THE SABBAT
The Assemblies of the witches differed very much from each other in an
almost infinite number of ways. On certain ancient anniversaries the
meeting was always particularly solemn, with as large an attendance as
possible, when all who belonged to the infernal cult would be required
to present themselves and punishment was meted out to those who proved
slack and slow; at other times these gatherings would be occasional,
resorted to by the company who resided within a certain restricted area,
it might be by only one coven of thirteen, it might be by a few more, as
opportunity served. There were also, as is to be expected, variations
proper to each country, and a seemingly endless number of local
peculiarities. There does not clearly appear to be any formal and fair
order in the ceremonies throughout, nor should we look for this, seeing
that the liturgy of darkness is of its essence opposed to the comely
worship of God, wherein, as the Apostle bids, all things are to be done
“decently and in order.”[1] The ceremonial of hell, sufficiently complex,
obscure, and obscene, is even more confused in the witches’ narratives
by a host of adventitious circumstances, often contradictory, nay, even
mutually exclusive, and so although we can piece together a very complete
picture of their orgies, there are some details which must yet remain
unexplained, incomprehensible, and perhaps wholly irrational and absurd.
“Le burlesque s’y mêle à l’horrible, et les puérilités aux abominations.”
(Ribet, _La Mystique Divine_, III. 2. Les Parodies Diaboliques.) (Mere
clowning and japery are mixed up with circumstances of extremest horror;
childishness and folly with loathly abominations.) In the lesser
Assemblies much, no doubt, depended upon the fickle whim and unwholesome
caprice of the officer or president at the moment. The conduct of the
more important Assemblies was to a certain extent regularized and more
or less loosely ran upon traditional lines. The name Sabbat may be held
to cover every kind of gathering,[2] although it must continually be
borne in mind that a Sabbat ranges from comparative simplicity, the
secret rendezvous of some half a dozen wretches devoted to the fiend,
to a large and crowded congregation presided over by incarnate evil
intelligences, a mob outvying the very demons in malice, blasphemy, and
revolt, the true face of pandemonium on earth.
The derivation of the word Sabbat does not seem to be exactly
established. It is perhaps superfluous to point out that it has nothing
to do with the number seven, and is wholly unconnected with the Jewish
festival. Sainte-Croix and Alfred Maury[3] are agreed to derive it from
the debased Bacchanalia. Sabazius (Σαβάζιος) was a Phrygian deity,
sometimes identified with Zeus, sometimes with Dionysus, but who was
generally regarded as the patron of licentiousness and worshipped with
frantic debaucheries. He is a patron of the ribald old Syrian eunuch
in Apuleius: “omnipotens et omniparens Dea Syria et sanctus Sabadius
et Bellona et Mater Idaea (ac) cum suo Adone Venus domina”[4] are the
deities whom Philebus invokes to avenge him of the mocking crier.
Σαβαζεῖν is found in the Scholiast on Aristophane (_Birds_, 874), and
σαβαῖ, a Bacchic yell, occurs in a fragment of the _Baptæ_ of Eupolis;
the fuller phrase εὐοῖ Σαβοῖ being reported by Strabo the geographer. The
modern Greeks still call a madman ζαβός. But Littré entirely rejects any
such facile etymology. “Attempts have been made to trace the etymology of
the Sabbat, the witches’ assembly, from _Sabazies_; but the formation of
the word does not allow it; besides, in the Middle Ages, what did they
know about _Sabazies_?”[5]
Even the seasons of the principal Assemblies of the year differ in
various countries. Throughout the greater part of Western Europe one of
the chief of these was the Eve of May Day, 30 April;[6] in Germany[7]
famous as Die Walpurgis-Nacht. S. Walburga (Walpurgis; Waltpurde; at
Perche Gauburge; in other parts of France Vaubourg or Falbourg) was born
in Devonshire _circa_ 710. She was the daughter of S. Richard, one of the
under-kings of the West Saxons, who married a sister of S. Boniface. In
748 Walburga, who was then a nun of Wimbourne, went over to Germany to
found claustral life in that country. After a life of surpassing holiness
she died at Heidenheim, 25 February, 777. Her cultus began immediately,
and about 870 her relics were translated to Eichstadt, where the
Benedictine convent which has charge of the sacred shrine still happily
flourishes. S. Walburga was formerly one of the most popular Saints in
England, as well as in Germany and the Low Countries. She is patroness of
Eichstadt, Oudenarde, Furnes, Groningen, Weilburg, Zutphen, and Antwerp,
where until the Roman office was adopted they celebrated her feast four
times a year. In the Roman martyrology she is commemorated on 1 May, but
in the Monastic Kalendar on 25 February. The first of May was the ancient
festival of the Druids, when they offered sacrifices upon their sacred
mountains and kindled their May-fires. These magic observances were
appropriately continued by the witches of a later date. There was not a
hill-top in Finland, so the peasant believed, which at midnight on the
last day of April was not thronged by demons and sorcerers.
The second witches’ festival was the Eve of S. John Baptist, 23 June.
Then were the S. John’s fires lit, a custom in certain regions still
prevailing.[8] In olden times the Feast was distinguished like Christmas
with three Masses; the first at midnight recalled his mission as
Precursor, the second at dawn commemorated the baptism he confessed, the
third honoured his sanctity.
Other Grand Sabbat days, particularly in Belgium and Germany, were S.
