THE
MALLEUS MALEFICARUM
PART II.
QUESTION I. CONTINUED . . . .
And this is the doctrine put forward by Dionysius in the fourth chapter
de Diuinus Nominibus: This is the fixed and unalterable law of
Divinity, that the High proceeds to the Low through a Medium; so that
whenever of good emanates to us from the fountain of all goodness, comes
through the ministry of the good Angels. And this is proved both by examples
and by argument. For although only the Divine power was the cause of the
Conception of the Word of God in the Most Blessed Virgin, through whom God
was made man; yet the mind of the Virgin was by the ministry of an Angel
much stimulated by the Salutation, and by the strengthening and information
of her understanding, and was thus predisposed to goodness. This truth can
also be reasoned as follows: It is the opinion of the above-mentioned Doctor
that there are three properties of man, the will, the understanding, and the
inner and outer powers belonging to the bodily members and organs. The first
God alone can influence: For the heart of the king is in the hand of the
Lord. A good Angel can influence the understanding towards a clearer
knowledge of the true and the good, so that in the second of his properties
both God and a good Angel can enlighten a man. Similarly in the third, a
good Angel can endow a man with good qualities, and a bad Angel can, with
God's permission, afflict him with evil temptations. However, it is in the
power of the human will either to accept such evil influences or to reject
them; and this a man can always do by invoking the grace of God.
As to the exterior protection which comes from God through the Movers of the
stars, the tradition is widespread, and conforms equally with the Sacred
Writings and with natural philosophy. For all the heavenly bodies are moved
by angelic powers which are called by Christ the Movers of the stars, and by
the Church the Powers of the heavens; and consequently all the corporeal
substances of this world are governed by the celestial influences, as
witness Aristotle, Metaphysics I. Therefore we can say that the
providence of God overlooks each on of His elect, but He subjects some of
them to the ills of this life for their correction, while He so protects
others that they can in no way be injured. And this gift they receive either
from the good Angels deputed by God for their protection, or from the
influence of the heavenly bodies or the Powers which move them.
It is further to be noted that some are protected against all witchcrafts,
and some against only a part of them. For some are particularly purified by
the good Angels in their genital functions, so that witches can in no way
bewitch them in respect of those functions. But it is in one sense superfluous
to write of these, although in another sense it is needful for this reason:
for those who are bewitched in their generative functions are so deprived
of the guardianship of Angels that they are either in mortal sin always, or
practise those impurities with too lustful a zest. In this connexion it has
been shown in the First Part of this work that God permits greater powers
of witchcraft against that function, not so much because of its nastiness,
as because it was this act that caused the corruption of our first parents
and, by its contagion, brought the inheritance of original sin upon the
whole human race.
But let us give a few examples of how a good Angel sometimes blesses just
and holy men, especially in the matter of the genital instincts. For the
following was the experience of the Abbot S. Serenus, as it is told by
Cassian in his Collations of the Fathers,
in the first conference of the Abbot Serenus. This man, he says, laboured
to achieve an inward chastity of heart and soul, by prayers both by night
and day, by fasting and by vigils, till he at last perceived that, by Divine
grace, he had extinguished all the surgings of carnal concupiscence. Finally,
stirred by an even greater zeal for chastity, he used all the above holy
practices to pray the Almighty and All-Good God to grant him that, by God's
gift, the chastity which he felt in his heart should be visibly conferred
upon his body. Then an Angel of the Lord came to him in a vision in the
night, and seemed to open his belly and take from his entrails a burning
tumour of flesh, and then to replace all his intestines as they had been;
and said: Lo! the provocation of your flesh is cut out, and know that this
day you have obtained perpetual purity of your body, according to the prayer
which you prayed, so that you will never again be pricked with that natural
desire which is aroused even in babes and sucklings.
Similarly S. Gregory, in the first book of his Dialogues, tells of
the Blessed Abbot Equitius. This man, he says, was in his youth greatly
troubled by the provocation of the flesh; but the very distress of his
temptation made him all the more zealous in his application to prayer. And
when he continuously prayed Almighty God for a remedy against this affliction,
an Angel appeared to him one night and seemed to make him an eunuch, and it
seemed to him in his vision that all feeling was taken away from his genital
organs; and from that time he was such a stranger to temptation as if he had
no sex in his body. Behold what benefit there was in that purification; for
he was so filled with virtue that, with the help of Almighty God, just as he
was before pre-eminent among, so he afterwards became pre-eminent over
women.
