# An Examen of Witches/Notes

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Title-page. Saint Oyan de Joux.
S. Oyan or Oyand is S. Eugendus (Augendus). S. Eugendus was born circa 449 at Izernore, Ain, Franche-Comté, and died 1 January, 510, at Condat. At the age of seven he was entrusted by his father, who had become a priest, to the care of S. Romanus and S. Lupicinus of the monastery of Condat in the French Jura, and thenceforth he never left the enclosure. He led a life of great sanctity and austerity. About 496 he was elected to follow Minausius as Abbot. Immediately after his death his eminent holiness was attested by miracles, and his successor, S. Viventiolus, built a church over his tomb, which soon became a celebrated place of pilgrimage. A town arose and was named after the Saint, S. Oyan de Joux. But when S. Claude, Bishop of Besançon, resigned his diocese and retiring to Condat died in 694 (or 696) as Abbot of the monastery, the number of pilgrims who visited his shrine became so great, particularly after the solemn translation of the body of the Saint, which having been concealed from the Saracen invaders in 1260 was brought back to Condat with great pomp twelve years later, that the abbey and the town began to be more generally known as Saint-Claude, and this name has to-day quite superseded the other. However, the old Saint Oyan de Joux lingered until the seventeenth century.
​Title-page. The procedure.
This procedure or “Instruction,” which was for many decades the authoritative code used in the prosecution of witches, first appears in the Second Edition, Rouen, 1603; the Second Edition, Lyons, 1603; and Second Edition, Paris, 1603. It will be noticed that all three issues from the several cities are in each case described as “Seconde édition.”
Page xxvii. Ferdinand de Rye.
This prelate, who was born of a distinguished house in 1556, was in 1585 preconized by Sixtus V to succeed Bishop Antoine II in the see of Besançon. Unfortunately François de Grammont had been elected by the Chapter, and although their choice was at once nullified, it was not until 13 November, 1587, that Ferdinand de Rye was enthroned in his Cathedral. The following year, on 24 September, being the feast of Our Lady of Ransom, the King of Spain appointed him titular Abbot of S. Claude. This was solemnly ratified by Clement VIII. Bishop Ferdinand died at Fraisans 20 August, 1636, at the age of eighty.
Page xxxi. François de Rye.
The nephew of Bishop Ferdinand, and since 1618 Bishop-Coadjutor with right of succession. He held the see barely eight months, dying 17 April, 1637, aged seventy-one.
Page xxxii. Oddo.
“One Oddo, a Dane, a mighty Pirat, was so well learned in Magick, that he would wander at Sea without a Ship, and oft-times drowned his Enemies ships, by raising Tempests with his Charms. Wherefore, that he might not fight at Sea with Pirats, he was wont, by Witchcraft, to raise and exasperate the Winds and Waves to ​destroy them.” Olaus Magnus, A Compendious History of the Goths. Translated by J. Streater. London. 1658. Book III, c. 17 (p. 49).
Page xxxii. Huns.
“Filimer, rex Gothorum … qui et terras Scythicas cum sua gente introisse superius a nobis dictus est, reperit in populo suo quasdam magas mulieres, quas patrio sermone Haliurunas is ipse cognominat, easque habens suspectas, de medio sui proturbat, longeque ab exercitu suo fugatas in solitudinem, coegit errare. Quas spiritus immundi per eremum uagantes dum uidissent, et earum in complexibus in coitu miscuissent, genus hoc ferocissimum edidere…. Tali ergo Hunni stirpe creati, Gothorum finibus aduenere. Jordanes, De Getarum siue Gothorum origine, xxiv, ed. C. A. Closs, Stuttgart, 1861 (pp. 93–94).
Page xxxii. Haakon.
Olaus Magnus, Book III, c. 18 (London, 1658, p. 49). “Haguinus, King of Norway, when he was to fight against the Danes, he raised a storm by Witchcraft, and so beat upon the Enemies heads, with Hail-stones of an unusual greatness, that their Eyes were hurt as with arrows from the Clouds, and they could not see, the Elements fighting more against them, than the Enemy.”
Page xxxii. Xerxes.
The land forces of Xerxes, says Herodotus (vii, 6i, sqq.), contained forty-six nations. Upon his march he received further accessions of strength, and when he reached Thermopylae the land and sea forces amounted to 2,641,610 fighting men. This does not include the attendants, the slaves, the crews of the provision ships, and others, which according to the reckoning of Herodotus ​exceeded in numbers the actual warriors. Even if it be supposed that the tally was equal, the total figure of the army of Xerxes at Thermopylae is 5,283,220. It must be remembered that his forces were the result of a maximum of effort throughout a vast empire, and that provisions had been stored for three years before all along the line of march.
Page xxxii. Trois-eschelles.
See The Geography of Witchcraft by Montague Summers, c. v, pp. 398–9 and 426. Bodin, Démonomanie, IV, 5 (ed. Lyons, 1593, p. 509), has: “Trois-eschelles dist au Roy Charles IX, qu’il y en alloit plus de trois cens mille [Sorciers] en ce Royaume.” Charles IX reigned 1560–74.
Page xxxiv. Saul.
I Kings (A.V., I Samuel), xv, 22–23: “And Samuel said: Doth the Lord desire holocausts and victims, and not rather that the voice of the Lord should be obeyed? For obedience is better than sacrifices: and to hearken rather than to offer the fat of rams. Because it is like the sin of witchcraft, to rebel: and like the crime of idolatry, to refuse to obey.”
Page xxxv. God … threatened.
E.g. Leviticus, xx, 6: “The soul that shall go aside after magicians, and soothsayers, and shall commit fornication with them, I will set my face against that soul, and destroy it out of the midst of its people.” Ibid. xx, 27: “A man, or woman, in whom there is a pythonical or divining spirit, dying let them die: they shall stone them: their blood be upon them.” Malachias, iii, 5: “And I will come to you in judgement, and will be a speedy witness against sorcerers, ​and adulterers, and false swearers.” II Paralipomenon (A.V., II Chronicles), xxxiii, 6, of Manasses: “And he made his sons to pass through the fire in the valley of Benennom: he observed dreams, followed divinations, gave himself up to magic arts, had with him magicians and enchanters: and he wrought many evils before the Lord, to provoke him to anger.”
Page xxxvii. Emperor.
Suetonius, Caligula, xxx: “Insensus turbae fauenti aduersus studium suum exclamauit: Utinam populus Romanus unam ceruicem haberet.” The phrase is often said to be Nero’s, but Seneca and Dio Cassius agree with Suetonius in attributing it to Caligula, Dio, lix: Καὶ ποτὲ παντὶ τῷ δήμῳ ἀπειλῶν εἴπεν: εἴθε ἕνα αὐχένα εἴχετε. Seneca, De Ira, iii. 19: “Qui optabat, ut populus Romanus unam ceruicem haberet, ut scelera sua tot locis, ac temporibus diducta, in unum ictum, et unum diem cogeret.”
Preface, xxxix. People who do not believe that there are witches.
The authority of the Malleus Maleficarum distinctly proves that a “belief that there are such beings as witches is so essential a part of the Catholic faith that obstinately to maintain the opposite opinion savours of heresy.” Part I, Question 1.
Preface, xli. Grilland.
Pauli Grillandi Castellionis, Tractatus duo de Sortilegiis et Lamiis. Lyons, 1533; 1536; Frankfort, 1590; and other editions.
Preface, xlii. The Psalmist.
Psalm lxxxv, 9: Quoniam magnus es tu, et faciens mirabilia: tu es Deus solus.
​Preface, xlvi. The Inquisition.
I.e. Malleus Maleficarum.
Preface, xlvi. Bodin.
Jean Bodin, 1530–96. The famous De la Démonomanie des Sorciers, first issued in 1580, Paris, was several times reprinted, the last edition being Rouen, 1604. There are Latin (1590), German (1581), and Italian (1587) translations. Of Bodin’s Le fleau des démons et sorciers there are editions 1616 and 1626.
Preface, xlvi. Remy.
Nicolas Remy, 1554–c. 1600. His Dæmonolatreia appeared in 1595 (Lyons), and was very frequently reprinted. One of the latest, if not the last, edition is Hamburg, 1698. There is a German translation of 1598. Another translation was printed at Hamburg in 1693. For a full account of Remy see the Introduction to the English translation of Dæmonolatreia in the present series.
Preface, xlvi. Binsfeld.
Peter Binsfeld, one of the most important names in the history of witchcraft, was born c. 1540, and died 1603. His Tractatus de Confessionibus Maleficorum, Trèves, 1589, which ran into many editions, is regarded as of high authority. For fuller details see the Introduction to the translation of the Tractatus in this series.
Page 8. Royal Prophet.
Psalm viii, 3: “Ex ore infantium et lactentium perfecisti laudem propter inimicos tuos, ut destruas inimicum et ultorem.” Quoted by Our Lord, S. Matthew, xxi, 16.
Page 8. Pope Paul IV.
Giovanni Pietro Caraffa, born 28 June, 1476: elected 23 May, 1555; died 18 August, 1559.
​Page 9. S. Paul.
I Corinthians, v, 1–5. “Omnino auditur inter uos fornicatio, et talis fornicatio qualis nec inter gentes, ita ut uxorem patris sui aliquis habeat. Et uos inflati estis: et non magis luctum habuistis ut tollatur de medio uestrum qui hoc opus fecit. Ego quidem absens corpore, praesens autem spiritu, iam iudicaui ut praesens, eum, qui sic operatus est. In nomine Domini nostri Iesu Christi, congregatis uobis et meo spiritu, cum uirtute Domini nostri Iesu, Tradere huiusmodi satanae in interitum carnis, ut spiritus saluus sit in die Domini nostri Iesu Christi.” And I Timothy, i, 20: “Hymenaeus, et Alexander: quos tradidi satanae, ut discant non blasphemare.”
Page 9. Psalm.
lxxvii. (A.V. 78) 49: “Misit in eos iram indignationis suae: indignationem et iram, et tribulationem: immissiones per angelos malos.”
Page 9. Benedicti.
Jean Benedicti, the celebrated Franciscan theologian of the sixteenth century, belonged to the Observantine Province of Tours and Poitiers. He arose to high office, being commissary-general of the French and visitor of many Italian provinces. His Somme des pechez et le reméde d’iceux, first published at Lyons in 1584, was many times reprinted. La triomphante victoire de la Vierge Marie sur sept Esprits malins, finalment chassés du corps d’une femme dan I’Eglise des Cordeliers de Lyon, Lyons, 1611, relates the case of Perrenette Pinay, who was exorcized and freed from a most grievous demoniac possession.
Page 9. Thyræus.
Peter Thyræus, S.J., of Neuss, was Professor of Theology at Mainz. The important work to ​which reference is here made is his Daemoniaci, hoc est de obsessis a spiritibus Daemoniorum hominibus, Cologne, 1594. There are reprints, Lyons, 1603; Cologne, 1604; and Lyons, 1626.
Page 9. Simon Magus.
Peter Thyræus, Daemoniaci, Pars I, c. xvi, 199, writes: “Refert Anastasius Nicaenus, quaestione 23, Simonem Magum eos, qui ipsum praestigiatorem dicerent, Daemonibus subiecisse.”
Page 9. Eighty girls and women.
This affair, which caused a great sensation, commenced in the reign of Julius III, continued during the short pontificate of Marcellus II (9–30 April, 1555), and was prolonged until the days of Paul IV. The possessed were exorcized by a Benedictine monk belonging to the household of Cardinal Pierre de Gondi, Bishop of Paris, and it is recorded that the demons proved particularly stubborn and obstinate, so powerful were the Hebrew sorcerers at work.
Page 9. Cook.
The woman’s name was Elsa Kamer. Both she and her mother, a notorious witch of long continuance, were executed.
Page 9. Caron.
Loys Charondas Le Caron, born at Paris 1530; died 1617.
Page 10. Fernel.
Jean Fernel, “le Galien moderne,” born at Clermont-en-Beauvoisis (or at Montdidier) in 1497. He was the Chief Physician to Henry II and Diane de Poitiers. Dr. Sauecrotte thus describes Fernel: “Il était professeur éloquent, écrivain non moins élégant que disert, artiste en l’art d’éxposer et d’enchaîner avec lucidité les doctrines qu’il conciliait.”
​Page 10. St. Claude.
The shrine of St. Claude was visited by many pilgrims of the highest rank, such as Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, who went there in 1369, 1376 and 1382: Philip the Good in 1422, 1442 and 1443; Charles the Rash in 1461; Louis XI in 1456 and 1482; Blessed Amadeus, Duke of Savoy, in 1471. In 1500 Anne of Brittany, wife of Louis XII, made a pilgrimage of thanksgiving to the shrine in gratitude for the birth of her daughter Claude. Unhappily in March, 1794, the sacred body of St. Claude was burned by order of the revolutionaries.
Page 12. S. Gregory.
Dialogues, I. iv.
Page 13. Thyræus.
Daemoniaci, II, c. 32: “In huius Capitis ingressu B. Hieronymi, superiori Capite allatam constituimus sententiam. Quae causa est, inquit, ut saepe bimuli trimuliue, et ubera materna lactantes a daemonio corripiantur? Inuisibilia haec inscrutabili altissimi Dei iudicio sunt relinquenda.”
Page 14. Hierarchy.
S. Gregory the Great (Hom. xxxiv. in Euangel.) says: “We know on the authority of Scripture that there are nine Choirs of Angels: Angels, Archangels, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Dominations, Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim.” S. Thomas (Summa, I, Q. cviii), following S. Dionysius, De Caelesti Hierarchia, vi and vii, divides the Angels into three hierarchies, each of which comprises three orders.
Page 15. Cacarchy.
κακαρχία.
Page 15. Peter Lombard.
The “Master of the Sentences,” c. 1100–c. 1160–64. His famous Book of Sentences was ​written 1145–51. In a long series of questions the author covers practically the whole body of theological doctrine, writing it in one systematized whole.
Page 15. Thyræus.
Daemoniaci, I, 12, says: “Cum igitur ex bonorum Angelorum numero et classibus spiritus nequam deciderint, etiam inter ipsos aliquis erit ordo, et procul dubio is ipsus, qui antequam ad suas miserias prolapsi sunt, fuit.”
Page 15. Behemoth.
Bodin in his Démonomanie, I, 1, says: “Il semble que Dieu a creé ce grand Satan au commencement du monde, que l’escripture appelle Behemoth, et Leviathan; car l’escripture saincte dit, Is prima rerum origine a Deo conditus est.” Job, xl and xli.
Page 15. Flagellum Daemonum.
This famous work is by Girolamo Menghi, a Capuchin of Valmontone. It first appeared Venice, 1599, and was reprinted as late as 1708. Flagellum Daemonum, exorcismos terribiles, potentissimos et efficaces … in malignos spiritus … complectens … Accessit postremo pars secunda quae Fustis daemonum inscribitur.
Page 15. Binsfeld.
De Confessionibus Maleficorum. III. Decima Conclusio. “Magi uirtute diabolica possunt aliquando Daemones cogere, et e suis sedibus expellere.”
Page 15. Nider.
John Nider, O.P., born in Swabia, 1380; died at Colmar, 13 August, 1438. As a theologian he adheres closely to S. Thomas. His Formicarius, an encyclopædic treatise, which may be dated 1435–37, was first printed about 1500. ​There are many subsequent editions. Strassburg, 1517; Paris, 1519; Douai, 1602; Helmstadt, 1692. The last Book, V, deals with witchcraft and sorcery, and is continually cited by the demonologists as of the first authority.
Page 16. Ezekiel.
Chapter vii. The prophet writes; “The spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heaven, and brought me in the vision of God into Jerusalem.” Here he beheld the secret sorceries of the seventy men of the ancients of the house of Israel who were worshipping with incense the frescoed animals and creeping things more Aegyptiano. He was also shown the women who wept and wailed for Adonis in the north porch of the temple. The rites of Adonis, moreover, were intimately connected with the practices of the Kedeshim. Boguet is mistaken in saying that Ezechiel was transported to Azotus (Ashdod), and he is perhaps thinking of S. Philip diaconus, who was carried away to Azotus after the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch. Acts viii, 26–40.
Page 17. Tobias.
Tobias was accompanied by the Archangel S. Raphael.
Page 17. Two Angels who visited Lot.
The appearances of Angels in the Old Testament often present points of some complexity with reference to the personality of the Being who was manifested. The earlier Fathers tell us that on certain occasions Almighty God Himself appeared, as in the bush to Moses, and on Mt. Sinai, whilst Tertullian saw some foreshadowing—as it were—of the Incarnation, and many of the Eastern Fathers follow the ​same line of thought. It would seem that the three Angels who visited Abraham were an actual Theophany, for the narrative implies that the Supreme Being remained when the two departed. Yet it is probable that two Angels visited Lot. The whole incident is one of extraordinary difficulty. Vandenbroeck, Dissertatio Theologica de Theophaniis sub Ueteri Testamento, Louvain, 1851, may be consulted with profit.