Thomas’ Day (21 December) and a date, which seems to have been movable,
shortly after Christmas. In Britain we also find Candlemas (2 February),
Allhallowe’en (31 October), and Lammas (1 August), mentioned in the
trials. Wright, _Narratives of Sorcery and Magic_ (I. p. 141), further
specifies S. Bartholomew’s Eve, but although a Sabbat may have been held
on this day, it would seem to be an exceptional or purely local use.
During a famous trial held in the winter of 1610 at Logrono, a town of
Old Castille, by the Apostolic Inquisitor, Alonso Becerra Holguin, an
Alcantarine friar, with his two assessors Juen Valle Alvarado and Alonso
de Salasar y Frias, a number of Navarrese witches confessed that the
chief Sabbats were usually held at Zugarramurdi and Berroscoberro in the
Basque districts, and that the days were fixed, being the vigils of the
“nine principal feasts of the year,” namely, Easter, Epiphany, Ascension
Day, the Purification and Nativity of Our Lady, the Assumption, Corpus
Christi, All Saints, and the major festival of S. John Baptist (24 June).
It is certainly curious to find no mention of Christmas and Pentecost
in this list, but throughout the whole of the process not one of the
accused—and we have their evidence in fullest detail—named either of
these two solemnities as being chosen for the infernal rendezvous.[9]
Satan is, as Boguet aptly says, “Singe de Dieu en tout,”[10] and it
became common to hold a General Sabbat about the time of the high
Christian festivals in evil mockery of these holy solemnities, and he
precisely asserts that the Sabbat “se tient encor aux festes les plus
solemnelles de l’année.”[11] (Is still held on the greatest festivals
of the year.) So he records the confession of Antide Colas (1598), who
“auoit esté au Sabbat à vn chacun bon iour de l’an, comme à Noel, à
Pasques, à la feste de Dieu.” The Lancashire witches met on Good Friday;
and in the second instance (1633) on All Saints’ Day; the witches of
Kinross (1662) held an assembly on the feast of Scotland’s Patron, S.
Andrew, 30 November, termed “S. Andrew’s Day at Yule,” to distinguish it
from the secondary Feast of the Translation of S. Andrew, 9 May. The New
England witches were wont to celebrate their chief Sabbat at Christmas.
In many parts of Europe where the Feast of S. George is solemnized with
high honour and holiday the vigil (22 April) is the Great Sabbat of
the year. The Huzulo of the Carpathians believe that then every evil
thing has power and witches are most dangerous. Not a Bulgarian or
Roumanian farmer but closes up each door and fastens close each window at
nightfall, putting sharp thorn-bushes and brambles on the lintels, new
turf on the sills, so that no demon nor hag may find entry there.
The Grand Sabbats were naturally held in a great variety of places,
whilst the lesser Sabbats could be easily assembled in an even larger
number of spots, which might be convenient to the coven of that district,
a field near a village, a wood, a tor, a valley, an open waste beneath
some blasted oak, a cemetery, a ruined building, some solitary chapel or
semi-deserted church, sometimes a house belonging to one of the initiates.
It was advisable that the selected locality should be remote and deserted
to obviate any chance of espionage or casual interruption, and in many
provinces some wild ill-omened gully or lone hill-top was shudderingly
marked as the notorious haunt of witches and their fiends. De Lancre says
that the Grand Sabbat must be held near a stream, lake, or water of some
kind,[12] and Bodin adds: “The places where Sorcerers meet are remarkable
and generally distinguished by some trees, or even a cross.”[13] These
ancient cromlechs and granite dolmens, the stones of the Marais de Dol,
the monolith that lies between Seny and Ellemelle (Candroz), even the
market-crosses of sleepy old towns and English villages, were among the
favourite rendezvous of the pythons and warlocks of a whole countryside.
On one occasion, which seems exceptional, a Sabbat was held in the
very heart of the city of Bordeaux. Throughout Germany the Blocksburg
or the Brocken, the highest peak of the Hartz Mountains, was the great
meeting-place of the witches, some of whom, it was said, came from
distant Lapland and Norway to forgather there. But local Blocksburgs
existed, or rather hills so called, especially in Pomerania, which
boasted two or three such crags. The sorcerers of Corrières held their
Sabbat at a deserted spot, turning off the highway near Combes; the
witches of la Mouille in a tumbledown house, which had once belonged to
religious; the Gandillons and their coven, who were brought to justice
in June, 1598, met at Fontenelles, a forsaken and haunted spot near
the village of Nezar. Dr. Fian and his associates (1591) “upon the
night of Allhollen-Even” assembled at “the kirke of North-Berrick in
Lowthian.” Silvain Nevillon, who was executed at Orleans, 4 February,
1615, confessed “que le Sabbat se tenoit dans vne maison,” and the full
details he gave shows this to have been a large château, no doubt the
home of some wealthy local magnate, where above two hundred persons could
assemble. Isobel Young, Christian Grinton, and two or three other witches
entertained the Devil in Young’s house in 1629. Alexander Hamilton,
a “known warlock” executed at Edinburgh in 1630, confessed that “the
pannel took him one night to a den betwixt Niddrie and Edmiston, where
the devill had trysted hir.” Helen Guthrie, a Forfar witch, and her
coven frequented a churchyard, where they met a demon, and on another
occasion they “went to Mary Rynd’s house, and sat doune together at the
table ... and made them selfes mirrie, and the divell made much of them
all” (1661). The Lancashire witches often held their local Sabbat at
Malking Tower. From the confession of the Swedish witches (1670) at Mohra
and Elfdale they assembled at a spot called _Blockula_ “scituated in a
delicate large Meadow.... The place or house they met at, had before it
a Gate painted with divers colours; ... In a huge large Room of this
House, they said, there stood a very long Table, at which the Witches did
sit down; And that hard by this Room was another Chamber in which there
were very lovely and delicate Beds.”[14] Obviously a fine Swedish country
house, perhaps belonging to a wealthy witch, and in the minds of the
poorer members of the gang it presently became imaginatively exaggerated
and described.
Christian Stridtheckh _De Sagis_ (XL) writes: “They have different
rendezvous in different districts; yet their meetings are generally held
in wooded spots, or on mountains, or in caves, and any places which are
far from the usual haunts of men. Mela, Book III, chapter 44, mentions
Mount Atlas; _de Vaulx_, a warlock executed at Etaples in 1603, confessed
that the witches of the Low Countries were wont most frequently to meet
in some spot in the province of Utrecht. In our own country, the Mountain
of the Bructeri, which some call Melibœus, in the duchy of Brunswick, is
known and notorious as the haunt of witches. In the common tongue this
Mountain is called the _Blocksberg_ or _Heweberg_, _Brockersburg_ or
_Vogelsberg_, as _Ortelius_ notes in his _Thesaurus Geographicus_.”[15]
The day of the week whereon a Sabbat was held differed in the various
districts and countries, although Friday seems to have been most
generally favoured. There is indeed an accumulation of evidence for every
night of the week save Saturday and Sunday. De Lancre records that in
the Basses-Pyrénées “their usual rendezvous is the spot known as Lane du
Bouc, in the Basque tongue _Aquelarre de verros, prado del Cabron_, &
there the Sorcerers assemble to worship their master on three particular
nights, Monday, Wednesday, Friday.”[16] Boguet says that the day of
the Sabbat varied, but usually a Thursday night was preferred.[17] In
England it was stated that the “Solemn appointments, and meetings ... are
ordinarily on Tuesday or Wednesday night.”[18] Saturday was, however,
particularly avoided as being the day sacred to the immaculate Mother of
God.
It is true that the hysterical and obscene ravings of Maria de Sains, a
witness concerned in the trial of Louis Gaufridi and who was examined
on 17-19 May, 1614, assert that the Sabbat used to be held on every day
of the week. Wednesday and Friday were the Sabbats of blasphemy and the
black ass. To the other days the most hideous abominations of which
humanity is capable were allotted. The woman was obviously sexually
deranged, affected with mania blasphematoria and coprolalia.
Night was almost invariably the time for the Sabbat, although, as Delrio
says, there is no actual reason why these evil rites should not be
performed at noon, for the Psalmist speaks of “the terror of the night,”
the “business that walketh about in the dark,” and of “the noonday
devil.”[19] (“Non timebis a timore nocturno ... a negotio perambulante
in tenebris; ab incursu et dæmonio meridiano.”) And so Delrio very aptly
writes: “Their assemblies generally are held at dead of night when the
Powers of Darkness reign; or, sometimes, at high noon, even as the
Psalmist saith, when he speaks of ‘the noonday devil.’ The nights they
prefer are Monday and Thursday.”[20]
The time at which these Sabbats began was generally upon the stroke
of midnight. “Les Sorciers,” says Boguet, “vont enuiron la minuict
au Sabbat.”[21] It may be remembered that in the _Metamorphoseon_ of
Apuleius, I, xi, the hags attack Socrates at night “circa tertiam
ferme uigiliam.” Agnes Sampson, “a famous witch”—as Hume of Godscroft
in his Account of Archibald, ninth Earl of Angus, calls her—commonly
known as the wise wife of Keith, who made a prominent figure[22] in
the Fian trials, 1590, confessed that the Devil met her, “being alone,
and commanded her to be at North-Berwick Kirk the next night,” and
accordingly she made her way there as she was bid “and lighted at the
Kirk-yard, or a little before she came to it, about eleven hours at
even.”[23] In this case, however, the Sabbat was preceded by a dance
of nearly one hundred persons, and so probably did not commence until
midnight. Thomas Leyis, Issobell Coky, Helen Fraser, Bessie Thorn, and
the rest of the Aberdeen witches, thirteen of whom were executed in
1597, and seven more banished, generally met “betuixt tuell & ane houris
at nycht.”[24] Boguet notes that in 1598 the witch Françoise Secretain
“adioustoit qu’elle alloit tousiours au Sabbat enuiron la minuit, &
beaucoup d’autres sorciers, que i’ay eu en main, ont dit le mesme.” In
1600 Anna Mauczin of Tubingen confessed that she had taken part in witch
gatherings which she dubbed _Hochzeiten_. They seem to have been held by
a well just outside the upper gate of Rotenburg, and her evidence insists
upon “midnight dances” and revelling. A Scotch witch, Marie Lamont, “a
young woman of the adge of Eighteen Yeares, dwelling in the parish of
Innerkip” on 4 March, 1662, confessed most ingenuously “that when shee
had been at a mietting sine Zowle last, with other witches, in the night,
the devill convoyed her home in the dawing.”[25]
The Sabbat lasted till cock-crow, before which time none of the assembly
was suffered to withdraw, and the advowal of Louis Gaufridi, executed at
Aix, 1610, seems somewhat singular: “I was conveyed to the place where
the Sabbat was to be held, and I remained there sometimes one, two,
three, or four hours, for the most part just as I felt inclined.”[26]
That the crowing of a cock dissolves enchantments is a tradition of
extremest antiquity. The Jews believed that the clapping of a cock’s
wings will make the power of demons ineffectual and break magic spells.
