An Examen of Witches/Chapter 11
Chapter XI.
Of the Copulation of the Devil with Male
and Female Witches.
The third point in Françoise Secretain’s confession was that she had had carnal relations with Satan. Clauda Jamprost, Jacquema Paget, Antoine Tornier, Antoine Gandillon, Clauda Janguillaume, Thievenne Paget, Rollande du Vernois, Janne Platet and Clauda Paget confessed the same thing; and it has been revealed in the examinations of witches that they all have this connexion with Satan. The Devil uses them so because he knows that women love carnal pleasures, and he means to bind them to his allegiance by such agreeable provocations. Moreover, there is nothing which makes a woman more subject and loyal to a man than that he should abuse her body.
And since male witches are addicted no less than female to this pleasure, the Devil also appears as a woman to satisfy them. This he does chiefly at the Sabbat, according to the reports of the father and son, George and Pierre Gandillon, and of those women whom I have several times named, who all agree in saying that in their assemblies there are many demons, of whom some take the form of women for the men, and others that of men for the women. These demons are called Incubi and Succubi. And it is no new thing for Satan to draw us to him by these means; for we read that, in order to tempt St. Anthony, St. Jerome and other devout persons, who passed their life in the solitude of the desert, he commonly appeared to them in the form of a courtesan.
There is also another reason for the coupling of the Devil with a witch, which is that the sin may thereby become the more grievous. For if God abominates the coupling of an infidel with a Christian, how much more shall He detest that of a man with the Devil? Moreover, by this means man’s natural semen is wasted, with the result that the love between man and wife is often turned to hatred, than which no worse a misfortune could happen to the state of matrimony.