[margin: Olaus Magnus, book 3, chapter 17; Covarruvias, book 2 of Various Resolutions, chapter 20; William of Tyre, Sacred War, book 20, chapter 31; Jacques de Vitry, Oriental History, chapter 14]
There are, above all, sorcerers of this class whom a canon calls archers or ballistarii. Pope Innocent III calls their art deadly and hateful, and forbids it under the penalty of anathema to be practiced against Catholics and Christians. I fear that the ordinary interpreters of law have not coined for us a sufficiently probable interpretation of this pontifical sanction, for they take it to refer to those who attack Christians in an unjust war with bows and arrows.
But what is peculiar here in those using bow and arrows? Is it that they act from a distance and, as it were, by ambush? As though it were to be distinguished in an enemy whether he kills by deceit or by courage. As though a robber sins less if he kills from nearby with a dagger than if he kills from afar with a gun. What then? It has long seemed to me that by this canon a certain singular kind of sorcerer is struck: those called archers or ballistarii, whom Sprenger accurately describes. They enter into a treaty with the demon. By pact they assign to him dominion over soul and body; he in turn promises to arrange for the future that they will pierce with unerring aim whomever they wish, however far away.
These are the solemn or ritual acts. They render homage to the demon. Then, on the Friday of the next Holy Week, during the time of Mass, they choose for themselves some sacred image of the crucified one, at which they aim their missiles as at a target; or, as Peter Binsfeld testifies, they fire lead bullets by shooting a gun behind their back. It is not clear whether they add any words then to this apostasy of work. Afterward, when a fixed number of missiles has been shot at the image of the crucified one, they believe that on one day they can kill the same number of people, whomever they choose, wherever they may be, even remote and enclosed. For the demon promises that he will carry the missiles there and fasten them in the enemy’s body. Yet this is under this law: if the sorcerer has at some time seen the person to be killed, and then again with a new actual consent, as they call it, wishes him to be killed.
Finally the demon promises that he will give them such skill in shooting with crossbow or firearm that they will be able to knock down a denarius placed on someone’s head without injury to the head. Sprenger adds two examples of such criminals. One was a certain Puncler, whom peasants at last killed, obstinate as he was, with digging tools. The second was another man who was discovered in the crime and paid the penalties by public execution, because by a miracle he could not move his foot from the place where he had pierced a crucifix, from which, when the matter was uncovered, blood was gushing out.
[margin: Cardano, De varietate rerum, book 15, chapter 80; Grillandus, question 5; Accursius, Salicetus, and Angelus on the law “Multi,” Code, On Malefici; Damhouder, Criminal Practice; the German inquisitors in the Malleus, part 2, question 1, chapter 12; Alfonso de Castro, On the Just Punishment of Heretics, book 1, chapter 15; Binsfeld, On the Confessions of Witches, and others; final abbreviated item preserved conservatively as printed, epi. Hippolyteles]
I think the canon mentioned should be taken of this kind of person. Nor is it an objection that magical sorcerers are excommunicated by other canons also. For since the most execrable sacrilege especially enters into the harmful magic of these men, and since it is more harmful than all the rest, it rightly seemed worthy to impose a special penalty on those who would give this service to unbelievers against the faithful.
Olaus Magnus mentions another kind of archer: namely, that the Lapps and Finns make magical darts of lead, the length of a finger, and send them through whatever distant places into those on whom they desire vengeance. The victims, when a cancer has arisen in the leg or arm, die within three days from violent pain.
As I have now explained the canon concerning archers, so, unless I am mistaken, Covarruvias excellently explained another canon of Innocent IV, in the title On Homicide in the sixth book, against the common opinion. Theologians and canonists, because of ignorance of histories, were extending it to all murderers who had arranged for someone to be killed by hired men. In reality, as Covarruvias taught from Volaterranus and Paulus Aemilius, mention is made only of a certain kind of human beings and a people, to whom the name Assassins belonged. Of these, eyewitnesses wrote best: William, bishop of Tyre, in whose jurisdiction they lived, and Jacob of Vitry, cardinal and bishop of Acre. Moschus, the shepherd of the flock at Armentieres, a learned and upright man, rescued this writer from the moths and caused him to be published for the public good.
Not very different from the archers is the kind of sorcerers who fashion certain images. They either prick these with needles, melt them by fire, or break them, and in this way bring certain death by wasting disease or by another kind of death upon those whom such images designated.
[margin: Paul Aemilius and Gaguinus, book 7; Horace, Satires, book 1, satire 8]
Jerome Cardano, blind leader of the blind Wierus, denies this whole matter. He attacks Hector Boethius, Francis Pico, the inquisitors of Germany, and St. Augustine himself, not with arguments but with pure abuse, as a man of little piety. But you may more easily despise the barking dog than restrain him. Jurists and theologians recognized images of this kind, and the ancient poets confirm them, whose fables always drew their origin from some truth. Therefore Buchanan is wrong, when in book 6 of the History of Scotland he denies that this kind is found among the ancients.
It is confirmed not by one historian of the Scots only. They bring forward Hector Boethius as a witness, narrating marvelous things about King Duff, but also many others, by whose examples that Scottish narration is supported. To reject all these as liars is Cardanian and Wierian, that is, rash and full of shamelessness. I do not deny that from this arose that story about Meleager’s death and the fatal brand of Althaea. But without fable, clearly and with the veil lifted, Ovid sings of Medea the witch:
She curses the absent; she fashions waxen likenesses. And she drives slender needles into the wretched liver.
