who refuse to comply are returned to prison. Water ordeals and shaving were also to be found in the local courts right up to the mid 17th century. The evidence of accomplices was also admitted and was given some attention. The advent of such terms as crimen exceptum et occultum and crimen laesae Divinae Maiestatis applied to witchcraft indicate the connection with continental doctrine. 2.4. From the end of the 16th century the secular courts had begun to take action against the religiously shaded forms of witchcraft: the Witches’ Sabbath, the journey to Blåkulla and compact. In general, however, it was necessary to prove maleficium in order to invoke the death penalty. This view was still held by the higher Church authorities in 1619. During the 17th century the Church set its stamp on development more through influencing the authorities and opinion than through direct measures of its own. The bishops and the chapters still had important duties on the local plane. Witches that the secular powers for one reason or another felt could be spared the death penalty were usually condemned, in addition to the lower civil punishment, to church penitence (publica poenitentia). It was the responsibility of the Church, after receiving a report, to effect this punishment. Furthermore, bishops and priests continued, by searches and interrogations, to keep a check in the villages. Serious cases of witchcraft were remitted to the civil court, sometimes with the priest acting as a sort of public prosecutor. The less serious cases were punished directly by penitence, often accompanied by fines or whipping. Thus clerical justice came to complement the secular. (Cf. England 1628: ”Have you any in your Parish, which have used Witchcraft and Incantations, which are not made Felony by the Statutes of the Realme?”) 2.5. The Church had played its most important role in defining the new forms of crime. It was thus natural that its cooperation was requested in applying them in the concrete situation. In a number of witchcraft cases during the 17th century the Crown or the Court of Appeal requested expert opinions from the chapters or other higher ecclesiastical instances. The earliest of these pronouncements is still carefully restrained. Proven maleficium or definite rejection of God is required for the death penalty. It is not until the middle of the century that a changed attitude can be detected. In a couple of reports from that time a number of offences against the decalogue, each of which is worthy of death, are grouped together under the heading Witchcraft. In accordance with the current theocratic doctrine of punishment the Old Testament (Exodus 22 etc.) is cited as the most important legal source. A deviation from this general tendency, however, is a significant pronouncement by Bishop Matthiae, formerly preceptor to Queen Christina. In modern terms, with shades of natural law, he takes exception to the mechanical application of the biblical laws, which only leads to unreasonable conse328
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