THE BEWITCHED, POSSESSED, SORCERERS AND DEMONOMANIACS.
In order to fully comprehend the Demonomania of the Middle Ages, it is necessary to previously analyze the different elements composing the medical constitution of the epoch, and, investigate under what morbid influences such strange neuroses were produced.
These influences, we shall find from thence, in the state of intellectual and moral depression provoked by the successive pestilential epidemics, which, from the sixth century decimated the population of Western Europe; in the disposition of the human mind towards supernaturalism, which had invaded all classes of society; in the terrors excited by the tortures of an ever flaming and eternal hell; in the fright, caused by the cruel and atrocious decisions of brutal Inquisitors, and their fanatical tools, the officers of the law. We find too, that a frightful condition of misery had weakened the inhabitants of city and country, morally and physically, inducing a multitude of women to openly enter into prostitution for protection and nutrition, owing to the iniquity of a despotic regime; then too, there were added bad conditions of hygiene and moral decadence, so that intelligence was sapped and undermined, together with a breaking down of the vitality of the organism.
In the recital of the miseries of the Middle Age, made by a master hand, by an illustrious historian, who bases his assertions on antique chronicles whose veracity cannot be questioned, we read the following: “Society was impressed with a profound sentiment of sadness, it was as though a pall of grief covered the generation; the whole world given over to plagues; the invasion by barbarians; horrible diseases; terrible famines decimating the masses by starvation; violent wind storms; greyish skies with foggy days; the darkness of night casting its shroud everywhere; a cry of lamentation ascends to Heaven through all this gruesome period. That sombre witness, our contemporary Glaber, fully indicates the position of society devoured by war, famine and the plague. It was thought that the order of seasons and the laws of the elements, that up to that period governed the world, had fallen back into the original chaos. It was thought that the end of the human race had arrived.”[65]
When the epidemic of Demonomania attacked the earth, at the end of the fifteenth century, more than ten generations had undergone the depressive action of the superstitions and false ideas spread broadcast by religion. Heredity had prepared the earth, the human mind being in an absolute condition of receptivity for all pathological actions. The education of children was confined to teaching them foolish doctrines, diabolical legends, mysterious practices that weakened their judgments. With the progression, from childhood to majority, a vague sentiment of uneasiness was experienced with a constant preoccupation on the subject of conscience and sin. In full adult age, as we have observed, came religious monomania, with acute sexual excitement, and persistent erotic ideas.
Arriving at this phase of the situation, some became theomaniacs, others demonomaniacs, saying they were possessed by sorcery, under the influence of genesic and other senses, with psychal hallucinations, and in some cases, psycho-sensorial illusions. These fictitious perception were produced either through the influence of the mind, assailed by supernatural conceptions, or by morbid impressions transmitted most often by the great sympathetic, or, finally, by an unknown action arising from the exterior.
Under the influence of these hallucinations, which manifested themselves in a state of somnambulism, or during physiological sleep, the recollection persisting to the after awakening, the Demonomaniac responded to those asking questions, that he had heard the confused noises made by the sorcerers at their vigil, had heard also the conversation of the devils, and had seen scenes of the wildest prostitution enacted by the demons; that fantastic animals were perceived; that strange odors of a diabolical nature, the savor of rotten meat, and corrupt human flesh, tainted blood of new born babes, and other noisome things had been smelled; that these effluvias were horrible, repulsive, nauseating, combined with the stink of sorcerers and the sulphurous vapors of magical perfumes; that he felt himself touched by supernatural beings who had the lightness of smoke or mist, and wafted away in the air. The hallucinations of the genital senses had led him to believe he had carnal connection, always of a painful nature, with succubi. When the victim to these delusions was a woman, she had the impression of having been brutally violated or deflowered, and some women declared they oftentimes experienced the voluptuous sensations of an amorous coition.
These hallucinations developed one after the other; those belonging to the anesthetized class, coming first, those belonging to the genesic class, coming last. The complexity of their symptoms produced what we call dedoublement, or a dual personality. Those possessed, claimed to be in the power of a demon, who entered their body by one of the natural passages, sporting with their person, placing itself in apposition with any place in their organism, proposing all sorts of erotic acts, natural and unnatural, whispering shameless propositions in their ears, blasphemy against God, forcing them to sign a contract with the Devil in their own blood.
