# The History of Witchcraft and Demonology/Chapter 2

CHAPTER II The Worship of the Witch
In order clearly to understand and fully to realize the shuddering horror and heart-sick dismay any sort of commerce between human beings and evil spirits, which is the very core and kernel of Witchcraft, excited throughout the whole of Christendom, to appreciate why tome after tome was written upon the subject by the most learned pens of Europe, why holiest pontiffs and wisest judges, grave philosopher and discreet scholar, king and peasant, careless noble and earnest divine, all alike were of one mind in the prosecution of sorcery; why in Catholic Spain and in Puritan Scotland, in cold Geneva and at genial Rome, unhesitatingly and perseveringly man sought to stamp out the plague with the most terrible of all penalties, the cautery of fire; in order that by the misreading of history we should not superficially and foolishly think monk and magistrate, layman and lawyer were mere tigers, mad fanatics—for as such have they, too, often been presented and traduced,—it will be not wholly impertinent briefly to recapitulate the orthodox doctrine of the Powers of Darkness, facts nowadays too often forgotten or ignored, but which to the acute mediæval mind were ever fearfully and prominently in view.
And here, as in so many other beliefs, we shall find a little dogma; certain things that can hardly be denied without the note of temerity; and much concerning which nothing definite can be known, upon which assuredly no pronouncement will be made.
In the first place, the name Devil is commonly given to the fallen angels, who are also called Demons. The exact technical distinction between the two terms in ecclesiastical usage may be seen in the phrase used in the decree of the Fourth Lateran Council: “Diabolus enim et alii dæmones.” (The devil and the other demons), i.e. all are demons, and ​the chief of the demons is called the Devil. This distinction is preserved in in the Vulgate New Testament, where diabolus represents the Greek διάβολος, and in almost every instance refers to Satan himself, whilst his subordinate angels are described, in accordance with the Greek, as dæmones or dæmonia. But save in some highly specialized context when the most meticulous accuracy is required, we now use the words “devil,” “demon” indifferently, and employ the definite article to denote Lucifer (Satan), chief of the devils, The Devil. So in S. Matthew xxv. 41, is written “the devil and his angels.” The Greek word διάβολος means a slanderer, an accuser, and in this sense is it applied to him of whom it is said “the accuser [ὁ κατήγορος] of our brethren is cast forth, who accused them before our God day and night” (Apocalypse xii. 10). Thus it answers to the Hebrew name Satan, which signifies an adversary, an accuser.
Mention is made of the Devil in many passages both of the Old and New Testaments, but much is left in obscurity, and the full Scriptural teaching on the legions of evil can best be ascertained by combining the scattered notices and reading them in the light of patristic and theological tradition. The authoritative teaching of the Church is declared in the Decrees of the Fourth Lateran Church (cap. 1. Firmiter credimus), wherein, after setting forth that God in the beginning had created two creatures, the spiritual and corporeal; that is to say, the angelic and the earthly, and lastly man, who was made of both earth and body; the Council continues: “For the Devil and the other demons were created by God naturally good; but they themselves of themselves became evil.” The dogma is here clearly laid down that the Devil and the other demons are spiritual or angelic creatures created by God in a state of innocence, and that they became evil by their own free act. It is added that man sinned by suggestion of the Devil, and that in the next world the reprobate and impenitent will suffer punishment with him. This then is the actual dogma, the dry bones of the doctrine, so to speak. But later theologians have added a great deal to this,—the authoritative Doctor Eximius, Francisco Suarez, S.J., De Angelis, VII, is especially valuable—and much of what they deduce cannot be disputed without ​such rejection incurring the grave censure technically known as “Erroneous.”
It is remarkable that for an account of the Fall of the angels, which happened before the creation of the world, we must turn to the last book in the Bible, the Apocalypse of S. John. For although the picture of the past be blended with prophecies of what shall be in the future, thus must we undoubtedly regard the vision of Patmos. “And there was a great battle in heaven, Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels: and they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the Devil, and Satan, who seduceth the whole world; and he was cast down unto the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him” (Apocalypse xii. 7–9). To this may be added the words of S. Jude: “And the angels who kept not their principality, but forsook their own habitation, he hath reserved under darkness in everlasting chains, unto the judgement of the great day.” To these references should be added a striking passage from the prophet Isaiah: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, who didst rise in the morning! how art thou fallen to the earth, that didst wound the nations! And thou saidst in thy heart: I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit in the mountain of the covenant, in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the most High. But yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, into the depth of the pit” (Isaiah xiv. 12–15). The words of the prophet may in one sense, perhaps primarily, be directed against Merodach-baladan, King of Babylon, but all the early Fathers and later commentators are agreed in understanding the passage as applying with deeper significance to the fall of the rebel angel. This interpretation is confirmed by the words of Our Lord to His disciples: “I saw Satan like lightning falling from heaven.” (Uidebam Satanam sicut fulgur de cœlo cadentem.) S. Luke x. 18.
An obvious question which next arises and which has been amply discussed by the theologians is: What was the nature of the sin of the rebel angels? This point presents some difficulty, for theology has logically formed the highest ​estimate of the perfection of the angelic nature, the powers and possibilities of the angelic knowledge. Sins of the flesh are certainly impossible to angels, and from many sins which are purely spiritual and intellectual they would seem to be equally debarred. The great offence of Lucifer appears to have been the desire of independence of God and equality with God.
It is theologically certain that Lucifer held a very high rank in the celestial hierarchy, and it is evident that he maintains some kind of sovereignty over those who followed him in his rebellion: “Si autem,” says Our Lord, “et Satanas in seipsum diuisus est quomodo stabit regnum eius?” (If Satan also be divided against himself, how shall his Kingdom stand?) And S. Paul speaks of “Principem potestatis æris huius, qui nunc operatur in filios diffidentiæ.” (The Prince of the power of this air, who now worketh in the sons of disobedience) Ephesians ii. 2. It may seem strange that those rebellious spirits who rose against their Maker should be subordinate to and obey one of their fellows who led them to destruction, but this in itself is a proof that Lucifer is a superior intelligence, and the knowledge of the angels would show them that they can effect more mischief and evil by co-operation and organization, although their unifying principle is the bond of hate, than by anarchy and division. There can be little doubt that among their ranks are many mean and petty spirits—to speak comparatively—but even these can influence betray foolish and arrogant men. We shall be on safe ground if we follow the opinion of Suarez, who would allow Lucifer to have been the highest of all angels negatively, i.e. that no one was higher, although many (and among these the three great Archangels, S. Michael, S. Gabriel, S. Raphael) may have been his equals.
It has been argued that the highest of the angels, by reason of their greater intellectual illumination, must have entirely realized the utter impossibility of attaining to equality with God. So S. Anselm, De Casu Diaboli (IV), says: “Non enim ita obtusæ mentis [diabolus] erat, ut nihil aliud simile Deo cogitari posse nesciret?” (The devil was surely not so dull of understanding as to be ignorant of the inconceivability of any other entity like to God?) And S. Thomas ​writes, in answer to the question, whether the Devil desired to be “as God,” “if by this we mean equality with God, then the Devil would not desire it, since he knew this to be impossible.” But as the Venerable Duns Scotus, Doctor subtilis, admirably points out, we must distinguish between efficacious volition and the volition of complaisance, and by the latter act an angel could desire that which is impossible. In the same way he shows that, though a creature cannot directly will its own destruction, it may do this consequenter, i.e. it can will something from which this would inevitably follow.
