They all agreed - married men and all - that this was new in their experience, and almost certainly demonic. The woman was convicted and burnt. This `devil's teat' was, of course, a clitoris. Even physicians believed that no virtuous woman would possess such a thing633 - an interesting application of the theory of predestination.
At Lille in 1661, the pupils of alleged witch Antoinette Bourignon confessed:
The Devil gives them a Mark, which Marks they renew as often as those Persons have any desire to quit him. The devil reproves them the more severely, and obligeth them to new Promises, making them also new Marks for assurance or Pledge, that those Persons should continue faithful to him.'
The twentieth-century's own would-be Inquisitor, the Reverend Summers, expounds without so much as a flicker of irony on this, `the most important point in the identification of a witch ... the very sign and seal of Satan . . .'6' Nevertheless, in his eagerness to prove his case, Summers is nothing if not thorough in providing a wide spread of sources, which possess a quaint horror for those of more balanced minds. He cites Robert Hink, `minister at Aberfoill', in his Secret Commonwealth (1691), who noted:
A spot that I have seen, as a small mole, horny, and browncoloured; throw [sic] which mark, when a large pin was thrust (both in buttock, nose and rooff of mouth), till it bowed and became crooked, the witches both men and women, nather felt a pain nor did bleed, nor knew the precise time when this was doing to them ...
Summers informs us breathlessly that, `This mark was sometimes the complete figure of a toad or a bat; or ... the slot of a hare, the foot of a frog, a spider, a deformed whelp, a mouse' .66 Note the `foot of a frog' - a vague description if ever there was one - or that `deformed whelp', which might be almost any shape or size: indeed, as many people would have borne some kind of birthmark or blemish on their person, who should emerge blameless?
(Summers also argues that heretics had a particularly loathsome smell, as indeed they probably did - terror does generate a markedly acrid sort of sweat. Besides, even a single night in the Inquisition's jails would render the most fragrant somewhat malodorous. However, of course, to Summers Catholic priests often exuded the odour of sanctity, as evidence for which he remarks in utter seriousness `I myself have known a priest of fervent faith who at times diffused the odour of incense' 67 Surely it would be a very odd thing if most priests did not `at times' smell of incense! One may laugh, but this sort of infantilism - nice people smell nice but nasty people smell nasty - smacks too much of Dr Goebbels' anti-Semitic propaganda, lapped up by millions of ordinary intelligent Germans, to be anything other than chilling.)
Summers quotes `that same authority' on the site of such `Witch Marks': `In men it may often be seen under the eyelids, under the lips, under the armpits, on the shoulders, on the fundament; in women, moreover, on the breast or the pudenda. 161 Ah. But remember that wherever these marks were `found' they were located by having a skewer-like bodkin, usually about three inches long, rammed into the near-locality `till it bowed and became crooked'. And this still was not officially classed as torture.
Summers explains that the `Little Teat or Pap' so found on the body of a wizard or witch, and said to secrete milk that nourished the `familiar' - a demon-possessed creature such as a cat or toad - must be carefully distinguished from the insensible devil-mark. This, for some reason, was a phenomenon more or less exclusive to England and New England, in the days when witch hysteria had moved seamlessly from the Inquisition to the dour Protestant Fathers. (Of course Montague Summers dismisses cases of Protestant exorcism as merely the fantasies of poor afflicted country folk, whereas the Catholic version is always a genuine spiritual feat.)
In 1597 Elizabeth Wright of Burton-on-Trent
the old woman they stript, and found behind her right sholder a thing much like the vdder of an ewe that giuth sucke with two teates, like vnto two great wartes, the one behind vnder her arme-hole, the other a hand off towardes the top of her shoulder. Being demanded how long she had those teates, she answered she was borne S0.69
The poor old woman's birthmark or defect effectively signed her death warrant.
