The history of witchcraft and demonologySummers, Montague
History
The history of witchcraft and demonology
Summers, Montague
Demonology; Demonology -- History; Witchcraft; Witchcraft -- History
The hosts are then brought to the altar. Boguet describes them as dark
and round, stamped with a hideous design; Madeleine Bavent saw them as
ordinary wafers only coloured red; in other cases they were black and
triangular in shape. Often they blasphemed the Host, calling it “Iean le
blanc,” just as Protestants called it “Jack-in-the-box.” The chalice is
filled, sometimes with wine, sometimes with a bitter beverage that burned
the tongue like fire. At the _Sanctus_ a horn sounded harshly thrice,
and torches burning with a sulphurous blue flare “qui est fort puante”
were kindled. There was an elevation, at which the whole gang, now in
a state of hysterical excitement and unnatural exaltation, burst forth
with the most appalling screams and maniac blasphemies, rivalling each
other in filthy adjurations and crapulous obscenities. The protagonist
poured out all the unbridled venom that diabolic foulness could express,
a stream of scurrility and pollution; hell seemed to have vomited its
reeking gorge on earth. _Domine adiuua nos, domine adiuua nos_, they
cried to the Demon, and again _Domine adiuua nos semper_. Generally all
present were compelled to communicate with the sacrament of the pit, to
swallow morsels soiled with mud and ordures, to drink the dark brew of
damnation. Gaufridi confessed that for _Ite missa est_ these infernal
orgies concluded with the curse: “Allez-vous-en tous au nom du diable!”
Whilst the abbé Guibourg cried: “_Gloria tibi, Lucifero!_”
The black mass of the Sabbat varied slightly in form according to
circumstances, and in the modern liturgy of the Satanists it would appear
that a considerable feature is made of the burning of certain heavy and
noxious weeds, the Devil’s incense. In the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries the use of incense is very rare at the Sabbat, although Silvain
Nevillon stated that he had seen at the Sabbat “both holy water and
incense. This latter smelled foul, not fragrant as incense burned in
church.”[135]
The officiant nowadays consecrates a host and the chalice with the actual
sacred words of Holy Mass, but then instead of kneeling he turns his back
upon the altar,[136] and a few moments later—_sit uenia uerbis!_—he cuts
and stabs the Host with a knife, throwing it to the ground, treading upon
it, spurning it. A part, at least, of the contents of the chalice is
also spilled in fearful profanation, and not infrequently there further
has been provided a ciborium of consecrated Hosts, all stolen from
churches[137] or conveyed away at Communion in their mouths by wretches
unafraid to provoke the sudden judgement of an outraged God. These the
black priest, for so the celebrant is called by the Devil worshippers,
scatters over the pavement to be struggled and fought for by his
congregation in their madness to seize and outrage the Body of Christ.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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