No harmful magic is more frequent today than this one; so much so that in some places hardly anyone dares to celebrate the solemnities of marriage in broad daylight, lest some evil person mock the vows of the spouses. If this is done because, the fewer people there will be present and aware of the matter, the more they escape snares, such caution does not belong to this discussion. But if it is because people believe that magical efforts before dawn have less power, the matter is not free of superstition.
But let us come to the harmful magic itself. They are accustomed by evil words to render a human being, as the canons say, frigid and bewitched, that is, unfit for the act of marriage. That they can and usually do this is proved first by the authority of canons; then by the common opinion of theologians; then by the practice of the Church, which after a three-year trial and after seven sworn witnesses have joined hands, is accustomed to separate people so affected; then from the opinion of the old rabbis and of the Berosus now extant, who thought that Ham had been struck by Noah with such harm; then by the examples soon to be related and by daily experience; and finally by reason.
[margin: Ananias, On the Nature of Demons, book 4]
This can happen naturally by castration, crushing, rupture, drying, chilling, and similar causes. Since the demon knows these, he can use them. Then it often happens that a man who cannot with one woman can with others, or that someone who can with all the rest cannot with one woman alone; likewise that he cannot with her alone whom he especially loves and is passionately devoted to; likewise that, when only the binding has been removed, one becomes capable who could do nothing before. Variation of this kind cannot come from a natural cause. Therefore it comes from a supernatural or prodigious cause; not a divine one, therefore angelic; not by the work of good angels, therefore of evil ones.
The forms or modes which the Devil uses for this are almost infinite. The author of the Demonomania wrote that more than fifty are found. Certain magicians, with certain words uttered, only tie a little strap; but meanwhile the demon performs the harmful magic and renders either man or woman impotent. Ananias truly said that this rages against women as well as men; yet we see this evil creep more easily and more frequently into men. Perhaps this is because, where more work and more instruments are required, some defect and impediment more easily occurs. Or is it because, since there are more female witches than male sorcerers, more men are harmed? Most people hold that one can be bound either for a day, or for a year, or forever, or until the knot of the little strap is loosened.
I find seven proximate causes of this impotence handed down by more learned men, causes which the demon abuses.
The first is when he makes one spouse hateful to the other, or both hateful to each other, through calumny or suspicion, or by sending some disease. Thus, according to Stesichorus, either Venus or Medea, by casting in a drug, made all the Lemnian women smell gravely from the mouth, and their husbands despised them. Myrtilus, in the book of Lesbian affairs, wishes this to be Medea’s deed. Or they do this by disturbing the imagination, so that people believe something vehemently hateful or frightening is in the mate. Thus Valasca, maidservant of Libussa of Bohemia, turned women away from the love of their husbands by poison-working, so that, after entering into a conspiracy, each killed her own husband, brothers, father, and sons in one night; then, with the fortress of Vissegrad taken, they almost cut down the army of Prince Primislaus.
[margin: Natalis Comes, Mythology, book 6, chapter 7; Aeneas Sylvius, History of Bohemia; Baptista Egnatius, book 3, chapter 2; Peter Enriquez, On the Sacrament of Marriage; Soto; the author of the Demonomania; and the author of the book On Witches]
Sometimes they make the spouses love each other most ardently, but, when it has come to intercourse, suddenly inflamed with hatred, one beats or tears the other with nails. Theologians and jurists know this kind. Then the demon first kindles the ardor of lust by placing the form of the spouse before the concupiscible power. But when the spouses come to embrace, he presents that same spouse as hateful and deadly, causing the organs of generation to appear either of wholly inappropriate size or of horrible and more than usually foul shape.
The second cause is when he impedes the bodies from being able to approach each other mutually. Thus he divides them or holds them in different places, or, when there is an attempt to join, throws in a phantom or some other intervening thing. To the former seems to belong that verse of Propertius:
We were hated; what god has overwhelmed me? Or what herb, gathered from Promethean ridges, divides the beds?
