But the superstition further gave rise to a worse sort of witches, namely those who deprived men of their health and life.In these cases the mischief, when not sufficiently accounted for by the evil eye and the like, was naturally attributed to the aid of powerful spirits.The punishment, as we have seen in the case of Finicella, was the stake;and yet a compromise with fanaticism was sometimes practicable.
According to the laws of Perugia, for example, a witch could settle the affair by paying down 400 pounds.The matter was not then treated with the seriousness and consistency of later times.In the territories of the Church? at Norcia (Nursia), the home of St.Benedict in the upper Apennines, there was a perfect nest of witches and sorcerers, and no secret was made of it.It is spoken of in one of the most remarkable letters of Aeneas Sylvius, belonging to his earlier period.He writes to his brother: 'The bearer of this came to me to ask if I knew of a Mount of Venus in Italy, for in such a place magical arts were taught, and his master, a Saxon and a great astronomer, was anxious to learn them.I told him that I knew of a Porto Venere not far from Carrara, on the rocky coast of Liguria, where I spent three nights on the way to Basle; I also found that there was a mountain called Eryx, in Sicily, which was dedicated to Venus, but I did not know whether magic was taught here.But it came into my mind while talking, that in Umbria, in the old Duchy (Spoleto)? near the town of Nursia, there is a cave beneath a steep rock, in which water flows.There, as I remember to have heard, are witches (striges), demons, and nightly shades, and he that has the courage can see and speak to ghosts (spiritus), and learn magical arts.I have not seen it, nor taken any trouble about it, for that which is learned with sin is better not learned at all.' He nevertheless names his informant, and begs his brother to take the bearer of the letter to him, should he be still alive.Aeneas goes far enough here in his politeness to a man of position, but personally he was not only freer from superstition than his contemporaries, but he also stood a test on the subject which not every educated man of our own day could endure.At the time of the Council of Basle, when he lay sick of the fever for seventy-five days at Milan, he could never be persuaded to listen to the magic doctors, though a man was brought to his bedside who a short time before had marvelously cured 2,000soldiers of fever in the camp of Piccinino.While still an invalid, Aeneas rode over the mountains to Basle, and got well on the journey.
We learn something more about the neighborhood of Norcia through the necromancer who tried to get Benvenuto Cellini into his power.A new book of magic was to be consecrated, and the best place for the ceremony was among the mountains in that district.The master of the magician had once, it is true, done the same thing near the abbey of Farfa, but had there found difficulties which did not present themselves at Norcia; further, the peasants in the latter neighborhood were trustworthy people who had had practice in the matter, and who could afford considerable help in case of need.The expedition did not take place, else Benvenuto would probably have been able to tell us something of the impostor's assistants.The whole neighborhood was then proverbial.Aretino says somewhere of an enchanted well, 'there dwell the sisters of the sibyl of Norcia and the aunt of the Fata Gloriana.'
And about the same time Trissino could still celebrate the place in his great epic with all the resources of poetry and allegory as the home of authentic prophecy.
After the notorious Bull of Innocent VIII (1484), witchcraft and the persecution of witches grew into a great and revolting system.The chief representatives of this system of persecution were German Dominicans; and Germany and, curiously enough, those parts of Italy nearest Germany were the countries most afflicted by this plague.The bulls and injunctions of the Popes themselves refer, for example, to the Dominican Province of Lombardy, to Cremona, to the dioceses of Brescia and Bergamo.We learn from Sprenger's famous theoretico-practical guide, the 'Malleus Maleficarum,' that forty-one witches were burnt at Como in the first year after the publication of the bull;crowds of Italian women took refuge in the territory of the Archduke Sigismund, where they believed themselves to be still safe.Witchcraft ended by taking firm root in a few unlucky Alpine valleys, especially in the Val Camonica; the system of persecution had succeeded in permanently infecting with the delusion those populations which were in any way predisposed for it.This essentially German form of witchcraft is what we should think of when reading the stories and novels of Milan or Bologna.That it did not make further progress in Italy is probably due to the fact that here a highly developed 'stregheria' was already in existence, resting on a different set of ideas.The Italian witch practiced a trade, and needed for it money and, above all, sense.We find nothing about her of the hysterical dreams of the Northern witch, of marvelous journeys through the air, of Incubus and Succubus; the business of the 'strega' was to provide for other people's pleasures.
If she was credited with the power of assuming different shapes, or of transporting herself suddenly to distant places, she was so far content to accept this reputation, as her influence was thereby increased; on the other hand, it was perilous for her when the fear of her malice and vengeance, and especially of her power for enchanting children, cattle, and crops, became general.Inquisitors and magistrates were then most thoroughly in accord with popular wishes if they burnt her.
