Concerning this threefold harmful magic, besides Grillandus, John Nider can be a witness in the last book of the Formicarius:
In the town of Boltigen, in the diocese of Lausanne, a certain man named Stadelein, a great sorcerer, captured by the aforesaid Peter, the judge of the place, confessed that in a certain house, where a husband and wife lived together, by his harmful magic he had killed about seven children successively in the womb of the aforesaid wife, so that she always miscarried, and likewise had killed all the offspring of the animals in the same house for many years, so that none of them gave birth to a living young one in those years.
Afterward, from the same man’s confession, Nider shows what the instrument of the harmful magic was:
He said that he had placed a lizard beneath the threshold of the door of the house, and predicted that, if it were removed, fertility would be restored to those dwelling there. But when that serpent was sought under the threshold and was not found, perhaps because it had been reduced to dust, the dust or earth placed beneath was carried away, and in that same year fertility was restored to the wife and to all the beasts of the house.
Nicholas Remigius shows that sometimes abortion is brought about by breath alone.
On difficult childbirth, and indeed perpetual difficult childbirth, Apuleius writes as follows:
The same woman condemned the wife of her lover, because she had wittily uttered a reproach against her, to perpetual pregnancy. Her womb was closed, the fetus resisted, and she was sentenced to endless pregnancy. As everyone counts, that poor woman is being distended by the burden of eight years, as though she were going to give birth to an elephant.
[margin: Baldwin Ronseus, Medical Hunting, letter 50; Grillandus on milk-drying; Johannes Beetzius, Praeceptorium, first precept, last exposition, chapter 7]
A Greek writer, Pausanias, agrees with the Latin one. In his Boeotian matters these words are found:
The Thebans say that Pharmakides were sent by Juno to be an impediment to Alcmena while giving birth; but while they were restraining Alcmena’s delivery they were deceived by this stratagem of Historis, the daughter of Tiresias. From the place where they could easily hear her, she shouted that Alcmena had already given birth. Deceived by that voice, they immediately went away, and Alcmena at once brought forth the child.
On the third kind, besides Grillandus, one may read Sprenger, who is older than Grillandus:
On certain nocturnal and more sacred occasions, as if by the prompting of the Devil, for the greater offense of the divine majesty, they place themselves in some corner of their house, holding a pitcher between their legs. And while they fasten a knife or some instrument into a wall or column, and put their hands to milking, they invoke their own Devil, who always cooperates with them in all things. They state that they wish to milk from such-and-such a cow of such-and-such a house, the healthier one and the one more abundant in milk. Then suddenly the Devil receives milk from the udders of that cow, brings it to the place where the witch sits, and makes it flow as though from that instrument.
In past years a witch was burned in the city of Trier who confessed that she was accustomed to milk from a wall, through a spigot, the milk which she sold to very many people.
Baldwin Ronseus, in Medical Hunting, letter 50, teaches that leather bags were usually sewn by witches in the likeness of a duck, which people commonly call Lutelaten; that these were used for milking milk from other people’s cows; and that the bags went by themselves empty, or were set by the witches in meadows, and soon returned full to the witch’s house. He confirms this by a true narration of an event, which you have, reader, in book 6, chapter 2, section 1, question 3, related by me in his words.
Other witches deprive herds and whatever flocks they wish of milk by herbs, words, or by touch alone. Biebrana, a witch of Laon, by threats alone so dried up the breasts of a neighboring woman that, until the witch’s death, although she bore many children, she always lacked milk.
I shall close this section with the words of Grillandus:
Certain poison-workings are done to dry up the milk of one flock or of a fertile herd of cows, so that they yield absolutely no cheese, although before they had yielded it in the greatest abundance; and similarly they can bring on abortions of a whole flock or herd. I once saw and had at Rome a case in fact: two witch women, by these harmful magic acts, had caused many fetuses of sheep to perish by abortion and had utterly dried up the mothers.
[margin: Decretals, title On Archers; Malleus, part 2, question 1, chapter 16]
On this harmful magic of turning away milk, and on its remedy, a certain amusing narration exists in the Praeceptorium of the Carmelite Johannes Beetzius, on the first precept, last exposition, chapter 7:
A certain old woman, full of evil days, wishing from envy to impede the milk of her neighbor’s cow, took a little knife and went to the door of the house in which the cow was. Placing herself opposite the brightness of the moon, she said: “Here I cut one shaving into the little milk’s expectation, and another besides; so I take the milk from this cow.” Hearing these words, the owner of the cow seized a staff and, running after her and striking her, said: “Here I strike one blow, and another as I can, and the third besides; so I keep the milk with the cow.” This was the best remedy.
So writes Beetzius, a learned man, who lived nearly one hundred and thirty years ago, among the more illustrious men of the Carmelite order.
I found in the same author, in the same place, a case similar to this harmful magic, about the turning away of grain, narrated in these words:
[margin: Related canon-law references include “Ad abolendam,” “Excommunicamus,” the bull of John XXII, and Leo X in the Lateran Council]
A certain woman went around a measure of grain, saying the verse, “You shall tread upon the asp,” etc. Afterward, coming to her house, she had a pipe in the loft. Taking it in her hand and saying the aforesaid words, all the grain of that measure fell before her through the pipe into the loft, and in this way grain was stolen from the field. She was finally detected by a certain bishop and burned.
Thus he writes, though barbarously, yet in good faith. Who does not recognize the demon as the carrier of this grain? Why, then, do they laugh at the poet’s verse?
And he saw sown crops transferred elsewhere.
Or at the prohibition of the Twelve Tables: “Nor shall one draw away another person’s crop.”