Sorcery and witchcraft (to which, notwithstanding its title, Mr. Wright's book chiefly relates) was a more vulgar pursuit, and is a more difficult matter to determine. The true magician was a master over both the seen and the unseen world. His art could compel spirits or demons to obey him, however much against their will. It seems a question whether a spell of sufficient potency could not control Satan himself. The witch or wizard was a vulgar being, a mere slave of the Evil One, with no original power, very limited in derived power, and, it would appear, with no means of acting directly except upon the elements. The facts relating to witchcraft, being often matter of legal record, are more numerous and more correctly narrated than those relating to magic. The difficulty of fixing the exact boundary between truth and falsehood, guilt and innocence, in the case of witchcraft, is not so easily settled as the sciolist in liberal philosophy imagines. Of course we all know that men and women could not travel through the air on broomsticks, or cause storms, or afflict cattle. Their innocence of the intention is not always so certain: their power over a nervous or weakly person, especially in bad health, might really, through the influence of imagination, produce the death threatened, and the miserable patient might pine away as his real or supposed waxen image slowly melted before the fire. At a time when the belief in witchcraft was entertained by society in general, as well as by the majority of educated men, it is not likely that the persons who were generally accused of it were skeptical on the subject. Their innocence would lie, not in their disbelief of its power, but in their rejection of the practice. That an accusation of witchcraft was sometimes made from political, religious, or personal motives, is true; and numbers of innocent victims were sacrificed in times of public mania on the subject. The question is, whether many did not attempt unlawful arts in full belief of their efficacy; and whether some, a compound of the self-dupe and the impostor, did not make use of their reputed power to indulge in the grossest license and to perpetrate abominable crimes.
The great difficulty, however, is the confessions. In many cases, no doubt, the victims, worn down by terror and torture, said whatever their examiners seemed to wish them to say; in other cases, their statements were exaggerated by the reporters. Yet enough remains, after every deduction, to render witches' confessions a very curious mental problem. Was it vision, or monomania, or nervous delusion, all influenced by foregone conclusion? or was it, as the mesmerists seem to hold, an instance of clairvoyance in a high degree? The case of Gaufridi is of this puzzling nature. Gaufridi was a French priest of licentious character, who succeeded by the opportunities which his priestly influence gave him, or by some pretended supernatural arts. His crimes were discovered through the confession of one of his victims, a nun whom he had abused before profession. After a time, she appeared to be possessed; and, under treatment by a celebrated exorcist, (an inferior hand having failed,) she, or the demon in possession, among other things accused Gaufridi. Her revelations may be resolved into an imposture instigated by revenge, or a pious fraud caused by remorse, or hysterical fits, with utterance shaped by memory; but what can be said of Gaufridi's, made with a full knowledge of consequences?
"The priests who conducted this affair seem almost to have lost sight of Louis Gaufridi, in their anxiety to collect these important evidences of the true faith. It was not till towards the close of winter that the reputed wizard was again thought of. A warrant was then obtained against him, and he was taken into custody, and confined in the prison of the conciergerie at Marseilles. On the fifth of March he was for the first time confronted with sister Magdalen, but without producing the result anticipated by his persecutors. Little information is given as to the subsequent proceedings against him; but he appears to have been treated with great severity, and to have persevered in asserting his innocence. Sister Magdalen, or rather the demon within her, gave information of certain marks on his body which had been placed there by the Evil One; and on search they were found exactly as described. It is not to be wondered at, if, after the intercourse which had existed between them, sister Magdalen were able to give such information. Still Gaufridi continued unshaken, and he made no confession; until at length, on Easter Eve, the twenty-sixth of March, 1611, a full avowal of his guilt was drawn from him, we are not told through what means, by two Capuchins of the Convent of Aix, to which place he had been transferred for his trial. At the beginning of April, another witness, the Demoiselle Victoire de Courbier, came forward to depose that she had been bewitched by the renegade priest, who had obtained her love by his charms; and he made no objection to their adding this new incident to his confession.
