The Jesuit father Costadau wrote, in his treatise De Signis, apropos of incubism: “The thing is too singular to treat lightly. We would not believe it ourselves had we not been convinced by personal experience with the Demon’s malice, and, on the other hand, find an infinity of writings of the first order from Popes, theologians, and philosophers, who have sustained and proved that there are men so unfortunate as to have shameful commerce and other things more execrable with such demons.”
Another Jesuit, Martin Antoine del Rio, published six books (Disquisitiones Magicæ) in 1599, in which his credulity attained the limit of fanaticism, thus making the good priest one of the most redoubtable enemies of demonomania. Such were the doctrines on which reposed the theocratical pretensions of the theologians.
It is not astonishing that the last years of the Middle Ages, during the time religious struggles reached their highest period of exacerbation, owing to the quarrels between the Court of Rome and the Reformation, witnessed the multiplication in the number of demonomaniacs to such an extent that the whole world commenced to believe in the power of demons. “At this unfortunate time,” remarks Esquirol, “the excommunicated, the sorcerers and the damned were seen everywhere; alarmed, the Church created tribunals, before which the devil was summoned to appear and the possessed were brought to judgment; scaffolds were erected, funeral pyres were lighted around stakes, and demonomaniacs, under the names of sorcerers and possessed, doubly the victims of prevailing errors, were burnt alive, after being tortured to make them renounce pretended compacts made with the Evil One. There was a jurisprudence against sorcery and magic as there were laws against theft and murder. The people, seeing the Church and Princes believing in the reality of these extravagances, were positively persuaded as to the existence of demons.”
No authority raised itself to protect these miserable possessed people; justice, philosophy, and science remained subjected to theology, becoming more and more the accomplices of an autocratic and ever-intolerant Church.
Among the magistrates, historians and publicists, who were the most ardent supporters of the Inquisition, we may mention J. Bodin, of Angers, who published, in 1581, a work entitled Demonomanie. He shows that the victims of demonomania enjoy perfect integrity of the mental faculties and are in every sense responsible, before Courts of Ecclesiastical Justice and Parliaments, for their impure relations with supernatural beings, and he logically concludes that all Demonomaniacs should be committed to the stakes and burnt alive. “Meantime,” says this amiable author, “we can deliver the possessed by exorcisms, and animals may be thus exorcised as well as men.” To the support of his thesis he then brings an immense collection of ridiculous stories, which are not supported by evidence. He says: “Those possessed by a demon can spit rags, hair, wood and nails from their mouths.” He cites the case of a possessed woman who had her chin turned towards her back, tongue pushed out of the mouth, a throat which furnished sounds analogous to the crowing of a crow, the chatter of a magpie and the song of the cuckoo. Finally, he pretends that the devil may speak through the mouth of the possessed and use all the idioms, known and unknown; that he can deflower young girls and give them voluptuous sensations, etc.
This work of J. Bodin is, in reality, the argument of a public prosecutor, presented with passion and prejudice, having all the erroneous arguments of the Inquisitors, so that the latter were more than satisfied at convincing the secular magistrates and fixing their jurisdiction as to the crime of sorcery. On the other hand, the same year that Bodin gave publicity to his inhuman side of the question, the Essays of Michel Montaigne appeared in Paris, in which this celebrated writer appealed to philosophy. He demanded that human life should be protected from fantastic accusations, and made that famous response to a Prince who showed him some sorcerers condemned to death: “In faith, I would rather prescribe hellebore than hemlock faggots, as they appear to be more insane than culpable.” Montaigne concluded one of his essays on this subject with the satirical remark: “It is placing a high valuation on human conjecture when we cook a man alive for an opinion.”
Meantime, Bodin had reasoned against Montaigne. But the one remained the ignorant prosecutor of the Middle Ages, while the other was an immortal philosopher, whom Colbert certainly quoted before presenting to Louis XIV. the famous edict of 1682, which forbade in the future “the cooking alive of sorcerers.”
Meantime, there was still a century to attain before one of the Prime Ministers of France put an end to all trials for sorcery, and during the intervening period there were other purveyors of the death penalty by the stake-burners of the Inquisition; among these were the celebrated Boguet, Criminal Judge of Bourgogne, and Pierre de l’Ancre, his colleague of Aquitanus, cited by Calmeil as the most fanatical judges of their day.
Boguet, in his Discours des Sorciers, wrote: “There were in France only three hundred thousand under King Charles IX., and they have since increased more than half as much again. The Germans prevent their growth by burning at the stake; the Swiss destroy whole villages at one time; in Lorraine the stranger may see thousands existing with but few executions. It is difficult to understand why France cannot purge itself of these creatures. These sorcerers walk around by thousands and multiply on earth like caterpillars in our gardens. I wish I could enforce punishment according to my ideas, for the earth would soon be purged of those possessed. For I fain would collect them all in one mass and burn them alive in a single bonfire.”
Pierre de l’Ancre, Councillor to the Parliament of Bordeaux, published in 1613 his Tableau de l’inconstance des mauvais anges et demons, and in 1622 his Incredulite et mecreance du sortilege pleinement convaincue. In these two works the author treats all questions regarding sorcery, and declares that in his capacity of judge he believes it a mistake to spare the life of any individual accused of magic, as he considers sorcerers as the enemies of morality and religion, and accuses them of having found means of “ravishing women even while they laid in the embraces of their husbands, thus forcing and violating the sacred oaths of marriage, for the victims are made adulterous even in the presence of their husbands, who remain motionless and dishonored without power to prevent; the women mute, enshrouded in a forced silence, invoking in vain the help of the husband against the sorcerer’s attack, and calling uselessly for aid; the husband charmed and unable to offer resistance, suffering his own dishonor with open eyes and helpless arms.