The Witches' Ointment

by Thomas Hatsis

  But under the accusations of sorcery there are indications of a true folk healer, a further clue given in the form of Bernardino’s misogynistic admonishment of women like Finicella: “O doctors, how much you have studied . . . amid much expense, peril, and labor, but it is the dog-faced old woman who gathers all the honor!”7 It would seem that like Matteuccia’s clients, local Romans sought Finicella’s services over those of elite physicians; her (admittedly incomplete) records indicate that she was not only a healer of sorts but more specifically a pediatrician. She told her inquisitors how she had killed thirty children (or thereabouts) but had healed sixty of them. In reverence for her pediatric prowess Finicella offered up the limb of an animal to the devil every time she successfully cured a sickly child. When the fathers of some of Finicella’s patients were asked if any of their children “at such a time began to pine away, and then died,” many responded in the affirmative. Once the fathers had been questioned, the Roman authorities declared that all “was shown to be nor more nor less than as [Finicella] said.”8 The pediatrician’s profession presented an easy target for parental blame when a child died—a usual occurrence in the fifteenth century.9

  Most of our information regarding folk plant and herbal lore comes from the pens of incensed theologians ridiculing superstitious behaviors they believed corroded the collective soul of the population. One practice Burchard of Worms wanted hammered out of his flock involved the improper collection of plants, which herbalists should pick according to prescribed Christian methods. For example, Question 65 of Burchard’s “Corrector” urges confessors to ask if the confessant has “collected medicinal herbs with evil incantations” instead of singing “credo in Deum” or reciting the Our Father.10 The punishment for this transgression was relatively light: ten days on bread and water. The caveat was apparently for the herb-picker’s own good. Gregory the Great told of a nun who, while walking through her convent’s garden, ate a lettuce leaf without blessing it with the Sign of the Cross first. A demon that had been sitting on the leaf immediately seized her. St. Equitius subsequently moved to have the demon expelled from the nun via exorcism.*50 11 This aspect of Christian lore found its way into an anonymous tract composed almost three centuries later, where it is addressed alongside questions pertaining to “readers of signs and idolaters.”12

  The emerging heretical underpinnings attached to the practice of gathering herbs can also be seen in that early, most infamous inquisitorial work, Practica inquisitionis heretice pravitatis (Conduct of the Inquisition into Heretical Wickedness, 1321), by French inquisitor Bernard Gui. As recounted in chapter 4 (and worth repeating here), it is in this work that Gui relates how some women “recite poetic words” and “kneel towards the East while reciting the Lord’s Prayer” while picking fruits and herbs. Unlike Burchard, Gui includes the Lord’s Prayer in his condemnation of the superstition. To him these are the same “women of the night” who meet secretly to collect toads for magical uses.13

  Blessing plants while collecting them was a common enough practice that some medical writers supplied prayers so that all gatherings would be consecrated. We can get a feel for the genera from two litanies: the first appears in a monastic herbal: “Oh God . . . we offer humble and suppliant prayers that you may bless and consecrate in your name these herbs, gathered for medicinal use, so that all who take potions or unguents made from them . . . may deserve to obtain health of mind and body.”14 Another, titled “Benedictio Unguentum,” is found in the Lacnunga, discussed earlier: “God, almighty father [sic], and Jesus Christ, son of god [sic], I ask that you will stoop to send your blessing and heavenly medicine and godly protection over this ointment so that it may produce health and cure against all the bodies’ disease . . .”15

  Burchard’s nonchalance regarding the gathering of medicinal herbs brings us to his true focus: the raw materials (both beneficial and poisonous) themselves caused no alarm, provided persons plucking plants pulled piously, prudently parrying pagan practices. To Burchard, it was the words, either accepted prayer or superstitious—and therefore erroneous—pagan incantations that held the true power.