"Gaufridi acknowledged the truth of all that had been said by sister Magdalen or by her demon. He said that an uncle, who had died many years ago, had left him his books, and that one day, about five or six years before his arrest on this accusation, he was looking them over, when he found amongst them a volume of magic, in which were some writings in French verse, accompanied with strange characters. His curiosity was excited, and he began to read it; when, to his great astonishment and consternation, the demon appeared in a human form, and said to him, 'What do you desire of me, for it is you who have called me?' Gaufridi was young, and easily tempted; and when he had recovered from his surprise and was reassured by the manner and conversation of his visitor, he replied to his offer, 'If you have power to give me what I desire, I ask for two things: first, that I shall prevail with all the women I like; secondly, that I shall be esteemed and honored above all the priests of this country, and enjoy the respect of men of wealth and honor.' We may see, perhaps, through these wishes, the reason why Gaufridi was persecuted by the rest of the clergy. The demon promised to grant him his desires, on condition that he would give up to him entirely his 'body, soul, and works;' to which Gaufridi agreed, excepting only from the latter the administration of the holy sacrament, to which he was bound by his vocation as a priest of the church.
"From this time Louis Gaufridi felt an extreme pleasure in reading the magical book, and it always had the effect of bringing the demon to attend upon him. At the end of two or three days the agreement was arranged and completed, and, it having been fairly written on parchment, the priest signed it with his blood. The tempter then told him, that whenever he breathed on maid or woman, provided his breath reached their nostrils, they would immediately become desperately in love with him. He soon made a trial of the demon's gift, and used it so copiously that, he became in a short time a general object of attraction to the women of the district. He said that he often amused himself with exciting their passions when he had no intention of requiting them, and he declared that he had already made more than a thousand victims.
"At length he took an extraordinary fancy to the young Magdalen de la Palude; but he found her difficult of approach, on account of the watchfulness of her mother, and he only overcame the difficulty by breathing on the mother before he seduced the daughter. He thus gained his purpose; took the girl to the cave in the manner she had already described, and became so much attached to her that he often repeated his charm on her, to make her more devoted in her love. Three days after their first visit to the cave, he gave her a familiar named Esmodes. Finding her now perfectly devoted to his will, he determined to marry her to Beelzebub, the prince of the demons; and she readily agreed to his proposal. He immediately called the demon prince, who appeared in the form of a handsome gentleman; and she then renounced her baptism and Christianity, signed the agreement with her blood, and received the demon's mark....
"The priest gave an account of the Sabbaths, at which he was a regular attendant. When he was ready to go—it was usually at night—he either went to the open window of his chamber, or left the chamber, locking the door, and proceeded into the open air. There Lucifer made his appearance, and took him in an instant to their place of meeting, where the orgies of the witches and sorcerers lasted usually from three to four hours. Gaufridi divided the victims of the Evil One into three classes: the masqués, (perhaps the novices,) the sorcerers, and the magicians. On arriving at the meeting, they all worshipped the demon according to their several ranks; the masqués falling flat on their faces, the sorcerers kneeling with their heads and bodies humbly bowed down, and the magicians, who stood highest in importance, only kneeling. After this they all went through the formality of denying God and the Saints. Then they had a diabolical service in burlesque of that of the church, at which the Evil One served as priest in a violet chasuble; the elevation of the demon host was announced by a wooden bell, and the sacrament itself was made of unleavened bread. The scenes which followed resembled those of other witch-meetings. Gaufridi acknowledged that he took Magdalen thither, and that he made her swallow magical 'characters' that were to increase her love to him; yet he proved unfaithful to her at these Sabbaths with a multitude of persons, and among the rest with 'a princess of Friesland.' The unhappy sorcerer confessed, among other things, that his demon was his constant companion, though generally invisible to all but himself; and that he only left him when he entered the church of the Capuchins to perform his religious duties, and then he waited for him outside the church door.
"Gaufridi was tried before the Court of Parliament of Provence at Aix. His confession, the declaration of the demons, the marks on his body, and other circumstances, left him no hope of mercy. Judgment was given against him on the last day of April, and the same day it was put in execution. He was burnt alive."
Narratives of Sorcery and Magic is a skilful and popular selection of stories or narratives relating to the subject, not a philosophic treatise. We are carried to France, Germany, England, Ireland, Scotland, Spain, and America, by turns. We have the most remarkable trials for witchcraft in these countries, as well as cases in which supernatural agency was only an incidental part,—as that of the Earl and Countess of Somerset, for the murder of Overbury.
By way of showing that Mr. Wright is by no means an indifferent story-teller, we may refer to the following legend: