I say first: by these philters no one’s will can be compelled to love the person whom he does not wish to love. But the imagination can indeed be disturbed, the humors stirred up, and the whole body inwardly, as it were, set on fire; so that, while the demon inwardly contends with various enticements of temptations, a person is vexed by a certain sting of lust, and so is drawn vehemently toward the desire of carnal intercourse with someone in general. If at that time the harmful-magical lover approaches, and presses her insistently with the arts by which little women are commonly taken, or if the demon constantly stirs up memory and imagination about that one man, presenting the appearance of circumstances by which he may seem worthy of love, and withdrawing those things that would render him unworthy, it easily happens that the prey falls into the net.
And this is the reason and manner by which the Devil is accustomed to deceive through these things. The common people, however, cannot distinguish between the acts of the will and the movements of concupiscence, that is, the impulses of the lower part. Therefore one ought not believe those who, whoever they are, claim a coercion of the will. For truly, while not willing, they will; and they would wish to abstain, but they will to commit the sin.
This opinion is common among jurists and theologians. It is proved first from the law Eorum, in the Code, On Harmful Magic and Mathematici, where Constantine the Emperor says that such people “are understood to have turned chaste minds toward lust.” He does not say “to have compelled,” but “to have turned.” Therefore, if the Remmian law were in force, Wierus would not escape the branding of his forehead here, since he has most manifestly slandered an imperial sanction.
[margin: a: Anania on the rubric On Sortilege; Ancharanus on chapter Ex tua, On Sortilege, and Abbas on chapter In tabulis under the same title; the same Ancharanus on chapter Accusatus, paragraph Sane, On Heretics, in the Sext; Squilla, century On the Catholic Faith, chapter 2; Turrecremata on chapter Si per sortiarias, 33, question 1. (b) St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, and Paludanus on book 4, distinction 34; Sprenger, Malleus, part 1, question 7; Castro, book 1, On the Just Punishment of Heretics, chapter 15; Michael Medina, book 2, On Right Faith in God; Angelus, Sylvester, Rosella, Fumus, Cajetan, Graffius, other summists, and Binsfeld]
Second, it is proved by reason, because there are many drugs that have a natural power to disturb the humors, irritate the semen, and heat the whole body. And if no such things were found, the demon could use whatever things he wished as agreed signs, and then, according to the pact, by himself introduce disturbance, flatulence, itching, and heat into the body, and at the same time set before the imagination an importunate suggestion of a certain person as though she were very worthy to be loved; and in this way he could bend him toward love of this person, but only if he is willing. For over the will, because of the freedom of human choice, no jurisdiction and no coercion belongs to the demon, all of which we proved in the preceding book, question 24.
Third, it is proved by examples: that of Mark Antony the triumvir in Plutarch, and of another man about whom Cleodemus speaks in Lucian; of Marcus the heretic and magician in St. Irenaeus; of the girl brought to St. Hilarion in St. Jerome; of King Josaphat and Theudas the magician in Damascene, in the Life of Barlaam; of Justina and Cyprian the magician in Nazianzen and Nicephorus, concerning whom consult Pamelius in the Life of St. Cyprian; also of a certain heretic in St. Epiphanius. When, a little before the narration of that example, Epiphanius had said that little women were compelled by a magician, that must be understood of vehement persuasion and strong inclination, not of an absolutely necessary coercion. It is proved also by the history of Basil the Pseudo-monk and the young nun, which St. Gregory the Great treated, and also by the crime of Seth, about which Nicetas writes. Read those accounts carefully, and you will find that an inclination was introduced, but that the necessity of obeying was absent.
Fourth, it is proved by the authority of the holy Fathers. To omit Epiphanius, Irenaeus, and the two Gregories already cited, it is proved by the authority of St. Jerome, when he teaches that certain demons serve loves and love-songs; and elsewhere he contends that harmful magics have power so that we love what we ought to hate, and detest what it would have been proper for us to love. Cassian also says: “The Prophet commemorates some spirits as inflamers of lusts and luxury: ‘The spirit of fornication,’ he says, ‘has deceived them, and they have fornicated away from their God.’” I do not ask whether he correctly explains the saying of Hosea; but I plainly bring forward what he himself thought.