  Bernardino’s remarks about Finicella’s ointment, too, are tied not to any learned literary traditions but to well-known folk traditions: gathering herbs on the feast of St. John the Baptist redoubled their efficacy. Demonologist Martin of Arles (ca. 1450–1520) records some of these folk beliefs in his Tractatus de superstitionibus, contra maleficia seu sortilegia quae hodie vigent in orbe terrarium (Work of Superstitions, against Witchcraft or Sorcery That Thrive in the World Today).16 St. John’s Eve was an especially magical night in all respects; a soul, in fact, could detach from its body and traverse the earth on this haunted summer eve. Others were said to magically enrich their lives on that day in other ways. Sometimes a maiden, desiring to know if her lover was faithful, went out at midnight, stripped nude, and drew a circle around a certain plant; she would then dance along this magical circumference. Afterward she gathered the leaves and placed them under her pillow so that the plant might send her answers in dreams.17 Additionally a variety of medicinal plants, branches, and nuts collected on the morning of that day were considered exceptionally powerful.18

  Martin in his account does not name specific plants, and simply condemns the practice of picking any plant, for any unsanctioned reason on that Holy Day. He reports that people would sometimes throw these herbs*51 onto a bonfire and dance around the smoke to protect themselves from itching and scabies for the year; these herbs were burned to ward off lightning, thunderstorms, and repel demons. Martin criticizes these heathenish practices with some reseverations: “However, we should not deny the medical virtue [of these plants,] of which fumigations work against diseases borne in children and cattle. This is not done by picking the herb at a specific day or before or after sunrise, as some foolishly believe, but by the natural power in the herbs.”19 He ends his tract by repeating an injunction that is a variation of one we are already familiar with, from Burchard of Worms and Bernard Gui—to not sing incantations while collecting medicinal plants; only the Lord’s Prayer or the Creed can suffice.

  THE CAT WOMAN OF ROME

  But Finicella used these herbs to ward off neither demons nor storms nor to protect herself from scabies. She and other women used them, instead, to make ointments, which they smeared over their bodies so as to turn into cats.

  Almost.

  Bernardino recalls that “once they were covered [with the ointment], they believed they were turned into cats, but that’s not true. They only thought their bodies changed into something else, but it was all in their head.” In other words, they were hallucinating. How did Bernardino know? The ointment jars had found their way to Bernardino himself, who investigated them personally. “They stank with such a foul stench that they seemed in truth to be of the devil,” he claimed.20

  Time passed and Finicella’s legend grew. In an account produced around 1456 written by Johannes Hartlieb (1410–1468), a physician of Bavaria, Finicella’s transforming ointment is absent. In its place is a flying ointment, which she begs her captors to give her so she may demonstrate how she can escape her chains.21 Writing around 1445 Felix Hemmerlin (ca. 1388–1460), Swiss provost and author of more than thirty polemical treatises on various subjects, makes no mention of Finicella’s ointment at all. The transformation into a cat, says Hammerlin, is Finicella’s way of taking advantage of her patients. Finicella would transform (via modes unspecified) so as to sneak into people’s homes and “infect children lying in their cribs with evil spells; afterward, transforming herself back into human shape, she would cure them, collecting her payment.”22 Another account of Finicella’s magical deeds comes from fifteenth-century chronicler Johann Chraft in his The Continuation (1490). He leaves the ointment out as well, saying that “whenever she wished [Finicella] would transform herself into a cat and suck the fresh blood from the children she had killed.”23 Franciscan observant friar, Bernard of Busti, writing just after Chraft, says not
hing of the cat transformation or the ointment, commenting only that a witch “Fanicella” was burned for killing sixty-five children.24 In short, the further away we get from the original account the more sensational it becomes.*52 When we sweep away the later interpolated accounts and focus only on Bernardino’s initial report of Finicella’s ointment, we are left with nothing more than a Roman medicine woman who used some curious ointment on herself to envision that she was, in fact, a feline.

  Despite Bernardino’s insistence that Finicella confessed to all this freely and “without being put to torture,” the literary traditions involving heretical infanticide (especially murdering one’s own child) makes the Apostle of Italy’s claim seem farfetched; it is doubtful that Finicella would have admitted to killing her own child if not under torture. Yet it is also surprising that Bernardino, a fanatic who never hesitated to exaggerate a story to scare his audience,25 mentions none of these fantastic details (like an actual transformation into a cat or flying out her cell window) found in later chronicles like those of Hartlieb and Chraft; in fact, of all the records from this time, his is, quite uncharacteristically, the least encumbered by orthodox witch lore regarding the ointment, a tidbit so out of place (considering the temperament of the preacher) as to render Finicella’s ointment an authentic psyche-magical drug as the best explanation of this evidence. That Bernardino admitted that the ointments didn’t really transform Finicella into a cat and that it was all in her head is a curious detail.

