And the evidence was so extraordinarily sound. No reasonable man could resist the force of it. It was not only the proverbially superstitious Middle Ages that believed in occult arts; no one had a more wholesome faith in these matters than Luther, and no country surpassed Protestant Scotland in the savage cruelty of its witch-trials. Richard Baxter, in his 'The Certainty of the World of Spirits,' was able to give numerous well authenticated cases from his own lifetime; and the sceptical man of science, Glanvill, showed that unreason, not reason, rejected the evidence for witchcraft. All history was full of the exploits of these instruments of darkness, and not 'the easily deceivable vulgar only,' but 'wise and grave discerners' were first-hand witnesses, who had no interest 'to agree together in a common lie.'[190]
The magicians and witches being almost universally believed in, it followed as a corollary that they were punished for their nefarious practices; but whereas in the pagan Roman world they had been punished simply on politic grounds, the magician being punished 'because he injured man, not because he offended God,'[191] in the Christian era the offence was regarded as a much more heinous sin. In days of polytheism the state could be tolerant of certain magic practices; not so Christianity, which regarded all pagan deities as emanations of the Devil. The punishments, save under the apostate Julian, were usually of a most ferocious character, reputed magicians being crucified or flung to wild beasts.[192] But while thus zealous in punishing the magician, there is no doubt that Christianity itself became contaminated, and in the Dark Ages thaumaturgy became rife within the Church. On the other hand, while in the Eastern Empire sorcery continued to be punished with severity, the Teutonic tribes in the west, who in their pagan days had been thoroughly imbued with magic beliefs, were more or less tolerant. During the epoch of the Carolingian empire ecclesiastical lenience, tempered by occasional mob violence, was the rule; and such lenience or indifference continued in western Europe till the end of the twelfth century.[193] Roger Bacon, unlike learned philosophers of later and presumably more enlightened periods, gave it as his opinion that reputed sorcery was either fraudulent or a delusion. There are instances of severity on the part of the secular authority in Spain, and the first mediæval legislation against sorcery was introduced in Venice in the twelfth century; yet the Church remained apparently indifferent. And when the Inquisition came into being, it was not given authority in cases of witchcraft and sorcery. A change is to be traced from Alexander IV's bull, _Quod super nonnullis_, issued in 1257, which laid it down that inquisitors were not to be distracted from their all-important duties by other business and were to leave cases of simple sorcery to the ordinary ecclesiastical tribunals; on the other hand, in sorcery cases where heresy was clearly involved, they were to take cognizance. This became the Canon law under Boniface VIII.[194]