CHAPTER IV

THE SABBAT The Assemblies of the witches differed very much from each other in an almost infinite number of ways. On certain ancient anniversaries the meeting was always particularly solemn, with as large an attendance as possible, when all who belonged to the infernal cult would be required to present themselves and punishment was meted out to those who proved slack and slow; at other times these gatherings would be occasional, resorted to by the company who resided within a certain restricted area, it might be by only one coven of thirteen, it might be by a few more, as opportunity served. There were also, as is to be expected, variations proper to each country, and a seemingly endless number of local peculiarities. There does not clearly appear to be any formal and fair order in the ceremonies throughout, nor should we look for this, seeing that the liturgy of darkness is of its essence opposed to the comely worship of God, wherein, as the Apostle bids, all things are to be done “decently and in order.”[1] The ceremonial of hell, sufficiently complex, obscure, and obscene, is even more confused in the witches’ narratives by a host of adventitious circumstances, often contradictory, nay, even mutually exclusive, and so although we can piece together a very complete picture of their orgies, there are some details which must yet remain unexplained, incomprehensible, and perhaps wholly irrational and absurd. “Le burlesque s’y mêle à l’horrible, et les puérilités aux abominations.” (Ribet, _La Mystique Divine_, III. 2. Les Parodies Diaboliques.) (Mere clowning and japery are mixed up with circumstances of extremest horror; childishness and folly with loathly abominations.) In the lesser Assemblies much, no doubt, depended upon the fickle whim and unwholesome caprice of the officer or president at the moment. The conduct of the more important Assemblies was to a certain extent regularized and more or less loosely ran upon traditional lines. The name Sabbat may be held to cover every kind of gathering,[2] although it must continually be borne in mind that a Sabbat ranges from comparative simplicity, the secret rendezvous of some half a dozen wretches devoted to the fiend, to a large and crowded congregation presided over by incarnate evil intelligences, a mob outvying the very demons in malice, blasphemy, and revolt, the true face of pandemonium on earth. The derivation of the word Sabbat does not seem to be exactly established. It is perhaps superfluous to point out that it has nothing to do with the number seven, and is wholly unconnected with the Jewish festival. Sainte-Croix and Alfred Maury[3] are agreed to derive it from the debased Bacchanalia. Sabazius (Σαβάζιος) was a Phrygian deity, sometimes identified with Zeus, sometimes with Dionysus, but who was generally regarded as the patron of licentiousness and worshipped with frantic debaucheries. He is a patron of the ribald old Syrian eunuch in Apuleius: “omnipotens et omniparens Dea Syria et sanctus Sabadius et Bellona et Mater Idaea (ac) cum suo Adone Venus domina”[4] are the deities whom Philebus invokes to avenge him of the mocking crier. Σαβαζεῖν is found in the Scholiast on Aristophane (_Birds_, 874), and σαβαῖ, a Bacchic yell, occurs in a fragment of the _Baptæ_ of Eupolis; the fuller phrase εὐοῖ Σαβοῖ being reported by Strabo the geographer. The modern Greeks still call a madman ζαβός. But Littré entirely rejects any such facile etymology. “Attempts have been made to trace the etymology of the Sabbat, the witches’ assembly, from _Sabazies_; but the formation of the word does not allow it; besides, in the Middle Ages, what did they know about _Sabazies_?”[5] Even the seasons of the principal Assemblies of the year differ in various countries. Throughout the greater part of Western Europe one of the chief of these was the Eve of May Day, 30 April;[6] in Germany[7] famous as Die Walpurgis-Nacht. S. Walburga (Walpurgis; Waltpurde; at Perche Gauburge; in other parts of France Vaubourg or Falbourg) was born in Devonshire _circa_ 710. She was the daughter of S. Richard, one of the under-kings of the West Saxons, who married a sister of S. Boniface. In 748 Walburga, who was then a nun of Wimbourne, went over to Germany to found claustral life in that country. After a life of surpassing holiness she died at Heidenheim, 25 February, 777. Her cultus began immediately, and about 870 her relics were translated to Eichstadt, where the Benedictine convent which has charge of the sacred shrine still happily flourishes. S. Walburga was formerly one of the most popular Saints in England, as well as in Germany and the Low Countries. She is patroness of Eichstadt, Oudenarde, Furnes, Groningen, Weilburg, Zutphen, and Antwerp, where until the Roman office was adopted they celebrated her feast four times a year. In the Roman martyrology she is commemorated on 1 May, but in the Monastic Kalendar on 25 February. The first of May was the ancient festival of the Druids, when they offered sacrifices upon their sacred mountains and kindled their May-fires. These magic observances were appropriately continued by the witches of a later date. There was not a hill-top in Finland, so the peasant believed, which at midnight on the last day of April was not thronged by demons and sorcerers. The second witches’ festival was the Eve of S. John Baptist, 23 June. Then were the S. John’s fires lit, a custom in certain regions still prevailing.