La Sorcière: The Witch of the Middle AgesMichelet, Jules
History
La Sorcière: The Witch of the Middle Ages
Michelet, Jules
Demonomania -- History -- To 1500; Satanism -- History -- To 1500; Superstition -- History -- To 1500; Witchcraft -- History -- To 1500
She said she had three devils: Verrine, a good Catholic devil, a
volatile spirit of the air; Leviathan, a wicked devil, an arguer and a
Protestant; lastly, another, acknowledged by her to be the spirit of
uncleanness. One other she forgot to name, the demon of jealousy.
She bore a savage hate to the little fair-faced damsel, the favoured
rival, the proud young woman of rank. This latter, in one of her fits,
had said that she went to the Sabbath, where she was made queen, and
received homage, and gave herself up, but only to the prince--“What
prince?” To Louis Gauffridi, prince of magicians.
Pierced by this revelation as by a dagger, Louisa was too wild to
doubt its truth. Mad herself, she believed the mad woman’s story in
order to ruin her. Her own devil was backed by all the jealous demons.
The women all exclaimed that Gauffridi was the very king of wizards.
The report spread everywhere, that a great prize had been taken, a
priest-king of magicians, even the prince of universal magic. Such was
the dreadful diadem of steel and flame which these feminine demons
drove into his brow.
Everyone lost his head, even to old Romillion himself. Whether from
hatred of Gauffridi, or fear of the Inquisition, he took the matter
out of the bishop’s hands, and brought his two bewitched ones, Louisa
and Madeline, to the Convent of Sainte-Baume, whose prior was the
Dominican Michaëlis, papal inquisitor in the Pope’s domain of Avignon,
and, as he himself pretended, over all Provence. The great point was
to get them exorcised. But as the two women were obliged to accuse
Gauffridi, the business ended in making him fall into the hands of the
Inquisition.
Michaëlis had to preach on Advent Sunday at Aix, before the
Parliament. He felt how much so striking a drama would exalt him. He
grasped at it with all the eagerness of a barrister in a Criminal
Court, when a very dramatic murder, or a curious case of adultery
comes before him.
The right thing in matters of this sort was, to spin out the play
through Advent, Christmas, Lent, and burn no one before the Holy Week,
the vigil, as it were, of the great day of Easter. Michaëlis kept
himself for the last act, entrusting the bulk of the business to a
Flemish Dominican in his service, Doctor Dompt, from Louvain, who had
already exorcised, was well-skilled in fooleries of that nature.
The best thing the Fleming could do, was to do nothing. In Louisa, he
found a terrible helpmate, with thrice as much zeal in her as the
Inquisition itself, unquenchable in her rage, of a burning eloquence,
whimsical, and sometimes very odd, but always raising a shudder; a
very torch of Hell.
The matter was reduced to a public duel between the two devils, Louisa
and Madeline.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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