In the fourteenth century
it was thought necessary carefully to watch the lake on Mount Pilatus,
near Scariotto, to hinder the magicians from there consecrating their
books. In the fifteenth century we find, for example, that the offer
was made to produce a storm of rain, in order to frighten away a
besieged army; and even then the commander of the besieged town,
Niccolo Vitelli in Citta di Castello had the good sense to dismiss the
sorcerers as godless persons. In the sixteenth century no more
instances of this official kind appear, although in private life the
magicians were still active. To this time belongs the classic figure of
German sorcery, Dr. Johann Faust; the Italian ideal, on the other hand,
Guido Bonatto, dates back to the thirteenth century.
It must nevertheless be added that the decrease of the belief in magic
was not necessarily accompanied by an increase of the belief in a moral
order, but that in many cases, like the decaying faith in astrology,
the delusion left behind it nothing but a stupid fatalism.
One or two minor forms of this superstition, pyromancy, chiromancy and
others, which obtained some credit as the belief in sorcery and
astrology was declining, may be here passed over, and even the pseudo-
science of physiognomy has by no means the interest which the name
might lead us to expect.
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