The Malleus Maleficarum

by The Malleus Maleficarum (lit)

  “Sacrament.” One of the most famous of the miracles of S. Antony of Padua, wrought for the conversion of heretics, was that of a mule, belonging to one Bovidilla, a blasphemer of the Sacrament. The animal, although it had been, as agreed, kept fasting for three days, refused to turn to a sieve of oats held out by its master, but fell down upon its knees and adored the Host which the Saint was carrying in the ostensory. Some narratives of the fourteenth century say this happened at Toulouse, and some name Bruges, but the actual place Rimini. In the basilica Il Santo, at Padua, this miracle is depicted more than once. There is a bronze bas-relief by Donatello in the Chapel of the Sacrament, and a fresco by Campagnola. The same subject was painted by Van Dyck for the Recollects at Malines.

  Animals have been known to distinguish Our Lord’s Body in the Host, a fact which, when one considers their sense and intelligence, is not at all surprising.

  At the trial of the Satanist Louis Gaufridi it was proved that upon one occasion during their accursed rites a dog was led in to devour the consecrated Species, but he stretched out his paws in adoration before the Body of Christ and bowed down his head, nor could kicks nor blows compel him to stir. Several of the devotees broke down into tears and began loudly to bewail their sins, after which it was decreed in future that the Host should be defiled, but that no animals must be admitted. See my “Geography of Witchcraft,” pp. 410-411.

  S. Optatus tells us that certain Donatists once threw the Host to some hungry dogs, who suddenly turned on the heretics and tore them to pieces.

  Every day. Since the Sacrament is medicina animae. In En Route, Chap. V, the Abb Gvresin says: Je comprends trs bien le systme du pre Milleriot qui forçait communier des gens quil apprhendait de voir retomber dans leus pchs, apr. Pour toute pnitence, il les obligeait recommunier encore et il finissait par les purer avec les Saintes Espces prises de hautes doses. Cest une doctrine tout la fois raliste et surleve. Pre Milleriot, S.J., was largely concerned in the conversion (1879-80) if Paul-Maximilien-Emile Littr, who died at Paris, 2 June, 1881.

  Carthage. The earliest Council of Carthage of which we know was held about A.D. 198, when seventy bishops, presided over by the Bishop of Carthage, Agrippinus, were present. After this date more than twenty Councils were held at Carthage, of which the most important were those under S. Cyprian, relative to the lapsi, Novatianism, and the re-baptism of heretics, and the synods of 412, 416 and 418 which condemned the doctrines of Pelagius.

  Ribaldry. A rubric of the De exorcizandis Obsessis a Daemonio prescribes: Necessarie uero interrogationes sunt, ut de tempore quo ingressi sunt, de cause, et aliis huiusmodi. Ceteras autem daemoniis nugas, risus, et ineptias Exorcista cohibeat, aut contemnat, et circumstantes, qui pauci esse debent, admoneat, ne haec curent, neque ipsi interrogent obsessum: sed potius humiliter et enixe Deum pro eo precantur.

  Fortunatus. Bishop of Naples, who was apointed to that see by S. Gregory the Great in 593 upon the deposition of Demetrius.

  Fasting. S. Matthew xvii, 20: Hoc autem genus non eiicitur nisi per orationem et ieiunium.

  Demonifuge. See Sinistrari, De Daemonialitate, LXVIII, in my translation Demoniality, pp. 52-53.

  Paul of Burgos. Paul de Santa Maria, a Spanish Archbishop, Lord Chancellor, and exegete, born at Burgos about 1351; died 29 August, 1435. The most wealthy and influential Jew of Burgos (Jewish name Solomon-Ha-Levi), and a scholar of the firs rank in Talmudic and Rabbinical literature, a Rabbi of the Hebraic community, he was converted to Christianity by the irrefutable logic of the Summa of S. Thomas. He received baptism 21 July, 1390. His reputation as a Biblical writer chiefly rests upon his Additiones to the Postilla of Nicolas of Lyra, Nuremberg, 1481; Venice, 1481; and many other editions.

