Compendium Maleficarum/Book 1/Chapter 19
Chapter XIX
That Cacodemons Exercise their Magic Powers of their Own Will.
Argument.
On this subject Tostado (on Job xl) argues strongly as follows. It must not be maintained that men can constrain or confine a demon to any particular place except by Divine power, that is, by exorcisms and adjurations: but witches do not claim to subject a demon to themselves except by the power of their spells and signs, or by deeds very foreign to the Christian Religion; therefore it is impossible for the lesser power, which is man’s, to subject to itself the greater, which is the demon’s, since there is no power on earth which can be compared with the power of demons. Therefore there can be no natural or ritual means by which a man can compel the demons to appear or to answer him or to do anything, except, as I have said, by means of the Exorcisms of the Church: for then it may be said that they are put under compulsion either to depart from the bodies of those whom they possess, or to refrain from injuring them; and this was instituted by God to be performed by the Church, and the power of God is in such Exorcisms. But God is not present in the operation of witches by which they claim to master demons, for such are contrary to the honour of God. The demons themselves play false and pretend that they are compelled; for in this lies their chief power of persuasion. But demons cannot really be mastered by men through witchcraft; or, if they could, they would not themselves teach men the way to master them, for the demons would be in a sorry case indeed if they could be mastered by men. So they pretend that they are subject when they are not, that they may deceive men: they pretend to be caught, that they may catch you; to be bound, that they may bind you; that they are subject to your commands, that they may make you subject to them; that they are imprisoned, that they may imprison you for ever: they pretend that they are in bondage to your art or image or charm, that they may bring you to Hell bound by the cords of your sins. Therefore, in short, they pretend that they are under compulsion, when they are really serving of their own will and voluntarily until such time as seems good to them.
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Examples.
Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola (the younger) in his De Praenotione[1] says that two magicians met in the hall of the Queen of England to give an entertainment, having mutually agreed to obey each other implicitly. The first ordered the second to look out of the window; and when he had done so, stag’s horns grew from his head, and he was for a long time exposed to the ridicule and jokes of all. So, since he had been powerless under this outrage and wished to avenge himself with a worse one, he drew a human figure with charcoal on the wall, and ordered the first sorcerer to stand under that figure and walk through the wall. The first magician saw instant death in this, and was afraid and began to beg to be excused; but when the other reminded him of their agreement he was compelled to obey, and he was seen to walk through the wall. But he was never found afterwards; for the demon with his higher power had killed him and hidden his body in some deserted place or cave.
I will give another example, taken from a certain German jurisconsult.[2] A conjurer, a man of high estate, for the public amusement and at the request of his fellow guests, cut off the head of his host’s servant; but when he wanted to restore his head to him, he found that there was another sorcerer who was preventing this. He asked the man not to do so; but when, after many warnings, he still persisted, the first conjurer caused a lily to grow upon the table and, no sooner had he cut off its head and leaves than that second sorcerer who had been thwarting him fell headless from the table, and the conqueror replaced the head upon the servant with no difficulty. Having done this he immediately fled from the house and city, lest he should be taken by the Magistrate for murder.
This pretended cutting off the head, and its restoration, as well as the production and cutting off of the lily, must all be ascribed to magical illusion. There was a contest between the demons of the two sorcerers, and the weaker of them was strong enough to hinder the success of the glamour, but was compelled by the stronger (though not unwillingly, as I think) to agree to his client’s death, which was a matter of fact, and no illusion.
Johan Dubravsky, Bishop of Olmütz, in his Historia rerum Bohemicarum, XXIII, tells the following. Wenceslaus, the Emperor and King of the Bohemians, formed an alliance with Prince John of Bavaria by marrying his daughter Sophia. And since the Prince knew that his son-in-law took a delight in ludicrous shows and magical illusions, he took a wagon full of buffoons and conjurers to Prague. There the most skilful of the conjurers was giving an exhibition of his power to deceive the eyes, when there came amongst the spectators Zyto, the Magician of Wenceslaus, with his mouth stretched open to the ears. He came nearer and ate up that Bavarian conjurer with all his apparatus, except his shoes, which he spat out because they were muddy. He then retired to rid his belly of its unwonted burden, and voided it into a tub full of water; and thus he restored the dripping conjurer to be laughed at on all sides by the spectators. After this his companions also stopped their tricks.
Now that eating of the conjurer was mere illusion; but the wretched man was really snatched up and thrown into the tub of water by a demon, and was not voided through the other’s bowels.
Olaus Magnus (III, 20) writes that a certain magician named Gilbert was quarrelling with his master Catilla as to which of them was superior in their art. The master then threw him a little stick carved with Gothic or Ruthenian characters, which he seized and at once became stiff, and was carried bound to an island in the lake called Wetter in the country of the Ostrogoths, and there imprisoned in an underground cavern.
