The Irish standard., 1899-01-07
A PROTESTANT FINDS GOOD POINTS
IN THE INSTITUTION.
IT WAS MIloER THAN SECULAR COURTS
ITS ORIGIN AND NATURE DESCRIBED
DY PROF. STARDUCkA
GERMAN PUNISHMENT Foa WITcHCaAfT
A WOMAN BURNED ALIVE IN SWEDEN
For LIGHT weight.

A distinguished Protestant writer, Prof.
Charles C. Starbuck, contributes an arti-
| Gle on the Spanish Inquisition to the Sa-
| cred Heart Review, in which he says:
"By Llorentes showing" he writes, "of
every ten arraigned before the InQuisi-
| tion and found guilty of some offense,
only one was condemned to death. Hos
] tile as the rules of the holy Office of
Spain were to the accused, and fruitless
| as were all the efforts of the Popes to
| have them reformed, yet the necessity Of
| finding an actual corpus deficit was
continual restraint. Indeed, Mr.. Leg
shows that the Dominican Inquisition,
| Ehich in this respect does not seem 10
| differ much from the Spanish, would
sometimes deliberate privately for two
years before feeling free even to issue
warrant of arrest. Occasionally it
would then find that the man in question
had died months before. in the full re-
pute of Catholic soundness. Llorente
| also informs us that no sentence could
! be pronounced so long as the prisoner
| had a single witness to produce, even
| though to find him it was necessary to
search the Andes or the pampas. The
reasonable rule of dsmissing the accused
on bail until the transatlantic witness
should be found and brought over, the
| holy office, 1t is true, could not be per-
suaded to adopt. Llorente's severe CEN
sure here is we'll deserved.
"On the other hand let us look at the
records of witchcraft trials, whether the
! few in New England (Which bears the
most discredit because 1t least deserves
! it,, or the huge numbers in Scotland or
the almost illimtable numbers In Ger
many (while in Spain the number con-
demned was very small and in Ireland,
1t is said, there were none), and we see
were in great measure one and the same
| thing. How could il be otherwise? or
course, there was absolutely no criterion
to distinguish guilt from innocence, for
the offense was purely imaginary. There
were, it is said, times and places in Ger
many in which any deviation from the
common average, in any respect, might
easily lead to being tried and condemned
as a sorcere1 To learn too fast or to be
| too dull, to be too strong or unaccount-
some or remarkably ugly,to lay up money
too fast or to be explainably poor, to be
careless of devotion or extremely devout
in short, to stand out notably in any way
from the common level was almost as
much as ones life was worth. Only 200
years back, in Lutheran Sweden, q
woman was burned alive MS q witch be-
cause she did not weigh hundred
pounds. Indeed, compact with the evil
one was assumed to work very particu-
larly against gravitation. 1t seems to
have been viewed as inducing diaboli-
cal counterpart to the levitaton of the
saints.
Moreover, man might guard himself
against being seduced into hcresy, but
who could guard himself against being a
victim of sorcery? AS there was nothing
to check credulity, 50 there was nothing
to set a limit to terrified cruelty. A
boundless dismay, as now in Africa, ex-
tinguished every feeling of compassion
| No wonder, then, that the executiOners
were fnnumerable. DIR. David Mueller,
the amiable and patriotic historian of
Germany, a staunch and enthusiastic
| Protestant, moreover, says that from
about 1880 to about 1850, that is, some
270 years, the witchcraft executions of
Germany ran up into the thousands of
thousands Comparing this with state
ments of other writer's, we may set down
300, 900 as being the very least that he
can mean. Indeed, he says that whole
FregiOns were laid waste Moreover, in
direct contradiction to Nippold, whose
constant practice it is TO charge every
thing bad in Germany upon the Roman
Catholics, Mueller distinctly declares
that the adherents of each religion were
equally fanatical and cruel in the mat
ter. Even If Spain, relatively to Ger
many, had then only the same popula-
tion as now (and after the 80 years
war she had for while a much greater
relative population than now, she
ought to have burned 100000 witches to
bring her up to the level of German cru
city. In fact, the holy office in 1926 years
sentenced to death for witchcraft, hercsy,
religious imposture. sacrilege certain
foul forms Of immortality and several
other crimes less than third the rea-
tive number that Catholic Germany and
Protestant Germany, one as remorseless
as the other, put to death in SO years.
shorter time on the fantastic charge of
sorcery alone.
"This for the number of executions
But when we consider the mode Of exc