The nervous state in which such weak minded creatures were found, victims to nocturnal hallucinations, insensibly induced a species of permanent somnambulism, during which they acquired a particularly morbid personality. They affirmed themselves to be sorcerers possessed by demons. When this personality disappeared, and the patient returned to a normal condition, a simple suggestion was all sufficient to cause the reappearance of the hallucination. This explains why so many individuals accused of sorcery, denied at first what they afterwards affirmed. When the Judge demanded with an air of authority, what they had done at the witch meeting, (vigil), they entered into a most precise recital of minute details, and all the circumstances surrounding the nocturnal reunions of demons and their victims; and, by reason of this crazy avowal, or so called confession were burned at the stake for participation in diabolical practices.
In the Chronicles of Enguarrand, of Monstrelet, a truthful and trustworthy historian of the incidents of his time, we find a description of the famous epidemics of sorcery in Artois, which caused such a multitude of victims to be burnt at the stake, by order of the Inquisition. The facts recounted by this celebrated writer support the interpretations we have given to these phenomena. He expresses himself as follows:
“In 1459, in the village of Arras, in the country of Artois, came a terrible and pitiable case of what we named Vaudoisie. I know not why.” “Those possessed, who were men and women, said that they were carried off every night by the Devil, from places where they resided, and suddenly found themselves in other places, in woods or deserts, when they met a great number of other men and women, who consorted with a large Devil in the disguise of a man, who never showed his face. And this Demon read, and prescribed laws and commandments for them, which they were obliged to obey; then made his assembled guests kiss his buttocks; after which, he presented each adept a little money, and feasted them on wines and rich foods, after which the lights were suddenly extinguished, and strange men and women knew each other carnally in the darkness, after which they were suddenly wafted through space, back to their own habitations, and awakened as if from a dream.
“This hallucination was experienced by several notable persons of the city of Arras, and other places, men and women, who were so terribly tormented, that they confessed, and in confessing, acknowledged that they had seen at these witch reunions many prominent persons, among others, prelates, nobles, Governors of towns and villages, so that when the judges examined them, they put the names of the accused in the mouths of those who testified, and they persisted in such statements although forced by pains and tortures to say that they had seen otherwise, and the innocent parties named were likewise put in prison, and tortured so much, that confessions were forced from them; and these too, were burned at the stake most inhumanely.
“Some of those accused who were rich and powerful escaped death by paying out money; others were reduced into making confessions on the promise that in case they confessed their lives and property would be spared. Some there were indeed who suffered torments with marvelous patience, not wishing to confess on account of creating prejudice against themselves; many of these gave the Judges large bribes in money to relieve them from punishment. Others fled from the country on the first accusation, and afterwards proved their perfect innocence.”[66]
Calmeil considers this narrative of so-called sorcery as a delirium, prevailing epidemically in Artois, where “many insane persons were executed,” although he is forced to add: “these facts lead us to foresee what misfortunes pursued the false disciples of Satan in former times.”
These neuroses of the inhabitants of Artois had already been observed, almost half a century previous, among a class of sectarians by the name of the Poor of Lyons. These people were designated in the Romanesque tongue as faicturiers, the word faicturerie meaning sorcerer, or one who believes in magic. Demonomania then evidently dated back to the very commencement of the Middle Ages.
