Compendium Maleficarum/Book 1/Chapter 3
Chapter III
Whether this Magic can produce True Effects
Argument
Any man who maintained that all the effects of magic were true, or who believed that they were all illusions, would be rather a radish than a man. Most often the devil, being the father of lies, deceives us and blinds our eyes or mocks our other senses with vain illusory images: and not seldom God prevents him from achieving on behalf of witches what he would and could truly essay; and when he sees that this is so he has recourse to glamours, so that his impotence may not be perceived. But when God permits it, and the devil wishes to produce a true effect, provided that it does not exceed his power, then there is nothing to prevent him from effecting a genuine result; for he then applies active to passive principles, and natural causes engender a true effect. Dionysius of Athens (De Diuinis Hominibus, IV.) proves this when he affirms that the Devil did not, in sinning, lose his natural gifts, so that he has the greatest natural strength together with age-long and unlimited experience to enable him to produce a true effect when he desired. But witches’ works are illusions, not real but apparent. This is shown by Glycas[1] where he speaks of the Egyptian Magicians who seemed to do as Moses did, and says: “They indeed changed their rods into serpents, but the rod of Moses swallowed their rods. And they also changed the water into blood, but once it had been changed, they could not restore it to its former state. They brought forth frogs also, but they were unable to protect the houses of the Egyptians from them. They had power to plague the Egyptians, but they had no power to ease their afflictions. Rather did God afflict the magicians with the same boils and blains as the rest of the people suffered; that it might be shown that not only were they unable to avert the divine punishment, but they must themselves partake of it.”
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Examples.
We read that the sorcerer Pasetes by means of certain enchantments caused a sumptuous feast to appear, and again he made all vanish at his pleasure. He used also to buy things and count out the price, and shortly the money would be found to have passed back secretly from the seller to the buyer. In S. Clement of Rome we also read much concerning Simon Magus: that he made a new man out of air, whom he could render invisible at will; that he could pierce stones as if they were clay; that he brought statues to life; that when cast into the fire he was not burned; that he had two faces like another Janus; that he could change himself into a ram or a goat; that he flew in the air; that he suddenly produced a great quantity of gold; that he could set up kings and cast them down; that he commanded a scythe to go and reap of itself, and that it went and reaped ten times as much as the others; and that when a certain harlot named Selene was in a tower, and a great crowd had run to see her and had entirely surrounded that tower, he caused her to appear simultaneously at all the windows and exhibit herself to all the people.
Anastasius[2] of Nicaea says: “Simon Magus made statues walk, and when thrown into the fire he did not burn, and he flew in the air, and made bread from stones. He changed himself into the form of a serpent and other beasts; he had two faces: he was changed into gold; he would cause all sorts of spectres to appear at feasts; he caused many shades to go before him, which he said were the souls of the departed; he made the vessels in a house move as though of their own accord with apparently none to carry them.”
Bishop Dubravsky[3] of Olmütz tells that a Bohemian sorcerer Zyto[4] exhibited his skill now in his own appearance and form, and now under that of another; also that he appeared before the King in purple and silk, which suddenly changed to sordid woollen rags; and that he walked upon the ground as if he were sailing over water. Sometimes he would drive in a four-wheeled coach drawn by cocks. He used also to make sport in many ways with the King’s guests; sometimes causing them to be unable to reach their hands to the dishes, by changing their hands into the hooves of oxen or horses; and sometimes he fixed spreading stag’s antlers to their foreheads when they looked out at window at some passing spectacle, so that they could not draw their heads in again. He made thirty fat pigs out of bundles of straw and drove them to a certain rich baker named Michael, saying that he might buy them at his own price; only he warned the buyer not to drive his new herd to the river to water. The baker took no notice of the warning, and saw his pigs sink into the water while bundles of straw floated on the top: he then sought out the seller and at last found him in a tavern lying stretched out on a bench; and when he angrily tried to stir him by pulling one of his legs, Zyto caused his foot and leg to come away in the other’s hand. Zyto then loudly complained and, seizing him by the throat, had him taken before the Judge. The baker seemed to have been caught in a manifest crime, and suffered punishment in addition to his loss. For this power of sorcerers to throw off their limbs, see Pliny, Books 25, 26 and 28, and Aulus Gellius, Book 10, chapter 12.
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- ↑ “Glycas.” Michael Glycas, Byzantine historian. His “Annals” commence with the Creation and conclude with the death of Alexis I, Commenus, 1118. Editions; Bekker, Bonn, 1836; Migne, Paris, 1866.
- ↑ “Anastasius.” A theologian and exegete of the sixth century. The reference is to his “In Sacra scriptura,” q. xxiii.
- ↑ “Bishop Dubravsky.” John Dubravsky, Bishop of Olmütz, was the great Catholic champion of the sixteenth century, who refuted Speratus, Hubmaier, Huter, Socinus and other sectaries. His various writings include five books on piscatology; the work entitled “Ueber das heilige Messopfer”; and the thirty-three volumes of his monumental History of Bohemia. The present reference is to Book XXIII of this work.
- ↑ Zyto was the favourite magician of the Emperor Wenceslas, and upon the occasion of the marriage of this latter in 1389 with Sophia of Bavaria, is said to have far outexcelled in his art all the warlocks and conjurers of the land. His feats are recorded in not a few chronicles: e.g. Concil. Pragens. anno 1355, c. 61 (Hartzheim, IV, 400); Höfler, “Prager Concilien,” p. 2 (Statuta breuia Amesti anno 1353); Raynaldus, anno 1400, No. 14. Most of these tricks—the sprouting of antlers on the heads of persons looking through a window; fardels of straw sold as pigs and sinking in running water (fatal to sorcery); the leg coming away when pulled; passed into common folk lore and chap-books, being attributed to every conjurer of popular renown. These three illusions are introduced in Marlowe’s “Dr. Faustus,” 4to, 1604.