Compendium Maleficarum/Foreword
Foreword
Although the “Compendium Maleficarum,” both from the encyclopaedic learning of the author and the scientific precision of his details, must rank as one of the most important of all Witchcraft Manuals, not only—largely owing to his severe concentration of thought and expression and the many technicalities—is the original Latin more than ordinarily difficult, but Guazzo was ill-served both in 1608 and in 1626 by his printers, for these two (which are the only) editions of the book are marred by a superabundance of most riddling typographical errors. Indeed before the work could be well rendered into English I found that it was necessary to prepare something like a definitive recension of the text, a preliminary which, if mechanical enough, has cost me no little time and labour.
To write a full excursus upon the “Compendium Maleficarum,” giving further and later examples of the many ill observances and devices of witchcraft, the transvection of the sorcerers to their rendezvous, the abominations of the Sabbat, the worship of the demon, the pledges of diabolical servitude, the “osculum infame,” the revelry, the dances, the lewdness of the Incubus and the Succubus, the malice and evil charms of Satanists, all of which and many more black secrets of goety Guazzo has so amply and so authoritatively displayed, would be to pen a second “History of Witchcraft,” another volume as copious and as detailed as the “Compendium” itself. However interesting and useful it would have proved to afford modern instances of the continued practices of this horrid Society I have judged it best to reserve so extensive a relation for a separate occasion, and therefore I have furnished this work of Guazzo with a minimum of annotation. Even so I am very well aware that in the glosses will be found information some may perhaps deem superfluous. On the other hand I am constantly being requested to illustrate these manuals of the demonologists by far more extensive commentaries than my wont, so that in fine it is, I fear, not possible entirely to satisfy every student and reader. In the present case I frankly acknowledge that on account of practical limitations of space, if for no other reason, I have felt obliged entirely to pass over no small number of points concerning which I was minded to write something fully, as also was it necessary for me to treat with economy other details not unworthy of closer investigation.
To the most learned Prefect of the Ambrosian Library, Monsignor Professore Giovanni Galbiati, I am greatly indebted for the trouble and pains he has so generously bestowed on my behalf in making very particular researches concerning Francesco-Maria Guazzo and in communicating to me important bibliographical and historical details of the Ambrosiani.
My best thanks are due to Dr. H. T. Norman, not only for the loan of many rare pieces on witchcraft from among the treasures of his library, but also for the very real and inspiring interest he has so cordially taken in the present series.
Montague Summers.