Upon which passage Thomas Farnabie, the celebrated English scholar (1575-1647) glosses thus: “He alludes to the office of the Haruspex who used to inspect entrails & intestines. Pliny says: The entrails of the toad (Rana rubeta), that is to say the tongue, tiny bones, gall, heart, have rare virtue for they are used in many medicines and salves. Haply he means the puddock or hop-toad, thus demonstrating that these animals are not poisonous, their entrails being completely inefficacious in confecting poisons.”[157] In 1610 Juan de Echalar, a sorcerer of Navarre, confessed at his trial before the Alcantarine inquisitor Don Alonso Becerra Holguin that he and his coven collected toads for the Sabbat, and when they presented these animals to the Devil he blessed them with his left hand, after which they were killed and cooked in a stewpot with human bones and pieces of corpses rifled from new-made graves. From this filthy hotch-potch were brewed poisons and unguents that the Devil distributed to all present with directions how to use them. By sprinkling corn with the liquid it was supposed they could blight a standing field, and also destroy flowers and fruit. A few drops let fall upon a person’s garments was believed to insure death, and a smear upon the shed or sty effectually diseased cattle. From these crude superstitions the fantastic stories of dancing toads, toads dressed en cavalier, and demon toads at the Sabbat were easily evolved.
There is ample and continuous evidence that children, usually tender babes who were as yet unbaptized, were sacrificed at the Sabbat. These were often the witches’ own offspring, and since a witch not unseldom was the midwife or wise-woman of a village she had exceptional opportunities of stifling a child at birth as a non-Sabbatial victim to Satan. “There are no persons who can do more cunning harm to the Catholic faith than midwives,” says the Malleus Maleficarum, Pars I, q. xi: “Nemo fidei catholicæ amplius nocet quam obstetrices.” The classic examples of child-sacrifice are those of Gilles de Rais (1440) and the abbé Guibourg (1680). In the process against the former one hundred and forty children are explicitly named: some authorities accept as many as eight hundred victims. Their blood, brains, and bones were used to decoct magic philtres. In the days of Guibourg the sacrifice of a babe at the impious mass was so common that he generally paid not more than a crown-piece for his victim. “Il avait acheté un écu l’enfant qui fut sacrifié à cette messe.” (“The child sacrificed at this mass he had bought for a crown.”) These abominable ceremonies were frequently performed at the instance of Madame de Montespan in order that Louis XIV should always remain faithful to her, should reject all other mistresses, repudiate his queen, and in fine raise her to the throne.[158] The most general use was to cut the throat of the child, whose blood was drained into the chalice and allowed to fall upon the naked flesh of the inquirer, who lay stretched along the altar. La Voisin asserted that a toll of fifteen hundred infants had been thus murdered. This is not impossible, as a vast number of persons, including a crowd of ecclesiastics, were implicated. Many of the greatest names in France had assisted at these orgies of blasphemy. From first to last no less than two hundred and forty-six men and women of all ranks and grades of society were brought to trial, and whilst thirty-six of humbler station went to the scaffold, one hundred and forty-seven were imprisoned for longer or shorter terms, not a few finding it convenient to leave the country, or, at any rate, to obscure themselves in distant châteaux. But many of the leaves had been torn out of the archives, and Louis himself forbade any mention of his favourite’s name in connexion with these prosecutions. However, she was disgraced, and it is not surprising that after the death of Maria Teresa, 31 July, 1683, the king early in the following year married the pious and conventual Madame de Maintenon.