  Why, of the multitude accused of witchcraft only Finicella and the other unfortunate, unnamed woman were burned at the stake should start to become clear: these women practiced a real form of sorcery, drowned in plant lore and other folk superstitions. To get them from being the simple sorceresses that they were to being enemies of humankind Bernardino attached folkways and instances of botched child care to ancient acts of heresy, rebellion, and cannibalism. This would certainly prove to his congregation at St. Peter’s Basilica that he wasn’t dreaming everything he spoke of.

  THE WITCH OF LINZ

  Laboring to understand “True Wisdom, and of the Mystery of the Lord,” Abraham of Worms (ca. 1362–1458), a German Jewish mystic, set out for the Holy Land. His teacher, Rabbi Moses of Mayence (Mainz), was boring him; Abraham could learn nothing more from this dull old man who concerned himself more with “superstitious secrets . . . collected from various infidels . . . full of nonsense and foolishness of Pagans and Idolaters,” rather than with the Holy Truth.26 Abraham wanted out. One day he “casually met” Samuel, a young Jew from Bohemia who Abraham believed wanted to “live, walk, and die in the way of the Lord.” Samuel was on his way to Constantinople to meet an uncle who would then journey with him to the Holy Land. The coincidence of travel itineraries did not escape Abraham’s attention and on February 13, 1397, the companions set out for Jerusalem.27 They reached Constantinople and stayed for two years. Before they could continue on their way a disease struck Samuel dead. Abraham felt lost, and in despair over time wasted, gave up his quest for the Holy Land.

  On his way home to Mainz, Abraham passed through Austria, where he found “an infinitude of Magicians” who murdered or maimed people, broke up marriages, and tied “witch-knots” to stop the flow of breast milk. These people, Abraham deduced, had given themselves over to the devil. One such person, a young girl living in Linz, promised to take Abraham to “a town [he] wanted to visit.” Abraham was intrigued but, to test her veracity, withheld the name of the desired destination. He followed the girl to her home where, to his surprise, she presented him with a special ointment. She oiled him on “the arteries of [his] hands and feet” with her goop and likewise rubbed herself. Falling into soporatum, Abraham “felt like [he] was journeying to the town which [he] in [his] heart wished to visit.” Once awake, Abraham believed he had been “far away,” while also complaining of a “deep melancholic confusion.” The girl awakened shortly afterward and told Abraham of their trip. To his disappointment, her version of the journey was totally different from his; she hadn’t flown with him anywhere.

  Abraham’s initial skepticism about the ordeal turned into confusion. He was certain that he had traveled “in [his] body, and personally experienced everything.” Why was the girl’s retelling of the trip so removed from his own experience? After pondering this for a few days Abraham returned to her, having decided to give her a final test of authenticity: she must journey alone to the place of his choosing and report on a friend of his. Agreeing, the girl again rubbed herself with the ointment and fell into a deep sleep. She awakened several hours later and eagerly told Abraham news of his friend, which he decided was spurious. The Hebrew mystic’s conclusion was telling: there was no magic at all, just “a good and fantastic sleeping ointment that made all imaginations appear as realities.” Unfortunately, Abraham informs us that since the “natural masters” know of these ointments he feels it “unnecessary to write about them here.”28 After that, the girl and her flying ointment disappear into history.

  Abraham’s account is significant for several reasons: first, the story is disinterested in the matter of the ointment; unlike we modern researchers (or the demonologists we investigate), Abraham wasn’t trying to confirm or invalidate the reality of a witches’ ointment; indeed, he called it a “sleeping ointment.” This makes sense historically, as his encounter with the witch of Linz occurred before the formulation of the witch stereotype that would crystallize later in the century. There are no clerically contrived notions of what will happen; there is no sect of witches gathering to rub ointments on themselves as Matteuccia supposedly did, nor is there infanticide or cannibalism, strix, mention of Sabbats, transvection with demons, wild and licentious orgies, a heretics’ potion, or even a hint of any kind of Dianic flight as detailed in the Canon Episcopi.29 There aren’t even any incantations or other magical preparations necessary to perform this enchantment, at least none reported by Abraham. As far as we can tell, the witch of Linz believed in the efficacy of the ointment alone.