And although man must realize that he cannot be God, yet there have been men who have caused themselves to be saluted as God and even worshipped as God. Such was Herod Agrippa I, who on a festival day at Cæsarea, had himself robed in a garment made wholly of silver, and came into the crowded theatre early in the morning, so that his vesture shone out in the rays of the sun with dazzling light, and the superstitious multitude, taught by his flatterers, cried out that he was a god, and prayed to him as divine, saying: “Be thou merciful unto us, for although we have hitherto reverenced thee only as a man yet henceforth we own thee to be god.” Caligula, also, arrogated to himself divinity. “Templum etiam numini suo proprium, et sacerdotes et excogitatissimas hostias instituit.” (He also built a temple in honour of his own godhead, and consecrated priests to offer him most splendid sacrifices.) This emperor, moreover, set up his statue in the Temple at Jerusalem, and ordered victims to be sacrificed to him. Domitian, with something more than literary compliment, is addressed by Martial as “Dominus Deusque noster” (Our Lord and our God), and he lived up to his title. Heliogabalus identified himself in some mystic way with the deity of Edessa, and ordered no god save himself to be worshipped at Rome, nay, throughout the wide world: “Taking measures that at Rome no god should be honoured save Heliogabalus alone. . . . Nor did he wish to stamp out only the various Roman cults, but his desire was that all the whole wide world through, only one god, Heliogabalus, should everywhere be worshipped.” To cite further examples, and they are numerous, from Roman history were superfluous. Perhaps the most ​astounding case of all was that of the Persian king, Khosroes (Khusrau) II, who in the seventh century sacked Jerusalem and carried off the True Cross to his capital. Intoxicated with success he announced by solemn proclamation that he was Almighty God. He built an extraordinary palace or tower, in which there were vast halls whose ceilings were painted with luminous suns, moons, and stars to resemble the firmament. Here he sat upon a lofty throne of gold, a tiara upon his head, his cope so sewn with diamonds that the stuff could not be seen, sceptre and orb in his hands, upon one side the Cross, upon the other a jewelled dove, and here he bade his subjects adore him as God the Father, offering incense and praying him “Through the Son.” This insane blasphemy was ended when the Persians were vanquished by the Emperor Heraclius, and in the spring of 629 the Cross was restored to Jerusalem.
Montanus, the Phrygian heretic of the second century, who had originally, as S. Jerome tells us, been a priest of Cybele, actually claimed to be the Trinity. “I am the Father, the Word, and the Paraclete,” he said, and again, “I am the Lord God omnipotent who have descended into a man . . . neither an angel, nor an ambassador, but I, the Lord, the Father, am come.” Elipandus of Toledo in the eighth century spoke of Christ as “a God among gods,” inferring that there were many others who had been divine. One may compare the incarnate gods adored in China and Tibet to-day. A Bohemian woman named Wilhelmina, who died in Milan, 1281, declared herself to be an incarnation of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, and was actually worshipped by crowds of fanatics, who caused great scandal and disorder. The Khlysti in Russia have not only prophets but “Christs” and “Redeemers,” and they pray to one another. About 1830 there appeared in one of the American states bordering upon Kentucky an impostor who declared himself to be Christ. He threatened the world with immediate judgement, and a number of ill-balanced and hysterical subjects were much affected by his denunciations. One day, when he was addressing a large gathering in his usual strain, a German standing up humbly asked him if he would repeat his warnings in German for the benefit of those present who only knew that tongue. The speaker answered that he had ​never been able to learn that language, a reply which seemed so ludicrous in one claiming divinity that many of the auditors were convulsed with laughter and so profane a charlatan soon lost all credit. Monsignor Flaget, Bishop of Bardstoun, wrote an account of this extraordinary imposture in a letter dated 4 May, 1833, where he says the scene took place some three years before. About 1880 at Patiala in the Punjaub, a fanatic of filthy appearance named Hakim Singh gave himself out to be Christ, and in a short time had a following of more than four thousand persons, but within a few months they melted away. Many “false Christs” have organized Russian sects. In 1840 a man drained the peasants of Simboisk and Saratov of their money by declaring himself to be the Saviour; about 1880 the founder of the bojki, an illiterate fanatic named Sava proclaimed that he was the Father, and his kinsman, Samouil, God the Son. Ivan Grigorieff, founder of the “Russian Mormons,” taught that he was divine; and other frenzied creatures, Philipoff, Loupkin, Israil of Selengisk, have all claimed to be the Messiah and God.
It is apparent then, that although rationally it should be inconceivable that any sentient creature could claim divinity, actually the contrary is the case. The sin of Satan would appear to have been an attempt to usurp the sovereignty of God. This is further borne out by the fact that during the Temptation of our Lord the Devil, showing Him “omnia regna mundi, et gloriam eorum” (all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them), said, “Hæc omnia tibi dabo, si cadens adoraueris me.” (All these will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me.) And he is rebuked: “Uade Satana: Scriptum est enim: Dominum Deum tuum adorabis, et illi soli seruies.” (Begone, Satan: for it is written: The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and Him only shalt thou serve.) It should be remarked that Lucifer was telling a lie. The kingdoms of this world are not his to offer, but only its sins and follies, disappointment and death. But here the Devil is demanding that divine honours should be paid him. And this claim is perpetuated throughout the witch trials. The witches believed that their master, Satan, Lucifer, the fiend, the principle of evil, was God, and as such they worshipped him with latria, they adored him, they ​offered him homage, they addressed prayer to him, they sacrificed. So Lambert Danéau, Dialogue of Witches (trans. 1575), asserts: “The Diuell com̃aundeth them that they shall acknowledge him for their god, cal vpõ 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.” Cannaert records that the accusation against Elisabeth Vlamynex of Alost, 1595, was “You were not even ashamed to kneel before Belzebuth, whom you worshipped.” De Lancre, in his Tableau de l’Inconstance des mauvais Anges (1613), informs us that when the witches presented a young child they fell on their knees before the demon and said: “Grand Seigneur, lequel i’adore.” (Great Lord, whom I worship.) The novice joining the witches made profession in this phrase: “I abandon myself wholly to thy power and I put myself in thy hands, acknowledging no other god; and this since there art my god.” The words of Silvain Nevillon, tried at Orleans in 1614, are even plainer: “We say to the Devil that we acknowledge him as our master, our god, our creator.” In America in 1692, Mary Osgood confessed that “the devil told her he was her God, and that she should serve and worship him.”
There are numberless instances of prayer offered to the Devil by his servants. Henri Boguet, in his Discours des Sorciers (Lyons, 1608), relates that Antide Colas, 1598, avowed that “Satan bade her pray to him night and morning, before she set about any other business.” Elizabeth Sawyer, the notorious witch of Edmonton (1621), was taught certain invocations by her familiar. In her confession to the Rev. Henry Goodcole, who visited her in Newgate, upon his asking “Did the Diuell at any time find you praying when he came unto you, and did not the Diuell forbid you to pray to Iesus Christ, but to him alone? and did he not bid you to pray to him, the Diuell as he taught you?” She replied: “He asked of me to whom I prayed, and I answered him to Iesus Christ, and he charged me then to pray no more to Iesus Christ, but to him the Diuell, and he the Diuell taught me this prayer, Sanctibecetur nomen tuum, Amen.” So as Stearne reports in Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft (1648), of the Suffolk witches: “Ellen, the wife of Nicholas Greenleife of Barton in Suffolke, confessed, ​that when she prayed she prayed to the Devill and not to God.”
In imitation of God, moreover, the Devil will have his miracles, although these are θαύματα, mere delusive wonders which neither profit nor convince. Such was the feat of Jannes and Mambres, the Egyptian sorcerers, who in emulation of Moses changed their rods to serpents. To this source we can confidently refer many tricks of Oriental jugglers. “I am satisfied,” wrote an English officer of rank and family, “that the performances of the native ‘wise-men’ are done by the aid of familiar spirits. The visible growth of a mango tree out of an empty vessel into which a little earth is placed, a growth which spectators witness, and the secret of which has never been discovered, may not be unreasonably referred to the same occult powers which enabled the Egyptian magicians of old to imitate the miraculous acts which Moses, by God’s command, openly wrought in the face of Pharaoh and his people.” In the basket-trick, which is performed without preparation in any place or spot—a greensward, a paved yard, a messroom—a boy is placed under a large wicker basket of conical shape, which may be examined and handled by all, and this is then stabbed through and through by the fakir with a long sword that pierces from side to side. Screams of pain follow each thrust, and the weapon is discerned to be covered with fresh blood. The cries grow fainter and at length cease altogether. Then the juggler uttering cries and incantations dances round the basket, which he suddenly removes, and no sign of the child is to be seen, no rent in the wicker-work, no stain on the steel. But in a few seconds the boy, unharmed and laughing, appears running forward from some distant spot. In this connexion we may well recall the words of Suarez: “[The Devil] can deceive and trick the senses so that a head may appear to be cut off and blood to flow, when in truth no such thing is taking place.”