Ludovico Maria Sinistrari writes that witches “promise the Devil sacrifices and offerings at stated times: once a fortnight, or at least each month, the murder of some child, or an homicidal act of sorcery,” and again and again in the trials detailed accusation of the kidnapping and murder of children are brought against the prisoners. In the same way as the toad was used for magical drugs so was the fat of the child. The belief that corpses and parts of corpses constitute a most powerful cure and a supreme ingredient in elixirs is universal and of the highest antiquity. The quality of directly curing diseases and of protection has long been attributed to a cadaver. Tumours, eruptions, gout, are dispelled if the afflicted member be stroked with a dead hand.[159] Toothache is charmed away if the face be touched with the finger of a dead child.[160] Birthmarks vanish under the same treatment.[161] Burns, carbuncles, the herpes, and other skin complaints, fearfully prevalent in the Middle Ages, could be cured by contact with some part of a corpse. In Pomerania the “cold corpse hand” is a protection against fire,[162] and Russian peasants believe that a dead hand protects from bullet wounds and steel.[163] It was long thought by the ignorant country folk that the doctors of the hospital of Graz enjoyed the privilege of being allowed every year to exploit one human life for curative purposes. Some young man who repaired thither for toothache or any such slight ailment is seized, hung up by the feet, and tickled to death! Skilled chemists boil the body to a paste and utilize this as well as the fat and the charred bones in their drug store. The people are persuaded that about Easter a youth annually disappears in the hospital for these purposes.[164] This tradition is, perhaps, not unconnected with the Jewish ritual sacrifices of S. William of Norwich (1144); Harold of Gloucester (1168); William of Paris (1177); Robert of Bury S. Edmunds (1181); S. Werner of Oberwesel (1286); S. Rudolph of Berne (1294); S. Andreas of Rinn (1462); S. Simon of Trent, a babe of two and a half years old (1473); Simon Abeles, whose body lies in the Teyn Kirche at Prague, murdered for Christ’s sake on 21 February, 1694, by Lazarus and Levi Kurtzhandel; El santo Niño de la Guardia, near Toledo (1490), and many more.[165]
The riots which have so continually during three centuries broken out in China against Europeans, and particularly against Catholic asylums for the sick, foundling hospitals, schools, are almost always fomented by an intellectual party who begin by issuing fiery appeals to the populace: “Down with the missionaries! Kill the foreigners! They steal or buy our children and slaughter them, in order to prepare magic remedies and medicines out of their eyes, hearts, and from other portions of their dead bodies.” Baron Hübner in his Promenade autour du monde, II (Paris, 1873) tells the story of the massacre at Tientsin, 21 June, 1870, and relates that it was engineered on these very lines. In 1891 similar risings against Europeans resident in China were found to be due to the same cause. Towards the end of 1891 a charge was brought in Madagascar against the French that they devoured human hearts and for this purpose kidnapped and killed native children. Stern legislation was actually found necessary to check the spread of these accusations.[166]
In the Navarrese witch-trials of 1610 Juan de Echelar confessed that a candle had been used made from the arm of an infant strangled before baptism. The ends of the fingers had been lit, and burned with a clear flame, a “Hand of Glory” in fact. At Forfar, in 1661, Helen Guthrie and four other witches exhumed the body of an unbaptized babe and made portions into a pie which they ate. They imagined that by this means no threat nor torture could bring them to confession of their sorceries. This, of course, is clearly sympathetic magic. The tongue of the infant had never spoken articulate words, and so the tongues of the witches would be unable to articulate.
It is a fact seldom realized, but none the less of the deepest significance, that almost every detail of the old witch-trials can be exactly paralleled in Africa to-day. Thus there exists in Bantu a society called the “Witchcraft Company,” whose members hold secret meetings at midnight in the depths of the forest to plot sickness and death against their enemies by means of incantations and spells. The owl is their sacred bird, and their signal call an imitation of its hoot. They profess to leave their corporeal bodies asleep in their huts, and it is only their spirit-bodies that attend the magic rendezvous, passing through walls and over the tree-tops with instant rapidity. At the meeting they have visible, audible, and tangible communication with spirits. They hold feasts, at which is eaten the “heart-life” of some human being, who through this loss of his heart falls sick and, unless “the heart” be later restored, eventually dies. Earliest cock-crow is the warning for them to disperse, since they fear the advent of the morning-star, as, should the sun rise upon them before they reach their corporeal bodies, all their plans would not merely fail, but recoil upon themselves, and they would pine and languish miserably. This hideous Society was introduced by black slaves to the West Indies, to Jamaica and Hayti, and also to the Southern States of America as Voodoo worship. Authentic records are easily procurable which witness that midnight meetings were held in Hayti as late as 1888, when human beings, especially kidnapped children, were killed and eaten at the mysterious and evil banquets. European government in Africa has largely suppressed the practice of the black art, but this foul belief still secretly prevails, and Dr. Norris[167] is of opinion that were white influence withdrawn it would soon hold sway as potently as of old.
A candid consideration will show that for every detail of the Sabbat, however fantastically presented and exaggerated in the witch-trials of so many centuries, there is ample warrant and unimpeachable evidence. There is some hallucination no doubt; there is lurid imagination, and vanity which paints the colours thick; but there is a solid stratum of fact, and very terrible fact throughout.
And as the dawn broke the unhallowed crew separated in haste, and hurried each one on his way homewards, pale, weary, and haggard after the night of taut hysteria, frenzied evil, and vilest excess.
“Le coq s’oyt par fois és sabbats sonna̅t le retraicte aux Sorciers.”[168] (The cock crows; the Sabbat ends; the Sorcerers scatter and flee away.)
[1] Omnia autem honeste et secundum ordinem fiant. I Cor. xiv. 40.
[2] Miss Murray, misled no doubt by the multiplicity of material, postulates two separate and distinct kinds of assemblies: The Sabbat, the General Meeting of all members of the religion; the Esbat “only for the special and limited number who carried out the rites and practices of the cult, and [which] was not for the general public.” The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, p. 97. Görres had already pointed out that the smaller meetings were often known as Esbats. The idea of a “general public” at a witches’ meeting is singular.
[3] On a voulu trouver l’etymologie du sabbat, réunion des sorciers, dans les sabazies; mais la forme ne le permet pas; d’ailleurs comment, au moyen âge aurait on connu les sabazies? Saint-Croix, Recherches sur les mystères du paganisme; Maury, Histoire des religions de la Grèce antique.
[4] Metamorphoseon, VIII. 25.
[5] Miss Murray thinks that Sabbat “is possibly a derivative of s’esbattre, ‘to frolic,’” and adds “a very suitable description of the joyous gaiety of the meetings”!!
[6] Miss Murray mistakenly says (p. 109) that May Eve (30 April) is called Roodmas or Rood Day. Roodmas or Rood Day is 3 May, the Feast of the Invention of Holy Cross. An early English calendar (702-706) even gives 7 May as Roodmas. The Invention of Holy Cross is found in the Lectionary of Silos and the Bobbio Missal. The date was not slightly altered. The Invention of Holy Cross is among the very early festivals.
[7] Especially in the North and North-East. Bavaria, Wurtemberg, and Baden, knew little of this particular date.
[8] In the Rituale we have “Benedictio Rogi, quæ fit a Clero extra Ecclesiam in Uigilia Natiuitatis S. Joannis Baptistæ.” (Blessing of a pyre, which the Clergy may give on the Vigil of the Nativity of S. John Baptist, but outside the Church.) This form is especially approved for the Diocese of Tarbes.
[9] Relacion de las personas que salieron al auto de la fé que los inquisidores apostólicos del reino de Navarra y su distrito, celebraron en la ciudad De Logroño, en 7 y 8 del mes de noviembre de 1610 años, 1611.
[10] Discours des Sorciers, XXII. 12. Tertullian’s Diabolus simia Dei.
[11] Idem, XX. 2.
[12] Tableau, p. 65.
[13] Les lieux des assemblées des Sorciers sont notables et signalez de quelques arbres, ou croix. Fleau, p. 181.
[14] Anthony Horneck; Appendix to Glanvill’s Sadducismus Triumphatus. London, 1681.
