Le diable au sabbat: Litterature demonologique et sorcellerie (1440-1460), by Martine Osterero

Abstract

The early history of Western European witchcraft has been transformed over the last twenty years or so by the publications of the group of historians gathered around Agostino Paravicini Bagliani at the University of Lausanne. This achievement naturally reflects the key role of the Western Alps in the creation of the witchcraft paradigm, as the region saw the pastoral work of the friars and others interact with widespread popular beliefs and practices. Through a series of excellent monographs and articles, coupled with publications of key texts, the group has been able to cast a remarkably revealing light on previously obscure processes. One of the surprises has been to see the speed with which virtually all the classic features of witchcraft trials made their appearance, alongside more theoretical debates that would continue at least into the eighteenth century. Martine Osterero has already made several important contributions to these studies; this impressive volume is her doctoral thesis, which has a close focus on a key period in the mid-fifteenth century. At this time clerical intellectuals, in particular, started to engage with the evidence from the first waves of trials, with their alarming picture of a widespread Satanic conspiracy. These men brought their formidable logical skills to bear on the resulting problems; on the one hand they clearly felt a need to resolve various difficulties for their own Christian world-view, on the other they were faced by widespread scepticism among the ruling classes about the real powers and activities of witches. Ostorero builds her thesis around a detailed analysis of three treatises written between approximately 1450 and 1462. Two of the authors were Dominicans. Jean Vinet may have been an inquisitor at Carcassonne, but is not known to have tried any witches; his Tractatus contra demonum invocatores provided a wide-ranging account of relations between men and demons, including various forms of magic and divination, with a strongly Thomist slant. Nicolas Jacquier was a much more active inquisitor, in the Burgundian lands and the Lyonnais, and his Flagellum hereticorum fascinariorum reflected this in its much narrower focus on the witchcraft conspiracy, the sabbat, and maleficium, with an insistence on the urgent need for harsher repression. The third author, Pierre Marmoris, was a theology professor at Poitiers, who wrote his Flagellum maleficorum at the request of the Bishop of Saintes, seeking to determine the respective parts of reality and demonic illusion in witchcraft. It is interesting that Marmoris possessed a considerably wider intellectual culture than the two friars, so that his work considers more possibilities and displays more hesitations than appear in their writings. When this discussion is coupled with the earlier texts already published and discussed by members of the Lausanne group, it becomes much clearer that the Malleus Maleficarum was more the continuation of an existing literature than the ground-breaking work it was once thought to be.