' Suppatius warns her against
the envy of the monastery, but she has no fear, since the guardian of
it is an old acquaintance of hers.
But the superstition further gave rise to a worse sort of witches,
namely those who deprived men of their health and life. In these cases
the mischief, when not sufficiently accounted for by the evil eye and
the like, was naturally attributed to the aid of powerful spirits. The
punishment, as we have seen in the case of Finicella, was the stake;
and yet a compromise with fanaticism was sometimes practicable.
According to the laws of Perugia, for example, a witch could settle the
affair by paying down 400 pounds. The matter was not then treated with
the seriousness and consistency of later times. In the territories of
the Church? at Norcia (Nursia), the home of St. Benedict in the upper
Apennines, there was a perfect nest of witches and sorcerers, and no
secret was made of it. It is spoken of in one of the most remarkable
letters of Aeneas Sylvius, belonging to his earlier period. He writes
to his brother: 'The bearer of this came to me to ask if I knew of a
Mount of Venus in Italy, for in such a place magical arts were taught,
and his master, a Saxon and a great astronomer, was anxious to learn
them. I told him that I knew of a Porto Venere not far from Carrara, on
the rocky coast of Liguria, where I spent three nights on the way to
Basle; I also found that there was a mountain called Eryx, in Sicily,
which was dedicated to Venus, but I did not know whether magic was
taught here.
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