The Witches' Ointment

by Thomas Hatsis

  The torture seemed endless; the solitude that followed spirit-crushing; the uncertainty of his future nerve-wracking. It had only lasted one day, March 15, 1438, but Peter Vallin had had enough. He wasn’t a Waldensian, which the Inquisition had been stamping out of Dauphiné since 1425, making Vallin the first person in that area to be accused solely of a hybridized, imaginary crime: diabolical magical heresy.25 Vallin’s “confession” included a combination of ideas already explored: he admitted to having given himself over to a demon, Belzebut (Beelzebub), sixty-three years earlier. He had trampled and spat on the cross, and sacrificed his daughter to Satan (who also helped Vallin raise storms and perform other maleficia). Furthermore, he congregated with others of like kind and ate children after first urinating on them. He flew to these cannibalistic orgies via the “Devil’s staff ” but no ointment is mentioned in conjunction.26 When, the next day, he stood before a large audience and issued his confession publically, he stated again that he had, in fact, ridden a staff (again, no ointment mentioned) to do the devil’s bidding.27

  Vallin was then turned over to the Lady of Tournon, Elinor of Grolea, a secular authority who had already tried Vallin for sortilegis (lot casting) in 1431. Viennese judge Philippe Baile would set no bail; he wanted names. The four that had been supplied by Vallin did little to satisfy his zeal, as those people mentioned had died long ago. He ordered a more thorough interrogation. After all, Vallin couldn’t have been in the devil’s service for sixty-three years without knowing others. Further torture resulted in names dropping from his lips.28 And while it was supposed that those later indicted “rode like the wind” on staffs to meet the devil, like Vallin, not a single one required an ointment to do so.29

  And Vallin wasn’t the only one to fly atop some apparatus without the need of a magical ointment. In 1437, Claude Tholosan, chief prosecutor from Briannçon for over a decade (1426–1449), sentenced Jubert of Bavaria to death for necromancy, practicing veneficia, divination, murder, demon invocation, and apostasy. Jubert was said to have “worshipped Lucifer as if he were God, prostrating himself at night, and turning his hindquarters toward the East. He drew a cross on the ground, which he spat on three times, and also stomped upon three times, and also peed and defecated upon. . . . and would deny God three times.” When Jubert wanted to worship the devil he would “straddle the feces of a mule or horse [signaling] the demons to carry him to their regular assembly.” Finally, he “gathered certain herbs for medicines on the Eve of St. John Baptist.” He also concocted poisonous mixtures from toads, basilisks, snakes, spiders, and scorpions, and put these substances in the food of a Bavarian man named Conrad. Jubert’s rap sheet is an apostasy amalgam, an accusation anthology appropriating folk magic (gathering herbs on the Eve of St. John the Baptist Day, veneficia, and night flight), magic (demon invocation, necromancy), apostasy (worshipping the devil), and heresy (urinating on a cross). He would pay the “ultimate punishment” for these crimes.30

  Much like hopelessly trying to understand the pain Vallin endured, we can’t quite imagine the kinds of torture inflicted on Johannes de Stipulis that would lead him to confess to such deplorable acts as devil worship, infanticide, and causing the sicknesses and deaths of his neighbors. We can be fairly certain, however, that Stipulis never thought he had committed any of these maleficent deeds at the devil’s direction. He may have belonged to some heretical group rampant in Western Europe during the tumultuous early modern period. He might have even practiced a form of low magic or village sorcery, having nothing to do with his possible membership in the sect. But a charge of witchcraft now routinely meant conviction of things like night flight, devil worship, child murder, sex with demons, and raising storms.

