Satan had conspired to rule the world and conscripted gullible witches to help carry out his nefarious plans. He would eventually send his flock away, but not before instructing them in the malefic arts (maleficia, or “evil magic”), which include preparing ointments and potions from the remains of dead children. These mixtures could be used to inflict harm or death on the populace, raise storms and disease, and stir hatred among pious Christians.
The above, more or less, is what some demonologists believed witches practiced during the height of the witch trials, ca. 1550–1650, when tens of thousands of women and men burned at the stake for their supposed diabolical crimes. Scholars largely agree that the Sabbat first appeard in Europe in the texts of ecclesiastics writing in the 1430s. The witches’ Sabbat was a composite idea fueled by the literate class’s appropriation and redefinitions of numerous templates. Indeed, all of these acts associated with the Sabbat—night flying, demonic congregation, satanic worship, wild orgies, cannibalism, and celestial insurgency—were quite separate ideas at one time, derived from folklore, ecclesiastical ideas regarding heresy, and common ideas about magic and demonology that had been developing over the preceding centuries.
These components were tampered with and eventually amalgamated into the image of the diabolical witch performing her maleficia within a larger witch cult. One of these offenses, though, was a newcomer to the stereotype of the witch. While all those other ideas such as night flight, cannibalism, demonic orgies, etc., evolved between the eleventh through the fifteenth centuries, the notion of an ointment used to enable flying through the air started to appear in the written record only around the early fifteenth century, on the cusp of theocrats’ formulation of the witch stereotype.
Witches’ ointments were magical drug pastes, ointments, and oils that women and men were said to smear over their bodies, and later, over “flying” vehicles such as brooms and rakes. Those thus anointed would then fall into a deep sleep, a soporatum,1 experience fantastic visions, and upon waking, claim to have traveled great distances and copulated with others.2 Contemporary reports have led some modern scholars to theorize that the so-called witches’ ointments contained soporific, hallucinogenic, or otherwise psychotropic ingredients mostly culled from the Solanaceae family of plants, and that the effects of these drugs were the cause of such bizarre delusions.3 This theory is not without evidence; most historians of medieval European magic agree that several kinds of medical folk magic existed and were practiced by low-status women and men.4 There is little doubt that this folk magic involved the use of plants and herbs in remedies and potions.5 Mostly when ointments and potions are mentioned in trial records of this time, they are used to heal, cause insanity, and incite love in humans, or to harm or cause death in people or animals.6 A scholarly yet romantic subgroup within this milieu holds that the ointments did exist, they had an unbroken link to antiquity, and they were smeared on brooms and inserted into the vagina or rectum, thus inaugurating our modern idea of witches “riding” on brooms.7 This theory is rejected by others who believe that the ointments were a “product of either harmless folklore or demonological theory . . . not effective mind-altering substances.”8 These skeptics maintain that during the period when the witch stereotype first began to crystalize, clergymen, lawyers, inquisitors, demonologists, and other members of the learned class fabricated their own fantasies about witchcraft, attaching diabolical implications to otherwise harmless folk practices. To the modern skeptics, the witches’ ointment bubbled up not from any crone’s cauldron but from the vivid imaginations of the priestly class and its long-held traditions concerning apostasy.
While some of the medieval witch trials certainly originated in this manner,*4 and those charged with witchcraft, once charged with other witch-related crimes, were often compelled to confess to having attended Sabbats after being arrested for practicing magic, there is previously overlooked evidence indicating that the witches’ ointment, like other aspects of the witch stereotype, had a foundation in real folk sorcery, i.e., intentional drug use. There is reluctance by some to consider the possibility that a few of these potions were vended for private use to clients specifically for their psychotropic effects. The argument is made in several ways, but can be summed up as follows: “The earliest recipes [of witches’ ointments] . . . consist not of narcotics, but of . . . disagreeable but nontoxic substances.”9 But the evidence suggests otherwise.
While all magic may seem like the same clatter to us today, to those living in Western Europe during the early modern period, defining what constituted magic was not so simple. Although trial dossiers of the time are terse on the modes of folk magic and often “specify neither means nor ends,”10 we can nonetheless get a taste of local magic by the practices that inquisitors and others of the literate class documented. Some of these arts involved weather magic, lot casting, invocation, image magic, medical magic, murder through magical means, poison magic (veneficia†5), and love magic.
Of these latter two categories, further breakdowns are possible: some kinds of love magic were “sympathetic” in nature—saying certain words while winding the shirt of the person the lovelorn person hoped to gain affection from was one technique;11 placement of magical objects in proximity to the target was another method. Other forms of veneficia specifically dealt with ingesting poisons and elixirs of various types, the contents of which comprise the present study.12 Veneficia also included truly spiteful poisonings, in which the ultimate outcome was indeed surreptitious homicide. A modern historian put it this way: “A veneficus . . . is not ‘a witch,’ since the latter may include the former but the former does not necessarily imply the latter.”13
This is the story of how veneficia of the sorcery kind (i.e., not just homicidal poisoning) got swept up into the witch stereotype and thereby became a tool of diabolical witchcraft in the opinions of church authorities. It is the story of an early medieval canonical belief, outlined in the famous Canon Episcopi (or Capitulum Episcopi), a certain passage found in medieval canon law that was debated and readapted by theologians over time. By the beginning of the early modern period this process had transformed local forms of witchcraft into a new heresy. It is also the story of how the Canon’s original condemnation of a specific folk belief once found dubious—that of night riding with ancient goddesses—was reinterpreted by theologians centuries later to prove that witches really did exist. It is the story of folk magic and the knowledge of the poisons some people used to practice those arts and rites. Finally, it is the story of how, within this theological redefinition of the witch in the early fifteenth century, the witches’ ointment was used to explain how witches flew to the Sabbat.
An Internet search of witches’ ointments will draw nearly one million hits. The validity of the information available is at best questionable; however, the zealousness of the writers is without question. While some academics, both conservative and romantic, can be praised for their contributions to the field, shoddy research from some conspiracy writers has led some academics to reject the possible reality of these magical ointments, and for good reason—most of this “history” by the conspiracy theorists is critically and contextually inadequate.14 Nonetheless, wholly denying the existence of the psyche-magical experience during the early modern period in Western Europe, as I discovered, is merely zealotry of a different kind. Modern-day skeptics have predispositions that are obvious;15 their reasons for this skepticism, however, remain debatable.
For now, let us suspend all partiality and start the investigation anew. Let’s reject feeble proclamations and focus on the best evidence; let’s put that evidence into historical context. Let’s shine a light into dark torture rooms, eavesdrop on the fireside lore of the superstitious, aid a village sorceress as she casts her spells, congregate with heretics gathered under cover of night, delve into the minds of fanatical inquisitors, stand in magic circles with necromancers, and see what reality, if any, exists surrounding the lore of the enchanting witches’ ointment.
/>
1
HELEN’S TEARS
They have mingled herbs and words which are not without harmful intention.
VIRGIL
Can a chemical substance be given instructions?
QUINTILIAN
A SIMPLE SORCERER
Catarina’s eighteen-mile journey north through the Italian countryside, from Pieve to Ripabianca, proved arduous indeed. In the early fifteenth century, even short-distance travel was fraught with perils of both the natural and the supernatural kind. Land maps—rare, expensive, and largely reserved for magistrates—often included geographical errors left uncorrected since the days of ancient Greece.1 Crude roads might lead Catarina into a forest but held no promise of leading her out again; bandits lay ready and waiting, temporarily unpeeling themselves from the precarious backdrop of night to rob, rape, and kill any unfortunate passersby. Even if Catarina managed to evade such assailants, she might not so easily slip by the wild animals that also prowled the forests; and certainly not the insects. There were also the supernatural dangers: ghosts, fairies, elves, kobolds, to say nothing of the fabled Italian “landladies conversant with the evil arts,” who turned people into horses, asses, and cows for use as temporary laborers.2 Finally, Catarina also had to contend with the demons that haunted the very air she breathed.3
These, then, were some of the threats Catarina faced on her way to see Matteuccia di Francesco, a “simple sorcerer and herbal healer” of Ripabianca whose renowned magical skills attracted clients from far and wide.4 Yet the hardships Catarina endured on her journey seemed trivial compared to the punishment that awaited her if she failed. She needed an abortifacient; a pregnancy courtesy of a priest in Pieve with whom she was romantically involved could have had them both ostracized. To avoid igniting a scandal, Catarina undertook the hazardous trip to see Matteuccia. The sorceress’s help, apparently, was worth the trouble. She arrived in Ripabianca, found Matteuccia, and followed her instructions precisely: burn a female mule hoof to ash, mix with wine, drink the concoction, and recite the words, “I take you in the name of the sin and of the Great Demon, that it might never stick.”*6 5 Presumably closing the spell with the words “never stick” would cause any pregnancy to miscarry.
Journeys like Catarina’s were not an infrequent occurrence at the dawn of the early modern period. Fifteenth century common folk had at least three good reasons to seek out vetulas expertissimas, “highly expert old women,” rather than professional physicians for their medical needs.6 First, consulting the former was in many cases just as good as visiting the latter, as official credentials offered little guarantee of quality service to the infirm. One contemporary, the Italian druggist Saladin d’Ascoli, writing around 1488 warned his readers that “the ignorance and unskilfulness [sic] of spice-dealers is wont very often to lead the most famous doctors and the most learned physicians to infamy and lose [sic].”7 And the situation does not seem to have improved by the following century.8 A second (and probably the usual) reason for a lower-class person to eschew a university-trained physician for a local specialist was, above all, fiscal pragmatism: most people couldn’t afford to pay the fee of an expert. Finally, if a client demanded secret treatment to avoid public scandal (as in Catarina’s case), she or he often consulted vetulas expertissimas like Matteuccia, who kept knowledge of spells, incantations, amulet-making, and veneficia.
