Note 86 — Front matter

True, there was still, in many quarters, an unreconciled public sentiment, and even now and then an open though unpublished deprecation. It has long struck the attention of historians that, even in witch-ridden Germany, the great imperial city of Nuremberg seems free from the persecution. Its criminal code was the Carolina; yet a contemporary manuscript copy of its executioner’s records, from 1600 to 1692, in the possession of the President White Library, shows not a single execution for witchcraft proper. I hold in my hand a document—so far as I know unprinted, and certainly unknown to the historians of witchcraft—which may partially explain this. It is a manuscript, in a sixteenth century hand, on whose cover I read, “Der Nürnbergischen Theologen Ainhellige Antwort, über etliche Puncten, die Unhulden betreffent”; and at the head of its first page, more explicitly, “Ainhellige Antwort der Hochgelerten Theologi unnd Predicanten zu Nürnberg: auff die Suplication des Raths zu Weisenburg an die Eltern herren dess geheimen Raths alhie zu Nürnberg: umb unterichtung: Wie sie sich mit iren Hexen undt Unhulden verhalden sollen, unnd wass in Göttlicher heiliger Schrifft darvon gegründett sey.” At the end are the signatures of the six pastors of Nuremberg, and the date—1590. Through thirty weary pages the city clergy wrestle with the problem set them; and superstitious enough seems their answer. They believe fully in witchcraft and in its punishment—nay, they establish both in all their horrible detail out of Holy Writ. And yet (the influence of the canon Episcopi is clearly not dead, even for Protestants) they deny that the witches can transform themselves, or ride through the air, or cause wind or hail-storm; all this is mere illusion. And so do they fence about the prescribed procedure with their cautions against trusting the testimony of the witches themselves or the word of the executioner or charges against persons of else unblemished reputation; that, seeing the most prolific sources of the spread of the persecution thus cut off, one no longer wonders, if such were the spirit of even her theologians, at Nuremberg’s own immunity.