[8] In olden times the Feast was distinguished like Christmas with three Masses; the first at midnight recalled his mission as Precursor, the second at dawn commemorated the baptism he confessed, the third honoured his sanctity. Other Grand Sabbat days, particularly in Belgium and Germany, were S. Thomas’ Day (21 December) and a date, which seems to have been movable, shortly after Christmas. In Britain we also find Candlemas (2 February), Allhallowe’en (31 October), and Lammas (1 August), mentioned in the trials. Wright, _Narratives of Sorcery and Magic_ (I. p. 141), further specifies S. Bartholomew’s Eve, but although a Sabbat may have been held on this day, it would seem to be an exceptional or purely local use. During a famous trial held in the winter of 1610 at Logrono, a town of Old Castille, by the Apostolic Inquisitor, Alonso Becerra Holguin, an Alcantarine friar, with his two assessors Juen Valle Alvarado and Alonso de Salasar y Frias, a number of Navarrese witches confessed that the chief Sabbats were usually held at Zugarramurdi and Berroscoberro in the Basque districts, and that the days were fixed, being the vigils of the “nine principal feasts of the year,” namely, Easter, Epiphany, Ascension Day, the Purification and Nativity of Our Lady, the Assumption, Corpus Christi, All Saints, and the major festival of S. John Baptist (24 June). It is certainly curious to find no mention of Christmas and Pentecost in this list, but throughout the whole of the process not one of the accused—and we have their evidence in fullest detail—named either of these two solemnities as being chosen for the infernal rendezvous.[9] Satan is, as Boguet aptly says, “Singe de Dieu en tout,”[10] and it became common to hold a General Sabbat about the time of the high Christian festivals in evil mockery of these holy solemnities, and he precisely asserts that the Sabbat “se tient encor aux festes les plus solemnelles de l’année.”[11] (Is still held on the greatest festivals of the year.) So he records the confession of Antide Colas (1598), who “auoit esté au Sabbat à vn chacun bon iour de l’an, comme à Noel, à Pasques, à la feste de Dieu.” The Lancashire witches met on Good Friday; and in the second instance (1633) on All Saints’ Day; the witches of Kinross (1662) held an assembly on the feast of Scotland’s Patron, S. Andrew, 30 November, termed “S. Andrew’s Day at Yule,” to distinguish it from the secondary Feast of the Translation of S. Andrew, 9 May. The New England witches were wont to celebrate their chief Sabbat at Christmas. In many parts of Europe where the Feast of S. George is solemnized with high honour and holiday the vigil (22 April) is the Great Sabbat of the year. The Huzulo of the Carpathians believe that then every evil thing has power and witches are most dangerous. Not a Bulgarian or Roumanian farmer but closes up each door and fastens close each window at nightfall, putting sharp thorn-bushes and brambles on the lintels, new turf on the sills, so that no demon nor hag may find entry there. The Grand Sabbats were naturally held in a great variety of places, whilst the lesser Sabbats could be easily assembled in an even larger number of spots, which might be convenient to the coven of that district, a field near a village, a wood, a tor, a valley, an open waste beneath some blasted oak, a cemetery, a ruined building, some solitary chapel or semi-deserted church, sometimes a house belonging to one of the initiates. It was advisable that the selected locality should be remote and deserted to obviate any chance of espionage or casual interruption, and in many provinces some wild ill-omened gully or lone hill-top was shudderingly marked as the notorious haunt of witches and their fiends. De Lancre says that the Grand Sabbat must be held near a stream, lake, or water of some kind,[12] and Bodin adds: “The places where Sorcerers meet are remarkable and generally distinguished by some trees, or even a cross.”[13] These ancient cromlechs and granite dolmens, the stones of the Marais de Dol, the monolith that lies between Seny and Ellemelle (Candroz), even the market-crosses of sleepy old towns and English villages, were among the favourite rendezvous of the pythons and warlocks of a whole countryside. On one occasion, which seems exceptional, a Sabbat was held in the very heart of the city of Bordeaux. Throughout Germany the Blocksburg or the Brocken, the highest peak of the Hartz Mountains, was the great meeting-place of the witches, some of whom, it was said, came from distant Lapland and Norway to forgather there. But local Blocksburgs existed, or rather hills so called, especially in Pomerania, which boasted two or three such crags. The sorcerers of Corrières held their Sabbat at a deserted spot, turning off the highway near Combes; the witches of la Mouille in a tumbledown house, which had once belonged to religious; the Gandillons and their coven, who were brought to justice in