Compendium Maleficarum/Book 2/Chapter 1

by Francesco Maria Guazzo

The Second Book, dealing with the various kinds of witchcraft, and certain other matters which should be known.

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Chapter I

Of Soporific Spells.

Argument.

Sorcerers and witches are in the habit of putting others to sleep by means of potions or evil incantations or some secret rite, so that they may then poison them or seize their children, or kill them, or rob them, or pollute them with filth and adultery. And this, as the examples will show, can be effected by natural soporific drugs. For it is a very truth that there are many natural drugs which, on being applied internally or externally, induce not only sleep, but a torpid insensitiveness to the acutest pain; and this is well known to surgeons, who make use of them when they wish to cut a limb from the human body without any pain. A laughable and at the same time pitiable example of this art is told of a young man of Narbonne who was led into slavery by a Thracian pirate. He was put to sleep by a powerful drug, and his testicles were so neatly cut out that, when he awoke thus deprived of his virility, he marvelled at himself as at a new man.

Another story is told by Mattioli^[1] of the asses of Etruria which were so put to sleep by eating hemlock that they were carried away for dead; but when they had started to skin them, they at last awoke and stood up on their feet and rushed miserably back to their stalls. Many drugs, then, are known and used by chemists, such as darnel, nightshade, the rush commonly called Euripice, mandragora, castor, poppy, etc., but if all these have the property of inducing a compulsory sleep in the daytime simply by reason of the natural powers with which they are imbued, what, I ask, cannot demons effect with their arts and contrivances, since they have perfect knowledge, not only of the secret and hidden powers of nature, but can also, with the permission of God, effect many things without the help or presence of any external thing?

And that witches may the more conveniently pour abroad, spread and disseminate their poisons, they themselves confess, as can be read in Remy (II, 4), that after they have worked with their familiars for some years, they are given by these demons power to penetrate into houses, so they can easily slip through narrow openings by shrinking themselves into mice or cats or locusts or some such small animal as the occasion demands, and once they are inside they can again, if they wish, resume their proper shape and then go deedily about their business. Now they would first anoint all the limbs of their victim whose death they were contriving, so that he should not awake, and next they would pour poison down his throat. And the ointment they use is either given them by the demon or brewed by themselves with devilish art. Wherefore this seems particularly worth noting: that just as Emperors reserve certain rewards for their veteran soldiers only, so the demon grants this power of changing themselves into different shapes, as the witches believe, only to those who have proved their loyalty by many years of faithful service in witchcraft; and this is as it were a reward for their long service and loyalty. This was amply proved by Henry Carmut in the year 1583 by his own particular confession, coming after that of many others of his sort. Witches used also to make use of strange lights in order to induce sleep, and I think Apuleius^[2] called the smoke of them “a cloud of smoke.” Sometimes they set fire to the feet or hands of corpses^[3]

which they have first anointed with an oil given them by the demon; or else they fix candles to each of a corpse’s fingers, or light the way before them with enchanted torches made from a horrid fat known to them, or they fix these torches in a certain place in the house; and the sleep lasts as long as those corpse lights burn. Sometimes they hang several parts of the corpse in various places; sometimes they practise other iniquities, all equally abominable, which are efficacious solely because of their pact with the devil. They also use magic characters in order to escape or overcome the tortures to which the Judges sentence them, as will be shown in the examples.

Therefore let those who go to sleep protect themselves by reciting Holy psalm and prayer; such as “Qui habitat in adiutorio Altissimi” or “In te Domine speraui,” or some such orison. Let them make the sign of the Cross, reciting the Salue Regina Mater misericordiae, the Paternoster, and the Aue Maria, etc., if they would be safe from such snares. Let them have by them a waxen Agnus Dei blessed by the Pope, or some Holy Relics. For such devotions are the safest protection and rampart against all the wiles of the Prince of Darkness.

Examples.

