a spy upon his neighbor. The bishop, however, is directed to endeavor "with prudence, zeal, and all love" to convert the accused, but, if unsuccessful, to proceed as provided by the canons of the Church. This procedure evidently involved only the infliction of canonical punishments such as penance, excommunication, and, in the case of a clergyman, degradation or suspension from the performance of sacerdotal functions. A priest who has learned through the confessional, or otherwise, that any person may believe in such things, is to teach him with fatherly affection that they are nothing but diabolical delusions"; but if the said person should be "notoriously tainted with wizardry" and should obstinately resist good counsel, then the priest is to apply to the bishop or his penitentiary for power to absolve the sinner. It is difficult to determine to what extent the Bavarian clergy, while officially declaring witchcraft to be a hallucination, believed in the reality of it. Doubtless the opinions on this point were divided, the more enlightened ecclesiastics discarding all stories of satanic compacts and concupiscence as mere illusions, while the lower and more ignorant orders of priests and monks were inclined to accept them as actual occurrences. In the decrees issued by the diocesan councils of Augsburg (1452), Treising (1440), Regensburg (1377 and 1512), and Salzburg (1420, 1490, and 1569), they are either not mentioned at all or characterized as errors and delusions, terms which would imply that they have no foundation in fact. But whatever theory of these strange aberrations may have been entertained, it is certain that the means employed for correcting them were remarkably humane and even rational as compared with the horrible atrocities and incredible absurdities which characterized the witch trials of the following century.
The first authentic cases of witch trials in Bavaria occurred under Duke Albrecht V in 1578. With the accession of Wilhelm V, surnamed the Pious, in 1579, persecutions and prosecutions of this kind increased in frequency and severity, and soon becoming epidemic, continued to rage for more than a century in every part of the country. The chief agents and instigators of this dreadful carnival of cruelty were Dominicans and Jesuits acting under instructions from Rome, and often opposed by the Bavarian clergy BO far as such opposition was possible without coming into direct collision with the Holy See. As early as the third century, Minutius Felix, in his apology for Christianity entitled "Octavius" and written in the form of a dialogue, makes the pagans accuse the Christians of being worshipers of Satan, and this charge was afterward brought by the Church against gnostics, Manicheans, Cathari, Albigenses, Waldenses, German Protestants, Knight Templars, and
