Fra Francesco Maria Guazzo
title page of the 2nd edition (Milan, 1626) larger image
Guazzo is not the most distinguished of demonologists by any means, although his work was compiled out of a vast array of sources. He is interesting on the means whereby the Devil induces diseases, and for his appeal to medical authorities. He adopts the usual line on the sabbat, that everything was absurdly performed, in an inversion of normal practice. He claimed to be moderate rather than credulous, and denied that werewolves were actually transformed. Like many other demonologists, he neglected the issue of the gender of witches.
Guazzo
was not much cited by later writers, partly because Italy did not experience
many severe prosecutions, because the Inquisition regarded the crime as
under its jurisdiction, and inquisitors were inclined to be more sceptical
than lay judges about many of the central beliefs. Guazzo was also
writing relatively late in the day, compiling the works of the classic
demonologists. By the time his second edition appeared, the major
Western European prosecutions were mostly over. However, his work
is much cited today, for two reasons. An English translation was
published in 1929, with an introduction by the ubiquitous Montague
Summers, and this has been available in paperback until recently.
[Used copies are easily obtainable.] Secondly, the book was illustrated
with attractive woodcuts, which have been much used by modern authors.
Unfortunately, these circulate detached from the accompanying text, so
their original meaning is often lost or significantly distorted.
Indeed, they are often used in totally different contexts.
Guazzo's book is too long to be summarized in its entirety here, but it seems worthwhile to show the images and explain the context of each of them, although the extent to which Guazzo influenced their content and placing is unknown. However, the printshop was that of the Ambrosian College at Milan, so they are presumably in accord with Guazzo's wishes. However, commercial considerations may have shaped the decision to use prints and, although these are newly commisioned illustrations, economy dictated their re-use, as will be seen. Images are used over and over again in different contexts, yet the meanings ascribed to them when they are reproduced by modern authors frequently have no connection with anything in Guazzo's text.
The images below are taken from the expanded second edition, to which the page numbers refer. I have not yet been able to consult a copy of the first edition, so I am not clear whether Summers followed the first edition or merely mangled the two together. He speaks of having "to prepare a definitive recension" out of the two editions, but large slabs of the second edition are not to be found in his translation.
The title page above reads thus:
Compendivm Maleficarvm, Ex quo nefandissima in genus
humanum opera venefica, ac ad illa vitanda remedia conspiciuntur. Per Fratrem
Franciscum Mariam Guaccium Ord. S. Ambrosij ad Nemus Mediolani compilatum.
In hac autem secunda æditione ab eodem authore pulcherrimis doctrinis
ditatum, exemplis auctum, & remedijs lo eupletatum. His additus est
Exorcismus potentissimus ad soluendum omne opus diabolicum; nec non modus
curandi febricitantes, ad Dei gloriam, & hominum solatium. Mediolani
Ex Collegij Ambrosiani Typographia. 1626.
Book 1, Chapter 6: pp.34, 36: The witches' pact
with the Devil. The witches deny their Christian faith and insult
the Virgin Mary. A literal trampling on the Cross is not mentioned
in the text, although it is implied later. Secondly, they are rebaptized.
Thirdly, they are renamed. Fourthly, they deny their godparents and
are given new ones.
pp.37, 38a: Fifthly, they give the Devil a piece of their
clothing, as a sign of their acquired goods being as much devoted to the
Devil as their spiritual goods. Sixthly, they swear allegiance within
a circle.
pp.38b, 40: Seventhly, they pray to be struck
out of the book of life, and written in the black book of death.
Eighthly, they promise to sacrifice to the
Devil.
pp.41, 42: Ninthly, they must make an annual gift of
something black to their demonic masters, to avoid being beaten.
Tenthly, the Devil places his mark on them. These marks vary.
Eleventhly, they must make various vows, such as promising never to adore
the Eucharist, to revile the Virgin Mary, to abstain from making the sign
of the Cross, and so forth. In return for their loyalty, the Devil
promises that their prayers in this world will be fulfilled and he will
bring them happiness in the world hereafter.
p.48:
Book 1, Chapter 7: Witches produce rain and hail by their deeds and words.
Witches can even produce lightning, when God permits. According to
Andrea Cesalpino, in his Daemonum Investigatio Peripatetica,such
men as could raise storms have confessed that they could only injure those
whom God had forsaken. Examples are provided, from the
Malleus
Maleficarum and from Nicolas Rémy
for example, but Guazzo also provides cases from Trier and Swabia, which
are not attributed to published sources. The former involves a man
discovering that his daughter could make rain by urinating in a trench.
She told him that her mother had taught her how to do it, so he handed
them both over to the judge in a neighbouring town, to which he had lured
them by pretending he had been invited to a wedding feast. The Swabian
example, taken from the Malleus, also involved a young daughter,
this time helping her peasant father whose fields were drought-stricken.
pp.51,
53: Book 1, Chapter 8: The power of witches over external objects.
Witches have to show that they have done evil since the previous sabbat,
so the Devil instructs them in how to create crop infestations, how to
bewitch cattle, how to use poisons. This is clear from the confessions
of Lorraine witches, produced by Rémy. They can conjure up
feasts, either illusory ones which leave the eaters hungry or real ones
composed of bad food, since God will not permit the conjuring of good food.
These generally lack salt and bread, associated with baptism and eucharist,
unless God permits. Various examples are provided, of a witch stealing
milk with the aid of a demon, of a garden wrecked with slugs after a sabbat,
and other tales.
pp.68, 70: Book 1, Chapter 12: Whether witches are really
transported to their nocturnal assemblies.
Followers of Luther and Melanchthon have claimed that
witches are only transported to the sabbat in their imagination, by diabolical
illusion. However, the devil can clearly place a likeness of a man's
wife in bed to deceive her husband, as Rémy's cases prove.
The Devil in the shape of a goat or some other animal really does transport
witches, as many citations prove. The witches anoint themselves with
filthy unguents before going, and sometimes walk to the sabbat. The
Devil presides, sitting on a throne in the shape of a goat or a dog.
They bend the knee or kick their legs high, pointing their chins skyward.
pp.71, 73: They offer black candles or infants' navel
strings to the Devil, and kiss his buttocks. According to Rémy,
they meet at one or two hours before midnight. Classical authors
give this as the time of ghosts and evil spirits walking the world.
For some reason, they must depart before cockcrow.
pp.76, 77: According to Rémy, great numbers meet
at sabbats and there are far more women than men present. There are
tables laid, but the food is foul, badly cooked and bitter in taste.
The wine is black. There is plenty of everything except bread and
salt. All is confused to the eyes, and sometimes the Devil deludes
witches into believing they are at the sabbat when actually they are fast
asleep at home. There is dancing in circles, but always to the left,
and they are not for pleasure but are tiring work.
pp.78, 79: When they approach the demons to venerate them, they approach
backwards. When they speak, they face the ground. All things
that they do are contrary to other people's usage. The desire for
wanton dancing always leads by evil example to lust and sin. Sometimes
they dance before eating and sometimes afterwards. Three or four
tables are set aside for the richest or most honoured witches. They
each sit with their familiar demons, sometimes side by side and sometimes
face to face. Afterwards, demons and witches join in frenzied dancing
and obscene songs. Finally, the witches copulate with their demon
lovers. Those who assert that all of this is a dream or an illusion
are guilty of sin against our mother, the Church, for the Catholic Church
does not punish any crime that is not evident and manifest, and counts
no one a heretic unless caught in patent heresy. Whoever says the
Church is in error over a matter of faith is Anathema Maranatha.
Many pages of examples are provided, mainly from recent demonologists.
p.97: Book 1, Chapter 13: Whether witches can transmute
bodies. Guazzo is certain that this cannot be done, and that it is
dangerously close to heresy to believe in actual transformation.
A human soul cannot inhabit the body of a beast. Rather, this is
an illusion created by the Devil. "Sometimes, in accordance with
the pact of the magus, he surrounds a witch with an aerial effigy of a
beast [aeream circundat effigiem beluæ], each part of which fits
on to the correspondent part of the witch's body, head to head, mouth to
mouth, belly to belly, foot to foot, and arm to arm; but this only happens
when they use certain ointments and words... and then they leave the footprints
of a wolf upon the ground." This is why the witch can be found wounded
after the wolf has been attacked. If, however, the witch is not bodily
present at all, it is the Devil who wounds the body in the part where the
beast was wounded.
pp.141, 142: Book 2, Chapter 1: Of soporific malefices.
