The history of witchcraft and demonologySummers, Montague
History
The history of witchcraft and demonology
Summers, Montague
Demonology; Demonology -- History; Witchcraft; Witchcraft -- History
During a famous trial held in the winter of 1610 at Logrono, a town of
Old Castille, by the Apostolic Inquisitor, Alonso Becerra Holguin, an
Alcantarine friar, with his two assessors Juen Valle Alvarado and Alonso
de Salasar y Frias, a number of Navarrese witches confessed that the
chief Sabbats were usually held at Zugarramurdi and Berroscoberro in the
Basque districts, and that the days were fixed, being the vigils of the
“nine principal feasts of the year,” namely, Easter, Epiphany, Ascension
Day, the Purification and Nativity of Our Lady, the Assumption, Corpus
Christi, All Saints, and the major festival of S. John Baptist (24 June).
It is certainly curious to find no mention of Christmas and Pentecost
in this list, but throughout the whole of the process not one of the
accused—and we have their evidence in fullest detail—named either of
these two solemnities as being chosen for the infernal rendezvous.[9]
Satan is, as Boguet aptly says, “Singe de Dieu en tout,”[10] and it
became common to hold a General Sabbat about the time of the high
Christian festivals in evil mockery of these holy solemnities, and he
precisely asserts that the Sabbat “se tient encor aux festes les plus
solemnelles de l’année.”[11] (Is still held on the greatest festivals
of the year.) So he records the confession of Antide Colas (1598), who
“auoit esté au Sabbat à vn chacun bon iour de l’an, comme à Noel, à
Pasques, à la feste de Dieu.” The Lancashire witches met on Good Friday;
and in the second instance (1633) on All Saints’ Day; the witches of
Kinross (1662) held an assembly on the feast of Scotland’s Patron, S.
Andrew, 30 November, termed “S. Andrew’s Day at Yule,” to distinguish it
from the secondary Feast of the Translation of S. Andrew, 9 May. The New
England witches were wont to celebrate their chief Sabbat at Christmas.
In many parts of Europe where the Feast of S. George is solemnized with
high honour and holiday the vigil (22 April) is the Great Sabbat of
the year. The Huzulo of the Carpathians believe that then every evil
thing has power and witches are most dangerous. Not a Bulgarian or
Roumanian farmer but closes up each door and fastens close each window at
nightfall, putting sharp thorn-bushes and brambles on the lintels, new
turf on the sills, so that no demon nor hag may find entry there.
The Grand Sabbats were naturally held in a great variety of places,
whilst the lesser Sabbats could be easily assembled in an even larger
number of spots, which might be convenient to the coven of that district,
a field near a village, a wood, a tor, a valley, an open waste beneath
some blasted oak, a cemetery, a ruined building, some solitary chapel or
semi-deserted church, sometimes a house belonging to one of the initiates.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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