Europe's inner demons

This was not the end of the matter. One of those arrested was the Chevalier Payen de Beaufort, an old man and head of one of the richest families in the province of Artois. He at once appealed to the parlement of Paris; and though his appeal was disregarded and suppressed, he had sons who were able to pursue the matter. By this time the persecution was in any case practically at an end; and it proved possible to remove de Beaufort and other prisoners from Arras to the Conciergerie in Paris. It was the beginning of a legal investigation in which, for the first time, both sides could be given a hearing. The prime mover in the whole affair, Jacques du Boys, promptly went mad, and died within the year. As for the investigation itself, it was pursued with all the procrastination for which the

parlement was celebrated, and lasted some thirty years. In 1491, when almost all those concerned were dead, a decree was read with great pomp at the very spot in Arras where the sentences had been pronounced. The accused and condemned were formally rehabilitated, while those of their persecutors who were still alive were fined; part of the sum to be spent on founding a mass for the souls of the victims, and erecting a cross on the spot where they had been burned. Anyone who believes in the reality of the sabbat — whether persuaded by Montague Summers or by Margaret Murray — would do well to consider the verdict passed by the parlement

of Paris and publicly proclaimed, and acclaimed, at Arras.

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In these fifteenth-century trials the role of the demonic associate undergoes a radical change. In the trials of the preceding century the demon had been more or less subservient to the human being who conjured him up. Boniface, Guichard, even Kyteler were all imagined as commanding the services of their demons, even if they had to offer sacrifices to induce them to appear at all. This is no longer the case with Vallin or Adeline. Vallin has given himself body and soul to his demon; he has served him obediently for 63 years; he calls him master; he kneels before him, kissing his left hand as a sign of homage; he pays him an annual fee in cash; he has even given him his own baby daughter to kill. Adeline does homage to his goat-demon by kissing him under the tail, and he signs a written compact with Satan. In the trials in the French Alps we meet with other new features, which were to become quite normal in the great witch-hunt of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: men and women confess both to having sexual intercourse with demons at the sabbat, and to having intercourse in private with their special demons. And here too the demons are beginning to emerge as dominant partners; sometimes the witch, male or female, is even marked with the Devil’s mark.

In short, a drastic inversion of roles has begun: the demon is changing from servant into master. This is how he figures in the witch-trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries — and when the witch is a woman, he figures as her sexual master as. well. Primarily this change reflected an ever-growing obsession with Satan and the demonic hosts, an ever-growing sense of their deadly fascination and overwhelming power. But it is also true that the notion of demon as master was already enshrined in certain specific, well-established traditions; and that will certainly have facilitated the change.

For instance, the idea that a human being could enter into an agreement with Satan or a subordinate demon was far from new. It figures already in a story concerning that leader of the Greek Church in the fourth century, Basil the Great, bishop of Caesarea. A slave asks a sorcerer for help in securing the love of a senator’s daughter. The sorcerer arranges for the Devil to appear at night at the tomb of a pagan, where the slave renounces his baptism, denies Christ and pledges himself to the Devil in writing. The Devil carries out his part of the bargain — but then Basil intervenes. Thanks to his prayers the written pledge is miraculously taken from the Devil and delivered to him. He tears it up in front of the assembled people, and so frees the slave from the Devil’s clutches.⁽⁹⁾