So Prudentius sang: “They say that the night-wandering demons, who
rejoice in dunnest shades, at the crowing of the cock tremble and scatter
in sore affright.”[27] The rites of Satan ceased because the Holy
Office of the Church began. In the time of S. Benedict Matins and Lauds
were recited at dawn and were actually often known as _Gallicinium_,
Cock-crow. In the exquisite poetry of S. Ambrose, which is chanted at
Sunday Lauds, the praises of the cock are beautifully sung:
Light of our darksome journey here,
With days dividing night from night!
Loud crows the dawn’s shrill harbinger,
And wakens up the sunbeams bright.
Forthwith at this, the darkness chill
Retreats before the star of morn;
And from their busy schemes of ill
The vagrant crews of night return.
Fresh hope, at this, the sailor cheers;
The waves their stormy strife allay;
The Church’s Rock at this, in tears,
Hastens to wash his guilt away.
Arise ye, then, with one accord!
No longer wrapt in slumber lie;
The cock rebukes all who their Lord
By sloth neglect, by sin deny.
At his clear cry joy springs afresh;
Health courses through the sick man’s veins;
The dagger glides into its sheath;
The fallen soul her faith regains.[28]
A witch named Latoma confessed to Nicolas Remy that cocks were most
hateful to all sorcerers. That bird is the herald of dawn, he arouses men
to the worship of God; and many an odious sin which darkness shrouds will
be revealed in the light of the coming day. At the hour of the Nativity,
that most blessed time, the cocks crew all night long. A cock crew
lustily at the Resurrection. Hence is the cock placed upon the steeple
of churches. Pliny and Ælian tell us that a lion fears the cock; so the
Devil “leo rugiens” flees at cock-crow.
“Le coq,” says De Lancre, “s’oyt par fois es Sabbats sonna̅t la retraicte
aux Sorciers.”[29]
The witch resorted to the Sabbat in various manners. If it were a
question of attending a local assembly when, at most, a mile or two had
to be traversed, the company would go on foot. Very often the distance
was even less, for it should be remembered that in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, and indeed, as a matter of fact, up to a quite
recent date, when the wayfarer had gone a few steps outside the gates
of a town or beyond the last house in the village he was enfolded in
darkness, entirely solitary, remote, eloined. If footmen with flambeaux,
at least the humbler linkboy, were essential attendants after nightfall
in the streets of the world’s great cities, London, Rome, Paris,
Madrid,[30] how black with shadows, dangerous, and utterly lonesome
was the pathless countryside! Not infrequently the witches of necessity
carried lanterns to light them on their journey to the Sabbat. The
learned Bartolomeo de Spina, O.P.,[31] in his _Tractatus de Strigibus
et Lamiis_ (Venice, 1533), writes that a certain peasant, who lived at
Clavica Malaguzzi, in the district of Mirandola, having occasion to rise
very early one morning and drive to a neighbouring village, found himself
at three o’clock, before daybreak, crossing a waste tract of considerable
extent which lay between him and his destination. In the distance he
suddenly caught sight of what seemed to be numerous fires flitting to
and fro, and as he drew nearer he saw that these were none other than
large lanthorns held by a bevy of persons who were moving here and there
in the mazes of a fantastic dance, whilst others, as at a rustic picnic,
were seated partaking of dainties and drinking stoups of wine, what time
a harsh music, like the scream of a cornemuse, droned through the air.
Curiously no word was spoken, the company whirled and pirouetted, ate
and drank, in strange and significant silence. Perceiving that many,
unabashed, were giving themselves up to the wildest debauchery and
publicly performing the sexual act with every circumstance of indecency,
the horrified onlooker realized that he was witnessing the revels of
the Sabbat. Crossing himself fervently and uttering a prayer he drove
as fast as possible from the accursed spot, not, however, before he had
recognized some of the company as notorious evil-doers and persons living
in the vicinity who were already under grave suspicion of sorcery. The
witches must have remarked his presence, but they seem to have ignored
him and not even to have attempted pursuit. In another instance Fra
Paolo de Caspan, a Dominican of great reputation for piety and learning,
reports that Antonio de Palavisini, the parish priest of Caspan in the
Valtellina, a territory infected with warlocks, most solemnly affirmed
that when going before daybreak to say an early Mass at a shrine hard by
the village he had seen through clearings in the wood an assembly of men
and women furnished with lanterns, who were seated in a circle and whose
actions left no doubt that they were witches engaged in abominable rites.
In both the above cases the lanterns were not required in the ceremonies
of the Sabbat, and they must have been carried for the purely practical
purpose of affording light.
Very often when going to a local Sabbat the coven of witches used to
meet just beyond the village and make their way to the appointed spot in
a body for mutual help and security. This is pointed out by Bernard of
Como, a famous scholar, who says: “When they are to go to some spot hard
by they proceed thither on foot cheerily conversing as they walk.”[32]
The fact that the dark initiates walked to the Sabbat is frequently
mentioned in the trials. Boguet, who is most exact in detail, writes:
“Sorcerers, nevertheless, sometimes walk to the Sabbat, and this is
generally the case when the spot where they are to assemble does not lie
very far from their dwellings.”[33] And in the interrogatory, 17 May,
1616, of Barthélemi Minguet of Brécy, a young fellow of twenty-five,
accused with seventeen more, we have: “He was then asked in what place
the Sabbat was held the last time he was present there.
“He replied that it was in the direction of Billcron, at a cross-road
which is on the high-road leading to Aix, in the Parish of Saint
Soulange. He was asked how he proceeded thither. He replied that he
walked to the place.”[34]
When Catharine Oswald of Niddrie (1625) one night took Alexander Hamilton
“a known warlock” “to a den betwixt Niddrie and Edmiston, where the
devill had trysted hir,” it is obvious that the couple walked there
together.
On one occasion the truly subtle point was raised whether those who
walked to the Sabbat were as guilty as those who were conveyed thither by
the Devil. But De Lancre decides: “It is truly as criminal & abominable
for a Sorcerer to go to the Sabbat on foot as to be voluntarily conveyed
thither by the Devil.”[35]
Major Weir and his sister seem to have gone to a meeting with the
Devil in a coach and six horses when they thus drove from Edinburgh to
Musselburgh and back again on 7 September, 1648. So the woman confessed
in prison, and added “that she and her brother had made a compact with
the devil.”[36]
[Illustration: PLATE IV
OFF TO THE SABBAT. Queverdo
[_face p. 120_]
Agnes Sampson, the famous witch of North Berwick (1590), confessed “that
the _Devil_ in mans lickness met her going out to the fields from her
own house at _Keith_, betwixt five and six at even, being alone and
commanded her to be at _North-berwick_ Kirk the next night. To which
place she came on horse-back, conveyed by her Good-son, called Iohn
Couper.”[37] The Swedish witches (1669) who carried children off to
Blockula “set them upon a _Beast_ of the _Devil’s_ providing, and then
they rid away.” One boy confessed that “to perform the Journey, he took
his own Fathers horse out of the Meadow, where it was feeding.”[38] Upon
his return one of the coven let the horse graze in her own pasture, and
here the boy’s father found it the next day.
In the popular imagination the witch is always associated with the
broomstick, employed by her to fly in wild career through mid-air. This
belief seems almost universal, of all times and climes. The broomstick
is, of course, closely connected with the magic wand or staff which was
considered equally serviceable for purposes of equitation. The wood
whence it was fashioned was often from the hazel-tree, witch-hazel,
although in De Lancre’s day the sorcerers of Southern France favoured the
“Souhandourra”—_Cornus sanguinea_, dog-wood. Mid hurricane and tempest,
in the very heart of the dark storm, the convoy of witches, straddling
their broomsticks, sped swiftly along to the Sabbat, their yells and
hideous laughter sounding louder than the crash of elements and mingling
in fearsome discord with the frantic pipe of the gale.
There is a very important reference to these beliefs from the pen of the
famous and erudite Benedictine Abbot, Regino of Prüm (A.D. 906), who in
his weighty _De ecclesiasticis disciplinis_ writes: “This too must by
no means be passed over that certain utterly abandoned women, turning
aside to follow Satan, being seduced by the illusions and phantasmical
shows of demons firmly believe and openly profess that in the dead of
night they ride upon certain beasts along with the pagan goddess Diana
and a countless horde of women, and that in those silent hours they
fly over vast tracts of country and obey her as their mistress, whilst
on certain other nights they are summoned to do her homage and pay
her service.”[39] The witches rode sometimes upon a besom or a stick,
sometimes upon an animal, and the excursion through the air was generally
preceded by an unction with a magic ointment. Various recipes are given
for the ointment, and it is interesting to note that they contain
deadly poisons: aconite, belladonna, and hemlock.[40] Although these
unguents may in certain circumstances be capable of producing definite
physiological results, it is Delrio who best sums up the reasons for
their use: “The Demon is able to convey them to the Sabbat without the
use of any unguent, and often he does so. But for several reasons he
prefers that they should anoint themselves. Sometimes when the witches
seem afraid it serves to encourage them. When they are young and tender
they will thus be better able to bear the hateful embrace of Satan who
has assumed the shape of a man. For by this horrid anointing he dulls
their senses and persuades these deluded wretches that there is some
great virtue in the viscid lubricant. Sometimes too he does this in
hateful mockery of God’s holy Sacraments, and that by these mysterious
ceremonies he may infuse, as it were, something of a ritual and
liturgical nature into his beastly orgies.”[41]
Although the witch is universally credited with the power to fly through
the air[42] to the Sabbat mounted upon a besom or some kind of stick, it
is remarkable in the face of popular belief to find that the confessions
avowing this actual mode of aerial transport are extraordinarily few.
Paul Grilland, in his tractate _De Sortilegiis_ (Lyons, 1533), speaks of
a witch at Rome during whose trial, seven years before, it was asserted
she flew in the air after she had anointed her limbs with a magic
liniment. Perhaps the most exactly detailed accounts of this feat are to
be found in Boguet,[43] than whom scarcely any writer more meticulously
reports the lengthy and prolix evidence of witches, such evidence as he
so laboriously gathered during the notorious prosecutions throughout
Franche-Comté in the summer of 1598. He records quite plainly such
statements as: “Françoise Secretain disoit, que pour aller au Sabbat,
elle mettoit un baston blanc entre ses iambes & puis prononçait certaines
paroles & dés lors elle estoit portée par l’air iusques en l’assemblée
des Sorciers.” (Françoise Secretain avowed that in order to go to the
Sabbat she placed a white stick between her legs & then uttered certain
words & then she was borne through the air to the sorcerers’ assembly).
