“The sorcerers dance around the bed in an indecent manner, like at a Bacchanalian feast, accoupling adulterously in a diabolical fashion, committing execrable sodomies, blaspheming scandalously, taking insidious carnal revenges, perpetrating all manner of unnatural acts, brutalizing and denaturalizing all physical functions, holding frogs, vipers, and lizards, and other deadly animal poisons in their hands, making stinking smells, caressing with lascivious amorousness, giving themselves over to horrible and shameful orgies.”
Thus says the Prosecutor of the Council of Bordeaux, but he fails to support his statements by a single material fact, not even one individual case being proven. His trials show nothing but a few poor demented women, who responded always in the affirmative to the obscene and indecent questions of the judges and prosecutors employed by the Most Holy Inquisition.
A sad thing philosophy registers celebrated names during this Age. We mention only those of Rene Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Nicholas Malebranche, Thomas Hobbes, Francis Bacon, Leibnitz, and the immortal Newton. Unfortunately these great geniuses could not take part in the struggle between the clerical party and free thinkers. Honored as scholars, their Governments never asked their advice on questions claimed to be under the control of religious orders. The clergy had all the latitude they desired in writing the history of demonology, and also the evidence wrung from those accused of sorcery—vague responses drawn out by fear, by torture, by suggestion imposed in the obscurity of a penitential tabernacle. A witness of veracity, as we have before stated, never gave testimony as to the conduct of the sorcerers at the secret vigils. Their invocations on initiation, their famous inunctions used on the body, with magical ointments while in a condition of absolute nudity; their equestrian position on broom sticks; their flying tricks up the chimney and their bewitched reunions when horned devils rode on their shoulders, are legendary recitals which could only be accepted by ignorant fanatics and judges firm in the Faith. How a man with the seeming intelligence of Prosecutor Bodin, who was delegated by the State, who wrote six works on The Republic and The Constitution—works which have been compared in point of ability as ranking with Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Law; how a publicist of talent could support such stories as we have mentioned in his work on sorcery is a matter of profound amazement. Yet, Bodin testifies as to his faith in the story of that peasant of Touraine “who found himself naked, wandering around the fields in the morning,” and who gave as an explanation of his conduct that he had surprised his wife the night before as she was making preparations to go to a sorcerers’ vigil, and that he had followed his better half, accompanied by the Devil, as far as Bordeaux, many leagues away. Bodin also believed the narration of that girl from Lyons “whom the lover perceived rubbing herself with magical ointment preparatory to attending a sorcerers’ vigil; and the lover, using the same ointment, followed his girl and arrived at the vigil almost as soon as she.”
As to that poor peasant who was found naked and alone in the field and forced to denounce his wife to the authorities, Bodin remarks impressively, “The woman confessed and was condemned to be burnt at the stake.”
Pierre de l’Ancre was never able to prove his stories by sentinels, sergeants, guards, or policemen, as to the appearance of the demon he described in his Traite sur les demons; a spirit that showed itself as a large blood-hound or as a wild bull. It is true that in another part of his book he demonstrates the changeable character of his Devil, and gives the following description, which methinks is more worthy the pen of an insane man rather than that of a magistrate: “The Devil of the sabbat (vigil) is seated in a black chair, with a crown of black thorns, two horns at the side of the head and one in the forehead with which he gores the assemblage. The Devil has bristling hair, pale and troubled looking face, large round eyes widely opened, inflamed and hideous looking, a goatee, a crooked neck, the body of a man combined with that of a billy goat, hands like those of a human being, except that the nails are crooked and sharp pointed at the ends; the hands are curved backwards. The Devil has a tail like that of a jackass, with which, strange to say, he modestly covers his private parts. He has a frightful voice without melody; he preserves a strange and superb gravity, having the countenance of a person who is very melancholy and tired out from overwork.”
This was the spirit of the lieutenants of justice called on by the Inquisitorial clergy to fix the penalty for the crime of sorcery. “Sorcery being a crime,” say they with the spirit of conviction, “consented to between man and the Devil; the man bowing to adore Satan, and receiving in exchange a part of his infernal power.”
According to this compact, “The demon unites carnally with the sorcerer and female medium likewise; these unite themselves with Satan, denying God, Christ and the Virgin, and profaning all objects of sanctity by their profane presence.
“They become zealots for evil and render eternal homage to the Prince of Darkness.
“They are baptized by the Devil and dedicate to his service all children born to them by nature.
“They commit incests, poison people, and bewitch and work cattle to death.