Note 591 — Chapter VII · WITCHCRAFT. (continued 2)

Diefenbach, the latest writer on witchcraft (Die Hexenwahn, Mainz, 1886). sees clearly enough that the witch-madness was the result of the means adopted for the suppression of witchcraft, but in his eagerness to relieve the Church from the responsibility he attributes its origin to the Carolina, or criminal code of Charles V., issued in 1531, and expressly asserts that ecclesiastical law had nothing to do with it (p. 176). Other recent writers ascribe the horrors of the witch-process to the bull of Innocent VIII., and the Malleus Maleficarum (Ib. pp. 222-6). We have been able to trace, however, the definite development of the madness and the means adopted for its cure from the beliefs and the practice of preceding ages. It was, as we have seen, a process of purely natural evolution from the principles which the Church had succeeded in establishing.