Here we have a curious and perhaps unique example of the demoniac masquerade subtly used to obtain evidence of guilt by a trick. The Aberdeen witch Jonet Lucas (1597) said that the Devil was at the Sabbat “beand in likenes of ane beist.” But Agnes Wobster of the same company declared that “Satan apperit to them in the likenes of a calff,” so possibly two masquerades were employed. Gabriel Pellé (1608) confessed that he attended a Sabbat presided over by the Devil, and “le Diable estoit en vache noire.”⁠[68] Françoise Secretain, who was tried in August, 1598, saw the Devil “tantost en forme de chat.” Rolande de Vernois acknowledged “Le Diable se presenta pour lors au Sabbat en forme d’vn groz chat noir.”⁠[69] To the goat there are innumerable allusions. In the Basses-Pyrénées (1609): “Le Diable estoit en forme de bouc ayant vne queue & audessous vn visage d’homme noir.” (The Devil appeared in the form of a goat having a tail & his fundament was the face of a black man.) Iohannis d’Aguerre said that the Devil was “en forme de bouc.”⁠[70] “Marie d’Aguerre said that there was in the midst of the ring an immense pitcher whence the Devil issued in the form of a goat.” Gentien le Clerc, who was tried at Orleans in 1614, “said that, as he was told, his mother when he was three years old presented him at the Sabbat to a goat whom they saluted as l’Aspic.”⁠[71] “Sur le trône,” writes Görres, “est assis un bouc, ou du moins la forme d’un bouc, car le démon ne peut cacher ce qu’il est.”⁠[72]

In 1630 Elizabeth Stevenson, alias Toppock, of Niddrie, avowed to her judges that in company with Catharine Oswald, who was tried for being by habite and repute a witch, and Alexander Hamilton, “a known warlock,” she went “to a den betwixt Niddrie and Edmiston, where the devill had trysted hir, where he appeared first to them like a foall, and then like a man, and appointed a new dyet at Salcott Muire.” When one of Catharine Oswald’s intimates, Alexander Hunter, alias Hamilton, alias Hattaraick, a “Warlok Cairle” who “abused the Countrey for a long time,”⁠[73] was apprehended at Dunbar he confessed that the Devil would meet him riding upon a black horse, or in the shape of a corbie, a cat, or a dog. He was burned upon Castle Hill, Edinburgh, 1631.

Sometimes those who are present at the Sabbat are masked. Canon Ribet writes: “Les visiteurs du sabbat se cachent quelquefois sous des formes bestiales, on se couvrent le visage d’un masque pour demeurer inconnus.”⁠[74] (Those who attend the Sabbat sometimes disguise themselves as beasts, or cover their faces to conceal their identities.)

At the famous Sabbat of one hundred and forty witches in North Berwick churchyard on All Hallow e’en, 1590, when they danced “endlong the Kirk-yard” “John Fian, missellit [masked] led the ring.” The Salamanca doctors mention the appearance at the Sabbats of persons “aut aperta, aut linteo uelata facie,”⁠[75] “with their faces sometimes bare, sometimes shrouded in a linen wimple.” And Delrio has in reference to this precaution: “Facie interdum aperta, interdum uelata larua, linteo, uel alio uelamine aut persona.”⁠[76] (Sometimes their faces are bare, sometimes hidden, either in a vizard, a linen cloth, or a veil, or a mask.)

In the latter half of the eighteenth century the territory of Limburg was terrorized by a mysterious society known as “The Goats.” These wretches met at night in a secret chapel, and after the most hideous orgies, which included the paying of divine honours to Satan and other foul blasphemies of the Sabbat, they donned masks fashioned to imitate goats’ heads, cloaked themselves with long disguise mantles, and sallied forth in bands to plunder and destroy. From 1772 to 1774 alone the tribunal of Foquemont condemned four hundred Goats to the gallows. But the organization was not wholly exterminated until about the year 1780 after a regime of the most repressive measures and unrelaxing vigilance.

Among certain tribes inhabiting the regions of the Congo there exists a secret association of Egbo worshippers. Egbo or Ekpé is the evil genius or Satan. His rites are Obeeyahism, the adoration of Obi, or the Devil, and devil-worship is practised by many barbarous races, as, for instance, by the Coroados and the Tupayas, in the impenetrable forests between the rivers Prado and Doce in Brazil, by the Abipones of Paraguay, as well as by the Bachapins, a Caffre race, by the negroes on the Gold Coast and the negroes of the West Indies. In the ju-ju houses of the Egbo sorcerers are obscene wooden statues to which great veneration is paid, since by their means divination is solemnly practised. Certain festivals are held during the year, and at these it is interesting to note that the members wear hideous black masks with huge horns which it is death for the uninitiated to see.

The first ceremony of the Sabbat was the worship of, and the paying homage to the Devil. It would seem that sometimes this was preceded by a roll-call of the evil devotees. Agnes Sampson confessed that at the meeting in North Berwick, when the whole assembly had entered the church, “The Devil started up himself in the Pulpit like a mickle black man, and calling the Row, every one answered Here. Mr. Robert Grierson being named, they all ran hirdie girdie, and were angry: for it was promised he should be called Robert the Comptroller, alias Rob the Rower, for expriming of his name. The first thing he demanded was whether they had been good servants, and what they had done since the last time they had convened.”

The witches adored Satan, or the Master of the Sabbat who presided in place of Satan, by prostrations, genuflections, gestures, and obeisances. In mockery of solemn bows and seemly courtesies the worshippers of the Demon approach him awkwardly, with grotesque and obscene mops and mows, sometimes straddling sideways, sometimes walking backwards, as Guazzo says: Cum accedunt ad dæmones eos ueneraturi terga obuertunt & cessim eum cancrorum more supplicaturi manus inuersas retro applicant.⁠[77] But their chief act of homage was the reverential kiss, osculum infame. This impious and lewd ritual is mentioned in detail by most authorities and is to be found in all lands and centuries. So Delrio writes: “The Sabbat is presided over by a Demon, the Lord of the Sabbat, who appears in some monstrous form, most generally as a goat or some hound of hell, seated upon a haughty throne. The witches who resort to the Sabbat approach the throne with their backs turned, and worship him ... and then, as a sign of their homage, they kiss his fundament.” Guazzo notes: “As a sign of homage witches kiss the Devil’s fundament.” And Ludwig Elich says: “Then as a token of their homage—with reverence be it spoken—they kiss the fundament of the Devil.”⁠[78] “Y al tiempo que le besan debajo de la cola, da una ventosidad de muy horrible olor,” adds the Spanish Relacion, “fetid, foul, and filthy.”

