An Examen of Witches/Chapter 27
Chapter XXVII.
Whether Witches Afflict with Looking.
Fifthly, witches cause injury by their looking. I. 2.
II. 1. c. 12.Sprenger observes that little children are more liable to be hurt in this way than are people; and he adds further that witches, by merely looking at them, can corrupt and soften the hearts of their judges. Cattle also are subject to this evil:
Verg. Eclog.Some evil eye has witched my lambs.
It is so also with the crops and trees. And this should not seem strange, seeing that there were formerly families in Africa which caused death by their looking. And we read the same of certain tribes about Pontus, Scythia, Transylvania, and Muscovy. Vair, de Incant. II. 9.
Wier, de praestig. II. 49.Again, Philostratus in his life of Apollonius mentions a certain Saturnius of Ephesus who, by his mere looking, killed all those at whom he looked. Further, we read that the witch Eriphile looked at a beast, and that soon afterwards some evil came to the beast. And the proverb which the Italians keep to this day, Di gratia non gli diate mal d’ochio, shows that the same practice was rife in Italy. Similarly there are animals which kill by their looking, such as the Basilisk, and the serpent Catoblepas which lives about the spring Nigris in Ethiopia, which many believe to be the source of the Nile. There are other animals which, by looking at a man, take away his speech; such as the wolf.
Verg. Eclog.Moeris was first beheld by wolves.
Notwithstanding this, I have never believed that witches had the power to cause injury by their looking. For whence should such power come to them? Either it must be born with them, or it must be acquired by art. Now the former alternative is impossible; for it cannot be that God, who created man to be a civilised animal, would have endowed him with a deadly power to kill those with whom he consorted. I could almost brand such a belief as a detestable impiety, seeing how strictly the Law of God punishes a murderer. Also it should be considered that, if witches were born with this power of killing, all indifferently at whom they looked would die; but this is not the case.
And if this power is acquired by art, I should like to be shown of what nature it is in witches; whether it consists in some poison emanating from them, or whether it is due to something else. But how would they not themselves be hurt by the poison which they emanated? Or how comes it that the force of the poison dwells in their eyes only, and that it hurts only the enemies of the witches, and not all sorts of people indifferently? Nothing is more certain than that, in such cases, it is Satan who kills or causes injury.
And if there have been families in Africa and Italy and Scythia and elsewhere which claimed to be able to kill by their looking, who can doubt that such people were witches and that Satan performed the murders which they wished to commit? We should think the same of the shepherd who bewitched the lambs in Vergil, and of those who injure the crops and the trees by looking at them.
Touching their effect on a Judge, I may well believe that a witch can, by looking at him, soften his heart by causing him to feel pity and compassion for her misery. For since the eyes are the messengers of the soul, they tell the Judge the inner torments and perplexity which the witch suffers. But I cannot be persuaded that a Judge can be corrupted by this means, for the eyes have no power to bribe. And of this I am the more assured, since it has been proved that a witch can in no way injure the Officers of Justice; for Justice comes directly from God, and can by no means be confounded.
Passing to the matter of the Basilisk and the serpent Catoblepas, I shall say that the most learned scholars hold what has been written of them to be a fable. And Mattioli has asked how it has been possible to examine these serpents without dying, seeing that they are very small, and that Catoblepas stands with half its body upright the better to infect the air and those who look at it from near by? Vair, de Incant. II. 9.
Dioscor. VI. 55.For this purpose it would be necessary to have the power to charm them, as did the witch of the town of Thene in Thessaly whom Aristotle mentions.
And even if that which is reported of these animals were true, we should have no warrant to draw a parallel between them and mankind. The Basilisk and the Catoblepas were born with such poison as to be able to kill with their looking, just as we know that serpents kill with their teeth, and scorpions with their tails. They are animals which God has placed in the world to punish men, for He avenges Himself in countless ways. But man is not born in the same manner. And as for wolves, there are those who flatly deny what has been said of them; Scal. Riola ad Fernel. II. 17. de abdis. rer. caus.and in any case we should hold the same opinion of them as of the Basilisk, the Catoblepas, the Scorpion and the Serpent. Yet I shall always rather believe that the fright which a man experiences on suddenly seeing a wolf freezes his limbs and nerves so that his voice becomes a hoarse whisper. De subtil. lib. 18.Cardan says that there is something inimical to man in the eyes of a wolf, which prevents his breathing, and therefore his speech.