Europe's inner demons

But the fiercest hatred came from the sons and daughters whom Lady Alice’s husbands had had by earlier marriages. These stepsons and stepdaughters of hers complained bitterly that, by her sorceries, she had killed some of their fathers and had so infatuated others that they had given all their wealth to her and her son William, to the perpetual impoverishment of the rightful heirs. They added that even her present husband was reduced to such a state by powders, pills and sorceries that he was wasting away, deprived of his nails, without hair on his body. Indeed it was said that Sir John le Poer, being warned by his wife’s maid, forcibly opened her boxes and found there a sackful of horrible things, which he transmitted to the local bishop. They had not far to go, for Kilkenny was the episcopal city of the diocese of Ossory.

The bishop, Richard de Ledrede, went quickly into action: early in 1324 he held a formal enquiry, with which he was able to associate a number of knights and nobles. The witnesses included the dispossessed heirs of the four husbands, who “urged the bishop with public clamour, demanding remedy and aid”; but the charges went far beyond maleficium and multiple homicide. Alice Kyteler and William Outlaw were presented as sorcerers who were also involved in sundry heresies, in fact as heading an organized heretical group. Ten men and women were accused along with them; to judge by their names, all belonged to the ruling Anglo-Norman stratum, and one at least, a cleric in minor orders called Robert of Bristol, is known to have come from a family with large estates.

In the supposed practices of this group, maleficium

and demon-worship were interwoven. The maleficia were manifold. The group was accused of concocting powders, pills and ointments from herbs, the intestines of cocks, horrible worms, nails from corpses, the swaddling-clothes of babies who had died unbaptized; and of making candles from human fat. These substances were boiled in the skull of a decapitated robber, and were employed, to the accompaniment of incantations, to bring sickness or death to faithful Christians, or else to excite love or hatred. Moreover, it was said that at their nocturnal meetings these people did what only the clergy were entitled to do: fulminated excommunications against individuals, cursing each part of the body from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head. In particular the women anathematized their own husbands.

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All these things were done in a truly heretical spirit. It was said that, to ensure the success of their sorceries, the members of the group became apostates from Christianity — though on a curiously temporary and provisional basis. According as their aims were more or less ambitious, they denied the faith of Christ and of the Church either for a month or for a whole year; during which time they would not attend mass or take the Eucharist, nor go to church, nor believe anything that the Church believed. By magical means they sought the counsel of demons, and they also sacrificed animals to demons; Lady Alice had three times offered up the blood and limbs of cocks to her private demon, just as Pope Boniface was supposed to have done.⁽⁴³⁾

There is nothing manifestly impossible in all this, but the charges include a further item, and one which must give us pause. It concerns that private demon of Lady Alice’s, who appeared sometimes in the guise of a cat, sometimes in the guise of a shaggy black dog, sometimes in the guise of a Negro. Lady Alice received him as her incubus and allowed him to copulate with her. In return, he gave her wealth — all her considerable possessions had been acquired with his help. Moreover, the demon was known to other members of the group. He even gave them his name, which was the Son of Art, or Robin, son of Art; and he also explained that he belonged to the poorer demons in hell.⁽⁴⁴⁾