The marvellous and the intangible so filled men's minds in every department of medieval life, that it is only necessary here to give a few illustrations complementary to the extracts in the preceding sections. Perhaps the most interesting single document relating to witchcraft is the trial of Dame Alice Kyteler, of Kilkenny, edited by T. Wright for the Camden Society (1843), from which the following extracts are taken, with considerable abridgment of superfluous details. Wright, in his Introduction, gives a very interesting collection of English causes célèbres in sorcery during the later Middle Ages.

Bishop Richard of Ossory, the Franciscan friar who is in one sense the hero of this Kyteler story, had a stormy career; see Wright's note, p. 42. About 1329, he himself was accused of heresy, and fled from Ireland for nine years; on his return, he was accused of abetting Thomas Fitzgilbert in slaying Hugh le Poer and plundering his castle. He regained the king's favour, however, and “passed the remainder of his life in great tranquillity. He obtained the king's leave for demolishing three churches without the walls, and employed the stones in building an episcopal palaoe near the Cathedral.” He died at a great age in 1360, after an episcopate of about 42 years. At this distance of time, it will probably never be known how far the accusations against the lady on the one hand, or the Bishop on the other, were due to personal grudges or family feuds.