Marguerite Jenin came to hate her son Jaquelin because she had to keep bullying him to go and earn money at the Alsatian markets round about, and by no arguments or demands could she prevail upon him to bestir himself. At last she was taken at dead of night by a demon, together with her associates in crime, to his house in Saxbingen, and suddenly approached him as he slept and roused him from his bed and stood him in front of the fire intending to roast him alive, if it lay in them to do so. But they were by some means prevented from this, and turned to another method of injuring him. They made a cut in his side and inserted a piece of brick which was lying on the ground; and the wound grew together again in a moment. After many months of torture, the piece of brick broke out from under his flesh in the sight of many.

The following history is very similar. At Vorpach in September 1586 Betrande, a barber’s wife, confessed that, with the help of her fellow witches, she had fixed a bone on to the neck of a woman named Elisa because she had refused her a pitcher of milk.

Similarly Seneael of Armentières confessed at Douzy on the 30th September, 1586, that he had inserted part of a sheep’s hip-bone into the top of the foot of one Philippe, a baker, having first made an incision with a fish’s spine; and when the wound hardened, the baker suffered acute and continual pain, as he himself complained.

A man named Benignus was implicated in the murder of a Counsellor of Her Most Serene and Christian Majesty, the Queen of Denmark. He could easily have escaped the death penalty, because he was abroad when the law was set in motion against him; but he preferred to rely upon a magic charm which had been given him by some strolling charlatan, and voluntarily offered himself for trial. And he was in no way deceived in his hope; for he came through all sorts of torture unhurt and without confessing, and was acquitted. But just as he was being released from prison he was unable to bear any longer the burden of so great a crime, and openly acknowledged his guilt, and at length suffered the punishment of death.

In the Diocese of Liège, relates Caesarius of Heisterbach (Miracul. III, 40), in a town which some call Hugo and others Dinant, there came one night to an inn two men who pretended that they were tired from their journey; and when they had supped they said that they would not go to bed in another room, but importunately insisted that the inn-keeper should allow them to sleep by the fire in the kitchen. But a maid-servant, who did not like the appearance of the travellers, secretly spied through the key-hole what they would do. In the middle of the night she saw them take from a bag a hand cut from a dead man and anoint the fingers, and light them at the fire; and all of them except one were soon ablaze. The warlocks were surprised at this unusual occurrence, and tried many times to light this finger at the fire, but always in vain. Then one of them said: “What does it matter if there is one person in the house keeping awake?” And setting the hand by the chimney with its four fingers burning with a dim blue flame, they went out of the house and by a whistle signalled to their companions to come and join in the plunder. The maid followed them and, locking the door, shut them out. Then she ran to the room where her master and mistress slept, and found them so fast asleep that she could not awaken them although she dragged them from the bed into the middle of the room. Meanwhile the thieves were trying to get into the house through a window, so she ran and threw down their ladder. But they persisted in their attempts to enter the house. The servant then remembered the light and, suspecting it to be the cause of the deep sleep of those in the house, extinguished all those burning fingers, and after that the sleepers awoke and ran to see what the matter was, and drove from the house the thieves who were thus caught in the act. After some days these villains were captured and confessed their crime. What wonder is it, then, if witches steal by night to the cradles of infants, and to others whom they mean to destroy?

Peter Binsfeld^[4] writes as follows: Anna, the mother of Johann Cuno de Rouer, and two other witches met together one night in order to bewitch a certain zealous witch-hunter. Their Little Master went before them and opened the doors; and Johann Cuno himself was taken as a companion by his mother and the others, that he might hold a lighted candle, made not naturally but by devilish art. They came into the room of him whom they would bewitch, in the town of Trèves; but because he had, after the manner of good Christians, fortified himself with the sign of the Cross and other pious acts before he went to rest, they could do nothing but had to shut the doors again and hurry back without effecting any harm. The good man whom they wished to injure yet lives by the grace of God, and shall live for as long as God pleases. Johann Cuno himself told this; and his mother, when she was questioned concerning information laid against her, confessed to the same matter. Necromancers, who are high in the order of witchcraft, have no need of this candle burning before them; but when they have lit it, they put it in some more remote place, as will be seen in the following example.

