nearly to examine the appointments of this infernal chapel.122
The missal used at the black mass was obviously a manuscript, although it is said that in later times these grimoires of hideous profanity have actually been printed. It is not infrequently mentioned. Thus De Lancre notes that the sorcerers of the Basses-Pyrénées (1609) at their worship saw the officiant “tournant les feuillets d’vn certain liure qu’il a en main.”123 Madeleine Bavent in her confession said: “On lisait la messe dans le livre des blasphèmes, qui servait de canon et qu’on employait aussi dans les processions.”124 The witches’ missal was often bound in human skin, generally that of an unbaptized babe.125 Gentien le Clerc, tried at Orleans, 1614–1615, confessed that “le Diable … marmote dans un liure duquel la couverture est toute veluë comme d’vne peau de loup, auec des feuillets blancs & rouges, d’autres noires.”
The vestments worn by the celebrant are variously described. On rare occasions he is described as being arrayed in a bishop’s pontificalia, black in hue, torn, squalid, and fusty. Boguet reports that a witch stated: “Celuy, qui est commis à faire l’office, est reuestu d’vne chappe noire sans croix,”126 but it seems somewhat strange that merely a plain black cope should be used, unless the explanation is to be found in the fact that such a vestment was most easily procurable and no suspicion of its ultimate employment would be excited. The abbé Guibourg sometimes wore a cope of white silk embroidered with fir-cones, which again seems remarkable, as the symbolism is in no way connected with the Satanic rites he performed. But this is the evidence of Marguerite, La Voisin’s daughter, who was not likely to be mistaken.127 It is true that the mass was often, perhaps, partially erotic and not wholly diabolic in the same sense as the Sabbat masses were, but yet Astaroth, Asmodeus, and Lucifer were invoked, and it was a liturgy of evil. On other occasions Guibourg seems to have donned the orthodox eucharistic chasuble, stole, maniple, girdle, alb, and amice. In the thirty-seventh article of his confession Gaufridi acknowledged that the priest who said the Devil’s mass at the Sabbat wore a violet chasuble.128 Gentien le Clerc, tried at Orleans in 1614–1615, was present at a Sabbat mass when
