The Witches' Ointment

by Thomas Hatsis

  Until the late eighteenth century, religion and magic were intimately tied to medicine.24 Because much medicine had found a home in the monasteries, local healers represented a “magical competition” to the arts of medical clergymen, who castigated the lay healers’ cures as satanically inspired.25 Restraints on such magical-medicinal arts varied in time and place. Many times those variations depended on gender; other times they did not. While women did not necessarily outnumber men as healers, they were certainly viewed askance by the more misogynistic members of their community. In England in the fourteenth century, for example, physicians successfully lobbied to legally ban uneducated male physicians and all women (educated or not) from medical practice,26 while in other areas some women attended universities (although the practice was uncommon). Alessandra Giliani (ca. 1307–1326 CE), the first woman to be recorded in historical documents as practicing anatomy (which today would be called pathology), studied surgery under Mondino de Luzzi, the “restorer of anatomy,” at the University of Bologna during the early fourteenth century. Not only was she an adept anatomist, she was also a clever chemist who devised a system of dyeing veins with “liquid of a suitable color” so as to not only make them “so perfectly presented in their own natural colors, but also to keep the veins from spoiling.” Due to conditions of life in those days Alessandra didn’t live to see her twentieth birthday, dying at age nineteen. Her methods, however, advanced by de Luzzi, achieved “great praise, fame and esteem everywhere.”27 Though women like Alessandra can-not be considered the norm, chroniclers in Paris recorded toward the end of the thirteenth century that nine female doctors (five surgeons, two barber-surgeons, and two midwives) lived in that city. This trend was not to last, however, and by the beginning of the following century educated physicians worked diligently to overturn such privileges.*7 28 In Italy, where women benefited from the legal right to practice medicine, Matteuccia honed her craft while enjoying the insouciance of immunity.

  That was until a fiery preacher, Bernardino of Siena, whom future generations would know as “the Apostle of Italy,” arrived in Todi during the winter of 1426. Bernardino’s travels throughout Italy brought him into contact with thousands of people. Some embraced him while others spurned him. Indeed, when Bernardino preached, pious but penniless admirers stood beside equally penniless critics—a situation that caused obvious problems. Once, after reading a sermon before a large crowd, an audience member slapped him; two assassination plots against him were thwarted.

  City officials tolerated his presence largely for two reasons: first, in the centuries before the printing press, preachers played a crucial role as information distributors;29 and second, Bernardino brought tourist business to cities and towns. Despite the clamor his visits caused, civil authorities often exhausted any resource to get a good preacher to deliver sermons in the public square. And it’s easy to understand why: one of Bernardino’s visits to Siena brought 30,000 florins in tourist money to that city.30

  Notary and Secretary for Witchcraft in Todi, Novello Scudieri, records the kind of career a successful sorceress might have enjoyed during the early fifteenth century, and allows us to peek into some of the forms of superstition that haunted quotidian life. Among many other charges that Scudieri records, Matteuccia was accused of various kinds of love magic. Once when a young man complained to her that he was in love with a girl set to wed another man, Matteuccia told him to burn a candle at a certain crossroads during the time of the wedding. He was further to recite these words to the melting wax: “As this candle bends in this heat, so may bridegroom and bride never be united in love.”31

  But folk traditions didn’t rely solely on wax and wistful wishing. Matteuccia also possessed knowledge of plants and herbs—the very veneficia she employed in several of her pocula amatoria, or love potions.

  QUINTILIAN’S QUESTION

  Otherwise known as a love philter, a poculum amatoria (literally “love cup”) was both a stupefacient and an exciter that “impair[ed] the senses and stirs within . . . apparitions and frenzied loves.”32 Sometimes the potion caused such delirium that the user died carelessly by her or his own hands. Poliziano, a flamboyant fifteenth-century Florentine professor, recalled a man “who drank the philters, and straightaway fell upon his sword in a madness. . . . [He] had totally lost his mind.”33 Concocted of various plants, herbs, and roots (sometimes psychoactive, sometimes not), body hairs, menstrual blood, breast milk, and animal parts, pocula amatoria had been employed for centuries to “lull all pain and anger, and bring forgetfulness of every sorrow,” as Helen of Troy famously lamented in Homer’s Odyssey.34 It was said, after all, that the first psychoactive plants sprouted from the very spot where Helen’s tears fell to the soil.