Finally, it is proved from sacred passages that there are some harmful magics of this kind. Nahum 3:4 says, “Because of the multitude of the fornications of the beautiful and gracious harlot, and of one possessing harmful magics.” Our Fr. Ribera has interpreted this rightly of these things. In Baruch, in the Epistle of Jeremiah, unless I am mistaken, there is mention of love-producing harmful magic by burning. These are the words:
[margin: Unkeyed continuation: On the cited law Eorum, question 1; Angelus and, as far as I know, all the others; and among physicians, Johannes Bokelius in an entire little book On Philters. (a) Plutarch, in the life of Mark Antony; Lucian, in Philopseudes; also book 1, chapter 9; St. Jerome, in the Life of St. Hilarion; Gregory Nazianzen, oration 29, in praise of Cyprian; Nicephorus, book 5, chapter 27; Epiphanius, book 1, tome 2, against the Ebionite heresy; St. Gregory, book 2 of the Dialogues, chapter 4; Nicetas, book 4 of the history. (b) Book 3, on the Epistle to the Ephesians, chapter 6]
The women, girded about, sit in the roads, burning the
pityra; and whenever one of them, drawn away by some passerby, lies with him, she reproaches her neighbor because she was not deemed worthy as she was, nor was her cord broken.
The Vulgate renders it thus:
Women, wrapped around with cords, sit in the streets, burning olive stones; and when any one of them, drawn away by some passerby, has lain with him, she reproaches her neighbor because she was not considered worthy as she was, nor was her cord broken.
This notable passage is still besieged by dense darkness, because of ignorance of antiquity. One part of it, the part about the little cords, Herodotus explains to us very clearly in book 1, as the Latin translation has it; I lack the Greek copy at present. He writes in these words:
[margin: a: On Nahum, chapter 3. (b) Cassian, Collation 7, chapter 32; Hosea 4:12. (c) Baruch 6:42]
Among these same Babylonians there is one law, execrable in every way. All native women alike must once in life sit at the temple of Venus and have intercourse with foreign men. But since many are swollen with riches and refuse to offer themselves, they are carried in covered carriages and stand before the temple, with a great crowd of attendants meanwhile left behind them. Many more also do it in this way: they sit at the temple of Venus with knots and garlands binding their temples, and while some go away, others return. For little paths, marked off everywhere with cords, provide foreigners access to those women, so that each may choose whichever one he pleases. Moreover, when they have once sat down there, they do not return home before one of the strangers has thrown money into the woman’s lap and, after leading her away from the shrine, has had intercourse with her. The stranger who offers the money must say, “I implore the goddess Mylitta for you at this price.” For the Assyrians call Venus Mylitta. But that money, however small it may be, it is not lawful to reject, since it is turned to sacred use. Nor is the woman permitted to refuse any stranger; whoever he is, the first one who has thrown money, she follows him without choice. Finally, when the woman has now lain with a foreigner and discharged her obligation to the goddess, she returns home. And those who are more elegant in form are, as is natural, released sooner; but those who are ugly are compelled to sit a long time before the temple before they satisfy the law. Sometimes it happens that the poor creatures must wait one or two years, or even three years and longer. Somewhere, namely in Cyprus, there is a certain similar law.
Thus far Herodotus. From his narrative you may easily understand with what cords they are said to be wrapped around, and which cord was broken: namely, the one that made a pathway to that woman. For when leaving, either the stranger or the woman herself would break this cord. But this too is understood: in the last place, when she objects that the cord has not been broken, ugliness is being reproached, because none of mortals deems those women worthy of his bed.
Therefore I retract what I once dictated publicly at Louvain on this matter, when I referred it to love-knots and love-bonds, about which the ancient poets treated. Virgil says in Eclogue 8:
First I wrap these three threads around you, each different with triple color, And three times I lead this image around these altars.
That is, the likeness of the beloved. They bound it with conceived words, as in the same poet:
Bind, Amaryllis, three colors in three knots; Bind them now, Amaryllis, and say: “I bind the bonds of Venus.”
Valerius, in the Ciris, adds another act, spitting into the bosom:
Three times she binds nine threads, marked with triple color; “Spit three times, maiden, into your bosom with me,” she says; “Spit three times, maiden: the god rejoices in an odd number.”
Nemesianus says in Eclogue 4:
This same Anycale brought around us The many-colored threads and a thousand unknown arts.