  With all the clerical prejudices removed we are left simply with a solo practitioner sharing with Abraham a magical experience that she believed was real. The account is noteworthy simply by how undiabolical it reads. If Abraham truly invented the story out of whole cloth, why did he ignore all the stereotypes about witches’ ointments? It’s as if none existed yet.

  WHERE WITCHES DANCE

  It started with a poet’s vision of heaven.

  Parzival couldn’t help but notice the infinite splendors and “[a] bounding wealth” that greeted all who entered the castle. Knights filled “a hundred tables,” waited on by chambermaids who scurried around the grand hall “with heavy basins all of gold.” Squires served any kind of food a knight could ask for and goblets overflowed with wine and mead. At the center of all these luxuries sat a grail of tremendous power; overseen by a queen and her handmaidens, it alone could claim responsibility for all the spoils of the castle. Here, truth and purity reigned—“heaven’s counterpart,” to hear medieval romanticists speak of it.30

  Or so the German knight and epic poet Wolfram von Eschenbach envisioned around 1200 CE. Through the early and late Middle Ages, legends of the Holy Grail found expression in stories passed down through generations, most notably in the Arthurian legends. According to some, the Grail saga began in the realm of folklore: post-Resurrection, Jesus visited his imprisoned uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, bringing him a “grail” from which spouted food and light.

  Others placed the Grail saga’s inception on the quilltip of Chrétien de Troyes, the twelfth-century French poet and troubadour. A champion of the newest class to emerge in the twelfth century, that of the knights,31 de Troyes’ stories took many forms; some involved the idea of “a mystical church, beside the visible and official one.” Opportunists used that notion to argue for the origins of the Church of England as existing separately from the Holy Roman Empire;32 others, like the knight-poet Wolfram, used the idea to add a “touch of religious mysticism” to his master
piece, the Grail saga Parzival.33

  Wolfram’s was a Holy Grail unlike any imagined. Shying away from earlier depictions of the Grail as a “jewel-encrusted golden cup emitting an intense light,” the German poet saw it as the Wunschding, a magical stone that provided abundance for the whole of the heavenly court, where all desires could be met.34 He even changed the location of the Grail castle, Gralsberg, to the inside of a cave.35 Drinking, feasting, copulation—all could be enjoyed at Gralsberg. Indeed, Wolfram’s literary successor, German poet Albrecht von Scharfenberg, wrote in his version of Wolfram’s Titurel*53 that sex was commonplace there.

  The church was enraged.

  Heaven was not a place of debauchery and licentiousness. Ecclesiastical authorities were resolute: this wasn’t Paradise; this was a hollow, heathen haven, hardly hallow heaven.36 Nevertheless, the word grail continued to connote an earthly paradise in the secular literature of those living in the Swiss-German territories, as recorded in the works of Gert van der Schuren (ca. 1411–1495) and Oswald von Wolkenstein (1377–1445), the latter using the term gral to mean “sensual pleasure.” Sometimes the legendary Arthur was the king of this utopia, as we find in the collection of early thirteenth-century poems known as the Wartburgkrieg.37

  But the legendary king was about to be dethroned.

  HOW VENUS USURPED THE GRAIL REALM

  Despite the Grail sagas that arose from Germanic lands most tellers and believers of those tales placed Gralsberg on a mountaintop in Italy. When poet-cleric Hein van Aken (ca. 1250–1325) wrote his Dutch romance Die kinder von Limborch (The Children of Limburg, 1318) he told the story of a man searching tirelessly for his lost sister. He stumbles upon a castle just beyond a thicket. There he is met by Venus and her handmaidens. He must stay for two years lest Venus slay him. Venus is not the typical medieval seductress goddess in this tale, but rather embodies the essence of the Grail in Wolfram’s Parzival—she was the “source of all virtue.”38 This would all change shortly. Perhaps the shift was partially the fault of preachers like Pierre Bersuire (d. 1362), who mentioned a “Sybil Mountain” (also in Italy) in a mid-fourteenth-century sermon. Therein, Bersuire was not referring to a mountain of love but rather to a mountain of magic and necromancy.39