How they are
Transported from Place to Place.
And
now we must consider their ceremonies and in what manner
they proceed in their operations, first in respect of
their actions towards themselves and in their own
persons. And among their chief operations are being
bodily transported from place to place, and to practise
carnal connexion with Incubus devils, which we shall
treat of separately, beginning with their bodily
vectification. But here it must be noted that this
transvection offers a difficulty, which has often been
mentioned, arising from one single authority, where it
is said: It cannot be admitted as true that certain
wicked women, perverted by Satan and seduced by the
illusions and phantasms of devils, do actually, as they
believe and profess, ride in the night-time on certain
beasts with Diana, a goddess of the Pagans, or with
Herodias and an innumerable multitude of women, and in
the untimely silence of night pass over immense tracts
of land, and have to obey her in all things as their
Mistress, etc. Wherefore the priest of God ought to
preach to the people that this is altogether false, and
that such phantasms are sent not by God, but by an evil
Spirit to confuse the minds of the faithful. For Satan
himself transforms himself into various shapes and
forms; and by deluding in dreams the mind which he holds
captive, leads it through devious ways, etc.
And there are
those who, taking their example from S. Germain and a
certain other man who kept watch over his daughter to
determine this matter, sometimes preach that this is an
altogether impossible thing; and that it is indiscreet
to ascribe to witches and their operations such
levitations, as well as the injuries which happen to
men, animals, and the fruits of the earth; since just as
they are the victims of phantasy in their transvections,
so also are they deluded in the matter of the harm they
wreak on living creatures.
But this
opinion was refuted as heretical in the First Question;
for it leaves out of account the Divine permission with
regard to the devil's power, which extends to even
greater things than this: and it is contrary to the
meaning of Sacred Scripture, and has caused intolerable
damage to Holy Church, since now for many years, thanks
to this pestiferous doctrine, witches have remained
unpunished, because the secular courts have lost their
power to punish them. Therefore the diligent reader will
consider what was there set down for the stamping out of
that opinion, and will for the present note how they are
transported, and in what ways this is possible, of which
some examples will be adduced.
It is shown
in various ways that they can be bodily transported; and
first, from the operations of other Magicians. For if
they could not be transported, it would either be
because God does not permit it, or because the devil
cannot do this since it is contrary to nature. It cannot
be for the first reason, for both greater and less
things can be done by the permission of God; and greater
things are often done both to children and men, even to
just men confirmed in grace.
For when it
is asked whether substitutions of children can be
affected by the work of devils, and whether the devil
can carry a man from place to place even against his
will; to the first question the answer is, Yes. For
William of Paris says in the last part of his De
Uniuerso: Substitutions of children are, with God's
permission, possible, so that the devil can affect a
change of the child or even a transformation. For such
children are always miserable and crying; and although
four or five mothers could hardly support enough milk
for them, they never grow fat, yet are heavy beyond the
ordinary. But this should neither be affirmed nor denied
to women, on account of the great fear which it may
cause them, but they should be instructed to ask the
opinion of learned men. For God permits this on account
of the sins of the parents, in that sometimes men curse
their pregnant wives, saying, May you be carrying a
devil! or some such thing. In the same way impatient
women often say something of the sort. And many examples
have been given by other men, some of them pious men.
For Vincent
of Beauvais (Spec. Hist., XXVI, 43) related a
story told by S. Peter Damian of a five-year-old son of
a nobleman, who was for the time living in a monastery;
and one night he was carried out of the monastery into a
locked mill, where he was found in the morning. And when
he was questioned, he said that he had been carried by
some men to a great feast and bidden to eat; and
afterwards he was put into the mill through the roof.
And what of
those Magicians whom we generally call Necromancers, who
are often carried through the air by devils for long
distances? And sometimes they even persuade others to go
with them on a horse, which is not really a horse but a
devil in that form, and, as they say, thus warn their
companions not to make the sign of the Cross.
And though we
are two who write this book, one of us has very often
seen and known such men. For there is a man who was once
a scholar, and is now believed to be a priest in the
diocese of Freising, who used to say that at one time he
had been bodily carried through the air by a devil, and
taken to the most remote parts.
There lives
another priest in Oberdorf, a town near Landshut, who
was at that time a friend of that one of us, who saw
with his own eyes such a transportation, and tells how
the man was borne on high with arms stretched out,
shouting but not whimpering. And the cause, as he tells
it, was as follows. A number of scholars had met
together to drink beer, and they all agreed that the one
who fetched the beer should not have to pay anything.
And so one of them was going to fetch the beer, and on
opening the door saw a thick cloud before the grunsel,
and returning in terror told his companions why he would
not go for the drink. Then that one of them who was
carried away said angrily: “Even if the devil were
there, I shall fetch the drink.” And, going out, he
was carried through the air in the sight of all the
others.
And indeed it
must be confessed that such things can happen not only
to those who are awake, but also to men who are asleep;
namely, they can be bodily transported through the air
while they are fast asleep.
This is clear
in the case of certain men who walk in their sleep on
the roofs of houses and over the highest buildings, and
no one can oppose their progress either on high or
below. And if they are called by their own names by the
other bystanders, they immediately fall crashing to the
ground.
Many think,
and not without reason, that this is devils' work. For
devils are of many different kinds, and some, who fell
from the lower choir of Angels, are tortured as if for
smaller sins with lighter punishments as well as the
punishment of damnation which they must suffer
eternally. And these cannot hurt anybody, at least not
seriously, but for the most part carry out only
practical jokes. And others are Incubi or Succubi, who
punish men in the night, defiling them in the sin of
lechery. It is not wonderful if they are given also to
horse-play such as this.
The truth can
be deduced from the words of Cassian, Collationes
I, where he says that there is no doubt that there are
as many different unclean spirits as there are different
desires in men. For it is manifest that some of them,
which the common people call Fauns, and we call Trolls,
which abound in Norway, are such buffoons and jokers
that they haunt certain places and roads and, without
being able to do any hurt to those who pass by, are
content with mocking and deluding them, and try to weary
them rather than hurt them. And some of them only visit
men with harmless nightmares. But others are so furious
and truculent that they are not content to afflict with
an atrocious dilation the bodies of those whom they
inflate, but even come rushing from on high and hasten
to strike them with the most savage blows. Our author
means that they do not only possess men, but torture
them horribly, as did those which are described in S.
Matthew viii.
From this we
can conclude, first that it must not be said that
witches cannot be locally transported because God does
not permit it. For if He permits it in the case of the
just and innocent, and of other Magicians, how should He
not in the case of those who are totally dedicated to
the devil? And we say with all reverence: Did not the
devil take up Our Saviour, and carry Him up to a high
place, as the Gospel testifies?
Neither can
the second argument of our opponents be conceded, that
the devil cannot do this thing. For it has already been
shown that he has so great natural power, exceeding all
corporeal power, that there is no earthly power that can
be compared with him; as it is said: “There is no
power on earth that can be compared with him,” etc.
Indeed the natural power or virtue which is in Lucifer
is so great that there is none greater among the good
Angels in Heaven. For just as he excelled all the Angels
in his nature, and not his nature, but only his grace,
was diminished by his Fall, so that nature still remains
in him, although it is darkened and bound. Wherefore the
gloss on that “There is no power on earth” says:
Although he excels all things, yet he is subject to the
merits of the Saints.
Two
objections which someone may bring forward are not
valid. First, that man's soul could resist him, and that
the text seems to speak of one devil in particular,
since it speaks in the singular, namely Lucifer. And
because it was he who tempted Christ in the wilderness,
and seduced the first man, he is now bound in chains.
And the other Angels are not so powerful, since he
excels them all. Therefore the other spirits cannot
transport wicked men through the air from place to
place.