Again, in the Lives of the Fathers collected by that very holy man
S. Heraclides, in the book which he calls
Paradise, he tells of a certain holy Father, a monk named Helias.
This man was moved by pity to collect thirty women in a monastery, and began
to rule over them. But after two years, when he was thirty years old, he
fled from the temptation of the flesh into a hermitage, and fasting there
for two days, prayed to God, saying: “O Lord God, either slay me, or
deliver me from this temptation.” And in the evening a dream came to
him, and he saw three Angels approach him; and they asked him why he had
fled from that monastery of virgins. But when he did not dare to answer, for
shame, the Angels said: If you are set free from temptation, will you return
to your cure of those women? And he answered that he would willingly. They
then extracted an oath to that effect from him, and made him an eunuch. For
one seemed to hold his hands, another his feet, and the third to cut out his
testicles with a knife; though this was not really so, but only seemed to
be. And when they asked if he felt himself remedied, he answered that he was
entirely delivered. So, on the fifth day, he returned to the sorrowing
women, and ruled over them for the forty years that he continued to live,
and never again felt a spark of that first temptation.
No less a benefit do we read to have been conferred upon the
Blessed Thomas, a Doctor of our Order, whom
his brothers imprisoned for entering that Order; and, wishing to tempt him,
they sent in to him a seductive and sumptuously adorned harlot. But when
the Doctor had looked at her, he ran to the material fire, and snatching
up a lighted torch, drove the engine of the fire of lust out of his person;
and, prostrating himself in a prayer for the gift of chastity, went to
sleep. Two Angels then appeared to him, saying: Behold, at the bidding of
God we gird you with a girdle of chastity, which cannot be loosed by any
other such temptation; neither can it be acquired by the merits of human
virtue, but is given as a gift by God alone. And he felt himself girded,
and was aware of the touch of the girdle, and cried out and awaked. And
thereafter he felt himself endowed with so great a gift of chastity, that
from that time he abhorred all the delights of the flesh, so that he could
not even speak to a woman except under compulsion, but was strong in his
perfect chastity. This we take from the Formicarius of Nider.
With the exception, therefore, of these three classes of men, no one is
secure from witches. For all others are liable to be bewitched, or to be
tempted and incited by some witchery, in the eighteen ways that are now to
be considered. For we must first describe these methods in their order, that
we may afterwards discuss more clearly the remedies by which those who are
bewitched can be relieved. And that the eighteen methods may be more clearly
shown, they are set forth under as many chapters as follows. First, we show
the various methods of initiation of witches, and how they entice innocent
girls to swell the numbers of their perfidious company. Second, how witches
profess their sacrilege, and the oath of allegiance to the devil which they
take. Third, how they are transported from place to place, either bodily or
in the spirit. Fourth, how they subject themselves to Incubi, who are devils.
Fifth, their general method of practising witchcraft through the Sacraments
of the Church, and in particular how, with the permission of God, they can
afflict all creatures except the Celestial Bodies. Sixth, their method of
obstructing the generative function. Seventh, how they can take off the
virile member by some art of illusion. Eighth, how they change men into the
shapes of beasts. Ninth, how devils can enter the mind without hurting it,
when they work some glamour or illusion. Tenth, how devils, through the
operation of witches, sometimes substantially inhabit men. Eleventh, how
they cause every sort of infirmity, and this in general. Twelfth, of certain
infirmities in particular. Thirteenth, how witch midwives cause the greatest
damage, either killing children or sacrilegiously offering them to devils.
Fourteenth, how they cause various plagues to afflict animals. Fifteenth,
how they raise hailstorms and tempests, and thunder and lightning, to fall
upon men and animals. Sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth, the three ways
in which men only, and not women, are addicted to witchcraft. After these
will follow the question of the methods by which these sorts of witchcraft
may be removed.