If an obvious witch's mark was neither found nor fabricated through the use of the retractable bodkin, there was still no likelihood of the accused escaping. When Bavarian witch-hunter Jorg Abriel failed to find the incriminating mark, he simply announced that the woman looked like a witch and then tortured her until she confessed.70
(The Devil's mark can be seen - and no doubt was by Summers and his like - as the satanic mockery of the stigmata, the marks of Jesus' crucifixion that have been witnessed to appear on the side, head, feet and hands of the Catholic devout, and are often associated with sainthood. For example, the Franciscan Capuchin monk Padre Pio of Pietrelcina [d. 1968, aged eighty-one], who was said to have bled from his miraculously wounded hands every day for fifty years and worked many miracles, was canonized by Pope John Paul II on 16 June 2002. However, the phenomenon of stigmata raises some interesting questions: as it is impossible to crucify a man by hammering nails through his palms, as depicted in most religious works of art - the skin would tear and he would fall to the ground - why do stigmatics usually bleed from their palms?)
However, to the Inquisition, the Devil's marks were proof of the greatest sin of all, visiting the Sabbat where they made a pact with the Devil himself. According to received wisdom about such matters, the individual members of a local coven would slip out at night - perhaps leaving their spouses asleep in the marital bed, all innocent of the enormity of their actions, a broom now lying in their place. One by one the witches sloped off to a remote or hidden place, a clearing deep in a forest or a cave (preferably one originally dedicated to a pagan goddess), where they met, feasted, drank and revelled on occasions that were not even saints' days. According to a contemporary French writer, `Mere clowning and japery are mixed up with circumstances of extremest horror; childishness and folly with loathsome abominations'.' Here, too, they were supposed to encounter the terrifying figure of Satan himself, rearing up from the shadows in the guise of a great horned goat, usually with a giant phallus which was sometimes even admitted to be artificial, a dildo orfascinum. The new witch, no doubt in a pitiful state of fear and excitement, had to affirm his or her dedication to the Devil by kissing his backside, and/or perhaps signing the official pact with their blood. They might then receive the distinguishing satanic mark - although clearly some already had them, having borne them since birth - and the entertainment might then consist of orgiastic coupling before the bedraggled and exhausted coven slunk home and slid once again between the marital sheets. But the evil deed had been done, and their soul was literally no longer their own.
Sometimes, if the Sabbat - and even Summers is careful to state that it was `wholly unconnected with the Jewish festival' '12 although in the eyes of many medieval people it almost certainly was linked, as anti-Semitism was rife - was far away, the witches would ride on broomsticks. Summers admits the illusion of flying was frequently brought on by the use of hallucinogenic ointment, rubbed on the legs before sitting astride the broomstick. The witch may have gone nowhere except in her imagination, but that was good enough for her accusers. In others cases she was said to ride `upon certain beasts along with the pagan goddess Diana',73 which rather says it all.
The satanic pact (of which more later) was always, we are led to believe, a triumph of hope over experience - other witches' experience, that is. For the Devil might hold out any glittering promise, but it was as well to realize he is also `the Father of Lies' and will always fail even his most stalwart devotees - in the end, when it matters most.
In that, however, the Devil was not alone. Many of the accused witches were promised by the Inquisition that if they confessed they would be released with a fine. When they were condemned to the pyre they shrieked that they had been tricked. Once again there was not much to choose between the Church and Satan himself.
It is impossible to know how many of the accused were Luciferan challengers of the status quo or real Satanists: clearly some were merely `wise women' or `cunning men', local herbalists and casters of spells, while others were probably adherents to a form of the old goddess or fertility god religion: indeed, the descriptions of a typical Sabbat, as outlined above, seem to echo the ancients' celebrations of Diana or Pan. Perhaps some of the `Sabbats' were simply the equivalent of the modern swingers' party - merry-making, boozing and wife-swapping - or even more innocently, just a spot of dancing and feasting away from the prying eyes of the clergy, or so they hoped. Life was grim, short and brutish enough in those days, in any case, so why not let off steam deep in the forest at night?
However, common sense dictates that some of the accused were Satanists, were involved in casting spells to harm others, if for no better reason than that such people always exist, everywhere. Spite and superstition together will always produce 'witches', although not necessarily at an organized level. And ironically, as the witch craze deepened and spread, no doubt there was an exponential increase in the number of genuine Devil worshippers.
