WRIGHT'S NARRATIVES OP SORCERY AND MAGIC. * THE rationale of magic,
when a combination of skill and fraud im- posed upon the vulgar, is easily settled. The priests of the an- cient mythology, the adepts of the middle ages, turned their know- ledge of chemistry and mechanics and their proficiency in leger- demain to account; and before we denounce the latter as impostors,. we should bear in mind the ignorance of the times in which they lived. People would not have believed any natural explanation, though they might have felt inclined to persecute the man when stripped of his magical character : we should also consider how far the general belief might influence even the man himself; how far he could in his inmost mind draw the distinction between what we call natural philosophy and what the age considered magic—a lawful if a riskful power over nature and spirits by means of oc- cult knowledge. An allowance is further to be made for the stories as they have come down to us ; a distinction is to be drawn be- tween the actual facts and the fancy of the narrator, between the reality and the romance of magic.
Sorcery and witchcraft (to which, notwithstanding its title, Mr. Wright's book chiefly relates) was a more vulgar pursuit, and is a
• Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, from the most Authentic Sources. By Thomas Wright, Esq., M.A., F.S.A., Ste. am In two volumes. Published by Bentley. more difficult matter to determine. The true magician was a mas- ter over both the seen and the unseen world. His art could cam- ped spirits or &mons to obey him, however much against their will ; it seems a question whether a spell of sufficient potency could not control Satan himself. The witch or wizard was a vulgar being, a mere slave of the Evil One, with no original power, very limited in derived power, and, it would appear, with no means of acting directly except upon the elements. The facts relating to witchcraft, being often matter of legal record, are more numerous and more correctly narrated than those relating to magic. The difficulty of fixing the exact boundary between truth and false- hood, guilt and innocence, in the case of witchcraft, is not so easily settled as the sciolist in liberal philosophy imagines. Of course we all know that men and women could not travel through the air on broomsticks, or cause storms, or afflict cattle. Their innocence of the intention is not always so certain : their power over a nervous or weakly person, especially in bad health, might really, through the influence of imagination, produce the death threatened, and the miserable patient might pine away as his real or supposed waxen image slowly melted before the fire. At a time -when the belief in witchcraft was entertained by society in general, as well as by the majority of educated men, it is not likely that the persons who were generally accused of it were sceptical on the subject. Their innocence would lie, not in their disbelief of its power, but in their rejection of the practice. That an accusation of witchcraft was sometimes made from political, religious, or personal motives, is true; and numbers of innocent victims were sacrificed in times of public mania on the subject. The question is, whether many did not attempt unlawful arts in full belief of their efficacy ; and 'whether some, a compound of the self-dupe and the impostor, did not make use of their reputed power to indulge in the grossest licence and to perpetrate abominable crimes. The great difficulty, however, is the confessions. In many cases, no doubt, the victims, worn down by terror and torture, said what- ever their examiners seemed to wish them to say; in other cases, their statements were exaggerated by the reporters. Yet enough remains, after every deduction to render witches' confessions a very curious mental problem. Was it vision, or monomania, or nervous delusion' all influenced by foregone conclusion ? or was it, as the mesmerists seem to hold, an instance of clairvoyance in a high degree? The case of Gaufridi is of this puzzling nature. Gaufridi was a French priest of licentious character, who seduced numerous women by the opportunities which his priestly influence gave him, or by some pretended supernatural arts. His crimes were discovered through the confession of one of his vietim.s, a nun whom he had abused before profession. After a time' she appeared to be possessed ; and, under treatment by a celebrated exorcist, (an inferior hand having failed,) she, or the d*mon in possession, among other things accused Gaufridi. Her revelations may be re- solved into an imposture instigated by revenge, or a pious fraud caused by remorse, or hysterical fits with utterance shaped by me- mory; but what can be said of Gaufridi's, made with a full know- ledge of consequences ? "The priests who conducted this affair seem almost to have lost sight of Louis Gaufridi, in their anxiety to collect these important evidences of the true faith. It was not till towards the close of winter that the reputed wizard was again thought of. A warrant was then obtained against him, and he was taken into custody and confined in the prison of the conciergerie at Marseilles. On the 5th of March he was for the first tune confronted with sister Magdalen, but without producin,, the result anticipated b his persecutors. Little information is given as% the subsequent proceedings against him - but he appears to have been treated with great severity, and to a.ve persevered in asserting his innocence. Sister Magdalen or rather the dremon within her, gave information of certain marks on his body which had been placed there by the Evil One ; and on search they were found ex- actly as described. It is not to be wondered at, if, after the intercourse which had existed between them, sister Magdalen were able to give such in- formation. Still Gaufridi continued unshaken and he made no confession; until at length, on Easter Eve, the 26th of March 1611, a full avowal of his guilt was drawn from him, we are not told through what means, by two Capuchins of the Convent of Aix, to which place he had been transferred for his trial. At the beginning of April another witness the Demoiselle Vic- toke de Conrbier, came forward to depose that she had been bewitched by the renegade priest, who had obtained her love by his charms ; and he made no objection to their adding this new incident to 'his confession. "Gaufridi acknowledged the truth of all that had been said by sister Magdalen or by her demon. Ile said that an uncle, who had died many years ago, had left him his books, and that one day, about five or six years before his arrest on this accusation, he was looking them over, when he found amongst them a volume of magic, in which were some writings in French verse, accompanied with strange