[15] Locus in diuersis regionibus est diuersus; plerumque autem comitia in syluestribus, montanis, uel subterraneis atque ab hominum conuersatione dissitis locis habentur. Mela. Lib. 3. cap. 44. montem Atlantem nominat; de Vaulx Magus Stabuleti decollatus, fatebatur 1603, in Hollandia congregationem frequentissimam fuisse in Ultraiectinæ ditionis aliquo loco. Nobis ab hoc conuentu notus atq; notatus mons Bructerorum, Melibœus alias dictus in ducatu Brunsuicensi, uulgo der Blocksberg oder Heweberg, Peucero, der Brockersberg, & Tilemanno Stellæ, der Vogelsberg, perhibonte Ortelio in Thesauro Geographico. For the Bructeri see Tacitus, Germania, 33: Velleius Paterculus, II, 105, i. Bructera natio, Tacitus, Historiæ, IV, 61.
[16] ... le lieu où on le trouue ordinairement s’appelle Lanne de bouc, & en Basque Aquelarre de verros, prado del Cabrón, & là des Sorciers le vont adorer trois nuicts durant, celle du Lundy, du Mercredy, & du Vendredy. De Lancre, Tableau, p. 62.
[17] Boguet, Discours des Sorciers, p. 124.
[18] A Pleasant Treatise of Witches, London, 1673.
[19] Psalm xc.
[20] Conuentus, ut plurimum ineuntur uel noctis mediæ silentio, quando uiget potestas tenebrarum; uel interdiu meridie, quo sunt qui referant illud Psalmistæ notum de dæmonio meridiano. Noctes frequentiores, quæ feriam tertiam et sextam præcedunt. Delrio, Disquisitiones Magicæ, Lib. II. xvi.
[21] Discours, XIX. 1. “The Sorcerers assemble at the Sabbat about midnight.”
[22] Her indictment consists of fifty-three points.
[23] Spottiswoode’s Practicks.
[24] Spalding Club, Miscellany, I.
[25] MS. formerly in the possession of Michael Stewart Nicolson, Esq.
[26] ... je me trouvais transporté au lieu où le Sabatt se tenait, y demeurant quelquefois une, deux, trois, quatre heures pour le plus souvent suivant les affections.
The translation in text is by Caswall, 1848.
[29] Tableau, p. 154.
[30] For London, see Dr. Johnson’s London (1738):
In 1500 Paolo Capello, the Venetian Ambassador, wrote: “Every night they find in Rome four or five murdered men, Prelates and so forth.” During the reign of Philip IV (1621-1665) the streets of Madrid, noisome, unpaved, were only lit on the occasion of festal illuminations.
[31] 1475-1546.
[32] Quando uadunt ad loca propinqua uadunt pedestres mutuo se inuicem inuitantes. De Strigibus, II.
[33] Les Sorciers neâtmoins vont quelquefois de pied au Sabbat, ce qui leur aduient principalement, lors que le lieu où ils font leur assemblée, n’est pas guieres eslongé de leur habitation. Discours, c. xvii.
Enquis en quel lieu se tint le Sabbat le dernier fois qu’il y fut.
Respond que ce fut vers Billeron à un Carroy qui est sur le chemin tendant aux Aix, Parroisse de Saincte Soulange, Iustice de ceans.
Enquis de quelle façon il y va.
Respond qu’il y va de son pied.
De Lancre, Tableau, pp. 803-805.
[35] Aussi vilain & abominable est au Sorcier d’y aller de son pied que d’y estre transporté de son consentement par le Diable. Tableau, p. 632.
[36] Sinclar, Satan’s Invisible World Discovered (Reprint 1875), VII.
[37] Idem, p. 25.
[38] Idem, pp. 175, 178.
[39] Illud etiam non omittendum quod quædam sceleratæ mulieres retro post Satanam conuersæ, dæmonum illusoribus et phantasmatibus seductæ credunt se et profitentur nocturnis horis cum Diana paganorum dea et innumera multitudine mulierum equitare super quasdam bestias et multa terrarum spatia intempestæ noctis silentio pertransire eiusque iussionibus uelut dominæ obedire, et certis noctibus ad eius seruitium euocari. Minge, Patres Latini, CXXXII. 352.
