[Picking up from page xxx of Vol. 1, M.B. has established his thesis: that there is a powerful spirit of good, and one of evil, and the latter causes or encourages much of the suffering in the world, though the genius of good keeps him on a leash; further, every culture of the world either explicitly or implicitly agrees with him, and common understanding is proof. Now he will spend 25 (!) pages on ghost stories and accounts of sorcery, fully another 60 pages of preamble, which did, originally, begin with “I’ll be brief.” These are  written in a style that is quite reminiscent of De Plancy’s Dictionairre Infernal and Infernal Legends, disconnected snippets of well-known lore. I’ve never enjoyed jumping around a text to track down footnotes, so I’ve included them in line with the text. There wasn’t much of a narrative flow to interrupt, may I be forgiven.

M.B. does attribute most of these, but frequently transliterating names and abbreviating works, I’ve attempted to build on his citations here.] 

Secure in this, let us look to the testimony of men of the past, who witnessed the effects of that evil spirit and the consequences of sharing in its infernal work—though I don’t think I need to dwell on the consequences overmuch. Pardon if I don’t quote the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, where pharaoh’s magi wrangled with Moses [Exodus 7:11], the sorceress invoking the shade of Samuel [the “Witch of Endor,” 1 Samuel 28], Simon Magus floating in the air before a gathered crowd [Acts 8.9]. Church history is full of pacts, magic, and other such chilling things. While I could quote the entirety of those books, let me instead quote from more secular sources.

Horace in his works often mentioned the sorceress Canidia, summoner of manes, opener of tombs, who filled the room with howling dogs and illusions of strange, frightful realms. Have you read the enchantment and magic in Virgil’s eighth eclogue, of Daphne blinded by infernal rituals and bewitched with a love charm? Or of the filthy beasts whose howls pierce the night, the statues dripping with sweat, battles in the air, prophecies of royal deaths, in his Georgics? And finally how the universe was filled with evil spirits and magicians screaming of the dooms they would bring? Livy, Tacitus, Suetonius, and so on, each century brings more evidence.

[References to the sorceress Canidia, a typically grotesque and animalistic witch figure; Wiki’s discussion of Virgil’s eighth eclogue, “The Sorceress;” Book 2 of “Georgics” concerns animal sacrifice and Book 4 contains Orpheus and Eurydice (wiki)]

You wouldn’t think of questioning Julian the Apostate, a Roman prince of such intellect and elegance he had freed himself from prejudice. True, he made sacrifices at the feasts of his new gods, and had something of the constancy and values of a great man but the weaknesses of a strong mind. His hatred of Christianity led him into the mysteries of the pagans, and he went down into their cave for initiation. The magician-priest evoked his patron spirit, and it manifested before Julian’s eyes. As a childhood reflex born of fear he made the sign of the cross, and the spirit vanished…only to return when Julian laughed away his actions as a lapse into a childish faith.

[Emperor Julian (331-363) was the last non-Christian Roman emperor, known for working against the influence of the Christian religion, though he was a Christian until he converted to paganism around age 20]

What trades with dark powers were made by the Druids of the Gauls, the Breton Bards, the Scandinavian priests who offered human victims to their ferocious gods? In the thick darkness of their circles and woods inaccessible to the unbeliever, their hands reddened with the blood of their victim’s still-beating heart, what terrible oaths did they call? What bargains did they strike for themselves, and for the believers in their care?

And finally, those people who still believe that men traffic with evil spirits…the people of Norway, China, Europe, the Caribbean, Asia…the dark people of the Sahara desert…All the people of the earth believed and yet still believe, that men still consort with these entities. It’s right there in the Histoire générale des voyages and in the work of Don Calmet. 

[L’Histoire générale des voyages ou Nouvelle collection de toutes les relations de voyages par mer et par terre, qui ont été publiées jusqu’à présent dans les différentes langues de toutes les nations connues (The General history of Travel or New Collection of All Travel Reports by Sea and Land, Which Have Been Published Until Now in the Different Languages of All Known Nations, Abbot Antoine François Prévost, a work as ambitious as its name published in 15 volumes between 1744 and 1747 (wiki),  Dom Antoine Augustine Calmet (1762-1757), an abbot and professor of theology, wrote several texts on ghosts, the supernatural, and sacred history.]

This, my proof. Now to support my evidence, my sources: the words of the most trusted sacred and profane authors, to show how many of the world’s people are given over to infernal spirits.

Leviticus 20: “That the man or the woman who communicates with spirits must be put to death. You must stone them, and their blood will be on your head”. And, “I will set my face against anyone who turns to mediums and spiritualists to prostitute themselves by following them, and I will cut them off from their people.”

