witches against the whole race of mankind. Whereunto is further added a most salutary and potent Exorcism to dissolve and dispel all iniquities and delusions of the devil.” Guazzo tells us that he has been engaged upon these chapters for some three years, and in addition to his earnest desire to satisfy the Cardinal-Archbishop he was yet further induced to employ his pen on the theme of witchcraft owing to what he had personally witnessed and heard at the court of the Serene Duke John William of Jülich-Cleves. Owing to the great reputation Guazzo had acquired throughout the Milanese Archdiocese as being one of the most learned, most patient and most acute Judges and Assessors in the prosecutions for witchcraft, he was summoned in the year 1605 to Cleves to advise and direct in the case of the Duke himself, who as it was feared and proved had been overlooked and ensorcelled by an aged Satanist, a warlock ninety years old, named John, who dwelt at Lauch, in the archdiocese of Cologne. This wretch confessed that by his charms and certain evil runes he had indeed afflicted the Duke with a wasting sickness and a frenzy, whereupon, being guilty in the highest degree, he was, as the law directed, condemned to the stake. However, in the madness of desperation, as he lay in prison on Sunday morning, 25 September, with a sharp knife he inflicted a fearful wound in his throat, and it was said the very fiend stood by him in his death throes.
It is not to be wondered at that the whole cohort of witches aimed their utmost malice at the Duke, for he was very active in the suppression of that sect throughout his dominions.[1] Thus on 24 July, 1581, he sent to the upper bailiff at Vlotho, Bertram von Landsberg, a woman accused of sorcery and deeply implicated, bidding the officers examine her straitly “both by gentle means and under torture,” and adding an express injunction that “in case of her still refusing to confess, she was to be subjected to trial by water.” It was to Duke John William, his territorial prince, that in 1596 Franz Agricola, pastor of Sittard, a strong opponent of Weyer, Hermann Neuwaldt, Wilckin, Anton Praetorius, and the rationalising school, dedicated his “Von Zauberern, Zauberinnen und Hexen,” in the preface to which pamphlet he very plainly says: “I know not whether any Catholic writers have hitherto treated this subject in German, but at any rate the rulers are not yet sufficiently informed as to the horror and monstrosity of this sin; … so that most scandalous, dangerous and abominable sin of sorcery and witchcraft has spread in all
- ↑ For the witch prosecutions in the Lower Rhine district see Kuhl’s “Geschichte der Stadt Jülich,” 3 Teile, Jülich, 1891–94.