The judgment of the tribunals of Arras, which condemned the sorcerers of Artois to be burned alive at the stake, is a curious document in old French, which merits a short notice at least, for it is supported on the following considerations, which were accepted as veracious, although merely the delirious conceptions of ignorant peasants:
“When one wished to go to the witch reunion (vigil), it was only necessary to take some magical ointment, rubbed on a yard stick, and also a small portion rubbed on the hands. This yard stick or broomstick placed between the legs, permitted one to fly where he willed over mountain and dale, over sea and river, and carried one to the Devil’s place of meeting, where were to be found tables loaded down with fine eatables and drinkables. There was also the Devil himself, in the form of a monkey, a dog or a man, as the case might be, and to him one pledged obedience and rendered homage; in fact one adored the Devil and presented unto him his soul. Then the possessed kissed the Devil’s rear—kissing it goat fashion in a butting attitude. After having eaten and taken drink, all the assemblage assumed carnal forms; even the Devil took the disguise of man or sometimes woman. Then the multitude committed the crime of sodomy and other horrible and unnatural acts—sins against God that were so wholly contrary to nature that the aforesaid Inquisitor says he does not even dare to name, they are too terrible and wicked ever to mention to innocent ears, crimes as brutal as they were cruel.”[67]
Among these sorcerers there was a poet, a painter and an old Abbot, who passed for an amateur in the mysteries of Isis. Perhaps the Inquisition pursued such individuals as sorcerers and heretics, knowing them to be given over to debauchery. Similar things occurred as before said very early in the Middle Ages.([68])
As also before mentioned, there were demons who cohabited with women at night, and sometimes with men, called incubi and succubi, following as they were active, (incubare, to lie upon), or passive, (sub cubare, to lie under).
Calmeil has written, that virgins dedicated to chastity by holy laws were frequently visited by these demons, disguised in the image of Christ, or of an angel, or seraphim. Sometimes the Devil took the form of the Holy Virgin, and attempted to seduce young monks from paths of piety. “Having impressed the victims with the power of beauty,” says the sage alienist,([69]) “the wicked demon then got into the bed of the young girl, or young man, as the case might be, and sought to seduce them through shameful practices. The Gods, so say the ancients, often sought the society of the daughters of Princes; these pretended Gods were nothing but demons. A Devil possessed Rhea, under the form of Mars, and this succubus passed for Venus the day Anchises thought he cohabited with the Godess of beauty.
“The demon incubi accosted by preference fallen women, under the form of a black man, or goat. From times immemorial, damned spirits have attacked certain females, under the form of lascivious brutes. Hairy satyrs or shags, fauns and sylvains were only disguised incubi.
The connections between the possessed and incubi were often accompanied by a painful sensation of compression in the epigastric region, with impossibility of making the least movement, the victim could not speak or breathe. She had all the phenomena noticeable in an attack of nightmare. Meantime, some had different sensations. A nun of Saint Ursula, named Armella, said that she seemed “always in company with demons who tempted her to surrender her honor. During five months, while this combat lasted, it was impossible to sleep at night, by reason of the specters, who assumed varied and monstrous shapes.”[70] This virtuous nun preserved her chastity notwithstanding the frightful ordeal.
Angele de Foligno accused the incubi, says Martin del Rio, of beating her without pity, of putting fire in her generative organs, and inspiring her with infernal lubricity. There was no portion of her body that was not bruised by the attack of these demons, and the lady was not able to rise from her bed.
Another nun, named Gertrude, cited by Jean Wier, avowed that from the age of fourteen years, she had slept with Satan in person, and that the Devil had made love to her, and often wrote her letters full of the most tender and passionate expressions. A letter was found in this poor nun’s cell, on the 25th of March, 1565. This amorous epistle was full of the details of the Demon’s nocturnal debaucheries.
Bodin, in his “Demonomania” gives the observation of Jeanne Hervillier, who was burned alive, by sentence of the Parliament of Paris. She confessed to her Judges, that she had been presented to the Devil, by her grandmother, at the age of twelve years. “A Devil in the form of a large black man, who dressed in a black suit and rode a black horse. This Devil had carnal intercourse with her, the same as men have with women, only without seed. This sin had been continued every ten, or fifteen days, even after she married and slept with her husband.”
This same author reports many instances of the same kind. Among others, that of Madelaine de la Croix, Abbess of a nunnery in Spain, who went to Pope Paul III., confessing, that from the age of twelve years, she had relations with a demon, in the form of a Moor, and, that for more than thirty years this commerce had been continued. Bodin firmly believes, that this nun had been presented to Satan, “from the belly of her mother,” and affirms that “such copulations are neither illusions, nor diseases.” In his work, he also gives extracts of the interrogatories put to the Sorcerers of Longni, in the presence of Adrien de Fer, Lieutenant General of Laon. These sorcerers were condemned to be burnt at the stake, for having commerce with incubi. He mentions Marguerite Bremond, who avowed that she had been led off one evening, by her own mother, to a reunion of Demons, and “found in this place six devils in human shape, but hideous to behold. After the demon dance was finished, the devils returned to the couches with the girls, and one cohabited with her for the space of half an hour, but she escaped conception, as he was seedless.”
