WITCHCRAFT. According to Grimm the word Witch is derived from the Gothic word veihan (German zreihen), which meant originally " to perform (rites)." The earlier meaning of the term was " a woman regarded as having supernatural or magical power and know ledge " (Findlater). The word then came to denote (in the Middle Ages, for instance) a woman who was sup posed to have formed a compact with the devil, or with evil spirits, in virtue of which she was able to work supernaturally and to do harm to men and beasts. The Catholic Dictionary defines Witchcraft as "a power, real or supposed, of producing, in concert with an evil spirit, effects beyond the reach of natural means and opera tions." A belief in magic and sorcery is found every where in ancient times, and even in modern times among primitive folk. But a distinction has been made between authorised and unauthorised exponents of the art. While the medicine-man has inspired people with a kind of religious awe, the witch has filled them with a sense of terror. The evils of real witchcraft are manifest, and real witches deserved to be ruthlessly exterminated. The danger was, and proved to be a terrible reality, that harmless persons might in spite be accused of practising witchcraft. In Africa •` countless millions of human beings have been slain as sorcerers and witches on the accusation of professional witch-doctors " (J. M. Robert son, P.C.). In Europe, in the thirteenth century, began a war of extermination against witches which developed into a horrible mania. In this war the innocent suffered with the guilty. It seems indeed to be a law of human progress that innocent persons must suffer or be sacri ficed. If the innocent had not suffered, the superstition involved in the burning and drowning of witches would have persisted longer. It is customary to lay all the blame for the hunting down of witches upon the Church. " No saint, no pope, no Christian scholar rebuked the great crime of the Middle Ages. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries pope after pope solemnly sanctioned and encouraged it. Innocent III., in 14S4, gave a fearful impetus to the slaughter throughout Europe, urging the Dominican monks on with awful effect. The Reformers joined in the error, and Protestant lands were just as much desecrated as Catholic. No estimate of the number
of victims is possible, but details such as a French judge boasting that be has accounted for 900 witches in fifteen years, or a Swiss judge dealing with 1,000 cases in one year, give some idea. The horror that was added to life by the hunts of Inquisitors, and the monstrous nature of their courts, can hardly be realised." So writes Joseph McCabe (Thc Bible in Europe, 1907). The Church and the Bible were to blame. But if " not a saint or prelate. from Francis of Assisi to Wesley, was moved to protest," as be says, one wonders what must have been the mental condition of the mass of the people or what it would have been without the Church. The natural inference is that to a large extent the excesses were due on the one hand to an impatient religious zeal and on the other hand to the interference of a lawless lay element. The history of witchcraft shows that the persecution of witches is often due to popular superstition. J. C. Oman (Cults, 190S) thinks that since 1S02 thousands of witches in India " must have perished in out-of-the-way places at the hands of their superstitious countrymen, with the knowledge and connivance of the equally superstitious village police." One of the methods of testing witches has been that of the trial by water. " In Hadramaut, according to Macrizi, when a man was injured by enchant ment, be brought all the witches suspect to the sea or to a deep pool, tied stones to their backs and threw them into the water. She who did not sink was the guilty person, the meaning evidently being that the sacred element rejects the criminal " (W. Robertson Smith, H.S.). The idea of the Witches' Sabbath which once pre vailed throughout Europe had an ancient pagan founda tion. It was believed " that certain women, having made a bargain with the devil, betook themselves to the ' Sabbath' on grotesque steeds, and there acquired re doubtable powers for evil " (Reinach). See 0h-embers's Encycl.; Cath. Diet.; W. E. H. Lecky, History of Rationalism in Europe; E. B. Tylor, P.C.; H. C. Lea, Hist. of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, vol. Hi., 1887; G. Steinhausen, Quell-en and Studien zur Geschichte der Heaenprocesse, 1898; Reinach, O.