Sorcerors and witches put people to sleep in order to poison them, steal
their children, rob them, or pollute them with filth and adultery.
This can be done with a wide variety of natural drugs, but demons have
perfect knowledge of the effects of such potions and can also, with the
permission of God, perform such things without external aids. Demons
also give witches the power to turn into mice or cats or locusts, as the
witches believe, to enable them more easily to insinuate themselves into
houses for this purpose. Witches also use strange lights, parts of
corpses, and human fat to induce sleep. All those who go to sleep
should therefore recite a psalm and prayer, such as "Qui habitat in adiutorio
Altissimi" or "In te Domini speravi". They should cross themselves,
recite the "Salve Regina Mater misericordiae", the Paternoster, and the
Ave Maria. They should also have a wax Agnus Dei blessed by the Pope
or some holy relics by their bed to be safe.
p. 149: Book 2, Chapter 2: Witches use human corpses to kill men.
[This scene of exhumation, dismemberment, and the cutting down of a hanged
man is followed in the Summers edition by a scene of babies being spit-roasted
and boiled, which does not appear in the second edition. See above
for hand-coloured version.] Witches dig up corpses to use them for
murderous purposes, especially the bodies of those condemned to death.
They also use the executioner's implements. Others cook the whole
body to ashes and mix it into a lump. Various examples of this are
provided, with witches using human remains for murder and for rendering
vines and fruit trees barren.
p.152: Book 2, Chapter 3: Of witches' poisons. The poisons are mixed
from many substances, from leaves and stalks and roots of plants, from
animals, fishes, venemous reptiles, stones and metals. Sometimes
they are administered to be swallowed and sometimes as an ointment to be
applied externally. In the first instance, they mix a powder into
food or drink; in the second, they bewitch their victim while asleep by
anointing various parts of the body, so that the poison is absorbed by
the heat of the body, causing great pain. A third method is by inhalation,
which is the worst kind because it is quickly drawn through the mouth and
so to the heart. Various examples provided, including one from Girolamo
Cardano's De Rerum Varietate xv. 80, concerning a hermaphrodite
who crept about the houses of Saluzzo at night in 1536, as part of a poisoning
conspiracy involving some forty men, including a hangman.
p.156: Book 2, Chapter 4: Of the malefice of binding [ligaminis].
Learned men give seven causes of impotence. The first is if a couple
is made hateful to one another, by slander or disease. The second
is when a couple are kept apart, in separate places or by a phantasm coming
between them. The third is when the vital spirit is prevented from
flowing to the male genitals. The fourth is when the semen is dried
up. The fifth is when the male member becomes flabby [flacida].
The sixth is through the application of natural drugs which deprive a woman
of the power to conceive. These are the commoner causes. The seventh
is rarer, when the female genitals are closed up or narrowed, or when the
male genitals are retracted, hidden or removed. The Malleus
and Rémy are cited, though not Bodin. Several examples given,
but none of them are ligatures, in the strict sense. Perhaps that
form of witchcraft was not widely feared in the regions known to Guazzo.
p.161: Book 2, Chapter 5: Of incendiary witchcraft.
Witches not only inflame souls but also set fire to bodies, houses, and
whole towns. They are evidently fuel for the eternal fire.
Examples from Rémy and from Konrad Lycosthenes' Prodigiorum ac
Ostentorum Chronicon. p.164: Book 2, Chapter 6: The Devil wishes
to perpetuate the race of witches. The infection of witchcraft [sortilegii
lues] is spread to children by a sort of contagion [veluti contagione].
One of the sure proofs of witchcraft is that the parents
of the accused were guilty of the crime. The Devil urges and compels
his servants to corrupt their children. Several examples drawn from
Rémy.
p.171: Book 2, Chapter 7: Of the witchcraft of love and
hatred. [This chapter does not appear in the Summers edition.