One of the distinctive characters of demons, was their infectious stink, which exhaled from all portions of the body. This odor attributed to the Devil was an hallucination to the sense of smell which entered, like those of the genesic sense, into all the complex hallucinations of Demonomania.
Examples of men cohabiting with demons, are cited by many authors of the Middle Ages. Gregory of Tours has left us the record of Eparchius, Bishop of Auvergne, who cohabited with succubi.
Jerome Cardan, physician and Italian mathematician, tells of a priest who cohabited for over fifty years, with a demon disguised as a woman.
Pic de Mirandolle, relates how another priest had commerce for over forty years with a beautiful succubus, whom he called Hermione. Bodin recounts the story of Edeline, the Prior of a religious community in Sorbonne. An adversary of Demonomaniacal doctrines, Edeline was accused by the theologians of defending demons. Before the Tribunal the Prior declared that he had been visited by Satan, in the form of a black ram, and had prostituted his body to an incubus, and only obeyed his master in preaching that sorcery was a chimerical invention. “Although the proof furnished by the registers of the Tribunal of Poitiers,” remarks Calmeil, “leaves no doubt as to the alienation of the intellectual faculties at the moment of his trial, Edeline was none the less condemned to perpetual seclusion from the world.”
As another striking example of hallucination, bearing upon this question of incubism, Guibert de Nogent tells of a monk, “who was sick, and retained the services of a Jew doctor. In exchange for health, the aforesaid physician, demanded a sacrifice. ‘What sacrifice?’ asked the monk. ‘The sacrifice of that which is the most precious to men,’ answered the Jew. ‘What may that be?’ inquired the monk. And the demon, for it was the Devil disguised as a doctor, had the audacity to explain. ‘Oh curses! Oh shame! to require such a thing of a priest’—but the victim, nevertheless, did what was asked. It was the denial of Christ and the true faith.”
Like psycho-sensorial hallucinations of the other senses, that of the genesic sense may assume the erotic type of disease, and is due undoubtedly, in some men, to a repletion of the spermatic vesicules. It is this that Saint Andre, physician in ordinary to Louis XIV., gives as an explanation of incubism. “The incubus,”[71] says this writer, “a chimera that had for its foundation only a dream, an over excited imagination, too often a longing after women; artifice had no less a part in the creation of the incubus,—a woman, a girl, only a devotee in name, already long before debauched, but desiring to appear virtuous to hide her crime, passes off the offenses of some lover as the act of a demon; this is the ordinary explanation. In this artifice the woman is often aided by the suggestions of the man—a man who has heard succubi speaking to him in his sleep, usually sees most beautiful women in his dreams, which, under such circumstances, are often erotic.”
It is certain that an ardent imagination and exaggerated sexual appetite have played a leading role in the history of incubi, but, meantime, there may be exceptions.
Nicholas Remy, Inquisitor of Lorraine, has given a description of impurities committed between demons and sorcerers, according to the testimony given by those possessed.[72] Fortunately, he has only given a Latin version of what they have told him. He states: “Hic igitur, sive vir incubet, sive succubet fœmina, liberum in utroque naturæ debet esse officium, nihilque omnino intercedere quod id vel minimum moretur atque impediat, si pudor, metus, horror, sensusque, aliquis acrior ingruit; il icet ad irritum redeunt omnia e lumbis affœaque prorsus sit natura.”
Then comes the sentence of the four girls of Vosges, according to the confessions, who were named Nanette, Claudine, Nicola, and Didace, and of whom Nicholas Remy, fortunately for the masses of the profession, only speaks in Latin, lest modesty be shocked at the narration. “Alexia Drigæa recensuit doémoni suo pœnem, cum surrigebat tentum semper extitisse quanti essent subices focarii, quos tum forte præsentes digito demonstrabat; scroto ac coleis nullis inde pendentibus, etc.” (We forbear from further quotation and for fuller particulars refer the reader to the original.)