June, 1598, met at Fontenelles, a forsaken and haunted spot near the village of Nezar. Dr. Fian and his associates (1591) “upon the night of Allhollen-Even” assembled at “the kirke of North-Berrick in Lowthian.” Silvain Nevillon, who was executed at Orleans, 4 February, 1615, confessed “que le Sabbat se tenoit dans vne maison,” and the full details he gave shows this to have been a large château, no doubt the home of some wealthy local magnate, where above two hundred persons could assemble. Isobel Young, Christian Grinton, and two or three other witches entertained the Devil in Young’s house in 1629. Alexander Hamilton, a “known warlock” executed at Edinburgh in 1630, confessed that “the pannel took him one night to a den betwixt Niddrie and Edmiston, where the devill had trysted hir.” Helen Guthrie, a Forfar witch, and her coven frequented a churchyard, where they met a demon, and on another occasion they “went to Mary Rynd’s house, and sat doune together at the table ... and made them selfes mirrie, and the divell made much of them all” (1661). The Lancashire witches often held their local Sabbat at Malking Tower. From the confession of the Swedish witches (1670) at Mohra and Elfdale they assembled at a spot called _Blockula_ “scituated in a delicate large Meadow.... The place or house they met at, had before it a Gate painted with divers colours; ... In a huge large Room of this House, they said, there stood a very long Table, at which the Witches did sit down; And that hard by this Room was another Chamber in which there were very lovely and delicate Beds.”[14] Obviously a fine Swedish country house, perhaps belonging to a wealthy witch, and in the minds of the poorer members of the gang it presently became imaginatively exaggerated and described. Christian Stridtheckh _De Sagis_ (XL) writes: “They have different rendezvous in different districts; yet their meetings are generally held in wooded spots, or on mountains, or in caves, and any places which are far from the usual haunts of men. Mela, Book III, chapter 44, mentions Mount Atlas; _de Vaulx_, a warlock executed at Etaples in 1603, confessed that the witches of the Low Countries were wont most frequently to meet in some spot in the province of Utrecht. In our own country, the Mountain of the Bructeri, which some call Melibœus, in the duchy of Brunswick, is known and notorious as the haunt of witches. In the common tongue this Mountain is called the _Blocksberg_ or _Heweberg_, _Brockersburg_ or _Vogelsberg_, as _Ortelius_ notes in his _Thesaurus Geographicus_.”[15] The day of the week whereon a Sabbat was held differed in the various districts and countries, although Friday seems to have been most generally favoured. There is indeed an accumulation of evidence for every night of the week save Saturday and Sunday. De Lancre records that in the Basses-Pyrénées “their usual rendezvous is the spot known as Lane du Bouc, in the Basque tongue _Aquelarre de verros, prado del Cabron_, & there the Sorcerers assemble to worship their master on three particular nights, Monday, Wednesday, Friday.”[16] Boguet says that the day of the Sabbat varied, but usually a Thursday night was preferred.[17] In England it was stated that the “Solemn appointments, and meetings ... are ordinarily on Tuesday or Wednesday night.”[18] Saturday was, however, particularly avoided as being the day sacred to the immaculate Mother of God. It is true that the hysterical and obscene ravings of Maria de Sains, a witness concerned in the trial of Louis Gaufridi and who was examined on 17-19 May, 1614, assert that the Sabbat used to be held on every day of the week. Wednesday and Friday were the Sabbats of blasphemy and the black ass. To the other days the most hideous abominations of which humanity is capable were allotted. The woman was obviously sexually deranged, affected with mania blasphematoria and coprolalia. Night was almost invariably the time for the Sabbat, although, as Delrio says, there is no actual reason why these evil rites should not be performed at noon, for the Psalmist speaks of “the terror of the night,” the “business that walketh about in the dark,” and of “the noonday devil.”[19] (“Non timebis a timore nocturno ... a negotio perambulante in tenebris; ab incursu et dæmonio meridiano.”) And so Delrio very aptly writes: “Their assemblies generally are held at dead of night when the Powers of Darkness reign; or, sometimes, at high noon, even as the Psalmist saith, when he speaks of ‘the noonday devil.’ The nights they prefer are Monday and Thursday.”[20] The time at which these Sabbats began was generally upon the stroke of midnight. “Les Sorciers,” says Boguet, “vont enuiron la minuict au Sabbat.”[21] It may be remembered that in the _Metamorphoseon_ of Apuleius, I, xi, the hags attack Socrates at night “circa tertiam ferme uigiliam.” Agnes Sampson, “a famous witch”—as Hume of Godscroft in his Account of Archibald, ninth Earl of Angus, calls her—commonly known as the wise wife of Keith, who made a prominent figure[22] in the Fian trials, 1590, confessed that the Devil met her, “being alone, and commanded her to be at North-Berwick Kirk the next night,” and accordingly she made her way there as she was bid “and lighted at the Kirk-yard, or a little before she came to it, about eleven hours at even.”