To cite other authorities would be but to quote the same words. Thomas Cooper, indeed, seems to regard this ceremony as a part of the rite of admission, but to confine it to this occasion alone is manifestly incorrect, for there is continual record of its observance at frequent Sabbats by witches of many years standing. “Secondly,” he remarks, “when this acknowledgement is made, in testimoniall of this subiection, Satan offers his back-parts to be kissed of his vassall.”⁠[79] But in the dittay of the North Berwick witches, all of whom had long been notorious for their malpractices, “Item, the said Agnis Sampson confessed that the divell being then at North Barrick Kerke, attending their comming, in the habit or likenesse of a man,⁠[80] and seeing that they tarried over long, hee at their comming enjoyned them all to a pennance, which was, that they should kisse his buttockes, in sign of duety to him, which being put over the pulpit bare, every one did as he had enjoyned them.”⁠[81]

One of the principal charges which was repeatedly brought against the Knights Templars during the lengthy ecclesiastical and judicial processes, 1307-1314, was that of the osculum infame given by the juniors to their preceptors. Even so prejudiced a writer as Lea cannot but admit the truth of this accusation. In this case, however, it has nothing to do with sorcery but must be connected with the homosexuality which the Order universally practised.

There are some very important details rehearsed in a Bull, 8 June, 1303, of the noble but calumniated Boniface VIII, with reference to the case of Walter Langton, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry (1296-1322), and treasurer of Edward I, when this prelate was accused of sorcery and homage to Satan: “For some time past it has come to our ears that our Venerable Brother Walter Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield has been commonly defamed, and accused, both in the realm of England and elsewhere, of paying homage to the Devil by kissing his posterior, and that he hath had frequent colloquies with evil spirits.”⁠[82] The Bishop cleared himself of these charges with the compurgators. Bodin refers to Guillaume Edeline, who was executed in 1453 as a wizard. He was a doctor of the Sorbonne, and prior of St. Germain en Laye: “The aforesaid sire Guillaume confessed ... that he had done homage to the aforesaid Satan, who appeared in the shape of a ram, by kissing his buttocks in token of reverence and homage.”⁠[83] A very rare tract of the fourteenth century directed against the Waldenses among other charges brings the following: “Item, in aliquibus aliis partibus apparet eis dæmon sub specie et figura cati, quem sub cauda sigillatim osculantur.” (The Devil appears to them as a cat, and they kiss him sub cauda.)⁠[84]

Barthélemy Minguet of Brécy, a young man of twenty-five, who was tried in 1616, said that at the Sabbat “he often saw [the Devil] in the shape of a man, who held a horse by its bridle, & that they went forward to worship him, each one holding a pitch candle of black wax in their hands.”⁠[85] These candles, as Guazzo tells us, were symbolic and required by the ritual of the Sabbat, not merely of use for the purpose of giving light: “Then they made an offering of pitch black candles, and as a sign of homage kissed his fundament.”⁠[86] The candles were ordinarily black, and one taper, larger than the rest, was frequently carried by the Devil himself. At the North Berwick meeting when the witches were all to assemble in the church, “Iohn Fein blew up the Kirk doors, and blew in the lights, which wer like Mickl black candles sticking round about the Pulpit.”⁠[87] Boguet relates that the witches whom he tried confessed that the Sabbat commenced with the adoration of Satan, “who appeared, sometimes in the shape of a tall dark man, sometimes in the shape of a goat, & to express their worship and homage, they made him an offering of candles, which burned with a blue light.”⁠[88] John Fian, also, when doing homage to the Devil “thought he saw the light of a candle ... which appeared blue lowe.” This, of course, was on account of the sulphurous material whence these candles were specially compounded. De Lancre expressly states that the candles or flambeaux used at the Sabbat were made of pitch.

An important feature of the greater Sabbats was the ritual dance, for the dance was an act of devotion which has descended to us from the earliest times and is to be found in every age and every country. Dancing is a natural movement, a primitive expression of emotion and ideals. In the ancient world there can have been few things fairer than that rhythmic thanksgiving of supple limbs and sweet voices which Athens loved, and for many a century was preserved the memory of that day when the young Sophocles led the choir in celebration of the victory of Salamis.⁠[89] The Mystæ in the meadows of Elysium danced their rounds with the silver clash of cymbals and with madly twinkling snow-white feet. At the solemn procession of the Ark from Cariathiarim (Kirjath Jearim) King David “danced with all his might before the Lord, ... dancing and leaping before the Lord.” S. Basil urges his disciples to dance on earth in order to fit themselves for what may be one of the occupations of the angels in heaven. As late as the seventeenth century the ceremonial dance in church was not uncommon. In 1683 it was the duty of the senior canon to lead a dance of choir-boys in the Paris cathedral. Among the Abyssinian Christians dancing forms no inconsiderable part of worship. Year by year on Whit Tuesday hundreds of pilgrims dance through the streets of Echternach (Luxemburg) to the shrine of S. Willibrod in S. Peter’s Church. Formerly the devotees danced three times round the great Abbey Courtyard before proceeding to the sanctuary. But beyond all these the dance has its own place in the ritual of Holy Church even yet. Three times a year in Seville Cathedral—on Holy Thursday, upon Corpus Christi and the Immaculate Conception—Los Seises dance before a specially constructed altar, exquisitely adorned with flowers and lights, erected near the outer door of the grand western entrance of the cathedral. The ceremony in all probability dates from the thirteenth century.

The dresses of the boys, who dance before the improvised altar at Benediction on Corpus Christi, are of the period of Philip III, and consist of short trousers and jackets that hang from one shoulder, the doublets being of red satin, with rich embroidery. Plumed white hats with feathers are worn, also shoes with large scintillating buckles. On Holy Thursday the costume is also red and white, whilst it is blue and white for “the day of the Virgin.”

The eight boy choristers—with eight others as attendants—dance, with castanets in their hands, to a soft organ obbligato, down the centre of the cathedral to the decorated altar, advancing slowly and gracefully. Here they remain for about a quarter of an hour, singing a hymn, and accompanying it (as the carols of the olden time) with dance and castanets. They sing a two-part hymn in front of the altar, forming in two eights, facing each other, the clergy kneeling in a semicircle round them.