Were these girls attacked by a malady, a complex hallucination of the senses that led them to firmly believe they were possessed or owned by a supernatural being who obliged them to abdicate their free will in his favor? Were they only, after all, prostitutes suffering from nymphomania? We can only insist that prostitution, or a low standard of morality, enters largely into the history of those possessed by incubi.
Aside from imaginary vigils (Sabbat), supposed to be frequented by those who were really insane, it is well to remember there were numerous houses of prostitution, conducted by old bawds and unscrupulous panderers, where nightly orgies occurred and scenes of wild debauchery were common. The real sorcerers boasted of their magic and their relations with demons, but, in reality, they knew nothing except the art of compounding stupefying drugs, of which they made every possible use. Having passed their entire lives in vice, their passions, instead of becoming extinct, were exalted by age. “Before ever becoming sorcerers,” remarks Professor Thomas Erastus, “these lamia (magicians) were libidinous and in close relation with the Evil One.”[73]
Pierre Dufour, the celebrated bibliomaniac, made a very lengthy and learned investigation as to the connection of sorcery with the social evil, and reaped a veritable harvest of facts, duly authenticated by the histories of trials for the crime of Demonidolatry, arriving at the conclusion that sorcery made fewer dupes than victims. Says Dufour: “Aside from a very small number of credulous magicians and sorcerers, all who were initiated in the mysteries served, or made others serve, in the abominable commerce of debauchery. The vigil offered a fine opportunity as a spot for such turpitudes. Such reunions of hideous companies of libertines and prostitutes was for the profit of certain knaves, and the sorcerers’ assemblage was patronized by many misguided young women, who fell from grace through libidinous fascination.”
Meantime, sorcery persisted always, notwithstanding judgments and executions. In the year 1574, on the denunciation of an old demented hag, eighty peasants were burned alive at Valery, in Savoy. Three years later nearly four hundred inhabitants of Haut-Languedoc perished for the same offense. In 1582 an immense number of so-called sorcerers were executed at Avignon. From 1580 to 1595 nine hundred persons accused of witchcraft were put to death.
In 1609, in the country of Labourde (Basses Pyrenees), the prisons were overcrowded with men, women and children accused of sorcery. Fires for stake-burnt victims lit up all the villages in the Province, and the courts spared no one. Many of these unfortunates accused themselves of believing in the demons of sorcery and having visited diabolical gatherings (vigils), where they had prostituted themselves to incubi. Others, to whom the death penalty was meted out, were innocent persons who had been informed against, but these, too, although denying all charges, were condemned to be burnt alive.
The same year some of the inhabitants of the country of Labourde, who had sought refuge in Spain, were accused of having carried demons into Navarre. Five of these unfortunates were burnt at the stake by order of the Inquisition, one woman being strangled and burned after her death. Even bodies were exhumed to be given to the flames. Eighteen persons were permitted to make penance for their alleged sorceries.
During two years, 1615 and 1616, twenty cases of Demonidolatry were punished in Sologne and Berry; these persons were accused of being at a vigil, without having been anointed with frictions however. An old villain, aged seventy-seven years, named Nevillon, pretended to have seen a procession of six hundred people, in which Satan took the shape of a ram, or buck, and paid the sorcerers eight sous, for the murder of a man, and five sous for the murder of a woman. They accused him of having killed animals by the aid of his bewitchings. Nevillon was hung along with those he accused. Another peasant, by the name of Gentil Leclercq, avowed that he was the son of a sorcerer, that he had been baptized at the vigil, by a demon called Aspic; he was condemned to be hanged, and his body was burnt. The same it was in the case of a man called Mainguet and his wife, together with one Antoinette Brenichon, who asserted they had all three visited a witch reunion in company.
An accusation of anthropophagy was launched against the inhabitants of Germany, by Innocent VIII., in 1484, and a hundred women were also accused of having committed murders, and cohabiting with demons.