What I am about to set down was taken from grave authors worthy of all belief, and is mentioned also by Martin Delrio (Disqu. Magic. III, 1, q. 3) and should, I think, be especially noted so that we may see the vengeance of God against sorcerers and necromancers. It has seemed to me fitting to conceal the names of the person and place. In a certain town in Spain a very famous man was the intimate friend of a nobleman who had a most beautiful but chaste wife. He began to love her, and not for long keeping this flame hidden, revealed his thought and tried to persuade the woman to sin. She, sure of keeping her chastity, tried her hardest to recall him from his madness to a better state of mind; but it was only throwing oil on the fire. For as flaming naphtha does but burn the more furiously if you throw water upon it, so her admonitions did but the more inflame the man, who continued to press her until she grew weary and determined to be revenged upon the wretch. She told the whole matter to her husband, who was seized with no less a fury than that of the sons of Atreus. At his command the wife made an assignation, and the longed-for night came for the wicked lover. The husband with some of his servants waited well armed in the next room to receive his friend in no friendly manner. And lo, at last arrived the lover girt with sword and dagger; he boldly followed where she led and, when they had sat down, repeated his old refrain: the woman as usual refused and denied him: the adulterer was emboldened by the darkness of night, and resorted to force: she forcefully resisted him until at last she cried out in fear, giving the agreed signal to her husband; but she might as well have called to the deaf, for neither her husband nor anyone else ran to her help. What was she to do? Should she run away? She was held by stronger arms. Should she consent? Rather an honourable death than a shameful sin. So she used her woman’s weapons, her nails and teeth, and mutilated his face; but in his madness he hardly felt it. He laid his sword aside; but between her sobs the woman noticed his dagger sticking out behind him, seized it, drew it and stabbed her assailant to death, and his dead body fell to the ground. Having conquered, she regained command of herself and ran to the room where she had hidden her husband, and found him and his servants more like dead men than living. She called them, shook them and dragged them about, and left nothing undone to awaken them; but they remained asleep. Suspecting that this was due to witchcraft (as in fact it was), and seeing that her whole hope rested in herself, she carried the corpse out of the house and threw it into the street with the sword and the bloody dagger. While it lay there some of the night watch came upon it, took it into the guard house and, washing its face, not without difficulty recognised the man. Here the Alcalde exhibited great prudence. He enjoined silence upon all the rest, and next morning went to the man’s house and saying that he wished to speak to the master in the presence of the whole household on a matter of the greatest importance ordered them all to assemble together. All the living were assembled, the dead man only being absent. The Alcalde remarked that it seemed to him that someone was missing, and the master of the house noted the fact and said: “All are present except So-and-so, who is probably now getting ready for some business.” “Let him also be summoned,” said the other. To save time some of them ran to call him, and finding his bedroom locked they beat upon the door; but no one answered. So the Alcalde himself went with the master and forced the door open; but there was no one in the room: and they were all amazed to find nothing but a torch burning with a pale flame by the chimney. Then the Alcalde told the master of the house how and where he had found the corpse: and while they took it from the guard house to bury it in unconsecrated soil, behold there came that nobleman and his wife who related the whole story. On taking note of the times, they found that they had awaked when the torch was extinguished. So the perfidy of that vile hypocrite was exposed to universal detestation, and the chastity and bravery of the lady became renowned and honoured throughout the whole neighbourhood.

