Here followeth how
Witches Injure Cattle in Various Ways.
When
S. Paul said, Doth God care for oxen? he meant that,
though all things are subject to Divine providence, both
man and beast each in its degree, as the Psalmist says,
yet the sons of men are especially in His governance and
under the protection of His wings. I say, therefore, if
men are injured by witches, with God's permission, both
the innocent and just as well as sinners, and if parents
are bewitched in their children, as being part of their
possessions, who can then presume to doubt that, with
God's permission, various injuries can be brought by
witches upon cattle and the fruits of the earth, which
are also part of men's possessions? For so was Job
stricken by the devil and lost all his cattle. So also
there is not even the smallest farm where women do not
injure each other's cows, by drying up their milk, and
very often killing them.
But first let
us consider the smallest of these injuries, that of
drying up the milk. If it is asked how they can do this,
it can be answered that, according to Blessed Albert in
his Book on Animals, milk is naturally menstrual
in any animal; and, like another flux in women, when it
is not stopped by some natural infirmity, it is due to
witchcraft that it is stopped. Now the flow of milk is
naturally stopped when the animal becomes pregnant; and
it is stopped by an accidental infirmity when the animal
eats some herb the nature of which is to dry up the milk
and make the cow ill.
But they can
cause this in various ways by witchcraft. For on the
more holy nights according to the instructions of the
devil and for the greater offence to the Divine Majesty
of God, a witch will sit down in a corner of her house
with a pail between her legs, stick a knife or some
instrument in the wall or a post, and make as if to milk
it with her hands. Then she summons her familiar who
always works with her in everything, and tells him that
she wishes to milk a certain cow from a certain house,
which is healthy and abounding in milk. And suddenly the
devil takes the milk from the udder of that cow, and
brings it to where the witch is sitting, as if it were
flowing from the knife.
But when this
is publicly preached to the people they get no bad
information by it; for however much anyone may invoke
the devil, and think that by this alone he can do this
thing, he deceives himself, because he is without the
foundation of that perfidy, not having rendered homage
to the devil or abjured the Faith. I have set this down
because some have thought that several of the matter of
which I have written ought not to be preacher to the
people, on account of the danger of giving them evil
knowledge; whereas it is impossible for anyone to learn
from a preacher how to perform any of the things that
have been mentioned. But they have been written rather
to bring so great a crime into detestation, and should
be preached from the pulpit, so that judges may be more
eager to punish the horrible crime of the abnegation of
the Faith. Yet they should not always be preached in
this way; for the secular mind pays more attention to
temporal losses, being more concerned with earthly than
spiritual matters; therefore when witches can be accused
of inflicting temporal loss, judges are more zealous to
punish them. But who can fathom the cunning of the
devil?
I know of
some men in a certain city who wished to eat some May
butter one May time. And as they were walking along they
came to a meadow and say down by a stream; and one of
them, who had formed some open or tacit pact with the
devil, said: I will get you the best May butter. And at
once he took off his clothes and went into the stream,
not standing up but sitting with his back against the
current; and while the others looked on, he uttered
certain words, and moved the water with his hands behind
his back; and in a short time he brought out a great
quantity of butter of the sort that the country women
sell in the market in May. And the others tasted it and
declared that it was the very best butter.
From this we
can deduce first the following fact concerning their
practices. They are either true witches, by reason of an
expressed pact formed with the devil, or they know by
some tacit understanding that the devil will do what
they ask. In the first case there is no need for any
discussion, for such are true witches. But in the second
case, then they owed the devil's help to the fact that
they were blasphemously offered to the devil by a
midwife or by their own mothers.
But it may be
objected that the devil perhaps brought the butter
without any compact, expressed or tacit, and without any
previous dedication to himself. It is answered that no
one can ever use the devil's help in such matters
without invoking him; and that by that very act of
seeking help from the devil he is an apostate from the
Faith. This is the decision of S. Thomas in the Second
Book of Sentences, dist. 8, on the question, Whether
it is apostasy from the Faith to use the devil's help.
And although Blessed Albert the Great agrees with the
other Doctors, yet he says more expressly that in such
matters there is always apostasy either in word or in
deed. For if invocations, conjurations, fumigations and
adorations are used, then an open pact is formed with
the devil, even if there has been no surrender of body
and soul together with explicit abjuration of the Faith
either wholly or in part. For by the mere invocation of
the devil a man commits open verbal apostasy. But if
there is no spoken invocation, but only a bare action
from which follows something that could not be done
without the devil's help, then whether a man does it be
beginning in the name of the devil, or with some other
unknown words, or without any words but with that
intention; then, says Blessed Albert, it is apostasy of
deed, because that action is looked for from the devil.
But since to expect or receive anything from the devil
is always a disparagement of the Faith, it is also
apostasy.
So it is
concluded that, by whatever means that sorcerer procured
the butter, it was done with either a tacit or an
expressed pact with the devil; and since, if it had been
with an expressed pact, he would have behaved after the
usual manner of witches, it is probably that there was a
tacit or secret pact, originating either from himself or
from his mother or a midwife. And I say that it arose
from himself, since he only went through certain
motions, and expected the devil to produce the effect.
The second
conclusion we can draw from this and similar practices
is this. The devil cannot create new species of things;
therefore when natural butter suddenly came out of the
water, the devil did not do this by changing the water
into milk, but by taking butter from some place where it
was kept and bringing it to the man's hand. Or else he
took natural milk from a natural cow and suddenly
churned it into natural butter; for while the art of
women takes a little time to make butter, the devil
could do it in the shortest space of time and bring it
to the man.
It is in the
same way that certain dealers in magic, when they find
themselves in need of wine or some such necessity,
merely go out in the night with a flask or vessel, and
bring it back suddenly filled with wine. For then the
devil takes natural wine from some vessel and fills
their flasks for them.
And with
regard to the manner whereby witches kill animals and
cattle, it should be said that they act very much as
they do in the case of men. They can bewitch them by a
touch and a look, or by a look only; or by placing under
the threshold of the stable door, or near the place
where they go to water, some charm or periapt of
witchcraft.
For in this
way those witches who were burned at Ratisbon, of whom
we shall say more later on, were always incited by the
devil to bewitch the best horses and the fattest cattle.
And when they were asked how they did so, one of them
named Agnes said that they hid certain things under the
threshold of the stable door. And, asked what sort of
things, she said: The bones of different kinds of
animals. She was further asked in whose name they did
this, and answered, In the name of the devil and all the
other devils. And there was another of them, named Anna,
who had killed twenty-three horses in succession
belonging to one of the citizens who was a carrier. This
man at last, when he had bought his twenty-fourth horse
and reduced to extreme poverty, stood in his stable and
said to the witch, who was standing in the door of her
house: “See, I have bought a horse, and I swear to God
and His Holy Mother that if this horse dies I shall kill
you with my own hands.” At that the witch was
frightened, and left the horse alone. But when she was
taken and asked how she had done these things, she
answered that she had done nothing but dig a little
hole, after which the devil had put in it certain things
unknown to her. From this it is concluded that the witch
co-operates sufficiently if it is only by a touch or a
look; for the devil is permitted no power of injuring
creatures without some co-operation on the part of the
witch, as has been shown before. And this is for the
great offence to the Divine Majesty.
For shepherds
have often seen animals in the fields give three or four
jumps into the air, and then suddenly fall to the ground
and die; and this is caused by the power of witches at
the instance of the devil.
In the
diocese of Strasburg, between the town of Fiessen and
Mount Ferrer, a certain very rich man affirmed that more
than forty oxen and cows belonging to him and others had
been bewitched in the Alps within the space of one year,
and that there had been no natural plague or sickness to
cause it. To prove this, he said that when cattle die
from some change plague or disease, they do not do so
all at once, but by degrees; but that this witchcraft
had suddenly taken all the strength from them, and
therefore everyone judged that they had been killed by
witchcraft. I have said forty head of cattle, but I
believe he put the number higher than that. However, it
is very true that many cattle are said to have been
bewitched in some districts, especially in the Alps; and
it is known that this form of witchcraft if unhappily
most widespread. We shall consider some similar cases
later, in the chapter where we discuss the remedies for
cattle that have been bewitched.
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