vital a matter necessarily resulted in a
reaction of the worst kind, and forced into secret channels the impulse
which it had attempted to suppress. This reaction occurred, moreover,
with an elemental force. There resulted widespread sexual violence and
seduction, hesitating at nothing, often insanely daring, in which
everywhere the devil was supposed to help; e