Assuredly I cannot do better than quote Mr. Arthur Symons’ verdict on this dance as he saw it a few years back in Seville: “And, yes, I found it perfectly dignified, perfectly religious, without a suspicion of levity or indecorum. This consecration of the dance, this turning of a possible vice into a means of devotion, this bringing of the people’s art, the people’s passion, which in Seville is dancing, into the church, finding it a place there, is precisely one of those acts of divine worldly wisdom which the Church has so often practised in her conquest of the world.”

Not too fantastically has a writer suggested that High Mass itself in some sense enshrines a survival of the ancient religious dance—that stately, magnificent series of slow movements which surely may express devotion of the most solemn and reverent kind, as well as can the colour of vestment or sanctuary, or the sounds of melody.

Since the dance is so essentially religious it must needs be burlesqued and buffooned by God’s ape. For the dance of the witches is degraded, awkward, foul, and unclean. These very movements are withershins, as Guazzo points out: “Then follow the round dances in which, however, they always tread the measure to the left.”⁠[90] “The Sorcerers,” says Boguet, “dance a country-dance with their backs turned one to the other.”⁠[91] This, of course, being the exact reverse of the natural country-dance. “Sometimes, although seldom,” he adds, “they dance in couples, & sometimes one partner is there, another here, for always everything is in confusion.”⁠[92] De Lancre writes of witches’ revels: “They only dance three kinds of brawls.... The first is à la Bohémienne ... the second with quick trippings: these are round dances.”⁠[93] In the third Sabbat measure the dancers were placed one behind another in a straight line.

An old Basque legend reported by Estefanella Hirigaray describes how the witches were wont to meet near an old limekiln to dance their rounds, a ceremony regarded throughout that district as an essential feature of the Sabbat. De Lancre notes the brawls à la Bohémienne as especially favoured by sorcerers in Labourd. Sylvester Mazzolini, O.P. (1460-1523), Master of the Sacred Palace, and the great champion of orthodoxy against the heresiarch Luther, in his erudite De Strigimagia⁠[94] relates that in Como and Brescia a number of children between eight and twelve years old, who had frequented the Sabbat, but had been happily converted by the unsparing patience of the Inquisitors, at the request of the Superiors gave exhibitions of these dances when they showed such extraordinary adroitness and skill in executing the most intricate and fantastic figures that it was evident they had been instructed by no mere human tutelage. Marco de Viqueria, the Dominican Prior of the Brussels monastery, closely investigated the matter, and he was a religious of such known acumen and exceptional probity that his testimony soon convinced many prelates at Rome who were inclined to suspect some trickery or cunning practice. In Belgium this Sabbat dance was known as Pauana.

In the Fian trial Agnes Sampson confessed that “They danced along the Kirk-yeard, Geilic Duncan playing on a Trump, and John Fein mussiled led the Ring. The said Agnes and her daughter followed next. Besides these were Kate Gray, George Noilis his wife, ... with the rest of their Cummers above an hundred Persons.”⁠[95] She further added “that this Geillis Duncane did goe before them, playing this reill or daunce uppon a small trumpe, called a Jewe’s trumpe, untill they entered into the Kerk of North Barrick.”⁠[96] “These confessions made the King [James I, then James VI of Scotland] in a wonderfull admiration, and sent for the saide Geillis Duncane, who, upon the like trumpe, did play the saide daunce before the kinges maiestie.”

Music generally accompanied the dancers, and there is ample evidence that various instruments were played, violins, flutes, tambourines, citterns, hautboys, and, in Scotland, the pipes. Those of the witches who had any skill were the performers, and very often they obliged the company awhile with favourite airs of a vulgar kind, but the concert ended in the most hideous discords and bestial clamour; the laws of harmony and of decency were alike rudely violated. In August, 1590, a certain Nicolas Laghernhard, on his way to Assencauria, was passing through the outskirts of a wood when he saw through the trees a number of men and women dancing with filthy and fantastic movements. In amaze he signed himself and uttered the Holy Name, whereupon the company perceiving him took to flight, but not before he had recognized many of these wretches. He was prompt to inform the ecclesiastical tribunals, and several persons being forthwith questioned freely acknowledged their infamies. Amongst these a shepherd named Michael, who enjoyed a considerable reputation for his musical talents and strangely fascinating voice, confessed that he was the piper at the local Sabbat and that his services were in constant requisition. At the lesser Sabbats (aquelarre) of Zugarramurdi, a hamlet of Navarre, some six hundred souls, in the Bastan valley, some twelve leagues from Pampluna, one Juan de Goyburu was wont to play upon the flute, and Juan de Sansin the tambourine. These two unhappy wretches, having shown every sign of sincerest contrition, were reconciled to the Church.

Sinclar in his Relation XXXV, “Anent some Prayers, Charms, and Avies, used in the Highlands,” says: “As the Devil is originally the Author of Charms, and Spells, so is he the Author of several baudy Songs, which are sung. A reverend Minister told me, that one who was the Devils Piper, a wizzard confest to him, that at a Ball of dancing, the Foul Spirit taught him a Baudy song to sing and play, as it were this night, and ere two days past all the Lads and Lasses of the town were lilting it throw the street. It were abomination to rehearse it.” Philip Ludwig Elich precisely sums up the confused scene: “The whole foul mob and stinkard rabble sing the most obscene priapics and abominable songs in honour of the Devil. One witch yells, Harr, harr; a second hag, Devil, Devil; jump hither, jump thither; a third, Gambol hither, gambol thither; another, Sabaoth, Sabaoth, &c.; and so the wild orgy waxes frantic what time the bedlam rout are screeching, hissing, howling, caterwauling, and whooping lewd wassail.”⁠[97] Of all the horrors of the Sabbat the climax was that appalling blasphemy and abominable impiety by which the most Holy Sacrifice of the Altar was mocked and burlesqued in hideous fashion. And since no Christian will receive the Blessed Sacrament save he be duly fasting as the Church so strictly enjoins, the witches in derision of Christ’s ordinance satiate their appetites with a wolfish feast and cram themselves to excess with food of all kinds, both meat and drink, before they proceed to the ritual of hell. These orgies were often prolonged amid circumstances of the most beastly gluttony and drunkenness.

