CHAPTER XI

Whether Witches can Transmute Bodies Srom One Form to Another.
Argument.
O one can doubt but that all
the arts and metamorphoses by which witches change men into beasts are deceptive illusions and opposed to all nature. I add that any one who holds the contrary opinion is in danger of Anathema; and in this I am supported by the opinion of S. Augus- tine,* as also by logical reasoning. For a human soul cannot inform the body of a beast, any more than the soul of a lion can inhabit the body of a horse, or the soul of a horse the body of a man: because every substantial form, to be true to its own nature, requires the peculiarly adapted dis- positions and physical organism which are natural to its own body, and the soul regulates the motions of the
* “8. Augustine.” ‘De Ciuitate Dei,’ XVII, 18.
BK. I. CH. XII.
organic body. Therefore, as I have said, no animal’s soul can inform the human body, and no human soul an animal’s body. The belief in such monstrous transformations is nothing new, but was firmly held by the Ancients many ages ago. Euanthes,f an author of great note, says that it is recorded in the Annals of Arcadia that there was a certain family of the tribe of Anthus which used every so many years to go to a certain pool across which, having taken off their clothes, they swam, and they were at once changed from men into beasts: and after nine years, if they had not in that time tasted human blood, they returned to their former shape. Hero- dotus in Melpomene, and Solinus in the Polyhistor, chapter 8, record that the Neuri, who live by the river Dnieper, are changed into wolves on certain days in every year, and after the appointed time has elapsed they return to their true shape. But this did not happen to them only in times before the light of Christian truth shone upon the world; for in Bulgaria a certain official had in his charge the son of that Symeon who had formerly ruled over the country, and this boy could when he wished change himself into a wolf or any other animal by black magic. And a certain Russian chieftain, hearing that there was in his territory a man who could change himself into what- ever form he pleased, summoned him and put him in chains and commanded him to give instant proof of his power. The man said he would willingly do so if he might withdraw into the next room for a while; and when this had been granted, he suddenly came back in the form of a wolf, but still bound with his chains, to the great astonishment of all who were present. But the chieftain had two very fierce dogs at hand, which fell upon the un- happy creature and tore him to pieces.
+ “‘Euanthes.” A Greek author as quoted by Pliny, ‘Historia Naturalis,” VIII, 22.
BK. I. CH. XIII.
But, as I have already said, no one must let himself think that a man can really be changed into a beast, or a beast into a real man; for these are magic portents and illusions, having the form but not the reality of those things which they present to our sight. For the devil, as I have said elsewhere, deceives our senses in various ways. Sometimes he substi- tutes another body, while the witches themselves are absent or hidden apart in some secret place, and himself assumes the body of a wolf formed from the air and wrapped about him, and does | " those actions which men think are done by the wretched ab- sent witch who is asleep. William of §{ Paris tells how a certain Holy Man made _ this stratagem clear to all. Sometimes, in accordance with his pact, 7 narra he surrounds a witch with an aerial effigy of a beast, each part of which fits on to the correspondent part of the witch’s body, head to head, mouth to mouth, belly to belly, foot to foot, and arm to arm; but this only happens when they use certain ointments and words, as in the case of the above example of the man who was torn in pieces by dogs: and then they leave the footprints of a wolf upon the ground. But in this last case it is no matter for wonder if they are after- wards found with an actual wound in those parts of their human body where they were wounded when in the appearance of a beast ; for the envelop- ing air easily yields, and the true body receives the wound. But when the witch is not bodily present at all,
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MALEFICARUM 51
then the devil wounds her in that part of her absent body corresponding to the wound which he knows to have been received by the beast’s body. Bartolomeo Spina* tells the following example of this sort.
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Examples.
A certain day-labourer named Philip bore witness in this very city of Ferrara to this apparent conversion of witches into cats. For he swore to me on oath that, three months before, a certain witch had told him not to drive them away if he saw any cats come coying playfully up to his son, whom she had strongly bewitched and had un- dertaken to Gunes \ The same day, about an hour
Woe a7 acter she had gone away, he and his wife saw a big cat which they had never seen before go deliberately up to the boy. They were frightened and kept driving it off, and were at last goaded to exasperation by its insistence, and the man shut the door and chased it about for a long time, striking it with a stick, until finally he made it jump out of a high window, so that the cat’s body seemed to be all bruised and broken. After that, the old witch kept her bed for many days with a bruised and broken body. Consequently, where there had already been a slight suspicion that she was a
* “Spina.” “De Strigibus,” XIX. “Ex- - perientiae apparentis conuersionis strigum in catos.”’
52 COMPENDIUM
witch and had bewitched the boy who lay very sick under the spell of his infirmity, this now grew into a strong and grave suspicion; for the blows and wounds which were given to the cat were found upon the corresponding parts of the witch’s body.
Remy (II, 5) writes that nearly all those who came into his hands charged with witchcraft told him that they changed themselves into cats whenever they wished to enter other people’s houses in secret, so that they could scatter their poison there by night. Barbelline Rayel, at Blainville-la-Grande on the Ist Janu- ary, 1587, confessed that she was turned into a cat so that in that shape she might more easily enter the house of Jean Louis and wander about it in greater safety; and when she had done so and found his two-year-old infant unguarded she dusted it with a drugged powder which she held in the pad of her paw, and killed it.
The Shepherd Petronio, who was tried at Dalheim in 1581, whenever he felt moved with hatred or envy against the shepherds of neighbouring flocks (as is the way of such men), used to change himself into a wolf by the use of certain incantations, and so for a long time escaped all suspicion of being the cause of the mutilation and death of his neighbours’ sheep.
The following example is told by the famous Count of Salm, chief Gentleman of the Bedchamber at the Palace of Lorraine. In Hesse-Lang- hau, over which town he was Lord, the inhabitants, in accordance with the ancient custom, came to pay him their yearly tribute of labour. As they came with their cart-loads of timber, and waited in turn for their reward of food, the dogs which were with them began to fight in the castle hall. One of these dogs hid itself in one of the bathroom furnaces, and the rest barked violently at it. One of the townsmen looked at it and, finding it uglier than the rest, began to suspect the truth (for that part is said to be
BK. I. CH. XIII.
infested with witches); so he thrust his weapon into its face and grievously wounded it, whereupon it rushed out of the door and was no more seen. Then a rumour crept all over the town that there was an old woman in bed with a wound of which no one knew where she had received it. They all began to suspect the truth, namely, that she was the mad dog who had been wounded in the castle hall. This suspicion, on the top of a long stand- ing rumour that she was a witch, led to her being seized and imprisoned ; and at last, after she had been care- fully questioned, she freely confessed all that has just been told, together with very many other sorceries.
Hear also what Remy reports to have been told him by the Noble Baroness Lady .Diana of Dommart, the wife of the illustrious Prince Charles Philip of Croy, Marquis of Haurech, as follows. Not long since there was in Thiaucourt, a village of that country, a woman addicted to these evil practices and credited with the power of assuming different shapes with the help of the Devil. This woman had conceived a bitter hatred against the village shepherd on account of his having bested her in some money transaction, and fell in the form of a wolf upon his flock as it was feeding. The shepherd ran up and wounded her in the thigh with an axe so grievously that, in her weakness, she was forced to flee into a neighbouring thicket. He followed her there, and found her trying to stop the freely flowing blood by binding her wound with strips torn from her clothes. With this evidence against her she was taken into custody and acknow- ledged all that we have said, and finally expiated her crimes at the stake.
In Flanders at a town not far from Dixmude a peasant was drinking at an ale-house with his son, a lively youth, and watched the hostess scoring up the beer which she brought him. He noticed that she marked up double
BK. I. CH. XIV.
the quantity that he drank, but kept
uiet until he had finished drinking.
hen he called the hostess and asked what he owed; and she demanded the amount that she had scored. He refused to pay it and, thrusting many persons aside, threw on to the table what he knew to be a sufficient sum of money, and was going out. The enraged hostess said: “You will not
o home to-day, or my name is not
o-and-so!”’ But he went away despis- ing the woman’s threats. He came to a stream where he had left his boat, but he could not, however much he tried, even with the help of his son, who was a lusty lad, move it from the bank; so that you would have said that it was nailed to the very ground. Two or three soldiers hap- pened to come that way, and he called to them, saying: “‘Good friends, come and help me launch this boat from the bank, and I will give you a good drink.” ‘They came and exerted them- selves to the utmost for a long time in vain, till one of them, panting and sweating, said: “Let us unload the boat. Perhaps when it is empty we shall manage better.’ And behold, when the goods were exposed to view, a lurid great toad stood in the road looking at them with gleaming eyes. One of the soldiers at once spitted it through the throat with his sword and threw it into the water, where it . floated belly upwards as if dead. The rest gave it more wounds as it floated, and suddenly the boat was launched. The overjoyed peasant took his helpers back to the same inn and ordered beer. This was brought by a serving maid; and he asked where the hostess was. He was told that she was very ill in bed. “What!” said he. ‘‘Do you think I am drunk, you fool? It is hardly half an hour since I left her as well as you are. I am going to see what the matter is.” He went into the bedroom and found that the woman had died from wounds in the neck and stomach. “How did she get these wounds?” he exclaimed.
MALEFICARUM 53
The serving maid said she did not know and that, to her knowledge, she had not set foot outside the house. They went to the Magistrate, and the cuts and stabs were found to be in the same places as those in which the soldiers had wounded to death the toad, which was never found.
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