The displaying of supposed witchcraft

by John Webster

6. The last thing of this strange nature, that we shall instance in, is concerning the bleeding or cruentation of the bodies of those that have been murthered, I mean of such as have been murthered by prepense malice, and upon premeditated purpose; for the bodies of others that are killed by chance-medley, and by man-slaughter, we do not read nor find any examples, that ever their bodies did bleed. And though we have not been ocular witness of any such bleeding yet are there records of such accidents given us by many learned and credible authors that a man might almost be accounted an Infidel not to give credit to them, and that both of those that have bled when the murtherer hath not been present, and also of those that have bled the murtherer being present. And first of those bodies that have issued blood, when the murtherer was not by.

Hist. 6.

Append. de Cruent. Cadaver. p. 143.

Gregorius Horstius a Physician of great experience and learning, and of no less integrity, recordeth this story, thus Englished. “In the year of our Lord 1604. twenty sixth day of December, a young Nobleman of twenty five years old, was shot at with a Gun in the night time about nine a clock from an high window of an house, in the Town of Blindmarck in lower Austria, and the bullet entring his left breast went forth at his right side, and so forthwith died in the place. The dead body being viewed again, and the wound considered, the same quantity or bigness both of the entrance and out-going are found with great plenty of blood issuing. The following day being the twenty seventh of December in the morning, the body of the murthered young man hath other cloaths put upon it and so is kept quiet for the space of two days. Furthermore upon the thirtieth of December he is laid upon the Bier, and kept in the Church and that without any further motion, where nevertheless from the upper wound the fresh blood did daily flow, until the eighth of January 1605. from which time the Hemorrhage ceased. But again the thirteenth of February, about noon, the flux of blood by the lower wound for an hour or two was observed to issue, as though the slaughter had been newly done. In the mean time the habit of the whole body was such, as did most easily agree to what it was living, the colour of his face remained even unto his burial ruddy and florid, the vein appearing in his forehead filled with good blood: no sign of an incipient putrefaction appearing for so many weeks, no stink, or ungrateful odour, which otherwise doth accompany dead bodies within a few days, was here found at all: The fingers of the hands remained soft, moveable, or flexible, without any wast, the natural colour being not very much changed, except that in process of time, about the last week before burial, they begun in a certain manner to wax livid in the extremities.”

Hist. 7.

Ibid. p. 154.

7. This following he giveth to prove, that as cold constringeth and shuteth up the veins, so heat doth open them, and cause the blood to flow, and saith: “This is proved a few years since by experience in an infant slain by a most wicked Mother forthwith after it was born, and thrown from the Tower of a Noble Baron of upper Austria into a ditch that was full with water; which after five weeks by good fortune was found and taken out. And forthwith (he saith) the Mother not present, it being then not known who was the Mother, when it felt the force of the external air, it begun to distil forth very fresh blood, because the pores, which by reason of the cold, were shut that the blood could not flow, were then unlockt and opened by the heat of the ambient air.” And thus much of those that have bled, the murtherers not being present.

Hist. 8.

Observ. l. 2. fol. 202.

8. Next we shall give some examples of those that have bled when the murtherers have been brought into the presence of the body murthered or caused to touch it, and this Franciscus Valeriola doth attest with an ample faith that he himself saw: “When (he saith) James of Aqueria, a Senator of Arles, was found dead of a wound, & that he that gave that wound was apprehended by the Magistrate, and brought into the view of the dead body, that he might acknowledge the person murthered and confess the fact, by and by the bubbling blood, all the by-standers looking on, begun to come forth, with much fervour and bubbles, from the wound and the nostrils.”