  Durandus. William Duranti, canonist and one of the most important mediaeval liturgical writers, born about 1237 at Puimisson, Provence; died at Rome 1 November, 1296. His career was most noble and distinguished. A long epitaph upon his monument in Santa Maria sopra Minerva tells the story of his life and gives a list of his works. The most important of these is the Rationale diuinorum officiorum, the first edition of which by Fust and Schoeffer as issued at Mainz in 1459. It has been frequently reprinted, the last complete edition being Naples, 1839. The Speculum Iudiciale and the Commentarius in canones Concilii Lugdunensis II are valuable treatises upon the canons and canonical processes.

  Remove hence. The miracle of the removal of a mountain was actually performed by S. Gregory Thaumaturgus, Bishop of Neocaesarea (d. circa 270-275), as the Venerable Bede tells us in his Commentary upon S. Mark xi: Hoc quoque fieri potuisset, ut mons ablatus de terra mitteretur in mare, si necessitas id fieri poscisset. Quomodo legimus factum precibus beati patris Gregorii Neocaesareae Ponti Antistitis, uiri mentis et virtutibus eximii, ut mons in terra tantum loco cederet, quantum incolae ciuitatis opus habebant. Cum enim uolens aedificare ecclesiam in loco apto, uident eum angustiorem esse quam res exigebat, eo quod ex una parte rupe maris, ex alia monte proximo coarctaretur; uenit nocte ad locum, et genibus flexis admonuit Dominum promissionis suae, ut montem longius iuxta fidem petentis ageret. Et mane facto reuersus inuenit montem tantum spatii reliquisse structoribus ecclesiae, quantum opus habuerant.

  Ceremonies. Actually baptismal exorcism is earlier than S. Gregory. From the very first catechumens were exorcised as a preparation for the Sacrament of Baptism. In this connexion exorcism is a symbolical anticipation of one of the chief effects of the Sacrament of Regeneration, and since it was used in the case of children who had no personal sins, S. Augustine, writing against the Pelagians, appeals to it as clearly implying the doctrine of original sin. S. Cyril of Jerusalem in his Catecheses, A.D. 347, gives a detailed description of baptismal exorcism, by which it appears that anointing with exorcised oil formed a part of this function in the East. The earliest Western witness which explicitly treads unction as part of the baptismal exorcism is that of the Arabic Canons of Hippolytus.

  Auguries. The De Auguriis, which is often ascribed to another writer, may be found in the Migne S. Augustine, Ap. V, 2268.

  Charms. Cf. Shirley's comedy The Sisters, licensed April 1642, where Antonio says to one of the supposed astrologers, III, I:

  You are one of the knaves that stroll the country,

  And live by picking worms out of fools' fingers.

  Glory of God. I. Corinthians x, 31.

  Good People. So in Ireland the fairies are called good people, and traditionally seem to be of a benevolent and capricious and even mischievous disposition. In some parts of Highland Scotland fairies are called daoine sithe or men of peace, and it is believed that every year the devil carries off a tenth part of them.

  It will be readily remembered that to the Greeks the Fairies were , the gracious goddesses.

  Arrows. Esarhaddon is employing a mode of sortilege by arrows, belomancy, which was extensively practised among the Chaldeans, as also among the Arabs. Upon this text S. Jerome comments: He shall stand in the highway, and consult the oracle after the manner of his nation, that he may cast arrows into a quiver, and mix them together, being written upon or marked with the names of each people, that he may see whose arrow will come forth, and which city he ought first to attack. The arrows employed by the Arabs were often three in number, upon the first of which was inscribed, My Lord hath commanded me; upon the second, My Lord hath forbidden me; and the third was blank. If the inquirer drew the first it was an augury of success; the second gave an omen of failure; if the third were drawn, all three were mixed again and another trial was made. In some countries diving rods were employed instead of arrows. These were drawn from a vessel, or, it might be, cast into the air, the position in which they fell being carefully noted. This practice is rhabdomancy. The LXX, Ezechiel xxi, 21, reads , not , and rhabdomancy is mentioned by S. Cyril of Alexandria. The Koran, V, forbids prognostication by divining arrows, which are there denounced as an abomination of the work of Satan. See my History of Witchcraft, Chap. V, pp. 182-83.

  Manichaean. For the close conn
exion between the Manichees and witches see my History of Witchcraft, Chap. I.

