We possess documents relating to the trial of the Milanese _untori_, which make it clear that crimes of this sort must have been imaginary.

As in cases of witchcraft, the first accusation was founded upon gossip and delation.
The judicial proceedings were ruled by prejudice and cruelty.

Fear and physical pain extorted confessions and complicated accusations of their neighbors from multitudes of innocent people.[241] Indeed the parallel between these unfortunate smearers and no less wretched witches is a close one.

I am inclined to think that, as some crazy women fancied they were witches, so some morbid persons of this period in Italy believed in their power of spreading plague, and yielded to the fascination of malignity.

Whether such moral mad folk really extended the sphere of the pestilence to any appreciable extent remains a matter for conjecture; and it is quite certain that all but a small percentage of the accused were victims of calumny.
After taking brigandage, piracy, and pestilence into account, the decline of Italy must be attributed to other causes.