The Inquisitors inspired the story of Nider, on the Sorceries of the Vaudois. They found, according to the testimony of certain witnesses, that these Vaudois cut the throats of their infants, in order to make magical philters, which would permit them to traverse space to attend the vigil of the witches, (Sorcerers). Other persons accused themselves of cohabiting with demons; some pretended they had caused disasters, floods and tempests, by the influence they had through Satan. Many submitted to the most horrible tortures with an insensibility so complete, that the theologians concluded that the fat of the first born males procured this demonological faculty for bearing pain. This general anæsthesia permits us to affirm that these unfortunates were neuropathic.
It would be a difficult matter to establish the exact number of victims offered up to the fanaticism of the Inquisition. Already, in 1436, the inhabitants in the country of Vaud, Switzerland, had been accused of anthropophagy, of eating their own children, in order to satisfy their ferocious appetites. Some one said they had submitted to the Devil, and raised the outcry that they had eaten thirteen persons within a very short time. Immediately the Judge and the Prosecutor of Eude, investigated the story. Failing to obtain the proof of eye witnesses, they subjected, according to Calmeil, hundreds of unfortunates to the tortures of the rack, after which a certain number were burned at the stake. Entire families overpowered by terror, fled from home, and found refuge in more hospitable lands; but fanaticism and death followed them like a plague.[74]
The moral and physical torture, undergone by those who were suspected of this anthropophagical sorcery, made some of the victims confess that they had the power to kill infants, by uttering charm words, and that ointments made of baby fat gave them the power to fly through the air at pleasure; that the practice of Demonic science permitted them to cause cows and sheep to abort, and, that they could make thunder and hail storms, and destroy the crops of others; that they could create flood and pestilence, etc. This was the anthropophagical epidemic of 1436.
The same observations might be made regarding what was known as lycanthrophy, which always arose among the possessed and sorcerers; that is to say crazy people, especially those of the monomaniac type, accused themselves and others with imaginary crimes, in confessions made to judges. As an example, we can cite the case of the peasant, spoken of by Job Fincel, and also one mentioned by Pierre Burgot, of Verdun, who did not hesitate to assert themselves to be guilty of lycanthrophy. They were burned alive at Poligny, but the remains of the five women and children, whose flesh they pretended to have devoured, were never found. In order to transform themselves into wolves, they claimed to use a pomade given them by the Devil; and, while in a certain condition, they copulated with female wolves. Jean Wier has written long essays on this last case of lycomania, and thinks the malady of these two men was due to narcotics, of which they made habitual use; but Calmeil is inclined to consider, that in a general manner, lycomania is a partial delerium confined to homicidal monomaniacs. This appreciation of the case seems justified by the similar one of Gilles Gamier, who was convinced that he had killed four children, and eaten their flesh. He was condemned to be burnt at the stake at Dole, as a wehr-wolf, (loupe garron), and the peasants of the suburbs were authorized by the same order to kill off all men like him. But we must not conclude from this particular instance, that a general law existed on the subject.
In 1603, the Parliament of Bordeaux, thought itself liberal in admitting attenuating circumstantial evidence, in the case of a boy from Roche Chalais, named Jean Grenier, who was accused of lycanthropy, by three young peasants. In the trial, no attempt was made to find evidence, the accused confessed all that was desired, and he was sentenced to imprisonment for life, before which verdict was announced, the Court said, that having taken into consideration the age and imbecility of this patient, who was so stupid that an idiot or child of seven years would know better, it added mercy to the judgment.”
He was then one of the imbeciles of the village, such as we see in asylums for insane, whose presence we rid ourselves of by isolation in charitable institutions.
At the same epoch, in the space of two years, 1598 to 1600, we can count the number of poor wretches of the Jura, whose poverty compelled them to beg nourishment, and who were almost all condemned to death as Demonidolators and lycanthropes. Ready and only too willing to leave this world, these poor people answered all questions as to accusation in the affirmative, and went to death with the greatest indifference. The infamous prosecutor, Bouget, who was sent into the Jura as a criminal agent, boasted that he had executed alone more than six hundred of these innocents.
The Inquistorial terror then reigned supreme; and it was only with extreme difficulty, at that time, that a poor idiot, named Jacques Roulet, condemned to death as a lycanthrope by the criminal Judge of Angers, was placed in an asylum for idiots, by order of the Parliament of Paris; this, too, in the seventeenth century.