  Ancient Greeks and Romans had an assortment of uses for these plant poisons and root intoxicants, yet used the terms venenum (poison) and veneficia (poison magic, a term synonymous with Demosthenes’ pharmakis) interchangeably, indicating one viewpoint on two different drug practices. What mattered was the practitioner’s intent. For instance, a Grecian woman gave a man a love philter, the power of which was so strong that he died. However, the Areopagus, the Athenian High Court of Appeals (for civil law), acquitted her on the grounds that she “had given [the deceased] the philter out of love, but had failed in her purpose. So the homicide was clearly not intentional, because she had not given him the philter with the intention of doing away with him.”35 Some of these drugs, like mandrake and hemlock (which I will discuss in greater detail in chapter 4), are mentioned specifically in the 81 BCE law of the Roman general Sulla.36 Therefore, the confusion arises not because we are ignorant of the drugs used, but rather because classical authors used the word venenum in conjunction with a spectrum of drug effects: fatal poisoning, sleep inducing, madness causing, love stimulating, magic making, and medicating (recall that Theôris’s pharmaka could cure, drive insane, or kill). The Lex Cornelia de Maiestate, a Roman law passed by Sulla during his dictatorship from 81 to 80 BCE, tried to categorize these diverse drug actions, but still furnishes us with only vague terminology (e.g., venenum mala, “bad poison,” and venenum bene, “good poison”), again reinforcing a concern with intent and indifference to the kind of drugs employed. The most likely explanation is that each incident was considered on a case-by-case basis and must have rested on one pertinent question regarding the definition of mala in the Lex Cornelia: “‘known beforehand to be poisonous,’ or ‘proved in the event to be poisonous.’”37 The drugs themselves were simply taken for granted. For years, pocula amatoria existed in this legal purgatory.

  The second-century Roman rhetorician Quintilian, recognizing this linguistic problem, resolved that if pocula amatoria or other potions caused illness, madness, death, or all three, the perpetrator should be charged with using venenum mala, bad poison, even if the drug’s intended use had been to use it as venenum bene, good poison. By this time intent mattered less, and was superseded by outcome.38 Quintilian also grants us an early association between veneficia and other magic in the form of a question: “Whether [magical crimes (carmina magorum) and poison magic (veneficia)] ought to be called by the same name?” He was concerned with how these crimes should be defined in the Lex Cornelia for purposes of punishment.39

  Also working off the Lex Cornelia, fifth-century emperor Marcian wrote two senatus consulta (texts emanating from the ancient Roman senate) dealing with drug punishments. The first chastised the use of fertility drugs taken by women in cases that led to her death. Intent aside, the offender should be punished, because the very act involved a “bad precedent.” The second dealt with general poisoners who “rashly dispense[d]” powerful and chancy drugs. Again, the shift here is away from intent, and instead the focus is on negligent use.40 Roman jurist Julius Paulus Prudentissimus, writing at the end of the third century CE, warns in book 5 of his Opinions of Julius Paulus, Addressed to his Son: “Persons who administer potions for the purpose of causing abortion (abortionis), or love philtres (pocula amat
oria), even if they do not do so maliciously, still, because the act affords a bad example, shall if of inferior rank, be sentenced to the mines; if of superior rank, they shall be relegated to an island, after having been deprived of their property.” Death awaited the venefica whose customer died, malicious forethought or not.41 We meet the nascent stages of merging veneficia with sorcery in Paulus’s Opinions, for under the same section that deals with love philters he condemns those “who celebrate, or cause to be celebrated, impious or nocturnal rites, so as to enchant, bewitch, or bind anyone.” The penalty is severe: perpetrators were to be crucified or fed to wild beasts.42

  Centuries after Julius Paulus bequeathed such notions to his son, the association between psychoactive and otherwise poisonous plants and pocula amatoria hadn’t changed much; the only difference was that herbal drugs, as opposed to symbolic ingredients (e.g., hair, semen, nails), were specifically identified with the magical arts: for example, section 19 of the Salic law, an ancient Germanic law code ca. 500, is titled “Concerning Magic Philters or Poisoned Potions,” and places heavy fines on anyone who gives any “herbal potion” that causes injury or death.43

  Quintilian’s question had been answered.