The venecopeia of such magicians included natural diuretics, purgatives, and psychoactives. The veneficae—the practitioners of veneficia—harbored knowledge of plants and poisons, understood the differences between medicinal and fatal doses, and conjoined them with other magical practices. Consequently, a mistake in dosage or an unwelcome outcome by the sorcerer’s client could result in a witchcraft accusation.9
When fourth-century BCE Athenian law orator and statesman Demosthenes wrote his deposition against the Lemnian witch Theôris, he was composing one of the earliest references to drugs in conjunction with incantations—a wedding of terms that would later mean “magic” in Latin prose.10 Demosthenes was among the first to use the Grecian name for those mixers of chants and poisons, pharmakis (from which our word pharmacist derives), when he ordered the death of Theôris: “The reason for [her trial],” Demosthenes explains, “was her drugs [pharmaka],” which she used to either drive people mad or cure their ailments.11 Although Plato’s earlier meaning for pharmakeia included decidedly nonpoisonous magical arts—the use of puppets, for example—this would change shortly after his death in ca. 347 BCE. The term pharmakis would become the customary word for “wise woman” or “witch” until its replacement by the later Latinized venefica.12
Plutarch called Theôris a “priestess” (hiereia)13; yet come the Middle Ages most other informal lay healers/poisoners existed in a lower-class social stratum alongside local diviners, seers, amulet dealers, and jugglers. Sometimes several of these skills overlapped in a single person. Indeed, a diviner might possess knowledge of veneficia; and a venefica might prophesy as well as poison—there was no telling what kind of odd skills a local magician might possess.14 Proximity to forests, herbal knowledge passed down for generations, experience gained through trial and error—any number of sources contributed to the formulas of the venefica.15 As early as the first century CE, Pliny the Elder mentioned such people in his Natural History, a compendium covering such diverse topics as astronomy, botany, geography, zoology, and “the entire scope of pharmacy in the classical world.”16 Many herbs remained unknown, he wrote, because “only illiterate country folk try them out, for they indeed are the only ones who live among them.”17 He cites the abundance of educated doctors as the reason most people living in urban areas remained ignorant of folk herbs. Three centuries later, St. Augustine gave an early and general caution as to the drugs of these country folk, spread about by Christians seeking magical medicines:
A man has a pain in his head. A neighbor male or female will say to you, [“]There is an enchanter here, there is a healer here, and a wizard somewhere.[”] You say, “I am a Christian, it is not lawful for me.” And if he says to you, “Why? Am I not Christian?” You should say, “But I am one of the faithful.” And he will answer, “I too have been baptized.” . . . [Enchanters and healers] lead astray by bindings, by precantationes, by devices of the Enemy, [and] mix with their precantationes the Name of Christ; because they are now able to lead Christians astray so as to give them a poison, they add a little honey, so that that which is bitter may be hidden by the sweet and the draught may be drunk to their destruction.18
Centuries earlier, famed physician Dioscorides warned of this practice in Liber de venenis: “[Poisoners] remove the bitterness [of poisons] by adding something sweet. They also mix poisons with drugs and put them in drinks and meals.”19
Veneficae held no degrees or certifications, attended no meetings, and gave no lectures detailing the secrets of their arts. They were acknowledged as medicine women and men only by their clients.20 They had no extensive cultic connection that bound them together, though they did know, learn from, and teach one another these arts, and thus carried knowledge of psychotropic, medicinal, and poisonous herbs, roots, and animals from antiquity through even the darkest of ages and into the Renaissance.21 The presence of veneficae is firmly established in medieval law codes and penitentials, which confirm their knowledge of the effects of poisons and drugs centuries before the early modern period and the formulation of the witch stereotype; the witch stereotype that placed an ever-expanding emphasis on the devil’s role in sorcery, linking folklore to heresy; the witch stereotype that was unfolding right around the time that Matteuccia was openly practicing her craft.
And so she had to die.
For years, the secular courts of Ripabianca tolerated Matteuccia’s activities, allowing her to mix her elixirs, cast her spells, and spew her incantations. But a pact with Satan? That was too much for Lorenzo de’ Surdi, captain and protector of the peace of the city of Rome, who ordered Matteuccia burned lest her blasphemies further d
eceive pious Christians. Her transition from tolerated sorceress to demonic witch is outlined by Novello Scudieri, notary and secretary for witchcraft in Todi, who recorded her as living as “a citizen in conformity of the statutes of the commune of Todi” while dichotomously cultivating an “evil life and reputation.”22
Nearly all societies had “informal healers,” those who used magic, folklore, and medicinal flora and fauna to “heal” what ailed their clients.23 Todi was no exception. Matteuccia was not a social outcast spurned by her neighbors for her magical practices but was rather a famous sorceress, specializing in love magic, who served many people. Unfortunately, it was becoming apparent in Europe at this time that those with a stake in magic would sooner or later find themselves tied to one. A transition was taking place; the sorcery and superstitious remedies used by medicine women and men that had in the past largely been disregarded by authorities was looking ever more demonic to judges, lawyers, lay magistrates, and of course, theologians and demonologists. Matteuccia was but one of many folk sorceresses who represent a way for us to understand that tectonic shift.
The Witches' Ointment Page 2