[23] In this case, however, the Sabbat was preceded by a dance of nearly one hundred persons, and so probably did not commence until midnight. Thomas Leyis, Issobell Coky, Helen Fraser, Bessie Thorn, and the rest of the Aberdeen witches, thirteen of whom were executed in 1597, and seven more banished, generally met “betuixt tuell & ane houris at nycht.”[24] Boguet notes that in 1598 the witch Françoise Secretain “adioustoit qu’elle alloit tousiours au Sabbat enuiron la minuit, & beaucoup d’autres sorciers, que i’ay eu en main, ont dit le mesme.” In 1600 Anna Mauczin of Tubingen confessed that she had taken part in witch gatherings which she dubbed _Hochzeiten_. They seem to have been held by a well just outside the upper gate of Rotenburg, and her evidence insists upon “midnight dances” and revelling. A Scotch witch, Marie Lamont, “a young woman of the adge of Eighteen Yeares, dwelling in the parish of Innerkip” on 4 March, 1662, confessed most ingenuously “that when shee had been at a mietting sine Zowle last, with other witches, in the night, the devill convoyed her home in the dawing.”[25] The Sabbat lasted till cock-crow, before which time none of the assembly was suffered to withdraw, and the advowal of Louis Gaufridi, executed at Aix, 1610, seems somewhat singular: “I was conveyed to the place where the Sabbat was to be held, and I remained there sometimes one, two, three, or four hours, for the most part just as I felt inclined.”[26] That the crowing of a cock dissolves enchantments is a tradition of extremest antiquity. The Jews believed that the clapping of a cock’s wings will make the power of demons ineffectual and break magic spells. So Prudentius sang: “They say that the night-wandering demons, who rejoice in dunnest shades, at the crowing of the cock tremble and scatter in sore affright.”[27] The rites of Satan ceased because the Holy Office of the Church began. In the time of S. Benedict Matins and Lauds were recited at dawn and were actually often known as _Gallicinium_, Cock-crow. In the exquisite poetry of S. Ambrose, which is chanted at Sunday Lauds, the praises of the cock are beautifully sung: Light of our darksome journey here, With days dividing night from night! Loud crows the dawn’s shrill harbinger, And wakens up the sunbeams bright. Forthwith at this, the darkness chill Retreats before the star of morn; And from their busy schemes of ill The vagrant crews of night return. Fresh hope, at this, the sailor cheers; The waves their stormy strife allay; The Church’s Rock at this, in tears, Hastens to wash his guilt away. Arise ye, then, with one accord! No longer wrapt in slumber lie; The cock rebukes all who their Lord By sloth neglect, by sin deny. At his clear cry joy springs afresh; Health courses through the sick man’s veins; The dagger glides into its sheath; The fallen soul her faith regains.[28] A witch named Latoma confessed to Nicolas Remy that cocks were most hateful to all sorcerers. That bird is the herald of dawn, he arouses men to the worship of God; and many an odious sin which darkness shrouds will be revealed in the light of the coming day. At the hour of the Nativity, that most blessed time, the cocks crew all night long. A cock crew lustily at the Resurrection. Hence is the cock placed upon the steeple of churches. Pliny and Ælian tell us that a lion fears the cock; so the Devil “leo rugiens” flees at cock-crow. “Le coq,” says De Lancre, “s’oyt par fois es Sabbats sonna̅t la retraicte aux Sorciers.”[29] The witch resorted to the Sabbat in various manners. If it were a question of attending a local assembly when, at most, a mile or two had to be traversed, the company would go on foot. Very often the distance was even less, for it should be remembered that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and indeed, as a matter of fact, up to a quite recent date, when the wayfarer had gone a few steps outside the gates of a town or beyond the last house in the village he was enfolded in darkness, entirely solitary, remote, eloined. If footmen with flambeaux, at least the humbler linkboy, were essential attendants after nightfall in the streets of the world’s great cities, London, Rome, Paris, Madrid,[30] how black with shadows, dangerous, and utterly lonesome was the pathless countryside! Not infrequently the witches of necessity carried lanterns to light them on their journey to the Sabbat. The learned Bartolomeo de Spina, O.P.,[31] in his _Tractatus de Strigibus et Lamiis_ (Venice, 1533), writes that a certain peasant, who lived at Clavica Malaguzzi, in the district of Mirandola, having occasion to rise very early one morning and drive to a neighbouring village, found himself at three o’clock, before daybreak, crossing a waste tract of considerable extent which lay between him and his destination. In the distance he suddenly caught sight of what seemed to be numerous fires flitting to and fro, and as he drew nearer he saw that these were none other than large lanthorns held by a bevy of persons who were moving here and there in the mazes of a fantastic dance, whilst others, as