Guazzo writes: “Tables are laid and duly furnished, whereupon they set themselves to the board & begin to gobbet piecemeal the meats which the Devil provides, or which each member of the party severally brings with him.”⁠[98] De Lancre also says: “Many authors say that sorcerers at the Sabbat eat the food which the Devil lays before them: but very often the table is only dressed with the viands they themselves bring along. Sometimes there are certain tables served with rare dainties, at others with orts and offal.” “Their banquets are of various kinds of food according to the district & the quality of those who are to partake.”⁠[99] It seems plain that when the local head of the witches, who often presided at these gatherings absente diabolo, was a person of wealth or standing, delicacies and choice wines would make their appearance at the feast, but when it was the case of the officer of a coven in some poor and small district, possibly a meeting of peasants, the homeliest fare only might be served. The Lancashire witches of 1613, when they met at Malking Tower, sat down to a goodly spread of “Beefe, Bacon, and roasted Mutton,” the sheep having been killed twenty-four hours earlier by James Device; in 1633 Edmund Robinson stated that the Pendle witches offered him “flesh and bread upon a trencher, and drink in a glass,” they also had “flesh smoaking, butter in lumps, and milk,” truly rustic dainties. Alice Duke, a Somerset witch, tried in 1664, confessed that the Devil “bids them Welcome at their Coming, and brings them Wine, Beer, Cakes, and Meal, or the like.”⁠[100] At the trial of Louis Gaufridi at Aix in 1610 the following description of a Sabbat banquet was given: “Then they feasted, three tables being set out according to the three aforesaid degrees. Those who were employed in serving bread had loaves made from wheat privily stolen in various places. They drank malmsey in order to excite them to venery. Those who acted as cup-bearers had filched the wine from cellars where it was stored. Sometimes they ate the tender flesh of little children, who had been slain and roasted at some Synagogue, and sometimes babes were brought there, yet alive, whom the witches had kidnapped from their homes if opportunity offered.”⁠[101] In many places the witches were not lucky enough to get bumpers of malmsey, for Boguet notes that at some Sabbats “They not unseldom drink wine but more often water.”⁠[102]

There are occasional records of unsavoury and tasteless viands, and there is even mention of putrefying garbage and carrion being placed before his evil worshippers by their Master. Such would appear to have been the case at those darker orgies when there was a manifestation of supernatural intelligences from the pit.

The Salamanca doctors say: “They make a meal from food either furnished by themselves or by the Devil. It is sometimes most delicious and delicate, and sometimes a pie baked from babies they have slain or disinterred corpses. A suitable grace is said before such a table.”⁠[103] Guazzo thus describes their wine: “Moreover the wine which is usually poured out for the revellers is like black and clotted blood served in some foul and filthy vessel. Yet there seems to be no lack of cheer at these banquets, save that they furnish neither bread nor salt. Isabella further added that human flesh was served.”⁠[104]

Salt never appeared at the witches’ table. Bodin gives us the reason that it is an emblem of eternity,⁠[105] and Philip Ludwig Elich emphatically draws attention to the absence of salt at these infernal banquets.⁠[106] “At these meals,” remarks Boguet, “salt never appears.”⁠[107] Gentien le Clerc, who was tried in Orleans in 1615, confessed: “They sit down to table, but no salt is ever seen.”⁠[108] Madeleine de la Palud declared that she had never seen salt, olives, or oil at the Devil’s feasts.⁠[109]

When all these wretches are replete they proceed to a solemn parody of Holy Mass.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century Marcelline Pauper of the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of Nevers was divinely called to offer herself up as a victim of reparation for the outrages done to the Blessed Sacrament, especially by sorcerers in their black masses at the Sabbat. In March, 1702, a frightful sacrilege was committed in the convent chapel. The tabernacle was forced open, the ciborium stolen, and those of the Hosts which had not been carried away by the Satanists were thrown to the pavement and trampled under foot. Marcelline made ceaseless reparation, and at nine o’clock of the evening of 26 April, she received the stigmata in hands, feet, and side, and also the Crown of Thorns. After a few years of expiation she died at Tulle, 25 June, 1708.

The erudite Paul Grilland tells us that the liturgy is burlesqued in every detail: “Those witches who have solemnly devoted themselves to the Devil’s service, worship him in a particular manner with ceremonial sacrifices, which they offer to the Devil, imitating in all respects the worship of Almighty God, with vestments, lights, and every other ritual observance, and with a set liturgy in which they are instructed, so that they worship and praise him eternally, just as we worship the true God.”⁠[110] This abomination of blasphemy is met with again and again in the confessions of witches, and although particulars may differ here and there, the same quintessence of sacrilege persisted throughout the centuries, even as alas! in hidden corners and secret lairs of infamy it skulks and lurks this very day.

What appears extremely surprising in this connexion is the statement of Cotton Mather that the New England witches “met in Hellish Randezvous, wherein the Confessors (i.e. the accused who confessed) do say, they have had their Diabolical Sacraments, imitating the Baptism and the Supper of our Lord.”⁠[111] At the trial of Bridget Bishop, alias Oliver, at the Court of Oyer and Terminer, held at Salem, 2 June, 1692, Deliverance Hobbs, a converted witch, affirmed “that this Bishop was at a General Meeting of the Witches, in a Field at Salem-Village, and there partook of a Diabolical Sacrament in Bread and Wine then administered.” In the case of Martha Carrier, tried 2 August, 1692, before the same court, two witnesses swore they had seen her “at a Diabolical Sacrament ... when they had Bread and Wine Administered unto them.” Abigail Williams confessed that on 31 March, 1692, when there was a Public Fast observed in Salem on account of the scourge of sorcery “the Witches had a Sacrament that day at an house in the Village, and that they had Red Bread and Red Drink.” This “Red Bread” is certainly puzzling. But the whole thing, sufficiently profane no doubt, necessarily lacks the hideous impiety of the black mass. A minister, the Rev. George Burroughs, is pointed to by accumulated evidence as being the Chief of the Salem witches; “he was Accused by Eight of the Confessing Witches as being an Head Actor at some of their Hellish Randezvouses, and one who had the promise of being a King in Satan’s kingdom”; it was certainly he who officiated at their ceremonies, for amongst others Richard Carrier “affirmed to the jury that he saw Mr. George Burroughs at the witch meeting at the village and saw him administer the sacrament,” whilst Mary Lacy, senr., and her daughter Mary “affirmed that Mr. George Burroughs was at the witch meetings with witch sacraments.”⁠[112]

The abomination of the black mass is performed by some apostate or renegade priest who has delivered himself over to the service of evil and is shamefully prominent amongst the congregation of witches. It should be remarked from this fact that it is plain the witches are as profoundly convinced of the doctrines of Transubstantiation, the Totality, Permanence, and Adorableness of the Eucharistic Christ, and of the power also of the sacrificing priesthood, as is the most orthodox Catholic. Indeed, unless such were the case, their revolt would be empty, void at any rate of its material malice.

