# An Examen of Witches/Chapter 60

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Chapter LX.
Whether the Eucharist may be Administered to One Accused of Witchcraft.
I Have thought good to add here two questions very useful and necessary for the subject of which we are treating. First, whether the Eucharist may be administered to one accused of witchcraft. Second, whether, when the person accused of witchcraft be but found guilty of having been at the Sabbat, without being charged with any act of witchcraft, the Judge may pass sentence of death upon him. These two questions I shall briefly discuss in two chapters.
As for the first question, I will admit that it applies equally in the case of those who are charged with any crime, other than witchcraft, which involves a sentence of death.
C. queasitum 13. q. 2.Although the difficulty seems to be resolved by the Canon, which provides that, when the condemned has confessed his sins and is contrite and penitent, the Eucharist should be given to him, nevertheless we read in Gaguin that the contrary was observed in the year 1475, in the time of King Louis the Eleventh, in the case of Louis of Luxemburg, Constable of France, to whom the Eucharist was denied after his sentence had been pronounced.
Also it is the custom in Spain and France not to administer the Eucharist to the condemned on the same day of their sentence, but to do so on ​the foregoing days. Consil. 16 de penitent. & remiss. lib. 5. d. consil. 16. nu. 2. 12.Navarro testifies to this custom; and he also is of opinion that the Eucharist may be administered in the morning, one hour before the sentence is passed.
But whatever may be advanced in respect of other crimes, I for my part maintain that, in the crime of witchcraft, the Eucharist should never be given to the accused, for fear lest he should abuse it. Lib. 5.For it is noted that witches normally abuse the Eucharist, as did those of whom Pontanus speaks, who, to help the French besieged by the Spaniards in the town of Sessa Aurunca in the Kingdom of Naples, dragged the Cross through the streets with a thousand insults and blasphemies, and threw it into the sea, and afterwards gave a consecrated Host to an ass, which they buried alive under the church door. Froissart also tells in his History of a certain man of Soissons who had a toad baptised, and afterwards made it eat a consecrated Host. The Inquisitors likewise relate that a witch confessed to having received the consecrated Host in her handkerchief instead of swallowing It, and that she shut It up in a pot where she was feeding a toad, and mixed all with other powders which the Devil gave her, and then put this mixture under the threshold of a sheep pen after saying certain words, in order to cause the sheep to die. Even a certain great King of Christendom abused It formerly through the agency of a necromancer. For he cut off the head of a firstborn child of ten years, and placed the head upon a consecrated Host to know his future fate; and the head answered in these words; Vim patior. The King died mad.
And within recent memory Antide Colas of ​Betoncourt in the County of Burgundy, who was burned at Dôle on the twentieth of February, 1599, confessed that the Devil had commanded her to bring him the Host when It was administered to her, and that at the previous Easter she had with great difficulty received It, being unable to swallow It without great pain; for a voice said to her in the form of a vision that she might not swallow It, and that she must take great care not to swallow It.
In short this cursed vermin ordinarily make use of the Host in their acts of witchcraft, as was also admitted by several of those who were accused at Paris by the Blind Man of the Fifteen-twenties, named Honorat, in the time of King Charles IX.
I cannot omit mention of President Gentil, who was found in possession of the Host by the executioner who hanged him at Montfaucon, as Bodin tells in his “Demonomania.”IV. 5.
Another reason why the Eucharist must be refused to one who is accused of witchcraft is that this Sacrament is of such reverence, so holy and so deeply august, that, de Consil. 16.according to Navarro, so high a mystery must not be communicated to one who is going to execution for his sins. And why should It be given to a witch, who tramples It underfoot and never speaks of It except in mockery and derision; seeing that such a one renders himself unworthy of the benefit of the law, which acts justly towards him, according to the Jurisconsult.
Besides, consideration should be given to the disadvantages which might follow. For it is possible that, at the instigation of Satan, the witch may spue It on to the ground, or behave ​in some such way with It; and this, I think, is the reason why in the primitive Church the Holy and Sacred Communion was never administered to demoniacs, S. Denis, Hier.; Theod. de sacr. Synax.as we learn from St. Denis and St. Theodore.
I am well aware that no one will oppose me in my contention when the accused has not yet confessed. But I make no doubt that there are some who will hold the contrary view in a case where the accused has confessed, even after the sentence has been pronounced and some hours before it has been confirmed, basing their opinion on the Canon above quoted. Yet I maintain that in neither case must the Host be administered. For the reasons already adduced, this is clearly just in the first case. As to the second, Judges know well enough how witches usually behave at their examination; for sometimes they confess and sometimes deny, now they say one thing and now another, and they generally contradict themselves two or three times in one day. They have even been known to retract when going to the fire, although they have repeated their confession countless times, and have previously shown every mark of repentance. This was so a few days ago in the case of Clauda Paget, known as la Foulet.
And indeed I do not find this very strange, seeing that the Devil is ever about them to prevent them from confessing. And therefore it is very difficult to place any reliance upon a witch’s penitence, having regard also to the fact that it has been noted that they seldom or never leave the service of Satan, as we have said elsewhere. It is sufficiently clear, therefore, that the Sacred Host must not be given to witches, either before ​or after their condemnation or confession, in order to avoid the danger spoken of by St. Paul, who says that he who receives and eats the Body of Jesus Christ unworthily, eateth his own damnation.
And if it be objected that a witch’s confession may sometimes be sincere, I answer that it is necessary to follow the safest and more usual course; L. nam. ad ea de legib.and that in such a case the good-will and intentions of the accused will suffice for him, just as the Theologians assure us that it does in the case of those who die at sea or elsewhere where the Sacrament cannot be obtained.
As for the Canon above quoted, I say that it does not apply to witches, but to those guilty of other crimes, where there is no fear of the Eucharist being abused, and where none of the calamities of which we have spoken can ensue.