The Witches' Ointment

by Thomas Hatsis

  One of the first heretical sects labeled as such by the orthodox believers was the gnostic Paulicians, who flourished in the early eighth century in southeastern Armenia. Founded in Samosata (modern Turkey) by two learned clerics, Paulus and his brother John were both dualists, believing in two gods, one the creator of material things, the other the creator of souls and the ethereal. They refused to recognize the divinity of Mary and exorcised the Torah from the Bible. In 845 they were captured and tortured during the reign of Byzantine emperor Michael III (r. 842–867 CE) and ordered to convert to orthodox Christianity or be banished from the empire by Michael’s mother, the empress Theodora, regent to her underage son.42 Allegations brought against the group came from the head of the Armenian Church, John of Ojun. He called a meeting in Ararat in 719 CE, and in his Oratio Synodalis condemned the Paulicians for horrific acts.43 Not only did they allegedly worship Satan, John claimed, they would assemble in secret to commit incest. If a child was born of such an unholy union the members tossed it from one to another until it died. The blood was drained and mixed with flour from which the Paulicians made a Eucharist, which was then shared by all.44

  Several centuries later (around 1114) Guibert of Nogent (ca. 1065–1125), a French Benedictine historian and theologian, borrowed this barbarous stereotype and applied it to another group headed by a “peasant named Clement.” Clement would gather with his followers in “unfrequented cellars, without distinction of sex.” They lit candles; a woman would lie down, chest to the floor, and present her backside to the congregation. The candles were presented to her derriere, and once they flickered out, the group cried “Chaos! . . . and everyone fornicate[d] with whatever woman comes first to hand.” Should a child be born of any foul union after the gathering, the members would light a large fire and throw the baby from one to another over the flames until it died. The ashes were baked with flour into bread; anyone who partook of the loaf became a member of the sect for life.45

  HEAVENLY FOOD

  A disgusted Constance of Provence, queen consort of Robert II of France, upon seeing her own spiritual confessor Stephenus standing before her in chains—a convicted heretic—drove the sharp end of her scepter into his eye. The cries of his pupils as his pupils hung from his skull might have stirred the Christian conscience in at least some onlookers to pity, but most of the spectators delighted in his pain. In an act of calculated cruelty designed to satiate the crowd’s thirst for blood the queen demonstrated to all gathered that she wanted nothing to do with a heretic. He could die for all she cared, along with the rest of his assembly of fellow heretics at Orléans that cold 28th day of December 1022 CE.

  Aréfast took no chances. A wealthy knight with close ties to the counts of Normandy, he was “eloquent in speech, prudent in council, morally upright, and well-groomed.”46 He was also now a heresy hunter on his way to Orléans under the employ of King Robert II to root out the malicious heretical sect infesting that city. Comprised both of women and men, scribes and laypersons, these sectarians believed a “most wicked heresy” and were prone to “ceremoniously drink deadly poison.”47 Aréfast had first heard of this sect from Heribert, a clerk living on his estate. Heribert had gone to Orléans to study and had inadvertently encountered the sect. He converted to an obedient disciple of the group after Stephenus and Liosis, its two leaders, “intoxicated [him] with an evil and deadly draft and the sweetness of the scriptures.” And thus began Heribert’s descent into the “trappings of madness [through] diabolical heresy.” King Robert sent Aréfast to investigate Orléans at once, promising the knight “all necessary assistance.”48 Heribert, who joined Aréfast on his journey to Orléans, knew nothing of the knight’s surreptitious investigation; so far as Heribert understood, he was taking Aréfast there to convert him.

  Aréfast, as advised, took communion every day and protected his soul with prayers. Dually fortified by his Christian magic Aréfast “went to the house where the heretics gathered, pretending to be an unassuming disciple coming to hear them teach.” After promising Aréfast rebirth into the heretics’ “holy company,” the sect leaders told him:

  The Virgin Mary did not give birth to Christ, and he did not suffer for humanity; [moreover] he was not buried in the sepulcher, and [his body] did not resurrect . . . baptism does not wash away sin, nor do the sacraments of the body and blood of Christ administered by a priest [erase sin]. Praying to the holy martyrs and [speaking to] confessors amounts to nothing.

