“So, in the eighth century, we find St. Boniface, the English apostle of Germany, declaring roundly that to believe in witches and werewolves is unchristian. In the same century Charlemagne decreed the death penalty for anyone who, in newly converted Saxony, burnt supposed witches. Such burning, he said, was ‘a pagan custom.’ In the next century St. Agobard, Bishop of Lyon, repudiated the belief that witches could make bad weather, and another unknown Church dignitary declared that night-flying and metamorphosis were hallucinations and that whoever believed in them ‘is beyond doubt an infidel and a pagan.’ This statement was accepted into the canon law and became known as the canon Episcopi or capitulum Episcopi. It remained the official doctrine of the Church. In the eleventh century the laws of King Coloman of Hungary declined to notice witches ‘since they do not exist,’ and in the twelfth century John of Salisbury dismissed the idea of a witches’ sabbat as a fabulous dream. In the succeeding centuries, when the craze was being built up, all this salutary doctrine would have to be reversed.”