Compendium Maleficarum/Book 2/Chapter 3
Chapter III
Of Witches’ Poisons.
Argument.
The poisons used by witches are compounded and mixed from many sorts of poisons, such as the leaves and stalks and roots of plants; from animals, fishes, venomous reptiles, stones and metals; sometimes these are reduced to powder and sometimes to an ointment. It must also be known that witches administer such poisons either by causing them to be swallowed, or by external application. In the first instance they usually mix some poisonous powder with the food or drink: in the second they bewitch their victim, whether man or woman, while he is sleeping by anointing him with their lotions, waters, oils, and unguents which contain many
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and various poisons. They anoint the thighs, or belly, or head, throat, breast, ribs, or some other part of the body of the person to be bewitched, who being asleep feels nothing; but such is the potency of that unguent that, as it is slowly absorbed by the heat of the sleeper’s body, it enters his flesh and penetrates to his vitals, causing him the greatest bodily pain, as Spina has said. They have also a third method of administering poison, namely, by inhalation: and this is the worst of all kinds of poison, for by reason of its tenuity it is readily drawn in through the mouth and so quickly reaches the heart.
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Examples.
Villamont in his Voyages, I, 33, tells of a witch at Venice who was the most villainous of all. He used to buy the souls of those condemned to the galleys, promising them freedom from their earthly punishment of slavery: he used to pay ten pieces of gold for their souls, which they sold with a duly engrossed deed written with blood, making them over to a demon and the witch. Soon after this, lest they should retract, he used to kill them by suddenly touching them with some poison, saying that he had been charged with carrying out the sentence which had been passed upon them. Who ever heard tell of such a thing?
Sprenger relates the history of two midwives who were burned, one in the Diocese of Basle and one in that of Strasburg. One of them had killed forty, and the other a countless number of newly born children, by secretly thrusting great needles into their heads.
According to Xiphilinus and Dio Cassius in the time of Domitian there were arrested many who used to prick whom they would with poisoned needles, so that numbers died without feeling any pain. This was also practised in the time of the Emperor Commodus.
Johann Nider tells that in the territory of Berne certain witches of both sexes killed and ate their own children; and that others did the same in the district of Lausanne.
A certain lawyer of Frankfort, says Gödelmann, de Lamiis, I, 7, narrated a few years ago that a Count of Higher Germany gave to the fire eight witches who had murdered a hundred and forty infants. In the year 1553 there were captured at Berlin two women witches who tried to cause a frost to destroy the fruit: these women secretly kidnapped the child of a who was their neighbour, and cut it up and cooked it; but by Divine will it happened that the mother, seeking her child, came upon them and saw the pot with the limbs of her child thrust in it. The women were therefore taken and examined under torture, and said that if that cooking had gone forward a great frost would have followed, so that all the fruit would have been lost.
About the year of Our Lord 1536 at Saluzzo[1] some forty men, one of whom was a hangman, and as many women, swore together that, since the plague which had been raging was now abating, they would make an unguent which would cause death when placed on the cornices of the doors. They also made a powder which they secretly sprinkled over persons’ clothes. This evil was for some time unsuspected, and many died; but when they had killed the brother and the only son of a certain citizen named Neri, and it was noticed that hardly any but the masters of houses or their sons died; and when at the same time they became aware of an Hermaphrodite which went creeping into the houses, and that they whose house it entered generally died, the plot was at last exposed, and all the conspirators were put to death with the most exquisite torture. They confessed moreover that they had planned to anoint the thresholds during the festival of a Saint much honoured in that district, and so kill all the citizens; and for that purpose they had prepared more than twenty vessels of ointment. Others attempted the same thing at Geneva, and paid the penalty.
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- ↑ “At Saluzzo.” This is from Girolamo Cardano, 1501–1570, the famous Italian physician, mathematician, and philosopher. “De rerum uarietate libri XVII,” lib. XV, c. 80. I have used the Basle edition, “per. H. Petri,” 1557.