How Witches Impede
and Prevent the Power of Procreation.
Concerning the method by which they obstruct the
procreant function both in men and animals, and in both
sexes, the reader my consult that which has been written
already on the question, Whether devils can through
witches turn the minds of men to love or hatred. There,
after the solutions of the arguments, a specific
declaration is made relating to the method by which,
with God's permission, they can obstruct the procreant
function.
But it must
be noted that such obstruction is caused both
intrinsically and extrinsically. Intrinsically they
cause it in two ways. First, when they directly prevent
the erection of the member which is accomodated to
fructification. And this need not seem impossible, when
it is considered that they are able to vitiate the
natural use of any member. Secondly, when they prevent
the flow of the vital essences to the members in which
resides the motive force, closing up the seminal ducts
so that it does not reach the generative vessels, or so
that it cannot be ejaculated, or is fruitlessly spilled.
Extrinsically
they cause it at times by means of images, or by the
eating of herbs; sometimes by other external means, such
as cocks' testicles. But it must not be thought that it
is by the virtue of these things that a man is made
impotent, but by the occult power of devils' illusions
witches by this means procure such impotence, namely,
that they cause man to be unable to copulate, or a woman
to conceive.
And the
reason for this is that God allows them more power over
this act, by which the first sin was disseminated, than
over other human actions. Similarly they have more power
over serpents, which are the most subject to the
influence of incantations, than over other animals.
Wherefore it has often been found by us and other
Inquisitors that they have caused this obstruction by
means of serpents or some such things.
For a certain
wizard who had been arrested confessed that for many
years he had by witchcraft brought sterility upon all
the men and animals which inhabited a certain house.
Moreover, Nider tells of a wizard named Stadlin who was
taken in the diocese of Lausanne, and confessed that in
a certain house where a man and his wife were loving, he
had by his witchcraft successively killed in the woman's
womb seven children, so that for many years the woman
always miscarried. And that, in the same way, he had
caused that all the pregnant cattle and animals of the
house were during those years unable to give birth to
any live issue. And when he was questioned as to how he
had done this, and what manner of charge should be
preferred against him, he discovered his crime, saying:
I put a serpent under the threshold of the outer door of
the house; and if this is removed, fecundity will be
restored to the inhabitants. And it was as he said; for
though the serpent was not found, having been reduced to
dust, the whole piece of ground was removed, and in the
same year fecundity was restored to the wife and to all
the animals.
Another
instance occurred hardly four years ago in Reichshofen.
There was a most notorious witch, who could at all times
and by a mere touch bewitch women and cause an abortion.
Now the wife of a certain nobleman in that place had
become pregnant and had engaged a midwife to take care
of her, and had been warned by the midwife not to go out
of the castle, and above all to be careful not to hold
any speech or conversation with that witch. After some
weeks, unmindful of that warning, she went out of the
castle to visit some women who were met together on some
festive occasion; and when she had sat down for a
little, the witch came, and, as if for the purpose of
saluting her, placed both her hands on her stomach; and
suddenly she felt the child moving in pain. Frightened
by this, she returned home and told the midwife what had
happened. Then the midwife exclaimed: “Alas! you have
already lost your child.” And so it proved when her
time came; for she gave birth, not to an entire
abortion, but little by little to separate fragments of
its head and feet and hands. And the great affliction
was permitted by God to punish her husband, whose duty
it was to bring witches to justice and avenge their
injuries to the Creator.
And there was
in the town of Mersburg in the diocese of Constance a
certain young man who was bewitched in such a way that
he could never perform the carnal act with any woman
except one. And many have heard him tell that he had
often wished to refuse that woman, and take flight to
other lands; but that hitherto he had been compelled to
rise up in the night and to come very quickly back,
sometimes over land, and sometimes through the air as if
he were flying.
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