But let no one think that, because we have enumerated the various methods by
which various forms of witchcraft are inflicted, he will arrive at a
complete knowledge of these practices; for such knowledge would be of little
use, and might even be harmful. Not even the forbidden books of Necromancy
contain such knowledge; for witchcraft is not taught in books, nor is it
practised by the learned, but by the altogether uneducated; having only one
foundation, without the acknowledgement or practice of which it is impossible
for anyone to work witchcraft as a witch.
Moreover, the methods are enumerated here at the beginning, that their deeds
may not seem incredible, as they have often been though hitherto, to the
great damage of the Faith, and the increase of witches themselves. But if
anyone maintains that, since (as has been proved above) some men are
protected by the influence of the stars so that they can be hurt by no
witchcraft, it should also be attributed to the stars when anyone is
bewitched, as if it were a matter of predestination whether a man can be
immune from or subject to witchcraft, such a man does not rightly understand
the meaning of the Doctors; and this in various respects.
And first, because there are three human qualities which may be said to be
ruled by three celestial causes, namely, the act of volition, the act of
understanding, and bodily acts. And the first, as has been said, is governed
directly and only by God; the second by an Angel; and the third is governed,
but not compelled, by a celestial body.
Secondly, it is clear from what has been said that choice and volition are
governed directly by God, as S. Paul says: It is God Who causeth us to will
and to perform, according to His good pleasure: and the understanding of
the human intellect is ordered by God through the mediation of the Angels.
Accordingly also all things corporeal, whether they be interior as are the
powers and knowledge acquired through the inner bodily functions, or
exterior as are sickness and health, are dispensed by the celestial bodies,
through the mediation of Angels. And when Dionysius, in the fourth chapter
de Diuinis Nominibus, says that the celestial bodies are the cause of
that which happens in this world, this is to be understood as to natural
health and sickness. But the sicknesses we are considering are supernatural,
since they are inflicted by the power of the devil, with God's permission.
Therefore we cannot say that it is due to the influence of the stars that a
man is bewitched; although it can truly be said that it is due to the
influence of the stars that some men cannot be bewitched.
But if it is objected that these two opposite effects must spring from the
same cause, and that the pendulum must swing both ways, it is answered that,
when a man is preserved by the influence of the stars from these supernatural
ills, this is not due directly to the influence of the stars, but to an
angelic power, which can strengthen that influence so that the enemy with
his malice cannot prevail against it; and that angelic power can be passed
on through the virtue of the stars. For a man may be at the point of death,
having reached the natural term of life, and God in His power, which in such
matters always works indirectly, may alter this be sending some power of
preservation instead of the natural defect in the man and in his dominating
influence. Accordingly we may say of a man who is subject to witchcraft,
that he can in just the same way be preserved from witchcraft, or that this
preservation comes of an Angel deputed to guard him; and this is the chief
of all means of protection.
And when it is said in Jeremias xxii: Write ye this man childless, a
man that shall not prosper in his days: this is to be understood with regard
to the choices of the will, in which one man prospers and another does not;
and this also can be ascribed to the influence of the stars. For example:
one man may be influenced by his stars to make a useful choice, such as to
enter some religious Order. And when his understanding is enlightened to
consider such a step, and by Divine operation his will is inclined to put it
into execution, such a man is said to prosper well. Or similarly when a man
is inclined to some trade, or anything that is useful. On the other hand,
he will be called unfortunate when his choice is inclined by the higher
Powers to unprofitable things.
S. Thomas, in his third book of the Summa against the Gentiles, and
in several places, speaks of these and many other opinions, when he
discusses in what lies the difference that one man should be well born and
another unfortunately born, that a man should be lucky or unlucky, or well
or badly governed and guarded. For according to the disposition of his stars
a man is said to be well or badly born, and so fortunate or unfortunate; and
according as he is enlightened by an Angel, and follows such enlightenment,
he is said to be well or badly guarded. And according as he is directed by
God towards good, and follows it, he is said to be well governed. But these
choices have no place here, since we are not concerned with them but with
the preservation from witchcraft; and we have said enough for the present
on this subject. We proceed to the rites practised by witches, and first to
a consideration of how they lure the innocent into becoming partakers of
their perfidies.
Page 2 of 2
Question I, Chapter I
This chapter was transcribed by Wicasta Lovelace.
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