The history of witchcraft and demonologySummers, Montague
History
The history of witchcraft and demonology
Summers, Montague
Demonology; Demonology -- History; Witchcraft; Witchcraft -- History
There are some very important details rehearsed in a Bull, 8 June,
1303, of the noble but calumniated Boniface VIII, with reference to the
case of Walter Langton, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry (1296-1322),
and treasurer of Edward I, when this prelate was accused of sorcery
and homage to Satan: “For some time past it has come to our ears that
our Venerable Brother Walter Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield has
been commonly defamed, and accused, both in the realm of England and
elsewhere, of paying homage to the Devil by kissing his posterior, and
that he hath had frequent colloquies with evil spirits.”[82] The Bishop
cleared himself of these charges with the compurgators. Bodin refers to
Guillaume Edeline, who was executed in 1453 as a wizard. He was a doctor
of the Sorbonne, and prior of St. Germain en Laye: “The aforesaid sire
Guillaume confessed ... that he had done homage to the aforesaid Satan,
who appeared in the shape of a ram, by kissing his buttocks in token of
reverence and homage.”[83] A very rare tract of the fourteenth century
directed against the Waldenses among other charges brings the following:
“Item, in aliquibus aliis partibus apparet eis dæmon sub specie et figura
cati, quem sub cauda sigillatim osculantur.” (The Devil appears to them
as a cat, and they kiss him _sub cauda_.)[84]
Barthélemy Minguet of Brécy, a young man of twenty-five, who was tried
in 1616, said that at the Sabbat “he often saw [the Devil] in the shape
of a man, who held a horse by its bridle, & that they went forward to
worship him, each one holding a pitch candle of black wax in their
hands.”[85] These candles, as Guazzo tells us, were symbolic and required
by the ritual of the Sabbat, not merely of use for the purpose of giving
light: “Then they made an offering of pitch black candles, and as a
sign of homage kissed his fundament.”[86] The candles were ordinarily
black, and one taper, larger than the rest, was frequently carried by the
Devil himself. At the North Berwick meeting when the witches were all to
assemble in the church, “_Iohn Fein_ blew up the Kirk doors, and blew in
the lights, which wer like _Mickl black candles sticking round about the
Pulpit_.”[87] Boguet relates that the witches whom he tried confessed
that the Sabbat commenced with the adoration of Satan, “who appeared,
sometimes in the shape of a tall dark man, sometimes in the shape of a
goat, & to express their worship and homage, they made him an offering
of candles, which burned with a blue light.”[88] John Fian, also, when
doing homage to the Devil “thought he saw the light of a candle ... which
appeared blue lowe.” This, of course, was on account of the sulphurous
material whence these candles were specially compounded. De Lancre
expressly states that the candles or flambeaux used at the Sabbat were
made of pitch.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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