An Examen of Witches/Chapter 24
Chapter XXIV.
Of the Unguents and Ointments Used by Witches.
There are unguents and ointments which witches make, if they have not already been given to them by Satan; and of these there are several kinds. Porta, II. 26.An Italian author, in his “Natural Magic,” has described the composition of some of them; but these ointments are for the most part made of the fat of little children whom the Devil has instigated witches to murder. The witches anoint themselves with it when they go to the Sabbat, or when they change themselves into wolves; but I do not see that these ointments can have any other effect in such cases than to deaden and stupefy the witches’ senses so that Satan may the more easily have his will of them.Dan. Dialog. 4. At other times also the Evil Spirit mixes with it some ingredient which causes deep sleep,Dioscor. V. 115. such as mandragora or the Memphite stone and such things, as it happened to the old women of whom Giovanni Battista Porta speaks,c. 26.
De subtil. lib. 18. who after being rubbed with a certain ointment fell to the earth as dead. Cardan adds that the ointment made from little children first sends these old hags to sleep, and afterwards makes them dream marvellous dreams.
This fat also helped François Gaillard of Longchamois to escape from prison, when we had him in custody in the year 1600 for the murder of a German stranger. Clauda Coirieres was a prisoner for witchcraft at the same time, and had a grease with which she rubbed François Gaillard’s hands; whereupon the latter at once went out by a window and jumped on to a rod stretched along the windows, on which it was impossible to set foot except by the help of the devilish arts; from there he climbed on to the roof and, after having climbed down, fled to the château of Esprel, two leagues from Saint Claude, where he was retaken. But he has since confessed that as he was fleeing he went at a quite incredible speed, and that on escaping from the prison he seemed to be without any feeling; and he added that he had never felt the least tired until, to be rid of the grease with which his hands were anointed, he washed them in the snow which was plentiful at that time.
I am well aware that many will find this matter strange for several reasons, but chiefly because it is thought that Satan has no power over those who are cast into prison. But let them read what I have set down in Chapter 46, and then they will easily be persuaded of the contrary.
Another use to which witches put the grease of which we are speaking is to cause the death, or at least the illness, of men and beasts. Christofle of the village of Aranthon confessed that Groz-Jacques and Françoise Secretain made her rub a certain ointment on the hinder parts of a cow, and that the cow died the next day. Vair, de Incant. II. 5.
Bodin, Demonom. IV. 4.And we read that in the year 1536 there were at Casale, a town in the Marquisate of Saluzzo, forty men and women who smeared the door latches with some ointment, as a result of which several people died. A rumour has reached us here that the same thing happened a year ago at Geneva; and this is no new experience to those of that city, for they suffered in the same way in the year 1536, when the ointment with which the doors were smeared caused so great a plague in the city that the greater part of the inhabitants died of it. But we need not go so far afield, for let us take what happened in this town of Saint Claude in the year 1564. There was a man of Orgelet, whom I shall not name, who put the plague in twenty-five houses by cunningly smearing with a grease, which he carried in a box, some spoons which belonged to the masters of the houses; but in another box he carried an antidote which he used every morning to protect and guard himself against the evil which he brought to others. He was executed for it at Annecy, where he confessed, among other things, what I have just said, and especially repented of having caused the death of the mistress of his own house. I have the story from the Sieur Millet, who was then Syndic and Magistrate at Saint Claude and witnessed his trial. There can, then, be no doubt that such ointments are actual poison. But in connexion with the statement we have just made, that witches sometimes cause the plague by means of their ointments, I shall add that they most usually poison and infect the air and the water. Riol. ad Fernel. de abdit. rer. caus. II. 12.We have seen how Antoine Tornier meant to poison the fountain of Orcieres so as to kill Big Claude Fontaine and his cattle. The great plague described by Thucydides, which so miserably afflicted Greece, was caused, according to Aratus, by the Peloponnesians poisoning several wells in the district of the Piraeus. Fulgos. IX. 11.And when the son of Philip the Fair was reigning in France there were several lepers in the countries of Languedoc and Dauphine, who surreptitiously bathed in the springs and so infected them that in a short time all the people of those countries were stained with the same disease; and therefore those first lepers were burned alive.
IV. 18.And as for the air, Nicephorus Calixtus recounts that the Persian magicians, in order to bring our religion into bad repute, caused an evil and disgusting stench to emanate from the place where Christians were. de Divinat.And St. Augustine says: “Sorcerers have the power to transmit diseases, and to corrupt and infect the air.”
In either case it is easy for them to achieve their object. For what can be easier than to poison the water supply? And if the air is sometimes corrupted by the odour from a dung-heap so as to cause a plague throughout a whole district, why should we not believe that witches can infect it by the heavy and loathsome stenches which they draw from a poison that they know how to compose with the help of their master? We read, in fact, that after the soldiers of Marcus Avidius Cassius, Mark Antony’s lieutenant, Card. de subtil. lib. 2.had opened a chest found in the temple of Apollo at Selancia, a town of Babylon, the air which came from it was so poisonous that it wasted the whole country with the pestilence; and being brought from there to Greece, and from Greece to Rome, it provoked such a plague that almost a third of the human race died of it.
While I am treating of this subject, I wish to set down the strange story of one of the so-called Reformed Religion, who was executed at Nyon not fifteen months ago. This man was returning from Berne in a state of despair because his only brother had caused him to lose the greater part of his goods in a lawsuit. The Devil appeared to him in the shape of a big black man, and said to him that, if he would give himself to him, he would cause him not only to recover his goods, but also to gain possession of all his brother’s goods, and told him how to proceed so as to secure such a result. “Here is a box,” he said, “in which there is some grease. Take it, and go to your brother, and beg him to settle matters with you in return for a sum of money. Invite him to dinner, and mix some of this grease in his broth, and you will see him die in a few days. As he has two sons, you will be appointed their guardian. You will send the older to school, and keep the younger in your house and in like manner make him eat of this grease, and he will die like his father. Then you will bring back the elder son and do to him as you did the younger; and so you will be left master of all their goods as well as of your own, for they will leave no nearer kin than yourself to succeed them.” The poor man, hearing this speech and knowing that he who spoke to him was the Devil (for he had so declared himself), refused to take the box or to give himself to him. The Devil pressed him, and said to him for the last time: “See, here is the box. When you have done what I have told you, you will dedicate yourself to me.” And he placed the box on a stone and disappeared. The poor man was for a long time troubled in spirit, but in the end he took the box, and then followed Satan’s advice so well that in less than a year he caused the death of his brother and his two nephews, and so succeeded to all their property. But he did not long enjoy his wealth, for Satan played him a trick after his own heart. He at once began to urge him to dedicate himself to him; and as the man had no wish to do so, he so tormented and beat him that his cries reached the ears of his neighbours, and then those of the Judge. He was then seized and, after he had confessed, was executed. This story teaches us among other things how the Devil provides his disciples with greases and ointments to cause the death of people. This was also confessed by Jeanne Platet, otherwise known as la Berche; for she said that, in order to kill persons and beasts, she touched them with her hand, which she had previously anointed with a grease given her by her master. And why should we not give credit to this, seeing that the Barbarians of old used to poison their arrows with toxicum and the Napellus, as we may read in the work of Pietro Andrea Mattioli.