Caesarius of Heisterbach (vi, 10) tells that a few years ago there died a simple man named Engilbert, a native of the Province of Tolbiac. Although he was born blind, he was known in many Provinces and esteemed by many noble persons of either sex on account of certain gifts with which the grace of God had illumined his inner life. In a simple hood and a woollen tunic and with bare feet he went both in summer and winter; and following this mode of conduct himself from his earliest years, he often visited distant shrines of the Saints, he never ate flesh, never slept at night on a bed, but only on a little hay or straw, and edified many both by word and example. In the time of his youth he was one night in the house of his aunt, a rich matron, and had gone to bed with her servants, when in the early evening two thieves broke through the wall and entered the house, where they stirred up the fire, lit the lamp, broke open the boxes and talked to each other without any fear. As soon as Engilbert heard them he had no doubt that they were thieves, but being unable to rouse the servants sleeping on each side of him, he cut himself a club from the wooden seat with his knife and, since he was blind, found his way towards the thieves by his ears, and lay about with his club on all sides wherever he could reach, striking like a madman, and so drove them from the house. He followed them to the door where a ladder barred the exit; and when they were outside the house and saw that there was no one awake but him only, they were ashamed at being so driven out. They took counsel and tried to enter again; but when he perceived this from the motion of the rungs, Engilbert so placed the ladder that the thieves would fall into a great corn-bin which was near the hole in the wall; and when they had done so, he pinned them down with the actual steps so that they could move neither forward nor backward. The thieves, fearing that they would be captured in the morning, begged to be pardoned, and after they had sworn a terrible oath never to harm his person or to enter that house, he let them go away. When Engilbert reported this in the morning no one could by any means rouse the sleepers, and so they searched for the magic charm which they were convinced must be the cause of this, and found hanging from the roof above the hole in the wall what appeared to be the backbone of a human corpse; and when this was taken away, they all quickly awoke. Many years later the same thieves, inspired by the fame and virtues of that Engilbert and, as I think, urged to it by his prayers, approached him and confessed their crimes and afterwards embraced the religious life.

Remy writes that at her trial at Gebweiler in January 1589 Marguerite Luondman confessed the following among other crimes. One night she and other wretches entered a house with the intention of pouring poison down the throat of the inmate who was sleeping heavily; and they had nearly accomplished their purpose, since everything seemed to favour them, when they were amazed to see their intended victim waken from his slumber, so that she and her fellow criminals were compelled to make their escape with their purpose unachieved. The man seized a weapon and pursued them, but not being able to catch them hurled terrible threats at them. To arrive at a more complete knowledge of this matter, the man himself was examined as a witness, and told everything clearly and fully as the witch had told it; namely, that there had been an attempt to poison him, which had been thwarted only by his having awaked (for he had not yet been anointed with their unguent) and his having protected himself by the sign of the Cross and the Lord’s Prayer against so great a danger. He said that it was quite true that he had chased them a long way with a halberd without catching them. After this nearly all those who were charged with witchcraft in the German province of Lorraine agreed in confessing that they owed to demons their power of penetrating into houses, as I have said above, and of anointing all the limbs of their victims so that they should not awake, and holding their mouths firmly open so that the poison should not be spilled, and finally pouring the poison down their throats by the light of a lamp burning with a sulphurous flame.

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1. “Mattioli.” Pietro Andrea Mattioli, the famous Italian physician, born at Siena in 1500; died at Trent 1577. He was especially renowned for his knowledge of herbs and simples. One of the best editions of his “Commentarii” (secundo aucti) is that of Venice, 1538.
2. “Apuleius.” The expression used in the “Metamorphoseon,” II, 30, of the sleep induced by the witches is “iniecta somni nebula.” Statius, “Siluae,” IV, viii, 2, has, I remember, “Sabaeae nubes” for “fume of frankincense.”
3. “Hands of corpses.” A Hand of Glory. “Le Petit Albert” gives directions how one may “se servir de la main de glorie,” and other grimoires (such as “Le Dragon noir”) have full receipts for the composition of this horrible charm. It will be readily remembered that in “The Ingoldsby Legends” there is a striking poem, “The Hand of Glory.”
4. “Binsfeld.” “Commentarius in Titulum Codicis Lib. IX. de Maleficis et Mathematicis,” Quaestio VIII, ed. 1605, pp. 566–69. Peter Binsfeld, suffragan Bishop of Trèves, was born c. 1540 and died 1603.