The wizards of Tartary and Tibet, bokte, upon certain special days will with great ceremony appear in the temples, which are always thronged on these occasions, and whilst their disciples howl and shriek out invocations, they suddenly throw aside their robes and with a sharp knife seem to rip open their stomachs from top to bottom, whilst blood pours ​from the gaping wound. The worshippers, lashed to frenzy, fall prostrate before them and grovel frantically upon the floor. The wizard appears to scatter his blood over them, and after some five minutes he passes his hands rapidly over the wound, which instantly disappears, not leaving even the trace of a scar. The operator is noticed to be overcome with intense weariness, but otherwise all is well. Those who have seen this hideous spectacle assure us that it cannot be explained by any hallucination or legerdemain, and the only solution which remains is to attribute it to the glamour cast over the deluded crowd by the power of discarnate evil intelligences.
The portentous growth of Spiritism, which within a generation passed beyond the limits of a popular and mountebank movement and challenged the serious attention and expert inquiry of the whole scientific and philosophical world, furnishes us with examples of many extraordinary phenomena, both physical and psychical, and these, in spite of the most meticulous and accurate investigation, are simply inexplicable by any natural and normal means. Such phenomena have been classified by Sir William Crookes, in his Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism. They include the movement of heavy bodies without contact, or with contact altogether insufficient to explain the movement; the alteration of weight of bodies; the rising of tables and chairs off the ground without contact with any human person; the levitation of human beings; “apports,” objects such as flowers, coins, pieces of stone conveyed into a hermetically closed room without any visible agency to carry them; luminous appearances; more or less distinct phantom faces and forms. In spite of continual and most deliberate trickery, repeated and most humiliating exposure, and this not only in the case of cheap charlatans but also of famous mediums such as William Eglinton, there occur and have always occurred phenomena which are vouched for upon the evidence of names whose authority cannot be gainsaid. Do such manifestations proceed from the spirits of the departed or from intelligences which have never been in human form? Even avowed believers in a beneficent Spiritism, anxious to establish communication with dead friends, are forced to admit the frequent and irresponsible action of non-human ​intelligences. This conclusion is based upon lengthy and detailed evidence which it is only possible very briefly to summarize. It proves almost impossible satisfactorily to establish spirit identity, to ascertain whether the communicator is actually the individual he or it purports to be; the information imparted is not such as would naturally be expected from those who have passed beyond this life but trivial and idle to a degree; the statements which the spirits make concerning their own condition are most contradictory and confused; the moral tone which pervades these messages, at first vague and unsatisfactory, generally becomes repulsive and even criminally obscene. All these particulars unmistakably point to demoniac intervention and deceit. The Second Plenary Council of Baltimore (1866) whilst making due allowance for fraudulent practice and subtle sleights in Spiritism declares that some at least of the manifestations are to be ascribed to Satanic intervention, for in no other manner can they be explained. (Decreta, 33–41.) A decree of the Holy Office, 30 March, 1898, condemns Spiritistic practices, even though intercourse with evil spirits be excluded and intercourse sought only with good angels.
Not only with miracles but also in prophecies does Lucifer seek to emulate that God Whose Throne he covets. This point is dealt with by Bishop Pierre Binsfeld, who in his De Maleficis (1589) writes: “Nunc uidendum est an dæmones præscientiam habeant futurorum et secretorum, ita ut ex eorum reuelatione possit homo prognosticare et occulta cognoscere? . . . Prima conclusio: Futura, si in seipsis considerentur, anullo præterquam a solo Deo cognosci possunt.” (Next we will inquire whether devils can have any foreknowledge of future events or of hidden things so that a man might from their revelations to him foretell the future and discover the unknown? . . . First conclusion: The future, precisely considered, can be known to none save to God alone.) But it must be borne in mind that the intelligence of angels, though fallen, is of the acutest order, as Simon Maiolo in his Dies caniculares explains: “Astutia, sapientia, acumine longe superant homines, et longius progrediuntur ratiocinando.” (In shrewdness, knowledge, perspicuity, they far excel mankind, and they can look much ​further into the future by logical deduction.) And it is in this way that a demon will often rightly divine what is going to happen, although more often the response will either be a lie or wrapped up in meaningless and ambiguous phrase, such as were the pagan oracles. A notable example of false prophets may be found in the Camisards (probably from camise, a black blouse worn as a uniform), a sect of evil fanatics who terrorized Dauphiné, Vivarais, and chiefly the Cévennes at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Their origin was largely due to the Albigensian spirit, which had never been wholly stamped out in that district, and which was fanned to flame by the anarchical preaching and disordered pamphlets of the French Calvinists, such as Jurieu’s Accomplissement des prophéties. Pope Clement XI styles the Camisards “that execrable race of ancient Albigenses.” De Serre, a rank old Calvinist of Dieulefit in Dauphiné, became suddenly inspired and a wave of foul hysteria spread far and wide. In 1702 the saintly abbé de Chaila was treacherously murdered by these wretches, who seized arms and formed themselves into offensive bands under such ruffians as Séguier, Laporte, Castanet, Ravenal, and Cavalier. Louis XIV sent troops to subdue them, but the Catholic leaders at first do not seem to have appreciated the seriousness of the position, and a desultory guerilla warfare dragged on for some years. Cavalier escaped to England, whence he returned in 1709, and attempted to kindle a revolt in Vivarais. On 8 March, 1715, by a proclamation and medals, Louis XIV announced that these demoniacs were entirely extinct.
A number of these prophets fled to England, where they created great disturbances, and Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV, XXXVI, tells us that one of the leading refugees, a notorious rebel, Elie Marion, became so obnoxious on account of his avertissements prophétiques and false miracles, that he was expelled the country as a common nuisance.
The existence of evil discarnate intelligences having been orthodoxly established, a realm which owns one chief, and it is reasonable to suppose, many hierarchies, a kingdom that is at continual warfare with all that is good, ever striving to do evil and bring man into bondage; it is obvious that if he be so determined man will be able in some way or another to get into touch with this dark shadow world, and however ​rare such a connexion may be it is, at least, possible. It is this connexion with its consequences, conditions, and attendant circumstances, that is known as Witchcraft. The erudite Sprenger in the Malleus Maleficarum expressly declares that in his opinion a denial of the possibility of Witchcraft is heresy. “After God Himself hath spoken of magicians and sorcerers, what infidel dare doubt that they exist?” writes Pierre de Lancre in his L’Incredulité et Mescreance du Sortilège (Paris, 1622). That eminent lawyer Blackstone, in his Commentaries (1765), IV, 4, asserts: “To deny the possibility, nay, actual existence of Witchcraft and Sorcery, is at once flatly to contradict the revealed Word of God in various passages both of the Old and New Testament; and the thing itself is a truth to which every Nation in the World hath in its turn borne testimony, either by examples seemingly well attested, or by prohibitory laws, which at least suppose the possibility of commerce with evil spirits.” Even the ultra-cautious—I had almost said sceptical—Father Thurston acknowledges: “In the face of Holy Scripture and the teaching of the Fathers and theologians the abstract possibility of a pact with the Devil and of a diabolical interference in human affairs can hardly be denied.” Imposture, trickery, self-deception, hypnotism, a morbid imagination have, no doubt, all played an important part in legends of this kind. It is not enough quite sincerely to claim magical powers to possess them in reality. Plainly, a man who not only firmly believes in a Power of evil but also that this Power can and does meddle with and mar human affections and human destinies, may invoke and devote himself to this Power, may give up his will thereunto, may ask this Power to accomplish his wishes and ends, and so succeed in persuading himself that he has entered into a mysterious contract with evil whose slave and servant he is become. Moreover, as we should expect, the records teem with instances of common charlatanry, of cunning villainies and crime masquerading under the cloak of superstition, of clever fraud, of what was clearly play acting and mumming to impress the ignorant and vulgar, of diseased vanity, sick for notoriety, that craved the name and reputation of witch, of quackery and cozening that proved lucrative and comfortable enough.
