all things into confusion.  ‘I dare not write’, he says, ’the wonders that my Lord Dacre and all his company do say they saw that night, six times, of spirits and fearful sights.  And universally all their company say plainly the Devil was that night among them six times.’  In that gaunt and bleak Border country the traveller overtaken by night may feel a disquieting awe even in these days when the rising moon is no longer a lamp to guide enemies to the attack.  Four hundred years ago, when it lay blood-stained and scarred with a thousand fights, bearing no crops to be fired, no homesteads to be sacked, we need not wonder if teams of demons swept down in the darkness and drove through and through the trembling ranks.

Again, in 1552 Melanchthon writes thus to a friend:  ’In some cases no doubt the causes of madness and derangement are purely physical; but it is also quite certain that at times men’s bodies are entered by devils who produce frenzies prognosticating things to come.  Twelve years ago there was a woman in Saxony who had no learning of books, and yet, when she was vexed by a devil, after her paroxysms uttered Greek and Latin prophecies of the war that should be there.  In Italy, too, I am told there was a woman, also quite unlearned, who during one of her devilish torments was asked what is the best line of Virgil, and replied, “Learn justice and to reverence the gods “’.[32] In this second case it would seem that the Devil scarcely knew his own business.

     [32] Aen. 6. 620.

Sudden death descending upon the wicked was a judgement of heaven, letting loose the powers of hell; and if the face of the corpse chanced to turn black, there was never any doubt but that Satan had flown off with the soul.  Suspicions and accusations of witchcraft were rife; and an old woman had to be careful of the reputation of her cat.  Wanderers among the mountains saw dragons; in the forests elves peeped at the woodmen from behind the trees, and fairies danced beneath the moon in the open places.  The world had not been sufficiently explored for the absence of contrary experience to carry much weight; and the means for the dissemination of news were quite inadequate.  In consequence men had not learnt to doubt the evidence of their senses and to regard things as too strange to be true.  It was felt that anything might happen; and as a result almost everything did happen.

For example, in 1500 there was an outbreak of crosses in two villages not far from Sponheim; and next year the same thing happened at Liege.  They appeared on any clothing that was light enough of hue; coloured crosses that no washing or treatment could remove.  Men opened their coats to find crosses on their shirts:  a woman would look down at her apron, and there, sure enough, was a cross.  Clothes that had been folded up and put away in presses, came out with the sacred sign upon them.  One day during the singing of the mass thirty men suddenly found themselves marked with crosses.  They lasted for nine or ten days, and then gradually faded.  It was afterwards remarked that where the crosses had been, the plague followed.  Such is Trithemius’ account in his chronicle:  we may wonder how closely he had questioned his informants.