Medicine in the Middle Ages: Extracts from "Le Moyen Age Medical" by Dr. Edmond Dupouy; translated by T. C. MinorDupouy, Edmond
History
Medicine in the Middle Ages: Extracts from "Le Moyen Age Medical" by Dr. Edmond Dupouy; translated by T. C. Minor
Dupouy, Edmond
Medicine, Medieval
Meantime, there was still a century to attain before one of the
Prime Ministers of France put an end to all trials for sorcery, and
during the intervening period there were other purveyors of the death
penalty by the stake-burners of the Inquisition; among these were the
celebrated Boguet, Criminal Judge of Bourgogne, and Pierre de l’Ancre,
his colleague of Aquitanus, cited by Calmeil as the most fanatical
judges of their day.
Boguet, in his _Discours des Sorciers_, wrote: “There were in France
only three hundred thousand under King Charles IX., and they have since
increased more than half as much again. The Germans prevent their
growth by burning at the stake; the Swiss destroy whole villages at
one time; in Lorraine the stranger may see thousands existing with but
few executions. It is difficult to understand why France cannot purge
itself of these creatures. These sorcerers walk around by thousands
and multiply on earth like caterpillars in our gardens. I wish I could
enforce punishment according to my ideas, for the earth would soon be
purged of those possessed. For I fain would collect them all in one
mass and burn them alive in a single bonfire.”
Pierre de l’Ancre, Councillor to the Parliament of Bordeaux, published
in 1613 his _Tableau de l’inconstance des mauvais anges et demons_,
and in 1622 his _Incredulite et mecreance du sortilege pleinement
convaincue_. In these two works the author treats all questions
regarding sorcery, and declares that in his capacity of judge he
believes it a mistake to spare the life of any individual accused
of magic, as he considers sorcerers _as the enemies of morality and
religion_, and accuses them of having found means of “ravishing women
even while they laid in the embraces of their husbands, thus forcing
and violating the sacred oaths of marriage, for the victims are
made adulterous even in the presence of their husbands, who remain
motionless and dishonored without power to prevent; the women mute,
enshrouded in a forced silence, invoking in vain the help of the
husband against the sorcerer’s attack, and calling uselessly for aid;
the husband charmed and unable to offer resistance, suffering his own
dishonor with open eyes and helpless arms.
“The sorcerers dance around the bed in an indecent manner, like at a
Bacchanalian feast, accoupling adulterously in a diabolical fashion,
committing execrable sodomies, blaspheming scandalously, taking
insidious carnal revenges, perpetrating all manner of unnatural acts,
brutalizing and denaturalizing all physical functions, holding frogs,
vipers, and lizards, and other deadly animal poisons in their hands,
making stinking smells, caressing with lascivious amorousness, giving
themselves over to horrible and shameful orgies.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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