Queer Culprits
Pont-du-Château, in Auvergne, as late as the eighteenth century.
The absurdity of these trials called forth several treatises during the middle ages. Philip de Beaumanoir in the thirteenth century, in his Customs of Beauvoisis, complained of their folly; and in 1606, Cardinal Duperron forbade any exorcism of animals, or the use, without license, of prayers in church for their extermination.
A book published in 1459, De Fascino, by a Spanish Benedictine monk, Leonard Vair, holds up the practice to ridicule. Eveillon, in his Traité des Excommunications, published in 1651, does the same.
One curious story more, and we shall give a detailed account of one of these trials.
We have taken this from Benoit's Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes (tom. v. p. 754), and give a translation of the writer's own words. "The Protestant chapel at La Rochelle was condemned to be demolished in 1685. The bell had a fate sufficiently droll: it was whipped, as a punishment for having assisted heretics; it was then buried, and disinterred, in order to represent its new birth in passing into the hands of Catholics.... It was catechised, and had to reply; it was compelled to recant, and promise never again to relapse into sin; it then made ample and honourable recompense. Lastly, it was reconciled, baptized, and given to the parish which bears the name of Saint Bartholomew. But the point of the story is, that when the governor, who had sold it
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