​But when every allowance has been made, as we examine in detail the long and bloody history of Witchcraft, as we recognize the fearful fanaticism and atrocious extravagances of the witch mania, as we are enabled to account for in the light of ampler knowledge, both psychological and physical, details and accidents which would have inevitably led to the stake without respite or mercy, as we can elucidate case after case—one an hysterical subject, a cataleptic, an epileptic, a sufferer from some obscure nervous disorder even to-day not exactly diagnosed; another, denounced by the malice of private enemies, perhaps on political grounds; a third, some doting beldame the victim of idlest superstition or mere malignity; a fourth, accused for the sake of gain by a disappointed blackmailer or thief; others, silly bodies, eccentrics, and half-crazed cranks; and the even greater number of victims who were incriminated by poor wretches raving in the agonies of the rack and boots;—none the less after having thus frankly discounted every possible circumstance, after having completely realized the world-wide frenzy of persecution that swept through those centuries of terror, we cannot but recognize that there remain innumerable and important cases which are not to be covered by any ordinary explanation, which fall within no normal category. As a most unprejudiced writer has well said: “The underlying and provocative phenomena had really been present in a huge number of cases.” And there is no other way of accounting for these save by acknowledging the reality of Witchcraft and diabolic contracts. It must be steadily remembered that the most brilliant minds, the keenest intelligences, the most learned scholars, the noblest names, men who had heard the evidence at first hand, all firmly believed in Witchcraft. Amongst them are such supreme authorities as S. Augustine, “a philosophical and theological genius of the first order, dominating, like a pyramid, antiquity and the succeeding ages”; Blessed Albertus Magnus, the “Universal Doctor” of encyclopædic knowledge; S. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor Angelicus, one of the profoundest intellects the world has ever seen; the Seraphic S. Bonaventura, most loving of mystics; Popes not a few, Alexander IV, the friend of the Franciscans, prudent, kindly, deeply religious, “assiduous in prayer and strict in abstinence”; John XXII, ​“a man of serious character, of austere and simple habits, broadly cultivated”; Benedict XII, a pious Cistercian monk, most learned in theology; Innocent VIII, a magnificent prelate, scholar and diplomatist; Gregory XV, an expert in canon and civil law, most just and merciful of pontiffs, brilliantly talented. We have the names of learned men, such as Gerson, Chancellor of Notre-Dame and of the University of Paris, “justly regarded as one of the master intellects of his age”; James Sprenger, O.P., who for all his etymological errors was a scholar of vast attainments; Jean Bodin, “one of the chief founders of political philosophy and political history”; Erasmus; Bishop Jewell, of Salisbury, “one of the ablest and most authoritative expounders of the true genius and teaching of the reformed Church of England”; the gallant Raleigh; Lord Bacon; Sir Edward Coke; Cardinal Mazarin; the illustrious Boyle; Cudworth, “perhaps the most profound of all the great scholars who have adorned the English Church”; Selden; Henry More; Sir Thomas Browne; Joseph Glanvill, who “has been surpassed in genius by few of his successors”; Meric Casaubon, the learned Prebendary of Canterbury; Sir Matthew Hale; Sir George Mackenzie; William Blackstone; and many another divine, lawyer, scholar, of lesser note. It is inconceivable that all these, mistaken as they might be in some details, should have been wholly deluded and beguiled. The learned Sinistrari in his De Dæmonialitate, upon the authoritative sentence of Francesco-Maria Guazzo, an Ambrosian, (Compendium Maleficarum, Liber I. 7), writes: “Primo, ineunt pactum expressum cum Dæmone aut alio Mago seu Malefico uicem Dæmonis gerente, et testibus præsentibus de seruitio diabolico suscipiendo: Dæmon uero uice uersa honores, diuitias, et carnales delectationes illis pollicetur.” (Firstly, the Novices have to conclude with the Demon, or some other Wizard or Magician acting in the Demon’s place, an express compact by which, in the presence of witnesses, they enlist in the Demon’s service, he giving them in exchange his pledge for honours, riches, and carnal pleasures.)
It is said that the formal pact was sometimes verbal, sometimes a signed document. In every case it was voluntary, and as Görres points out, the usual initiation into these foul ​mysteries was through some secret society at an asseblym of which the neophyte bound himself with terrific oathsnd a blasphemy to the service of evil. But there are cases which can only be explained by the materialization of a dark intelligence who actually received a bond from the worshipper. These are, of course, extremely rare; but occasionally the judges were able to examine such parchments and deeds. In 1453 Guillaume Edelin, Prior of S. Germain-en-Laye, signed a compact with the Devil, and this was afterwards found upon his person. Pierre de Lancre relates that the witch Stevenote de Audebert, who was burned in January, 1619, showed him “le pacte & conuention qu’elle auoit faict auec le Diable, escrite en sang de menstrues, & si horrible qu’on auoit horreur de la regarder.” In the library at Upsala is preserved the contract by which Daniel Salthenius, in later life Professor of Hebrew at Köningsberg, sold himself to Satan.
In the archives of the Sacred Office is preserved a picture of the Crucifixion of which the following account is given: A young man of notoriously wicked life and extreme impiety having squandered his fortune, and being in desperate need, resolved to sell himself body and soul to Lucifer on condition that he should be supplied with money enough to enable him to indulge in all the luxuries and lusts he desired. It is said the demon assumed a visible form, and required him to write down an act of self-donation to hell. This the youth consented to do on one proviso. He asked the demon if he had been present on Calvary, and when he was answered in the affirmative he insisted that Lucifer should trace him an exact representation of the Crucifixion, upon which he would hand over the completed document. The fiend after much hesitation consented, and shortly produced a picture. But at the sight of the racked and bleeding Body stretched on the Cross the youth was seized with such contrition that falling upon his knees he invoked the help of God. His companion disappeared, leaving the fatal contract and picture. The penitent, in order to gain absolution for so heinous guilt, was obliged to have recourse to the Cardinal Penitentiary, and the picture was taken in charge by the Holy Office. Prince Barberini afterwards obtained permission to have any exact copy made of it, and this eventually he presented to the Capuchins at S. Maria della Concezione.
​A contract with Satan was said always to be signed in the blood of the executor. “The signature is almost invariably subscribed with the writer’s own blood. . . . Thus at Augsburg Joseph Egmund Schultz declared that on the 15 May, 1671, towards midnight, when it was betwixt eleven and twelve of the clock, he threw down, where three crossroads met, an illuminated parchment, written throughout in his own blood and wrapped up in a fair kerchief, and thus he sealed the compact . . . Widmann also tells us how that unhappy wretch Faust slightly cut his thumb and with the drops of blood which trickled thence devoted himself in writing body and soul to the Devil, utterly repudiating God’s part in him.” From the earliest times and in many nations we find human blood used inviolably to ratify the pledged word. Rochholz, I, 52, relates that it is a custom of German University freshmen (Burschen) for the parties to write “mutually with their own blood leaves in each other’s albums.” The parchment is still said to be in existence on which with his own blood Maximilian, the great and devout Bavarian elector, religiously dedicated himself to the Most Holy Mother of God. Blood was the most sacred and irrevocable of seals, as may be seen in the custom of blood-brotherhood when friendship was sworn and alliances concluded. Either the blood itself was drunk or wine mixed with blood. Herodotus (IV, 70) tells us that the Scythians were wont to conclude agreements by pouring wine into an earthen vessel, into which the contracting parties having cut their arms with a knife let their blood flow and mingle. Whereupon both they and the most distinguished of their following drank of it. Pomponius Mela, De Situ Orbis, II, 1, records the same custom as still existing among them in his day: “Not even their alliances are made without shedding of blood: the partners in the compact wound themselves, and when the blood gushes out they mingle the stream and taste of it when it is mixed. This they consider to be the most assured pledge of eternal loyalty and trust.” Gyraldus, Topographia Hibernorum, XXII, p. 743, says: “When the Ireni conclude treaties the one drinks the blood of the other, which is shed voluntarily for this purpose.” In July, 1891, a band of brigands which had existed for three years was discovered and broken up in South Italy. It was reported ​that in the ritual of these outlaws, who were allied to the “Mala Vita” of Bari, “the neophytes drank blood-brotherhood with the captain of the band by sucking out and drinking the blood from a scratch wound, which he had himself made in the region of his heart.”