  THE TRIAL OF MUMMOLUS

  And that answer damned Mummolus in the middle of the sixth century.

  Only Mummolus’s captors could hear him scream as the strappado hoisted his scarred body into the cold air of the torture room. For those unfamiliar with this device, the strappado involved binding a prisoner’s hands behind the back and attaching another rope to the wrists; the torturers would tug the rope through a pulley system, yanking the arms upward, dislocating the shoulders and tearing at the joints. It was an ingenious way of getting an unfortunate soul to confess to anything. Queen Fredegonda’s son Thierry was dead; someone—anyone—had to be held accountable.

  Given his loyal service to the crown as both a prefect and military general, Mummolus might have believed he was above suspicion. However, Fredegonda was “thoroughly barbaric in her genius,”44 and before Mummolus met the infamous torture device, a group of local Parisian sorceresses had already been brought in for questioning; none survived. Gregory of Tours, Gallo-Roman historian and bishop of Tours, recorded the witches’ gruesome end: “[Queen Fredegonda] caused some to be drowned and delivered others over to fire, and tied others to wheels [spread-eagle and beaten with mallets] until their bones were broken.”45 It was only just before some of these women met their unfortunate end that Mummolus’ name spilled from their lips, prompting his summons before the Inquisition.*8 While it is true that during his torture Mummolus confessed to obtaining “ointments and potions” from the women, it will serve us well to investigate why he was initially arraigned.

  One night over dinner at a fellow high-ranking official’s house, the host confessed to Mummolus that some young boy he knew was dying of dysentery. Mummolus assured the official that he had “an herb at hand, a draught of which will soon cure a sufferer from dysentery no matter how desperate the case.” Somehow this information got relayed to Fredegonda, which infuriated her for reasons unspecified in the record. She brought in the unfortunate local sorceresses who, under torture, implicated Mummolus. Mummolus did not deny seeking these women for help but claimed it was not for maleficia or incantations, the actual charges brought against him. His only admission was that he “often received from these women ointments and potions to secure for him the favor of the king and queen.” While his intentions (whatever they were) might have been magical they certainly weren’t malefic. Perhaps Mummolus was trying to obtain some form of poculum amatoria for the royal family’s private enjoyment? Or maybe he intended to use these mixtures himself for some kind of magical purpose that would make him seem more attractive to the royal family? It would seem that Fredegonda used drug potions herself to manipulate subordinates. One story outlined by Gregory tells of Fredegonda urging two assassins to take a drug that would give them fearlessness in their task to kill Sigebert, Germanic king of Austrasia.46 Nevertheless, whatever the reason, Mummolus would not admit to any foul play on the part of Thierry’s death.

  Sadly, after the torturers loosened the rope suspending him, Mummolus, too, tried to alleviate the tension by asking his captors to let King Chilperic know that he had “no ill effect of the tortures inflicted.” Presumably, he meant that he felt no ill-will toward the king for trying to determine how his son had passed and accepted his abuse as a means to that end. However, Chilperic mistook this as proof that Mummolus hadn’t been harmed by the torture—a sure sign of the prefect’s magical powers.47 Mummolus was tied to the wheel and beaten mercilessly; torturers shoved wooden splints up his finger and toenails. Still, he confessed to nothing remotely evil, all the while speaking openly of elixirs that were obviously not wicked in nature, as there would have been no reason to continue the torture once he spoke of them. Eventually, Mummolus was released; Fredegonda seized all his possessions and banished him to his home city, Bordeaux, where he died shortly thereafter.

  Unfortunately, following Greek and Roman legal tradition, medieval records like Gregory of Tours’ account of Mummolus’s trial, which possibly points to poisons placed in potions, powders, or ointments, rarely mention specific drugs, which were of tertiary concern, coming after the practitioner’s intent and the victim’s outcome.