Exodus 22, “Do not let diviners live.”

Deuteronomy 28: So that the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his eye shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife of his bosom.

Paul’s letter to the Galatians 3: “O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth…?”

First Peter 5: “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”

According to Pliny the Elder, in book 7 of Natural History, assures us that some men of African descent can charm and enchant, and can probably kill sheep, trees, and children. And Aulus Gellius backs this up with quotes from Proconesius, Isigone of Nicea, Cresias Onisecritus, Polystephanes and Hegesias.

[Gaius Plinius Secundus (23-79), AKA Pliny the Elder, a military officer turned author, wrote extensively on military history and natural history, collecting much of the world’s current knowledge into what could be considered the first encyclopedia, heavily mixing fact and myth. Aulus Gellius (125-180?) was a grammarian and author, who likely preserved many older writings in his chaotic compilations.]

According to Apuleius, “the diabolical enchantments have enough force to make not only miracles by means of men, but also to upset nature, to stop the course of rivers, to change the direction of storms, to obscure the sun and the moon, lengthen the days and shorten the night.”

[Apuleius (124-170?) writer, and philosopher, best known for his novel, Metamorphoses.]

Tibullus says this of a sorceress:  “I saw her bring down the constellations from the sky, change by her witchcraft the course of the fastest river, open the earth, call the dead from the tombs, and even call them down from the gallows. At her voice, the light of the sky darkens, and the snow falls in the middle of the heat wave.”

[Albius Tibullus (55-19 BC), poet and writer. Including known poets and fantasists in one’s rhetorical proof seems like bad form, but M.B.’s thesis is that we share ideas across cultures, not that these ideas are scientifically provable.] 

Both Plato and Cicero said that Gyges had a ring which made him invisible or visible, depending on which way he turned his hand. 

[Cicero, De Officiis, Book 3; Plato, Republic, Book 2]

The Duke of Orleans, wanting to wipe out the royal family for their crimes, asked an apostate monk to enchant his sword and ring. To this end a crone invoked the demon in the tower of Monschau, near Ligni. Then the Duke used his magic to drive  King Charles, his brother, slowly mad, so that no one noticed the subtle change at first.  The first enchantment took place near Beauvais; he suffered a fit so  violent that he tore his hair and nails. The second enchantment took place in Maine, and was even more violent: no one could tell whether the king was alive or not, he was barely breathing.  As soon as he came to himself, he said “I beg you, take away this sword which pierces my body by the power of my brother from Orleans.”

[M.B. cites this as “Platina, Naucler,  Pierre de Prémontré, the cardinal of Benon,  the Chronicle of Brother Martin, Dominican.” More specific information welcome…]

It was said that the French Pope Silvestre II, called Gilbert, claimed the papacy by magical means. In his youth, he was a monk in Orleans,  but soon left to follow the devil and gave himself completely to him. He came to Seville, in Spain, and begin his studies with a Saracen philosopher, skilled in magic. The philosopher had a book of necromancy which Gilbert wanted to steal for himself, and convinced the philosopher’s servant to entrust it to him. Thanks to the book, Gilbert was soon the Archbishop of Riems, then Ravennes, and in 997, became the pontiff, though after his death he would belong to the devil. Although he concealed his knowledge of magic, he had a brass head which he would ask questions of. One day, he asked the head how long he would be the sovereign potiff, and through the bronze head the devil answered him with typical ambiguity: “You will live a long time if you do not touch Jerusalem. But on the tenth day of his fourth year as pope, he was seized with a terrible fever while saying mass in Rome, in the Basilica of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem. He knew that his death approached and soon he would hear the howls of demons, and repented, making a public confession of his sins, begging his assistants to tear out his tongue and cut away the hands he had used to make sacrifice to the demons, and died repentant.

[apparently this story comes from “Contra Gregorium VII et Urbanum II,” according to Nancy Marie Brown]

In the year 1568, The Prince of Orange took a Spanish prisoner in the diocese of Juliers, near the passage of the Meuse, and condemned him to die.  The prince’s soldiers tied him to a tree, and tried to kill him with rifles and arrows, but they failed in their attempt. Astonished by this miracle, the soldiers stripped the prisoner to see if he was wearign armor, but they only found an amulet bearing the head of a lamb. When they took it from him, the next shot killed the man.

[M.B. cites, “Thyreus, parl.  3, Avail.  of Dæmoniacis, cap.  45, 1. ex Molant.  v”. Likely Peter Thyraeus (1546-1601), who wrote several books on exorcism and spirit phenomena.]