Page 17. Augustus Cæsar.
An account of the many and very early legends that make Augustus Cæsar one of the “prophets of Christ” may be found in Graf, Roma nella memoria e nelle immaginazioni del Medio Evo, Turin, 1882, I, ix. 308, 331.
Page 17. Pope Leo.
Pope S. Leo I, 440–61.
Page 18. Spina.
Bartolomeo Spina, O.P., whose Quaestio de strigibus et lamiis, Venice, 1523, was widely esteemed and often reprinted. This celebrated theologian was born at Pisa about 1475, and rose to high honours in his Order. In July 1542 he was made Master of the Sacred Palace by Paul III. He died at Rome in 1546.
Page 18. Pliny.
Lib. VII. Ep. 27: “Ego ut esse credam, in primis eo ducor, quod audio accidisse Curtio Rufo. Tenuis adhuc et obscurus obtinenti Africam comes haeserat: inclinato die spatiabatur in porticu: offertur ei mulieris figura humana grandior pulchriorque: perterrito, Africam se, futurorum praenuntiam, dixit: iturum enim Romam, honoresque gesturum, atque etiam cum summo imperio in eandem prouinciam ​reuersurum, ibique moriturum. Facta sunt omnia. Praeterea accidenti Carthaginem, egredientique nauem, eadem figura in litore occurrisse narratur.”
Page 18. Boethius.
Hector Boece, chronicler, and one of the founders of Aberdeen University, 1465–1536. The impetus he gave to historical studies at Aberdeen was of lasting effect. His works are highly esteemed.
Scotorum Historiae, VIII.—I have used the first edition, 1526, where this story and other similar adventures may be read, folios cliv-v. “In Gareotha regione, uico quatuordeum uix passuū millibus ab Aberdonia, adolescēs multa formositate, coram Aberdonen̄ antistite questus est palam, sese a de͛mone Succuba (vt dicunt) gratissima omniū quȩ uidisset forma, multo antea menses infestatum eandē occlusis foribus noctu ad si ingredi blanditiis, in sui amplexus cōpellere. Dubia luce abiri sine strepitu poene, nullo se posse modo quū plures attentasset a tāta, actā turpi uesania liberari. Iubet cōtinus optimus episcopus adolescētē, alio se cōferre, & vt christiana religiōe magis laudatis, ieiuniis & oronibus plus solito accōmodaret uim: fore vt piis operibus incēto, uictus cacodȩmon tādē terga esset datums. Euenit adolescēti salubre cōsiliū religiose exequuto, paucos post dies vti uenerādus antistes erat pfatus.”
Page 19. Agrippa.
The story is found in Paulus Jovius, Elogia Doctorum Uirorum, c. 101. See my History of Witchcraft, p. 103. Weyer, De Magis Infamibus, V. 11 and 12, relates the circumstance. Opera omnia, 1670, pp. 110–11: “Silentio inuolui ​diutius … non patiar quod in diuersis aliquot scriptoribus legerim, diabolum forma canis ad extremum Agrippae halitum comitem ipsi fuisse, et postea nescio quibus modis euanuisse…. Canem hunc nigrum mediocris staturae, Gallico nomine Monsieur (quod Dominum sonat) nuncupatum noui ego … at uere naturalis erat canis masculus … causam autem huic falsae opinioni dedisse opinor, partim quod canem hunc pueriliter nimis amaret (ut sunt quorundam hominum mores) oscularetur plerumque, aliquando et a latere hunc sibi admoueret in mensa.”
Page 19. Abdias.
A collection of “Acts of the Apostles” which was formed, probably by a monk, in the Frankish Church in the sixth century by a mistake concerning the authorship was under the title Historia Certaminis Apostolorum ascribed to Abdias, who is said to have been a disciple of the Apostles and first Bishop of Babylon. The nucleus of this collection was formed by the Latin Passiones of those Apostles concerning whom there were no Gnostic or semi-Gnostic legenda, that is, SS. James Major and Minor, Philip, Bartholomew, Simon, and Jude. Amongst many accretions there is a very early tradition to be found, and it is believed historical truth.
Page 19. Agnan.
“Ou Agnian, démon qui tourmente les Américains par des apparitions et des méchancetés. Il se montre surtout au Brésil et chez les Topinamboux. Il parait sous toutes sortes de formes, de façon que ceux qui veulent le voir peuvent le rencontrer partout.” Collin de Plancy, Dictionnaire Infernal (6me ed.), Paris, 1863.
​Page 20. Black.
It is very commonly held that this colour, especially in certain circumstances, is unlucky. Cf. Heywood, The Fair Maid of the West, 4to, 1631. Part I, Act IV, scene 2:
Besse. Then first, you said your ship was trim and gay: Ile have her pitcht all ore, no spot of white, No colour to be seene, no saile but blacke, No flag but sable. No flag but sable.Goodlache. Twill be ominous, And bode disaster fortune. And bode disaster fortune.Besse. Ile ha’ it so. Goodlache. Why then she shall be pitcht blacke as the devil. Besse. She shall be call’d The Negro.
Page 20. Psellus.
“Daemones … impetum in animalia nonnulla faciunt … quia mirum in modum animali calore capiantur. Nam cum in profundissimis locis uersentur, quae frigida extreme siccaque sunt, sit ut multum frigiditatis sibi contrahant, qua quidem contracti atque afflicti, humidum at animalem calorem appetunt, quo ut potiantur, in bruta quoque animalia insiliunt, et in balnea concauaque loca penetrant. Ignis enim solisque calorem, quia urit et exsiccat, auersantur: animalem uero, tanquam humiditati temperatum, libenter amplexantur, maximeque hominum, congruum quidem ilium et temperatum.” Michaelis Pselli, De Operatione daemonum Dialogus, Latin translation by Petus Morellus, Paris, 1615, pp. 52 and 55.
Page 21. Cardan.
Sorcerers could often be distinguished by their foul and fetid odour. In the patois of the Pyrenees wizards were commonly known as ​poudouès and witches poudouèros, both words being derived from putere, which signifies to have an evil smell. See my History of Witchcraft, pp. 44–45.
Page 24. Renunciation.
For this abjuration of the Catholic Faith as noted by Francesco-Maria Guazzo in his authoritative Compendium Maleficarum, see my History of Witchcraft, c. iii, pp. 81–82.
Page 24. Bodin.
In his Démonomanie, II, c. iv, Bodin says: “Les plus detestables Sorciers, sont ceux, qui renoncent à Dieu, et à son service.” Lambert Daneau (English translation, A Dialogue of Witches) writes: “He commaundeth them to forswere God theyr creator and all his power, promising perpetually to obey and worship him, who then standeth in their presence.” De Lancre, Tableau de l’Inconstance des Mauvais Anges, Livre II, Discours 1 (ed. Paris, 1612, p. 74}, tells us that a neophyte was told it was necessary “qu’il renonce & renie son Sauueur, la Vierge Marie, les saincts & sainctes de Paradis, son baptesme, le sainct chresme, le ciel & la Terre, & particulierement son pere confesseur, ses pere & mere, parrain & marraine, & autres parens.”
Page 25. Rebaptised.
Remy, Dæmonolatreia, III, vi: “Non desunt & qui se iterum sacramento initiali expiari postulent, rati se ea ratione in Christi familiam rursus cooptari posse.” It may be worth remarking that the Sacrament of Baptism cannot, of course, be repeated. The Sacrament validly administered impresses an ineffaceable character on the soul, which the Tridentine Fathers call a spiritual and indelible mark—S. Thomas treats ​of the nature of this indelible seal in the Summa, III. Q. lxiii, a. 2.
Page 25. Chrism.
This is actually a mixture of oil of olives and balsam, blessed by a bishop in an especial manner, and used in the administration of certain Sacraments, particularly Confirmation (as also Baptism and Holy Orders).
Page 25. St. Cyril.
S. Cyril of Jerusalem, c. 315–86.
Page 25. Jesus Christ.
It is held by great theologians such as S. Thomas, Summa, III. Q. lxxii, a. 4, and Suarez, De Confessione, D. xxxiii, and is indeed humanly certain that chrism was immediately instituted by Our Lord Himself.
Page 25. Fabian.
Pope S. Fabian, 236–50.
Page 26. Cold.
A Belgian witch, Digna Robert, in 1565, said that the devil “était froid dans tous ses membres.” At the North Berwick Sabbat in 1590, “he caused all the company to com and kiss his ers quhilk they said was cauld lyk yce.” In 1661 a Forfar witch “Katheren Porter confesseth that the divill tooke hir by the hand, that his hand was cold.” In 1662 Isabel Rutherford “confesst that ye was at ane meeting at Turfhills, where Sathan took you by the hand and said ‘welcome Isabel,’ and said that his hand was cold.” Margaret Litster of the same coven spoke of “Sattan having grey clothes and his hand cold.” In 1697 Thomas Lindsay, a boy, gave witness that “Jean Fulton his Grand-Mother awaked him one Night out of his Bed, and caused him to take a Black Grimm Gentleman (as she called him) by the Hand; which he felt to be cold.”
​Page 26. Of the voice of demons.
The demon who presided at the meetings or synagogues of the Vaudois spoke “uoce rauca.” J. Friedrich, La Vauderye, Munich, 1898, p. 188. Remy, Dæmonolatreia, I, viii, says of demons: “nec adeo feliciter humanam uocem imitantur, quin ficta, ementitaque audientibus facile appareat. Nicolaea Ganatia, Eua Hesoletia, Iana Nigra Armacuriana, ac pluraque aliae uocem illis esse aiunt, qualem emittunt, qui os in dolium, aut testam rimosam insertum habent.”
Page 27. Black ram.
In the case of Guillaume Edeline, who was condemned in 1453, “Confessa ledit sire Guillaume, de sa bonne et franche voulenté, avoir fait hommage audit ennemy en l’espéce et semblance d’ung mouton, en le baisant par le fondement au signe de révérence et d’hommage.” De Lancre tells us that the witch Silvain Nevillon, when on his trial at Orleans, in 1614, “dit qu’il a veu le Diable en plusieurs façons, tantost comme vn bouc, ores comme vn gros mouton.”
Page 28. Fulgosus.
Baptista Fregoso, an Italian writer of the fifteenth century.
Page 28. Rook.
This is from Suetonius, Domitian, xxiii: “Ante paucos quam occideretur menses, cornix in Capitolio locuta est, ἔσται πάντα καλῶς. Nec defuit qui ostentum sic interpretaretur:
Nuper Tarpeio quae sedit culmine cornix, Est bene, non potuit dicere: dixit, Erit.
Page 28. Cœlius Rhodiginus.
Lodovico Ricchieri, the famous Italian philologist, surnamed Rhodiginus from Rovigo (Rhodigium), where he was born about 1450, and where he died in 1525. His Antiquarum ​lectionum, lib. xvi, was published at Venice, folio, 1516; Paris, folio, 1517. A more complete edition, comprising thirty books, was issued under the care of Camillo Ricchieri and Goretti at Bale, folio, 1550. I have used the folio Geneva edition of 1620.
Page 28. Vair.
Leonardo Vairo (or Vair), born at Benevento, of Spanish descent, c. 1540; Bishop of Pozzuoli, where he died in 1603. His De Fascino, Libri III, Paris, 1583; Venetiis apud Aldum, 1589, is a work of singular erudition.
Page 29. Of the copulation of the Devil.
A phallic orgy was an essential part of the Sabbat. At the nocturnal synagogues of the Vaudois the presiding demon—or he who filled the copulation devil’s office—took aside the neophyte, “trahit ad partem in nemore receptam, ut eam suo modo amplexetur et cognoscat carnaliter, cui ex malicia dicit, quod iaceat super terram in facie ad duas manus et pedes, et quod ei aliter non potest copulari, et in quacumque forma fruitur presidens, tacto primo per receptam membro presidentis, quod sepius frigidum et molle indicat, ut sepius totum corpus. Primo immittit in portam naturalem et relinquit sperma corruptum et croceum susceptum in pollucione nocturna aut alias, secundo in locum egestionis, et ita inordinate abutitur.” Upon her return to the company, “recepta transit ante refectionem in copulam carnalem alicuius hominis.” After a banquet the torches are extinguished and “quisque suam ad partem trahit et carnaliter cognoscit. Nonnunquam uero excessus indicibiles commictuntur in commutacionibus mulierum, iussu presidentis, de transitu de muliere in ​mulierem et de uiro in uirum; de abusu contra naturam mulierum inuicem, et similiter uirorum inter se; aut mulieris cum uiro extra uas debitum et ad partem aliam…. Uir uero cum dyabola aut mulier cum daemone nullam experitur delectacionem, sed ex timore et obediencia consentit in copulam…. In secunda autem congregacione ipsa mulier recepta cognoscitur carnaliter a demone familiari ac sollicitatore, modo quo prius a presidente, et non amplius a demone in aliis congregacionibus sequentibus, nisi cum propter paucitatem uirorum ad complendum copulas (quum ut plurimum plures sunt ibi mulieres, quam uiri) demones in copulis supplent uices uirorum, sicuti interdum, sed raro, uti pauciores sunt mulieres, supplecio fit per dyabolas, et ita sepius in aliis congregacionibus, preter duas primas congregaciones, in quorum prima in reditu a presidente, post receptionem ad congregacionem, cognoscitur a dyabola: est tamen reperire, sed raro, quod uir aliquis semper habet dyabolam in copula, et est signum maxime nequicia in eo, et similiter aliqua mulier semper in omnibus congregacionibus habet uirum uel demonem.” J. Friedrich, La Vauderye, Munich, 1898, pp. 188–89. De Lancre, Tableau de l’Inconstance, III, Discours V, says: “Or cette operation de luxure n’est commise ou pratiquee par eux pour plaisir qu’ils y prēnent, parce que comme simples Esprits, ils ne peuuent prendre aucune joye ny plaisir des choses sensibles. Mais ils le font seulement pour faire choir l’homme dans le precipice dans lequel ils sont, qui est la disgrace de Dieu tres-haut & tres-puissant.” He also records definite confessions: “Iohannes d’Aguerre, diet que le Diable en ​forme de bouc auoit son membre au derriere & cognoissoit les femmes en agitent & poussant auec iceluy contre leur deuant. Marie de Marigrane aagee de quinze ans habitante de Biarrix diet, Qu’elle a veu souuent le Diable s’accoupler auec vne infinité de femmes qu’elle nomme par nom & surnom: & que sa coutume est de cognoistre les belles pardeuant & les laides tout au rebours.” It is certain from the detailed and overwhelming evidence of all countries that the copulation of the Devil or the Grand-Master of the Sabbat with the witches was no morbid hallucination but an actual and achieved fact. As the Platonist Dr. Henry More says: “Witches confessing, so frequently as they do, that the Devil lies with them, and withal complaining of his tedious and offensive coldness, it is a shrewd presumption that he doth lie with them indeed, and that it is not a meer Dream.” The Salmanticenses in the authoritative Theologia Moralls, Tr. xxi. c. 11, p. 10, nn. 180, 181, lay down: “Some deny this, believing it impossible that demons should perform the carnal act with human beings. None the less the opposite opinion is most certain, and must be followed.”
Page 31. Cold.
The coldness of the Devil and the repeated assertion at the trials that his semen was nipping and gelid would seem to point to the use upon occasion of an artificial penis. “In many of the cases of debauchery at Sabbats so freely and fully confessed by the witches, their partners were undoubtedly the males who were present; the Grand Master, Officer, or President of the Assembly, exercising the right to select first for his own pleasures such women as he chose…. ​Yet when we sift the evidence, detailed and exact, of the trials, we find there foul and hideous mysteries of lust which neither human intercourse nor the employ of a mechanical property can explain. Howbeit, the theologians and the inquisitors are fully aware what unspeakable horror lurks in the blackness beyond.” See my History of Witchcraft, c. iii, pp. 97—101. Mother Bush of Barton in 1649 said that the Devil who visited her as a young black man “was colder than man, and heavier, and could not performe nature as man.” In 1662 Isobel Gowdie and Janet Breadheid of Auldearne described the Devil as “a meikle, blak, roch man, werie cold; and I fand his nature als cold within me as spring-well-water.” “He is abler for us that way than any man can be,” said Isobel, “onlie he was heavie lyk a malt-sek; a hudg nature, verie cold, as yce.”
Page 31. A good finger’s length.
