Europe's inner demons полностью

In the course of the fifteenth century inquisitors and lay magistrates began to combine these various fantasies with the stereotype of a Devil-worshipping, orgiastic, infanticidal sect. A few untypical inquisitors, from Conrad of Marburg to Alberto Cattaneo, had supplied what seemed to be confirmation of that stereotype; they had been able to do so thanks to the inquisitorial procedure, and in particular to the use of torture. Bishop Ledrede of Kilkenny and the Swiss judge Peter of Greyerz had integrated maleficium into the picture, along with features borrowed from ritual magic; again torture played its part. Now the nocturnal flight was added. In earlier centuries that fantasy had been rejected by the educated, but it was a different matter now. Precisely because the notion of nocturnal travels for purposes of cannibalism not only fitted in with the existing stereotype but made it much more credible, it appealed strongly to those concerned with tracking down and trying heretics. Tales which a few of the accused provided spontaneously had to be confirmed by the rest — and again, torture was used to ensure this. In the end it became a commonplace, accepted by the greater part of society, that there were heretics who, in addition to perpetrating the horrors traditionally attributed to heretics, flew at night to their assemblies. In popular parlance all these activities were identified with Waldensians — in French it was even called Vauderie. In reality, a new crime had been invented — one which, in later times, lawyers were to give a technical name, crimen magiae.

The pursuit of Waldensians, though most intensive in mountainous regions, was by no means confined to them; and nor were witch-trials. In 1438 Pierre Vallin of La Tour du Pin was tried for witchcraft, and he was a vassal of the lord of Tournon: the whole area, which lies to the south and south-east of Lyons, is a mere 200 metres above sea level. The trial is of interest for two reasons: it shows how closely secular and ecclesiastical authorities collaborated in pursuing the newly invented' crime, and also why the new-style witch-trials tended to turn into mass trials. The trial took place in two stages: in the first, Pierre Vallin was prosecuted and sentenced by officers of the archbishop of Vienne and of the Inquisition; in the second, by the fiscal of the lord of Tournon.⁽⁶⁾ Already at the first of the two trials the accused confessed that he had given himself to a demon called Belzebut, body and soul, no less than sixty-three years before; and regularly rode on a stick to the “synagogue”, or sabbat, where children were eaten. At the second trial the secular authorities were interested in extracting from the unfortunate man the names of accomplices, i.e. of fellow-witches who had also ridden on sticks to the sabbat. Pierre Vallin had already been tortured and had already, in effect, been sentenced to death; now he was tortured again to obtain this information. In the end he supplied some ten names. It is noteworthy that they were mostly names of men, and that the interrogators pressed him to name priests and clerics and nobles and rich men in particular. The time had not yet come when attendance at the sabbat would be practically confined to women, and to peasant women at that.

In 1453 and 1459 two sensational trials took place in northern France. In the first, at Evreux in Normandy, the accused was Guillaume Adeline, who was a noted doctor of theology and had formerly been a Professer at Paris; the judges consisted of an inquisitor and a representative of the bishop of Evreux.⁽⁷⁾ It was alleged that a written compact with Satan had been found on Adeline’s person, binding him to preach sermons against the reality of the sabbat; with the result that judges had been discouraged from prosecuting frequenters of the sabbat, and the number of those frequenting it had increased accordingly. Adeline eventually confessed not only that he had indeed entered into such a compact with Satan, but that he himself had been in the habit of flying on a broomstick to the sabbat. He found there a demon called Monseigneur, who sometimes changed himself into a he-goat; whereupon Adeline would do him homage by kissing him under the tail. Those attending the sabbat were also required to renounce formally every aspect of the Christian faith. Perhaps because of his eminence, perhaps because he enjoyed the support of the University of Caen, Adeline was sentenced not to death but to perpetual imprisonment in a dungeon, on a diet of bread and water. After four years of this regime he was found dead in his cell, in an attitude of prayer.