“Jean de Ban saw Bernard Bloquet touring the countryside in a two-horse chariot, remembered a string of insults Bernard had thrown at him, and cast a spell at him. Hardly had he finished than Bernard fell from his car and died, without a single wound – surely a demon took his life.

[M.B.: “Remigius, lib. 10, cap. 10.” Likely Remigius of Auxerre (841-908)]

Jacob Cujas:  “They prick with needles, or they melt in fire an image of a man, and without any delay those who represent the images are attacked with consumption or are struck with death.”

[M.B.: “de Malefiet Math.”]

From Carichterus, who saw it with his own eyes: “They form a wax figure which they prick with a thorn or a piece of oak cut to a point, and place this figure by a door where the one in whose image it was made would pass through. He feels the keenest pains, like nails, needles, thorns coming out of his body, accompanied by pus.”

[M.B.: “a CARICHTERUS in Cardituci, tom.  I, p.  487” ]

Jacob Sprenger, Dominican, “The brothers of the convent report that they know an old woman who not only cursed three consecutive abbots, but even killed them. The fourth she drove mad.  As she tells everyone who will listen,  ‘They will never be able to stop themselves from loving me, because they have eaten as much of my dung as I am showing you now. We still have no solution to this problem.”

[M.B.: “Mall.  Malef., P.  1, quæst.  7”. One of many quotes from Jacob Sprenger (1436-1495), promoter and possibly co-author of the Malleus Malificarum.]

Saint Jerome  relates the story of a virgin, consecrated to God, whom a young man had come to win by magical means. 

Eusebe of Césaréc said that the poet Lucretia, having taken a love potion, conceived such a rage that she killed herself.

Jean Weir Gravianus: “I had been treating a young girl of about 16. She began to vomit an instant after I’d touched her. Examining  her mouth carefully, I found a coarse black flap stretched over her tongue;  When I touched it, I found a number of strange objects;I touched it to see if it had come from her stomach. Her father said she had brought forth other, similar items. He showed me cloth, threaded needles, bits of iron nails, the cloth barely moistened  with a little saliva. She had only recently had lunch, and the rag should have been soaked with saliva and bile. The girl fell into terrible convulsions; them the evidence, that is the cloth,  threaded needles, and fragments of iron nails;  the cloth was barely moistened with a little saliva.  It was around three in the afternoon, and she had dined in her usual way.  If the rag had been in her stomach it would have been soaked with saliva and bile. The young girl fell into terrible convulsions, which, the father said, only the sign of the cross could end.

[Unsure of “Gravianus” in attribution, but this is almost certainly Johann Weyer (1515-1588), German physician, grandfather of psychiatric medicine, and unwitting occultist. Likely from De Praestigiis Daemonum et Incantationibus ac Venificiis.] 

Vincent de Guillerin: “Around the 11th century, there was a woman in an English town who was very involved with magic. As she took dinner, her beloved crow croaked at her, I don’t know what it said. The lady paled, her knife fell from her hands, and she sighed, “today I will learn of a great misfortune.” Scarcely had she finished uttering the words when she was told her son and all his family had died suddenly. Struck with the deepest pain, she called her remaining children, and asked that a monk or nun witness her confession: ‘Up to this day I have given myself to a demon for magic and a  happy, charmed life. I am a monster, a woman full of sins, and I have no other hope than in your religion, because I know demons will claim me to punish me for my crimes.  I beg you, on the body of my mother, to relieve my torments, because I know that I’m condemned. When I die, wrap my body in a deer’s skin, in a stone chest wrapped thrice in chains. If for three nights I am quiet, bury me on the fourth, and sing psalms and masses for me for fifty days…although I fear that the earth will not take my body.”

Her children tried to fulfill her wishes, but they could not for the first two nights, while the priests sang psalms, the demons lifted the doors of the temple as if they were straw, and carried away her chains. On the third night, towards the rooster’s crow,  the whole monastery felt as though it was shaken by the demons surrounding the building. The most terrible of the demons, colossal in size, smashed the doors and loudly called for the body, calling the dead woman by name, and ordered her to come to them. ‘I cannot,’ replied the corpse, ‘I am bound.’ ‘You are going to be unbound,’ the devil told her,  breaking her chains and uncovering the lid of her casket with a kick, dragging her toward the doors of the temple.  At the door there was a black horse, covered with iron hooks, neighing proudly.  The unfortunate woman was placed on his back, and she disappeared from the eyes of those present, though  you could hear her cries in the distance.”

[M.B.: “Spec.  Ilist.  , lib.  26″]

In Wirtemberg, a witch was going to be punished for her sorcery, along with her accomplices. She was about to say a farewell to her husband, but left a memento on his body, striking his back and saying a few words in German.  At first the husband took this to be a gesture of love,, but not for long: the mark of her hand swelled, giving him the most excruciating pains, pains which were felt above all when the moon changed.

[M.B.: “David Mederus”]

Delrio relates the following fact: “In the diocese of Trier, a peasant was planting cabbages with his eight-year-old daughter, and praised her for her skill in carrying out this small duty.  With the careless talk of a little girl, she replied, ‘Oh! I have many more astonishing skills than this one.’  The father asks her what they were. ‘Leave me alone for a bit,’ she said to him, ‘and I will let the rain fall on whatever part of garden you wish.’  The father went back to gardening, then went for a rest. The little girl made a hole in the earth, sprinkled her urine there, mixed it with the earth with a stick, said a few words, and the rain fell in torrents on the garden.  ‘Where did you learn that?’  cried the stunned peasant.  ‘From my mother, who is very skilled in this art.’ The peasant, full of religious zeal,  put his daughter and his wife in a cart, brought them to the city, and delivered them to justice.

[M.B.: “DELRIO, lib.  2, D. M., quæst.  11” Likely Martin Delrio (1551-1608), Magical Investigations. Wiki suggests that Delrio largely repurposed material from the Malleus Maleficarum, and that this work was something of a historical project.]

Kornmann: Magicians can render newlyweds impotent by cursing them with a needle used to sew the shroud of a corpse, but this trick should not be written down, for fear that others will learn this magic. 

[Possibly Heinrich Kornmann (?-1627), De Miraculis Vivorium Sue De Varia Natura, a German lawyer who often wrote about the supernatural.] 

Antonius Benivenius:  A sixteen-year-old girl was suffering an aching stomach, and was tearing at her belly, uttering horrible cries. Her belly suddenly swelled and it looked like she was eight months pregnant.  When she could no longer scream, she would fall back on her bed, bending to touch her feet with her head. She would sit up, fall and get up again, over and over again until she came to her senses, and didn’t seem to remember these fits.

We thought that her illness came from the gasses of the stomach rising towards her heart and head.  But treatments didn’t help; the patient became more disturbed and intractable, and had a haggard look. She later vomited up long curved nails, copper needles, and horse hair, and finally, after eating her lunch, a mass of such size that no throat could have swallowed it…something she did many times. I thought that she was possessed by the demon, which became evident when we gave her to the church’s medics, as she began to speak prophecies and other such actions well beyond the realm of disease and human intelligence.

[Antonio Benivieni (1443-1502), De Abditis Morborum Causis.  Benivieni was a skilled physician who pioneered the autopsy, considered the founder of pathology, which shows in the details of this snippet.]

“Meirner Clatz, gentleman of Hontembrouch, in the Duchy of Juliers, had a servant named William. This man was possessed by demon for fourteen years, at first it was thought that he had a disease. At the demon’s suggestion, William confessed his sins to a pastor.. This priest, Bartholomew Panen from Gerac, was paid to drive out the devil, but in this regard was something of a hypocrite in this regard. During his confession William grew pale and his throat swelled, and it seemed like he would suffocate. Clatz’s pious wife and her family began to recite the prayer of Judith. Immediately, William began to vomit up all sorts of debris: his belt, stones, thread, needles, girls’ headdresses, peacock feathers, buttons. The peacock feathers William had torn from the bird some eight days before. When asked what caused this attack, William replied that he had met a strange woman on the road who breathed on his face, and all his pain came from that moment. Later, when he was well again, he took this story back and said that the demon had forced him to make this confession, and that none of the the strange items were in his stomach, but the demon had produced them from his mouth.” [Johann Weyer]

“In our time a judge had burned a group of women as witches, after a magician had pointed them out. Later this magician came to the judge to tell him that he had found another guilty woman, and would point her out to the judge if he would not become angry. This woman turned out to be the judge’s own wife, and to prove this, the magician gave him the time and place for the witches’ sabbat, where the judge would find his wife. At the appointed hour the judge excused himself from dinner and asked his guests to stay with his wife, and stay until he returned. At the sabbat the judge saw a choir of witches, I know not what strange orgies he saw. When he returned his guest and wife were still there,  and the guests said that his wife had not left her place. The judge realized his error, and how many innocent women he’d killed, he sentenced the magician to death.” [M.B: “Gravanius, Idem, lib.  5, cap.  10”. Johann Weyer.]

Gravanius:  “In Horn County, some nuns were tormented by an evil spirit.  They were  bewitched by a poor woman who, in Lent, had borrowed from them three pounds of salt, and had given them back double on Easter Day.  Since that time strange white globules had been found in the convent,  resembling seeds encrusted in sugar, but tasting of salt. We could not guess how these objects had arrived in these places. Sometimes we thought we heard the sound of a person moaning, and we often heard a voice who called to the sisters, begging them to accompany him to the window, but the sisters found no one there.  Sometimes they felt torn from their bed and carried a few steps away, where their feet were tickled so intensely that they feared dying from laughing.  Others were mutilated, their arms and legs twisted,  arms and faces wounded.  Some who were injured took only beetroot juice for fifty days to aid their recovery, but still  vomited vast quantities of a liquid black as ink, so bitter it washed away the tissues of the palate. One day when thirteen friends of the convent came to visit and console them, they fell speechless and unconscious, most stretched out, arms and legs paralyzed.  Another felt herself being lifted in the air, and though her friends tried to restrain her, she nevertheless passed over their head and fell again as though dead.  Some of them crawled on their knees, their feet not touching the ground;  they climbed trees like cats, and descended in the same position. The woman who had bewitched them was delivered to justice, though she did not make a confession even in the face of the most dreadful torments. [M.B.: “GRAVIANUS, Idem, lib.  3, cap.  8.” Johann Weyer.]

Saint Augustine: “All the arts related to magic have their origin in a horrible pact made between humans and demons.”

[M.B.: “lib.  1, dc Doct.  Christ”. Probably On Christian Doctrine but I haven’t yet found this reference, outside of blog posts that don’t cite the source.] 

Saint Thomas: Children who are the product of the intercourse of a woman and a demon are more powerful than other men.
[M.B.: “Sen., 2, dist., Art.  4”. Thomas Aquinas? ]

“One of our inquisitors, having encountered a town which had become almost emptied as their men had mysteriously died,  learned that this scourge was attributed to the power of a buried woman who was gradually swallowing the funeral shroud in which she was wrapped.  He was also told that the town’s deaths would not cease until the dead woman had swallowed the whole sheet.  The inquisition assembled all the council, and with the help of the city’s mayor had the tomb dug up. Half the shroud, they found, was already swallowed and digested. At this sight one of them drew his sword, cut off the head of the corpse, threw it out of the tomb, and the plague then subsided.  After an investigation it was discovered that this woman had for much of her life made use of magic  and spells.” [Sprenger, MM, 1.15]

“A man noticed that his wife had not wanted a midwife during childbirth, and instead had apparently been alone in her room. His daughter hid herself away and learned of the wife’s sacrilege, the pact she had made with the devil in the name of her son. She saw the child suspended in the air by the devil, taking him for an invisible walk. 

“The father, terrified of what they had learned, insisted that the child be baptized immediately, and took it to the church in the neighboring village. When the party crossed over a bridge over a river, the father drew his sword on his daughter, saying “The child will cross the bridge alone, or go into the river.” The rest of the party thought he had gone mad, except for two men who had come with him. He continued, “Monster, you could suspend this child in the air by magic. Now let him cross the bridge alone, or I will drown you. The daughter placed the child on the bridge, called out to the devil and the infant was transported to the other side. Knowing now that his daughter was the source of the enchantments, the father delivered her to the local authorities.”  [Sprenger]

“A married woman, from an honest family, made the following testimony during some legal formalities: ‘I have a square of green along one side of my property, a side shared by a neighbor. One day I was crossing from her garden to mine, she pursued me, insulting and cursing me, accusing me of damaging her garden. I was frightened because of her reputation, but said that my footprints must have drawn attention to damage that had been done earlier. The woman saw that I didn’t wish to argue with her, and went away, whispering to herself. A few days later, I was seized with terrible pain, as if my lungs were cut by knives, and I bothered my neighbors day and night with my cries. A friend of this bad woman came to see me and said that my pain had been caused by a spell, and he would investigate it. He came back the next day, melted lead and poured it into a saucer held over my body, and by the shapes it formed learned that the spell was under my door. My husband and the potter ran to the door and dug there, finding wax images crossed by needles, grains, seeds, and other objects. They threw them into the fire, and I immediately recovered my health.” [Sprenger]

