On the title-page of his
manual he boasts that within fifteen years he had sent nine
hundred persons to death for this imaginary crime.[358]
Protestantism fell into the superstition as fully as
Catholicism. In the same century John Wier, a disciple of
Agrippa, tried to frame a pious theory which, while satisfying
orthodoxy, should do something to check the frightful cruelties
around him. In his book _De Praestigiis Daemnonum_, published in
1563, he proclaimed his belief in witchcraft, but suggested that
the compacts with Satan, journeys through the air on
broomsticks, bearing children to Satan, raising storms and
producing diseases--to which so many women and children
confessed under torture--were delusions suggested and propagated
by Satan himself, and that the persons charged with witchcraft
were therefore to be considered "as possessed"--that is,
rather as sinned against than sinning.[359]
But neither Catholics nor Protestants would listen for a moment
to any such suggestion. Wier was bitterly denounced and
persecuted.
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