Nonetheless, the abbot of little sense (and no tongue) was the first one ignited. The people were largely sad to see him go.
Dubois, one can imagine, could only think delightedly of the spoils his machinations had won him.
Little can be done to ameliorate the appetites of the avarice. If Dubois’ deceit could fleece “poor people, and . . . persons of very equivocal character” of their possessions, why not try it on the more moneyed members of society? A new round of arrests snagged a different crop of detainees—rich “men of substance.”47 Some were tortured and let go after a confession could not be wrenched from them. Others tried to escape only to be caught later and dragged back to the bishop’s prison. Finally, on October 16, 1460, the “five prisoners of most importance for their wealth and position” were brought before the judges. One of them, Payen de Beaufort, much to the shock of the courtroom, confessed voluntarily that he had in fact known Demiselle and two other prostitutes who had burned with her. They had come to his home and given him the foul ointment that he had rubbed on his body and on a stick, which he mounted to fly to the mountain of Mofflaine (to do all the things we have come to expect happened at such a place). He was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment, all his possessions forfeited to the church and the inquisitors, chief among them Dubois.
Further clouding the matter for the other prisoners (and thousands of others later in history), Payen’s testimony gave credence to the new Sabbat script. The other men were punished in similar fashion despite never having admitted guilt of participating in the Vaulderie; De Beaufort’s confession alone was enough to implicate them.48
But this wasn’t the end of the matter. Some pious churchmen, doubly dubious of Dubois’ duplicity and outraged at his misuse of power, vocalized their discontent, claiming that the Vaulderie wasn’t real and that no one, from Demiselle to De Beaufort, deserved to be punished, much less executed, for something that was impossible. Dubois had also overlooked the other side of these mens’ power: they weren’t just rich—they were also tremendously influential, and some, like Payen de Beaufort, seized on the opportunity of the clerical schism at this time to sue his judges in the Parliament of Paris that June of 1461. Meanwhile, Dubois had died earlier that year in February from a paralytic attack, being deprived of both motor function and his mind at the end. But De Beaufort’s testimony before the parliament reminded his captors of something they had heard earlier: he claimed that he had only confessed because Dubois promised him freedom if he would. Everyone, from the jailers to the vicars to De Beaufort—and certainly the accused innocents—had been duped by Dubois. The parliament set De Beaufort free; holding the other accused magistrates who had been arrested became moot. While the appeals and countersuits processes lasted until 1491 no further arrests were made and the first major witch craze of Europe terminated bittersweetly. Sadly, with regard to the larger opera of witchcraft this was merely the overture.
The entire Arras affair was the first time the new witch script was used on a large cross-section of people in such an obvious way. We can see how inquisitors like Dubois fit the witches’ ointment into this contrived narrative. However, the ointment didn’t materialize at Arras in 1460. As has been shown, the ointment first sidled into the record as a magical medical drug used by village sorceresses for reasons outside those prescribed in medical texts. What is interesting about this case, though, is that the surviving trial records do not mention using the flesh or blood of infants to create the ointment used to fly to the Vaulderie. In fact, there is only one known suggested recipe for the ointment, found in famous Renaissance composer, poet, lawyer, and mathematician Johannes Tinctoris’s treatise Sermo de secta Vaudensium (Report on the Vaudensian [Waldensian] Sect, 1460). Tinctoris had firsthand knowledge of the proceedings, having played a role in the trial (though in what capacity remains uncertain).49 In Sermo de secta, Tinctoris, another attendee at the Council of Basel, explains that the magical ointment was made from “toads, powdered bones from a corpse, and the bloods of both innocent children and that of the menstrual kind.” These are then mixed into a “liquid paste” enabling them to “fly speedily through the air.”50
Considering the farcical nature of the trial at Arras it is possible that Tinctoris pulled this ointment recipe from his own experiences (or the experiences of his peers), and simply assumed that the “witches” of Arras used a similar “liquid paste” as that of the real sorcerer/esses he might have encountered during his lifetime. Exactly where Tinctoris pulled this recipe from cannot be determined but his contemporaries agreed with him; German historian and chaplain Matthias von Kemnat (1430–1476) included toads in his accounts of these magical ointments too, along with other venomous wildlife like snakes, lizards, spiders (and, of course, the fat of children).51
But there remains a burning question: of the many subversive groups appearing in sacrilegious symphony throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, why did inquisitors and judges single out the Waldensians as witches? Certainly there were other heretical groups such as the Fraticelli, the Free Spirits of Bohemia, the Hussites (which Nider dealt with personally52), and gangs like the Pastoureaux (“Shepherds,” participants in two popular outbreaks of mystico-political enthusiasm in France, in 1251 and 1320), among other groups of a rebellious nature.53 Theologians must have interpreted some Waldensian beliefs and rites as involving similar practices as those of local magicians, which at first presented opportunities for comparison, and later terminated in a complete synthesis.
One area of common ground exists in both the Waldensian barbes’ and the sorceresses’ ability to heal. Barbes appear in several contemporary records as doctors and surgeons.54 Village medicine women, sorceresses, and those who blended the two in their arts, appear in several early cases, serving as prototypes for the formulaic witch. While both groups had their own superstitions and rites (and still there was no intrauniformity in either practice), it seems that at least in the eyes of some churchmen they were similar enough if only in their illicitness.
The most striking of the overlaps must have been the spiritual journeys taken by Waldensian barbes, a similarity that is both enticing yet incomplete. In Waldensian dossiers dating from the fifteenth century we meet several references to barbes journeying “to Heaven” to receive their powers directly from God.55 Another posits that the sect sometimes congregated in heaven.56 Waldensian confessions that mention such trips are few, and appear only in dossiers pertaining to the Eastern church, specifically in Pomerania, Austria, and Bavaria. Unfortunately for our exploration, the various inquisitors assigned to each of these confessants didn’t bother asking about the trips to heaven; they didn’t seem to care.
We do know that many Waldensian barbes were trained physicians—or at least as trained as one could be at the time. Therefore, they would have had access to the kinds of drugs explored in chapter 4 and knowledge of the powers of these substances, which could cause a person prone to such beliefs to have a deeply significant experience while under their influence. This is circumstantial, of course; plausible but by no means certain. There are less glamorous possibilities as well: for all we know, the barbes faked such visits simply to lend credibility to their message. Their followers simply believed the trips to be true. There is also the chance that the few mentions of these trips to Paradise were invented spontaneously by a scared Waldensian under interrogation (though this is unlikely, considering that all those who mention such trips do so without being put to torture). Finally, all affirm that the trips occurred so that the barbe could learn his trade from the Creator, pointing to shamanism. Still, the ways the comments appear in the record imply something more. For our purposes we can say that the mode of transport doesn’t really matter. What mattered was whether Matteuccia’s magic, and indeed the magic of countless village magicians like her, reminded authorities of those heavenly trips undertaken by the Waldensian barbes.
Still, we must recognize that trance states can be obtained without the use of medical dru
gs. The Benandanti, “Good Walkers,” an Italian fertility cult that had the witch stereotype superimposed onto its beliefs by inquisitors in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, did exactly that. Four times a year during the Ember Weeks the members of the Benandanti fell into a catatonic trance. The person’s soul would fly into the ethers and battle witches for the protection of crops and fertility. It has been decisively shown that the Benandanti did not require any kind of drug for their spirit journeying. Benandanti members could perform this bizarre feat (i.e., throwing oneself into a catatonic state at an appointed time) simply because they had been raised their whole lives to accept this responsibility—it was as natural as breathing to them. We therefore cannot dismiss the importance of cultural encoding. Even Nider relates such spontaneous trance states as possible; in his Formicarius he writes about a presbyter named Restitutus who could enter these catatonic trance states and “lie [sic] like a dead man. In this state he was . . . completely insensitive to pinching and pricking [or burning].”57 A certain horse wrangler and shaman from Oberstdorf, Chonrad Stoeckhlin, could “[fall] as if unconscious. And thus in rapture he went [with an angel] to a place where he observed pain and joy, which he took to be purgatory and paradise.” He required no ointment of any kind to do this.58 Perhaps Waldensian barbes arrived at the gates of heaven in a similar fashion.
The most we can say is that while both drug- and nondrug-induced methods of psyche-magical experience existed at the time,59 too many cases, especially those that record the use of a love philter or “venom” are so terse and/or incomplete as to render it impossible to tell what caused the experience, an active drug or cultural programming. Demonologists didn’t seem to care much about the methods of belief, only the belief itself; moreover, since they were cocksure in their assertions, any folk notion that didn’t fit their preconceptions was “omitted or reinterpreted” to conform to the stereotype of the satanic witch.60
No more than a decade after the horrors that engulfed the citizens of Arras a new trend began to stir in the literature dealing with witches and their psyche-magical flying ointments: the playing down of psychoactive ingredients in order to give the devil a more active role in explaining nocturnal excursions to the Sabbat. Dominican witch theorist Giordano de Bergamo, for instance, commented in his Quaestio de striges (Inquiry into Witches, ca. 1460–1470): “[T]he common folk generally believe, and witches themselves also admit . . . they smear a stick with a particular ointment . . . or they [push the ointment] under their nails, the mouth, ear, or under their hairy areas [i.e., vaginas] or underarms.” He writes that neither the stick nor the ointment enable flight; it is all done through Satan’s powers.61
Bergamo’s argument served a twofold objective: first, it represented his stance on the larger demonological opinion of witchcraft as diabolical illusion. The women didn’t fly corporally; rather, they flew via a corrupted spirit. Second, this explanation eschewed the need for drugs, all the while recognizing their presence in the ointment. Is it therefore really so impossible, given the clerical trend of demonizing actual practices,62 that the bastardization of psychoactive Solanaceae plants (like those found in love philters) can be seen in the development of the witches’ ointment?
Perhaps. And perhaps this wasn’t overlooked by all clergymen. In 1475 the Dominican inquisitor of Carcassonne, Jean Vincent, warned his readers in his Tractatus contra demonum invocatores (A Treatise against Anyone Who Invokes Demons):
Poison witches . . . mix poisonous ingredients into love philters and ointments which disturb people’s minds, transform their bodies, but usually serve only to kill the user. They claim to be transported far away, at night, to demonic Sabbats by the influence of these [same] drugs. The correct deduction, however, [is that] not one of these should be attributed to any natural power belonging to such drugs, but rather to the cunning of a demon. . . . He [the demon] is the true operative cause, whereas these kinds of drugs are the secondary cause.63
Vincent even likens the effects of the ointments to “drinking mandrake bark mixed in wine.”64 His deduction that the herbs can be used for various reasons—to cause mental disturbances (e.g., feeling like the body is transforming or imagined flight) or biological ones (e.g., to heal, sicken, and especially to cause death)—are all consistent with solanaceous intoxication. Depending on the dose (and one’s expectation) any of these outcomes are possible.65 The words of Bergamo and Vincent strike us as copouts, admissions that the plants caused these experiences coupled with an attempt to rationalize that natural explanation away with demon theory.
This development of dampening a drug in favor of the devil’s powers might account for a curious omission in a flying ointment description composed the same year as Vincent’s Tractatus. Bavarian physician Johannes Hartlieb mentions such an ointment, unguentum pharelis,66 found in Puch aller verpoten kunst, ungelaubens und der zaubrey (The Book of All Forbidden Arts, Superstition, and Sorcery, 1475). Hartlieb, a man who was present when Finicella was burned (and wrote an account of it, as told in chapter 6, see here), relates that the flying ointment was composed by an unholden and contained seven herbs, adding that each herb must be collected on a certain day. A review of the herbal ingredients—Heliotropium (borage) on Sunday, Lunaria annua (honesty) on Monday, Verbena on Tuesday, Mer-curialis (spurge) on Wednesday, Anthyllis barba (vetch) on Thursday, and Adiantum capillus-veneris (maidenhair fern) on Friday—does not turn up any plants that are psychoactive. Curiously, though, Hartlieb excludes the identity of the seventh herb, neglecting to mention which plant should be picked on Saturday, admitting that he is withholding that particular piece of information so as not to encourage people to try it.67 We can only speculate, but there seems to be little other reason for Hartlieb to deliberately skip over that plant other than a desire to suppress information about an effective drug. While the connection is undoubtedly casual, it is worth noting that certain psychoactive plants like henbane, hemlock, and deadly nightshade fell under the dominion of Saturn (for whom Saturday is named), according to popular early modern period European plant lore.68
A mere decade later Catholic clergyman Heinrich Kramer and Dominican priest Jacob Sprenger*62 would exclude all plants, whether psychoactive or not, from the flying ointment they describe in their infamous 1484 work Malleus maleficarum (Hammer of Witches). Thereafter, witches were said to boil the flesh of children (preferably those who died before baptism) and would smear the resulting gunk onto “a chair or broomstick . . . whereupon they [were] immediately carried into the air.”69 Like most learned men of the day, Kramer and Sprenger were familiar with Johannes Nider’s Formicarius,70 yet made no distinction between the vetula’s flying ointment (found in Book 2 of Formicarius, “On False Dreams and Visions”) and the heretics’ potion (found in Book 5, “On Witchcraft”). The highly influential Malleus would set a precedent for witches’ ointments and their composition when the first fires of the witch craze started to flicker in the following century.
Another man familiar with Nider, who also makes no distinction between the vetula’s ointment and that of the Bernese heretics, was the “eloquent” Strasburg preacher Johann Geiler von Kaiserberg (1445–1510), a Swiss-born priest considered one of the more popular preachers of his time. In a Lenten sermon delivered in his home city of Strasburg two years before he died, von Kaiserberg informed his congregation that “as a certain rule of matter” Satan could transvect a corporeal body because of divine authorization allotted by God. “This is why,” he continued, “it is then possible that when a witch sits on a pitchfork, and smears it [with the ointment], and says the words she is supposed to utter, she will fly away. . . . The pitchfork does not do that on its own accord, the salve does not do it either.”71 He then goes on to borrow from Nider’s vetula exemplum explicitly.
The transition is clear: by the late fifteenth and into the early sixteenth centuries, both secular and religious authorities were taking concepts about psychoactive drug use that originated with Nider, Tostado, and others
at the Council of Basel, and replacing the psyche-magical effects of the ointments with the devil’s powers.
Religio-philosopher Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola (1470–1533) outlined the incorporeal nature of the witch’s “flight” in his dialogue on screech owls, Dialogus strix, which adopts a three-way conversational exchange between a learned theologian, Phronimus, “Prudent Man”; the skeptical Apistio, “Unbeliever”; and Dicaste, “Judge.” The central plot of the book shows the conversion of Apistio from his disbelieving stance to one that accepts the reality of witches. At one point, the object of their conversation, the witch herself (striga), enters the discussion. Apistio cannot help but ask her about her ointments:
“The blood of infants makes up the majority of the ointments,” Striga replies.
“And where do you smear this oil?”
“Those body parts that are used for sitting”
Just like Matteuccia’s trial, which opened this investigation, Striga composed her “foul ointments” from the “blood of innocent children” and used them to “depart bodily through the air space.”72
It is no surprise that this striga also flies through the air with Diana and Herodias. The flying, transforming, and otherwise psyche-magical ointments of the previous decade are now charged with diabolism, allegedly containing mostly childrens’ blood. Those who wrote about these ointments in the early sixteenth century appear unconcerned with the natural, medical explanation for the ointment reported by earlier fifteenth-century chroniclers.
The Witches' Ointment Page 19