ther than one
in their own employ--the devil of persecution. But so it was. The more
they burned, the more they found to burn; until it became a common
prayer with women in the humbler walks of life, that they might never
live to grow old. It was sufficient to be aged, poor, and ill-tempered,
to ensure death at the stake or the scaffold.

In the year 1487 there was a severe storm in Switzerland, which laid
waste the country for four miles around Constance. Two wretched old
women, whom the popular voice had long accused of witchcraft, were
arrested on the preposterous charge of having raised the tempest. The
rack was displayed, and the two poor creatures extended upon it. In
reply to various leading questions from their tormentors, they owned,
in their agony, that they were in the constant habit of meeting the
devil, that they had sold their souls to him, and that at their command
he had raised the tempest. Upon this insane and blasphemous charge they
were condemned to die. In the criminal registers of Constance there
stands against the name of each the simple but significant phrase,
"convicta et combusta."

This case and hundreds of others were duly reported to the
ecclesiastical powers. There happened at that time to be a Pontiff at
the head of the Church who had given much of his attention to the
subject of witchcraft, and who, with the intent of rooting out the
crime, did more to increase it than any other man that ever lived.
John Baptist Cibo, elected to the Papacy in 1485, under the designation
of Innocent VIII, was sincerely alarmed at the number of witches, and
launched forth his terrible manifesto against them. In his celebrated
bull of 1488, he called the nations of Europe to the rescue of the
church of Christ upon earth, emperilled by the arts of Satan, and set
forth the horrors that had reached his ears; how that numbers of both
sexes had intercourse with the infernal fiends; how by their sorceries
they afflicted both man and beast; how they blighted the marriage bed,
destroyed the births of women and the increase of cattle; and how they
blasted the corn on the ground, the grapes of the vineyard, the fruits
of the trees, and the herbs of the field. In order that criminals so
atrocious might no longer pollute the earth, he appointed inquisitors
in every country, armed with the apostolic power to convict and punish.

It was now that the Witch Mania, properly so called, may be said to
have fairly commenced.