  We learn of Stipulis in the anonymously*60 penned 1437 tract Errores Gazariorum seu illorum qui scobam vel baculum equitare probantur (The Errors of the Cathars, or Those Who Are Proved to Ride on Brooms and Staffs). According to Stipulis this sect engaged in the following new, yet somehow all-too-familiar pattern of error: First, Stipulis received a staff and a jar of ointment from a sect member. He anointed said staff with the ointment and was whisked away to the diabolical congregation. There the devil usually appeared as a black cat (or sometimes another animal) or as an “imperfect man.” Stipulis swore an oath of loyalty to the devil that he would assemble with the society whenever instructed to, that he would never tell the secrets of the sect, and that he would kill all children under the age of three to bring to the synagogue for consumption. He was further to cause trouble in his community via maleficia, halt sexual intercourse, and avenge any harm brought to the sect by outsiders. Once these formalities were satisfied the group all sat down to a banquet of deceased children. The “presiding devil” called for the lamps to be extinguished, ordering “Mestlet, mestlet!” (Mix it up), and the orgy commenced.

  These sectarians weren’t just heretics; they were witches who used “baby fat and other [ingredients] . . . such as poisonous creatures like snakes, toads, lizards, and spiders” to raise storms, freeze crops, make flying ointments to rub on sticks, and otherwise kill pious Christians.31 Here the heretical underpinnings of the fifteenth-century witch are on full display. The Errores Gazariorum contains a general outline of folk magic and even expands on its heretical implications, emphasizing the diabolical nature of that supernatural cult meeting par excellence, the witches’ Sabbat.32 These unfortunates described in this tract have been identified as Vouderie: “Waldensian witches.”33

  The anonymous author of Errores Gazariorum might have picked up these ideas about witches’ flying ointments while attending the Council of Basel. Indeed, theologians Johannes Nider and Alonso Tostado, along with others we will meet in a moment, attended the Council. While the minutes of the various meetings do not mention it we must consider that several early chroniclers of these magical folk ointments—save Bernardino of Siena, Matteuccia’s interrogators, and Abraham of Worms—were also in attendance at the Council. It is unlikely that the subject of magical folk ointments was not addressed—perhaps not in the grand meeting halls where important matters like heretics and church reform took place, but rather in more intimate settings, whispers and quiet laughter echoing cautiously down the long, stone corridors . . .

  A NEW SECT

  During the papal schism that infected the church between 1378 and 1418, pitting popes against antipopes,*61 various canons elected (as antipope) Pietro Philarghi—Alexander V—to quell the matter. Alexander issued a bull based on descriptions of sorcery he received from Ponce Fougeyron, the inquisitor general of many dioceses including Geneva and Avignon. Pope Alexander wrote of “some Christians and wicked Jews” who comprise “a new sect [practicing] forbidden rituals . . . and secret beliefs.” Some of them even dabbled in various kinds of witchcraft such as “divining, invoking demons, spell-casting, conjuring, [believing in] superstitions, sooth-saying, and other nefarious and prohibited arts.”34 Assuming Fougeyron was the author of the Errores Gazariorum, it might have been he who introduced the subject of magicians to the Council of Basel. In any case, someone surely did, as shown in the minutes of a meeting that autumn of 1433, which deemed magical acts “heretical, erroneous, scandalous [and] offensive to pious ears.”35

  But it would teeter on conspiratorial casuistry to assume that everyone attending the Council of Basel accepted this fusion of concepts as readily as Ponce Fougeyron did. Johannes Nider, as shown, believed the whole notion of night flight was a delusion sometimes caused by psyche-magical drug ointments. And while other transcripts from the March 23, 1440, meeting of the Council of Basel lumped “wizards or witches or Waldensians” into a single entity,36 Nicolaus Cusanus (ca. 1400–1464), German philosopher, theologian, and humanist, flatly rejected the idea. Others, like Spanish theologian Juan de Torquemada (aka Johannes de Turrecremata, 1388–1468), opted to uphold the original skepticism of the Canon Episcopi.37 The Dominican Bernard of Como, however, was able to dismiss the Canon by appealing to Fougeyron’s (or whoever’s) “new sect�
�� theory as outlined in the Errores. Bernard’s argument is complicated but crucial. Like all theologians of his day he mistakenly believed the Canon Episcopi had originated at the Council of Ancyra (314 CE). Therefore, this “new sect,” as he and many others saw it, was just that—new, and therefore unknown to Regino of Prüm, the original author of the Canon.38 It is within this debate over whether a person literally flew in physical form as Fougeyron maintained, or only in spirit as Nider upheld, that the concept of the witches’ ointment develops.

  Perhaps it is no coincidence, then, that around 1436–37, at the time of the formulation of the witch stereotype, chief magistrate of Dauphiné, Claude Tholosan recorded a gathering of heretics who “imagine in dreams that they travel bodily at night . . . in order to suffocate children and strike them with sickness.” Ointments, brooms, even the animals supposedly straddled by women in the Canon Episcopi aren’t mentioned in the chief magistrate’s charges. In a move that must have turned demonology on its head at the time, Tholosan “no longer distinguished between dreams and harmful magic,” insisting that while the heretics traveled in dreams, somehow this journey corresponded to a corporal act in real life.39 Interestingly, though, Tholosan reported that alongside “poisonous powders” and “the devil’s piss,” these particular heretics also employed in their magic “poisons they get from an apothecary.”40 He did not connect the “poisons” with the flight; he did, however, contextualize witches, heretics, and drugs.

  Still, the rationalists could not stop the currents of fate. Lay magicians like Finicella, Matteuccia, and Stipulis could now theoretically be tried for the ecclesiastical crime of heresy even if they had been arrested only on charges pertaining to the secular crime of magic. Such a case illustrating this ideological transition happened, in fact. In Fribourg two separate persecutions, one taking place in 1399 and the other in 1430, involved some of the same people. Whereas the earlier charges spoke of the accused in terms of heresy only, the later charges speak of them in terms of witchcraft.41 The most famous source detailing these trials comes from Swiss chronicler Hans Fründ, who in 1428 reported that “witches and magicians”42 in Lucerne rubbed ointments on chairs in order to fly from town to town, preferring those neighborhoods with the best wine cellars. These people could transform into animals and had even set up demonic schools where initiates met to listen to the evil master preach against Christianity. The devil appeared in the shape of some black animal and those assembled paid homage to him.43 This was the same year that Matteuccia was charged with many of these same crimes, with one slight modification: she didn’t rub ointment on some apparatus; she rubbed it on her body while singing incantations.

  Here is the final link in our thread, incorporating every aspect of the witches’ Sabbat in its earliest imaginings: witches rubbing magical ointments on brooms, chairs, and other implements to fly to a heretical congregation overseen by Satan.

  The ointments come from the medical drugs outlined by Alonso Tostado and Abraham of Worms, found in various contemporary medical texts; they were not necessarily a part of the general belief in night flight but were nonetheless used by some people as an element in psyche-magical rites; some, perhaps, might have even been used entheogenically.

  The act of rubbing them on chairs, brooms, and so forth, most probably belongs to some obscure folk tradition associated with the Germanic goddess Frigg. Diana’s association with the devil probably stretches back to folk beliefs about female fertility and good fortune deities.

  The worship of the devil comes down to us from ancient stereotypes about heretics.

  Finally, the pact with the devil comes from the realm of high magic.

  To summarize: At the dawn of the witch stereotype, first conceived by theologians in the 1430s in a merging maelstrom of magical lore, heretical stereotypes, and folk notions, the ointments finally enter the ecclesiastical record alongside the new definition of the witch. Subsequent writers would weave these folk ointments tightly into the demonological fabric as a way to explain how all these so-called witches could fly to their Sabbats. In the years to come, untold numbers of people—mostly women—would burn for this imaginary crime.

  Renaissance poet Martin le Franc (ca. 1400–1460) had had enough. Abhorred by the treatment of his countrywomen, he composed his famous 1442 defense of women, Le champion des dames (The Champion of Women), wherein he cast himself as “Franc Vouloir,” the defender of women, in a dialogue with his misogynistic antagonist, “the Adversary.” The conversation is not entirely about witchcraft but the few lines that mention it are telling. The Adversary insists that women rode on brooms to the devil (no ointments mentioned), where they encountered thousands of other women who have transformed into goats and cats (transmutation). The devil then gives them “an ointment made out of awful, varied poisons” and instructs them on how to use it to make men impotent.44

  Poisons and night flight also appear in Le Franc’s epic verse, but do not overlap, again pointing to two separate traditions. Martin le Franc pulled his stanzas from the chaotic world around him, and the use of an ointment (for any reason) was hardly uniform by this time; or even yet a staple of theological witchcraft. But even Le Franc’s noble (if somewhat pretentious) mission couldn’t stop this revolution in theological thought, that which defined the newest sect of heretics: that of the satanic witch.

  ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE

  The inquisitor Jacques Dubois, dean of Notre Dame at Arras, was as sly as the devil he pretended to despise. Singing sweet promises of freedom through iron bars, Dubois assured those who had been arrested in Arras around the Feast of All Saints 1459 that any hope of emancipation meant confessing for their crime—the crime of Vaulderie.

  Dubois had started his roundup of witches with a known prostitute, Demiselle Grenier, who worked out of Douai. Thrown into the bishop’s prison without any explanation, she begged her captors to tell her what she had done. Reportedly one of the jailers asked if she knew Robinet de Vaulx, a citizen of Burgundy who had recently been burned for sorcery. Demiselle, fearing for her fate and knowing exactly what Robinet’s name implied, asked nervously, “And what of it? Do they think I’m a witch?”45

  Jacques Dubois wasted no time interrogating her. Not surprisingly, after he left the torture chamber Demiselle confessed that she had attended a Vaulderie (Sabbat) and also had provided a lengthy list of names of those whom she had seen while reveling there. One man on that list was Jehan Lavite, known as the “abbot of little sense.” Something of an early modern period rock star, he had gained wide fame in his day for his glorious paintings and songs about the Blessed Mother. He also lived up to his nickname by cutting his tongue out to avoid confessing to anything after his arrest—a fruitless effort, as he was made to sign a declaration of guilt saying that he had in fact visited the Vaulderie. Between his and Demiselle’s confessions a multitude of other people were also implicated. At this point the bishop’s vicars grew uneasy about the hordes of people being accused: women and men, burgers and members of the nobility, prostitutes and theologians. A brief quarrel erupted between the more conscionable vicars and Dubois over the treatment of the prisoners. Sadly, Dubois won out by beseeching the Count of Peronne, Comte d’Estampes, to threaten the vicars with losing their clerical privileges if they did not continue the investigation. Fearing their own loss of status the vicars resumed the interrogations and trials. To no one’s surprise the number of those indicted grew every day—all showered with promises of freedom by Dubois if they would simply admit their guilt.

  A large scaffold was built in the public square in Arras and each prisoner was led out to it before a large crowd. The accused—complete with miters on their heads with the devil painted on them—were lined up before the spectators and each read their sworn admission of guilt. The hellish scenario was portrayed as follows:

  These witches, when they wanted to attend the Vaulderie, would smear their hands with an ointment that they then rubbed onto a small, wooden rod. Straddling the rod they flew o
ff to assemble at a fountain in the forests of Mofflaines before the devil, who appeared in the form of a goat with a human face. Due to the nearness of the congregation some participants required no ointment or staffs at all and simply walked to the affair. Once at their destination each paid homage to Satan by offering her or his soul or some other body part as collateral. They then kissed the devil’s derriere as a sign of adoration. A cross was brought before them on which they spat and stomped. Afterward, a banquet of meat and wine sated the guests; all then descended into a wild orgy with demons taking on the likenesses of both genders. The devil then preached and forbade them to perform their Christian obligations.

  Each prisoner was asked if she or he acknowledged her or his participation in this Vaulderie.

  “Yes,” they replied one by one.

  Their lands and holdings were surrendered to the count and to the bishops. Acknowledgment of the crimes meant a forfeiture of life as well. When the sentence was announced, several of the condemned “burst into fearful screams . . . declar[ing] themselves innocent, and called for vengeance on Jacques Dubois, saying he had induced them to make the confession . . . by the promise that on that condition he would save their lives.” There must have been something very sincere in their indictment of Dubois, as their words led some in the audience to assert out loud that the “witches” had all been wrongfully condemned.46