CHAPTER III

DEMONS AND FAMILIARS One of the most authoritative of the older writers upon Witchcraft, Francesco-Maria Guazzo, a member of the Congregation of S. Ambrose ad Nemus,[1] in his encyclopædic _Compendium Maleficarum_, first published at Milan, 1608, has drawn up under eleven heads those articles in which a solemn and complete profession of Witchcraft was then held to consist: _First_: The candidates have to conclude with the Devil, or some other Wizard or Magician acting in the Devil’s stead, an express compact by which, in the presence of witnesses they devote themselves to the service of evil, he giving them in exchange his pledge for riches, luxury, and such things as they desire. _Secondly_: They abjure the Catholic Faith, explicitly withdraw from their obedience to God, renounce Christ and in a particular manner the Patronage and Protection of Our Lady, curse all Saints, and forswear the Sacraments. In Guernsey, in 1617, Isabel Becquet went to Rocquaine Castle, “the usual place where the Devil kept his Sabbath: no sooner had she arrived there than the Devil came to her in the form of a dog, with two great horns sticking up: and with one of his paws (which seemed to her like hands) took her by the hand: and calling her by her name told her that she was welcome: then immediately the Devil made her kneel down: while he himself stood up on his hind legs; he then made her express detestation of the Eternal in these words: _I renounce God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost_; and then caused her to worship and invoke himself.”[2] De Lancre tells us that Jeannette d’Abadie, a lass of sixteen, confessed that she was made to “renounce & deny her Creator, the Holy Virgin, the Saints, Baptism, father, mother, relations, Heaven, earth, & all that the world contains.”[3] In a very full confession made by Louis Gaufridi on the second of April, 1611, to two Capuchins, Father Ange and Father Antoine, he revealed the formula of his abjuration of the Catholic faith. It ran thus: “I, Louis Gaufridi, renounce all good, both spiritual as well as temporal, which may be bestowed upon me by God, the Blessed Virgin Mary, all the Saints of Heaven, particularly my Patron S. John-Baptist, as also S. Peter, S. Paul, and S. Francis, and I give myself body and soul to Lucifer, before whom I stand, together with every good that I may ever possess (save always the benefit of the sacraments touching those who receive them). And according to the tenour of these terms have I signed and sealed.”[4] Madeleine de la Palud, one of his victims, used a longer and more detailed declaration in which the following hideous blasphemies occurred: “With all my heart and most unfeignedly and with all my will most deliberately do I wholly renounce God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; the most Holy Mother of God; all the Angels and especially my Guardian Angel, the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, His Precious Blood and the merits thereof, my lot in Paradise, all the good inspirations which God may give me in the future, all prayers which are made or may be made for me.”[5] _Thirdly_: They cast away with contempt the most Holy Rosary, delivered by Our Lady to S. Dominic;[6] the Cord of S. Francis; the cincture of S. Augustine; the Carmelite scapular bestowed upon S. Simon Stock; they cast upon the ground and trample under their feet in the mire the Cross, Holy Medals, _Agnus Dei_,[7] should they possess such or carry them upon their persons. S. Francis girded himself with a rough rope in memory of the bonds wherewith Christ was bound during His Passion, and a white girdle with three knots has since formed part of the Franciscan habit. Sixtus IV, by his Bull _Exsupernæ dispositionis_, erected the Archconfraternity of the Cord of S. Francis in the basilica of the Sacro Convento at Assisi, enriching it with many Indulgences, favours which have been confirmed by pontiff after pontiff. Archconfraternities are erected not only in Franciscan but in many other churches and aggregated to the centre at Assisi. The Archconfraternity of Our Lady of Consolation, or of the Black Leathern Belt of S. Monica, S. Augustine and S. Nicolas of Tolentino, took its rise from a vision of S. Monica, who received a black leathern belt from Our Lady. S. Augustine, S. Ambrose, and S. Simplicianus all wore such a girdle, which forms a distinctive feature of the dress of Augustinian Eremites. After the canonization of S. Nicolas of Tolentino it came into general use as an article of devotion, and Eugenius IV in 1439 erected the above Archconfraternity. A Bull of Gregory XIII _Ad ea_ (15 July, 1575) confirmed this and added various privileges and Indulgences. The Archconfraternity is erected in Augustinian sanctuaries, from the General of which Order leave must be obtained for its extension to other churches. [Illustration: PLATE III COMPENDIVM MALEFICARVM. Francesco-Maria Guazzo. Title-page of Second Edition [_face p. 82_] _Fourthly_: All witches vow obedience and subjection into the hands of the Devil; they pay him homage and vassalage (often by obscene ceremonies), and lay their hands upon a large black book which is presented to them. They bind themselves by blasphemous oaths never to return to the true faith, to observe no divine precept, to do no good work, but to obey the Demon only and to attend without fail the nightly conventicles. They pledge themselves to frequent the midnight assemblies.[8] These conventicles or covens[9] (from _conuentus_) were bands or companies of witches, composed of men and women, apparently under the discipline of an officer, all of whom for convenience’ sake belonged to the same district. Those who belonged to a coven were, it seems from the evidence at trials, bound to attend the weekly Esbat. The arrest of one member of a coven generally led to the implication of the rest. Cotton Mather remarks, “The witches are organized like Congregational Churches.” _Fifthly_: The witches promise to strive with all their power and to use every inducement and endeavour to draw other men and women to their detestable practices and the worship of Satan. The witches were imbued with the missionary spirit, which made them doubly damnable in the eyes of the divines and doubly guilty in the eyes of the law. So in the case of Janet Breadheid of Auldearne, we find that her husband “enticed her into that craft.”[10] A girl named Bellot, of Madame Bourignon’s academy, confessed that her mother had taken her to the Sabbat when she was quite a child. Another girl alleged that all worshippers of the Devil “are constrained to offer him their Children.” Elizabeth Francis of Chelmsford, a witch tried in 1566, was only about twelve years old when her grandmother first taught her the art of sorcery.[11] The famous Pendle beldame, Elizabeth Demdike “brought vp her owne Children, instructed her Graundchildren, and tooke great care and paines to bring them to be Witches.”[12] At Salem, George Burroughs, a minister, was accused by a large number of women as “the person who had Seduc’d and Compell’d them into the snares of Witchcraft.” _Sixthly_: The Devil administers to witches a kind of sacrilegious baptism, and after abjuring their Godfathers and Godmothers of Christian Baptism and Confirmation they have assigned to them new sponsors—as it were—whose charge it is to instruct them in sorcery: they drop their former name and exchange it for another, generally a scurrilous and grotesque nickname. In 1609 Jeanette d’Abadie, a witch of the Basses-Pyrénées, confessed “that she often saw children baptized at the Sabbat, and these she informed us were the offspring of sorcerers and not of other persons, but of witches who are accustomed to have their sons and daughters baptized at the Sabbat rather than at the Font.”[13] June 20, 1614, at Orleans, Silvain Nevillon amongst other crimes acknowledged that he had frequented assemblies of witches, and “that they baptize babies at the Sabbat with Chrism.... Then they anoint the child’s head therewith muttering certain Latin phrases.”[14] Gentien le Clerc, who was tried at the same time, “said that his mother, as he had been told, presented him at the Sabbat when he was but three years old, to a monstrous goat, whom they called l’Aspic. He said that he was baptized at the Sabbat, at Carrior d’Olivet, with fourteen or fifteen other children....”[15] Among the confessions made by Louis Gaufridi at Aix in March, 1611, were: “I confess that baptism is administered at the Sabbat, and that every sorcerer, devoting himself to the Devil, binds himself by a particular vow that he will have all his children baptized at the Sabbat, if this may by any possible means be effected. Every child who is thus baptized at the Sabbat receives a name, wholly differing from his own name. I confess that at this baptism water, sulphur, and salt are employed: the sulphur renders the recipient the Devil’s slave whilst salt confirms his baptism in the Devil’s service. I confess that the form and intention are to baptize in the name of Lucifer, Belzebuth and other demons making the sign of the cross beginning backwards and then tracing from the feet and ending at the head.”[16] A number of Swedish witches (1669) were baptized: “they added, that he caused them to be baptized too by such Priests as he had there, and made them confirm their Baptism with dreadful Oaths and Imprecations.”[17] The giving of a new name seems to have been very general. Thus in May, 1569, at S. Andrews “a notabill sorceres callit Nicniven was condemnit to the death and burnt.” Her Christian name is not given merely her witch’s name bestowed by the demon. In the famous Fian case it was stated that when at the meeting in North Berwick kirk Robert Grierson was named great confusion ensued for the witches and warlocks “all ran hirdie-girdie, and were angry, for it was promised that he should be called Robert the Comptroller, for the expriming of his name.”[18] Euphemia McCalyan of the same coven was called Cane, and Barbara Napier Naip. Isabel Goudie of Auldearne (1662) stated that many witches known to her had been baptized in their own blood by such names as “Able-and-Stout,” “Over-the-dike-with-it,” “Raise-the-wind,” “Pickle-nearest-the-wind,” “Batter-them-down-Maggy,” “Blow-Kate,” and similar japeries. _Seventhly_: The witches cut off a piece of their own garments, and as a token of homage tender it to the Devil, who takes it away and keeps it. _Eighthly_: The Devil draws on the ground a circle wherein stand the Novices, Wizards, and Witches, and there they confirm by oath all their aforesaid promises. This has a mystical signification. “They take this oath to the Demon standing in a circle described upon the ground, perchance because a circle is the Symbol of Divinity, & the earth God’s footstool and thus he assuredly wishes them to believe that he is the lord of Heaven and earth.”[19] _Ninthly_: The sorcerers request the Devil to strike them out of the book of Christ, and to inscribe them in his own. Then is solemnly brought forward a large black book, the same as that on which they laid their hands when they did their first homage, and they are inscribed in this by the Devil’s claw. These books or rolls were kept with great secrecy by the chief officer of the coven or even the Grand Master of a district. They would have been guarded as something as precious as life itself, seeing that they contained the damning evidence of a full list of the witches of a province or county, and in addition thereto seems to have been added a number of magic formulæ, spells, charms, and probably, from time to time, a record of the doings of the various witches. The signing of such a book is continually referred to in the New England trials. So when Deliverance Hobbs had made a clean breast of her sorceries, “She now testifi’d, that this _Bishop_ [Bridget Bishop, condemned and executed as a long-continued witch] tempted her to sign the _Book_ again, and to deny what she had confess’d.” The enemies of the notorious Matthew Hopkins made great capital out of the story that by some sleight of sorcery he had got hold of one of these Devil’s memorandum-books, whence he copied a list of witches, and this it was that enabled him to be so infallible in his scent. The Witch-Finder General was hard put to it to defend himself from the accusation, and becomes quite pitiful in his whining asseverations of innocence. There is a somewhat vague story, no dates being given, that a Devil’s book was carried off by Mr. Williamson of Cardrona (Peebles), who filched it from the witches whilst they were dancing on Minchmoor. But the whole coven at once gave chase, and he was glad to abandon it and escape alive. Sometimes the catalogue of witches was inscribed on a separate parchment, and the book only used to write down charms and spells. Such a volume was the Red Book of Appin known to have actually been in existence a hundred years ago. Tradition said it was stolen from the Devil by a trick. It was in manuscript, and contained a large number of magic runes and incantations for the cure of cattle diseases, the increase of flocks, the fertility of fields. This document, which must be of immense importance and interest, when last heard of was (I believe) in the possession of the now-extinct Stewarts of Invernahyle. This strange volume, so the story ran, conferred dark powers on the owner, who knew what inquiry would be made ere the question was poised; and the tome was so confected with occult arts that he who read it must wear a circlet of iron around his brow as he turned those mystic pages. Another volume, of which mention is made—one that is often confused[20] with, but should be distinguished from, these two—is what we may term the Devil’s Missal. Probably this had its origin far back in the midst of the centuries among the earliest heretics who passed down their evil traditions to their followers, the Albigenses and the Waldenses or Vaudois. This is referred to by the erudite De Lancre, who in his detailed account of the Black Mass as performed in the region of the Basses-Pyrénées (1609) writes: “Some kind of altar was erected upon the pillars of infernal design, and hereon, without reciting the _Confiteor_ or _Alleluya_, turning over the leaves of a certain book which he held, he began to mumble certain phrases of Holy Mass.”[21] Silvain Nevillon (Orleans, 1614) confessed that “the Sabbat was held in a house.... He saw there a tall dark man opposite to the one who was in a corner of the ingle, and this man was perusing a book, whose leaves seemed black & crimson, & he kept muttering between his teeth although what he said could not be heard, and presently he elevated a black host and then a chalice of some cracked pewter, all foul and filthy.”[22] Gentien le Clerc, who was also accused, acknowledged that at these infernal assemblies “Mass was said, and the Devil was celebrant. He was vested in a chasuble upon which was a broken cross. He turned his back to the altar when he was about to elevate the Host and the Chalice, which were both black. He read in a mumbling tone from a book, the cover of which was soft and hairy like a wolf’s skin. Some leaves were white and red, others black.”[23] Madeleine Bavent, who was the chief figure in the trials at Louviers (1647), acknowledged: “Mass was read from the book of blasphemies, which contained the canon. This same volume was used in processions. It was full of the most hideous curses against the Holy Trinity, the Holy Sacrament of the Altar, the other Sacraments and ceremonies of the Church. It was written in a language completely unknown to me.”[24] Possibly this blasphemous volume is the same as that which Satanists to-day use when performing their abominable rites. _Tenthly_: The witches promise the Devil sacrifices and offerings at stated times; once a fortnight, or at least once a month, the murder of some child, or some mortal poisoning, and every week to plague mankind with evils and mischiefs, hailstorms, tempest, fires, cattle-plagues and the like. The _Liber Pœnitentialis_ of S. Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury 668-690, the earliest ecclesiastical law of England, has clauses condemning those who invoke fiends, and so cause the weather to change “si quis emissor tempestatis fuerit.” In the _Capitaluria_ of Charlemagne (died at Aachen, 28 January, 814), the punishment of death is declared against those who by evoking the demon, trouble the atmosphere, excite tempests, destroy the fruits of the earth, dry up the milk of cows, and torment their fellow-creatures with diseases or any other misfortune. All persons found guilty of employing such arts were to be executed immediately upon conviction. Innocent VIII in his celebrated Bull, _Summis desiderantes affectibus_, 5 December, 1484, charges sorcerers in detail with precisely the same foul practices. The most celebrated occasion when witches raised a storm was that which played so important a part in the trial of Dr. Fian and his coven, 1590-1, when the witches, in order to drown King James and Queen Anne on their voyage from Denmark, “tooke a Cat and christened it,” and after they had bound a dismembered corpse to the animal “in the night following the said Cat was convayed into the middest of the sea by all these witches, sayling in their riddles or cives, ... this doone, then did arise such a tempest in the sea, as a greater hath not bene seene.”[25] The bewitching of cattle is alleged from the earliest time, and at Dornoch in Sutherland as late as 1722, an old hag was burned for having cast spells upon the pigs and sheep of her neighbours, the sentence being pronounced by the sheriff-depute, Captain David Ross of Little Dean. This was the last execution of a witch in Scotland. With regard to the sacrifice of children there is a catena of ample evidence. Reginald Scot[26] writes in 1584: “This must be an infallible rule, that euerie fortnight, or at the least euerie month, each witch must kill one child at the least for hir part.” When it was dangerous or impossible openly to murder an infant the life would be taken by poison, and in 1645 Mary Johnson, a witch of Wyvenhoe, Essex, was tried for poisoning two children, no doubt as an act of sorcery.[27] It is unknown how many children Gilles de Rais devoted to death in his impious orgies. More than two hundred corpses were found in the latrines of Tiffauges, Machecoul, Champtocé. It was in 1666 that Louis XIV was first informed of the abominations which were vermiculating his capital “des sacrilèges, des profanations, des messes impies, des sacrifices de jeunes enfants.” Night after night in the rue Beauregard at the house of the mysterious Catherine la Voisin the abbé Guibourg was wont to kill young children for his hideous ritual, either by strangulation or more often by piercing their throats with a sharp dagger and letting the hot blood stream into the chalice as he cried: “Astaroth, Asmodée, je vous conjure d’accepter le sacrifice que je vous présente!” (Astaroth! Asmodeus! Receive, I beseech you, this sacrifice I offer unto you!) A priest named Tournet also said Satanic Masses at which children were immolated; in fact the practice was so common that la Chaufrein, a mistress of Guibourg, would supply a child for a crown[28] piece. _Eleventhly_: The Demon imprints upon the Witches some mark.... When this has all been performed in accordance with the instructions of those Masters who have initiated the Novice, the latter bind themselves by fearful oaths never to worship the Blessed Sacrament; to heap curses on all Saints and especially to abjure our Lady Immaculate; to trample under foot and spit upon all holy images, the Cross and Relics of Saints; never to use the Sacraments or Sacramentals unless with some magical end in view; never to make a good confession to the priest, but always to keep hidden their commerce with hell. In return the Demon promises that he will at all times afford them prompt assistance; that he will accomplish all their desires in this world and make them eternally happy after their death. This solemn profession having been publicly made each novice has assigned to him a several demon who is called _Magistellus_ (a familiar). This familiar can assume either a male or a female shape; sometimes he appears as a full-grown man, sometimes as a satyr; and if it is a woman who has been received as a witch he generally assumes the form of a rank buck-goat. It is obvious that there is no question here of animal familiars, but rather of evil intelligences who were, it is believed, able to assume a body of flesh. The whole question is, perhaps, one of the most dark and difficult connected with Witchcraft and magic, and the details of these hideous connexions are such—for as the Saints attain to the purity of angels, so, on the other hand, will the bond slaves of Satan defile themselves with every kind of lewdness—that many writers have with an undue diffidence and modesty dismissed the subject far too summarily for the satisfaction of the serious inquirer. In the first place, we may freely allow that many of these lubricities are to be ascribed to hysteria and hallucinations, to nightmare and the imaginings of disease, but when all deductions have been made—when we admit that in many cases the incubus or succubus can but have been a human being, some agent of the Grand Master of the district,—none the less enough remains from the records of the trials to convince an unprejudiced mind that there was a considerable substratum of fact in the confessions of the accused. As Canon Ribet has said in his encyclopædic _La Mystique Divine_, a work warmly approved by the great intellect of Leo XIII: “After what we have learned from records and personal confessions we can scarcely entertain any more doubts, and it is our plain duty to oppose, even if it be but by a simple affirmation on our part, those numerous writers who, either through presumption or rashness, treat these horrors as idle talk or mere hallucination.”[29] Bizouard also in his authoritative _Rapports de l’homme avec le démon_ writes of the incubus and succubus: “These relations, far from being untrue, bear the strongest marks of authenticity which can be given them by official proceedings regulated and approved with all the caution and judgement brought to bear upon them by enlightened and conscientious magistrates who, throughout all ages, have been in a position to test plain facts.”[30] It seems to me that if unshaken evidence means anything at all, if the authority of the ablest and acutest intellects of all ages in all countries is not to count for merest vapourings and fairy fantasies, the possibility—I do not, thank God, say the frequency—of these demoniacal connexions is not to be denied. Of course the mind already resolved that such things cannot be is inconvincible even by demonstration, and one can only fall back upon the sentence of S. Augustine: “Hanc assidue immunditiam et tentare et efficere, plures talesque asseuerant, ut hoc negare impudentiæ uideatur.”[31] In which place the holy doctor explicitly declares: “Seeing it is so general a report, and so many aver it either from their own experience or from others, that are of indubitable honesty and credit, that the sylvans and fawns, commonly called incubi, have often injured women, desiring and acting carnally with them: and that certain devils whom the Gauls call _Duses_, do continually practise this uncleanness, and tempt others to it, which is affirmed by such persons, and with such confidence that it were impudence to deny it.” The learned William of Paris, confessor of Philip le Bel, lays down: “That there exist such beings as are commonly called incubi or succubi and that they indulge their burning lusts, and that children, as it is freely acknowledged, can be born from them, is attested by the unimpeachable and unshaken witness of many men and women who have been filled with foul imaginings by them, and endured their lecherous assaults and lewdness.”[32] S. Thomas[33] and S. Bonaventura,[34] also, speak quite plainly on the subject. Francisco Suarez, the famous Jesuit theologian, writes with caution but with directness: “This is the teaching on this point of S. Thomas, who is generally followed by all other theologians.... The reason for their opinion is this: Such an action considered in its entirety by no means exceeds the natural powers of the demon, whilst the exercise of such powers is wholly in accordance with the malice of the demon, and it may well be permitted by God, owing to the sins of some men. Therefore this teaching cannot be denied without many reservations and exceptions. Wherefore S. Augustine has truly said, that inasmuch as this doctrine of incubi and succubi is established by the opinion of many who are experienced and learned, it were sheer impudence to deny it.”[35] The Salmanticenses—that is to say, the authors of the courses of Scholastic philosophy and theology, and of Moral theology, published by the lecturers of the theological college of the Discalced Carmelites at Salamanca—in their weighty _Theologia Moralis_[36] state: “Some deny this, believing it impossible that demons should perform the carnal act with human beings,” but they affirm, “None the less the opposite opinion is most certain and must be followed.”[37] Charles René Billuart, the celebrated Dominican, in his _Tractatus de Angelis_ expressly declares: “The same evil spirit may serve as a succubus to a man, and as an incubus to a woman.”[38] One of the most learned—if not the most learned—of the popes, Benedict XIV, in his erudite work _De Seruorum Dei Beatificatione_, treats this whole question at considerable length with amplest detail and solid references, Liber IV, Pars i. c. 3.[39] Commenting upon the passage “The sons of God went unto the daughters of men” (Genesis vi. 4), the pontiff writes: “This passage has reference to those Demons who are known as incubi and succubi.... It is true that whilst nearly all authors admit the fact, some writers deny that there can be offspring.... On the other hand, several writers assert that connexion of this kind is possible and that children may be born from it, nay, indeed, they tell us that this has taken place, although it were done in some new and mysterious way which is ordinarily unknown to man.”[40] S. Alphonsus Liguori in his _Praxis confessariorum_, VII, n. 111, writes: “Some deny that there are evil spirits, incubi and succubi; but writers of authority for the most part assert that such is the case.”[41] In his _Theologia Moralis_ he speaks quite precisely when defining the technical nature of the sin witches commit in commerce with incubi.[42] [43] This opinion is also that of Martino Bonacina,[44] and of Vincenzo Filliucci, S.J.[45] “Busembaum has excellently observed that carnal sins with an evil spirit fall under the head of the technical term _bestialitas_.”[46] This is also the conclusion of Thomas Tamburini, S.J. (1591-1675); Benjamin Elbel, O.F.M. (1690-1756);[47] Cardinal Cajetan, O.P. (1469-1534) “the lamp of the Church”; Juan Azor, S.J. (1535-1603); “in wisdom, in depth of learning and in gravity of judgement taking deservedly high rank among theologians” (Gury); and many other authorities.[48] What a penitent should say in confession is considered by Monsignor Craisson, sometime Rector of the Grand Seminary of Valence and Vicar-General of the diocese, in his Tractate _De Rebus Uenereis ad usum Confessariorum_.[49] Jean-Baptiste Bouvier (1783-1854) the famous bishop of Le Mans, in his _Dissertatio in Sextum Decalogi Præceptum_[50] (p. 78) writes: “All theologians speak of ... evil spirits who appear in the shape of a man, a woman, or even some animal. This is either a real and actual presence, or the effect of imagination. They decide that this sin ... incurs particular guilt which must be specifically confessed, to wit an evil superstition whereof the essence is a compact with the Devil. In this sin, therefore, we have two distinct kinds of malice, one an offence against chastity; the other against our holy faith.”[51] Dom Dominic Schram,[52] O.S.B., in his _Institutiones Theologiæ Mysticæ_ poses the following: “The inquiry is made whether a demon ... may thus attack a man or woman, whose obsession would be suffered if the subject were wholly bent upon obtaining perfection and walking the highest paths of contemplation. Here we must distinguish the true and the false. It is certain that—whatever doubters may say—there exist such demons, incubi and succubi: and S. Augustine asserts (_The City of God_, Book XV,