“Diana or Herodias.” This decree, which was often attributed to
a General Council of Ancyra, but which is now held to be of a later date,
was in any case authoritative, since it passed into the “De
ecclesiasticis disciplinis” ascribed to Regino of Prum (906), and
thence to the canonists S. Ivo of Chartres and Johannes Gratian. Section 364
of the Benedictine Abbot's work relates that “certain abandoned women
turning aside to follow Satan, being seduced by the illusions and phantasms
of demons, believe and openly profess that in the dead of night they ride
upon certain beasts with the pagan goddess Dianan and a countless horde of
women, and that in these silent hours they fly over vast tracks of country
and obey her as their mistress, while on other nights they are sullen to
pay her homage.” John of Salisbury, who died in 1180, in his
“Policraticus,” I, xvii, speaks of the popular belief in a
witch-queen named Herodias, who called together the sorcerers to meeting at
night. In a MS., “De Sortilegis,” the following passage occurs:
“We next inquire concerning certain wicked crones who believe and
profess that in the night-time they ride abroad with Diana, the heathen
goddess, or else with Herodias, and an innumerable host of women, upon
certain beasts, and that in a silent covey at the dead of night they pass
over immense distances, obeying her commands as their mistress, and that
they are summoned by her on appointed nights, and they declare that they
have the power to change human beings for better or for worse, ay, even to
turn them into some other semblance or shape. Concerning such women I answer
according to the decrees of the Council of Alexandria, that the minds of the
faithful are disordered by such fantasies owing to the inspiration of no
good spirit but of the devil.”