one, to work his harm; therefore the character of the accused went for nothing. Cotton Mather was befooled by a clever girl, who played on his vanity. While the mania raged no one could oppose it, and those who tried to do so became victims of it. The notion of sex-intercourse between Satan and women came out again at Salem, and Glanvil and Sir Matthew Hale were treated as great authorities. The ministers were warned to be careful, but they could not deny the reality of witchcraft.[1] The New England case is especially important because it shows how limited in space and time an outburst of a popular mania may be.
The fundamental notion of this delusion is that men, with the help of demons whom they invoke for that purpose, can do harm, and that the attempts to invoke the demons are now actually made. This notion belongs to-day to the acknowledged doctrine of the Catholic Church, and has its place in all the authoritative Catholic books on ethics. Perhaps it has adherents amongst Protestants.[2] Leo XIII ordered every priest to read aloud a prayer on the steps of the altar after every mass in which occurs the petition: "Holy Archangel Michael, throw Satan and all other spirits of hell, who roam in the world to destroy men, back into hell."[3]
In 1749 Mia Renata, a nun seventy years old, who had entered the convent at the age of nineteen, was beheaded and her body was burned as a witch at Würzburg, under the authority of the prince-bishop of that place. She was accused of trying to seduce the nuns and bewitching them with gout and neuralgia,[4] and all the old witch-