characters. His curiosity was-ex- cited, and he began to read it; when, to his great astonishment and conster- nation, the demon appeared in a human form and said to him, What do you desire of me for it is you who have called me ? ' Gaufridi was young and easily tempted; and when he had recovered from his surprise, and was reassured by the manner and conversation of his visiter, he replied to his offer, 'If you have power to give me what I desire, I Isk for two things : first, that I shall prevail with all the women I like ; secondly, that I shall be esteemed and honoured above all the priests of this country, and enjoy the respect of men of wealth and honour.' We may see perhaps through these wishes the reason why Gaufridi was persecuted by the rest of the eleagy. The demon promised to grant him his desires, on condition that he would give up to him entirely his 'body, soul, and works' • to which Gau- fridi agreed, excepting only from the latter the administration of the holy sacrament, to which he was bound by his vocation as a priest of the church. -"From this time Louis Gaufridi felt an extreme pleasure in reading the magical book, and it always had the effect of bringing the demon to attend upon him. At the end of two or three days the agreement was arranged and completed, and, it having been fairly written on parchment, the priest signed it with his blood. The tempter then told him, that whenever he breathed on maid or woman, provided his breath reached their nostrils, they would immediately become desperately in love with him. He soon made a trig of the demon's gift, and used it so copiously that he became is a short time a general objw.t of attraction to the women of the district. He *id that he often amused himself with exciting their passions when he had no intention of requiting them, and be declared that he had already made more than a thousand victims. " At length he took an extraordinary fancy to the young Magdalen -de Is Made; but he found her difficult of approach on account of the watchful- ness of her mother, and he only overcame the difficulty by breathing on the mother before he seduced the daughter. He thus gained his purpose ; took the girl to the cave in the manner she had already described, and became so much attached to her that he often repeated his charm on her to make her more devoted in her love. Three days after their first visit to the cave, he gave her a familiar named Esmodes. Finding her now perfectly devoted to his will, he determined to marry her to Belzebub, the prince of the demons; and she readily agreed to his proposal. He immediately called the demon prince, who appeared in the form of a handsome gentleman; and she then renounced her baptism and Christianity, signed the agreement with her
blood, and received the demon's mark. • • • "The priest gave an account of the Sabbaths, at which he was a regular attendant. When he was ready to go—it was usually at night—he either went to the open window of his chamber, or left the chamber, locking the '
door and proceeded into the open air. There Lucifer made his appearance, and took him in an instant to their place of meeting, where the orgies of the witches and sorcerers lasted usually from three to four hours. Gaufridi di- vided the victims of the Evil One into three classes ; the masques, (perhaps the novices,) the sorcerers, and the magicians. On arriving at the meeting, they all worshiped the demon according to their several ranks ; the masques falling fiat on their faces, the sorcerers kneeling with their heads and bodies humbly bowed down, and the magicians, who stood highest in importance, only kneeling. After this they all went through the formality of denying God and the Saints : then they had a diabolical service in burlesque of that of the church, at which the Evil One served as priest in a violet chasuble; the elevation of the demon host was announced by a wooden bell, and the sacrament itself was made of unleaven bread. The scenes which followed resembled those of other witch-meetings. Gaufridi acknowledged that he took Magdalen thither, and that he made her swallow magical characters' that were to increase her love to him; yet he proved unfaithful to her at these Sabbaths with a multitude of persons, and among the rest with a princess of Friesland.' The unhappy sorcerer confessed, among other things, that his demon was his constant companion, though generally invisible to all but himself; and that he only left him when he entered the church of the Capuchins to perform his religious duties, and then he waited for him outside the church-door.
"Gaufridi was tried before the Court of Parliament of Provence at Aix. His confession, the declaration of the demons, the marks on his body, and other circumstances, left him no hope of mercy : judgment was given against him on the last day of April, and the same day it was put in execution. He was burnt alive."
Very judicious passing reflections are scattered throughout Mr. Wright's book ; which will help the reader to a sound judgment on the particular case, but he will hardly be guided to a large philo- sophical conclusion. Narratives of Sorcery and Magic is a skilful and popular selection of stories or narratives relating to the sub- ject, not a philosophic treatise. After a general introduction, the writer proceeds to give an account of the most remarkable eases of magic, sorcery, or witchcraft, beginning with the accusation against Dame Kyteler in Ireland, circa 1324, down to the trial and execution of Colley the sweep, for the murder of Huth Os- borne, an alleged witch, about a century ago. In the earlier nar- ratives an approach is made to magic proper,—as in the notices of Friar nar- ratives, Doctor Faustus, &c. ; but the reader is soon carried
from these apocryphal tales, in which a traditionary imagination overpowers the reality, to narratives of witchcraft or vulgar sor- cery, in which, if some ulterior object beyond the punishment of the black art is aimed at by the prosecution, some wicked or fraudulent end is often mixed up with the occult practices. In accomplishing his task, Mr. Wright exhibits a wide extent of reading, and considerable skill in abridging or reproducing it. We are carried to France, Germany, England, Ireland, Scotland, Spain, and America, by turns. We have the most remarkable trials for witchcraft in these countries, as well as cases in which superna- tural agency was only an incidental part,—as that of the Earl and. Countess of Somerset, for the murder of Overbury. To those who have read much upon the subject, many of the trials will have little novelty ; their striking character rendering them well known. The work, however, will be found very interesting and complete, especially for the general reader.
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