One of the gravest charges brought against the Templars and in the trials (1307-1314) established beyond any question or doubt was that of celebrating a blasphemous mass in which the words of consecration were omitted. It has, indeed, been suggested that the liturgy used by the Templars was not the ordinary Western Rite, but that it was an Eastern Eucharist. According to Catholic teaching the Consecration takes place when the words of institution are recited with intention and appropriate gesture, the actual change of the entire substances of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ being effected in virtue of the words Hoc est enim Corpus meum; Hic est enim Calix sanguinis mei.... This has been defined by a decree of the Council of Florence (1439): “Quod ilia uerba diuina Saluatoris omnem uirtutem transsubstantiationis habent.” (These divine words of Our Saviour have full power to effect transubstantiation.) But the Orthodox Church holds that an Epiklesis is necessary to valid consecration, the actual words of Our Lord being repeated “as a narrative” [διηγηματικῶς],⁠[113] which would seem logically to imply that Christ’s words have no part in the form of the Sacrament. In all Orthodox liturgies the words of Consecration are found together with the Epiklesis, and there are in existence some few liturgies, plainly invalid, which omit the words of Consecration altogether. These are all of them forms which have been employed by heretical sects; and it may be that the Templars used one of these. But it is far more probable that the words were purposely omitted; the Templars were corroded with Gnostic doctrines, they held the heresies of the Mandæans or Johannites who were filled with an insane hatred of Christ in much the same way as witches and demonolaters, they followed the tenets of the Ophites who venerated the Serpent and prayed to him for protection against the Creator, they adored and offered sacrifice before an idol, a Head, which, as Professor Prutz holds, represented the lower god whom Gnostic bodies worshipped, that is Satan. At his trial in Tuscany the knight Bernard of Parma confessed that the Order firmly believed this idol had the power to save and to enrich, in fine, flat diabolism. The secret mass of the Templars may have burlesqued an Eastern liturgy rather than the Western rite, but none the less it was the essential cult of the evil principle.

In 1336 a priest who had been imprisoned by the Comte de Foix, Gaston III Phébus, on a charge of celebrating a Satanic mass, was sent to Avignon and examined by Benedict XII in person. The next year the same pontiff appointed his trusty Guillaume Lombard to preside at the trial of Pierre du Chesne, a priest from the diocese of Tarbes, accused of defiling the Host.

Gilles de Sillé, a priest of the diocese of S. Malo, and the Florentine Antonio Francesco Prelati, formerly of the diocese of Arezzo, were wont to officiate at the black masses of Tiffauges and Machecoul, the castles of Gilles de Rais, who was executed in 1440.

A priest named Benedictus in the sixteenth century caused great scandal by the discovery of his assistance at secret and unhallowed rites. Charles IX employed an apostate monk to celebrate the eucharist of hell before himself and his intimates, and during the reign of his brother the Bishop of Paris burned in the Place de Grève a friar named Séchelle who had been found guilty of participating in similar profane mysteries. In 1597 the Parliament of Paris sentenced Jean Belon, curé of S. Pierre-des-Lampes in the Bourges diocese, to be hanged and his body burned for desecration of the Sacrament and the repeated celebration of abominable ceremonies.⁠[114] The Parliament of Bordeaux in 1598 condemned to the stake Pierre Aupetit, curé of Pageas, near Chalus Limousin. He confessed that for more than twenty years he had frequented Sabbats, especially those held at Mathe-goutte and Puy-de-Dôme, where he worshipped the Devil and performed impious masses in his honour.⁠[115] August 14, 1606, a friar named Denobilibus was put to death at Grenoble upon a similar conviction. In 1609 the Parliament of Bordeaux sent Pierre De Lancre and d’Espagnet to Labourd in the Bayonne district to stamp out the sorcerers who infested that region. No less than seven priests were arrested on charges of celebrating Satan’s mass at the Sabbat. Two, Migalena, an old man of seventy, and Pierre Bocal, aged twenty-seven, were executed, but the Bishop of Bayonne interfered, claimed the five for his own tribunal and contrived that they should escape from prison. Three other priests who were under restraint were immediately set free, and wisely quitted the country. A twelvemonth later Aix and the whole countryside rang with the confessions of Madeleine de la Palud who “Dit aussi que ce malheureux Loys magicien ... a controuvé le premier de dire la messe au sabatt et consacrer Véritablement et présenter le sacrifice à Lucifer.”⁠[116] It was, of course, mere ignorance on her part to suppose that “that accursed Magician Lewes did first inuent the saying of Masse at the Sabbaths,” although Gaufridi may have told her this to impress her with a sense of his importance and power among the hierarchies of evil. Certainly in her evidence the details of the Sabbat worship are exceptionally detailed and complete.

They are, however, amply paralleled, if not exceeded, by the narrative of Madeleine Bavent, a Franciscan sister of the Third Order, attached to the convent of SS. Louis and Elizabeth at Louviers. Her confessions, which she wrote at length by the direction of her confessor, des Marets, an Oratorian, meticulously describe scenes of the most hideous blasphemy in which were involved three chaplains, David, Maturin Picard, the curé of Mesnil-Jourdain, and Thomas Boullé, sometime his assistant. Amongst other enormities they had revived the heresy of the Adamites, an early Gnostic sect, and celebrated the Mass in a state of stark nudity amid circumstances of the grossest indecency. Upon one Good Friday Picard and Boullé had compelled her to defile the crucifix and to break a consecrated Host, throwing the fragments upon the ground and trampling them. David and Picard were dead, but Boullé was burned at Rouen, 21 August, 1647.⁠[117]

