Europe's inner demons

From all this there emerges a coherent picture of a traditional folk-belief. Its origins seem to lie in a pre-Christian, pagan world-view. It is certainly very ancient; and despite certain variations of detail, it has remained constant in its main features over a period of at least a thousand years and over a great part of western Europe. It is concerned with beneficent, protective spirits, who are thought of above all as female, and who are sometimes associated with the souls of the dead. In the past, it has been taken seriously in peasant communities: people tidied up their houses and left food and drink to win the favour of these spirits. Moreover some people — notably old women — used to dream or fantasy that they could attach themselves to these spirits and take part in their nocturnal journeyings. And here this age-old folk-belief can be brought into relation with equally ancient beliefs about witches. In both cases, we find that women are believed — and sometimes even believe themselves — to travel at night in a supernatural manner, endowed with supernatural powers by supernatural patrons. One belief is indeed the opposite of the other; with the cannibalistic witch, symbol of destruction, disorder and death, one can contrast the woman who joins the radiant “ladies” on their benign missions for the encouragement of hospitality and good housekeeping.

Inevitably, the official attitude of the Church to the “ladies of the night” was very different from that of the half-pagan peasantry. Just as, down to the thirteenth century, the Church denied the existence of night-witches, so it denied that these more welcome visitors were what they seemed to be. Belief in either kind of nocturnal voyager was condemned as pagan superstition. From the Canon Episcopi

in the ninth century to Guillaume d’Auvergne in the thirteenth, there is unanimity amongst the orthodox: the “ladies of the night” belong to the world of dreams. The demons are indeed involved, but only in so far as they try, by means of these dreams, to seduce the dreamers from the true faith. To take such dreams for reality, above all to believe that one has oneself taken part in a nocturnal journey — this is to turn away from Christianity, it is to fall into the errors of the pagans and the snares of the Devil. Even so, it is not a horrific sin; and the penance imposed is much lighter than the penance for praying or lighting candles at a former pagan shrine.

But in the thirteenth century the attitude begins to change. Already Jacobus de Voragine takes a different view of the matter, and this is still truer of Jacopo Passavanti in the fourteenth century. The traditional picture of the nocturnal visitors changes; no longer tall, beautiful ladies, they have all the appearance of known individuals of both sexes, in fact they look just like one’s neighbours. And the traditional interpretation also changes. These are no mere apparitions in a dream, they are demons visiting this earth in the guise of human beings; and they can also be seen and heard by human beings who are fully awake and in full possession of their senses. Something that hitherto has happened only in the minds of silly old women has taken on an objective, material existence. The implication is clear: a human being who takes part in such a gathering is no longer merely relapsing into pagan superstition, but is actually consorting with demons. The old fantasy of the supernatural queen and her train is beginning to blend with the new fantasy of the witches’ Sabbat.

At the same time the Church becomes much more severe in its dealings with women who thought themselves followers of Diana. Between 1384 and 1390 two women were actually tried before the tribunal of the Inquisition in Milan — not for imagining that they followed Diana, but for following her.⁽³²⁾Both gave substantially the same evidence. Twice a week for many years they had been going to the “society” or “game” around “Signora Oriente”, or Diana, or Herodias, and paying homage to that supernatural queen. The “society” included dead as well as living persons (as we have seen, Diana’s followers always had included the souls of the dead). It also included animals — one of every kind except the donkey and the wolf. The animals were eaten by the company, but later the queen would resuscitate them. The company would also visit the houses of the rich; and wherever they found a house in good order and ready for them, the queen would bless it. For the rest, it was the queen’s custom to instruct her followers about the use of herbs to cure sickness, and about the divining of theft and sorcery.