This is skillfully said and entirely according to the art. But Horace was unskillful because he transferred to the calling up of souls what belonged to this harmful magic. For, describing the apparatus of the Lamiae Sagana and Canidia, he says that two statues were made by them: one of wax, representing the person to be imbued with harmful magic, and one of wool, which took the witch’s place in afflicting the other:
There was a woolen image, and the other was of wax. The woolen one was greater, to restrain the lower one with punishments. The waxen one stood suppliant, and in servile fashion, as though soon to perish.
Seek the history of Duff from Boethius himself, book 11 of Scottish affairs, and from Cardano and others. The annals of France report that things similar to these were attempted by the wife of Enguerrand Marignani against the king of France, and that, when detected, she paid the penalties. Why did Cardano and Wierus not refute this also? Is it because, when something cannot happen in one place, it then cannot happen elsewhere? Another waxen image, of which Sprenger speaks, will be treated in the following section.
Concerning the same images Meierus narrates thus in book 16, under the year 1462:
Three men from the household of the Count of Stampa were captured at Brussels, together with a certain perfumer, who were said to have prepared a certain fascination by three male and as many female images for fascinating the younger prince Charles. They were guarded for a long time at Quercetum in Hainaut, along with Charles Neyerius, who was brought back after flight and was himself from the household of Stampa. The perfumer uncovered the conspiracy.
[margin: Zonaras, tome 3; Glycas, Annals, book 4]
But why were there so many images for killing one man, namely three male ones? So that, if it did not succeed through one, it might be accomplished through another? I think the female images were of the avenging Furies, by whom the male images representing Charles would be badly handled, as is gathered from the verses of Horace already cited. Or perhaps there was a single image and rumor increased the number. Certainly, when Gaguinus treats the harmful magic of Pierre de La Voute, in book 7, he mentions several images; but Aemilius and others record that there was one.
Take a more recent case. In the year 1574 a certain nobleman was beheaded at Paris, with whom there was found a waxen image marked with various characters; the heart and the head had been pierced through. In the same place two others were captured, one of whom was plotting the death of King Charles IX, the other that of Henry, Duke of Guise, by this very harmful magic of waxen piercing. Crespet narrates it, and adds that when he was at Avignon he saw a knife fixed in a wall, with which, according to the judge’s sentence, a certain magician had been flayed, because by pricking a waxen image in this way he had taken a supreme pontiff out of the midst.
I also observe that magicians sometimes abuse statues made long before, because the demon accepts them as a sign of harmful magic. I think such was the case which John Curopalates narrates in his history, folio 24 of the Venetian edition: a certain John Morochazarios, teacher of Emperor Theophilus, though he was a heretic and magician, was raised to the patriarchate of Constantinople. When the treacherous and hard nation of the Bulgarians made an incursion into the borders of the Roman Empire, relying on three leaders, he gave this counsel: three huge bronze hammers should be made and handed to men ready in hand. With these, he said, he would go at night to a certain three-headed statue which formerly stood in the euripus of the Hippodrome.
He did it. He went there. He ordered each man to strike one head violently so that, as if by a single blow, they would knock them to the ground. He himself, dressed in lay clothing so that he would not be detected, muttered certain magical words and took away all the power of the statue. Of those three men, two with the strongest blows cast down two heads of the statue; the third, with a weaker hand, only bent the remaining head and did not tear it off entirely. Those leaders experienced a corresponding outcome. A violent sedition followed in their army, and from it arose an internal battle. Two leaders fell; the third, wounded with a large but not fatal blow, returned home with the remains of the army.
This image was not, as it seemed to most foolish little Greeks, fated for those Bulgarians. Rather, the magician used it as a sign and by agreement, and in place of a magical image.
[margin: Julius Caesar Bulengerus, On the Roman Circus, chapter 6]
Zonaras and Glycas write that Simeon, leader of the Bulgarians, brought war upon Crobat, and that this was troublesome to Romanus Lecapenus. But a certain astrologer named John came to him and announced that he should send someone to cut off the head of the statue placed above Xerolophus; that statue, he said, was fatal to Simeon. He sent someone; the statue was beheaded; the hour was noted. Not long afterward it was learned that at that very hour Simeon had died in Bulgaria from pain of the stomach. What I read in Curopalates, I have read also in Cedrenus.
I think no one is so thick-nosed that he does not immediately perceive that these two statues, by magical murmuring, took here the place of those waxen images newly made, and that the life of those four leaders was devoted by John and John, unless in both places it was the same John, as I suspect, in the heads of the statues. If they were able to do this in statues made long before, when there was no thought either of Simeon or of those barbarian leaders, why would they not be able to do it in a newly fashioned waxen image, and in one fashioned under the name of a given person? Why, if by a head cut off or broken, not by the whole body melted? If it happened in Greece and France, why could it not have happened in Scotland and Germany?
Moreover, from those passages of Cedrenus, Zonaras, and Glycas it appears sufficiently that many statues in the Byzantine circus were of magical workmanship, which were thought to predict the events of the empire of Constantinople, marked with certain letters or characters. When the brothers of the empress Eudocia had read them, they predicted many evils threatening Byzantium. The history is narrated, though known to few, by Himerius the chartulary, whom Suidas mentions. Julius Caesar Bulengerus, from a manuscript codex, commended it to posterity in the book On the Roman Circus, chapter 6; let those who wish seek it there.
A diligent man of much reading will deserve well of this age and following ages if, with the same diligence, he gives Himerius, Gregory the Monk, and others not yet published to the public good, as he gave the oration of St. Chrysostom To the Hippodrome.
Finally, it is a solemn practice today among our witches to baptize these effigies in the name of Beelzebub and to give them the name of the person to be killed.
[margin: Jerome on Matthew 4; Chrysostom, homily 54 on Matthew 17; Thomas, first part, question 115, article 5; Burchard, book 19 of the Decretals, chapter On Magical Matters; Le Loyer, On Specters, book 1, last chapter; Grillandus, question 3, near number 13]