[40] See Professor A. J. Clark’s note upon “Flying Ointments.” Witch-Cult in Western Europe, pp. 279-280.
[41] Posset dæmon eas transferre sine unguento, et facit aliquando; sed unguento mauult uti uariis de causis. Aliquando quia timidiores sunt sagæ, ut audeant; uel quia teneriores sunt ad horribilem illum Satanæ contactum in corpore assumpto ferendum; horum enim unctione sensum obstupefacit et miseris persuadet uim unguento inesse maximam. Alias autem id facit ut sacrosancta a Deo instituta sacramenta inimice adumbret, et per has quasi cerimonias suis orgiis reuerentiæ et uenerationis aliquid conciliat. Delrio, Disquitiones magicæ, Liber II, qᵗᵒ xvi.
[42] In antiquity we have the case of Simon Magus, who was levitated in the presence of Nero and his court.
[43] Henri Boguet, the High Justice of the district of Saint-Claude, died in 1616. The first edition (of the last rarity) of his Discours des Sorciers is Lyons, 1602; second edition, Lyons 1608; but there is also a Paris issue, 1603. Pp. 64 and 104.
[44] Scot, Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584). Book III. p. 42.
[45] De Lancre, Tableau, p. 211.
[46] Thomas Wright, Proceedings against Dame Alice Kyteler, Camden Society. 1843.
[47] Cotton Mather, Wonders of the Invisible World, 1693. (Reprint, 1862. P. 158.)
[48] Quarterly Journal of Science, January, 1874.
[49] J. Godfrey Raupert, Modern Spiritism. 1904. Pp. 34, 35. See also Sir W. Barrett, On the Threshold of the Unseen, p. 70.
[50] Arthur Lillie, Modern Mystics and Modern Magic, 1894, pp. 74, 75.
[51] David Lewis, Life of S. John of the Cross (1897), pp. 73-4.
[52] See the Saint’s own letter (written in 1777) to the Bishop of Foggia. Lettere di S. Alfonso Maria de’ Liguori (Roma, 1887), II. 456 f.
[53] Philip Coghlan, C.P. Gemma Galgani (1923), p. 62. For fuller details see the larger biography by Padre Germano.
[54] Vie du B. Paul de la Croix. (French translation.) I. Book ii. c. 3.
[55] La Mystique Divine. Traduit par Sainte-Foi. V. viii. 17. p. 193.
[56] Giovanni Francesco Ponzinibio was a lawyer whose De Lamiis was published at Venice, 1523-4. It called forth a reply, Apologiæ tres aduersum Joannem Franciscum Ponzinibium Iurisperitum, Venice, 1525. The edition of De Lamiis I have used is Venice, 1584, in the Thesaurus Magnorum iuris consultorum. This reprint was met by Peña’s answer and two treatises by Bartolomeo Spina, O.P.
[57] Rome, 1584.
[58] De modo quo localiter transferentur [sagæ] de loco ad locum.... Probatur quod possint malefici corporaliter transferri.
[59] An isti Sortilegi & Strigimagæ siue Lamiæ uere & corporaliter deferantur a dæmone uel solum in spiritu? De Sortilegiis, VII.
[60] Sum modo istius secundæ opinionis quod deferantur in corpore.