at a rustic picnic, were seated partaking of dainties and drinking stoups of wine, what time a harsh music, like the scream of a cornemuse, droned through the air. Curiously no word was spoken, the company whirled and pirouetted, ate and drank, in strange and significant silence. Perceiving that many, unabashed, were giving themselves up to the wildest debauchery and publicly performing the sexual act with every circumstance of indecency, the horrified onlooker realized that he was witnessing the revels of the Sabbat. Crossing himself fervently and uttering a prayer he drove as fast as possible from the accursed spot, not, however, before he had recognized some of the company as notorious evil-doers and persons living in the vicinity who were already under grave suspicion of sorcery. The witches must have remarked his presence, but they seem to have ignored him and not even to have attempted pursuit. In another instance Fra Paolo de Caspan, a Dominican of great reputation for piety and learning, reports that Antonio de Palavisini, the parish priest of Caspan in the Valtellina, a territory infected with warlocks, most solemnly affirmed that when going before daybreak to say an early Mass at a shrine hard by the village he had seen through clearings in the wood an assembly of men and women furnished with lanterns, who were seated in a circle and whose actions left no doubt that they were witches engaged in abominable rites. In both the above cases the lanterns were not required in the ceremonies of the Sabbat, and they must have been carried for the purely practical purpose of affording light. Very often when going to a local Sabbat the coven of witches used to meet just beyond the village and make their way to the appointed spot in a body for mutual help and security. This is pointed out by Bernard of Como, a famous scholar, who says: “When they are to go to some spot hard by they proceed thither on foot cheerily conversing as they walk.”[32] The fact that the dark initiates walked to the Sabbat is frequently mentioned in the trials. Boguet, who is most exact in detail, writes: “Sorcerers, nevertheless, sometimes walk to the Sabbat, and this is generally the case when the spot where they are to assemble does not lie very far from their dwellings.”[33] And in the interrogatory, 17 May, 1616, of Barthélemi Minguet of Brécy, a young fellow of twenty-five, accused with seventeen more, we have: “He was then asked in what place the Sabbat was held the last time he was present there. “He replied that it was in the direction of Billcron, at a cross-road which is on the high-road leading to Aix, in the Parish of Saint Soulange. He was asked how he proceeded thither. He replied that he walked to the place.”[34] When Catharine Oswald of Niddrie (1625) one night took Alexander Hamilton “a known warlock” “to a den betwixt Niddrie and Edmiston, where the devill had trysted hir,” it is obvious that the couple walked there together. On one occasion the truly subtle point was raised whether those who walked to the Sabbat were as guilty as those who were conveyed thither by the Devil. But De Lancre decides: “It is truly as criminal & abominable for a Sorcerer to go to the Sabbat on foot as to be voluntarily conveyed thither by the Devil.”[35] Major Weir and his sister seem to have gone to a meeting with the Devil in a coach and six horses when they thus drove from Edinburgh to Musselburgh and back again on 7 September, 1648. So the woman confessed in prison, and added “that she and her brother had made a compact with the devil.”[36] [Illustration: PLATE IV OFF TO THE SABBAT. Queverdo [_face p. 120_] Agnes Sampson, the famous witch of North Berwick (1590), confessed “that the _Devil_ in mans lickness met her going out to the fields from her own house at _Keith_, betwixt five and six at even, being alone and commanded her to be at _North-berwick_ Kirk the next night. To which place she came on horse-back, conveyed by her Good-son, called Iohn Couper.”[37] The Swedish witches (1669) who carried children off to Blockula “set them upon a _Beast_ of the _Devil’s_ providing, and then they rid away.” One boy confessed that “to perform the Journey, he took his own Fathers horse out of the Meadow, where it was feeding.”[38] Upon his return one of the coven let the horse graze in her own pasture, and here the boy’s father found it the next day. In the popular imagination the witch is always associated with the broomstick, employed by her to fly in wild career through mid-air. This belief seems almost universal, of all times and climes. The broomstick is, of course, closely connected with the magic wand or staff which was considered equally serviceable for purposes of equitation. The wood whence it was fashioned was often from the hazel-tree, witch-hazel, although in De Lancre’s day the sorcerers of Southern France favoured the “Souhandourra”—_Cornus sanguinea_, dog-wood. Mid hurricane and tempest, in the very heart of the dark storm, the convoy of witches, straddling their broomsticks, sped swiftly along to the Sabbat, their yells and hideous laughter sounding louder than the crash of elements and mingling in fearsome discord with the frantic pipe of the gale. There is a very important reference to these beliefs from the pen of the famous and erudite Benedictine Abbot, Regino of Prüm (A.D. 906), who in his weighty _De ecclesiasticis disciplinis_ writes: “This too must by no means be passed over that certain utterly abandoned women, turning aside to follow Satan, being seduced by the illusions and phantasmical shows of demons firmly believe and openly profess that in the dead of night they ride upon certain beasts along with the pagan goddess Diana and a countless horde of women, and that in those silent hours they fly over vast tracts of country and obey her as their mistress, whilst on certain other nights they are summoned to do her homage and pay her service.”