Dom Calmet, it is true, has very mistakenly said: “To attempt to give a description of the Sabbat, is to attempt a description of what does not exist, & what has never existed save in the fantastic & disordered imagination of warlocks & witches: the pictures which have been drawn of these assemblies are merely the phantasy of those who dreamed that they had actually been borne, body & soul, through the air to the Sabbat.”[66] Happy sceptic! But unfortunately the Sabbat did—and does—take place; formerly in deserted wastes, on the hill-side, in secluded spots, now, as often as not, in the privacy of vaults and cellars, and in those lone empty houses innocently placarded “To be Sold.” The President of the Sabbat was in purely local gatherings often the Officer of the district; in the more solemn assemblies convened from a wider area, the Grand Master, whose dignity would be proportionate to the numbers of the company and the extent of his province. In any case the President was officially known as the “Devil,” and it would seem that his immediate attendants and satellites were also somewhat loosely termed “devils,” which formal nomenclature has given rise to considerable confusion and not a little mystification in the reports of witch trials and the confessions of offenders. But in many instances it is certain—and orthodoxy forbids us to doubt the possibility—that the Principle of Evil, incarnate, was present for the hideous adoration of his besotted worshippers. Such is the sense of the Fathers, such is the conclusion of the theologians who have dealt with these dark abominations. Metaphysically it is possible; historically it is indisputable. When a human being, a man, occupied the chief position at these meetings and directed the performance of the rites, he would sometimes appear in a hideous and grotesque disguise, sometimes without any attempt at concealment. This masquerade generally took the shape of an animal, and had its origin in heathendom, whence by an easy transition through the ceremonial of heretics, it passed to the sorcerer and the witch. As early as the _Liber Pœnitentialis_ of S. Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, 668-690, we have a distinct prohibition of this foul mummery. Capitulum xxvii denounces the man who “in Kalendas Ianuarii in ceruulo et in uitula uadit.” “If anyone at the kalends of January goes about as a stag or a bull; that is making himself into a wild animal and dressing in the skin of a herd animal, and putting on the head of beasts; those who in such wise transform themselves into the appearance of a wild animal, penance for three years because this is devilish.”