In several grimoires and books of magic, such as The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts, The Key of Solomon the King, Sanctum Regnum, may be found goetic rituals as well as invocations, and if these, fortunately for the operators, are occasionally bootless, it can only be said that Divine Power holds in check the evil intelligences. But, as Suarez justly observes, even if no response be obtained from the demon “either because God does not allow it, or for some other reason we may not know,” the guilt of the experimenter in this dark art and his sin are in no wise lightened. Towards the end of the eighteenth century a certain Juan Perez, being reduced to the utmost misery, vowed himself body and soul to Satan if he were revenged upon those whom he suspected of injuring him. He consulted more than one magician and witch, he essayed more than one theurgie ceremonial, but all in vain. Hell was deaf to his appeal. Whereupon he openly proclaimed his disbelief in the supernatural, in the reality of devils, and mocked at Holy Scripture as a fairy tale, a nursery fable. Naturally this conduct brought him before the Tribunal of the Holy Office, to whom at his first interrogation he avowed the whole story, declaring himself ready to submit to any penance they might seem fit to inflict.
Any such pact which may be entered into with the demon is not in the slightest degree binding. Such is the authoritative opinion of S. Alphonsus, who lays down that a necromancer or person who has had intercourse with evil spirits now wishing to give up his sorceries is bound: “1. Absolutely to abjure and to renounce any formal contract or any sort of commerce whatsoever he may have entered into with, demonic intelligences; 2. To burn all such books, writings, amulets, talismans, and other instruments as appertain to the black art (i.e. crystals, planchettes, ouija-boards, pagan periapts, and the like); 3. To burn the written contract if it be in his possession, but if it be believed that it is held by the demon, there is no need to demand its restoration since ​it is wholly annulled by penitence; 4. To repair any harm he has done and make good any loss.” It may be remarked that these rules have been found exceedingly useful and entirely practical in dealing with mediums and others who forsake spiritism, its abominations and fearful dangers.
There are examples in history, even in hagiography, of sorcerers who have been converted. One of the most famous of these is S. Theophilus the Penitent; and even yet more renowned is S. Cyprian of Antioch who, with S. Justina, suffered martyrdom during the persecution of Diocletian at Nicomedia, 26 September, 304. Blessed Gil of Santarem, a Portuguese Dominican, in his youth excelled in philosophy and medicine. Whilst on his way from Coimbra to the University of Paris he fell into company with a courteous stranger who offered to teach him the black art at Toledo. As payment the stranger required that Gil should make over his soul to the Devil and sign the contract with his blood. After complying with the conditions he devoted seven years to magical studies, and then proceeding to Paris easily obtained the degree of doctor of medicine. Gil, however, repented, burned his books of spells, and returned to Portugal, where he took the habit of S. Dominic. After a long life of penitence and prayer he died at Santarem, 14 May, 1205, and here his body is still venerated. His cult was ratified by Benedict XIV, 9 March, 1748. His feast is observed 14 May.
The contract made by the witch was usually for the term of her life, but sometimes it was only for a number of years, at the end of which period the Devil was supposed to kill his votary. Reginald Scot remarks: “Sometimes their homage with their oth and bargaine is receiued for a certeine terme of yeares; sometimes for ever.” Magdalena de la Cruz, a Franciscan nun, born at Aquilar in 1487, entered the convent of Santa Isabel at Cordova in 1504. She acquired an extraordinary reputation for sanctity, and was elected abbess in 1533, 1586, and 1539. Scarcely five years later she was a prisoner of the Inquisition, with charges of Witchcraft proven against her. She confessed that in 1499 a spirit who called himself by the grotesque name Balbar, with a companion Pithon, appeased to her at the tender age of twelve, and she made a contract with him for the space of ​forty-one years. In 1543 she was seized with a serious illness, during which she confessed her impostures and demonic commerce. She was confined for the rest of her life as a penitent in a house of the utmost austerity. Joan Williford, a witch of Faversham, acknowledged “that the Devil promised to be her servant about twenty yeeres, and that the time is now almost expired.” In 1646 Elizabeth Weed, a witch of Great Catworth in Huntingdonshire, confessed that “the Devill then offer’d her that hee would doe what mischiefe she should require him; and said she must covenant with him that he must have her soule at the end of one and twenty years which she granted.” In 1664, a Somerset sorceress, Elizabeth Style, avowed that the Devil “promised her Mony, and that she should live gallantly, and have the pleasure of the World for Twelve years, if she would with her Blood sign his Paper, which was to give her Soul to him.”
Satan promises to give his votaries all they desire; knowledge, wealth, honours, pleasure, vengeance upon their enemies; and all that he can give is disappointment, poverty, misery, hate, the power to hurt and destroy. He is ever holding before their eyes elusive hopes, and so besotted are they that they trust him and confide in him until all is lost. Sometimes in the case of those who are young the pact is for a short while, but he always renews it. So at Lille in 1661 Antoinette Bourignon’s pupils confessed: “The Devil gives them a Mark, which Marks they renew as often as those Persons have any desire to quit him. The Devil reproves them the more severely, and obligeth them to new Promises, making them also new Marks for assurance or Pledge, that those Persons should continue faithful to him.”
The Devil’s Mark to which allusion is here made, or the Witches’ Mark, as it is sometimes called, was regarded as perhaps the most important point in the identification of a witch, it was the very sign and seal of Satan upon the actual flesh of his servant, and any person who bore such a mark was considered to have been convicted and proven beyond all manner of doubt of being in league with and devoted to the service of the fiend. This mark was said to be entirely insensible to pain, and when pricked, however deeply, it did not bleed. So Mr. John Bell, minister at Gladsmuir, in ​his tract The Trial of Witchcraft; or Witchcraft: Arraigned and Condemned, published early in the eighteenth century, explains: “The witch mark is sometimes like a blew spot, or a little tate, or reid spots, like flea biting; sometimes also the flesh is sunk in, and hollow, and this is put in secret places, as among the hair of the head, or eye-brows, within the lips, under the arm-pits, and in the most secret parts of the body.” Robert Hink, minister at Aberfoill, in his Secret Commonwealth (1691), writes: “A spot that I have seen, as a small mole, horny, and brown-coloured; throw which mark, when a large pin was thrust (both in buttock, nose, and rooff of the mouth), till it bowed and became crooked, the witches both men and women, nather felt a pain nor did bleed, nor knew the precise time when this was doing to them, (their eyes only being covered).” This mark was sometimes the complete figure of a toad or a bat; or, as Delrio says, the slot of a hare, the foot of a frog, a spider, a deformed whelp, a mouse. The same great authority informs us on what part of the body it was usually impressed: “In men it may often be seen under the eyelids, under the lips, under the armpits, on the shoulders, on the fundament; in women, moreover, on the breast or on the pudenda.”
In his profound treatise De Dæmonialitate that most erudite Franciscan Ludovico Maria Sinistrari writes: “[Sagæ seu Malefici] sigillantur a Dæmone aliquo charactere, maxime ii, de quorum constantia dubitat. Character uero non est semper eiusdem formæ, aut figuræ: aliquando enim est simile lepori, aliquando pedi bufonis, aliquando araneæ, uel catello, uel gliri; imprimitur autem in locis corporis magis occultis: uiris quidem aliquando sub palpebris, aliquando sub axillis, aut labiis, aut humeris, aut sede ima, aut alibi: mulieribus autem plerumque in mammis, seu locis muliebribus. Porro sigillum, quo talia signa imprimuntur, est unguis Diaboli.” (The Demon imprints upon [the Witches or Wizards] 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 image of a hare, sometimes a toad’s leg, sometimes a spider, a puppy, a dormouse. It is imprinted on the most hidden parts of the body: with men, under the eye-lids, or the armpits, or the lips, on the shoulder, the fundament, or somewhere else: ​with women it is usually on the breasts or the privy parts. Now, the stamp which imprints these marks is none other but the Devil’s claw.)