  All this seemed pretty bleak to a man of Aréfast’s piety. If not through Jesus Christ what could the Orléans heretics offer in the form of salvation? Stephenus’s and Liosis’s answer was both baffling and enlightening with regard to our inquiry and deserves to be reproduced in full:

  When we lay our hands upon you, you shall be washed of every stain of sin, and be filled with the gift of the Holy Spirit, which will teach you without scruple the true dignity and secret meaning of the Scriptures, along with true virtue. When you are sated from eating the heavenly food you will see angelic visions with us, and sated by that comfort you will be able to go where you will at your leisure. You will desire nothing, for the omnipotent God is the treasure of all wisdom, and the [shine] of those riches will never fade.49

  Soon after, the historical record that describes the above meeting between Aréfast and the heretics of Orléans digresses to tell us more about how “these people confected what they call the heavenly meal.” They would meet up on certain nights at a heretic’s home carrying torches and the devil would appear as a wild animal. Then they would throw their torches onto the ground and hold an orgy, regarding this sexual intercourse as their “holy and religious obligations.” When a child was born out of this carnal activity, the sect members would set a fire and throw it onto the blaze. The ashes were collected and given to eat. Those who partook would be unable to ever again leave the sect.50

  Once brought before the court and confessing, the sectarians refused to renounce their faith (save one clerk and one nun) even after torture. It was then that Queen Constance jabbed her scepter into Stephenus’s eye. The lot of heretics, Stephenus and Liosis included, was then taken to a cottage outside the walls of the city and locked inside. Those gathered outside then threw torches onto the house—an act of generosity to be sure, as hanging the heretics would not have left them time to beg the sky for eternal salvation in their final moments. Redeemed or not, all ended in ashes.

  The political nature of the trial at Orléans is well-attested to, tainting all the sources even before the chroniclers touched quill to parchment.51 Still, there are some realities we can discern from the record. Despite its late composition, which is dated sixty years or so after the episode (ca. 1078 CE) took place, Paul of St. Père de Chartres’s chronicle is the most extensive of the four sources we have of this incident.52 But the later date isn’t the only problem with this source; there are clear literary developments found between the lines that Paul composed (such as the theme of heavenly food), which make it difficult to tell where the real history ends and his story begins.53 But Paul’s account also has merit. Some scholars believe this version of the Orléans event materialized in the very house where Aréfast took his vows to become a monk two years after his dealings with Stephenus and Liosis, and might have been based on Aréfast’s own eyewitness account. Or Paul’s description might have even been based on an earlier document that he used as a source, now lost.54

  Of the other four historical mentions of the heresy of Orléans*28—a letter written by a monk of Fleury, John of Ripoll, to Bishop Oliba of Vic, penned around 1022–23; a five-volume history authored by a Burgundian monk, Rudolph Glaber, around 1040; Life in the Fleury Abbey of Gaul (Vie de Gauzlin abbé de Fleury) by André of Fleury (1042), and a brief account from the eleventh century monk, historian, and literary forger Adémar of Chabannes (1020s)—only the history composed by Adémar of Chabannes mentions a special brew imbibed by the sectarians. Adémar called these heretics “Manichaeans,” referring to a group that
flourished in the third century, and attributed that sect’s founding to a Frenchman from Perigord. This Perigordian “claimed that he performed miracles and carried about with him the ashes of dead children, by which he soon made a Manichaean of anyone to whom he could give them.”55

  We are left guessing what the “heavenly food” was, and that it might have been an entheogen certainly cannot be ruled out. Paul’s bit about the orgies and the children born of such unorthodox unions as an ingredient in the heretics’ potion seems to be an effort to sell the story as being more heinous than it might have been in reality. If the heavenly food existed—and we can be fairly certain it did not contain infant remains—what was in it? After all, various heretical sects incorporated the idea of a Eucharist, so it should not be thought of solely as a fiction on the part of the Orléans chronicler.56 That eating the heavenly food caused “visions” and the ability to “transport” is a departure from the heretical stereotype, which always maintained that drinking the heretics’ potion bound someone to a sect†29 (as Adémar of Chabannes reported). And so Paul’s account strikes one as a distorted resonance that points to something deeper: the use of a psychoactive food as an entheogenic key to divine realms, colored by biased orthodox conceptions of how heretics employed magical foods and drinks.