[39] The witches rode sometimes upon a besom or a stick, sometimes upon an animal, and the excursion through the air was generally preceded by an unction with a magic ointment. Various recipes are given for the ointment, and it is interesting to note that they contain deadly poisons: aconite, belladonna, and hemlock.[40] Although these unguents may in certain circumstances be capable of producing definite physiological results, it is Delrio who best sums up the reasons for their use: “The Demon is able to convey them to the Sabbat without the use of any unguent, and often he does so. But for several reasons he prefers that they should anoint themselves. Sometimes when the witches seem afraid it serves to encourage them. When they are young and tender they will thus be better able to bear the hateful embrace of Satan who has assumed the shape of a man. For by this horrid anointing he dulls their senses and persuades these deluded wretches that there is some great virtue in the viscid lubricant. Sometimes too he does this in hateful mockery of God’s holy Sacraments, and that by these mysterious ceremonies he may infuse, as it were, something of a ritual and liturgical nature into his beastly orgies.”[41] Although the witch is universally credited with the power to fly through the air[42] to the Sabbat mounted upon a besom or some kind of stick, it is remarkable in the face of popular belief to find that the confessions avowing this actual mode of aerial transport are extraordinarily few. Paul Grilland, in his tractate _De Sortilegiis_ (Lyons, 1533), speaks of a witch at Rome during whose trial, seven years before, it was asserted she flew in the air after she had anointed her limbs with a magic liniment. Perhaps the most exactly detailed accounts of this feat are to be found in Boguet,[43] than whom scarcely any writer more meticulously reports the lengthy and prolix evidence of witches, such evidence as he so laboriously gathered during the notorious prosecutions throughout Franche-Comté in the summer of 1598. He records quite plainly such statements as: “Françoise Secretain disoit, que pour aller au Sabbat, elle mettoit un baston blanc entre ses iambes & puis prononçait certaines paroles & dés lors elle estoit portée par l’air iusques en l’assemblée des Sorciers.” (Françoise Secretain avowed that in order to go to the Sabbat she placed a white stick between her legs & then uttered certain words & then she was borne through the air to the sorcerers’ assembly). In another place she confessed “qu’elle avoit esté vne infinité de fois au Sabbat ... & qu’elle y alloit sur vn baston blanc, qu’elle mettoit entre ses iambes.” (That she had been a great number of times to the Sabbat ... and that she went there on a white stick which she placed between her legs.) It will be noticed that in the second instance she does not explicitly claim to have been borne through the air. Again: “Françoise Secretain y estoit portée [au Sabbat] sur vn baston blanc. Satan y tra̅sporta Thieuenne Paget & Antide Colas estant en forme d’vn homme noir, sortans de leurs maison le plus souuent par la cheminée.” “Claudine Boban, ieune fille confessa qu’elle & sa mère montoient sur vne ramasse, & que sortans le contremont de la cheminée elles alloient par l’air en ceste façon au Sabbat.” (Françoise Secretain was carried [to the Sabbat] on a white stick. Satan, in the form of a tall dark man conveyed thither Thieuenne Paget & Antide Colas, who most often left their house by way of the chimney.... Claudine Boban, a young girl, confessed that both she and her mother mounted on a besom, & that flying out by the chimney they were thus borne through the air to the Sabbat.) A marginal note explains _ramasse_ as “autrement balai, & en Lyonnois coiue.” Glanvill writes that Julian Cox, one of the Somerset coven (1665), said “that one evening she walkt out about a Mile from her own House and there came riding towards her three persons upon three Broom-staves, born up about a yard and a half from the ground. Two of them she formerly knew, which was a Witch and a Wizzard.” It might easily be that there is some exaggeration here. We know that a figure in one of the witch dances consisted of leaping as high as possible into the air, and probably the three persons seen by Julian Cox were practising this agile step. A quotation from Bodin by Reginald Scot is very pertinent in this connexion. Speaking of the Sabbat revels he has: “And whiles they sing and dance, euerie one hath a broome in his hand, and holdeth it vp aloft. Item he saith, that these night-walking or rather night-dansing witches, brought out of _Italie_ into _France_, that danse which is called _La Volta_.”