This Mark was made by the Devil, or by the Devil’s vicegerent at the Sabbats upon the admission of a new witch. “The Diuell giveth to euerie nouice a marke, either with his teeth or his clawes,” says Reginald Scot, Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584. The young witches of Lille in 1661 confessed that “the Devil branded them with an iron awl upon some part of the body.” In Scotland, Geillis Duncane, maid-servant to the deputy bailiff of Tranent, one David Seaton, a wench who was concerned in the celebrated trial of Doctor Fian, Agnes Sampson, Euphemia McCalyan, Barbara Napier, and their associates, would not confess even under torture, “whereuppon they suspecting that she had been marked by the devill (as commonly witches are) made a diligent search about her, and found the enemies mark to be in her fore crag, or fore part of her throate; which being found, shee confessed that all her doings was done by the wicked allurements and entisements of the devil, and that she did them by witcheraft.” In 1630 Catharine Oswald of Niddrie was found guilty of sorcery, “the advocate for the instruction of the assyze producing the declaration of two witnesses, that being in the tolbuith, saw Mr. John Aird, minister, put a pin in the pannell’s shoulder, (where she carries the devill’s mark) up to the heid, and no bluid followed theiron, nor she shrinking thereat; which was againe done in the justice-depute his own presence.” In 1643 Janet Barker at Edinburgh confessed to commerce with the demon, and stated that he had marked her between the shoulders. The mark was found “and a pin being thrust therein, it remained for an hour unperceived by the pannell.”
On 10 March, 1611, Louis Gaufridi, a priest of Accoules in the diocese of Marseilles, was visited in prison, where he lay under repeated charges of foulest sorcery, by two physicians and two surgeons who were appointed to search for the Devil’s mark. Their joint report ran as follows: “We, the undersigned doctors and surgeons, in obedience to the directions given us by Messire Anthoine de Thoron, sieur de Thoron, Councillor to the King in his Court of Parliament, have visited Messire L. Gaufridy, upon whose ​body we observed three little marks, not very different in colour from the natural skin. The first is upon his right thigh, about the middle towards the lower part. When we pierced this with a needle to the depth of two fingers breadth he felt no pain, nor did any blood or other humour exude from the incision.
“The second is in the region of the loins, towards the right, about an inch from the spine and some four fingers breadth above the femoral muscles. Herein we drove the needle for three fingers breath, leaving it fixed in this spot for some time, as we had already done in the first instance, and yet all the while the said Gaufridy felt no pain, nor was there any effluxion of blood or other humour of any kind.
“The third mark is about the region of the heart. At first the needle was introduced without any sensation being felt, as in the previous instances. But when the place was probed with some force, he said he felt pain, but yet no moisture distilled from this laceration. Early the next morning we again visited him, but we found that the parts which had been probed were neither swollen nor red. In our judgement such callous marks which emit no moisture when pierced, cannot be due to any ancient affection of the skin, and in accordance with this opinion we submit our report on this tenth day of March, 1611.
Fontaine, Grassy, Doctors; Mérindol, Bontemps, Surgeons.”
On 26 April, 1634, during the famous Loudun trials, Urbain Grandier, the accused was examined in order to discover the witch-mark. He was stripped naked, blindfolded, and in the presence of the officials, René Mannoury, one of the leading physicians of the town, conducted the search. Two marks were discovered, one upon the shoulder-blade and the other upon the thigh, both of which proved insensible even when pierced with a sharp silver pin.
Inasmuch as the discovery of the devil-mark was regarded as one of the most convincing indications—if not, indeed, an infallible proof—that the accused was guilty since he bore indelibly branded upon his flesh Satan’s own sign-manual, it is easy to see how the searching for, the recognition and the probing of, such marks actually grew to be a profession ​in which not a few ingenious persons came to be recognized as experts and practical authorities. In Scotland, especially, the “prickers,” as they were called, formed a regular gild. They received a good fee for every witch they discovered, and, as might be expected, they did not fail to reap a golden harvest. At the trial of Janet Peaston, in 1646, the magistrates of Dalkeith “caused John Kincaid of Tranent, the common pricker, to exercise his craft upon her. He found two marks of the Devil’s making; for she could not feel the pin when it was put into either of the said marks, nor did the marks bleed when the pin was taken out again. When she was asked where she thought the pins were put into her, she pointed to a part of her body distant from the real place. They were pins of three inches in length.” Another notorious pricker was John Bain, upon whose unsupported evidence a large number of unfortunate wretches were sentenced to death. About 1634 John Balfour of Corhouse was feared over all the countryside for his exploits; whilst twenty years later one John Dick proved a rival to Kincaid himself. The regular trade of these “common prickers” came to be a serious nuisance, and confessedly opened the door to all sorts of roguery. The following extraordinary incident shows how dangerous and villainous in mountebank hands the examinations could become, which, if conducted at all, ought at least to be safeguarded by every precaution and only entrusted to skilled physicians, who should report the result to grave and learned divines. “There came then to Inverness one Mr. Paterson, who had run over the kingdom for triall off witches, and was ordinarily called the Pricker, because his way of triall was with a long brass pin. Stripping them naked, he alledged that the spell spot was seen and discovered. After rubbing over the whole body with his palms he slips in the pin, and, it seemes, with shame and fear being dasht, they felt it not, but he left it in the flesh, deep to the head, and desired them to find and take it out. It is sure some witches were discovered but many honest men and women were blotted and break by this trick. In Elgin there were two killed; in Forres two; and one Margret Duff, a rank witch, burned in Inverness. This Paterson came up to the Church of Wardlaw, and within the church pricked 14 women and one man brought thither by the Chisholm of ​Commer, and 4 brought by Andrew Fraser, chamerlan of Ferrintosh. He first polled all their heads and amassed the heap of haire together, hid in the stone dich, and so proceeded to pricking. Severall of these dyed in prison never brought to confession. This villan gaind a great deale off mony, haveing two servants; at last he was discovered to be a woman disguished in mans cloathes. Such cruelty and rigure was sustained by a vile varlet imposture.” No doubt in very many, in the majority of instances, these witch-marks were natural malformations of the skin, thickened tissue, birthmarks—I myself have known a subject who was by prenatal accident stamped upon the upper part of the arm with the complete figure of a rat—moles, callous warts, or spots of some kind. But this explanation will not cover all the cases, and even the sceptical Miss Murray who writes: “Local anæsthesia is vouched for in much of the evidence, which suggests that there is a substratum of truth in the statements,” is bound candidly to confess, “but I can at present offer no solution of this problem.” Moreover, as before noticed, this mark was not infrequently branded upon the novice at admission, often by the Witch-Master, who presided over the rout, sometimes—it must be admitted—by non-human agency.
The “little Teat or Pap,” so often found on the body of the wizard or witch, and said to secrete milk which nourished the familiar, must be carefully distinguished from the insensible devil-mark. This phenomenon, for no explainable reason, seems to occur only in the records of England and New England, where, however, it is of exceedingly frequent occurrence. It is worth remarking that in the last act of Shadwell’s play, The Lancashire Witches (1681), the witches are searched by a woman, who reports “they have all great Biggs and Teats in many Parts, except Mother Madge, and hers are but small ones.” Shadwell, who in his voluminous notes has citations from nearly fifty authors, on this point writes: “The having of Biggs and Teats all modern Witch-mongers in England affirm.” In 1597 at the trial of a beldame, Elizabeth Wright, of Stapenhill, near Burton-on-Trent: “The old woman they stript, and found behind her right sholder a thing much like the vdder of an ewe that giueth sucke with two teates, like vnto two great wartes, ​the one behinde vnder her armehole, the other a hand off towardes the top of her shoulder. Being demanded how long she had those teates, she answered she was borne so.” In the case of the Witch of Edmonton, Elizabeth Sawyer, who was in spite of her resistance searched upon the express order of the Bench, it was found by Margaret Weaver, a widow of an honest reputation, and two other grave matrons, who performed this duty that there was upon her body “a thing like a Teate the bignesse of the little finger, and the length of half a finger, which was branched at the top like a teate, and seemed as though one had suckt it.” John Palmer of St. Albans (1649) confessed that “upon his compact with the Divel, hee received a flesh brand, or mark, upon his side, which gave suck to two familiars.” The Kentish witch, Mary Read of Lenham (1652), “had a visible Teat, under her Tongue, and did show it to many.” At St. Albans about 1660 there was a wizard who “had like a Breast on his side.” In the same year at Kidderminster, a widow, her two daughters, and a man were accused; “the man had five teats, the mother three, and the eldest daughter, one.” In 1692 Bridget Bishop, one of the Salem witches, was brought to trial: “A Jury of Women found a preternatural Teat upon her Body: But upon a second search, within 3 or 4 hours, there was no such thing to be seen.” There is similar evidence adduced in the accounts of Rose Cullender and Amy Duny, two Suffolk witches, executed in 1664; Elizabeth Horner, a Devon witch (1696); Widow Coman, an Essex witch, who died in her bed (1699); and, indeed, innumerable other examples might be quoted affording a whole catena of pertinent illustrations. No doubt many of these are explicable by the cases of polymastia (mammæ erraticæ) and polythelia (supernumerary nipples) of which there are continual records in recent medical works. It must be freely admitted that these anatomical divagations are commoner than is generally supposed; frequently they are so slight that they may pass almost unnoticed; doubtless there is exaggeration in many of the inexactly observed seventeenth-century narratives. However, it has to be said, as before, that when every most generous allowance is made, the facts which remain, and the details are very ample, cannot be covered by physical peculiarities and malformations. ​There is far more truth in the records of the old theologians and witch finders than many nowadays are disposed to allow.
NOTES TO CHAPTER II.
* ↑ Under Innocent III, 1215.
* ↑ Diabolus enim et alii demones a Deo quidem natura creati sunt boni, sed ipsi per se facti sunt mali.
* ↑ Bossuet says that the writings of Suarez contain the whole of Scholastic Philosophy.
* ↑ Since it contradicts a definite (certa) theological conclusion or truth clearly consequent upon two premises, of which one is an article of faith (de fide), the other naturally certain.
* ↑ Which explains much of the trifling and silliness in Spiritism; the idle answers given through the mediums of the influences at work.
* ↑ Josephus, Antiquities, XIX. 8. 2.
* ↑ Suetonius, Caligula, XXII. Here ample details of Caligula’s worship may be read.
* ↑ Epigrammatum, V. 8. 1. See also IX. 4, et sæpius.
* ↑ . . . id agens ne quis Romæ deus nisi Heliogabalus coleretur. . . . Nec Romanas tantum extinguere uoluit religiones, sed per orbem terræ unum studens ut Heliogabalus deus unus ubique coleretur. Ælius Lampridius, Antoninus Heliogabalus, 3; 6.
* ↑ Even the Christian (Arian) Constantius II suffered himself to be addressed as “Nostra Æternitas.”
* ↑ Now commemorated on 14 September, the Feast of the Exaltation of Holy Cross. Shortly after the Restoration of the Cross to Jerusalem, the wood was cut up (perhaps for greater safety) into small fragments which were distributed throughout the Christian world.
* ↑ Didymus, De Trinitate, III. xli.
* ↑ Epiphanius, Hær., xlviii. 11.
* ↑ Annales de la Propogation de la Foi, VII (1834), p. 84.
* ↑ D. C. J. Ibbetson, Outlines of Punjaub Ethnography, Calcutta. 1883. p. 123.
* ↑ . . . vous n’avez pas eu honte de vous agenouiller devant votre Belzebuth, que vous avez adoré. J. B. Cannaert, Olim procès des Sorcières en Belgique, Gand, 1847.
* ↑ Ie me remets de tout poinct en ton pouuoir & entre tes mains, ne recognois autre Dieu: si bien que tu es mon Dieu.
* ↑ On dit au Diable nous vous recognoissons pour nostre maistre, nostre Dieu, nostre Createur.
* ↑ John Hutchinson, History of the Province of Massachusett’s Bay, 1828, II. p. 31.
* ↑ Satan luy commãda de le prier soir & matin, auant qu’elle s’addonat à faire autre œuure.
* ↑ Wonderful Discoverie of Elizabeth Sawyer, London, 1621.
* ↑ Rev. F. G. Lee, More Glimpses of the World Unseen, 1878, p. 12.
* ↑ Potest [diabolus] eludere sensus et facere ut appareat caput abcisum, De Religione, l. 2, c. 16, n. 13, t. 13, p. 578.
* ↑ Huc. Voyage dans la Tartarie, le Thibet et la Chine, I, ix, p. 308. The author remarks: Ces cérémonies horribles se renouvellent assez souvent dans les grandes lamaseries de la Tartarie et du Thibet. Nous ne pensons nullement qu’on puisse mettre toujours sur le compte de la superchérie des faits de ce genre: car d’après tout ce que nous avons vu et entendu parmi les nations idolâtres, nous sommes persuadé que le démon y joue un grand rôle. (These horrible ceremonies frequently occur in the larger lamaseries of Tartary and Tibet. I am very certain that we cannot always ascribe happenings of this sort to mere juggling or trickery; for, after all that I have seen and heard among heathen people, I am confident that the powers of evil are very largely concerned therein.)
* ↑ I use this term rather than the more popular “Spiritualism.” Spiritism obtains in Italy, France and Germany. “Spiritualism ” is correctly a technical name for the doctrine which denies that the contents of the universe are limited to matter and the properties and operations of matter.
* ↑ For fuller, and, indeed, conclusive details see Godfrey Raupert’s Modern Spiritism, London, 1904; and Monsignor Benson’s Spiritualism, Dublin Review, October, 1909, and reprinted by the Catholic Truth Society.
* ↑ Prognosticare is a late word. Strictly to prognosticate is to deduce from actual signs, to prophesy is to foretell the future without any such sign or token.
* ↑ The Camisards were agreeably satirized by D’Urfey in his comedy The Modern Prophets; or, New Wit for a Husband, produced at Drury Lane, 5 May, 1709, (Tatler, 11), and printed quarto, 1709, (no date). One of the Principal characters is “Marrogn, A Knavish French Camizar and Priest,” created by Bowen. This is a portrait of Elie Marion. In his preface D’Uriey speaks of “the abominable Impostures of those craz’d Enthusiasts” whom he lashes. The play had been composed in 1708, but production was postponed owing to the death of the Prince Consort, 28 October of that year. Swift, Predictions for the Year 1708, has: “June. This month will be distinguished at home, by the utter dispersing of those ridiculous deluded enthusiasts, commonly the prophets; occasioned chiefly by seeing the time come, when many of their prophecies should be fulfilled, and then themselves deceived by contrary events.”
* ↑ See also Fléchier’s Récit fidéle in Lettres choisies, Lyons, 1715; and Brueys’ Histoire du fanatisme de notre temps, Montpellier, 1713.
* ↑ Après que Dieu a parlé de sa propre bouche des magiciens et sorciers, qui est l'incredule qui on peut justement douter?
* ↑ In the fourteenth century bas-reliefs on cathedrals frequently represent men kneeling down before the Devil, worshipping him, and devoting themselves to him as his servants. Martonne, Piété au Moyen Âge, p. 137.
* ↑ George Ives, A History of Penal Methods, p. 75. His admirable and documented chapter II, “The Witch Trials,” should be carefully read.
* ↑ Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church.
* ↑ Matthew Paris, Chronica Maiora.