In another place she confessed “qu’elle avoit esté vne infinité de fois
au Sabbat ... & qu’elle y alloit sur vn baston blanc, qu’elle mettoit
entre ses iambes.” (That she had been a great number of times to the
Sabbat ... and that she went there on a white stick which she placed
between her legs.) It will be noticed that in the second instance she
does not explicitly claim to have been borne through the air. Again:
“Françoise Secretain y estoit portée [au Sabbat] sur vn baston blanc.
Satan y tra̅sporta Thieuenne Paget & Antide Colas estant en forme d’vn
homme noir, sortans de leurs maison le plus souuent par la cheminée.”
“Claudine Boban, ieune fille confessa qu’elle & sa mère montoient sur vne
ramasse, & que sortans le contremont de la cheminée elles alloient par
l’air en ceste façon au Sabbat.” (Françoise Secretain was carried [to the
Sabbat] on a white stick. Satan, in the form of a tall dark man conveyed
thither Thieuenne Paget & Antide Colas, who most often left their house
by way of the chimney.... Claudine Boban, a young girl, confessed that
both she and her mother mounted on a besom, & that flying out by the
chimney they were thus borne through the air to the Sabbat.) A marginal
note explains _ramasse_ as “autrement balai, & en Lyonnois coiue.”
Glanvill writes that Julian Cox, one of the Somerset coven (1665), said
“that one evening she walkt out about a Mile from her own House and
there came riding towards her three persons upon three Broom-staves,
born up about a yard and a half from the ground. Two of them she
formerly knew, which was a Witch and a Wizzard.” It might easily be
that there is some exaggeration here. We know that a figure in one of
the witch dances consisted of leaping as high as possible into the air,
and probably the three persons seen by Julian Cox were practising this
agile step. A quotation from Bodin by Reginald Scot is very pertinent in
this connexion. Speaking of the Sabbat revels he has: “And whiles they
sing and dance, euerie one hath a broome in his hand, and holdeth it vp
aloft. Item he saith, that these night-walking or rather night-dansing
witches, brought out of _Italie_ into _France_, that danse which is
called _La Volta_.”[44] Sir John Davies in his _Orchestra or A Poeme on
Dauncing_ (18mo, 1596) describes the lavolta as “A loftie iumping, or a
leaping round.” De Lancre observes that after the regular country dance
at the Sabbat the witches sprang high into the air. “Après la dance ils
se mettent par fois à sauter.”[45] At their assembly certain of the
Aberdeen witches (1597) “danced a devilish dance, riding on trees, by a
long space.” In an old representation of Dr. Fian and his company swiftly
pacing round North Berwick church withershins the witches are represented
as running and leaping in the air, some mounted on broomsticks, some
carrying their besoms in their hands.
There was discovered in the closet of Dame Alice Kyteler of Kilkenny, who
was arrested in 1324 upon the accusation of nightly meeting a familiar
Artisson and multiplied charges of sorcery, a pipe of ointment, wherewith
she greased a staff “upon which she ambolled and gallopped thorough
thicke and thin, when and what manner she listed.”[46] In the trial of
Martha Carrier, a notorious witch and “rampant hag” at the Court of Oyer
and Terminer, held by adjournment at Salem, 2 August, 1692, the eighth
article of the indictment ran: “One _Foster_, who confessed her own share
in the Witchcraft for which the Prisoner stood indicted, affirm’d, that
she had seen the prisoner at some of their _Witch-meetings_, and that it
was this _Carrier_, who perswaded her to be a Witch. She confessed that
the Devil carry’d them on a pole, to a Witch-meeting: but the pole broke,
and she hanging about _Carriers_ neck, they both fell down, and she then
received an hurt by the Fall, whereof she was not at this very time
recovered.”[47]
In many of these instances it is plain that there is no actual flight
through the air implied; although there is a riding a-cock-horse of
brooms or sticks, in fact, a piece of symbolic ritual.
It is very pertinent, however, to notice in this connexion the actual
levitation of human beings, which is, although perhaps an unusual, yet
by no means an unknown, phenomenon in the séances of modern spiritism,
where both the levitation of persons, with which we are solely concerned,
and the rising of tables or chairs off the ground without contact with
any individual or by any human agency have occurred again and again
under conditions which cannot possibly admit of legerdemain, illusion,
or charlatanry. From a mass of irrefutable evidence we may select some
striking words by Sir William Crookes, F.R.S., upon levitation. “This
has occurred,” he writes, “in my presence on four occasions in darkness;
but ... I will only mention cases in which deductions of reason were
confirmed by the sense of sight.... On one occasion I witnessed a chair,
with a lady sitting on it, rise several inches from the ground.... On
another occasion the lady knelt on the chair in such manner that the
four feet were visible to us. It then rose about three inches, remained
suspended for about ten seconds, and then slowly descended....