“A judge once asked a sorcerer on trial how they could call up thunderstorms and tempests. The sorcerer said it was easy for them to make hail fall, but the power of the good angels stopped them from making it as harmful as they would like, and that they could only harm people who were deprived of the help of heaven or not marked with the sign of the cross. They would ask the prince of demons to send one of his own to smite the person they indicated, and then burn a black chicken at a crossroad and throw it into the air. Then the demon would accept the sacrifice and stir up the wind and hail, though not always in the places they wished, as the Most High would often oppose their work.”[Sprenger, 2.1.15]

“In Rome, in the days of Emperor Henry III, a rich young man of noble birth, after his wedding, held a feast. After the meal, the friends get together to play a game of hand-tennis.  The young husband takes off his ring, for fear of losing it in the game, and  places it on the finger of a statue of Venus which was there. When he was tired he went to retrieve his ring, but he could not remove it from the statue’s closed hand. He returned to his friends, not mentioning the incident. Later that night he came back with a servant, but found the hand open again, without his ring. When he came to his wife, he could not hold her or even see her, it was like trying to embrace a cloud…but he heard a voice saying “come with me, you gave me your ring, I am venus.” He did not tell anyone about this strange event. For days he could not sleep, his mind filled with chaotic thoughts, and still could not be with his wife…although he seemed well enough to go to affairs of state and to war.

Finally, at his wife’s wish, he reported everything to his parents, and they took him to a priest who was also a magician, wise in necromancy, addicted to magic. He agreed to help them, composing a letter which he gave to the young man, telling him to go to a crossroad and see what was there. There he saw men and women of all ages and conditions pass before him, some sad, others joyful. After the crowd came a man on a chariot, taller than the others. To this man, the magician had told him to give the letter. The husband did so, and the tall young man opened the letter, and called to heaven, ‘Almighty God, how long will you allow the priest Palumbus to enjoy his life?” He dispatched a servant to reclaim the ring from the statue of Venus, and the newlyweds could enjoy the pleasures of their marriage.  But the priest Palunubus, having learned of the demon’s invocation, knew his life was coming to an end, confessed his crimes to Rome and did penance.

[Vincent of Beauvais, 1194-1264, likely from his massive Speculum Maius (Great Mirror), a 3-million-word, 80-book, 9885-chapter encyclopedia ordered by scripture. An amazing “all medieval knowledge” work. “Hand-Tennis,” or jeu de paume, looks like ping pong played in a full-sized indoor court. Delightful.]

“An abbot and Pricinski, the ambassador to France, once told me the true story of one of the greatest kings of the Christian world. Wanting to know how he would die, this king brought in a Jacobite priest known for necromancy.  After mass and the communion, this priest brought forth the head of a ten-year-old girl, prepared for this purpose.  He placed this in front of the host, uttered a few words, drew some symbols best not described, and asked her to speak.  The head replied: “I am being violated.”  Furious, the king cried out, “Take this head away from me,” and he died in a fit of rage.”

[Likely Jean Bodin, On the Demon-Mania of Witches, 1580]

A jew came to an old woman in the city and asked her for mother’s milk, promising a reward if she brought him any.   The old woman mentioned this to her friends, and with them made a plan to deceive the Jew. She had a nursing sow: she milked it, and carried the milk to the Jew.  As he began his magical charm he heard a growl and noticed the deception.  However, all the pigs in the neighborhood perished.

[M.B. attributes…I believe…Joachim Camerarius (1500-1574), De Natura et Affectionibus Daemonorum, and Johann Christian Frommann (1640?), “Tractacus de fascinatione novus et singularis….”]

“A plowman who was chopping wood one day hit a medium-sized cat. A larger one came and bit his leg. He chased them away with a piece of wood. An hour later a judge called for the plowman, putting him in prison for the mistreatment of three ladies of the town…though the astonished plowman said he had only threatened some cats. The judge released him, because it was clear that the devil alone was the guilty party in the case.” [Sprenger, 1.1.9]

“In the year 1549, seven magicians from the city of Nantes declared that, within an hour, they would make known all that was happening around the city, within ten thousand paces.  They fell into a deathlike trance. When they returned to their senses,  they revealed all that had been done in the city of Nantes and beyond, as if they had seen the events themselves.”

[M.B. attributes “Majol, colloq. 3, p. 213”. Any suggestions appreciated. ]

‘“We have learned from eyewitnesses that a noble girl, beautiful but unchaste, was found pregnant.  The parents looked for the villian who had raped their daughter.  She informed them that night and day a handsome young man came to sleep with her, though she never saw him enter. The parents doubted her words, and so set a servant to wait for the young man, and then took up torches to catch the man by surprise. 