  Pope Clement. Pope Clement V, born at Villandraut, 1264; elected to the Chair of S. Peter, 5 June, 1305; died at Roquemare, 20 April, 1314; completed the mediaeval Corpus Iuris Canonici by the publication of a collection of papal decretals known as Clementinae or Liber Clementinarum, sometimes as Liber Septimus in reference to Liber Sextus of Bonafice VIII. It contains decretals of this latter Pontiff, of Benedict XI, and of Clement himself. Together with the decrees of the Council of Vienne it was promulgated, 12 March, 1314, at the Papal residence of Monteaux near Carpentras. It is divided into five books with subdivisions of titles and chapters. As Clement V died before the collection had been generally published, John XXII promulgated it anew, 25 October, 1317, and sent it to the University of Bologna as the authorative Corpus of decretals to be used in the courts and schools.

  Bonaventura. The parents of S. Bonaventura were Giovanni di Fidanze and Maria Ritella. He was born at Bagnorea, near Viterbo, in 1221, and baptized Giovanni. This was changed to Bonaventura owing to the exclamation of S. Francis, O buona ventura, when the child was brought to him to be cured of a dangerous illness. (This account has been doubted, and it is true that others bore the name before S. Bonaventura.) S. Bonaventura was canonized by Sixtus IV, 14 April, 1482. This formal enrolment in the catalogue of the Saints was thus long delayed mainly owing to the unfortunate dissensions concerning Franciscan affairs after the Saint's death, 15 July, 1274. He was inscribed among the principal Doctors of the Church by Sixtus V, 14 March, 1587. His feast is celebrated 14 July.

  Guido the Carmelite. Guy de Perpignan, Doctor PArisiensis, d. 1342; General of the Carmelite Order from 1318-20. His chief work was the Summa de Haeresibus.

  Extrauagantes. This word designates some Papal decretals not contained in certain canonical collections which possess a special authority, that is, they are not found in (but wander outside, extra uagari) the Decree of Gratian, or the three great official collections of the Corpus Iuri (the Decretals of Gregory IX; the Sixth Book of the Decretals; and the Clementines). The term is now applied to the collections known as the Extrauagantes Ioannis XXII and the Extrauagantes Communes. When John XXII (1316-34) published the Decretals already known as Clementines, there also existed various pontifical documents, obligatory upon the whole Church indeed, but not included in the Corpus Iuris, and these were called Extrauagantes. In 1325 Zenselinus de Cassanis added glosses to twenty constitutions of John XXII, and named this collection Uiginti Extrauagantes papae Ioannis XXII. Chappuis also classified these under fourteen titles containing all twenty chapters.

  House should be searched. Thus in the famouse witch trial of Dame Alive Kyteler and her coven before the Bishop of Ossory in 1324, John le Poer, the husband of Dame Alice, deposed that in her closet were discovered mysterious vials and elixirs, strange necromantic instruments and ghastly relics of mortality which she used in her horrid craft. Holinshed in his Chronicle of Ireland (London, 1587, p. 93), sub anno 1323, has: In rifling the closet of the ladie, they found a wafer of sacramental bread, having the divels name stamped thereon in steed of JESUS Christ, and a pipe of ointment, wherewith she greased a staffe, upon whish she ambled and gallopped through thicke and thin when and in what manner she listed. See my Geography of Witchcraft, Chap. II, pp. 85-91.

  S. Paul. Colossians iii, 17.

  Bonifice VIII. Benedetto Gaetani, born at Anagni about 1235; elected Pope, 24 December, 1294; died at Rome, 11 October, 1303. He was one of the most eminent canonists of his age, and as Supreme Pontiff enriched legislation by the promulgation (Bull Sacrosanctae, 1298) of a large number of his own constitutions and those of his predecessors since 1234, when Gregory IX issued his five books of Decretals. In reference to this, the collection of Bonifice VIII is known as Liber Sixtus, i.e. of Pontifical Constitutions.

  Hanging. There are recorded many instances of this. In 1597 the Scotch warlock Playfair, having killed Lord Lothian by witchcraft, was laid for, and "being soon apprehended, was made prisoner in Dalkeith steeple, and having confest that and much more wickedness to Mr. Archibald Simson, minister there, and that confession coming to the ears of Robert, Earl of Lothian, my lord’s son, he had moyen to get some persons admited to speak with the prisoner in the night, by which means he was found worried in the morning, and the point of his breeches knit about his neck, but never more inquiry was made who had done the deed."