  Needing a way to distill the dissimilarities among the many heretical groups, ecclesiastical law came to rely on a general outline of what all heresies implied. Six centuries after Isidore of Seville published his catalog of beliefs, Etymologiae, Pope Gregory IX would collect these diverse profanations into one single heretic stereotype, exemplified in his papal bull Vox in Rama (ca. 1230), which he sent to three churchmen: the Bishop of Hildesheim, the Archbishop of Mainz, and a fanatical priest, one Conrad of Marburg, whom the Archbishop of Mainz in turn elected to personally stamp out heresy in the surrounding areas.

  In his letter, Pope Gregory made clear which heretical practices he found so revolting: when a new member was indoctrinated into any sect, a large toad was offered the candidate that she or he must kiss so that “they receive the tongue and saliva of the beast inside their mouths.” Next, an emaciated man of “marvelous [sic] pallor” came forward, whom the novice must also kiss. This man felt cold and kissing him wiped all remembrance of the Catholic faith from the neophyte’s mind. The group then feasted and a black cat*30 emerged from behind a statue, “which [wa]s usual for a sect of this kind.” This cat would be kissed on the hindquarters first by the novice, then the master, then the “perfects” of the group. All then asked the cat for forgiveness. Finally the lamp was put out and an orgy ensued with no distinction of gender or family. The revel complete, a man emerged from the corner whose upper body gleamed “more brightly than the sun” and whose lower extremities were “shaggy like a cat.” The emaciated master offered up an article of the novice’s clothing, to which the shining man replied, “You have served me well and will serve more and better. I commit what you have given into your custody.” With that the illuminated man disappeared and the apprentice became a full member of the order. They would continue to attend Sunday Mass and take Communion; however, they held the host in their mouths and later threw it into a latrine “in contempt of the savior.”57

  In Pope Gregory’s heretic stereotype one finds a variation on the theological tradition: instead of a foul drink supposedly composed of baby ashes, the initiate ingests toad emissions. That this was consumed in a ritual suggests it was a kind of Eucharist and was possibly an entheogen. As will be shown in the next chapter, the use of toad secretions had long been recognized in magic; in fact, such discharges are powerfully psychoactive, producing phantasms of visionary magnitudes. Therefore, should Pope Gregory’s caveat be authentic,*31 this aspect of a heretical rite can rightfully be called “entheogenic.”

  BILIA’S BREW

  The ruthless campaign with which inquisitors hunted Waldensians along the Italian-Franco border throughout the thirteenth century resulted in a meager handful of those faithful heretics retreating to the Cottian Alps. There they reestablished themselves—a band of heretical outlaws that was not opposed to killing should any threat come its way. Indeed, two of the group’s inquisitorial pursuers were slain while trying to arrest them. By the end of the fourteenth century, the sect had a rather impressive stretch along the alpine valleys in multiple towns nestled between Susa and Pignerol, Italy; some clusters of heretics even appeared in neighboring Turin. Despite the sect’s notable size, capture became more of a hassle for even the most persistent heresy hunter, but some, it turned out, were more tenacious in their pursuit than others.

  One such dogged hunter was Anthony di Setto, a Dominican friar from Savigliano who, while investigating heresy in Pignerol in November 1387, finally apprehended one of the Waldensian sect’s members, Antonio Galosna, a tertiary of the Third Order of Preachers. As regards his shadowy life, Antonio had been a sectarian for twenty-five years and had toured the countryside as a wandering missionary for over a decade. His outstanding tenure traveling along the lower valleys of the Cottian Alps would surely house a wealth of information regarding the practices of those isolated peoples once di Setto started the interrogation.