  The laws of later centuries would fully adopt the standards of Quintilian’s answer. In the early ninth century, Egbert of Wessex made sure to include in his Penitential of Egbert a punishment for those women who used “witchcraft, and enchantment, and magical philters.”48 The Latin texts call this latter kind of magic veneficium”49; their Anglo-Saxon counterparts use the term unlibban,50 specifically connoting “something medicinal and potent, a harmful or powerful drug.”51 Egbert also distinguished penalties between those who dabbled in these poisons and those who accidentally killed with them. A decade before Egbert died, delegates attending the Council of Paris in 829 CE complained that alongside other “very dangerous evils” like astrology, divination, and dream analysis, certain persons were “capable of perverting the minds of others with the devil’s illusions [via] philters, drugged food, and phylacteries,” an early coupling of demonic deceptions with potent, mind-altering drugs.52 Around 1260, the Castilian king Alonzo the Wise (aka Alfonso X), in his Siete Partidas (Seven-Part Code), categorized those who employed “love herbs” (yerbas para enamoramiento), along with “soothsayers” (agoreros), “sorcerers” (sorteros), “diviners” (adevinos), “enchanters” (hechiceros), and “scoundrels” (truanes).53 Alonzo attributed the powers of love philters to herbs, not sympathetic magical accoutrements like hair, menstrual blood, animal entrails, or clothing scraps. The Sicilian king Frederick II (r. 1212–20) also made this connection between love potions and effective drugs in his Constitutions of Melfi, despite his skepticism of their ability to arouse love or hate (as opposed to madness and death): “Those who administer love potions, or noxious, illicit, or exorcized food for such purposes shall be put to death if the recipient loses his life or senses.” Even using ineffective potions ran the risk of a year in prison.54

  The use of sorcery to achieve some form of ultimately selfish end seems to have been part of common life for Europeans during the early modern period. In some instances this sorcery involved spending what little money one had on potions and poisons. Indeed, in most towns there was some magician ready to take a person’s money in exchange for some form of supernatural help, whether by amulets, psyche-magical elixirs, or blessings.

  Matteuccia was such a vendor. Although many of her spells for lovesick persons involved drugless superstitions, buried in the trial dossiers are some curious remarks suggesting that the witch of Todi at times used drugs both as philters and as harmful poisons. For those who called on her for pocula amatoria, she instructed them to take an undocumented herb, “enchanted by her incantations,” and feed it to the person her customer hoped to attract.55 They were then to wash their hands and face with wate
r and give the wash water to their quarry to drink. The incantations and the washings probably served as a means of symbolically reinforcing the magic, but it was the herb that gave the spell efficacy by giving the user an effect that she or he could feel physically.56 Although we do not know the name of the particular herb, it might have caused some form of inebriated psychic arousal—an aphrodisiac perhaps—the kind of venenum (poison) used in veneficium (poison magic) at the crux of Quintilian’s question. Matteuccia also instructed Giovanna of San Martino to sweeten with sugar a “certain reed,” wash her hands and feet in wine, and give the meal to her husband. The reed might have been the giant cane, Arundo donax, native to Italy, a plant that recent studies have shown to contain the tryptamines bufotenine and dimethyltryptamine (DMT).57

  However, not all of Matteuccia’s potions were supposed to arouse maddening passions. Other tonics were “mercenary” in nature and used by spurned lovers as magical tools of vengeance.58 One woman who lamented her husband’s abuse asked Matteuccia for a way “to make restitution for the numerous and great indignities he visited on her daily.” Matteuccia gave the woman the herb horsetail (Equisetum arvense) and told her to cook it with an egg and feed the mixture to her husband. We can infer that the woman took great pleasure in watching her husband walk around “deranged to the point of insanity for three days” after he ate the meal. It is written that Matteuccia sold this recipe to a “great and uncountable number of women” in Perugia.59 Horsetail is a powerful diuretic and doesn’t cause insanity as far as we know. It is possible that the sorceress’s client gave her husband a stupefying drug not unlike something found in a love philter, which Scudieri misidentified (he was, after all, a notary, not a botanist). The victim’s reaction—“deranged to the point of insanity”—to the drug (whatever it was) surely alludes to a psychoactive effect rather than a diuretic one. While it is possible that the abusive husband’s reaction was a culturally scripted reaction to bodily symptoms he took as signs of bewitchment,60 we are given a further clue by the incantation Matteuccia told those women to say as their targets ate the meal: “I give you to drink, in the name of the specter and of the enchanted spirits, and may be unable to sleep or rest until you do what I would command you [italics mine].”61 Perhaps the plant was some kind of stimulant that drove a person crazy with wakefullness? The credulous customer might have believed the incantation caused the delirium; only Matteuccia was the wiser woman.