THE FATE OF DIETRICH FLADE.

By Professor George L. Burr, Cornell University.

When, just three hundred years ago, in the spring of the year 1589, it was whispered abroad in Europe that no less a personage than Dr. Dietrich Flade, of Trier,' city Judge of that oldest of German towns, Dean of its juristic faculty, ex-Rector of its university, a councillor of the ArchbishopElector himself, had been put on his trial for witchcraft, men turned with a shudder of interest to watch the result. And when, in mid-September of that year, there came the further tidings that he had been convicted on his own confession and burned at the stake, pious folk everywhere drew a long sigh of relief that at last a ringleader of the horrid crew of Satan had, spite of money and influence, been brought to the fate he deserved. No voice anywhere was raised in protest or in question. No word of pity found its way into print.

But never again, even in Germany, did the persecution strike so high. Though two centuries of witch-burning followed, Dietrich Flade remains to our day its most eminent victim in the land of its greatest thoroughness. And in these later years of failing faith men have dared to ask whether he was, after all, guilty of the preternatural crime laid to his charge, and to wonder what other cause may have brought the accusation which cost his life. Wide has been the field of conjecture. Was he, perhaps, a martyr who brought suspicion on himself by opposing the persecution of others? Was he a heretic, whose politic foes found

1 Better known to us, though a German city, by its Gallicized name of Treves, or Trèves.

it easier to burn him as a witch than as a Protestant? Was he only a corrupt magistrate, for whom this seemed the most convenient method of impeachment? Did he but owe his death to the malice of some spiteful criminal,-to the cunning of some private foe,—to the greed of some heir who coveted his wealth? Each of these theories might be sustained by contemporary hints, and either is but too sadly plausible in the light of what we know of his time; but the scholars who have thus speculated as to the fate of Dietrich Flade have been forced to add that the one document which might have answered their question—the minutes of his trial has long been lost to research.'

That document lies before me'; and it is upon the basis

I What has been known about Flade is, all told, very little. Just before the middle of the last century, Hauber, stirred to curiosity by the allusion of Delrio, discussed his fate in the chapter of his Bibliotheca magica which has remained the main source for all later historians of witchcraft; but, beside Delrio, Hauber had no materials save the bare mention by the contemporary Cratepolius. Later in the eighteenth century, the eminent Trier historian and Vice-Bishop, Hontheim, gave to Flade a foot-note of sympathetic appreciation; while the Trier jurist, Neller, on the other hand, blackened his fame by resurrecting for a student's thesis the Elector's letter to the theological faculty (see page 36 below). In 1817, the city librarian, Wyttenbach (in his Versuch einer Geschichte von Trier, published as a serial in the Trierischer Adresskalender, 1810-22), would gladly have told more about him; but the records of his trial, which were known to have shortly before existed at Trier, Wyttenbach could not find, though he found men who had read them. In 1818, however, the Echternach antiquary, Clotten, produced what seemed fragments of them. They were printed by Müller (in the Trierisches Wochenblatt for 1818, Nos. 49-51), and were afterward given to the city library at Trier, in whose keeping they still are. When, a few years later, the two last-named historians (Wyttenbach and Müller) published their edition of the Gesta Trevirorum, they added to its third volume (1839) a valuable note on Flade. The later histories of Trier, including even the elaborate work of Marx, add nothing to our knowledge of him. The article upon him, by Professor Dr. Kraus, in the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie contributes, however, one or two fresh facts. * Since 1883 it has been in the possession of the President White library at Cornell University. Glancing through an old-book catalogue issued, late in 1882, by Albert Cohn, of Berlin, my eye lit on the title of this manuscript. I laid it before President White, who at once, spite of an inaccuracy in the name, divined that it was the trial of Dr. Flade, whose case he knew well through his researches in this field. We ordered it forthwith, and were overjoyed both to secure it and to find it what we had hoped. Of its earlier fortunes I have

of this and of other papers' which have hitherto escaped the historians that I wish to discuss once more the story of his life.

