In this connection may be given some of the curious injunctions of the Anglo-Saxon penitentials, which continued to be quoted throughout the Middle Ages, becoming superstitious beliefs after they had lost their ecclesiastical character and undergone the changes which, with the lapse of time, develop folklore. One of the oddest prescribed that in case a "mouse fall into liquor, let it be taken out, and sprinkle the liquor with holy-water, and if it be alive, the liquor may be used, but if it be dead, throw the liquor out and cleanse the vessel." Another said: "He who uses anything a dog or mouse has eaten of, or a weasel polluted, if he do it knowingly, let him sing a hundred psalms; and if he knew it not, let him sing fifty psalms." These are but samples of many superstitions with which the thought of the Middle Ages was tinctured.
A considerable treatise might be written upon the superstitions of the English women; it would contain astonishing disclosures as to the effect of the unreal world of fairies, goblins, and the like upon woman's development and status during the Middle Ages. She was undoubtedly influenced in her daily life, in almost all her duties and undertakings, by the terrors with which her superstitions filled her. The legacy of a pagan system was slowly thrown off, and, with all the credulity of the religion of the times, it is to the credit of the Church that, by its proscriptions as well as by its healthier teaching, superstition in many of its forms lessened its hold upon the minds of the people. And yet it was needful, if historical fact denotes a social necessity, that these superstitions should culminate in a belief in witchcraft, and woman, because of her credulity, become the scapegoat of the gnomes and witches which existed in her simple faith. Even so cultured a person as Augustine, one of the most prominent of the Church Fathers of his time, declared it to be insolent to doubt the existence of fauns, satyrs, and suchlike demoniac beings, which lie in wait for women and have intercourse with them and children by them. It was this belief which extended into a labyrinth of darkness and superstition throughout the Middle Ages. The reasoning of the Church was perfectly simple: if the miracles of the Apostles and of Christ were of divine agency, then the marvels performed by magicians before the astonished eyes of the heathen were to be accredited to Satan. The Church never doubted the existence of malignant spirits, but bent its endeavors toward persuading the people to give up converse with them. If a woman gave herself over to Satan or any of his minions, the only resource was to put her to death. Horrible as were the witch burnings of the Middle Ages, the Church sincerely believed that it was exorcising the Devil from the lives of the people; and by the terrible examples it made of those who were accounted as having sold themselves to the Evil One, it believed it was placing a deterrent upon others who might be minded to yield themselves to diabolical possession. The Church was but sharing the universal belief of the times, and, as the guardian of the spiritual interests of mankind, it sought the purification of society by severe measures which, it felt, were alone suited to the gravity of the subject. From this belief in devil possession arose a veritable system of Christian magic; charms, amulets, exorcisms, abounded; thus, white magic was opposed to black magic.