devotion, self-assertion, possessed by the race at large.  Only in districts remote from civil life did witchcraft assume those anti-social and repulsive features which are familiar to Northern nations.  Elsewhere it penetrated, as a subtle poison, through society, lending its supposed assistance to passions already powerful enough to work their own accomplishment.  It existed, not as an endemic disease, a permanent delirium of maddened peasants, but as a weapon in the arsenal of malice on a par with poisons and provocatives to lust.

I might illustrate this position by the relation of a fantastic attempt made against the life of Pope Urban VIII.[244]

[Footnote 243:  Dandolo’s Streghe Tirolesi, and Cantu’s work on the Diocese of Como show how much Subalpine Italy had in common in Northern Europe in this matter.]

[Footnote 244:  See Rassegna Settimanale, September 18, 1881.]

Giacomo Centini, the nephew of Cardinal d’Ascoli, fostered a fixed idea, the motive of his madness being the promotion of his uncle to S. Peter’s Chair.  In 1633 he applied to a hermit, who professed profound science in the occult arts and close familiarity with demons.  The man, in answer to Giacomo’s inquiries, said that Urban had still many years to live, that the Cardinal d’Ascoli would certainly succeed him, and that he held it in his power to shorten the Pope’s days.  He added that a certain Fra Cherubino would be useful, if any matter of grave moment were resolved on; nor did he reject the assistance of other discreet persons.  Giacomo, on his side, produced a Fra Domenico; and the four accomplices set at work to destroy the reigning Pope by means of sorcery.  They caused a knife to be forged, after the model of the Key of Solomon, and had it inscribed with Cabalistic symbols.  A clean virgin was employed to spin hemp into a thread.  Then they resorted to a distant room in Giacomo’s palace, where a circle was drawn with the mystic thread, a fire was lighted in the center, and upon it was placed an image of Pope Urban formed of purest wax.  The devil was invoked to appear and answer whether Urban had deceased this life after the melting of the image.  No infernal visitor responded to the call; and the hermit accounted for this failure by suggesting that some murder had been committed in the palace.  As things went at that period, this excuse was by no means feeble, if only the audience, bent on unholy invocation of the power of evil, would accept it as sufficient.  Probably more than one murder had taken place there, of which the owner was dimly conscious.  The psychological curiosity to note is that avowed malefactors reckoned purity an essential element in their nefarious practice.  They tried once more in a vineyard, under the open heavens at night.  But no demon issued from the darkness, and the hermit laid this second mischance to the score of bad weather.  Giacomo was incapable of holding his tongue.  He talked about his undertaking