They saw instead a horrible monster in their daughter’s arms. The neighbors came to their aid, and brought with them a priest, wise and without sin, instructed in the holy scriptures.   the priest read from the gospel of St. John, and when he spoke  “Et Verbum caro faetum est,”…And the word became flesh and dwelt among us… the demon burst through the roof of the room, burning the furniture, and fled screaming into the night. Three days later the young girl gave birth to a hideous monster such as Scotland had never seen before, and the midwives burned the creature to spare the honor of the family.Rémy

[Hector Boece (1465-1536), History of the Scottish People. Likely also Gerolamo Cardano (1501-1574), De Subtilitate & Varietate Rerum]

Nauppius, 1565: “In the town of Schmin, under Lord Vratislas de Berstem, a woman gave birth to a child of the demon. This creature had neither feet nor head, and instead had a kind of mouth on its chest to the left side of the shoulder, and a kind of ear on the right side;  instead of fingers he had sticky pads like those of some tree frogs, his whole body was dark and liver-colored, and trembled like jelly. When the mother moved to pick him up, he uttered a horrible cry.  

The creature was buried in the part of the cemetery left for unbaptized children.  However, the mother would often ask that the creature be taken from the earth and burnt, so that not a trace of it was left. She confessed that a demon would sometimes take the form of her husband, and had often had dealings with her, and that consequently it was necessary to give the demon what was his own. For fear of this demon she asked for guards and friends to stay at her house.   Finally, by order of Lord Vratislas, they dug up the monster, put it on the wheel, and gave it to the executioner to burn it outside the walls of the village.  No amount of burning wood could consume the body, even its wrappings remained wet and could not be burned, until the executioner broke the body into pieces, and succeeded at last in burning it on the Friday after the Feast of the Ascension. 

[M.B. attributes “D.N. Nauppius, Biblioth. Portat. Pract. Loc.  p 454, 1565.” Any reference to this author is pretty consistently from a reference to Berbiguier’s work. This may be a reference lifted from an encyclopedia.]

“While I was in Mainz, in Treves, I saw a well-known witch tortured to death, having taken all the milk of the cows in the neighborhood, and keeping it in a vase on her wall.” [Delrio]

“At night, the witches would sit in a corner of their house, holding a vase between their legs; they place a knife, or some other instrument, in the wall or column. At the same time they reach out as if to milk a cow, and invoke the devil who works with them to milk this or that cow, the one that appears the fattest and most supplied with milk. The demon squeezes the cow’s udders and carries the milk back to the witch.” [Sprenger 2.1.14]

At Montpellier a famous physician saw a magician stretched out on the tomb of a woman, buried just the night before, who cut off the corpse’s leg and devoured it with his own teeth.

[Possibly Guillaume Rondelet (1507-1566), Rondelet was a professor of medicine at Montpellier, so this seems like a safe bet.]

“It cannot be denied that demon-possessed men can endure a long fast; the demon secretly provides them with food, or otherwise preserves their strength.”

[Likely Daniel Sennert (1572-1637), physician and academic writer, which fits the tone of this quotation.]

“A German sorcerer had only to look at the muzzle of a gun or cannon to stop the effect of the powder.”

[M.B. attributes “Trendius, quaest 134, ex Boissard de Magiae”]

“In the year 1589, a young man who had been sending and receiving gifts and love letters for some time fell in a sort of stupor, and vomited all kinds of garbage, woman’s hair,  wool, flax, silk, hair pins and sewing needles, fingernails, bits of bone, iron and blood.  An unknown voice told him that his minions were looking for the chest that contained his love letters. He would have swallowed the key to the chest if his hand hadn’t been stayed, so he hid the key secretly under his pillow…and was struck blind. HIs mother warned him to return the key, if it had hurt him. We did not find the key, but later found the chest and broke it open. We burned the two love letters we found therein, and quickly he regained his sight, and the key became visible to those looking for it, to the amazement of all.”

[M.B. attributes “Jordanus, de Divin, cap 23.” Possibly Divinity and morality in robes of poetry composed for the recreations of the courteous and ingenius by the author Tho. Jordan, 1660, but I can’t prove a connection here.]

Schottus relates the following fact which he witnessed in his childhood, and which he heard told to his elders: “Two companions were coming out of one town, armed with a sword, and carrying the tools and supplies for their work.  One of them, who had drunk too much, attacked the other when he complained about being seen with a drunkard. But after taking a blow to the head and beginning to bleed, he struck back and pierced the unfortunate drunkard right through. He went into a nearby door. Among the workers inside was the very wife of the deceased. Later, when she was taking care of her husband’s body, the murderer, who had continued on his way, felt himself seized by an invisible hand and pulled to the magistrate. 