Hereafter, chapter numbers differ by one.] A standard treatment,
drawing especially on classical authors, such as Virgil, Lucan and Ovid,
more than the demonologists. Only one example, from the thirteenth
century, which is striking in view of the predominance of such cases before
the Roman and Venetian Inquisitions. p.174: Book 2, Chapter 8: The
various forms of witches' vindictiveness against the human race.
Witches are everywhere to be feared, although they do not have an infinite
capacity to harm whoever they wish, as no one is altogether safe from them.
Although there are stories on this subject elsewhere in this book, it may
be profitable and not altogether displeasing [non omnino iniucunda] to
lay some out in detail. Many examples, apparently all from Rémy.
p.185: Book 2, Chapter 9: Of the different diseases brought
by demons. Argues against the naturalistic position of many Galenists
and Aristotelians, that natural diseases cannot be induced by demons.
Among others, he cites Codronchi, Jean Fernel and Cesalpino against this
position. Examples of prodigious vomiting and other recent witchcraft
material. p.194: Book 2, Chapter 10: Why God permits the Devil thus
to act by witchcraft. [The image not in the Summers edition at this
point.] God permits it so that glory may be increased in us,
because he permits man to sin, as a proof of divine benevolence in allowing
free will even to the Devil, to show mercy to the human race by restraining
the harm done, to show wisdom in causing the Devil to be overcome by mere
mortals, to show power in not allowing the Devil to accomplish various
things, to show justice in punishing sin even in this life.
p.210: Book 2, Chapter 11: Of vain practices and superstitions.
[This chapter is not in the Summers edition.] This chapter deals
with various forms of idoltry and divination, mainly from classical sources.
p.217: Book 2, Chapter 13 [sic]: Of oracles [de sortibus].
[This chapter is not in the Summers edition.] This chapter deals
with various forms of divination and necromancy. [The Summers edition
here contains two short chapters located elsewhere in the 1626 edition:
10, "The Laws Observed by Witches in Causing and in Curing Sickness", and
11, "Witches Use something of Religion in Healing Sickness".]
p. 219: Book 2, Chapter 12 [sic]: Striking fear into
witches by word and deed is the best remedy for the ills they inflict.
[Due to the misnumbering, this is also 2.12 in Summers.] The fear
of prison can cause witches to remove their spells. The external
cures used by witches have no efficacy but merely act as a cover for witchcraft.
The demons do not remove a disease from one person without transferring
it to another. Examples from Rémy. p.227: Book 2, Chapter
14: Of dreams, revelations, visions, and apparitions. [Not in Summers.]
Citations mainly classical and biblical but plenty of modern examples of
the activities of the Devil, finishing with the tale of a wretched English
heretic girl, Elizabeth Croft.
p.247: Book 2, Chapter 15: What rules witches have in
their inflicting and removing of diseases. [2.10 in Summers, without the
image.] The Devil is quick to harm but witches find many obstacles
in their path when they try to heal. Several brief examples from
Rémy. p.255: Book 2, Chapter 19: After the many impieties
accomplished by witches, the Devil tries to induce them to take their own
lives. [2.13 in Summers.] The harsh bondage in which the Devil keeps
his servants induces despair. When they try to kill themselves, they
are instantly beyond help. The Devil thus drives them to their eternal
death but, if they will confess with penitential joy, voluntarily and without
torture, God will grant them the chance to save their souls, at the modest
cost of their most wretched lives [leui miserrimæ vitæ dispendio].
p.278: Book 3, Chapter 1: Whether it is lawful to remove a spell in order
to cure the bewitched. It is indeed permitted to burn, untie, dig
up, or otherwise destroy the physical instruments of the curse in order
to break the Devil's hold.
The rest of Book 3 deals with the diagnosis of possession and bewitchment and with the lawful Catholic sacraments and sacramentals that can be used to cure such afflictions. It is worthy of note that Guazzo does not distinguish between direct possession and obsession caused by a witch. He acknowledges only two categories: possession caused by a witch and bewitchment. Thus, any strange afflictions are presumably to be attributed to the agency of a witch and none to the sins of the afflicted or the independent activity of the Devil.
All the other illustrations in Book 3 of the Summers edition are clearly quite different from the Guazzo illustrations, and from one another, and have been inserted by the editor.