“The most striking case of levitation which I have witnessed has been
with Mr. Home. On three separate occasions have I seen him raised
completely from the floor of the room.... On each occasion I had full
opportunity of watching the occurrence as it was taking place. There
are at least a hundred recorded instances of Mr. Home’s rising from the
ground.”[48]
Writing in July, 1871, Lord Lindsay said: “I was sitting with Mr. Home
and Lord Adare and a cousin of his. During the sitting Mr. Home went
into a trance, and in that state was carried out of the window in the
room next to where we were, and was brought in at our window. The
distance between the windows was about seven feet six inches, and there
was not the slightest foothold between them, nor was there more than a
twelve-inch projection to each window, which served as a ledge to put
flowers on. We heard the window in the next room lifted up, and almost
immediately after we saw Home floating in air outside our window.”[49]
William Stainton Moses writes of his levitation in August, 1872, in the
presence of credible witnesses: “I was carried up ... when I became
stationary I made a mark [with a lead pencil] on the wall opposite to my
chest. This mark is as near as may be six feet from the floor.... From
the position of the mark on the wall it is clear that my head must have
been close to the ceiling.... I was simply levitated and lowered to my
old place.”[50]
When we turn to the lives of the Saints we find that these manifestations
have been frequently observed, and it will suffice to mention but a few
from innumerable examples.
S. Francis of Assisi was often “suspended above the earth, sometimes
to a height of three, sometimes to a height of four cubits”; the
same phenomenon has been recorded by eye-witnesses in many instances
throughout the centuries. Among the large number of those who are
known to have been raised from the ground whilst wrapt in prayer are
the stigmatized S. Catherine of Siena; S. Colette; Rainiero de Borgo
San-Sepolcro; S. Catherine de Ricci; S. Alphonsus Rodriguez, S.J.;
S. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi; Raimond Rocco; Bl. Charles de Sezze; S.
Veronica Giuliani the Capuchiness; S. Gerard Majella, the Redemptorist
thaumaturge; that wondrous mystic Anne Catherine Emmerich; Dominica
Barbagli (died in 1858), the ecstatica of Montesanto-Savino (Florence),
whose levitations were of daily occurrence. S. Ignatius Loyola whilst
deeply contemplative was seen by John Pascal to be raised more than a
foot from the pavement; S. Teresa and S. John of the Cross were levitated
in concurrent ecstasies in the shady locutorio of the Encarnacion, as
was witnessed by Beatriz of Jesus and the whole convent of nuns;[51]
S. Alphonsus Liguori whilst preaching in the church of S. John Baptist
at Foggia was lifted before the eyes of the whole congregation several
feet from the ground;[52] Gemma Galgani of Lucca, who died 11 April,
1903, was observed whilst praying one evening in September, 1901, before
a venerated Crucifix, to rise in the air in a celestial trance and to
remain several minutes at some distance from the floor.[53] Above all,
S. Joseph of Cupertino (1603-63), one of the most extraordinary mystics
of the seventeenth century, whose whole life seemed one long series of
unbroken raptures and ecstasies, was frequently lifted on high to remain
suspended in mid-air. Such notice was attracted by this marvel that his
superiors sent him from one lonely house of Capuchins or Conventuals
to another, and he died at the little hill town of Osimo, where his
remains are yet venerated. For many years he was obliged to say Mass
at a private altar so inevitable were the ecstasies that fell upon him
during the Sacrifice. There are, I think, few sanctuaries more sweet and
more fragrant with holiness than this convent at Osimo. During a most
happy visit to the shrine of S. Joseph I was deeply touched by the many
memorials of the Saints, and by the kindness of the Fathers, his brethren
to-day. S. Philip Neri and S. Francis Xavier were frequently raised from
the ground at the Elevation, and of the ascetic S. Paul of the Cross
the Blessed Strambi writes: “Le serviteur de Dieu s’éleva en l’air à
la hauteur de deux palmes, et cela, à deux reprises, avant et après
la consecration.”[54] (The servant of God during Holy Mass was twice
elevated in the air to a height of two hand-breadths from the ground
both before and after the Consecration.) It is well known that in a
certain London church a holy religious when he said Mass was not unseldom
levitated from the predella, which manifestation I have myself witnessed,
although the father was himself unconscious thereof until the day of his
death.
But, as Görres most aptly remarks,[55] although many examples may be
cited of Saints who have been levitated in ecstasy, and although it is
not impossible that this phenomenon may be imitated by evil powers—as,
indeed, it undoubtedly is in the cases of spiritistic mediums—yet nowhere
do we find in hagiography that a large number of Saints were in one
company raised from the earth together or conveyed through the air to
meet at some appointed spot. Is it likely, then, that the demons would
be allowed seemingly to excel by their power a most extraordinary and
exceptional manifestation? It must be remembered, also, that save in very
rare and singular instances, such as that of S. Joseph of Cupertino,
levitation is only for a height of a foot or some eighteen inches, and
even this occurs seldom save at moments of great solemnity and psychic
concentration.
A question which is largely discussed by the demonologists then arises:
Do the witches actually and in person attend the Sabbat or is their
journey thither and assistance thereat mere diabolic illusion? Giovanni
Francesco Ponzinibio, in his _De Lamiis_,[56] wholly inclines to the
latter view, but this is superficial reasoning, and the celebrated
canonist Francisco Peña with justice takes him very severely to task for
his temerity. Peña’s profound work, _In Bernardi Comensis Dominicani
Lucernam inquisitorum notæ et eiusdem tractatum de strigibus_,[57]
a valuable collection of most erudite glosses, entirely disposes of
Ponzinibio’s arguments, and puts the case in words of weighty authority.