[61] Doctrina multi eorum qui sequuti sunt Lutherum, & Melanctonem, tenuerent Sagas ad conuentus accedere animi duntaxat cogitatione, & diabolica illusione interesse, allegantes quod eorum corpora inuenta sunt sæpe numero eodem loco iacentia, nec inde mora fuisse, ad hoc illud pertinens quod est in uita D. Germani, de mulierculis conuiuantibus, vt uidebantur, & tame̅ dormierant dormientes. Huiusmodi mulierculas sæpe numero decipi certum est, sed semper ita fieri non probatur.... Altera, quam uerissimam esse duco, est, nonnunquam uere Sagas transferri a Dæmone de loco ad locum, hirco, uel alteri animali fantastico vt plurimum eas simul asportanti corporaliter, & conuentu nefario interesse, & hæc sententia est multo communior Theologorum, imò & Iurisconsultorum Italiæ, Hispaniæ, & Germaniæ inter Catholicos; hoc idem tenent alii quam plurimi. Turrecremata super Grillandum,[A] Remigius,[B] Petrus Damianus,[C] Siluester Abulensis,[D] Caietanus[E] Alphonsus a Castro[F] Sixtus Senensis[G] Crespetus[H] Spineus[I] contra Ponzinibium, Ananias,[J] & alii quam plurimi, quos breuitatis gratia omitto. Per Fratrem Franciscum Mariam Guaccium Ord. S. Ambrosii ad Nemus Mediolani compilatum. Mediolani. Ex Collegii Ambrosiani Typographia. 1626.
[A] De hæreticis et sortilegiis. Lugduni. 1536.
[B] Nicolas Remy, De la démonolâtrie.
[C] Epistolarum, IV. 17.
[D] Silvester of Avila.
[E] Tommaso de Vio Gaetani, O.P. 1469-1534.
[F] Alfonso de Castro, Friar Minor. (1495-1558). Confessor to Charles V and Philip II of Spain.
[G] Sisto da Siéna, O.P. Bibliotheca Sancta ... (Liber V). Secunda editio. Francofurti. 1575. folio.
[H] Père Crespet, Celestine monk. Deux livres de la haine de Satan et des malins esprits contre l’homme. Paris. 1590.
[I] Bartholomeo Spina, O.P. De lamiis. De strigibus. Both folio. Venice, 1584. Apologiæ tres aduersus Joannem Franciscum Ponzinibium Jurisperitum. Venice. 1525. Giovanni Francesco Ponzinibio wrote a Dedamiis of which I have used a late edition. Venice. 1584.
[J] Giovanni Lorenzo Anania, De natura dæmonum: libri iiii. Venetiis. 1581. 8vo.
[62] De Strigibus, II. I have used the reprint, 1669, which is given in the valuable collection appended to the Malleus Maleficarum of that date, 4 vols. 4to.
[63] Ad quam congregationem seu ludum præfatæ pestiferæ personæ uadunt corporaliter & uigilantes ac in propriis earū sensibus & quando uadunt ad loca propinqua uadunt pedestres mutuo se inuicem inuitantes. Si aute̅ habent congregari in aliquo loco distanti tunc deferuntur a diabolo, & quomodocunque uadant ad dictum locum siue pedibus suis siue adferantur a diabolo uerū est quod realiter et ueraciter & no̅ pha̅tastice, neque illusorii abnegant fide̅ catholicam, adorant diabolum, conculcant crucem, & plura nefandissima opprobria committunt contra sacratissimum Corpus Christi, ac alia plura spurcissima perpetrant cum ipso diabolo eis in specie humana apparenti, & se uiris succubum, mulieribus autem incubum exhibenti.
[64] George Gandillon, la nuict d’vn Ieudy Sainct, demeura dans son lict, comme mort, pour l’espace de trois heures, & puis reuint à soy en sursaut. Il a depuis esté bruslé en ce lieu auec son père & vne sienne sœur.
[65] Chapitre xvi. Comme, & en quelle façon les Sorciers sont portez au Sabbat.
1. Ils y sont portez tantost sur un baston, ou ballet, tantost sur un mouton ou bouc, & tantost par un homme noir.
2. Quelquefois ils se frotte̅t de graisse, & à d’autres non.
3. Il y en a, lesquels n’estans pas Sorciers, & s’estans frottez, ne delaissent pas d’estre transportez au Sabbat, & la raison.
