"[28]
As a result of this belief in the diabolic power of woman, judicial
murder of helpless women became an institution, which is thus
characterized by Sumner: "After the refined torture of the body and
nameless mental sufferings, women were executed in the most cruel
manner. These facts are so monstrous that all other aberrations of the
human race are small in comparison.... He who studies the witch trials
believes himself transferred into the midst of a race which has
smothered all its own nobler instincts, reason, justice, benevolence and
sympathy."[24]
Any woman was suspect. Michelet, after a thirty years' study, wrote:
"Witches they are by nature. It is a gift peculiar to woman and her
temperament. By birth a fay, by the regular recurrence of her ecstasy
she becomes a sibyl. By her love she grows into an enchantress. By her
subtlety ... she becomes a witch and works her spells."[29]
Just how many victims there were of the belief in the power of women as
witches will never be known. Scherr thinks that the persecutions cost
100,000 lives in Germany alone.[30] Lord Avebury quotes the estimate of
the inquisitor Sprenger, joint author of the "Witch Hammer," that during
the Christian period some 9,000,000 persons, mostly women, were burned
as witches.[31] Seven thousand victims are said to have been burned at
Treves, 600 by a single bishop of Bamburg, 800 in a single year in the
bishopric of Wurtzburg.
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