Sprenger in the _Malleus Maleficarum_, I, had already considered
“How witches are bodily transported from one place to another,”
and he concludes “It is proven, then, that sorcerers can be bodily
transported.”[58] Paul Grilland inquires: “Whether magicians & witches
or Satanists are bodily & actually conveyed to and fro by the Devil,
or whether this be merely imaginary?” He freely acknowledges the
extraordinary difficulty and intricacy of the investigation, beginning
his answer with the phrase “Quæstio ista est multum ardua et famosa.”[59]
(This is a very difficult and oft-discussed question.) But S. Augustine,
S. Thomas, S. Bonaventure, and a score of great names are agreed upon the
reality of this locomotion, and Grilland, after balancing the evidence to
the nicety of a hair wisely concludes: “Myself I hold the opinion that
they are actually transported.”[60]
In his _Compendium Maleficarum_ Francesco Maria Guazzo discusses (Liber
I. 13) “Whether Witches are actually and bodily conveyed from place
to place to attend their Sabbats”; and lays down: “The opinion which
many who follow Luther & Melancthon hold is that Witches only assist at
these assemblies in their imagination, & that they are choused by some
trick of the devil, in support of which argument the objectors assert
that the Witches have very often been seen lying in one spot and not
moving thence. Moreover, what is related in the life of S. Germain is
not impertinent in this connexion, to wit, when certain women declared
that they had been present at a banquet, & yet all the while they
slumbered and slept, as several persons attested. That women of this
kind are very often deceived in such a way is certain; but that they
are always so deceived is by no means sure.... The alternative opinion,
which personally I hold most strongly, is that sometimes at any rate
Witches are actually conveyed from one place to another by the Devil,
who under the bodily form of a goat or some other unclean & monstrous
animal himself carries them, & that they are verily and indeed present at
their foul midnight Sabbats. This opinion is that generally held by the
authoritative Theologians and Master Jurisprudists of Italy and Spain,
as also by the Catholic divines and legalists. The majority of writers,
indeed, advance this view, for example, Torquemada in his commentary
on Grilland, Remy, S. Peter Damian, Silvester of Abula, Tommaso de
Vio Gaetani, Alfonso de Castro, Sisto da Siena, O.P., Père Crespet,
Bartolomeo Spina in his glosses on Ponzinibio, Lorenzo Anania, and a vast
number of others, whose names for brevity’s sake I here omit.”[61]
This seems admirably to sum up the whole matter. In the encyclopædic
treatise _De Strigibus_[62] by an earlier authority, Bernard of Como, the
following remarkable passage occurs: “The aforesaid abominable wretches
actually & awake & in full enjoyment of their normal senses attend these
assemblies or rather orgies, and when they are to go to some spot hard
by they proceed thither on foot, cheerily conversing as they walk. If,
however, they are to meet in some distant place then are they conveyed by
the Devil, yet by whatsoever means they proceed to the said place whether
it be on foot or whether they are borne along by the Devil, it is most
certain that their journey is real and actual, and not imaginary. Nor
are they labouring under any delusion when they deny the Catholic Faith,
worship and adore the Devil, tread upon the Cross of Christ, outrage the
Most Blessed Sacrament, and give themselves up to filthy and unhallowed
copulations, fornicating with the Devil himself who appears to them in a
human form, being used by the men as a succubus, & carnally serving the
woman as an incubus.”[63]
The conclusion then is plain and proven. The witches do actually and
individually attend the Sabbat, an orgy of blasphemy and obscenity.
Whether they go thither on foot, or horseback, or by some other means is
a detail, which in point of fact differs according to the several and
infinitely varied circumstances.
It is not denied that in some cases hallucination and self-deception
played a large part, but such examples are comparatively speaking few
in number, and these, moreover, were carefully investigated and most
frequently recognized by the judges and divines. Thus in the _Malleus
Maleficarum_ Sprenger relates that a woman, who had voluntarily
surrendered herself to be examined as being a witch, confessed to the
Dominican fathers that she nightly assisted at the Sabbat, and that
neither bolts nor bars could prevent her from flying to the infernal
revels. Accordingly she was shut fast under lock and key in a chamber
whence it was impossible for her to escape, and all the while carefully
watched by lynx-eyed officers through a secret soupirail. These reported
that immediately the door was closed she threw herself on the bed where
in a moment she was stretched out perfectly rigid in all her members.
Select members of the tribunal, grave and acute doctors, entered the
room. They shook her, gently at first, but presently with considerable
roughness. She remained immobile and insensible. She was pinched and
pulled sharply. At last a lighted candle was brought and placed near
her naked foot until the flesh was actually scorched in the flame. She
lay stockish and still, dumb and motionless as a stone. After a while
her senses returned to her. She sat up and related in exact detail the
happenings at the Sabbat she had attended, the place, the number of the
company, the rites, what was spoken, all that was done, and then she
complained of a hurt upon her foot. Next day the fathers explained to her
all that had passed, how that she had never stirred from the spot, and
that the pain arose from the taper which to ensure the experiment had
been brought in contact with her flesh. They admonished her straightly
but with paternal charity, and upon the humble confession of her error
and a promise to guard against any such ill fantasies for the future, a
suitable penance was prescribed and the woman dismissed.
In the celebrated cases investigated by Henri Boguet, June, 1598, young
George Gandillon confessed to having walked to the Sabbat at a deserted
spot called Fontenelles, near the village of Nezar, and also to having
ridden to the Sabbat. Moreover, in his indictment the following occurs:
“George Gandillon, one Good Friday night, lay in his bed, rigid as a
corpse, for the space of three hours, & then on a sudden came to himself.
He has since been burned alive here with his father & his sister.”[64]
Since Boguet, who is one of our chief authorities, discusses the Sabbat
with most copious details in his _Discours des Sorciers_ it will not be
impertinent to give here the headings and subdivisions of his learned and
amply documented chapters.[65]