Europe's inner demons

In ritual magic demons were imagined as participating in a far more direct and individual way than had been the case with ordinary magic, such as had been practised down the centuries. Of course, the Church had always maintained that every magical operation implied the cooperation of demons; but that had been understood in a very vague and general sense. Now magicians were conjuring demons by name, summoning them to manifest themselves in visible form, giving them precise instructions; and this implied a new and closer form of collaboration between particular human beings and particular demons. Moreover, some demons were noted as being especially good providers of familiars — which pointed to a still closer, more lasting form of collaboration.

Then there was the matter of sacrifice. The magicians were not Satanists — yet some of them certainly did try to lure demons on by offerings of flesh and blood. This had nothing to do with human sacrifice. The custom was either to cut a limb from a corpse — usually the corpse of a criminal on the gallows — or else to slaughter an animal or fowl. Michael Scot and Cecco d’Ascoli refer to such practices in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; and some books of magic contain detailed prescriptions for sacrificing a fowl. The magician is instructed, for instance, to take a black virgin hen to a cross-roads at midnight and tear it apart, while summoning up a demon; or else to kill a black cock, tear out its eyes, tongue and heart, dry them in the sun, and reduce them to powder, which is then offered up.⁽¹⁹⁾ Admittedly, the books containing these two prescriptions date from the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries respectively; but the prescriptions themselves are certainly very ancient. All these various forms of sacrifice figure in one or other of the fourteenth-century trials.

In these transactions a special place was reserved for the demon Belial. The Lemegeton

and its variants describe the situation of that “mighty king”, who in his origins was the first angel to be created after Lucifer or Satan himself. We learn that King Solomon shut up the seventy-two principal demons in a brass vessel and cast it into a deep lake; but the Babylonians discovered the vessel and, supposing it to contain a great treasure, broke it open. The spirits who were thus set free returned to their former places, along with their attendant legions. Only Belial took a different course: he entered into an image or idol, whence he uttered oracles in return for sacrifices and divine honours.⁽²⁰⁾ Such a demon figures in at least one of the fourteenth-century trials— the posthumous trial of Pope Boniface VIII. More important, the fact that the books of magic proclaimed, and magicians accepted, the special status and demands of Belial was bound to appear particularly sinister to the guardians of religious orthodoxy.

In reality, whatever sacrifices were offered, and even if they were offered to Belial himself, God was still invoked and his omnipotence affirmed. But that did not make the proceedings any less blasphemous, indeed heretical, when viewed in terms of Catholic doctrine. The first step towards the great witch-hunt was taken when the traditional teaching of the Church was applied — not necessarily or mainly by inquisitors — to the relatively unfamiliar phenomenon of ritual magic; for in the process maleficium acquired a meaning it had not possessed in earlier centuries.

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In a paper on “The literature of witchcraft”, delivered to the American Historical Association in 1889, George Lincoln Burr listed the theological and ecclesiastical pronouncements which in his view effectively created the stereotype of the witch. Already Thomas Aquinas, who died in 1274, “taught that there were among men other servants of the Devil, more subtle, more dangerous, than the heretics: the men and women devoted altogether to his service — the witches”. By the 1320s, he continues, the Church was fully committed to the struggle against witchcraft; and this was exemplified by a bull of Pope John XXII, Super illius specula. Finally, the inquisitor Nicolas Eymeric produced the earliest book on witchcraft, with the object of clarifying its nature and so helping inquisitors to identify and pursue witches.⁽²¹⁾ Burr was a serious and conscientious scholar, and his comments fitted in well with what was thought to have happened around Toulouse and Novara; so it is not surprising that this view of the matter has been accepted and perpetuated by reputable historians down to the present day. But now the events around Toulouse and Novara turn out never to have occurred, and in any case the best part of a century has passed since the lecture was delivered. It is time to re-examine the sources.