[44] Sir John Davies in his _Orchestra or A Poeme on Dauncing_ (18mo, 1596) describes the lavolta as “A loftie iumping, or a leaping round.” De Lancre observes that after the regular country dance at the Sabbat the witches sprang high into the air. “Après la dance ils se mettent par fois à sauter.”[45] At their assembly certain of the Aberdeen witches (1597) “danced a devilish dance, riding on trees, by a long space.” In an old representation of Dr. Fian and his company swiftly pacing round North Berwick church withershins the witches are represented as running and leaping in the air, some mounted on broomsticks, some carrying their besoms in their hands. There was discovered in the closet of Dame Alice Kyteler of Kilkenny, who was arrested in 1324 upon the accusation of nightly meeting a familiar Artisson and multiplied charges of sorcery, a pipe of ointment, wherewith she greased a staff “upon which she ambolled and gallopped thorough thicke and thin, when and what manner she listed.”[46] In the trial of Martha Carrier, a notorious witch and “rampant hag” at the Court of Oyer and Terminer, held by adjournment at Salem, 2 August, 1692, the eighth article of the indictment ran: “One _Foster_, who confessed her own share in the Witchcraft for which the Prisoner stood indicted, affirm’d, that she had seen the prisoner at some of their _Witch-meetings_, and that it was this _Carrier_, who perswaded her to be a Witch. She confessed that the Devil carry’d them on a pole, to a Witch-meeting: but the pole broke, and she hanging about _Carriers_ neck, they both fell down, and she then received an hurt by the Fall, whereof she was not at this very time recovered.”[47] In many of these instances it is plain that there is no actual flight through the air implied; although there is a riding a-cock-horse of brooms or sticks, in fact, a piece of symbolic ritual. It is very pertinent, however, to notice in this connexion the actual levitation of human beings, which is, although perhaps an unusual, yet by no means an unknown, phenomenon in the séances of modern spiritism, where both the levitation of persons, with which we are solely concerned, and the rising of tables or chairs off the ground without contact with any individual or by any human agency have occurred again and again under conditions which cannot possibly admit of legerdemain, illusion, or charlatanry. From a mass of irrefutable evidence we may select some striking words by Sir William Crookes, F.R.S., upon levitation. “This has occurred,” he writes, “in my presence on four occasions in darkness; but ... I will only mention cases in which deductions of reason were confirmed by the sense of sight.... On one occasion I witnessed a chair, with a lady sitting on it, rise several inches from the ground.... On another occasion the lady knelt on the chair in such manner that the four feet were visible to us. It then rose about three inches, remained suspended for about ten seconds, and then slowly descended.... “The most striking case of levitation which I have witnessed has been with Mr. Home. On three separate occasions have I seen him raised completely from the floor of the room.... On each occasion I had full opportunity of watching the occurrence as it was taking place. There are at least a hundred recorded instances of Mr. Home’s rising from the ground.”[48] Writing in July, 1871, Lord Lindsay said: “I was sitting with Mr. Home and Lord Adare and a cousin of his. During the sitting Mr. Home went into a trance, and in that state was carried out of the window in the room next to where we were, and was brought in at our window. The distance between the windows was about seven feet six inches, and there was not the slightest foothold between them, nor was there more than a twelve-inch projection to each window, which served as a ledge to put flowers on. We heard the window in the next room lifted up, and almost immediately after we saw Home floating in air outside our window.”[49] William Stainton Moses writes of his levitation in August, 1872, in the presence of credible witnesses: “I was carried up ... when I became stationary I made a mark [with a lead pencil] on the wall opposite to my chest. This mark is as near as may be six feet from the floor.... From the position of the mark on the wall it is clear that my head must have been close to the ceiling.... I was simply levitated and lowered to my old place.”[50] When we turn to the lives of the Saints we find that these manifestations have been frequently observed, and it will suffice to mention but a few from innumerable examples. S. Francis of Assisi was often “suspended above the earth, sometimes to a height of three, sometimes to a height of four cubits”; the same phenomenon has been recorded by eye-witnesses in many instances throughout the centuries. Among the large number of those who are known to have been raised from the ground whilst wrapt in prayer are the stigmatized S. Catherine of Siena; S. Colette; Rainiero de Borgo San-Sepolcro; S. Catherine de Ricci; S. Alphonsus Rodriguez, S.J.; S. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi; Raimond Rocco; Bl. Charles de Sezze; S. Veronica Giuliani the Capuchiness; S. Gerard Majella, the Redemptorist thaumaturge; that wondrous mystic Anne Catherine Emmerich; Dominica Barbagli (died in 1858), the ecstatica of Montesanto-Savino (Florence), whose levitations were of daily occurrence. S. Ignatius Loyola whilst deeply contemplative was seen by John Pascal to be raised more than a foot from the pavement; S. Teresa and S. John of the Cross were levitated in concurrent ecstasies in the shady locutorio of the Encarnacion, as was witnessed by Beatriz of Jesus and the whole convent of nuns;[51] S. Alphonsus Liguori whilst preaching in the church of S. John Baptist at Foggia was lifted before the eyes of the whole congregation several feet from the ground;[52] Gemma Galgani of Lucca, who died 11 April, 1903, was observed whilst praying one evening in September, 1901, before a venerated Crucifix, to rise in the air in a celestial trance and to remain several minutes at some distance from the floor.[53] Above all, S. Joseph of Cupertino (1603-63), one of the most extraordinary mystics of the seventeenth century, whose whole life seemed one long series of unbroken raptures and ecstasies, was frequently lifted on high to remain suspended in mid-air. Such notice was attracted by this marvel that his superiors sent him from one lonely house of Capuchins or Conventuals to another, and he died at the little hill town of Osimo, where his remains are yet venerated. For many years he was obliged to say Mass at a private altar so inevitable were the ecstasies that fell upon him during the Sacrifice. There are, I think, few sanctuaries more sweet and more fragrant with holiness than this convent at Osimo. During a most happy visit to the shrine of S. Joseph I was deeply touched by the many memorials of the Saints, and by the kindness of the Fathers, his brethren to-day. S. Philip Neri and S. Francis Xavier were frequently raised from the ground at the Elevation, and of the ascetic S. Paul of the Cross the Blessed Strambi writes: “Le serviteur de Dieu s’éleva en l’air à la hauteur de deux palmes, et cela, à deux reprises, avant et après la consecration.”[54] (The servant of God during Holy Mass was twice elevated in the air to a height of two hand-breadths from the ground both before and after the Consecration.) It is well known that in a certain London church a holy religious when he said Mass was not unseldom levitated from the predella, which manifestation I have myself witnessed, although the father was himself unconscious thereof until the day of his death. But, as Görres most aptly remarks,[55] although many examples may be cited of Saints who have been levitated in ecstasy, and although it is not impossible that this phenomenon may be imitated by evil powers—as, indeed, it undoubtedly is in the cases of spiritistic mediums—yet nowhere do we find in hagiography that a large number of Saints were in one company raised from the earth together or conveyed through the air to meet at some appointed spot. Is it likely, then, that the demons would be allowed seemingly to excel by their power a most extraordinary and exceptional manifestation? It must be remembered, also, that save in very rare and singular instances, such as that of S. Joseph of Cupertino, levitation is only for a height of a foot or some eighteen inches, and even this occurs seldom save at moments of great solemnity and psychic concentration. A question which is largely discussed by the demonologists then arises: Do the witches actually and in person attend the Sabbat or is their journey thither and assistance thereat mere diabolic illusion? Giovanni Francesco Ponzinibio, in his _De Lamiis_,[56] wholly inclines to the latter view, but this is superficial reasoning, and the celebrated canonist Francisco Peña with justice takes him very severely to task for his temerity. Peña’s profound work, _In Bernardi Comensis Dominicani Lucernam inquisitorum notæ et eiusdem tractatum de strigibus_,[57] a valuable collection of most erudite glosses, entirely disposes of Ponzinibio’s arguments, and puts the case in words of weighty authority. Sprenger in the _Malleus Maleficarum_, I, had already considered “How witches are bodily transported from one place to another,” and he concludes “It is proven, then, that sorcerers can be bodily transported.”[58] Paul Grilland inquires: “Whether magicians & witches or Satanists are bodily & actually conveyed to and fro by the Devil, or whether this be merely imaginary?” He freely acknowledges the extraordinary difficulty and intricacy of the investigation, beginning his answer with the phrase “Quæstio ista est multum ardua et famosa.”[59] (This is a very difficult and oft-discussed question.) But S. Augustine, S. Thomas, S. Bonaventure, and a score of great names are agreed upon the reality of this locomotion, and Grilland, after balancing the evidence to the nicety of a hair wisely concludes: “Myself I hold the opinion that they are actually transported.”[60] In his _Compendium Maleficarum_ Francesco Maria Guazzo discusses (Liber