[Gaspar Schott (1608-1666), Magia universalis naturæ et artis]

“An undertaker, instructed by a demon, cut off the head of a corpse that had not yet decayed, and hung it between two windows in his house.  He opened the corpse’s head and poured into it blood drawn from the leg of a corpse, mother’s milk which he had himself squeezed from the breasts of two women he had lain with, and mixed it together in the devil’s name.  When he needed to cause more death, he heated the body’s head until it sweated, and spun it around in a sling. Every drop that fell was another death and another burial.”

[Benedikt Carpzov, Jr. (1595-1666), Practica Rerum Criminalium, a book which promoted torture to extract confessions from accused witches.]

Two men came to the inn in Laon late at night, saying they were very tired.  After supper they refused to go to bed, but instead demanded that they be allowed to sleep in the kitchen, until the innkeeper gave in. One of the inn’s servants, not a fan of these foreign visitors, peeked through the keyhole to see what they were up to. They pulled a corpse’s hand from a sack, anointing its fingers with fat, and lighting them on fire…all the fingers caught fire except one. The magician-thieves couldn’t work out why the last finger wouldn’t burn. “What does it matter if there’s still one person awake?” So they planted the hand on the fireplace, like a candle with four branches, and went to call for their comrades. The servant closed the house’s doors, and ran to her master’s bed to wake them, but couldn’t shake him out of his deep sleep. The thieves tried to come through a window, but the maid stopped them. She remembered the strange four-fingered candle and thought it might be the source of the deep sleep, and doused its light entirely. Her master woke, heard her cries, and chased the criminals away. A few days later, they were caught and confessed their crimes. [Delrio]

“It’s a well-known fact  that there are two groups of demons, the Sylvans and the Pans (and called “Dusii” by the Gauls), more commonly called Incubi. They are dangerous to women and avidly seek them out to sleep with them. This happens so often, it would be foolishness to deny that it is so.” 

[Augustin, De civitate Dei, 15.23. The passage is ambivilant on whether or not incubi “mingle with women sensually,” although he is firm in that angels would have never done such a thing.] 

 “Marie, the wife of the shoemaker Jean of Metzer-Esch, told us that Jeanette, wife of Sonnius Mathieu, had recently aborted her unborn child. She hid the fetus in a corner of the house, but some witches found it by smell and dug it up to make an ointment out of it. Without knowing what it was, Jeanette dipped her broom into it one day, and immediately felt herself lifted up into the air and transported to Bruch. The witches confessed the event before a judge.”  

[Nicholas Rémy (1530-1616), Daemonolatreiae libri tres. A judge in Paris who claimed to have sentenced 900 people to death as witches. This seems to be an unfortunately common thread in M.B.’s sources. Remy seems to have a bit of an afterlife in pop culture, appearing in the 1987 TV series Werewolf and in the 1999 movie, The Ninth Gate.]

“A witch was questioned on the ways in which ske killed children: “We are looking for your unbaptized children, and baptized ones that are not marked with the sign of the cross. We kill them for our ceremonies, When they’re dead and buried, we lift them from the tomb and boil them in a cauldron, to make a liquor which none can drink without becoming a member of our coven.” [Sprenger]

From the Dictionary of Medical Materials, currently in print, in an article titled “Cauchemare,” an event that happened to an entire French regiment during the wars in Italy, witnessed by surgeons and doctors:  an abandoned church was used to quarter a whole regiment. The locals warned them at midnight one of theirs had felt a feeling of suffocation, and saw a large dog passing over his body. The soldiers went to bed after laughing about the story. At midnight, all the soldiers experience a feeling of oppression and suffocation, and each sees a dog pass over their chests. When it disappeared, they were able to return to their senses. They reported the story to their officer, who had the same phantom experience the following night.

[I’ve flipped through the Dictionnaire raisonné-universel de matiere médicale, 1823 edition, and can’t find an article on “Cauchemare” (nightmares)]

Salgues, in an essay on Prejudice, says, “There was evidence that a shepherd had cast a spell that had taken someone’s life. He was dragged to court, and we spent a long time looking for the instruments of his magic. The shepherd was quiet, until suddenly he exclaimed “Ah! I’m going to die!” His life had been attached to a pot in a stable, and when we discovered it, he immediately expired. The instant of his death and the instant of the discovery of the pot happened at the same time. The author, despite his skepticism regarding magical things, is forced to agree that this report is compelling.

[Jacques-Barthélemy Salgues (1760-1830), Des Erreurs et Des Préjugés, a priest and professor of rhetoric.]

[page lx, continued in part 3]