4. L’onguent, & la graisse ne seruent de rien aux Sorciers, pour leur transport au Sabbat.
5. Les Sorciers sont quelquefois portez au Sabbat par un vent & tourbillon.
Chapitre xvii. Les Sorciers vont quelques fois de pied au Sabbat.
Chapitre xviii. Si les Sorciers vont en ame seulement au Sabbat.
1 & 3. L’affirmatiue, & exemples.
2. Indices, par lesquels on peut coniecturer, qu’vne certaine femme estoit au Sabbat en ame seulement.
4. La negatiue.
5. Comme s’entend ce que l’on dit d’Erichtho, & d’Apollonius lesquels resusciterent l’un un soldat, & l’autre une ieune fille.
6. Les Sorciers ne peuuent resusciter un mort, & exemples.
7. Non plus que les heretiques & exemples.
8. Opinion de l’Autheur sur le suiect de ce chapitre.
9. Satan endort le plus souuent les personnes, & exemples.
Chapitre xix.
1. Les Sorciers vont enuiron la minuict au Sabbat.
2. La raison pourquoy le Sabbat si tient ordinairement de nuict.
3. Satan se plait aux tenebres, & à la couleur noire, estant au contraire la blancheur agreable à Dieu.
4. Les Sorciers dansent doz contre doz au Sabbat, & se masquent pour la plus part.
5, 8. Le coq venant à chanter, le Sabbat disparoit aussi tost, & la raison.
6. La voix du coq funeste à Satan tout ainsi qu’au lyon, & au serpent.
7. Le Demon, selon quelques uns a crainte d’vne espée nue.
Chapitre xx. Du iour du Sabbat.
1. Le Sabbat se tient à un chacun iour de la semaine, mais principalement le Ieudy.
2. Il se tient encor aux festes les plus solemnelles de l’année.
Chapitre xxi. Du lieu du Sabbat.
1. Le lieu du Sabbat est signalé, selon aucuns, de quelques arbres ou bien de quelques croix, & l’opinion de l’autheur sur ce suiect.
2. Chose remarquable d’vn lieu pretendu pour le Sabbat.
3. Il faut de l’eau au lieu, où se tient le Sabbat, & pourquoy.
4. Les Sorciers, à faute d’eau, urinent dans un trou, qu’ils font en terre.
Chapitre xxii. De ce qui se fait au Sabbat.
1. Les Sorciers y adorent Satan, estăt en forme d’homme noir, ou de bouc, & luy offrent des chandelles, & le baisent aux parties honteuses de derriere.
2. Ils y dansent, & de leurs danses.
3. Ils se desbordent en toutes sortes de lubricitez, & comme Satan se fait Incube & Succube.
4. Incestes, & paillardises execrebles des Euchites & Gnostiques.
5. Les Sorciers banquettent au Sabbat, de leurs viandes, & breuuages, & de la façon qu’ils tiennent à benir la table, & à rendre graces.
6. Ils ne prennent cependant point de gout aux Viandes, & sortent ordinairement auec faim du repas.
7. Le repas paracheué, ils rendent conte de leurs actions à Satan.
8. Ils renoncent de nouueau à Dieu, au Chresme, &c. Et comme Satan les sollicite à mal faire.
9. Ils y font la gresle.
10. Ils y celebrent messe, & de leurs chappes, & eau benite.
11. Satan se consume finalement en feu, & se reduit en cendre, de laquelle les Sorciers prennent tous, & a quel effet.
12. Satan Singe de Dieu en tout.
[66] Vouloir donner une description du Sabbat, c’est vouloir decrire ce qui n’existe point, & n’a jamais subsisté que dans l’imagination creuse & séduite des Sorciers & Sorcieres: les peintures qu’on nous en fait, sont d’après les rêveries de ceux & de celles qui s’imaginent d’être transportés à travers les airs au Sabbat en corps & en ame. Traité sur les Apparitions des Esprits, par le R. P. Dom Augustin Calmet, Abbé de Sénones. Paris, 1751, I. p. 138.