“Margueritte fille de Sare aagee de seize à dixsept ans, depose que le Diable, soit qu’il ayt la forme d’homme, ou qu’il soit en forme de Bouc, a tousiours vn membre de mulet, ayant chosy en imitation celuy de cet animal comme le mieux pourueu: Qu’il l’a long & gros comme le bras: que quand il veut cognoistre quelque fille on femme au sabbat comme il faict presque â chasque assemblee, il faict paroistre quelque forme de lict de foye, sur lequel il faict semblant de les coucher, qu’elles n’y prenent poinct de desplaisir, comme ont diet ces premieres: Et que iamais il ne paroist au sabbat en quelque action que ce soit, qu’il n’ait tousiours son instrumēt dehors, de cette belle forme & mesure: Tout à rebours de ce que diet Boguet, que celles de son ​pais ne luy ont veu guiere plus long que le doigt & gros simplement à proportion: Si bien que les sorcieres de Labourt sont mieux seruies de Satan que celles de la Franche Comité.” De Lancre, Tableau de l’Inconstance, III, Discours v.
Page 31. Woman in travail.
“Marie de Marigrane fille de Biarrix aagee de quinze ans dict, Qu’il semble que ce Mauveais Demon ayt son membre my-party, moitié de fer, moitié de chair tout de son long, & de mesme les genitoires, & depose l’auoir veu en cette forme plusieurs fois au sabbat: & outre ce l’auoir ouy dire à des femmes que Satan auoit cognues: Qu’il faict crier comme des femmes qui sont en mal d’enfant: & qu’il tient tousiours son membre dehors.
“Petry de Linarse dict, Que le Diable a le membre faict de corne, ou pour le moins il en a l’apparence: e’est pourquoy il faict tant crier les femmes.” Ibid. Francis Hutchinson in his Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft, Second edition, London, 1720 (pp. 42–43), tells us that in 1594 Jeanne Bosdeau, a witch of Bordeaux, confessed that on the Eve of S. John (23 June) she accompanied an Italian necromancer who had debauched her long before to a field, where, after he had conjured from a black book, “there appeared a great Black Goat with a Candle between his Horns…. He had carnal Knowledge of her, which was with great Pain.”
Page 32. A dog or a cat.
A Scotch witch confessed that “the Devil gaive hir his markis; and went away from her in the liknes of ane blak doug.” (Pitcairn, III, p. 601.) Also: “He wold haw carnall dealing with us in ​the shap of a deir, or in any vther shap, now and then. Somtym he vold be lyk a stirk, a bull, a deir, a rae, or a dowg, etc. and haw dealling with us” (Ibid., III, pp. 611, 613). Margaret Hamilton was thus indicted: “Yow … had carnall cowpulatiown with the devil in the lyknes of ane man, bot he removed from yow in the lyknes of ane black dowg.” Bodin, Démonomanie, III, 6, relates, “il aduint au Monastere du Mont de Hesse en Allemaigne, que les Religieuses furent daemoniaques: & voiot on sur leurs licts des chiens qui attendoient impudiquement celles qui estoient suspectes d’en auoir abusé, & commis le peché qu’ils appellent le peché muet.” Peccatum Mutum is the name given by Gregorio Lopez, O.P., Bishop of Basilia, to sodomy, because he says it is so shocking to honest ears that it is wrong to speak of it. And Ludovico Maria Sinistrari is of opinion that sodomia perfecta may be committed between women, not in all cases, but in some. He is inclined to believe that Philaenis first practised this lewdness. And in the work commonly attributed to Aloisia Sigaea, Colloquium II, may be read: “Philaenis uero, quod huic uoluptati indulgeret perditissime, inuenisse credita est; et usu suo, quae scilicet magni nominis erat, inauditae ad suam aetatem, uoluptati usum feminis puellisque apud suos suasisse.”
Page 32. A natural dog.
Dr. Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. V, Erotic Symbolism, iv, speaking of congress between women and animals says, “When among women in civilisation animal perversions appear, the animals is nearly always a pet dog.” Several cases are ​discussed, and there is reference to other authorities (Bloch, Beiträge zur Aetiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis; Maschka; Irving Rosse) who state that these conjunctions are not an infrequent exhibition given by prostitutes in certain brothels. Mantegazza, Gli Amori degli Uomini, V. may be further consulted on the subject.
Page 32. Pasiphaë.
Ovid, De Arte Amandi, I, 280–96, 323–26:
Forte sub umbrosis nemorosae uallibus Idae Candidus armenti gloria taurus erat; Signatus tenui media inter cornua nigro. Una fuit labes; cetera lactis erant. Ilium Gnosiadesque Cydoneaeque iuuencae Optarunt tergo sustinuisse suo. Pasiphae fieri gaudebat adultera tauri: Inuida formosas oderat ilia boues…. Et modo se Europen fieri, modo postulat Io: Altera quod bos est; altera uecta boue. Hanc tamen impleuit uacca deceptus acerna Dux gregis: et partu proditus auctor erat.
Page 33. Fauns.
See Sinistrari, Demoniality (Fortune Press, 1927) where these questions are most learnedly discussed in detail.
Page 33. Vair.
There is a French translation of Vair’s De incantationibus, Trois livres des charmes, sorcelages, ov enchantemens…. Faits en latin par Leonard Pair et mis en François par Iulian Bardon, Angeuin. Paris, 1583, 8vo.
Page 33. Satyrs.
Called by Pliny, Historia Naturalis, vii, 2, “pernicissimum animal.”
​Page 34. Egeria.
Ovid, Fasti, III, 275–6 has:
Egeria est, quae praebet aquas, Dea grata Camoenis. Illa Numae coniunx consiliumque fuit.
And Juvenal, III, 12–13, writes:
Hic, ubi nocturnae Numa constituebat amicae Nunc sacri fontis nemus …
Upon this Grangaeus glosses: “Numa Pompilius, maximus ille Romanorum idololatra, nocturnum connubium et colloquium se habere simulabat cum Ægeria nympha, religionis causa.” Upon constituebat Dorleans has a note: “Legendum puto, nocturna Numa constertebat amica. Id est, ubi cum amica Egeria simul dormiebat.”
Page 35. Pregnant by him.
In 1652, during their trial at Maidstone, “Anne Ashby, Anne Martyn, and one other of their Associates, pleaded that they were with child pregnant, but confessed it was not by any man, but by the Divell.”
A Prodigious and Tragicall History of the Arraignment, Tryall, Confession, and Condemnation of six Witches at Maidstone in Kent, at the Assizes there held in July, Fryday 30, this present year, 1652. London, 1652.
Page 35. Merlin.
Boece, Scotorum Historiae, folio 1526, VIII, says: “Constans tum fama erat, Merlinū incubi, ac nobilis Britānici sanguinis foeminae cōcubitu, p̃gnatū, magicis carminibus malos dȩmones ad colloquia excire: & ex his quȩ futura essent cognoscere.”
There is an old romance of Merlin: Sensuyt le p̃mier volume de Merlin. Qui est le premier liure de la Table ronde. Avec plusiers choses ​moult recreatiue. P. le Noir, Paris, 1528. Here the demons, alarmed at the number of men who have escaped them since the Birth of Our Lord, hold a council of war and resolve to send to the world one of their company to engender upon some virgin a child. He shall be their vicegerent upon earth, and (salua reuerentia) according to their schemes endeavour to counteract the Redemption. The fiend deputed to this work obtains admittance into the house of a wealthy Briton, and true to his nature slays his host, seducing two of the three daughters. The youngest resists, but whilst in an enchanted sleep is swived by the devil. Witless of what has occurred she confesses to a holy hermit, Blaise, who protects her. She gives birth to Merlin, who is instantly baptized by Blaise, and thus the devil’s designs are frustrated. Cf. James Huneker’s tale, Antichrist; Visionaries, 1905.
One may compare Machiavelli’s Belphegor, and the Oriental Saga of the angels Harut and Marut, in the commentators on (Sura, 11, 96) the Qu’ran. In the Chronicle of Philippe Moustres, Bishop of Tournai, a diabolical origin is attributed to Eleonora of Aquitaine, who espoused Louis-le-Jeune, King of France, and afterwards was wedded to Henry II of England. J. Brompton (Hist. Franc., XIII, 215) has preserved a similar legend, and in the Livre de Badouin (p. 13) Comtesse Jeanne de Flandre is supposed to be a daughter of the evil spirit. See Reiffenberg, Introduction to the Chronicle of Philippe de Moustres, p. lxviii.
With regard to Merlin one may consult Die Sagen von Merlin … by San Marte (A. Schulz), Halle, 8vo. 1853; and Slavianskia Shazania o ​Solomenye i Kitrovrase i Zapadnya legendy o Morolfe i Merline, by A. Vesselovsky, S. Petersburg, 1872.
William Rowley’s The Birth of Merlin, or the Childe hath found his Father, not printed until 1662, and once ascribed to Shakespeare, is a curious medley of farce and romance, awkward, but not wholly destitute of poetry. Herein the Devil appears as Merlin’s father. He has got Joan Go-Too’t, the Clown’s sister, with child, and Merlin is born amid thunder and lightning. But Merlin, rebuking his father, who dubs him “Traitor to hell!” as “an inferior lustful Incubus, Taking advantage of the wanton Flesh,” encloses him in a rock, and conveys his mother to a secure retreat.
An ancient authority is the Chronica of John Nauclerus, volumen secundum, generatio xv. “Inuentus est tum adolescens dictus Merlinus, cuius mater confessa est se a spiritu in specie hominis concepisse, hoc est, per incubum. hic Merlinus Ambrosius est dictus natus ex filia regis Demetae, quae monada erat.” The marginal note has “Merlinus ab incubo daemone conceptus,” p. 559, folio, Cologne, 1579.
Page 35. Luther.
Luther’s mother was Margaret, a peasant woman of Eisleben. The story of his alleged generation is related by Malvenda in c. vi of his De Antichristo with title, Martinus Lutherus creditus a quibusdam uerus Antichristus.
“Ex incubo daemonio genitum haud leuibus futilibusque coniecturis deprehensum est a plerisque, vt Coclaeus refert” (p. 71). See the ​Historia Ioannis Cochlaei de Actis et Scriptis Martini Lutheri, Paris, 1565.
Johann Cochlaeus, properly Dobeneck, and named Cochlaeus from his native place, Wendelstein, near Schwabach, was born 1479; and died 11 January, 1552, at Breslau. After a brilliant career as a student and professor of theology, he was ordained at Rome in 1518, and was shortly to make his mark as an active opponent of the Lutheran movement. With indomitable ardour he poured forth pamphlet after pamphlet, and although it is hardly to be expected that everything from his pen has the same value, the bulk of his work is an excellent refutation of the contemporary anarchy and looseness of thought. His editions of ecclesiastical writers, and such historical studies as Historiae Hussitarum, XII Libri (1549), are of permanent value, as also is his sound criticism of Luther and the new tenets.
Page 35. Plato.
Diogenes Laertius has the following: Plato 11: Σπεύσιππος δ᾿ ἐν τῷ ἐπιγραφομένῳ Πλάτωνος περιδείπνῳ καὶ Κλέαρχος ἐν τῷ Πλάτωνος ἐγκωμίῳ καὶ Ἀναξιλαίδης ἐν τῷ δευτέρῳ περὶ φιλοσόφων φασὶν ὡς Ἀφήνησιν ἦν λόγος, ὡραίαν οὖσαν τὴν Περικτιόνην βιάζεσθαι τὸν Ἀρίστωνα καὶ μὴ ἐπιτυγχάνειν· παυόμενόν τε τῆς βίας ἰδεῖν τὴν τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος ὄψιν, ὅθεν καθαρὰν γάμου φυλάξαι ἕως τῆς ἀποκυήσεως. Καὶ γίνεται Πλάτων, ὥς φησιν Ἀπολλόδωρος ἐν χρονικοῖς, ὀγδόῃ καὶ ὀγδοηκοστῇ Ὀλυμπιάδι, Θαργηλιῶνος ἑβδόμῃ· καθ᾿ ἣν Δήλιοι τὸν Ἀπόλλωνα γενέσθαι φασί. S. Jerome says: Aduersus Iouinianum, I, 42: “Speusippus quoque sororis Platonis filius, et Clearchus in laude Platonis, et Anaxilides in secundo libro Philosophiae, ​Perictionem matrem Platonis, phantasmate Apollinis oppressam ferunt, et sapientiae principem non aliter arbitrabantur nisi de partu uirginis editum.” Migne, Patres Latini, Vol. XXIII, c. 273.
Page 35. Servius Tullius.
Of whose miraculous begetting Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitatum IV, 2, writes at length: Φέρεται δέ τις ἐν ταῖς ἐπιχωρίοις ἀναγραφᾶις καὶ ἕτερος ὑπὲρ τῆς γενέσεως αὐτοῦ λόγος, ἐπὶ τὸ μυθῶδες ἐξαίρων τὰ περὶ ἀυτόν, ὃν ἐν πολλαῖς Ῥωμαικαῖς ἱστορίαις εὕρομεν, εἰ θεοῖς τε καὶ δαίμοσι λέγεσθαι φίλον, τοιοῦτός τις, ἀπὸ τῆς ἑστίας τῶν βασιλείων, ἐφ ἦς ἄλλας τε Ῥωμαῖοι συντελοῦσιν ἱερουργίας, καὶ τὰς ἀπὸ τῶν δείπνων ἀπαρχὰς ἀγίζουσιν, ὑπὲρ τοῦ πυρὸς ἀνασχεῖν λέγουσιν αἰδοῖον ἀνδρός. Τοῦτο δὲ θεάσασθαι τὴν Ὀκρισίαν πρώτην φέρουσαν τοὺς εἰωθότας πελάνους ἐπὶ τὸ πῦρ, καὶ αὐτίκα πρὸς τοὺς βασιλεῖς ἐλθοῦσαν εἰπεῖν, τὸν μὲν οὖν ταρχύνιον ἀκούσαντά τε καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα ἰδόντα τὸ τέρας ἐν θαύματι γενέσθαι, τὴν δὲ Τανακυλίδα τὰ τ᾿ ἄλλα σοφὴν οὖσαν καὶ δὴ καὶ τὰ μαντικὰ οὐδενὸς χεῖρον Τυῤῥηνῶν ἐπισταμένην εἰπεῖν πρὸς αὐτόν, ὅτι γένυς ἀπὸ τῆς ἑστίας τῆς βασιλείου πέπρωται γενέσθαι κρείττον ἢ κατὰ τὴν ἀνθρωπείαν φύσιν, ἐκ τῆς μιχθείσης τῷ φάσματι γυναικός. Τὰ δ᾿ αὐτὰ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων τερατοσκόπων ἀποφηναμένων, δόξαι τῷ βασιλεῖ τὴν Ὀκρισίαν, ᾗ πρώτῃ ἐφάνη τὸ τέρας, εἰς ὁμιλίαν αὐτῷ συνελθεῖν καὶ μετὰ τοῦτο τὴν γυναῖκα κοσμησαμένην, οἷς ἔθος ἐστὶ κοσμεῖσθαι τὰς γαμουμένας, κατακλεισθῆναι μόνην εἰς τὸν οἶκον, ἐν ᾧ τὸ τέρας ὤφθη. Μιχθέντος δή τινος αὐτῇ θεῶν ἢ δαιμόνων, καὶ μετὰ τὴν μίξιν ἀφανισθέντος, εἴτε Ἡφαίστου, καθάπερ οἴονταί τινες, ​εἴτε τοῦ κατ᾿ οἰκίαν ἥρωος, ἐγκύμονα γενέσθαι καὶ τεχεῖν τὸν Τύλλιον ἐν τοῖς καθήκουσι χρόνοις. Pliny, xxxvi, 27, has: “Tradunt … ita Seruium Tullium natum, qui regno successit. Inde et in regia cubanti puero caput arsisse uisum, creditumque Laris familiaris filium.”
Page 36. Terrible monsters.
Vaisette, Histoire de Languedoc (p. 29), records that in 1275 the Inquisitor Hugues de Baniols condemned to death a witch of many years’ continuance, Angele de la Barthe, who confessed to having had connexion with a demon from which intercourse she brought forth a monster whom she nourished with the flesh of infants, slain by her or dug up from their graves in lonely churchyards.
Page 36. Semen.
This detail is discussed at some length by Sinistrari in his Demoniality.
Page 36. Binsfeld.
De Confessionibus Maleficorum, Prior quaestionis pars; 5 Conclusio: Malefici uel maleficae rem ueneream habent cum Daemone. This learned author holds that there is actually copulation between witches and demons, as indeed is proved by what S. Augustine says, De Ciuitate Dei, V, 23. This is further maintained by a vast number of Popes, doctors and theologians; by S. Isidore; S. Thomas; S. Bonaventura; Dionysius the Carthusian; William of Paris; Martin of Arles; Alphonso de Castro; the authors of the Malleus Maleficarum; Innocent VIII; Cardinal Cajetan; Bartolomeo de Spina; Bartolomeo de Medina; Nider; Molitor; Grilland; Thomas Erastus; Bodin; and very many more.
​Page 37. Bodin.
Démonomanie, III, 6: “Il se trouua en vn monastere vn chien qu’on disoit estre un Daemon, qui leuoit les robbes des Religieuses pour en abuser. Ce n’estoit point vn Daemon, comme ie croy; mais vn chien naturel. Il se trouua a Toulouse vne femme qui en abusoit en ceste sorte: Et le chien deuant tout le monde la vouloit forcer. Elie confessa la verité, & fut bruslee. Il y en eut vne autre qui fut amenee prisonniere à Paris l’an mil cinq cens quarante, conuaincue de mesme cas.”
Page 39. Olympias.
Alexander was said to be the son of Jupiter Hammon (Quintus Curtius, IV, 7), who visited his mother Olympias, so Plutarch tells us (Alexander, II), as a snake or dragon. When Boguet writes of a swan he is thinking rather of Leda.
Page 40. The Sons of God.
This passage has been much discussed by the exegetes, and one may profitably consult the commentary in loco of the learned Sinistrari, who in his Demoniality, XXXII–XXXIV (translation by the present writer, Fortune Press, 1927) says: “We also read in the Bible, Genesis, chap. 6, verse 4, that giants were born when the sons of God went in to the daughters of men: this is the actual text. Now, those giants were men of great stature, says Baruch, chap. 3, verse 26, and far superior to other men. Not only were they distinguished by their huge size, but also by their physical power, their rapine and their tyranny. Through their misdeeds the giants, according to Cornelius a Lapide, in his Commentary on Genesis, were the primary and principal cause of the Flood. Some contend that by Sons of God are ​meant the sons of Seth, and by daughters of men the daughters of Cain, because the former practised piety, religion and every other virtue, whilst the descendants of Cain were quite the reverse; but, with all due deference to S. John Chrysostom, S. Cyril, S. Theodore of Studium, Abbot Rupert of Deutz, S. Hilary and others who are of that opinion, it must be conceded that it hardly agrees with the obvious meaning of the text. Scripture says, in fact, that of the conjunction of the Sons of God and the daughters of men were born men of huge bodily size: consequently, those giants were not previously in existence, and if their birth was the result of that conjunction, it cannot be ascribed to the intercourse of the sons of Seth with the daughters of Cain, who, being themselves of ordinary stature, could but procreate children of ordinary stature. Therefore, if the intercourse in question gave birth to beings of huge stature, the reason is that it was not the common connexion between man and woman, but the operation of Incubi who, from their nature, may very well be styled Sons of God. Such is the opinion of the Platonist Philosophers and of Francesco Giorgio the Venetian; nor is it discrepant from that of Josephus the Historian, Philo Judæus, S. Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Hugh of S. Victor, who look upon Incubi as corporeal Angels who have fallen into the sin of lewdness with women. Indeed, as shall be shown hereafter, though seemingly distinct, those two opinions are but one and the same.
“If, therefore, these Incubi, as is so commonly held, have begotten giants by means of sperm ​taken from man, it is impossible, as aforesaid, that of that sperm should have been born any but men of approximately the same size as he from whom it came; for it would be in vain for the Demon, when acting the part of a Succubus, to draw from man an unwonted quantity of prolific liquor in order to procreate therefrom children of higher stature; quantity is irrelevant since all depends, as we have said, upon the vitality of that liquor, not upon its quantity. We are bound, therefore, to infer that giants are born of another sperm than man’s, and that, consequently, the Incubus, for the purpose of generation, uses a semen which is not man’s. But what, then, are we to say with regard to this?
“Subject to correction by our Holy Mother Church, and as a mere expression of private opinion, I say that the Incubus, when having intercourse with women, begets the human foetus from his own seed.”
Page 40. Council of Aquileia.
“Some wicked women, reverting to Satan and seduced by the illusions and phantasms of demons, believe and profess that they ride at night with Diana on certain beasts with an innumerable multitude of women, passing over immense distances. It were well if they alone perished in their infidelity and did not draw so many along with them. For innumerable multitudes, deceived by this false opinion, believe all this to be true, and thus relapse into pagan errors…. It is to be taught to all that he who believes such things has lost his faith, and he who is not of the true faith is not of God, but of the devil.” This early proclamation came to be attributed to the ​Council of Ancyra, 314, but this is an error. It is, however, found in the work of Regino of Prüm, who died 917, and it was embodied in the canonical collections of Burchard, Ivo, and Gratian. It must be emphasized that it has no force, and it remains merely as an unauthoritative expression of opinion.
Page 40. Ulrich Molitor.
A Doctor of Roman and Canon law, who, at the instance of the Archduke Sigismund of the Tyrol, wrote his De Lamiis et phitonicis (pythonicis) mulieribus in some sort as an answer to, or a commentary upon, the Malleus Maleficarum. The first edition of the De Lamiis is Cologne, 1489. Molitor teaches that there are witches who make a pact with Satan, and that death is the penalty for this abomination, but he is sceptical as to the possibility of witches travelling many miles at night, and he attributes their transport by the devil to imagination wrought upon by the evil one. Weyer, De Lamiis, III, 12, explicitly says; “Falsum arte magica homines deferri per aerem,” and he quotes with approval (11) the conclusion of Ponzibius, that these aerial transvections are fantasy. The matter, none the less, cannot be so easily settled and the weight of authority is against Molitor, Ponzibius, Weyer, and their followers.
Page 41. Malleus.
The authors of the Malleus Maleficarum conclude “that it is found that some witches are transported only in imagination, but that it is also found in the writings of the Doctors that many have been bodily transported.” (Part II, Qn. I, Ch. 3, ad finem; translation by present ​writer; John Rodker, 1928). This is the orthodox view and cannot he disbelieved without great rashness, for, as S. Augustine says, to deny so general a consensus of Fathers and Doctors were the height of impudence. This view is maintained by Bodin; Remy; Grilland; Vincenzo Dodo of Pavia (who very aptly rebukes Samuel de Cassinis of Milan); Bernard of Como, O.P.; Francesco Maria Guazzo; Silvester Prierias, O.P; Bartolomeo de Spino, O.P.; Arnaldus Albertini, Bishop of Patti; Francesco di Vittoria, Professor of Theology at Salamanca; the great Binsfeld; Crespet; Anania; Sisto of Siena; Bernard Basin; Martin Delrio, S.J. (Disquisitionum Magicarum, II, xvi, De nocturnis sagarum conuentibus & an uera sit earum translatio de loco ad locum?); even by the Calvinist Lambert Daneau, and many more. We cannot gainsay the common opinion of theologians that witches may fly through the air at night to their Sabbats, and it has been ratified by the famous jurist of the Roman Curia, Francesco Pegna, who in his Commentaries lays down that this opinion is “most certainly true, that it is indeed proven by many sound reasons and most apparent signs, by actual fact and experiment.” Opinio uerissima, multis quidem rationibus et euidentibus signis atque experimentis comprobata. (Directorium Inquisitorum F. Nicolai Eymerici, Ordinis Praedicatorum Cum Commendariis Francisci Peniae, Venice, 1595. Quaestio XLIII: Comment. XLIII, 343.)
Page 44. How … witches are conveyed to the Sabbat.
For a full discussion of this point see my History of Witchcraft, c. iv, “The Sabbat,” pp. 118–33.
​Page 44. Ointment.
Weyer, De Lamiis, III, xvii, treats at length of these flying ointments under the rubric: De naturalibus pharmacis somniferis, quilus interdum illuduntur Lamiae, de earum item unguentis, & quibusdam plantis soporiferis, mentemque impense turbantibus. He gives these formulae for the preparation of these unguents. (1) Hemlock, water of aconite, poplar leaves, and soot. (2) Cowbane, sweet flag, cinquefoil, bat’s blood, deadly nightshade, and oil. (3) Fat of babes, juices of cowbane, aconite, cinquefoil, deadly nightshade, and soot.
Page 44. Neither ointment nor words … of any use.
Debrio, Disquisitionum Magicarum, II, xvi, says that the chief ingredient of the ointment is the fat of children whom the witches slay for this purpose. The ointment is actually of no effect per se, and the devil can (and often will) transport the witches to the Sabbat without any use of unguent or potions. But he will have them anoint themselves for various reasons, namely, in order that any of his followers who are fearful may pluck up courage and rely on this empty thing; that often their senses are addled by the potency of the drugs, and therefore they can the better endure his horrible embraces and connexions; and again, they use this ointment to mock the holy Chrism which is employed in the Sacraments.
Page 46. As Dead.
The authors of the Malleus Maleficarum have given particular attention to this point. Part II, Qn. I, Ch. 3: “And since the public report of this sort of transvection is continually being spread even among the common people, it is unnecessary to add further proofs of it here. But ​we hope that this will suffice to refute those who either deny altogether that there are such transvections, or try to maintain that they are only imaginary or phantastical. And, indeed, it would be a matter of small importance if such men were left in their error, were it not that this error tends to the damage of the Faith. For notice that, not content with that error, they do not fear to maintain and publish others also, to the increase of witches and the detriment of the Faith. For they assert that all the witchcraft which is truly and actually ascribed to witches as instruments of the devil, is only so ascribed in imagination and illusion, as if they were really harmless, just as their transvection is only phantastic. And for this reason many witches remain unpunished, to the great dispraise of the Creator, and to their own most heavy increase.
“The arguments on which they base their fallacy cannot be conceded. For first they advance the chapter of the Canon (Episcopi, 26, q. 5) where it is said that witches are only transported in imagination; but who is so foolish as to conclude from this that they cannot also be bodily transported? Similarly at the end of that chapter it is set down that whoever believes that a man can be changed for the better or the worse, or can be transformed into another shape, is to be thought worse than an infidel or a pagan; but who could conclude from this that men cannot be transformed into beasts by a glamour, or that they cannot be changed from health to sickness and from better to worse? They who so scratch at the surface of the words of the Canon hold an opinion which is contrary to that of all the ​Holy Doctors, and, indeed, against the teaching of Holy Scripture.
“For the contrary opinion is abundantly proved by what has been written in various places in the First Part of this treatise; and it is necessary to study the inner meaning of the words of the Canon. And this was examined in the First Question of the First Part of the treatise, in refuting the second of three errors which are there condemned, and where it is said that four things are to be preached to the people. For they are transported both bodily and phantastically, as is proved by their own confessions, not only of those who have been burned, but also of others who have returned to penitence and the Faith.
“Among such there was the woman in the town of Brisac, whom we asked whether they could be transported only in imagination, or actually in the body; and she answered that it was possible in both ways. For if they do not wish to be bodily transferred, but want to know all that is being done in a meeting of their companions, then they observe the following procedure. In the name of all the devils they lie down to sleep on their left side; and then a sort of bluish vapour comes from their mouth, through which they can clearly see what is happening. But if they wish to be bodily transported, they must observe the method which has been told.
“Besides, even if that Canon be understood in its bare meaning without any explanation, who is so dense as to maintain on that account that all their witchcraft and injuries are phantastic and imaginary, when the contrary is evident to the senses of everybody? Especially since there are many species of superstition, namely, fourteen; ​among which the species of witches holds the highest degree in spells and injuries, and the species of Pythonesses, to which they can be reduced, which is only able to be transported in imagination, holds the lowest degree.
“And we do not concede that their error can be substantiated by the Legends of S. Germain and certain others. For it was possible for the devils to lie down themselves by the side of the sleeping husbands, during the time when a watch was being kept on the wives, just as if they were sleeping with their husbands. And we do not say that this was done for any reverence felt for the Saint; but the case is put, that the opposite of what is set down in the Legend may not be believed to be impossible.”
Page 47. One Thursday.
There is an accumulation of evidence to show that the Sabbat was held every night of the week save Saturday and Sunday. Leger Rivasseau confessed that the Sabbat commenced at midnight, that the assembly generally met at crossroads, “le plus souuent la nuict du Mercredy ou du Vendredy. Que le Diable chercoit la nuict la plus orageuse qu’il pouuoit, affin que les vens & les orages portasset plus loing & plus impetueusement leurs poudres.” De Lancre, L’Inconstance …, Livre II, Discours iv. In England it was stated that the “Solemn appointments, and meetings … are ordinarily on Tuesday or Wednesday night”; A Pleasant Treatise of Witches, London, 1673. Matthew Hopkins, The Discovery of Witches, 1647, says that the witches of Manningtree and the local covens “every six weeks in the night (being always on the Friday night) had their meeting close by his ​house, and had their severall solemne sacrifices there offered to the Devill.” In certain districts of the Basses-Pyrénées, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday were chosen. (De Lancre, Tableau de l’Inconstance des Mauvais anges, Paris, 1612, p. 62). Saturday was always and everywhere particularly avoided as being the day sacred to the Immaculate Mother of God.
Page 48. When the cock crew.
De Lancre, Tableau de l’Inconstance, Livre II, Discours v, writes at length: “Du Coq, & s’il est vray ce qu’on diet, que tout aussi tost qu’il est entendu au Sabbat, il dissipe par son chant, & faict esuanouir toute l’assemblee.” “Le Coq se oyt par foisés sabbats sonnant la retraicte aux sorciers, & fait qu’à vn instant tout disparoist.” But Satan can teach the sorcerers a secret which will prevent the cock from crowing, or at any rate will retard his clarion. “Les sorciers sçauent coniurer les Coqs, & leur interdise le chāt.” This, however, can only last for a little while, as the charm is an affair of half-an-hour at most.
Page 49. No power to raise the dead.
Neither the Devil nor the witches his servants can raise the dead. Delrio, Disquisitiones Magicae, II, Q. xxix. Sect. I, discusses “An diabolus possit facere ut homo vere resurgat,” and decides “Non potest facere ut homo a mortuis resurgat.” But a demon may enter the corpse of some notoriously evil person and energize the dead body so that it will walk and have the appearance of life. The ethnic fables of Plato, Pliny, Apuleius, Philostratus and others concerning the raising of the dead are dealt with very fully by Delrio.
​Page 49. One of the poets.
Lucan, Pharsalia, VI, 570–830.
Page 49. Saul.
For a full commentary upon the Witch of Endor, see my History of Witchcraft, Ch. v. “The Witch in Holy Writ,” particularly pp. 176–81. That Samuel did actually appear is the opinion of S. Ambrose and S. Augustine, which should be maintained. This is also favoured by S. Jerome, who, however, has not definitely pronounced.
Page 49. Apollonius.
Philostratus, De Uita Apollonii, IV, 45, relates that Apollonius raised a girl of consular family to life when she was being carried on the bier through the streets of Rome to her grave. But even the writer suggests that life was not really extinct and obviously doubts the seeming miracle.
Page 49. Simon Magus.
A relation of the pseudo-miracles of Simon Magus will be found in the Clementines, particularly Homilies, II, 32, and Recognitions, II, 9.
Page 50. Jerome Bolsecque.
Jérôme-Hermès Bolsec died at Lyons, circa 1584. Originally a Catholic, he separated from the Church about 1545, but even from a Protestant point of view he did not appear sufficiently orthodox, and he led an unquiet migratory life. Eventually, however, he recanted his errors and was reconciled. He then published a life of Calvin, Histoire de la vie, des mœurs … de Jean Calvin, Lyons and Paris, 1577; Latin translation, Cologne, 1580; German translation, 1581; edited by L. F. Chastel, 1875.
​Page 50. Mani.
According to a doubtful tradition he failed to cure the daughter of Bahram I. It is certain that in 276–77 this monarch caused Mani to be crucified, had the corpse flayed, the skin stuffed and hung up at the city gates of Babylon in order to terrify the followers of this Persian dualist, whose sect he harried with relentless severities.
Page 50. Remy.
Dæmonolatreia II, c. iv, has as rubric: Perdifficiliter uitari posse quas ueneficae hominibus struunt insidias: quod de nocte in obseratas, clausasque domos ignota specie, ac forma illabantur: arctissimo somno decumbentes diris suis artibus obruant….
Page 52. Ovid.
At the Lemuria:
Terque manus puras fontana proluit unda; Uertitur, et nigras accipit ore fabas. Auersusque iacit: sed dum iacit, Haec ego mitto; His, inquit, redimo meque meosque fabis. Hoc nouies dicit, nec respicit. Umbra putatur Colligere, et nullo terga uidente sequi.
Page 52. Cicero.
De Legibus, II, 18: “Color autem albus praecipue decorus deo est.”
Page 52. Back to back.
The back to back dance was a favourite piece of choreography at the Sabbat, and there are very many references to this. De Lancre, Tableau de l’Inconstance, III, Discours iii, in describing the witches’ dances, says: “La troisieme est aussi le dos tourné, mais se tenant tous en long, & sans se deprendre des mains, ils s’approchent de si près qu’ils se touchent, & se rencontrent dos à dos, un homme avec une femme: & à certaine ​cadance ils se choquent & frapent impudēment cul contre cul.” Hutchinson, A Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft, Second edition, 1720 (p. 43), gives a confession of Jeanne Bosdeau (1594): “The black Goat carried a lighted Candle in his Fundament, and all the Witches had Candles which they lighted at his, and danced in a Circle Back to Back.” There are in the trials many allusions to the masks which were worn at these assemblies. Thus in 1613 Barbe de Moyemont said that at the Sabbat “elle a veu dancer les assistans en nombre de sept à huict personnes, partie desquelles elle ne cognoissoit a cause des masques hideux qu’elles auoient de noire.”
Page 52. Sword.
This was the sword wrought of unalloyed steel with a copper handle fashioned like a crucifix. Mystical signs were engraved thereon, and it was consecrated at noon on a Sunday in the full rays of the hottest sun. It was heated in a fire of cypress and laurel, cooled with the blood of a snake, polished and then swathed in silk and bound with garlands of vervain, laid aside for use in the magic rites. The sword was often used in necromantic ceremonials.
Page 53. Of the day.
De Lancre, Tableau de l’Inconstance, Livre II, Discours i, points out that in earlier times the Devil appointed a Monday on which to hold the Sabbat, but that later he preferred the night between Wednesday and Thursday, or that between Friday and Saturday. It became common also to hold a general Sabbat about the time of the high Christian festivals in evil mockery of these holy solemnities. So the ​Scotch witches of Kinross (1662) met on S. Andrew’s Day, 30 November; and in many parts of Europe when the Feast of S. George is solemnized with high honour and holiday, Satan held an assembly on the night of the 22–23 April.
Page 54. Of the Place.
For a full discussion of the locality of various Sabbats see my History of Witchcraft, ch. iv, pp. 113–17. The ordinary Sabbat was generally held in some remote and ill-omened spot near the town or village where the witches dwelt, sometimes in a house belonging to one of that crew. Dr. Fian and his associates (1591) were wont to forgather at the haunted church of North Berwick. In some countries certain spots acquired an infamous repute, as, for example, the Blocksburg or Brocken in the Hartz Mountains; Benevento in Italy; Malking Tower in Lancashire; Mohra and Elfdale where the Swedish witches met (1670); and many more of lesser note.
Page 55. First worship.
The congruity and similarity of the accounts given by witches in all countries of the Sabbat demand the most careful consideration. As might be expected, certain details differ in several localities, but the end of the ritual, the worship of Satan, is the same. The account of the Sabbat given by the witches who confessed to Boguet may be compared with the accounts gleaned by Sprenger and Kramer, De Lancre, Guazzo, Bodin, Remy, Binsfeld, and all demonologists. In Guernsey, 1617, Isabel Becquet went to Rocquaine Castle, “the usual place where the Devil kept his Sabbath … then immediately the Devil made her kneel down ​… he then made her express detestation of the Eternal in these words: I renounce God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost; and then caused her to worship and invoke himself.” To the witches the Fiend was god incarnate manifesting himself for the worship of his followers. As Lambert Daneau says in his A Dialogue of Witches, English translation, 1575: “The Diuell comaundeth them that they shall acknowledge him for their god, cal vpō him, pray to him, and trust in him. Then doe they all repeate the othe which they haue geuen vnto him; in acknowledging him to be their God.”
Page 55. Goat.
This appearance was one of the most usual forms in France at the Sabbat, and there are very many examples to be found. Thus Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum, I, 13, says: “Ibi Daemon est conuentus praeses, in solio sedet forma terrifica ut plurimum Hirci.” And Elich in his Daemonomagia, Quaest. 10, has: “Solent ad conuentum Lamiae adorare Daemonem, Synagogae praesidem & rectorem in solio considentem, immutatum in Hircum horridum.”
Page 56. Candles.
The lighting of candles was not only to illuminate the orgy held under cover of darkness, but also a ritual observance in parody of the candles at Holy Mass. De Lancre, Tableau de l’Inconstance. II, Discours i, says that the Devil appeared as a black goat, “qu’il a seulement trois comes, & qu’il a quelque espece de lumiere en celle du milieu, de laquelle il a accoustumé au sabbat d’esclairer & donner du feu & de la lumiere, mesme à ces Sorcieres qui tiennent quelques chandelles alumees aux ceremonies de la Messe qu’ils veulent contrefaire.”
​Page 56. Kiss.
There are continual references to the osculum obscaenum, or osculum infame, which formed one of the chief acts of homage of the witch. Guazzo notes: “As a sign of homage witches kiss the devil’s fundament.” Ludwig Elich, in his Daemonomagia, Quaestio 10, writes: “Then as a token of their homage—with reverence be it spoken—they kiss the fundament of the devil.” One of the charges brought against Walter Langton, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry (1296–1322), was that he had paid “homage to the Devil by kissing his posterior.” Guillaume Edeline, a doctor of the Sorbonne, who was executed for sorcery in 1453, “had done homage to the aforesaid Satan, who appeared in the shape of a ram, by kissing his buttocks in token of reverence and homage.” In Shadwell’s play, The Lancashire Witches, produced at Dorset Garden, London, in the autumn (probably September) of 1681, 4to, 1682, at the end of the Second Act we have: “The Scaene Sir Edward’s Cellar: Enter all the Witches, and the Devil in the form of a Buck-Goat after.
| Demdike. | Lo here our little Master’s come. Let each of us salute his Bum. All kiss the Devil’s Arse. |
Shadwell, in his “Notes upon the Second Act,” quotes several demonologists for this circumstance.
One of the charges repeatedly brought against the Knights Templars during the lengthy process of their examinations and trials, 1307–14, was that of the kissing the posteriors of the preceptors by the juniors, but this has nothing to do ​with sorcery, since it is to be connected with the homosexual practices of the Order.
Page 56. Pipes.
Various musical instruments to accompany the dances were played at the Sabbats. De Lancre, De l’Inconstance, III, 3, says of the witches: “Elles dancent au son du petit tabourin & de la fluste & par fois auec ce long instrument qu’ils posent sur le sol, puis l’allongeant iusqu’ aupres de la ceinture, ils le batent auec vn petit baston: parfois auec vn violon. Mais ce ne sont les seuls instruments du sabbat, car nous avons apprins de plusieurs qu’on y oyt toute sorte d’instrumens.” Gellis Duncan of the North Berwick coven, who attempted the life of King James VI and I, was famous for her performances “on ane trump,” whilst the witches danced “endlang” round the haunted old kirk-yard “to the number of sevin scoir of persounes.” Elizabeth Styles (or Style) of Stoke Tryster in Somerset, when examined in January and February 1664 by the justice, confessed that the gang met on a lonely common where appeared a man in black to whom they did obeisance. “The Man in black sometimes playes on a Pipe or Cittern and the company dance.” Sadducismus Triumphatus, 1681, Pt. II, p. 141.
Page 57. Catullus.
XC. Nascatur magus ex Gelli matrisque nefando Coniugio, et discat Persicum aruspicium. Nam magus ex matre et gnato nascatur oportet Si uera est Persarum impia religio. Gnatus ut accepto ueneretur carmine diuos, Omentum in flamma pingue liquefaciens.
Strabo (735) writes: Τοὺς δὲ Μάγους οὐ θάπτουσιν, ἀλλ᾿ οἰωνοβρώτους ἐῶσι· Τούτοις δὲ καὶ μητράσι συνέρχεσθαι πάτριον νενόμισται.
​Page 57. Euchites.
These heretics were known under various names: Messalians, Adelphians, Lampetians, Enthusiasts. They arose about 360, and in 431 the third General Council of Ephesus utterly banned the Asceticus, “that filthy book of this heresy.” In Armenia they were condemned for their lewdness in the fifth century, and their very name signified obscenity. After they had actually ceased to exist as Euchites or Messalians they revived under the name of Bogomiles. One of their tenets was that divine honours must be paid to the Devil, who is further to be propitiated by means of every outrage against the Saviour of mankind. This is, of course, modern Satanism.
Page 58. Feasting.
De Lancre says that sometimes the banquets at the Sabbat are of rare dainties, sometimes the witches are served with orts and offal. The wine, Guazzo tells us, is usually like black and clotted blood poured out in some foul and filthy vessel. But he continues that sometimes there is no lack of cheer at the tables, “save that they furnish neither bread nor salt.” Remy agrees with this, Daemonolatreia, I, 16, for the witches confessed that at their revels “Nullarum fere rerum copiam illic deesse, praeterquam salis & panis.” These details, however, differed widely. See my History of Witchcraft, ch. iv, “The Sabbat,” pp. 143–45.
Page 59. Render an account.
“Sometimes, at their solemn assemblies, the Devil commands that each tell what wickedness he hath committed, and according to the heinousness and detestableness of it, he is honoured and respected with a general applause. Those, on ​the contrary, that have done no evil are beaten and punished.”—A Pleasant Treatise of Witches.
Page 60. Mass.
The “Black Mass” of the witches and the Satanists has many variants; the hellish ritual, the vestments, the very shape of the host widely differ at several times and in several countries. See my History of Witchcraft, ch. v, “The Sabbat,” pp. 145–57. Joanny Bricaud’s La Messe Noire ancienne et moderne (1924) may also be consulted. The celebrant is stated by Boguet to have worn a black cope. The abbé Guibourg was arrayed in an ample cope or a chasuble of white silk embroidered with silver and black fir cones; Gaufridi (1611) confessed that the priest who said the Devil’s mass at the Sabbat donned a violet planeta; at Orleans in the seventeenth century a phainolion of murky red, dark and ominous, was often assumed; to-day at the liturgy of Satanists the vestments are generally those of the ordinary ecclesiastical shape or form, but the chasuble though rich is of some garish and unusual colour and embroidered with malefic or obscene emblems.
Page 60. A round.
Madeleine Bavent saw the ordinary wafers used, only coloured red; sometimes they were black and triangular, stamped with a hideous design. It may be noted that very often by the grace of God the Mass of the Satanists is irrite and vain, since there are defectus materiae, et panis et uini.
Page 60. Goat … burns to ashes.
This Satanic illusion was largely effected to encourage the witches not to fear the flames of execution. Accordingly we find this glamour ​mentioned in France and Germany, where the stake was the penalty of witchcraft, but not in England, where the punishment was the gallows. Bodin, Démonomanie, II, iv, gives details of a trial at Poitiers in 1574 where the witches confessed they have been at the Sabbat, “et là se trouuoit vn grand bouc noir, qui parloit comme vne personne aux assistans, & dansoient à l’entour du Bouc: puis vn chacun luy baisoit le derriere auec vne chandelle ardente: & cela faict, le bouc se consommoit en feu, & de la cèdre chacun en prenoit pour faire mourir le boeuf ou vache,” etc. In 1603 a Belgian witch, Claire Goessen, was at a Sabbat when “elle a, comme tous les assistans, baisé un bouc à l’endroit de sa queue, lequel bouc fut ensuite brûlé et ses cendres distribuies et emportées par les convives.” The ashes were utilized in various potent charms, especially to harm herds and blast crops. Miss Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, in connexion with this burning of the goat, has idly advanced a ridiculous theory to link it with the “Sacrifice of the God,” a divine victim, but this preposterous nonsense cannot be for a moment maintained.
Page 62. Hail.
Upon this point, which is dealt with in detail by nearly all demonologists, consult the Malleus Maleficarum, Part II, Qu. 1, Ch. 15 (translation, John Rodker, 1928, p. 147), of witches: How they Raise and Stir up Hailstorms and Tempests, and cause Lightning to Blast both Men and Beasts.
Page 69. Ointments.
De Lancre, Tableau de l’Inconstance, II, Discours i, says: “Les liures & les Inquisiteurs disét, ​que les sorciers composent & font ces onguens ou graisses, ou que le Diable les leur donne: Que la plus part se font auec de la graisse de petit enfant que Satan faict occire à des sorcieres. Mais ils tiennent que ces onguents ne peuuent seruir en ce cas à autre effect, que pour assoupir les sens des sorciers, afin que Satan iouisse mieux à son aise d’eux.” Weyer, De Lamiis, III, 17, writes: “De naturalibus pharmaci somniferis, quilus interdum illuduntur Lamiae, de earum item unguentis, & quibusdam plantis soporiferis, mentemque impense turbantibus.” In his opinion the ointments of witches are toxic, producing excitement and delirium, or narcotic, awakening evil dreams. “Lamiarum quoque unguentum propemodum simile tradit Hieronymus Cardanus, post cuius inunctionem mirabilia uideri apparet.”
Page 70. Memphite.
“Albertus Magnus in Ægypto etiam nasci lapidem tradit, et Dioscorides, qui Memphites nuncupatur, a Memphi, magnitudine calculi, pinguis et uersicolor: quo contrito, et cum aqua uinoque epoto, stupor omnium sensuum inducatur, ut nullum omnino dolorem sentias.”
Page 71. Smearing with a grease.
Various outbreaks of the plague in Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were said to be largely caused by sorcerers who at the instigation of the Devil smeared walls and doors with purulent matter, the poison of which fearfully increased the mortality. The Great Plague of Milan, 1629–30, is known as “La Peste degli Untori,” and an old distich which had prophesied that in 1630 the Devil would endeavour to poison all Milan was widely quoted ​and believed. Hundreds of these untori were arrested and summarily put to death. See Ripamonte, De Peste Mediolani, and my Geography of Witchcraft, pp. 559–62.
Page 72. Aratus.
The celebrated general of the Achaeans; 271–213 B.C. He wrote Commentaries, being a history of his own times down to 220 B.C., which are highly commended by Polybius, II, 40.
Page 72. Philip the Fair.
Philip IV of France, died at Fontainebleau, 29 November, 1314. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Louis X, le Hutin, who died at Vincennes 5 June, 1316. Then followed his brother, the second son of Philip IV, Philip V, le Long. It was in this reign that the lepers were slain. He died at Longchamps, 3 January, 1322.
Page 72. Nicephorus.
Callistus Xanthopulus Nicephorus was born in the latter part of the thirteenth century and died about 1350. His Ecclesiastical History has been edited by Duchène, 2 vols., folio, Paris, 1630.
Page 77. Circe.
Vergil, Eclogue VIII, 70, has “Carminibus Circe socios mutauit Ulixi,” but the touch with her wand is emphasized in the Odyssey, X, 237–40:
αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ δῶκέν τε καὶ ἔκπιον, αὐτίκ᾿ ἔπειτα ῥάβδῳ πεπληγυῖα, κατὰ συφεοῖσιν ἐέργνυ. οἱ δὲ συῶν μὲν ἔχον κεφαλάς, φωνήν τε τρίχας τε, καὶ δέμας, αὐτὰρ νοῦς ἦν ἔμπεδος, ὡς τὸ πάρος περ.
​Page 77. Thessaly.
Thessaly was the legendary home of witchcraft, so that Thessala, a Thessalian woman, came almost to mean an enchantress.
Page 78. Ovid.
The lines Boguet paraphrases are from the Amores, I, vii:
Num mea Thessalico languent deuota ueneno Corpora? num misero carmen et herba nocent? … Carmine laesa Ceres sterilem uanescit in herbam: Deficiunt laesae carmine fontis aquae, Ilicibus glandes, cantataque uitibus uua Decidit; et nullo poma mouente fluunt. Quid uetat et neruos magicas torpere per artes?
Page 78. Vergil.
Eclogue VIII, 70–71:
Carminibus Circe socios mutauit Ulixi; Frigidus in pratis cantando rumpitur anguis.
Page 78. Lucan.
Pharsalia, VI, 452–91.
Page 78. Vergil.
Eclogue VIII, 77–78:
Necte tribus nodis ternos, Amarylli, colores; Necte, Amarylli, modo et “Ueneris” die “uincula necto.”
Page 79. A staff.
See my History of Witchcraft, ch. iv, “The Sabbat,” pp. 121–24.
Page 79. El-phurkan.
Al Forkan is one of the names of the Koran, being derived from the verb faraka, to divide or distinguish, and chapter xxv of the Koran is also known as “Al Forkan.”
Page 80. Mirandola.
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, 1463–94.
​Page 80. Vergil.
Eclogue III, 103:
Nescio quis teneros oculus mihi fascinat agnos.
Page 81. Basilisk.
“Suivant les anciens le Basilic était un reptile né d’un oeuf de coq (beaucoup de gens croient encore aux oeufs du coq). Son regard feudroyait à moins qu’on ne l’eut aperçu le premier.”—Rion, Erreurs, Prejugés populaires, 1869.
Page 81. Catoblepas.
κατῶβλεψ or κατῶβλεπων, i.e. that looks down. “Apud Hesperios Æthiopas fons est Nigris, ut plerique existimauere Nili caput…. Iuxta hunc fera appellatur catoblepas, modica alioquin, ceterisque membris iners, caput tantum praegraue aegre ferens; id deiectum semper in terram: alias internecio humani generis, omnibus qui oculos eius uidere confestim exspirantibus. Eadem et basilisci serpentis est uis.”—Pliny, Historia Naturalis, VIII, xxxii, xxxxiii.
Page 81. Moeris.
Vergil, Eclogue IX, 53–54:
uox quoque Moerim iam fugit ipsa; lupi Moerim uidere priores.
For an account of the baleful glances of sorcerers see Malleus Maleficarum, Part I; Q. 2, pp. 12–13 (translation), John Rodker, 1928.
Page 86. Waxen images.
To fashion mommets of wax and melt these at a fire or pierce them with pins in order to afflict the individual in whose likeness they are moulded is one of the oldest and most general of malign spells. See my Geography of Witchcraft, pp. 10, 11, 81–84, 104.
​Page 86. Medea.
Heroides, VI, 91–2:
Deuouet absentes: simulacraque cerea figit, Et miserum tenues in iecur urget acus.
And Amores, III, 7 (Boguet gives reference III, 6, as the elegy Somnium was restored as number 5 by Daniel Heinsius):
Sagaue Poenicea defixit nomina cera, Et medium tenues in iecur egit acus?
Page 86. Duffus.
At the end of the seventh century certain hags of Forres in Murray attempted to kill King Duffus by melting his image made of wax. See my Geography of Witchcraft, ch. i, pp. 12–13.
Page 86. Charles IX.
“Et l’an M.D.LXXIIII au proces imprimé, qui fut fait à vn certain Gentil-homme, qui fut decapité à Paris, il fut trouué saisy d’vn image de cire ayant la teste & le coeur percé auec d’autres caracteres qui fut (peut estre) l’vne des principales causes de sa mort.” Bodin, Démonomanie, II, 8. Charles IX died 30 May, 1574.
Page 87. Plato.
“Mais Platon en l’vnziesme liure des loix, confirme ce discours des images de cire que font les sorcieres, & ne faut s’esbahir commēt celà fut sçeu.” Bodin, Démonomanie, II, 8.
Page 87. Medea.
In the tragedy of Euripides the Messenger cries to Medea:
πέπλοι δὲ λεπτοί, σῶν τέκνων δωρήματα λεπτὴν ἔδαπτον σάρκα τῆς δυσδαίμονος.
Page 88. Kill the children.
Malleus Maleficarum, Part II, Qn. i, ch. 13. How Witch Midwives commit most Horrid Crimes when they either Kill Children or Offer them to Devils in most Accursed Wise.
​Page 88. Stadlin.
Formicarius, c. III. Malleus Maleficarum, Part II, Qn. I, ch. 6 (translation; John Rodker, 1928, p. 118). Stadlin buried a serpent under the threshold of the outer door of the house.
Page 88. Baron of Rays.
See my Geography of Witchcraft, ch. v, pp. 389–96; also the Bibliography (p. 342), History of Witchcraft.
Page 90. Virile member.
Malleus Maleficarum, Part II, Qn. i, ch. 7: How, as it were, they Deprive Man of his Virile Member.
Page 94. Remy.
Daemonolatreia, II, 4: “Perdifficiliter uitari posse quas ueneficae hominibus struunt insidias: quod de nocte in obseratas, clausasque domos, ignota specie ac forma illabantur: arctissimo somno decumbentes diris suis artibus obruant.”
Page 97. Binsfeld.
Commentarius in titulum codicis Lib. IX de Maleficis et Mathematicis, Quaestio IV, discusses: “An malefici possint inducere pluuias, tempestates, grandines, et similia meteorologica, quibus fructibus aut seminibus noceant, ut d.L. significat?” The affirmative is demonstrated by authority, by philosophical reasoning, and by example.
Page 97. Sprenger.
Hoppo and Stadlin were two notorious witches of the school of one Staufer who lived at Berne, a sorcerer mentioned by Nider in his Formicarius. Malleus Maleficarum (translation, p. 148, Part II, Qn. i, ch. 15).
Page 97. Carius Furius.
Pliny, Historia Naturalis, XVIII, 6, relates that Caius Furius Cresinus, whose lands were Furius ​far richer in crops and fruit than those of any of his neighbours, was by them accused of witchcraft and the employment of spells, since, as they said, by these horrid arts his tilth was pregnant whilst their fields languished and were dry.
Appearing on the appointed day before Spurius Albinus, who was to judge the cause, Furius displayed his mattocks and hoes, his sharp spades, his heavy ploughshares as well as the sleek oxen that drew them, together with his sturdy sons and Amazonian daughters. “These,” cried he, “are my only spells, for I cannot show you my sleepless nights, my vigils, my early wakings, the sweat of my brow.” So he was dismissed with much honour and praise.
Page 97. Vergil.
Eclogue VIII, 98–99:
Moerim, saepe animas imis excire sepulcris atque satas alio uidi traducere messes.
Page 97. Twelve tables.
Pliny, Historia Naturalis, XXVIII, 4: “Non et legum ipsarum in duodecim tabulis uerba sunt? ‘Qui fruges excantasset.’ Et alibi, ‘Qui malum carmen incantasset.’ ”
Page 98. Apollonius.
For his miracles see the Life by Philostratus, III, 39; for the staying of the plague at Ephesus, idem, VIII, 7.
Page 102. Abracadabra.
This magical word, is said to be formed from Abrasax or Abraxas, the name given by Gnostics to the Supreme Deity. Julius Africanus says that the word is efficacious in its pronunciation, and Serenus Sammonicus advises its use as a spell to cure asthma.
​Page 102. Gaspar.
Gaspar fert myrrham, thus Balthazar, Melchior aurum.
Page 103. Caracalla.
“Damnati sunt et qui remedia quartanis tertianisque collo annexa gestarent.” Aelius Spartianus, Antoninus Caracalla, V. Salmasius glosses: “Plena sunt monumenta Graecorum et Latinorum huiusmodi remediis.” S. John Chrysostom in his Eighth Homily on the Epistle to the Colossians very sternly reproves the wearing of such periapts and amulets.
Page 103. Marcus Aurelius.
This is related in the life of Marcus Aurelius by Julius Capitolinus, xix. The soothsayers advised the Empress Faustina to bathe τὴν φύσιν in the blood of the gladiator of whom she was enamoured, “atque ita cum uiro concumberet. Quod quum esset factum, solutum quidem amorem, natum uero Commodum, gladiatorem esse non principem.”
Page 103. Apollonius.
See the Life by Philostratus, VIII, 7. The old man was supposed to be the genius of the pestilence who had assumed that form.
Page 104. Wier.
De Praestigiis Daemonum, I, 7: “De humani sanguinis uictima, a diabolo inuenta, celebrataque in populo Dei, apud Graecos, et Romanos, et alios. Item de diuinatione ex mactatorum hominum uisceribus.”
Page 104. Antinous.
The essay by John Addington Symonds, Antinous, collected in Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Third Series (1898), should be consulted. See also my Geography of Witchcraft, ch. I, pp. 39–41.
​Page 104. Druids.
Suetonius, Tib. Claudius Caesar, XXV, has: “Druidarum religionem apud Gallos dirae immanitatis, et tantum ciuibus sub Augusto interdictam, penitus aboleuit.” Upon which Joannes Schildius glosses: “Cruore captiuo adolere aras, et hominum fibris consulere Deos, fas habebant. Tacitus. Plura de ἀνθρωποθυσία Druidum. Caesar, De Bello Gallico, Commentario sexto, et Strabo, Geogr. Lib. IV.” Vossius on Penitus aboleuit adds: “Abolere penitus uoluit, non potuit.”
Page 104. Constantine.
The legends introduced into the Uita beati Sylvestri (Liber pontificalis, ed. Duchesne, Introduction, cix, sqq.), to the effect that Constantine the Great, being attacked by leprosy, was told by the pagan priests that the only cure was a bath of children’s blood, and that numbers of innocents were actually brought by his soldiers to be sacrificed for this purpose, when he declared he would rather suffer than consent to such barbarities, but the very same night SS. Peter and Paul in a vision bade him seek baptism at the hands of Pope S. Sylvester I, whereupon he came clean and whole from the sacramental font, are now very generally disputed. The Uita beati Sylvestri appears in the Constitutio Sylvestri, and has been preserved in Greek, Syriac and Latin. Pope S. Sylvester I died in December, 335, and his feast, 31 December, is doubtless the day of his burial, since the Despositio Episcoporum was compiled barely a year after his decease.
Page 104. Creon.
The story as told by Sophocles relates that the son of Creon, Haemon, who loves Antigone, ​kills himself by her side when she slays herself in the subterranean cave to which she is doomed by her father. Hyginus, Falularum Liber, lxxii, gives different details, and according to this author Haemon first stabbed Antigone and then himself. The legend of the sacrifice of Iphigenia is told with varying details by many authors. The most usual story is that she was sacrificed because of the calm which detained the Greek fleet anxious to sail against Troy at Aulis. It was believed that Artemis substituted a stag for the maiden, who afterwards served the goddess in the temple in the Tauric Chersonesus. See S. Augustine, De Ciuitate Dei, XVIII, 18. There can be little doubt that the myth arose from the custom of human victims being offered in localities such as Sparta, Brauron and Megara, all closely connected with some form of the story. Quintus Curtius, rather Mettus or Mettius Curtius, was a noble youth of Rome, who when a chasm appeared in the forum in 362 B.C. and the soothsayers announced that it could only be filled by throwing into it the city’s greatest treasure, in full armour mounted his gallant steed and leaped into the abyss, which closed over him. Varro tells us that the spot was blasted by lightning in 445 B.C. and was enclosed by Curtius, one of the consuls for that year, whence the legend had its origin.
Page 105. Julian.
Both Theodoret, Historia Ecclesiastica, III, 27, and S. Gregory of Nanzianus, Orationes, IV, 92, accuse Julian of having immolated youths and children during his secret celebrations, particularly when he instituted the Mithraic rites at Charres.
​Page 105. Vitellius.
This is related by Suetonius, Uitellius, xiv, where he tells us that the Emperor received the prediction from a certain German seeress, “uaticinante Chatta muliere, cui uelut oraculo acquiescebat.” Tacitus, Germania, viii, mentions one Veleda as being a noted prophetess among the Germans in the time of Vespasian, whilst a little before the sibyl Aurinia was much revered and regarded.
Page 107. Wedding ring.
This remedy is referred to by many writers, and in Thomas Shadwell’s The Lancashire Witches (acted in 1681; 4to, 1682), Act III, when Sir Jeffery complains of a certain frigidity, “last night, when I would have been kind to my Wife, she bewitcht me, I found it so,” Tegue O’Divelly advises: “Maak shome waater through de Ring of a Wedding … and dou wilt be sound agen: gra.”
Page 107. Bodin.
De la Démonomanie des Sorciers, III, 2, has the rubric: “Si les Sorciers peuvent asseurer la santé des hommes alaigres & donner guerison aux malades.”
Page 107. Bellarmine.
Blessed Robert Bellarmine, S.J., 1542–1621, in his De notis Ecclesiae.
Page 107. Vespasian.
The account of the poor man who was blind and another who was lame presenting themselves before the tribunal of Vespasian and imploring him to heal them, declaring that the god Serapis had appeared to them in a dream and admonished them to seek the Emperor, who would restore them to health, is to be found in Suetonius, Uespasianus, vii. The historian says that Vespasian hesitated, but at length made the essay ​and both the blind and lame were healed. Tacitus gives an even fuller account of the miracles of Vespasian, and particularly emphasizes these two cures, adding: “Utrumque, qui interfuere, nunc quoque memorant, postquam nullum mendacio pretium.” Historiarum, Liber IV, 81. Hume in his Essay on Miracles selects this incident as an example of successful imposture, but he has been completely answered by Paley in his Evidences of Christianity. The commentators on Suetonius and Paley agree that the affair was a juggle between the Egyptian priests, the patients and, perhaps, the Emperor. If this were not the case it may well be, as Tertullian thought and Boguet well suggests, a diabolic counterfeit. Spartianus in his life of Hadrian relates how that Emperor also healed a blind man.
Page 111. Dueteronomy, xviii, 10, 11.
“Neither let there be found among you anyone that shall expiate his son or daughter, making them to pass through the fire: or that consulteth soothsayers, or observeth dreams and omens, neither let there be any wizard, Nor charmer, nor any one that consulteth pythonic spirits, or fortune tellers, or that seeketh truth from the dead.” Leviticus, xx, 6: “The soul that shall go aside after magicians, and soothsayers, and shall commit fornication with them, I will set my face against that soul, and destroy it out of the midst of its people.”
Page 111 magic.
White magic, as it is termed.
Page 111. Romans, iii, 8.
“And not rather (as we are slandered, and as some affirm that we say) let us do evil, that there may come good? whose damnation is just.”
​Page 111. Ochozias.
IV Kings, i (A.V.). II Kings, i.
Page 112. Heliogabalus.
Concerning whose death Aelius Lampridius writes: “Post hoc in eum impetus factus est, atque in latrina ad quam confugerat occisus. Tractus deinde per publicum, additaque iniuria cadaueri est, ut id in cloacam milites mitterent…. Occisa est cum eo et mater Semiamira probrosissima mulier et digna filio.” Bodin, Démonomanie, II, 3, writes: “Aussi lisons nous en Dion & Xeipheilin que l’Empereur Heliogabale des plus detestables hommes du monde en vsoit souuent & fist comparoir pas Necromantie son pere & Commode l’Empereur ausquels il demanda conseil de son estat: mais il fut tué auec sa mere cruellement & trainé aux cloaques auec sa mere.”
Page 114. Martha.
Plutarch is his Life of Marius (translated North) says: “He ever carried a Syrian woman in a litter about with him called Martha, with great reverence, whom they said had the spirit of prophecy in her: and that he even did sacrifice unto the gods by her order, and at such time as she willed him to do it…. She was always at Marius’ sacrifices, apparelled in a gown of purple in grain, clasped to her with clasps, and held a spear in her hand wound all about with nosegays, and garlands of flowers tied on with laces. This manner of gest made many doubt whether Marius showed this woman openly, believing indeed that she had the spirit of prophecy: or else that knowing the contrary he made as though he did believe it, to help her feigning.”
​Page 114. He who is helped.
Psalm XC, I. “He who dwelleth …”
Page 116. Officers.
“Spranger & Nider qui en ont faict brusler vne infinité, demeurent d’accord que les Sorciers ne peuuent nuire aucunement aux officiers de Iustice, fussent ils les plus mechans du monde.” Bodin, Démonomanie, III, 4. King James in his Daemonologie, Edinburgh, 1597, uses similar arguments to show that the bond-slaves of Satan cannot harm accredited officers of justice who are to take them, and that the authorities who prosecute these wretches must not fear their craft any more than a captain in the field is alarmed at “the small clack of a Pistolet” or “the rummishing shot of a cannon.”
Page 116. Sprenger.
Malleus Maleficarum, II, Qn. I, Ch. 11, ad finem. Translated by Montague Summers, John Rodker, 1928, p. 137.
Page 117. Moly.
Odyssey, X, 302–306:
Ὥς ἄρα φωνήσας πόρε φάρμακον Ἀργειφόντης, ἐκ γαίης ἐρύσας, καί μοι φύσιν αὐτοῦ ἔδειξεν. ῥίζη μὲν μέλαν ἔσκε, γάλακτι δὲ εἴκελον ἄνθος· μῶλυ δέ μιν καλεούσι θεοί· χαλεπὸν δέ τ᾿ ὀρύσσειν ἀνδράσι γε θνητοῖσι· θεοὶ δέ τε πάντα δύνανται.
The author of the seventy-ninth Carmen of the Priapeia has a rationalistic explanation:
Hinc legitur radix de qua flos aureus exit: Quern cum moly uocat, mentula moly fuit.
Page 117. Satyrion.
A name given to various kinds of Orchis. The Latin “Satyrion,” a plant exciting sexual appetite, is sometimes translated as “ragwort” ​(Senecio Jacobæa). Pliny makes mention of it, Historia Naturalis, LXII, 10; and Caelius Aurelianus, III, has: “Satyriasis est uehemens ueneris appetentia. Uocatur autem ab herbae uirtute quam Satyrion uocant.” So Quartilia in Petronius has a drink prepared from this aphrodisiac. In Italy there was, and perhaps is, a famous aphrodisiac named Satirione. See Machiavelli, La Clizia, iv, 2.
Page 117. Pederasty.
Of Ancient Mexico, Bernal Diaz del Castillo (circa 1498–1570), the Spanish historian whose Verdadera Historia de la conquista de Nueua España was written in 1568, says; “Erant quasi omnes sodomia commaculati, et adolescentes multi, muliebriter uestiti, ibant publice, cibum quaerentes ab isto diabolico et abominabili labore.”
Page 121. Tears.
Debrio, Disquisitiones Magicae, V, ix, says: “Hoc enim ipsum pro certissimo signo ex fide dignorum antiqua relatione, ac propria experientia docente, adeo compertum est, quod etiamsi ad lachrymandum coniuratoribus hortetur et compellatur, si malefica exstitit, hoc ipsum scilicet lachrymas emittere, non potest: dabit quidem flebiles uoces, et ex sputo genas et oculos linire ac si fleret, attentabit: super quo a circumstantibus caute aduertendum erit.”
Page 122. Bells.
There exist some rough but apt lines which are quoted in the gloss of the Corpus Iuris to describe the functions of bells:
Laudo Deum uerum, plebem uoco, congrego clerum, defunctos ploro, nimbum fugo, festa decoro.
​Or, in another form:
Funera plango, fulmina frango, sabbata pango, Excito lentos, dissipo uentos, paco cruentos.
Page 122. Eyes … bent upon the ground.
Bodin, Démonomanie, IV, 4, marks as a presumption of guilt: “la contenance du Sorcier, qui baisse ordinairement la veue contre terre, & n’ose regarder en face.”
Page 124. Theocritus.
Idyll VI, 39:
ὡς μὴ βασκανθῶ δέ, τρὶς εἰς ἐμὸν ἔπτυσα κόλπον.
The charm was broken by spitting thrice. Diogenianus, Prov. IV, 82, has a reference to this line: εἰς κόλπον πτύει, ἐρὶ τῶν βασκαινομένων. Θεόκριτος. One may compare Juvenal, VII, 111–12:
Tunc immensa caui spirant mendacia folles Conspuiturque sinus.
Upon which the old Scholiast glosses: “Propter fascinum uerborum ter sibi in sinu spuunt, et uidentur fascinum arcere.”
Page 125. Shaved.
See the Malleus Maleficarum, Part III, Qn. 15. It is there laid down: “The third precaution to be observed in this tenth action is that the hair should be shaved from every part of the body. The reason for this is the same as for stripping her of her clothes, which we have already mentioned; for in order to preserve their power of silence they are in the habit of hiding some superstitious object in their clothes or in their hair, or even in the most secret parts of their bodies which must not be named.”
​Witches were also shaved in order that the Devil’s mark might be discovered upon their bodies. This mark or Stigma, as Delrio terms it, “is given to them, as is alledg’d, by a Nip in any part of the Body, and it is blew.”
Page 125. Mark.
Ludovico Maria Sinistrari in his Demoniality writes: “The Devil imprints on them some mark, especially on those whose constancy he suspects. That mark, moreover, is not always of the same shape or figure: sometimes it is the likeness of a hare, sometimes a toad’s foot, sometimes a spider, a puppy, a dormouse. It is imprinted on the most hidden parts of the body: with men, under the eyelids, or it may be under the armpits, or on the lips, on the shoulder, the fundament, or somewhere else: with women, it is usually on the breast or the privy parts. Now, the stamp which imprints those marks is none other but the Devil’s claw.”
Page 130. Schedules.
Bodin, Démonomanie, III, 2: “Un certain Aduocat de Paris, que ie ne veux nommer, qui fut deferé l’an mil cinq cens septāte vn, & de faict il confessa qu’estant malade à l’extremité, il se donna au Diable pour guarir, & luy mesme escriuit & signa la sedule de son sang.”
Page 130. Satan often kills witches.
See the Malleus Maleficarum, Part III, Qn. 13, translated by Montague Summers (John Rodker, 1928): “And some also are distinguished by the fact that, after they have admitted their crimes, they try to commit suicide by strangling or hanging themselves. And they are induced to do this by the Enemy, lest they should obtain pardon from God through sacramental confession.” See further the note on this passage.
​Page 131. Judge.
The judge in question was “M. Adam Martin, Baillif de Bieures.”
Page 132. Ascletario.
This is related by Suetonius, T. Flauius Domitianus, XV.
Page 138. Wolves.
See my Geography of Witchcraft, pp. 22–26. The whole question of lycanthropy is discussed in the Malleus Maleficarum, at length by De Lancre, Bodin, and most demonologists. Hertz, Der Werwolf, may be consulted, and I have a forthcoming volume, The Werewolf. S. Augustine, De Ciuitate Dei, XVIII, 18, does not allow that evil powers and black magic can actually transform a man, but demons directly or mediately through a witch can and do cast a glamour so that to himself and to all who behold him a man may seem to be a wolf and be informed with all the savagery and appetites of the wolf nature. Indeed it is recorded that some lycanthropists have coupled with female wolves and have declared that this coitus was to them more natural and more pleasurable than connexion with a woman. S. Augustine says: “Nor can the devils create anything (whatever shows of theirs produce these doubts), but only cast a changed shape over that which God has made, altering only in show. Nor do I think the devil can form any soul or body into bestial or brutal members, and essences: but they have an unspeakable way of transporting man’s phantasy in a bodily shape, unto other senses …” Ludwig Elich, in his Daemonomagia, xii, says that the devil wraps the man into the form of a wolf composed of thickly condensed air, which seems a very possible explanation of the phenomenon. It may be noted that ​Boguet closely follows Bodin, Démonomanie, II, 6: “De la lycanthropie & si les esprits peuuent changer les hommes en bestes.”
Page 138. Antæus.
The legend said that at the festival of the Wolf-god Zeus Lycaeus, which was held every nine years on the Wolf-mountain in Arcadia, a man chosen by lot was stripped naked, his clothes being hung on an oak, and that then he ate of the entrails of animals mingled with human bowels. After this he swam across a lake, and on the further side was transformed into a wolf. If for nine years he refrained from tasting human flesh he could at the end of that time recover his former shape. S. Augustine, De Ciuitate Dei, XVIII, 17, quotes from Varro. See also Pliny, Historia Naturalis, VIII, xxxiv, 22. There are references in Plato, Republic, VIII, DE.; Polybius, VII, 13; Pausanias, VI, VIII, 2; VIII, II, 3–6, and other authors.
Page 138. Sigebert.
Sigebert of Gembloux, the famous Benedictine historian, born circa 1035; died 5 November, 1112. His most celebrated work, Chronica siue Chronographia, was immensely popular, and very numerous MSS. copies exist.
Page 138. Vergil.
Eclogue VIII, 97–98, speaking of magic herbs:
His ego saepe lupum fieri et se condere siluis Moerim … uidi.
Page 138. Ovid.
Metamorphoseon I, 232–33, of Lycaon:
Territus ille fugit; nactusque silentia ruris Exululat, frustraque loqui conatur.
​Page 139. Fincel.
Job Fincel, Wunderzeichen, Warhaffitge Beschreibung und gründlich verzeicnus schrecklicher Wunderzeichen und Geschichten die von … MDXVII bis auff … MDLVI geschechen und ergangen sind, noch der Jarzal … Jhena, 1556, 8v0. Hence the account is quoted by Weyer, De Maleficio Affectis, IV, 23, and Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part I, Sect, 1, Mem. 1, Subs. 4, makes reference to this passage: “Wierus tells a story of such a one at Padua, 1541, that would not believe to the contrary, but that he was a wolf.” Simon Goulart also records the circumstance in his Histoires admirables …, 1606. The book was translated into English, 1607, by E. Grimeston, and here Webster found a hint for the complexion of Duke Ferdinand’s madness in The Dutchesse of Malfy, V, 2, where the Doctor says:
two nights since One met the duke, ’bout midnight in a lane Behind St. Markes church, with the leg of a man Upon his shoulder; and he howl’d fearefully: Said he was a woolffe: onely the difference Was, a woolffes skinne was hairy on the outside, His on the in-side: bad them take their swords, Rip up his flesh, and trie.
Page 139. No tails.
The sexual power of a wolf was popularly supposed to lie in his tail, and accordingly, when during the old harvest rituals the corn-spirit was imagined as a wolf, particular attention was paid to his tail. In East Prussia, if a wolf were seen running through a field, the peasants took particular note whether he carried his tail high or dragged it on the ground. In the latter case ​they covered him with blessings and would even set out food for him, since he was fertilizing their fields and promised a rich tilth. In the former case aridity was threatened and they would curse and even try to kill him. A wolf without a tail was sexually considered exceptionally unlucky and malign.
Page 140. Jacobins.
Dominicans, so called from their convent hard by the church of St. Jacques at Paris.
Page 140. Gilles Garnier.
For an account of this notorious werewolf of Lyons who, being convicted of the “abominable crimes of lycanthropy and witchcraft,” was burned alive 18 January, 1573, see my Geography of Witchcraft, ch. I, pp. 23–24; and ch. v, pp. 399–400.
Page 142. Vincent.
Vincent of Beauvais, the celebrated encyclopædist. The most generally accepted dates assigned for his birth and death are respectively 1190 and 1264. It is thought that he was a member of the Dominican Order. The title of Vincent’s great work is Speculum maius, which contains 80 books and 9885 chapters.
Page 142. Belon.
Bodin, Démonomanie, II, 6: “Belon en ses obseruations imprimees à Paris, escript qu’il a veu en Egypte aux faux-bourgs de la ville du Cayre vn basteleur qui auoit vn asne auec lequel il discouroit, & parloit du meilleur sens qu’il eust: Et l’asne par gestes & signes à sa voix faisoit cognoistre, qu’il entendoit fort bien ce qu’on disoit.”
Page 142. Bartolomeo de Spina.
Quaestio de Strigibus: xix: “Experientiae apparentis conuersionis strigum in catos.”
​Page 142. The Inquisitors.
Malleus Maleficarum, Part II, Qn. i, chap. 9.
Page 143. Hares.
In Somersetshire there was a belief, still persisting in certain parts, that a hare might be a witch under that form. To my own knowledge when a hare has been seen in a field a farmer and his men will turn out to hunt the animal away lest it should bring ill-luck to, or cast a spell upon, the stock and cattle. Julian Cox, an old witch who was tried at the Taunton Summer Assizes in 1663 and executed, was commonly said to have been seen in the shape of a hare, evidence which was admitted by the court. James Device, one of the Lancashire coven of 1613, confessed that the Devil had appeared to him as a hare.
Page 145. Psalm VIII.
“Omnia subiecisti sub pedibus eius, oues et boues universas: insuper et pecora campi.”
Page 147. Osiander.
Andreas Osiander, 1498–1552, was for many years a preacher and pastor at St. Lornzkirche, Nuremberg, in which town he published his Harmony.
Page 152. Lucan.
Pharsalia, VI, 543–46, of Erichto:
laqueum, nodosque nocenteis Ore suo rupit: pendentia corpora carpsit Abrasitque cruces: percussaque uiscera nimbis Uulsit et incoctas admisso sole medullas.
Page 152. Horace.
Ars Poetica 338–40:
ficta uoluptatis causa sint proxima ueris, ne quodcumque uelit poscat sibi fabula credi, neu pransae Lamiae uiuum puerum extrahat aluo.
​Page 152. Apuleius.
Metamorphoses, II, 21–30, the relation of Thelyphron.
Page 155. L. 1. de Siccar.
Lex Cornelia (Sullae), de sicariis et ueneficis. See the Institutes of Justinian, IV, xviii, 5.
Page 155. Psalm 106.
(Douay, 105). “Et immolauerunt filios suos et filias suas daemoniis.”
Page 155. IV Kings, xxiii. 10.
(A.V., II Kings, xxiii) Cf Josias: “And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Ennom: that no man should consecrate there his son or his daughter through fire to Moloch.”
Page 156. Manasses.
II Paralipomenon, xxiii, 6: “He made his sons to pass through the fire in the valley of Benennom: he observed dreams, followed divinations, gave himself up to magic arts, had with him magicians, and enchanters: and he wrought many evils before the Lord, to provoke him to anger.”
Page 157. Stadlin.
Malleus Maleficarum, Part II, Qn. 1, ch. vi. “Moreover, Nider [in his Formicarius] tells of a wizard named Stadlin, who was taken in the diocese of Lausanne, and confessed that in a certain house where a man and his wife were living he had by his witchcraft successively killed in the woman’s womb seven children, so that for many years the woman always miscarried.”
Page 157. Maxentius.
M. Aurelius Valerius Maxentius, Roman Emperor, A.D. 306–312. See Zosimus, II, 9–18; and the Annales, xii, 33, and xiii, 1, of ​Joannes Zonaras. All authorities agree in representing Maxentius as a monster of lust and cruelty. Zosimus especially notes that he was superstitious to the last degree and wholly given to magical crafts. Many emperors, Commodus, Caracalla, Julian the Apostate, and others, were much addicted to the offering of human sacrifices, and these victims were immolated for the sake of extispicium, the examination of human entrails in order thereby to divine the future. Of Maxentius Eusebius precisely says that he indulged the same horrid passion: νεογνῶν σπλάγχρα βρέφων διερευνομένου.
Page 157. Mantuanus.
Blessed Baptista Mantuanus (or Spagnoli), the famous Renaissance poet, was born at Mantua 17 April, 1447, where also he died 22 March, 1516. Whilst yet young he joined the Carmelite Order, of which he is one of the glories. He was beatified by Leo XIII in 1890 and his feast is kept in the Order on 23 March. His Opera omnia were collected at Bologna in 1502, and as he excelled in every form of Latin verse, representative selections may be found from his vast store in most of the Delitiae and other treasuries of the later Latinists.
Page 157. Bodin.
Démonomanie, IV, 4. “Des Presomptions contre les Sorciers.” “Les autres indices sont, la contenance du Sorcier, qui baisse ordinairement la veüe contre terre, & n’ose regarder en face, les variations aux interrogatoires & sur tout si le sorcier est descendu de pere ou mere, sorciers. Car c’est un argumēt bien grand auec le bruit commun, d’autant que le plus aggreable ​sacrifice que le Diable desire de telles gens, est de vouer & dedier leurs enfans à son seruice, si tost qu’ils sont nez.”
Page 162. Levites.
Upon the occasion of the idolatrous worship of the golden calf, Moses said: “If any man be on the Lord’s side let him join with me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him: And he said to them: Thus saith the Lord God of Israel: Put every man his sword upon his thigh: go, and return from gate to gate through the midst of the camp, and let every man kill his brother, and friend, and neighbour. And the sons of Levi did according to the words of Moses, and there were slain that day about three and twenty thousand men.” Exodus, xxxii, 26–28.
Page 169. Remy.
Remy, Daemonolatreia, III, 12, emphasizes the stubborn malice of witchcraft: “Inueteratum hoc malum est, & plerumque ab ipsa iam adolescentia admissum & contractum…. Diserta atque aperta Domini uox est: Uir siue mulier, in quibus Pythonicus, uel diuinationis fuerit spiritus, morte moriantur: (Leuiticus, xx); … Ecce ut nullo nec aetatis, nec sexus discrimine, ac delectu supplicium est in eos diuina lege cōstitutum; qui eiusmodi uetitas, illicitasque artes exercent.”
Page 169. Bodin.
Démonomanie, IV, 5: “Car si la loy condamne a mort l’enfant qui n’a pas atteint la puberté pour n’auoir pas crié quand on tuoit son maistre, & n’auoir pas declaré les meurtriers, comme en cas pareil fut pendu & estranglé vn ieune enfant aagé d’onze ans, qui auoit tué d’vn coup ​de pierre vne fille, & l’auoit cachee … à plus forte raison doit l’enfant Sorcier, qui a attaint la puberté estre mis à mort, s’il n’a declaré les assemblees auec les Diables, mesmement estāt preuenu, & qu’il soit conuaincu, ne voulant rien confesser.”
Page 170. Lucan.
Pharsalia, IX, 1087–88:
sed parcimus annis, donamusque nefas.
Page 170. Bodin.
The important trial of Jeanne Harvillier was the occasion of Bodin’s writing his famous treatise. The Preface of the Démonomanie commences: “Le iugement qui a esté conclud contre vne Sorciere, auquel ie fus appellé le dernier iour d’Auril, mil cinq cens septante & huict, m’a donné occasion di mettre la main à la plume, pour esclairir le subiect des Sorciers qui semble à toutes personnes estrange à merueilles, & à plusiers incroyable. La Sorciere que i’ay diet s’appelloit Ieanne Haruillier, natifue de Verbery pres Compeigne, accusee d’auoir fait mourir plusieurs hommes & bestes, comme elle confessa sans question, ny torture, combien que de prime face elle eust denié opiniatrement, & varié plusieurs fois. Elle confessa aussi que sa mere dés l’aage de douze ans l’auoit presentee au Diable, en guise d’vn grand homme noir…. Et que dés lors elle renonça Dieu, & promit seruir au diable. Et qu’au mesme instant elle eut copulation charnellement auec le Diable, continuant depuis l’aage de douze ans, iusques hà cinquante, ou enuiron qu’elle fut prise…. Il fut trouué que trente ans au parauāt, elle auoit eu le foüet pour le mesme ​crime, & sa mere cōdamnee à estre bruslee viue, par arrest de la Cour de Parlement, confirmatif de la sentence du Iuge de Sélis…. Ceux qui assisterent au iugement, estoyēt bien d’aduis qu’elle auoit bien merité la mort: mais sur la forme & genre de mort, il y en eut quelqu’vn plus doux, & d’vn naturel plus pitoyable, qui estoit d’aduis qu’il suffisoit de la faire pendre. Les autres apres auoir examiné les crimes detestables & les peines establies par les loix Diuines & humaines, … furēt d’auis qu’elle deuoit estre cōdānee a estre bruslee viues: ce qui fut arresté, & la sentence, dont il n’y eut point d’appel, executee le dernier iour d’Auril à la poursuyte de Maistre Claude Dofay, Procureur du Roy à Ribemont.”
Page 180. St. Fortunatus.
Bishop of Todi; 14 October, 537. S. Gregory the Great speaks with admiration of the extraordinary powers of this Saint in delivering the possessed and expelling demons. Dialogues, I, X. Also Acta Sanctorum (Bollandists), October, Vol. VI, p. 520 sqq.
Page 180. St. Hilarion.
A disciple of S. Antony the Great. He was a hermit of the most extreme sanctity and austerity. His feast is kept 21 October. The Breviary lection for that day tells us: “Innumerabiles daemones in multis orbis terrae partibus ex hominum corporibus eiecit.”
Page 180. St. Bernard.
S. Bernard of Menthon, founder of the St. Bernard Alpine hospice, was so famous for his exorcisms and victories over Satan that he is represented on a public seal with the demon bound (Recuiel … de sphragistique, Vol. IV, ​p. 85. Cf. Blavignac, Histoire de l’architecture sacrée … p. 294). In art he often appears with the demon tied by his stole. Feast Day, 15 June. He died in 1008. Acta Sanctorum, June, Vol. II, p. 1077.
Page 180. St. Martin.
Bishop of Tours, born circa 316; died at Candes, Touraine, 397. Feast Day 11 November. S. Martin is one of the most famous thaumaturges of the world, and his cult was very popular throughout the centuries. Numbers of the possessed were delivered from demons at his tomb, and his relics were constantly honoured by pilgrimages from all countries. France has ever held him one of her greatest Saints.
S. Martin of Vertou is also greatly honoured as a scourge of devils and liberator of the possessed. He exorcized the daughter of a King of Spain (one account says of an English nobleman), and the old prose records:
Liberata Et saluata Principis est filia: Ursus cedit Et obedit Remota saeuitia.
Page 180. S. Gall.
An Irishman by birth, he was one of the twelve disciples who accompanied S. Columbanus to Gaul. When his master went on to Italy in 612, S. Gall remained as a hermit in Switzerland, where he died about 646. Immediately God revealed the sanctity of His servant by countless miracles, and a chapel was erected upon the spot which had been his ​retreat. In time this became the famous Abbey of S. Gall, for many centuries one of the noblest Benedictine houses in Europe. The Feast Day of S. Gall is 16 October. S. Gall delivered from the demon by which she was possessed Fridiburga, the daughter of Cunzo, and betrothed of Sigebert, King of the Franks.
Page 180. Other holy men.
Vast numbers of names might be given, such as Pope S. Linus; S. Gregory the Wonder-worker; S. Zeno of Verona; S. Ubald of Gubbio; S. Geminianus of Modena; S. Allyre of Clermont; S. Parthenius; S. Silvin; S. John the Thaumaturge, Bishop of Polybota; S. Hidulphus of Treves; S. Dié; S. Exsuperius, first Bishop of Bayeux; S. Januarius; S. Hubert; S. Giles; S. Nicolas the Great; S. Nicolas of Tolentino; S. Ouen; S. Lanfranc; S. Elpidius of Atella; S. Melanius; S. Mathurin; S. Aubin of Angers; S. Paternian of Vannes; S. Hervé; S. Samson; S. Frobert; S. Cyriacus; S. Albert the Carmelite; S. Theodore the Solitary; S. Eleutherius; S. Antoninus of Sorrento; S. Eustasius the Abbot; S. Venant; S. Dêle; S. Theotonius, Canon Regular; S. Philip of Argiro; S. Hugh of Lincoln; S. Norbert; S. Francis of Assisi; S. Antony of Padua; S. John of the Cross; S. Ignatius Loyola; S. Francis Xavier; S. John Baptist Vianney; S. Hermann Joseph; S. Dominic; S. Antony the Great; S. Gerard Majella, C.SS.R.; S. Bertrand of Comminges; S. Mary Magdalene; S. Marina; S. Dympna; S. Catherine of Siena; S. Colomba of Rieti; cum multis allis.
​Page 182. Gregory.
St. Gregory, Bishop of Langres, who ruled that see 509–39, is locally much venerated. It was he who transferred the relics of S. Benignus.
Page 182. Albinus.
Saint Aubin (Albinus), Bishop of Angers from 529 to 549, was a native of Vannes. See Lobineau, Vies des Saints de la Bretagne (1836), I, p. 123.
Page 182. St. Antony.
Eremite, or the Great. In art, as in the famous picture by Salvator Rosa, he is often seen chasing away the nightmare demons with a Cross.
Page 182. St. Margaret.
Virgin and Martyr. She usually appears trampling the demoniac dragon under her feet and holding up the Cross in her hand, since when Satan appeared to her in a terrible bestial form she put him to flight by the power of the crucifix. She is so depicted in a Gothic sculpture, Henry VII’s Chapel; and in a picture by Lucas van Leyden.
Page 182. St. Justina.
The history of S. Justina and S. Cyprian, the converted magician, is well known. Feast Day of the two Martyrs, 26 September.
Page 183. The Cross.
Malleus Maleficarum, Part II, Qn. 1, ch. 2: “The witches met together and, by their art, summoned a devil in the form of a man, to whom the novice was compelled to swear to deny the Christian religion, never to adore the Eucharist, and to tread the Cross underfoot whenever she could do so secretly.” Guazzo in the Compendium Maleficarum tells us that at the reception into that horrid company witches are required to “cast upon the ground and ​trample under their feet in the mire the Cross, Holy Medals, Agnus Dei, should they possess such or carry them on their persons.” In the La-Bas of Huysmans it is said of “Le Chanoine Docre” a composite figure, “Sa rage du sacrilège est telle qu’il s’est fait tatouer sous la plante des pieds l’image de la Croix, afin de pouvoir toujours marcher sur le Sauveur” (IX).
Page 185. Theodosius.
Born circa 346; Roman Emperor of the East, 378–95. Valentinian II, Roman Emperor, 375–92, was, although at that time only some four or five years old, proclaimed Augustus by the army upon the death of his father, Valentinian I. When Valentinian II was expelled from Italy by Maximus, Theodosius defeated this latter and restored the Emperor to his Western authority in 391. Valentinian was murdered 15 May, 392, by Arbogastes.
Page 187. St. Athanasius.
The passage is from the De humanitate Uerbi et corporalis euis praesentia. Peter Thyraeus, De Spirituum Apparitionibus, I, xvi, 420, writes: “Ueniat, inquit Athanasius, qui istorum dictorum experimentum capere uelit, (uidelicet, solo signo crucis daemones fugari) et in ipsis praestigiis daemonum et imposturis uaticiniorum et in miraculis Magiae, utatur signo Crucis ab ipsis deriso nomenque Christi inuocet; et uidebit, quomodo eius rei metu daemones fugiant, uaticinia conquiescant, Magiae et ueneficia iaceant.”
Page 189. Perfumes.
Sinistrari. Demoniality, lxviii–lxxvi, has dealt at length with this point, which he treats in a very masterly and skilful way.
​Page 193. St. Catherine.
This is related in the “Legend,” the biography of S. Catherine, which was completed in 1395 by Blessed Raimondo delle Vigne, of Capua, her confessor. An Italian translation of the “Legend” is included in the first volume of Gigli’s L’opere della serafica Santa Caterina da Siena, Siena and Lucca, 1707–54.
Page 193. Palladius.
Born in Galatia, 368; died probably before 431. The identity of the author of the Historia Lausiaca and of the Bishop of Helenopolis, once disputed, is now generally accepted. He passed nine years among the monks, some of whom were hermits, some living in communities, who inhabited the Nitrian desert. During this period he learned the traditions of their great founders, S. Antony, S. Paul, S. Pachomius, S. Pambo, and the rest. The Historia Lausiaca is a history of the monks of Egypt and Palestine in the form of short biographies and many anecdotes. The best modern edition is that by Abbot Butler in two volumes, Cambridge, 1898 and 1904.
Page 199. Eucharist.
Communion may be given to those possessed. Thyraeus, De Daemoniacis, II, 365, says: “An forte ab Altaris Sacramento arcendi sunt daemoniaci? Non sunt. Patrum pro ipsis est sententia. Eis, inquit Crassianus, teste Diuo Thoma, qui ab immundis uexantur Spiritibus, communionem sacrosanctam a senioribus nostris nunquam inuenimus interdictam.”
Page 199. Gaguin.
Robert Gaguin, Trinitarian, 1425–1502. He was employed on various important businesses during the reigns of Louis XI and Charles ​VIII, and among the works he has left his historical tractates are considered particularly valuable.
Page 199. Louis of Luxembourg.
Count of St. Pol, was delivered up by Charles of Burgundy to Louis XI. Condemned as a traitor, he was executed at Paris, 19 December, 1475.
Page 200. Pontanus.
De Bello Neapolitano, V. “Nefarium ad sacrum, Magicaque ad maleficia concursum est. Quod in summis miseriis, ultimaque aquarum penuria perditissimis a sacerdotibus commentum esset, dum impie agendo, Dei simul iras et aeris turbationem ac tempestates exciunt. Inuenti enim ex oppidanis atque obsessis sunt, qui nocturnis in tenebris, deceptis castrorum uigiliis per asperrimas rupes furtim profecti ad litus trahentes secum imaginem affixi ad crucem Christi, maledictis illam prius ac diro persecuti carmine, post in mare execrabundi immerserint, coelo, mari, terrisque tempestatem imprecati. Quo etiam tempore sacerdotes quidam mortalium omnium scelestissimi, dum satisfacere profanis militum artibus student, ritum nefarium secuti, quo, ut dictum est, in huiusmodi necessitatibus elici hymbres putantur, asipo pro aedis foribus constituto, tanquam agenti animam cecinere funestum carmen. Post diuina Eucharistia in illius os palatumque iniecta conclamatum asinum funereis cantibus uiuum tandem ibidem pro templi foribus humauere. Hic uero uix dum perfecto sacro obnubescere aer, ac mare agitari uentis cum coepisset, diesque medius offundi tenebris….” A terrible storm with much rain followed. ​Pontani Opera Omnia, Basileae, 1538, II, pp. 574–75.
Page 200. Inquisitors.
Malleus Maleficarum, Part II, Qn. 1. ch. 5. See the translation by Montague Summers; John Rodker, 1928; pp. 116–17.
Page 200. King.
The reference is to Charles IX, born 1550; reigned 1560, died 30 May, 1574. He was greatly suspect of encouraging sorcerers and of consulting with necromancers and witches.
Page 201. Gentil.
Bodin, Démonomanie, IV, 5: “La superstition est bien plus grande de porter … l’hostie consacree en sa pochette. Comme faisoit le President Gentil, qui fut trouué saisi d’vne Hostie par le bourreau, qui le pendit à Montfaucon.”
Page 201. Mockery and derision.
Bodin, Démonomanie, IV, 5, says: “I’ay monstré qu’il y a crime de leze Maiesté diuine, fouillant les Sacremens ou prieres sacrees de charmes diaboliques.” This is one of the most frequent and most horrible crimes practised by witches, for as there can be nothing more agreeable to their master than the profanation of the Body of the Lord, these witches use all their cunning to devise ways and means to secure the Host in order that they may abuse and befoul It in every hideous sort. Innumerable examples might be cited from the trials throughout the centuries. Even at the present day Satanists will pay considerable sums of money to those who, feigning devoutly to go to Holy Communion, retain God’s Body in their mouths and presently spitting It forth into ​some handkerchief or cloth bear It away to sell for their thirty pieces of silver. Tabernacles are also broken open and the Contents filched. These scandals occur even now. From time to time gangs of Host-stealers are detected and broken up, as in 1855, when a society of these sacrilegious miscreants which carried on its horrid operations at Paris was traced and stamped out mainly owing to the effects of the Archbishop of Paris, Marie-Dominique-Auguste Siborn, who it is significant to note was assassinated 3 January, 1857, by a renegade priest named Verger. In 1874 and 1878 similar organizations of professional Host-stealers were suppressed in Paris, but there is evidence that the same activities are even now being pursued in London, and in other English cities, as well as in France, Italy, America, and indeed many countries beside.
Page 206. Deuteronomy, xiii, 1–3, 5.
“If there rise in the midst of thee a prophet or one that saith he hath dreamed a dream, and he foretell a sign and a wonder, And that come to pass which he spoke, and he say to thee: Let us go and follow strange gods, which thou knowest not, and let us serve them: Thou shalt not hear the words of that prophet or dreamer: for the Lord your God trieth you, that it may appear whether you love him with all your heart, and with all your soul, or not…. And that prophet or forger of dreams shall be slain.”
Page 206. Leviticus, xxiv, 16.
“He that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, dying let him die: all the multitude shall stone him, whether he be a native or a stranger. He that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, dying let him die.”
​Page 207. Jeremiah, xxxii, 29.
“The Chaldeans that fight against this city shall come and set it on fire, and burn it, with the houses upon whose roof they offered sacrifices to Baal, and pound out drink offerings to strange gods, to provoke me to wrath.”
Page 207. Exodus, xx, 3.
“Thou shalt not have strange gods before me.”
Page 207. Exodus, xxxii, 28.
After the worship of the gold calf the sons of Levi were commanded to kill the idolaters, “and then were slain that day about three and twenty thousand men.”
Page 207. Numbers, xxv, 3, 5, 9.
“And Israel was initiated to Beelphegor: upon which the Lord being angry … Moses said to the judges of Israel: Let every man kill his neighbours, that have been initiated to Beelphegor…. And there were slain four and twenty thousand men.”
Page 207. III Kings (A.V. I Kings), xiii.
The prophet sent from Juda to Bethel to denounce Jeroboam was bidden, “Thou shalt not eat bread nor drink water,” … but being deceived by an old prophet of Bethel, “he ate bread and drank water in his house…. And when he was gone, a lion found him in the way and killed him.”
Page 208. Exodus, xxxiv.
Where all society with the Chanaanites, and especially intermarriages, are strictly forbidden.
Page 208. Deuteronomy, vii.
No league nor fellowship to be made with the Chanaanites. “Thou shalt make no league with them, nor show mercy to them: Neither shalt thou make marriages with them. Thou shalt not give thy daughter to his son, nor take his daughter for thy son.”
​Page 208. Numbers, xxv.
The people fall into fornication and idolatry, being initiated to Beelphegor. Four-and-twenty thousand are slain. Zambri, a prince of the tribe of Simeon, boldly has connexion in the brothel house with Cozbi, the daughter of a prince among the Madianites, whereupon Phinees, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, takes a dagger “and thrust both of them through together, to wit, the man and the woman, in the genital parts.” Phinees is highly praised and blessed.
Page 208. Leviticus, xx, 15, 16.
“He that shall copulate with any beast or cattle, dying let him die: the beast also shall ye kill. The woman that shall lie under any beast, shall be killed together with the same: their blood be upon them.”
Page 208. Deuteronomy, xxvii, 21.
“Cursed be he that lieth with any beast: and all the people shall say: Amen.”
Page 211. Procedure.
These Instructions, which do not appear in every edition of the Discours des Sorciers, were long held as supremely authoritative, and they were used as the official hand-book and directory in trials of this kind by many local Parliaments and other courts of justice. They should be compared in detail with the Third Part of the Malleus Maleficarum: “The Third Part relating to the Judicial Proceedings in both the Ecclesiastical and Civil Courts against Witches and indeed all Heretics; Containing xxxv Questions in which is Most Clearly Set Out the Formal Rules for Initiating a Process of Justice, How it should be conducted, and the Method of Pronouncing Sentence.”