  Like any wise heretic Galosna first denied any and all charges of religious error; like any wise inquisitor di Setto tortured him until he confessed. Most unfortunately, Galosna’s obviously interpolated account is all that survives from the encounter. He had been pingponged between the secular and religious authorities a number of times after his arrest: the former promising the hapless heretic freedom; the latter, further torture depending on his confession, which was sworn to and retracted several times during the two institutions’ volley for his fate. Galosna’s record is therefore one of a confused, desperate, tortured man coupled with an inquisitorial zealousness that can only be called fanatical—definitely not the most historically reliable source. Still, the account has value as a fifteenth-century foreshadowing of the witch stereotype—and our witches’ ointment.

  During one of the interrogations the inquisitor asked Galosna who among the women of the sect was revered by the rest.

  “Bilia la Castagna,” he answered, “who carries with her a phial filled with a strange potion made from the emissions of a large toad and the ashes of burned hairs, [which she] mixes around a fire late at night on the Eve of the Epiphany.”58 Bilia would sip from the bottle and pass it around the table. Once a man drank so much that he almost died, but those who tasted a responsible dose would understand all the secrets of the sect and forever question orthodox teaching.59

  It is tempting to interpret the toad potion as an entheogen; the great detail with which Galosna speaks of it only entices us more. Or could it be that di Setto was merely reading Pope Gregory IX’s letter into Galosna’s confession? But that is to assume Galosna was familiar with that papal bull. What we can see clearly, however, is that Bilia’s brew had all the trimmings of a folk magical potion: a psychoactive drug (toad poison, or bufotenine*32 60), symbolic ingredients (burned hair), and a superstitious preparation date (Eve of the Epiphany).

  And this is not the only piece of evidence. If the toad merely represents di Setto’s insertion of Gregory’s ideas into Galosna’s confession, where are all the other toads in the records that would surely have been forced on others’ confessions? Furthermore, no other element of Gregory’s Vox in Rama appears in Galosna’s statement. One likely explanation for the lack of toads in other trial records of that time and its inclusion in this one is that perhaps here it is authentic. Maybe Galosna, during his travels, had encountered the toad Eucharist in some isolated form of folk heresy and so he incorporated the toad drug in his description of their rites. Indeed, Galosna described the poison’s effects in terms consistent with bufotenine intoxication: if drunk too much, the body swelled; the potion might possibly be fatal, as one enthusiastic imbiber at a synagogue almost discovered. A small amount, however, could have a profound effect on the psyche. Given that deviations existed from one heretical sec
t to another—and that the barbe Pierre admitted that some of the cells among the Waldensians celebrated in remembrance of a Bacchus cult—the idea that a psychoactive drug was utilized in some rites deemed heretical is not historically impossible. An anonymous author writing a recollectio around the 1460s references “[drugs] put in food . . . which provoke the [regions of the brain] that control the senses,” in discussing the practices of Waldensian idolaters.61 Di Setto might have dug just deep enough into Galosna’s memories among the more remote forms of belief and uncovered a legitimate use of an entheogen in a variant folk heresy.

  TREGENDA

  Which brings us back to Matteuccia di Francesco.

  Eventually the church formally adopted the folk belief in supernatural nightly gatherings. Not long before Matteuccia was accused of rubbing her body with an ointment so as to transvect via demonback to a satanic congress, Italian poet Jacopo Passavanti warned the populace in 1354:

  It happens that demons taking on the likeness of men and women who are alive, and of horses and beasts of burden, go by night in company through certain regions, where . . . people . . . mistake them for [other persons]; and in some countries this is called the tregenda. And the demons do this to spread heresy . . . to discredit those whose likenesses they take on, by showing that they do dishonorable things in the tregenda. There are some people, especially women, who say that they go at night in company with such a tregenda, and name many men and women in their company; and they say that the mistresses of the throng, who lead the others are Herodias, who killed St. John the Baptist, and the ancient Grecian goddess Diana.62