During the reign of Louis XIV a veritable epidemic of sacrilege seemed to rage throughout Paris.⁠[118] The horrors of the black mass were said in many houses, especially in that of La Voisin (Catherine Deshayes) who lived in the rue Beauregard. The leading spirit of this crew was the infamous abbé Guibourg, a bastard son—so gossip said—of Henri de Montmorency. With him were joined Brigallier, almoner of the Grande Mademoiselle; Bouchot, director of the convent of La Saussaye; Dulong, a canon of Notre-Dame; Dulausens, vicar of Saint-Leu; Dubousquet; Seysson; Dussis; Lempérier; Lépreux; Davot, vicar of Notre-Dame de Bonne-Nouvelle; Mariette, vicar of Saint-Séverin, skilled in maledictions; Lemeignan, vicar of Saint-Eustache, who was convicted of having sacrificed numberless children to Satan; Toumet; Le Franc; Cotton, vicar of St. Paul, who had baptized a baby with the chrism of Extreme Unction and then throttled him upon the altar; Guignard and Sébault of the diocese of Bourges, who officiated at the black mass in the cellars of a house at Paris, and confected filthy charms under conditions of the most fearful impiety.

In the eighteenth century the black mass persisted. In 1723 the police arrested the abbé Lecollet and the abbé Bournement for this profanity; and in 1745 the abbé de Rocheblanche fell under the same suspicion. At the hotel of Madame de Charolais the vilest scenes of the Sabbat were continued. A gang of Satanists celebrated their monstrous orgies at Paris on 22 January, 1793, the night after the murder of Louis XVI. The abbé Fiard in two of his works, Lettres sur le diable, 1791, and La France Trompée ... Paris, 8vo, 1803, conclusively shows that eucharistic blasphemies were yet being perpetrated but in circumstances of almost impenetrable secrecy. In 1865 a scandal connected with these abominations came to light, and the Bishop of Sens, in whose diocese it occurred, was so horrified that he resigned his office and retired to Fontainebleau, where he died some eighteen months later, practically of shock. Similar practices were unmasked at Paris in 1874 and again in 1878, whilst it is common knowledge that the characters of Joris Karl Huysmans’ Là-Bas were all persons easy of identification, and the details are scenes exactly reproduced from contemporary life.⁠[119] The hideous cult of evil yet endures. Satanists yet celebrate the black mass in London, Brighton, Paris, Lyons, Bruges, Berlin, Milan, and alas! in Rome itself. Both South America and Canada are thus polluted. In many a town, both great and small, they have their dens of blasphemy and evil where they congregate unsuspected to perform these execrable rites. Often they seem to concentrate their vile energies in the quiet cathedral cities of England, France, Italy, in vain endeavour to disturb the ancient homes of peace with the foul brabble of devil-worship and all ill.

They have even been brought upon the public stage. One episode of Un Soir de Folie, the revue (1925-6) at the Folies Bergère, Paris, was “Le Sabbat et la Herse Infernale,” where in a Gothic cathedral an actor (Mons. Benglia) appeared as Satan receiving the adoration of his devotees.

At the more frequented Sabbats the ritual of Holy Mass was elaborately burlesqued in almost every detail. An altar was erected with four supports, sometimes under a sheltering tree, at others upon a flat rock, or some naturally convenient place, “auprès d’vn arbre, ou parfois auprès d’vn rocher, dressant quelque forme d’autel sur des colonés infernales,” says De Lancre.⁠[120] In more recent times and to-day when the black mass is celebrated in houses such an altar is often permanent and therefore the infernal sanctuary can be builded with a display of the full symbolism of the hideous cult of evil. The altar was covered with the three linen cloths the ritual enjoins, and upon it were six black candles in the midst of which they placed a crucifix inverted, or an image of the Devil. Sometimes the Devil himself occupied this central position, standing erect, or seated on some kind of monstrous throne. In 1598, at a celebrated witch-trial before the Parliament of Bordeaux with the Vicar-general of the Bishop of Limoges and a learned councillor Peyrat as assessors, Antoine Dumons of Saint-Laurent confessed that he had frequently provided a large number of candles for the Sabbat, both wax lights to be distributed among those present and the large black tapers for the altar. These were lit by Pierre Aupetit, who held a sacristan’s reed, and apparently officiated as Master of the Ceremonies when he was not actually himself saying the Mass.⁠[121]

In May, 1895, when the legal representatives of the Borghese family visited the Palazzo Borghese, which had been rented for some time in separate floors or suites, they found some difficulty in obtaining admission to certain apartments on the first floor, the occupant of which seemed unaware that the lease was about to expire. By virtue of the terms of the agreement, however, he was obliged to allow them to inspect the premises to see if any structural repairs or alterations were necessary, as Prince Scipione Borghese, who was about to be married, intended immediately to take up his residence in the ancestral home with his bride. One door the tenant obstinately refused to unlock, and when pressed he betrayed the greatest confusion. The agents finally pointed out that they were within their rights to employ actual force, and that if access was longer denied they would not hesitate to do so forthwith. When the keys had been produced, the cause of the reluctance was soon plain. The room within was inscribed with the words Templum Palladicum. The walls were hung all round from ceiling to floor with heavy curtains of silk damask, scarlet and black, excluding the light; at the further end there stretched a large tapestry upon which was woven in more than life-size a figure of Lucifer, colossal, triumphant, dominating the whole. Exactly beneath an altar had been built, amply furnished for the liturgy of hell: candles, vessels, rituals, missal, nothing was lacking. Cushioned prie-dieus and luxurious chairs, crimson and gold, were set in order for the assistants; the chamber being lit by electricity, fantastically arrayed so as to glare from an enormous human eye. The visitors soon quitted the accursed spot, the scene of devil-worship and blasphemy, nor had they any desire more nearly to examine the appointments of this infernal chapel.⁠[122]

The missal used at the black mass was obviously a manuscript, although it is said that in later times these grimoires of hideous profanity have actually been printed. It is not infrequently mentioned. Thus De Lancre notes that the sorcerers of the Basses-Pyrénées (1609) at their worship saw the officiant “tournant les feuillets d’vn certain liure qu’il a en main.”⁠[123] Madeleine Bavent in her confession said: “On lisait la messe dans le livre des blasphèmes, qui servait de canon et qu’on employait aussi dans les processions.”⁠[124] The witches’ missal was often bound in human skin, generally that of an unbaptized babe.⁠[125] Gentien le Clerc, tried at Orleans, 1614-1615, confessed that “le Diable ... marmote dans un liure duquel la couuerture est toute veluë comme d’vne peau de loup, auec des feuillets blancs & rouges, d’autres noires.”

The vestments worn by the celebrant are variously described. On rare occasions he is described as being arrayed in a bishop’s pontificalia, black in hue, torn, squalid, and fusty. Boguet reports that a witch stated: “Celuy, qui est commis à faire l’office, est reuestu d’vne chappe noire sans croix,”⁠[126] but it seems somewhat strange that merely a plain black cope should be used, unless the explanation is to be found in the fact that such a vestment was most easily procurable and no suspicion of its ultimate employment would be excited. The abbé Guibourg sometimes wore a cope of white silk embroidered with fir-cones, which again seems remarkable, as the symbolism is in no way connected with the Satanic rites he performed. But this is the evidence of Marguerite, La Voisin’s daughter, who was not likely to be mistaken.⁠[127] It is true that the mass was often, perhaps, partially erotic and not wholly diabolic in the same sense as the Sabbat masses were, but yet Astaroth, Asmodeus, and Lucifer were invoked, and it was a liturgy of evil. On other occasions Guibourg seems to have donned the orthodox eucharistic chasuble, stole, maniple, girdle, alb, and amice. In the thirty-seventh article of his confession Gaufridi acknowledged that the priest who said the Devil’s mass at the Sabbat wore a violet chasuble.⁠[128] Gentien le Clerc, tried at Orleans in 1614-1615, was present at a Sabbat mass when the celebrant “wore a chasuble which was embroidered with a Cross; but there were only three bars.”⁠[129] Later a contemporary witness points to the use of vestments embroidered with infernal insignia, such as a dark red chasuble, the colour of dried blood, upon which was figured a black buck goat rampant; a chasuble that bore the inverse Cross, and similar robes adorned by some needle with the heraldry of hell.

In bitter mockery of the Asperges the celebrant sprinkled the witches with filthy and brackish water, or even with stale. “The Devil at the same time made water into a hole dug in the earth, & used it as holy water, wherewith the celebrant of the mass sprinkled all present, using a black aspergillum.”⁠[130] Silvain Nevillon, a sorcerer who was tried at Orleans in 1614-1615, said: “When Tramesabot said Mass, before he commenced he used to sprinkle all present with holy water which was nothing else than urine, saying meanwhile Asperges Diaboli.”⁠[131] According to Gentien le Clerc: “The holy water is yellow ... & after it has been duly sprinkled Mass is said.”⁠[132] Madeleine de la Palud declared that the sorcerers were sprinkled with water, and also with consecrated wine from the chalice upon which all present cried aloud: Sanguis eius super nos et super filios nostros.⁠[133] (His blood be upon us and upon our children.)

This foul travesty of the holiest mysteries began with an invocation of the Devil, which was followed by a kind of general confession, only each one made mock acknowledgement of any good he might have done, and as a penance he was enjoined to utter some foul blasphemy or to break some precept of the Church. The president absolved the congregation by an inverse sign of the Cross made with the left hand. The rite then proceeded with shameless profanity, but De Lancre remarks that the Confiteor was never said, not even in a burlesque form, and Alleluia never pronounced. After reciting the Offertory the celebrant drew back a little from the altar and the assembly advancing in file kissed his left hand. When the Queen of the Sabbat—the witch who ranked first after the Grand Master, the oldest and most evil of the witches (“en chasque village,” says De Lancre, “trouuer vne Royne du Sabbat”)—was present she sat on the left of the altar and received the offerings, loaves, eggs, any meat or country produce, and money, so long as the coins were not stamped with a cross. In her hand she held a disc or plate “vne paix ou platine,” engraved with a figure of the Devil, and this his followers devoutly kissed. In many places to-day, especially Belgium, during Holy Mass the pax-brede (instrumentum pacis) is kissed by the congregation at the Offertory, and universally when Mass is said by a priest in the presence of a Prelate the pax-brede is kissed by the officiant and the Prelate after the Agnus Dei and the first appropriate ante-communion prayer.

Silvain Nevillon, who was tried at Orleans in 1614-15, avowed: “The Devil preached a sermon at the Sabbat, but nobody could hear what he said, for he spoke in a growl.”⁠[134]

At the Sabbat a sermon is not infrequently delivered, a farrago of impiety and evil counsel.

The hosts are then brought to the altar. Boguet describes them as dark and round, stamped with a hideous design; Madeleine Bavent saw them as ordinary wafers only coloured red; in other cases they were black and triangular in shape. Often they blasphemed the Host, calling it “Iean le blanc,” just as Protestants called it “Jack-in-the-box.” The chalice is filled, sometimes with wine, sometimes with a bitter beverage that burned the tongue like fire. At the Sanctus a horn sounded harshly thrice, and torches burning with a sulphurous blue flare “qui est fort puante” were kindled. There was an elevation, at which the whole gang, now in a state of hysterical excitement and unnatural exaltation, burst forth with the most appalling screams and maniac blasphemies, rivalling each other in filthy adjurations and crapulous obscenities. The protagonist poured out all the unbridled venom that diabolic foulness could express, a stream of scurrility and pollution; hell seemed to have vomited its reeking gorge on earth. Domine adiuua nos, domine adiuua nos, they cried to the Demon, and again Domine adiuua nos semper. Generally all present were compelled to communicate with the sacrament of the pit, to swallow morsels soiled with mud and ordures, to drink the dark brew of damnation. Gaufridi confessed that for Ite missa est these infernal orgies concluded with the curse: “Allez-vous-en tous au nom du diable!” Whilst the abbé Guibourg cried: “Gloria tibi, Lucifero!”

The black mass of the Sabbat varied slightly in form according to circumstances, and in the modern liturgy of the Satanists it would appear that a considerable feature is made of the burning of certain heavy and noxious weeds, the Devil’s incense. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the use of incense is very rare at the Sabbat, although Silvain Nevillon stated that he had seen at the Sabbat “both holy water and incense. This latter smelled foul, not fragrant as incense burned in church.”⁠[135]

The officiant nowadays consecrates a host and the chalice with the actual sacred words of Holy Mass, but then instead of kneeling he turns his back upon the altar,⁠[136] and a few moments later—sit uenia uerbis!—he cuts and stabs the Host with a knife, throwing it to the ground, treading upon it, spurning it. A part, at least, of the contents of the chalice is also spilled in fearful profanation, and not infrequently there further has been provided a ciborium of consecrated Hosts, all stolen from churches⁠[137] or conveyed away at Communion in their mouths by wretches unafraid to provoke the sudden judgement of an outraged God. These the black priest, for so the celebrant is called by the Devil worshippers, scatters over the pavement to be struggled and fought for by his congregation in their madness to seize and outrage the Body of Christ.

Closely connected with the black mass of the Satanists and a plain survival from the Middle Ages is that grim superstition of the Gascon peasant, the Mass of S. Sécaire.⁠[138] Few priests know the awful ritual, and of those who are learned in such dark lore fewer yet would dare to perform the monstrous ceremonies and utter the prayer of blasphemy. No confessor, no bishop, not even the Archbishop of Auch, may shrive the celebrant; he can only be absolved at Rome by the Holy Father himself. The mass is said upon a broken and desecrated altar in some ruined or deserted church where owls hoot and mope and bats flit through the crumbling windows, where toads spit their venom upon the sacred stone. The priest must make his way thither late attended only by an acolyte of impure and evil life. At the first stroke of eleven he begins; the liturgy of hell is mumbled backward, the canon said with a mow and a sneer; he ends just as midnight tolls. The host is triangular, with three sharp points and black. No wine is consecrated but foul brackish water drawn from a well wherein has been cast the body of an unbaptized babe. The holy sign of the cross is made with the left foot upon the ground. And the man for whom that mass is said will slowly pine away, nor doctor’s skill nor physic will avail him aught, but he will suffer, and dwindle, and surely drop into the grave.⁠[139]

Although there is, no doubt, some picturesque exaggeration here the main details are correct enough. A black, triangular wafer is not infrequently mentioned in the witch-trials as having been the sacramental bread of the Sabbat, whilst Lord Fountainhall⁠[140] in describing the devilish communion of the Loudian witches says: “the drink was sometimes blood, sometimes black moss-water,” and many other details may be closely paralleled.

When the blasphemous liturgy of the Sabbat was done all present gave themselves up to the most promiscuous debauchery, only interrupting their lasciviousness to dance or to spur themselves on to new enormities by spiced foods and copious draughts of wine. “You may well suppose,” writes Boguet, “that every kind of obscenity is practised there, yea, even those abominations for which Heaven poured down fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah are quite common in these assemblies.”⁠[141] The erudite Dominican, Father Sebastian Michaelis, who on the 19 January, 1611, examined Madeleine de la Palud concerning her participation in Sabbats, writes⁠[142] that she narrated the most unhallowed orgies.⁠[143] The imagination reels before such turpitudes! But Madeleine Bavent (1643) supplied even more execrable details.⁠[144] Gentien le Clerc at Orleans (1614-1615) acknowledged similar debauchery.⁠[145] Bodin relates that a large number of witches whom he tried avowed their presence at the Sabbat.⁠[146] In 1459 “large numbers of men & women were burned at Arras, many of whom had mutually accused one another, & they confessed that at night they had been conveyed to these hellish dances.”⁠[147] In 1485 Sprenger executed a large number of sorcerers in the Constance district, and “almost all without exception confessed that the Devil had had connexion with them, after he had made them renounce God and their holy faith.”⁠[148] Many converted witches likewise confessed these abominations “and let it be known that whilst they were witches demons had swived them lustily. Henry of Cologne in confirmation of this says that it is very common in Germany.”⁠[149] Throughout the centuries all erudite authorities have the same monstrous tale to tell, and it would serve no purpose merely to accumulate evidence from the demonologists. To-day the meetings of Satanists invariably end in unspeakable orgies and hideous debauchery.

Occasionally animals were sacrificed at the Sabbat to the Demon. The second charge against Dame Alice Kyteler, prosecuted in 1324 for sorcery by Richard de Ledrede, Bishop of Ossory, was “that she was wont to offer sacrifices to devils of live animals, which she and her company tore limb from limb and made oblation by scattering them at the cross-ways to a certain demon who was called Robin, son of Artes (Robin Artisson), one of hell’s lesser princes.”⁠[150]

In 1622 Margaret McWilliam “renounced her baptisme, and he baptised her and she gave him as a gift a hen or cock.”⁠[151] In the Voodoo rites of to-day a cock is often the animal which is hacked to pieces before the fetish. Black puppies were sacrificed to Hecate; Æneas offers four jetty bullocks to the infernal powers, a coal-black lamb to Night;⁠[152] at their Sabbat on the Esquiline Canidia and Sagana tear limb from limb a black sheep, the blood streams into a trench.⁠[153] Collin de Plancy states that witches sacrifice black fowls and toads to the Devil.⁠[154] The animal victim to a power worshipped as divine is a relic of remotest antiquity.

The presence of toads at the Sabbat is mentioned in many witch-trials. They seem to have been associated with sorcerers owing to the repugnance they generally excite, and in some districts it is a common superstition that those whom they regard fixedly will be seized with palpitations, spasms, convulsions, and swoons: nay, a certain abbé Rousseau of the eighteenth century, who experimented with toads, avowed that when one of these animals looked upon him for some time he fell in a fainting fit whence, if help had not arrived, he would never have recovered.⁠[155] A number of writers—Ælian, Dioscorides, Nicander, Ætius, Gesner—believe that the breath of the toad is poisonous, infecting the places it may touch. Since such idle stories were credited it is hardly to be surprised at that we find the toad a close companion of the witch. De Lancre says that demons often appeared in that shape. Jeannette d’Abadie, a witch of the Basses-Pyrénées, whom he tried and who confessed at length, declared that she saw brought to the Sabbat a number of toads dressed some in black, some in scarlet velvet, with little bells attached to their coats. In November, 1610, a man walking through the fields near Bazas, noticed that his dog had scratched a large hole in a bank and unearthed two pots, covered with cloth, and closely tied. When opened they were found to be packed with bran, and in the midst of each was a large toad wrapped in green tiffany. These doubtless had been set there by a person who had faith in sympathetic magic, and was essaying a malefic spell. No doubt toads were caught and taken to the Sabbat, nor is the reason far to seek. Owing to their legendary venom they served as a prime ingredient in poisons and potions, and were also used for telling fortunes, since witches often divined by their toad familiars. Juvenal alludes to this when he writes: