CHAPTER VII

By their Terrible Deeds and Imprecations Witches Produce Rain and Hail, ete.
Argument.
| ia is most clearly proved by experi- ence that witches can control not only the rain and the hail and the wind, but even the lightning when God permits. Therefore Andrea Césal- pino, in his Daemonum inuestigatio peri- patetica, says that men have been known who could raise, not only hail storms, but lightning also; but they confessed that they could not injure whomsoever they pleased, but only those whom God had forsaken, that is (for so I understand it) those who had fallen from God’s grace by mortal sin. They can also evoke darkness; where- fore we read in Marco Polo that the Tartars are so potent in devilish illu- sions that they can cause darkness when and where they will, and that he once narrowly escaped from robbers through the protection of this art. Bishop Haitot of Basle also tells that when the Tartar army was being beaten in battle, the witch Vexillarius
+ “Bishop Haito.”’ Born in 763 of a noble house of Swabia; died 17 March, 836, in the Abbey of Reitchenau on an island in the Lake of Constance. Vautrey, ““Histoire des évéques de Béle,’’ I, (Einsiedeln, 1884).
20
encompassed their enemies with a thick darkness by means of his spells, so that they rallied and won the vic- tory. They can moreover cause rivers to stop flowing, and dry up springs, and irrigate the land with fresh springs produced from rocks and stones: they can make the water of a river turn back and flow to its source, a thing which Pliny* says happened in his time (II,
103). Many examples are to be found.
in Remy, of which I shall quote a few here. uA
Examples.
In the dis- trict of Treves § a peasant was | planting cab- RSG bages in his & garden with } hiseight-year- —& old daughter, and praised the girl highly | for her skill | in the work. | The young | maid, whose § sex and age | combined to make hertalk- { ative, boasted “™ . é that she could do more wonderful things than that; and when her father asked what they were, she said: “‘Go away a little, and I will quickly make it rain on whatever part of the garden you wish.” He was aston- ished, and said: ‘‘Come then, I will go a little away.” And when he had withdrawn the girl dug a trench and pissed in it, and beat the water with a stick, muttering I know not what, and behold there fell from the clouds a sudden rain upon the said place. The astounded father asked:
* “Pliny.” “Historia Naturalis,” II, 103: ““Amnes retro fluere et nostra uidit aetas, Neronis principis annis supremis, sicut in rebus eius retulimus.”?
COMPENDIUM
BK. I. CH. VII.
‘Who taught you to do this?” She answered: “‘My mother did; and she is very clever at this and other things like it.”” The peasant nobly faced his right and plain duty, so a few days later, on the pretence that he had been invited to a wedding, he took his wife and daughter dressed in festal wedding robes to the neighbouring town, where he handed them over to the Judge to be punished for the crime of witch- craft.
It is recorded in the Malleus Male- jicarum that certain Inquisitors deter- mined to prove by means of a witch whom they had in custody the truth of the power claimed by witches of stir- ring up tem- pests. Lhe therefore re- leased _ her; since it is cer- tain that, as long as they remain in prison, all magic powers desert them. She then went to a thickly wooded place
. ~ and there dug a trench with her hands and filled it with water, which she continued to stir with her finger until there arose from it a vapour which grew into a dense cloud. This cloud at once became alive with thunder and lightning, to the great awe and terror of the onlookers. But she said: ‘“Be of good heart; I will cause all this cloud to be removed to whatever place you wish.” And when they named a desert place near by, the cloud was at once borne thither by the force of the wind and tempest, and let loose its hail upon the rocks, so confining all its damage within the prescribed and indicated limits.
The following example is very like the first. A Suabian peasant was bit-
BK. I. CH. VII.
terly complaining of the drought from which they were suffering, and as he was doing so his daughter, who was eight or ten years old, came to him and said that if he wished she would at once bring a heavy shower upon the field in which they were together. When the father said that he very greatly wished it, she asked him to - give her a little water. So they came to a neighbouring stream where she beat the water in the name of that Master, as she said, to whom her mother was dedicated ; and thereupon there fell rain from the skies abun- dantly enough to water that field, while it left all the other fields as dry as they were before.
Remy relates how a witch named Alexia Granjean told that she was once being carried through the clouds and came to a place where, from her point of vantage, she could see a man named Johann Vehon pasturing his horses. Suddenly there appeared to her a huge black man who, as if eager to serve her, asked her whether she had any grudge against that | oe for he would quickly avenge
er upon him. She answered that she hated the man bitterly because he had once beaten her only son nearly to death while he was pasturing his horse. ‘“Very well,” replied he; “‘I agree to avenge you at once.”’ So say- ing, he quickly rose up in the air so high that no eye could see him, and thereupon the lightning, with a mighty flash and thunder, fell upon the horses and smote down two of them, while the peasant looked on in terror about thirty paces away, accord- ing to his own evidence.
Giovanni Pontano* tells that Fer- dinand II, King of Naples, laid close siege to Sessa Aurunca, which is situ- ated near Monte Massico. Now this town was for the House of Anjou, and he hoped to force it to surrender
* “*Pontano.” ‘““De Bello Neapolitano,”’ V. **Pontani Opera Omnia,” Basileae, 1538, I,
Pp. 574-75-
MALEFICARUM 21
through lack of water. But a number of wicked priests dared to summon rain by means of magic. For some of the besieged townsmen went out in the dark of night evading the camp sentries, and stealthily made their way to the sea shore dragging with them over rugged rocks the image of the Crucifix, which these execrable sin- ners reviled with foul curses and incan- tations and then cast into the sea. At the same time certain priests, the vilest sinners of all men, being anxious to assist the soldiers’ profane practices, performed a wicked rite in order to produce rain of this sort. They stood an ass before the Church door and sang a funeral dirge as for a living soul: then they placed the Divine Eucharist in its mouth, and continued their funeral chants about the living ass, and finally buried it before the Church doors. Hardly had this rite been performed before the air grew dark and the sea began to be lashed with the wind, and at midday the darkness of night descended, and now the heavens were rent with lightning, and now all was black darkness, and the heavens and the earth shook with thunder, and trees were hurled through the air by the wind, and rocks were split by lightning and filled the air with crashing explosions: and so heavy a downpour of rain fell from the clouds that the cisterns were not adequate to collect the water, but the torrents swept away stones and rocks which had before been parched and dried by the sun. The King therefore, whose whole hope of taking the town had rested upon the townsmen’s thirst, was baffled in his intention and re- turned to his former camp by the river Savone.
I purposely set down this example, reader, that you may be advised of what abuses have crept into certain regions ; such as dragging the Crucifix and the images of the Saints over the ground. In Germany and Aqui- taine also they boldly resort to such evil means for ensuring seasonable
22
weather; and Martin de Arles* has written against similar foul practices prevailing in Spain in his book on Superstitions. .
w