Inventing the Enemy: Essays Read Online Free Page A

together with their livestock, goods, and chattels, and set fire to them.”
    One leader of such a group confessed he had been bribed by a Jew, who had given him some poison (made with human blood, urine, three herbs, and pieces of the consecrated host) placed in a sack that was weighted so it would easily sink to the bottom of a drinking fountain. But, he said, it was the king of Granada who had gone to the Jews—and another source also added the sultan of Babylon to the plot. Three traditional enemies—the leper, the Jew, and the Saracen—were thus brought together in one fell swoop. Reference to the fourth enemy, the heretic, was provided in a detail: the assembled lepers had to spit on the host and trample on the cross.
    Rituals of this kind were later said to be practiced by witches. The fourteenth century saw the appearance of the first manuals for the trial of heretics by inquisition, such as the
Practica inquisitionis hereticae pravitatis
by Bernardo Gui and the
Directorium inquisitorum
by Niccolao Emeric, and in the fifteenth century (while Marsilio Ficino is translating Plato in Florence on the orders of Cosimo de’ Medici and, according to a well-known schoolboys’ ditty, people were preparing to sing “At last, at last, the Middle Ages are past!”) John Nider’s
Formicarius,
written between 1435 and 1437 and published in 1473, speaks for the first time in a modern vein about the various practices of witchcraft.
    Innocent VIII wrote about these practices in the papal bull
Summis desiderantes affectibus
of 1484:
     
It has recently reached our ears—to our great distress—that in certain regions of Germany . . . persons of both sexes, heedless of their own well-being and straying from the Catholic faith, have no hesitation in giving themselves carnally to devils incubus and succubus, letting the progeny of women, animals, fruits of the earth, die or perish . . . by means of spells, charms, incantations, and other odious magical practices . . . Seeking, as our office requires of us, by way of appropriate remedies, to prevent the scourge of heretical depravity from spreading its poison to the detriment of innocent people, the aforementioned inquisitors Sprenger and Kramer are permitted to exercise the inquisitorial office in those lands.
     
    And Sprenger and Kramer, inspired also by the
Formicarius,
published their infamous
Malleus maleficarum
(
Hammer of the Witches
) in 1486.
    The records of the inquisition in 1477 against Antonia, of the parish of Saint-Jorioz in the diocese of Geneva, provide one of a thousand examples of how a witch was created:
     
The accused, having abandoned her husband, went with Masset to the place known as “laz Perroy” near the stream . . . where a synagogue of heretics was held, and found there a large number of men and women, who courted, capered, and danced backwards with her. He then showed her a demon, called Robinet, who had the appearance of a Negro, saying: “Here is our master, to whom we must pay homage if you wish to have all you desire.” The defendant asked him what she had to do . . . and the said Masset replied: “Disown God your creator, and the Catholic faith and that adulteress the Virgin Mary and accept this demon called Robinet as your lord and master and do whatever he wishes of you . . .” Having heard these words, the accused began to feel regretful and refused at first to comply. But she eventually disowned God her creator, saying: “I disown God my creator and the Catholic faith and the Holy Cross, and accept you, Demon Robinet, as my lord and master.” And she paid homage to the demon by kissing his foot . . . Then in contempt of God she threw a wooden cross to the ground, trampled it under her left foot, and broke it . . . She was transported on a staff one and a half feet long; to reach the synagogues she had to lubricate it with the ointment contained in a pyx, which was filled with it, and place the staff between her thighs,