These
arguments have no force. For, to consider the Angels
first, even the least Angel is incomparably superior to
all human power, as can be proved in many ways. First, a
spiritual is stronger than a corporeal power, and so is
the power of an Angel, or even of the soul, greater than
that of the body. Secondly, as to the soul; every bodily
shape owes its individuality to matter, and, in the case
of human beings, to the fact that a soul informs it; but
immaterial forms are absolute intelligences, and
therefore have an absolute and more universal power. For
this reason, the soul when joined to the body cannot in
this way suddenly transfer its body locally or raise it
up in the air; although it could easily do so, with
God's permission, if it were separate from its body.
Much more, then, is this possible to an entirely
immaterial spirit, such as a good or bad Angel. For a
good Angel transported Habacuc in a moment from Judaea
to Chaldaea. And for this reason it is concluded that
those who by night are carried in their sleep over high
buildings are not carried by their own souls, nor by the
influence of the stars, but by some mightier power, as
was shown above.
Thirdly, it
is the nature of the body to be moved, as to place,
directly by a spiritual nature; and, as Aristotle says, Physics,
VIII, local motion is the first of bodily motions; and
he proves this by saying that local motion is not
intrinsically in the power of any body as such, but is
due to some exterior force.
Wherefore it
is concluded, not so much from the holy Doctors as from
the Philosophers, that the highest bodies, that is, the
stars, are moved by spiritual essences, and by separate
Intelligences which are good both by nature and in
intention. For we see that the soul is the prime and
chief cause of local motion in the body.
It must be
said, therefore, that neither in its physical capacity
nor in that of its soul can the human body resist being
suddenly transported from place to place, with God's
permission, by a spiritual essence good both in
intention and by nature, when the good, who are
confirmed in grace, are transported; or by an essence
good by nature, but not good in intention, when the
wicked are transported. Any who wish may refer to S.
Thomas in three articles in Part I, question 90, and
again in his question concerning Sin, and also in the Second
Book of Sentences, dist. 7, on the power of devils
over bodily effects.
Now the
following is their method of being transported. They
take the unguent which, as we have said, they make at
the devil's instruction from the limbs of children,
particularly of those whom they have killed before
baptism, and anoint with it a chair or a broomstick;
whereupon they are immediately carried up into the air,
either by day or by night, and either visibly or, if
they wish, invisibly; for the devil can conceal a body
by the interposition of some other substance, as was
shown in the First Part of the treatise where we spoke
of the glamours and illusions caused by the devil. And
although the devil for the most part performs this by
means of this unguent, to the end that children should
be deprived of the grace of baptism and of salvation,
yet he often seems to affect the same transvection
without its use. For at times he transports the witches
on animals, which are not true animals but devils in
that form; and sometimes even without any exterior help
they are visibly carried solely by the operation of the
devil's power.
Here is an
instance of a visible transportation in the day-time. In
the town of Waldshut on the Rhine, in the diocese of
Constance, there was a certain witch who was so detested
by the townsfolk that she was not invited to the
celebration of a wedding which, however, nearly all the
other townsfolk were present. Being indignant because of
this, and wishing to be revenged, she summoned a devil
and, telling him the cause of her vexation, asked him to
raise a hailstorm and drive all the wedding guests from
their dancing; and the devil agreed, and raising her up,
carried her through the air to a hill near the town, in
the sight of some shepherds. And since, as she
afterwards confessed, she had no water to pour into the
trench (for this, as we shall show, is the method they
use to raise hailstorms), she made a small trench and
filled it with her urine instead of water, and stirred
it with her finger, after their custom, with the devil
standing by. Then the devil suddenly raised that liquid
up and sent a violent storm of hailstones which fell
only on the dancers and townsfolk. And when they had
dispersed and were discussing among themselves the cause
of that storm, the witch shortly afterwards entered the
town; and this greatly aroused their suspicions. But
when the shepherds had told what they had seen, their
suspicions became almost a certainty. So she was
arrested, and confessed that she had done this thing
because she had not been invited to the wedding: and for
this, and for many other witchcrafts which she had
perpetrated, she was burned.
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