For at least three generations the Flades had been loyal servants of the Electors of Trier. Before the close of the fifteenth century Hupert Flade had left his Luxemburg home at St. Vith to enter the archiepiscopal Kanzlei; and he had received more than one substantial recognition of his worth as a secretary before he found himself snugly been able to learn only that it was for a time in the possession of the wellknown Cöln bookseller, Lempertz, who offered it in a catalogue of 1874. Whence it had come into his hands he could in 1886 no longer remember. It was bought from him by a Cöln collector, at the dispersion of whose library it drifted to the shelves of the Berlin dealer. Wyttenbach's words as to its loss are: "Bis auf unsere Zeiten waren die Originalpapiere dieses Prozesses aufbewahrt worden; aber sie sind entkommen, man weiss nicht wohin. Ich habe sie nie gelesen; aber man sagt mir, dass darin der Doctor der Zauberey selbst geständig gewesen." It is possible that, with so much else, they went astray during the French occupation. I hope to print the manuscript as an appendix to my forthcoming catalogue of the President White collection on witchcraft. It is a folio, neatly written in a Kanzlei hand familiar to the contemporary records at Trier. Of its original 126 leaves, the first is detached and sadly worn; the second is wholly gone (I have fortunately been able to supply its contents from the fragments at Trier), while ff. 105, 106 (a part of Flade's confession--the later Urgicht suggests their substance) have been rudely cut out, their stubs remaining. Else the document is complete, beginning with the first calling together of the court, and ending with the execution. The Clotten fragments (see last note), still preserved at Trier, were never a part of it, but are rather the original papers from which this final protocol was drawn up. They comprise: (1) Most of the Fath report, in what I believe the handwriting of that commissioner; (2) all the miscellaneous reports therewith submitted to the court by the Elector (see note on page 32 below); (3) the minutes of the proceedings connected with Flade's arrest, in the handwriting of the court clerk, Wilhelm von Biedborgh; (4) three more or less complete reports of the first examination of Flade, partly in the handwriting of Biedborgh, partly in a Kanzlei hand resembling that of our own protocol. These could not have been what Wyttenbach's informant had seen, for they contain nothing of Flade's confession, nor indeed of his trial proper. A brief account of our own manuscript, by Dr. William H. Carpenter, now of Columbia College, was published in the library bulletin of Cornell University in April, 1883.

Of these the most important are: (1) The annual reports, manuscript and printed, of the Trier Jesuits; (2) the remains at Trier of the judicial records of the witch-trials; (3) the significant passages of Brouwer and of Binsfeld. There has been, indeed, hitherto no attempt at investigation of the case.

established as Cellarer, or Steward, of the Electoral estates at Pfalzel, on the Moselle, just below Trier.' His son, Johann,' the father of Dietrich, rose to the responsible position of town clerk of the neighboring city itself.

When Dietrich Flade was born, or where he gained his education for the law, does not appear. Inheriting position and wealth, he would seem to have early devoted himself to

1 Thus, on December 31, 1495, the Elector “verschreibt dem Hupert Flade eine iahrrente von 4 malter frucht und 4 ohm wein"; on June 25, 1499, he "giebt seinem kanzleischreiber Hupert Flade von St. Vyt und dessen ehefrau Margaretha Kellners von Ellenz anstatt einer weinrente von 4 ohm, auf lebenszeit einen wingert zu Fankel”; and on June 28, 1499, he “belehnt denselben Hupert Flad mit 4 wingerten zu Ellentz” (Goerz, Regesten d. Erzb. zu Trier). These last gifts were, perhaps, on the occasion of Hupert's marriage. Both Fankel and Ellentz are on the Moselle, near Cochem, whence the deeds of gift are dated. That Dietrich was a grandson of Hupert, there can, I think, be little doubt. In the Neue Zeitung of 1594 (see note on page 45 below), the ill-fated judge is himself spoken of as von Kochheim an der Mosel." That Hupert Flade became later Electoral Cellarer at Pfalzel, we know, on his own testimony, from a paper (in codex 1753 of the Stadt-Bibliothek at Trier), dated “anno 1504 more Trev.,” drawn “durch mich Huprechten Flade von Sant Vyt Kelner zu Paltzel," and signed "Hupt Flade." That Dietrich Flade, too, held property at Pfalzel is known to Dr. Kraus (see his article on Flade in the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie) from the Pfalzel church records.

2 That Johann Flade was Dietrich's father is assumed without question by Wyttenbach and Müller (in their note to the Gesta Trev.), and is certainly probable. In a manuscript still preserved in the City Library at Trier, an account of "Wie Frantz von Sieckingen den Stifft beschediget und . . . diess Stat Trier belegert haitt" in 1522, compiled from the city records by order of the Rath, and written by Johann Flade's own hand, he speaks of himself as "mech, Johannem Flade vonn Sant Vyt der Stat Trier Secretarien." He still held this office in 1556 (Hontheim, Hist. Trev. Dipl., ii.), but in 1559 had given place to a successor (Peter Dronkmann).

As to the proper spelling of the name Flade, there can be no doubt; for, though it appears under various disguises (Flad, Fladt, Vlaet, Fladius, Vlaetius, Flattenus) in contemporary sources, all the autographs of the Flades agree in this form. There lies before me an autograph receipt, given officially by Dietrich Flade, June 28, 1587 (I owe it to the scholarly generosity of Dr. Conrad Cuppers, of Cöln), in which he signs himself "Dietherich Flade doctor | Chfl. Tr: Rhat vnd Schultes | zu Trier." The seal (Petschaft) attached bears his arms and the initials "T. F. | L. D." (Theodoricus Flade, Legum Doctor?) I have found among the documents of the Trier City Library only two bearing his signature, though there are several in his handwriting. Dr. Kraus (in the Allg. deutsche Biog.) cites two other signatures. All are written "Flade."

political life; and we first meet him, in 1559, as a councillor of Johann VI., the ablest and most energetic of the Electors of Trier in that half-century. It was the critical time of the Protestant attempt to introduce the Reformation into Trier, and the young jurist was added to the important Commission charged with the suppression of the disorder.' A fellow-member of that Commission, the Cathedral-Dean, Jacob von Eltz, became eight years later the successor of Johann VI. on the archiepiscopal throne; and it was probably to Jacob III., whose best claim to the gratitude of posterity lies in his care for the courts of his province, that Dietrich Flade owed his appointment to one of the highest judicial positions in the land-the headship of the civil court at Trier, which carried with it an assessor's seat on the bench of the supreme tribunal of the Electorate at Coblenz." And when, a few years later, he was honored with the degree of Doctor of the Civil and of the Canon Law,' a career

"Sexto Septembris" [1559], says Brouwer (Annales Trev., ii., p. 389), "junxere se Principis legatis Jacobus ab Eltz templi primarii Decanus, Theodoricus Fladius, et Jacobus Henselius jureconsulti." (Yet, a little earlier, Brouwer names the same "Theodoricus Fladius" among the members of the original Commission—a manifest inconsistency, and doubtless an oversight.)

'His appointment dates, perhaps, from the Elector's "Reformatio judicii scabinalis Trevirensis," in April of 1569. In July of that year the edict reorganizing the Coblenz court, names among the assessors “Diederichen Flade, unsern Schultheisen zu Trier, etc." (Hontheim, Hist. Dipl. Trev., iii.). The office brought with it, too—in Flade's case, at least—the judgeship of the jurisdiction of the Cathedral Provost at Trier. Thus, in a collection of "Urfehden," etc., of the Domprobstei, from the years 1581-93 (codex 1500 of the Trier Stadt-Bibliothek), an Urfehde of July 29, 1581, is in his handwriting, and a slip of December, 1583, is addressed to “d. Ern. u. Hochgel. Herr Dietherich Flad, als Schultheiss der Dhom Probsteien zu Trier." Very vivid becomes his relation to the criminal justice of the city, as one comes upon a note to him (of May 9, 1572) announcing that the town council "sei willigh Iren Ern: wie von alters den armen gefanghenen menschen mit seiner urgicht, so ihn Sant Simeons Thorn [the old Roman Porta Nigra] gefanghen ligt, zu lieberen "; or when one finds, appended to the protocol of the trial of the robber Sontag of Crittenach, in 1574, an account of his formal surrender by the city authorities to Dr. Flade, with the formulæ spoken by the Stadt-Zender and the Judge, respectively.

At some time between 1570 and 1573. An autograph letter of Flade's to the Elector (in codex 1775 of the Trier Stadt-Bibliothek), dated February 6, 1570