Note 2 — Chapter VII

The same incongruity appears also in Innocent VIII., whose bull against witchcraft (1484) systematized the persecution directed against unfortunate old women and idiots. Sprenger, in the Malleus Maleficarum, mentions that in the first year after its publication forty-one witches were burned in the district of Como, while crowds of suspected women took refuge in the province of the Archduke Sigismond. Cantù's Storia della Diocesi di Como (Le Monnier, 2 vols.) may be consulted for the persecution of witches in Valtellina and Val Camonica. Cp. Folengo's Maccaronea for the prevalence of witchcraft in those districts.