* ↑ J. P. Kirsch.
* ↑ All these quotations are from W. H. Lecky, History of Rationalism in Europe. c. 1.
* ↑ Rev. Peter Lorimer, D.D.
* ↑ First published by Isidore Liseux, 1875. p. 21. XIII. Ludovico Maria Sinistrari, Minorite, was born at Ameno (Novara) 26 February, 1622. He was Consultor to the Supreme Tribunal of the Holy Office; Vicar-general of the Archbishop of of Avignon, and Theologian Advisory to the Archbishop of Milan. He is described as “omnium scientiarum uir.” He died 6 March, 1701.
* ↑ L'incredulité et Mescreance du Sortilege, Paris, 1622, p. 38.
* ↑ Subscriptio autem sæpissime peragitur proprio sanguine. . . . Sic Augustæ referebat Joseph Egmund Schultz, se anno 1671. d. 15. Maji sanguine proprio tinctum manuscriptum, in membrana, nomine picto, obuolutoque muccinio, in media nocte, cum hora undecima & duodecima agebatur, in compitum iecisse, atque pactum sic corroborasse . . . Sic de infausto illo Fausto Widmannus refert, proprio sanguine ex leuiter uulnerato pollice emisso illum se totum diabolo adscripsisse, Deoque repudium misisse. De Sagis, Christian Stridtheckh, Lipsiæ, 1691. (XXII).
* ↑ See Götz, De subscriptionibus sanguine humano firmatis, Lübeck, 1724. Also Scheible, Die Sage vom Faust. Stuttgart, 1847. So far as I am aware this point has been neglected by writers on Witchcraft.
* ↑ Ne fœdora quidem incruenta sunt: sauciant se, qui paciscuntur, exemtumque sanguinem, ubi permiscuere, degustant. Id putant mansuræ fidei pignus certissimum.
* ↑ . . . uel quia Deus non permittit, uel propter alias rationes nobis occultas. De Superstitione, VIII. i. 13.
* ↑ Tunc autem propria culpa diuinationis iam commissa est ab homine, etiamsi effectus desideratus non fuerit subsecutus. (For the sin of divination is actually committed by the sinner and that willingly, although he obtain not the desired effect of his action.) Idem.
* ↑ Theologia moralis, l. iii. n. 28. Monendi sunt se teneri 1. Pactum expressum, si quod habent cum dæmone, aut commercium abiurare et dissoluere; 2. Libros suos, schedas, ligaturas, aliaque instrumenta artis comburere; 3. Comburere chirographum, si habeat: si iuro solus dæmon; id habeat, non necessario cogendus est ut reddat, quia pactum sufficienter soluitur per pœnitentiam; 4. Damna illata resarcire.
* ↑ Bollandists, 4 February.
* ↑ Breuiarium Romanum, Paris Autumnalis, 26 September, lectio iii. of Matins. Upon this history Calderon has founded his great drama El Magico Prodigioso.
* ↑ Bollandists, 14 May. Breuiarium iuxta S. Ordinis Prædicatorum. 14 May. In Nocturno, Lectiones ii, iii. Touron Histoire des hommes illustres de l’ordre de Saint Dominique. (Paris, 1743.)
* ↑ Discoverie of Witchcraft, Book III.
* ↑ Examination of Joane Williford, London, 1643.
* ↑ John Davenport, Witches of Huntingdon, London, 1646.
* ↑ Glanvill, Sadducismus Triumphatus.
* ↑ Antoinette Bourignon, La Vie exterieure, Amsterdam, 1683.
* ↑ Delrio. Disquisitiones magicæ, l. v. sect. 4. t. 2. Non eadem est forma signi; aliquando est simile leporis uestigio, aliquando bufonis pedi, aliquando araneæ, uel catello, uel gliri.
* ↑ Idem. In uirorum enim corpore sæpe uisitur sub palpebris, sub labiis, sub axillis, in humeris, in sede ima: feminis etiam, in mammis uel muliebribus locis.
* ↑ . . . le Diable leur fait quelque marque comme avec une aleine de fer en quelque partie du corps.
* ↑ Newes from Scotland, London. (1592.) Roxburgh Club reprint, 1816.
* ↑ Abbreviate of the Justiciary Record.
* ↑ Nous, medecins et chirurgiens soussignés, suivant le commandement à nous fait par messire Anthoine de Thoron, sieur de Thoron, conseiller du roy en sa cour de parlement, avons visité messire L. Gaufridy au corps duquel avons remarqué trois petites marques peu differentes en couleur du reste du cuir. L’une en sa cuisse sénestre sur le milieu et en la partie inferieure, en laquelle ayant enforcé une aiguille environ deux travers de doigts n’a senti aucune douleur, ni de la place n’est sorti point de sang ni autre humidité. La seconde est en la region des lombes en la partie droite, un poulce prés de l’épine du dos et quatre doigts au-dessus les muscles de la fesse, en laquelle nous avons enfoncé l’aiguille trois travers de doigts, la laissons comme avions fait à la première plantée en cette partie quelque espace de temps, sans toutefois que le dit Gaufridy ait senti aucune douleur et que sang ni humeur quelconque en soit sorti. La troisième est vers la région du cœur. Laquelle, au commencement qu’on mit l’aiguille parut comme les autres sans sentiment; mais à mesure que l’on enfonçait fort avant, il dit sentir quelque douleur; ne sortant toutefois aucune humidité, et l’ayant visité le lendemain au matin, n’avons reconnu aux parties piquées ni tumeur, ni rougeur. A cause de quoi nous disons telles marques insensibles en rendant point d’humidité étant piquées, ne pouvoir arriver par aucune maladie du cuir précédante, et tel faisons notre rapport ce 10 mars; 1611. Fontaine, Grassy, médecins; Mérindol, Bontemps, chirurgiens. So great was the importance attached to the discovery of a witch-mark upon the body of the accused that when the above medico-legal report was read in court, Father Sebastian Michaelis, a learned Dominican, who was acting as consultor in the case, horror-struck, involuntarily exclaimed: “Good sooth, were we at Avignon this man would be executed to-morrow!” Gaufridi confessed: “J’advoue que les dites marques sont faites pour qu’on sera toujours bon et fidèle serviteur du diable toute la vie.” (I confess that these marks were made as a sign that I shall be a good and faithful servant to the Devil all my life long.)
* ↑ Pitcairn, Records of Justiciary. In 1663 Kincaid was thrown into jail, where he lay nine weeks for “pricking” without a magistrate’s warrant. He was only released owing to his great age and on condition that he would “prick” no more.
* ↑ This shaving of the head and body was the usual procedure before the search for the devil-mark. We find it recorded in nearly every case. Generally, a barber was called in to perform the operation: e.g. the trials of Gaufridi and Grandier, where the details are very ample.
* ↑ The Wardlaw Manuscript, p. 446. Scottish History Society publication, Edinburgh.
* ↑ The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, p. 86.
* ↑ Angelica in Love for Love (1695), II, mocking her superstitious old uncle, Foresight, and the Nurse, cries: “Look to it, Nurse; I can bring Witness that you have a great unnatural Teat under your Left Arm, and he another; and that you Suckle a young Devil in the shape of a Tabby-Cat by turns, I can.”
* ↑ The most wonderfull . . . storie of a . . . Witch named Alse Gooderidge. London. 1597.
* ↑ Goodcole’s Wonderful Discoverie of Elizabeth Sawyer, London, 1621. There is an allusion in Ford and Dekker’s drama, IV: Sawyer.My dear Tom-boy, welcome . . . Comfort me: thou shalt haue the teat anon. Dog.Bow, wow! I'll haue it now.
* ↑ W. B. Gerish. The Devil’s Delusions, Bishops Stortford, 1914.
* ↑ Prodigious and Tragicall Histories, London, 1652.
* ↑ W. B. Gerish, Relation of Mary Hall of Gadsden, 1912
* ↑ T. B. Howell, State Trials, London, 1816.
* ↑ Cotton Mather, Wonders of the Invisible World.
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