These threads were, for the most part, woolen, and were twisted on a rhombus, or unwound from a wheel or ball. Propertius says in book 3:
That wicked woman did not overcome me by her morals, but by herbs; He is drawn by thread from the wheel of a rhombus. The portentous toad swollen with poison draws him, And bones gathered from cut serpents; And the feather of a screech-owl found among tombs, And a woolen band tied around a man doomed to death.
That is, the woolen band of a hanged man; this too is magical. And in book 2:
The rhombi, turned beneath a magical song, fail.
On the triple spitting Tibullus says, Elegy 2:
She composed songs for me by which you might be deceived. Sing three times; spit three times when the charms have been spoken.
But to the matter: the magical mystery which Jeremiah mentions, and from which he deters the people of God, is the burning of the pityra. The matter is not entirely certain concerning the meaning of this word; for the others translate it “bran,” but our translator renders it “olive stones.” Which of these has been translated better and more faithfully could be more certainly defined if that Hebrew epistle were extant; now the decision depends on the meaning of the Greek word.
[margin: a: Book 2 of the Deipnosophists]
I think this word does not have one meaning only. Hesychius explains pityra as the husks of wheat or barley. And indeed most people think that bran of this sort, from wheat or barley, or little skins separated by grinding, as Dioscorides and Theophrastus also use the word, were commonly burned in love-producing poisoning. They rely on the passage of Theocritus, Idyll 2, “Now I shall burn the pityra,” where the scholiast explains “burn” as “I shall burn up, consume by fire.” I would scarcely believe that bran was commonly burned, since it is not very suitable for this; but meal in the mill certainly was, about which Theocritus had already spoken a little before, and did not need to repeat. Therefore I prefer to explain pityra there as our translator does here. For I am more inclined to think that the poet there and the prophet here spoke of the same kind of harmful magic, since in the same Idyll Theocritus confesses that the Greeks learned those love-producing harmful magics from the Babylonians.
Therefore, just as the ancients burned laurel and bitumen, and statues made from clay or wax - concerning laurel Virgil says:
Wicked Daphnis burns me; I burn this laurel against Daphnis.
Horace, unless I am mistaken, mentions bitumen, but the passage does not occur to me; concerning clay and waxen statues:
[margin: a: Psalm 53:9. (b) Genesis 49:13]
As this clay hardens, and as this wax melts In one and the same fire, so may Daphnis melt with love for me.
So also I think they were accustomed to burn the stones of olives, that is, small olives, harder than the rest and almost bony. This is another, less known meaning of the Greek word, found in Athenaeus from Callimachus and Philemon, for a certain small, cheaper, bran-colored kind of olives which they called pityra. Hence also the dregs and pressings of olives seem to have been called epityra by Hesychius, when he writes of the pressings of olives. There perhaps epityra should be read, and in a word that is, as I think, foreign, one should not seek the usual composition of the Greeks. Athenaeus and Varro, book 6 On the Latin Language, know epityrum as an edible thing. In Plautus, “If, hungry as I am, I eat one epityrum at his house, it is well enough.” Epityrum is the name of a food, used more frequently in Sicily than in Italy; so says Varro. The passage of Plautus is in The Braggart Soldier. It was made from a crushed olive paste; Cato and Columella also mention it in the book on agriculture, indicating the method of preparing it, and the Greek cities of Magna Graecia were accustomed to prepare it. Perhaps the common people also contracted the word epipityra in this way, saying epityra.
But when our translator renders it “olive stones,” it is certain that the Hebrews call “bones” those things that are stronger and harder in any given thing, as the bones of the besiegers. It is also a known point that this small olive offers more stone than edible flesh. It is also established that, in Hebrew expression, a fixed genitive has the force of a movable nominative; and therefore “bones of olives” can be understood as “bony olives,” just as in the Mosaic writings “a donkey of bones” is put for a bony donkey. Therefore I suspect that in this place Jeremiah wrote atsmoth zethim, which literally signifies “bones of olives,” and that the Greek translators, knowing the meaning I have given, rendered it pityra.
Is it not very likely that Babylonian women, who were most addicted to magical trifles, lest they be compelled to keep watch there for a long time, did not abstain from sortileges of this kind, especially those whom neither wealth, nor beauty, nor birth recommended? Therefore those tasteless and two-obol women sought some enticement from wherever they could, and they were using cheaper Pityrid olives in the flames. And how mad a flame they were feeding within themselves, they testified far more aptly and expressly by burning stones than by burning bran. For at the same time they were complaining in this way about the hardness and rigidity of the strangers and arrivals, whom no compassion for them touched. Therefore they burned not only the flesh of olives, or the skin, since in these olives there is skin rather than flesh, but solid olives with bony kernels, clearly so that by this compact the hardness hostile to them might be softened, and iron hearts might be melted by love. If you translate “bran,” that elegant analogy of the magical mystery perishes.
It is likely that, when they burned these things, they added what I find in the solemn rite: that in this way they were burning the bones of the strangers, or that in their own stranger they were burning these things; or that they prayed that in this way the strangers might be scorched with love of them. Virgil and Theocritus set down all of these things. Finally, when they had been burned in this way and reduced to ashes, she would scatter them in the wind, thrown behind her head. Theocritus says:
The meal first melts in the fire; but sprinkle it.
Virgil says:
First the meal melts in the fire; but scatter it. Carry the ashes out, Amaryllis, and cast them Into the flowing stream, over your head.
[margin: a: Aristotle, History of Animals, book 6, chapter 18; Pliny, book 8, chapter 42; Columella, book 6; Virgil, in the Georgics]
But this is enough, or even too much, about the explanation of the passage of Baruch. If it is approved, that will be well; if not, I await better explanations. From here it is clear that Burchard must be understood either according to this first conclusion of ours, or that an error underlies his opinion, book 19, chapter On Magical Art, final chapter.
Let the second conclusion of the question be this: these philters are, for the most part, very harmful both to mind and to body. Note that those which are not given to be taken internally are less harmful, because if they are made by bare incantations, they usually harm the mind alone; if by bindings or external contact, they are also accustomed to harm the body, if they have bad poisons mixed into them, which is not frequent in these cases. But if they are given in drink and food, they are usually very strongly harmful to health, and cast the mind down from its state; because their ingredients are commonly very dangerous: menstrual discharges, semen, as is clear from old penitential books, the brain of a cat or of a young ass, the uterus of a hyena, the genital of a wolf, a remora, the bones of a toad, a stincus, and above all, what they call hippomanes.
This hippomanes is threefold, lest anyone be deceived. One kind, mention of which occurs in Theocritus in the Pharmaceutria, is handed down as a certain little plant of Arcadia. Another is what Tibullus sings:
A fluid drips from the groin of the lustful mare.
And Propertius:
[margin: a: Josephus, book 11 of the Antiquities; Suetonius, in Caligula; Juvenal, satire 6. (b) Eusebius, in the Chronicle; Plutarch, in Lucullus; Aristotle, in the Magna Moralia; St. Gregory, cited chapter 4; Jerome, in the Life of St. Hilarion; Sprenger, part 1, question 7; Cuspinianus, on Ludwig the Bavarian; Antonius Panormita, book 4, On the Deeds of Alfonso; Peter Le Loyer, book 1 On Spectres, chapter 5]
The pregnant mare gathers
hippomanesfrom herself.
Such as a sow has as her own; the third is the little membrane that is torn from the forehead of a newly born foal, whose odor drives mares into madness. Aristotle, Pliny, Columella, Virgil, and others speak of it. How harmful this is the end of Caligula teaches, who died after Caesonia had offered this to him to drink, as Josephus, Suetonius, and Juvenal narrate. Juvenal had regard to this:
As that uncle of Nero, Into whose trembling forehead Caesonia poured The whole forehead of a foal.
And soon afterward:
[margin: a: Demosthenes, against Aristogiton. (b) Aristotle, Magna Moralia, book 1, chapter 17. (c) The cited paragraph Qui abortionis. (d) Menochius, On the Arbitrary Judgments of Judges, case 358; Binsfeld, on the cited law and question 3; references to the Digest, To the Cornelian Law on Assassins and Poisoners; the received opinion attributed to Julius Paulus. The remaining abbreviations are cramped in the scan and are preserved only to this extent]
A foal is worth as much as a single poison-woman costs.
On all philters, however, Ovid speaks most prudently:
Let not pale philters, given to girls, avail; Philters harm minds, and have the force of madness.
Eusebius testifies that by these the poet Lucretius was first driven mad, and then, unable to endure the madness, killed himself. Plutarch has handed down about Lucullus that by these he was first driven into madness and soon afterward even killed. Aristotle narrates similar things about a certain man. “That virgin, enchanted by Basil,” as St. Gregory says, “began to grow feverish and to be violently distressed, and with loud cries to shout with a shriek: ‘I am about to die now, unless Basil the monk comes and himself restores the zeal of health to me by his care.’” Behold the words of a mind captured and a body languishing.
[margin: a: Law Nemo haruspicem, and the Doctors there, Code, On Harmful Magic and Mathematici; so also understand Menochius, On the Arbitrary Judgments of Judges, case 388, number 5. (b) Argument from law 3, paragraph Ex senatusconsulto, Digest, To the Cornelian Law on Assassins and Poisoners; Bartolus and Menochius there, case 358, number 7]
But the woman about whom St. Jerome writes, “after her lover, instructed in magical arts by the priests of Aesculapius, returned and buried under the threshold of the girl’s house certain torments of words and portentous figures carved on Cyprian bronze: and at once the virgin began to go mad with love, and, throwing away the covering of her head, to whirl her hair, gnash her teeth, and cry out the name of the young man: indeed the greatness of the love had turned into madness.” I read in Sprenger of three abbots successively killed by the same sorceress with love-poison. Concerning Frederick, Duke of Austria and king-elect of the Romans, whom Ludwig the Bavarian defeated, Cuspinianus is the authority. Concerning a certain Neapolitan knight named Stephen, Antoninus Panormita is the authority. Concerning a girl into whose bosom her lover had thrown an inscribed little membrane, Peter Le Loyer sets before us both the narration and the judgment. Therefore, since philters are commonly so harmful, the Athenians deservedly punished Theoris the witch with death; and the Areopagites were too lax when they pardoned another woman after the man who had received it had died.
Most prudent are the civil laws, by which the following punishments have almost been received. I shall treat them more fully as to practice in book 5, section 16; now briefly. If one who provides some amatory thing did not employ magical superstition, and death did not follow, he was formerly punished with the penalty of relegation and condemnation to the mines; today he is punished extraordinarily at the judge’s discretion. But if death has followed, which Hippolytus de Marsiliis, that distinguished writer on criminal trials, has handed down to follow in most cases, then, if he provided the philter for an evil end, for instance as a cause of abortion or of illicit love, whether magical arts were then employed or not, he is considered guilty of death by the common opinion of the interpreters of law, from the argument of the paragraph Qui abortionis, which Julius Paulus handed down as received also by the opinion of the ancients. Nor should this have seemed harsh to Antonio Guibert; for a mind so evil, striving for a most wicked end through the greatest danger and the worst example, is plainly worthy of punishment.
But if he did not give it for an evil end, but for a good one, for example to drive away a woman’s sterility, or to reconcile the mind of a husband undeservedly alienated from her, then, if magical art has entered in, the audacity must still be punished with capital punishment. For it is a capital offense to use these arts. But if he did not employ anything magical, but used natural things which he thought would not harm, he must be punished more mildly, extraordinarily, and short of death. These things are true if suspicion of heresy is absent. When that is added, what must be said will be seen in the same section 16.
Divine vengeance sometimes anticipates human punishment. Siffridus the priest, in his chronicle, narrates that in the year 1260 it happened that a certain young man in Meissen, so that he might possess the loves he desired, was led by a magician into a remote deserted place. When, through the incantations of the malefic, a specter presented itself to him in the image of the girl whom he loved, that ruined lover, reaching out his hand to it, was dashed against the walls by the evil demon and killed in a miserable manner. The demon also hurled his corpse with such force against the magician that he lay half-dead for a long time.
[margin: Unkeyed marginal note: In the Conjugal Admonitions]
Go now, and entrust your mind to flames covered with this deceitful cloak of magical powder. Should not Phocylides rather be heard, who sang that love-incantations and philters are to be avoided altogether? This is true even with regard to spouses, because even if they did procure love, which never or rarely happens, they nevertheless always, at the least, render the person weak, stunned, and out of his mind, just as happens to fish - Plutarch’s comparison is sharp and apt - which are caught not with nets or hooks, but with drugs.