rious plants, men, women, and other
animals of different kinds, vineyards, meadows, pasture land, corn and
other vegetables of the earth, to perish, be oppressed, and utterly
destroyed; that they torture men and women with cruel pains and
torments, internal as well as external; that they hinder the proper
intercourse of the sexes, and the propagation of the human species.
Moreover, they are in the habit of denying the very faith itself. We,
therefore, willing to provide by opportune remedies, according as it
falls to our office, by our apostolical authority, by the tenor of these
presents, do appoint and decree that they be convicted, imprisoned,
punished, and mulcted according to their offences."

It was this Pope who commissioned the inquisitor, Sprenger, to root out
witches. Sprenger, with two others, acting on the authority of the
Popes, drew up the famous work, _The Witch Hammer_, which provided the
basis for all subsequent works on the detection and punishment of
witches.[188] The folly and iniquity of the book is almost unbelievable,
although it is quite matched by subsequent productions. It even provides
for the silence of people under torture. If they confess when tortured,
the case is complete. But if they do not confess, this diabolic
production lays it down that this is because witches who have given
themselves up to the devil are insensible to pain. Even the evidence of
children was admitted. And although in ordinary trials the evidence of
criminals was barred, it was to be freely allowed in trials for sorcery.
Everything that ingenuity could suggest or brutality execute was
provided for.

From the issue of _The Witch Hammer_ until the middle of the seventeenth
century, a period of about one hundred and fifty years, an epidemic of
witchcraft raged. People of all ages and of all classes of society
became implicated, and for some time, at least, accusation meant
conviction. An almost unbelievably large number were executed. Says
Lecky:--

"In almost every province of Germany, but especially in those where
clerical influence predominated, the persecution raged with a fearful
intensity. Seven thousand witches are said to have been burned at
Treves, six hundred by a single bishop in Bamberg, and nine hundred in a
single year in the bishopric of Wuerzburg.... At Toulouse, the seat of
the Inquisition, four hundred persons perished for sorcery at a single
execution, and fifty at Douay in a single year. Remy, a j