This theory once started, proofs
came in to support it, during a hundred years, from the torture
chambers in all parts of Europe.
Throughout the later Middle Ages the Dominicans had been the
main agents in extorting and promulgating these revelations, but
in the centuries following the Reformation the Jesuits devoted
themselves with even more keenness and vigour to the same task.
Some curious questions incidentally arose. It was mooted among
the orthodox authorities whether the damage done by storms
should or should not be assessed upon the property of convicted
witches. The theologians inclined decidedly to the affirmative;
the jurists, on the whole, to the negative.[354]
In spite of these tortures, lightning and tempests continued,
and great men arose in the Church throughout Europe in every
generation to point out new cruelties for the discovery of
"weather-makers," and new methods for bringing their
machinations to naught.
But here and there, as early as the sixteenth century, we begin
to see thinkers endeavouring to modify or oppose these methods.
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