287-307.] To the miseries of pestilence and its attendant famine were added lawlessness and license, raging fires, and what was worst of all, the dark suspicion that the sickness had been introduced by malefactors.
This belief appears to have taken hold upon the popular mind during the plague of 1598 in Savoy and in Milan.[238] Simeone Contarini reports that two men from Geneva confessed to having come with the express purpose of disseminating infection.

He also gives curious particulars of two who were burned, and four who were quartered at Turin in 1600 for this offense.[239] 'These spirits of hell,' as he calls them, indicated a wood in which they declared that they had buried a pestilential liquid intended to be used for smearing houses.

The wood was searched, and some jars were discovered.

A surgeon at the same epoch confessed to having meant to spread the plague at Mondovi.

Other persons, declaring themselves guilty of a similar intention, described a horn filled with poisonous stuff collected from the sores of plague-stricken corpses, which they had concealed outside the walls of Turin.