For the close connection between the Manichees and witches see my History of Witchcraft, Chap. I. ↩
Pope Clement V, born at Villandraut, 1264; elected to the Chair of S. Peter, 5 June, 1305; died at Roquemare, 20 April, 1314; completed the medieval Corpus Iuris Canonici by the publication of a collection of papal decretals known as “Clementinae” or “Liber Clementinarum,” sometimes as “Liber Septimus” in reference to “Liber Sextus” of Bonafice VIII. It contains decretals of this latter Pontiff, of Benedict XI, and of Clement himself. Together with the decrees of the Council of Vienne it was promulgated, 12 March, 1314, at the Papal residence of Monteaux near Carpentras. It is divided into five books with subdivisions of titles and chapters. As Clement V died before the collection had been generally published, John XXII promulgated it anew, 25 October, 1317, and sent it to the University of Bologna as the authorative Corpus of decretals to be used in the courts and schools. ↩
The parents of S. Bonaventura were Giovanni di Fidanze and Maria Ritella. He was born at Bagnorea, near Viterbo, in 1221, and baptized Giovanni. This was changed to Bonaventura owing to the exclamation of S. Francis, “O buona ventura,” when the child was brought to him to be cured of a dangerous illness. (This account has been doubted, and it is true that others bore the name before S. Bonaventura.) S. Bonaventura was canonized by Sixtus IV, 14 April, 1482. This formal enrolment in the catalogue of the Saints was thus long delayed mainly owing to the unfortunate dissensions concerning Franciscan affairs after the Saint’s death, 15 July, 1274. He was inscribed among the principal Doctors of the Church by Sixtus V, 14 March, 1587. His feast is celebrated 14 July. ↩
Guy de Perpignan, “Doctor Parisiensis,” d. 1342; General of the Carmelite Order from 1318–20. His chief work was the Summa de Haeresibus. ↩
This word designates some Papal decretals not contained in certain canonical collections which possess a special authority, that is, they are not found in (but “wander outside,” “extra uagari”) the Decree of Gratian, or the three great official collections of the Corpus Iuri (the Decretals of Gregory IX; the Sixth Book of the Decretals; and the Clementines). The term is now applied to the collections known as the Extrauagantes Ioannis XXII and the Extrauagantes Communes. When John XXII (1316–34) published the Decretals already known as “Clementines,” there also existed various pontifical documents, obligatory upon the whole Church indeed, but not included in the Corpus Iuris, and these were called “Extrauagantes.” In 1325 Zenselinus de Cassanis added glosses to twenty constitutions of John XXII, and named this collection Uiginti Extrauagantes papae Ioannis XXII. Chappuis also classified these under fourteen titles containing all twenty chapters. ↩
Thus in the famouse witch trial of Dame Alice Kyteler and her coven before the Bishop of Ossory in 1324, John le Poer, the husband of Dame Alice, deposed that in her closet were discovered mysterious vials and elixirs, strange necromantic instruments and ghastly relics of mortality which she used in her horrid craft. Holinshed in his Chronicle of Ireland (London, 1587, p. 93), sub anno 1323, has: “In rifling the closet of the ladie, they found a wafer of sacramental bread, having the divels name stamped thereon in steed of Jesus Christ, and a pipe of ointment, wherewith she greased a staffe, upon whish she ambled and gallopped through thicke and thin when and in what manner she listed.” See my Geography of Witchcraft, Chap. II, pp. 85–91. ↩
Colossians 3:17. ↩
Benedetto Gaetani, born at Anagni about 1235; elected Pope, 24 December, 1294; died at Rome, 11 October, 1303. He was one of the most eminent canonists of his age, and as Supreme Pontiff enriched legislation by the promulgation (Bull “Sacrosanctae,” 1298) of a large number of his own constitutions and those of his predecessors since 1234, when Gregory IX issued his five books of Decretals. In reference to this, the collection of Bonifice VIII is known as Liber Sixtus, i.e. of Pontifical Constitutions. ↩
There are recorded many instances of this. In 1597 the Scotch warlock Playfair, having killed Lord Lothian by witchcraft, was laid for, and “being soon apprehended, was made prisoner in Dalkeith steeple, and having confest that and much more wickedness to Mr. Archibald Simson, minister there, and that confession coming to the ears of Robert, Earl of Lothian, my lord’s son, he had moyen to get some persons admitted to speak with the prisoner in the night, by which means he was found worried in the morning, and the point of his breeches knit about his neck, but never more inquiry was made who had done the deed.”
Alice Gooderidge, a Derbyshire witch, who was tried in 1597 and condemned, “should have bin executed, but that her spirit killed her in the prison.” John Stewart, a warlock of Irvine, in 1618, “for his better