  Alice Gooderidge, a Derbyshire witch, who was tried in 1597 and condemned, "should have bin executed, but that her spirit killed her in the prison." John Stewart, a warlock of Irvine, in 1618, "for his better preferring to the day of the assys, was put in one lockfast buith, . . . and for avoyding of putting violent handis on himself, was verie strictly gairdit and flitherit be the airms, as us is." He was visited by two ministers, who exhorted him to repentance, and seemed very contrite, confessing his witchcrafts. However, almost immediately after "he was fund be the burrow officers, quha went about him stranglit and hangit be the cruik of the dur, with ane tait of hemp (or a string maid of hemp, supposed to haif been his garters, or string of his bonnet) not above the length of two span long, hi kneyis not being from the grund half ane span, and was brocht out of the hous, his lyf not being so layt expellit: but notwithstanding of quhat-somever meines usit to the contrair for remeid of his lyf, he revievit not, but so endit his lyf miserable by the help of the devill his maister." In 1649 the lady of Pittahro, Mistress Henderson, "being delated by many to be a witch, was apprehended and carried to Edenbroughe, wher she was keiped fast; and after her remaining in prison for a tyme, being in health all night, upon the morne was found dead. It was thought, and spoken by many, that she wronged her selfe, either by strangling or by poyson."

  It is recorded of the Renfrewshire trials (1697) that John Reid, a notorious warlock of Bargarran, "after his Confession had called out of his prison Window, desiring Baily Scott to keep that old body Angus Forrester, who had been his fellow prisoner, close and secure; whereupon the company asked John when they were leaving him on Friday night the 21st of May, whether he desired company or would be afraid alone, he said he had no fear of anything: So being left till Saturday in the Forenoon, he was found in this posture, viz. sitting upon a stool which was on the Hearth of the Chimney, with his feet on the floor and his Body straight upward, his shoulders touching the lintel of the Chimney, upon which the Company, especially John Campbell a Chyrurgeon who was called, thought at first in respect of his being in an ordinary posture of sitting, and the neck-cloath not having any drawn knot (or "run loup") but an ordinary one which was not very strait, and the sticke not having the strength to bear the weight of his Body or the struggle, that he had not been quite dead; but finding it otherways, and that he was such a Situation that he could not have been the Actor thereof himself, concluded that some extraordinary Agent had done it, especially considering that the Door of the room was secured, and that there was a board set over the Window which was not there the night before when they left him."

  Tears. The beautiful devotion to the Sacred Tears of Our Lord is well known. The Premonstratensians have a Mass, De Lacryma Christi, proper to the Order.

  Our Lady of Tears, Santa Maria delle Lagrime, is the Patroness of Spoleto. A picture of Our Lady, painted upon the wall of the house belonging to Diotallevio d’Antonio, which stood on the road from Spoleto to Trevi, was seen to shed tears in great abundance. Many graces and favours were obtained before the miraculous picture. A small chapel was erected on the spot in August 1485, and Mass was daily offered therein. On 27 March 1487, the large basilica was begun, which on its completion, 8 March 1489, was entrusted to the Olivetans.

  Blessed Wax. The Agnus Dei, which is a disc of wax, stamped with the figure of a Lamb, and on certain stated days blessed by the Holy Father. These Agnus Deis may either be worn suspended round the neck, or preserved as objects of devotion. They are to be regarded as Sacramentals.

  Sin. S. John" xv, 22.

  Gift of
Silence. De Lancre, Tableau de l’inconstance des mauvais agnes et demons, Paris, 1912, has: pour ne confessor iamais le secret de l’escole, on faict au sabbat une paste de millet noir, auec de la poudre du foyer de quelque enfant non baptise qu’on faict secher, puis meslant cette poudre avec ladicte paste, elle a cette vertu de tacitrunite; si bien que qui en mange ne confesse iamais. Five Forfar witches, of which one was Helen Guthrie, in 1661 dug up the body of an unbaptized infant, which was buried in the churchyard near the south-east door of the church and took severall peices thereof, as the feet, hands, pairt of the head, and a pairt of the buttocks, and they made a py thereof, that they might eat of it, that by this means they might never make a confession (as they thought) of their witchcraft.

  They Return. Proverbs xxvi, II: As a dog that returneth to his vomit, so is the fool that repeateth his folly. II. S. Peter, ii, 22: For, that of the true proverb has happened to them: the dog is returned to his vomit: and, The sow that was washed, to her wallowing in the mire.