To the latter belongs a certain narration, full of admirable novelty, whose trustworthiness may rest with its authors. St. Antoninus narrates from Vincent of Beauvais that in Rome, in the times of Emperor Henry III, there was a certain wealthy and noble young man who had recently married a wife and received his companions at a lavish wedding banquet. After lunch they went out into a field to play ball. The bridegroom, leader of the game, asked for the ball, and lest his wedding ring slip off, he put it on the finger of a bronze statue of Venus which was nearby. All were seeking only him; therefore he soon grew tired and withdrew from the game. Returning to the statue to recover the ring, behold, he saw the statue’s finger bent back all the way to the palm of the hand; and however much he tried, he could neither bend back the finger nor draw out the ring.
He returned to his companions and told them nothing about it. In the dead of night he returned to the statue with a servant and found the finger extended as at first, but without the ring. Pretending away the loss, he returned home to his new bride. When he entered the marriage bed and wished to join himself to his bride, he felt himself impeded, and he sensed something cloudy and dense rolling between his body and that of his wife. He perceived it by touch, though he could not see it. By this obstacle he was kept from the embrace. He also heard a voice saying, “Lie with me, because today you have espoused me. I am Venus, on whose finger you put the ring, and I shall not give it back.”
[margin: Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Historiale, book 26; Antoninus, History, tome 16, chapter 7]
Terrified by so great a prodigy, says Antoninus, he did not dare or could not report anything. He spent that night sleepless, deliberating much with himself. So it happened for a long time that at whatever hour he wished to lie with his bride, he felt and heard the same thing. Yet he was otherwise strong and fit, at home and in military service.
At last, prompted by his wife’s complaints, he brought the matter to his parents. After taking counsel, they disclosed it to a certain Palumbus, a suburban priest. He was a necromancer and powerful in harmful magic. Enticed by many promises, he gave the young man a composed letter and said:
Go at that hour of the night to a crossroads where four roads meet, and, standing silently, watch. Figures of human beings of each sex, every age and condition, will pass by: horsemen and foot soldiers, some happy and some sad. Whatever you hear, do not speak. After that crowd there will follow a certain man of taller stature and bulkier form, sitting in a chariot. Silently hand him the letter to read, and immediately what you seek will happen.
The young man fulfilled everything as he had been taught. Among the rest he saw there a woman in the dress of a prostitute, riding a mule, her hair loose and tossed over her shoulders, bound above with a golden band, carrying a golden rod in her hands with which she guided the mule, almost naked because of the thinness of her clothing, displaying shameful gestures. The last lord of the crowd, terrible in appearance and gouging the young man with his eyes from a proud axle set with emeralds and pearls, asked the reason for his journey. The young man said nothing in response, but stretched out his hand and offered him the letter. The demon, not daring to despise the known seal, read the writing and, with arms raised to heaven, immediately said, “Almighty God, how long will you endure the wickedness of the priest Palumbus?”
Without delay he sent attendants from his side to extort the ring from Venus. After she had long resisted, she scarcely at last gave it back. Thus the young man, having obtained his desire, possessed the long-sighed-for loves without obstacle. But when Palumbus heard the demon’s cry to God about himself, he understood that the end of his days was marked out. Therefore, when all his members had been cut off voluntarily, he died by a wretched punishment, after confessing unheard-of crimes before the Roman people.
[margin: John Major, on book 4, distinction 34; Paul of Burgos and Soto; Sylvester, word “maleficium”; Abulensis on Matthew 19]
In these words you see both the harmful magic of division, and an impious cure through another harmful magic, and the serious repentance of the sorcerer.
The third cause is if the vital spirits are prevented from passing to the members of generation, and thus the emission of seed is impeded. John Major rightly discussed this impediment.
The fourth is if the procreative seed is dried up and withdrawn.
The fifth is if the man’s member becomes flaccid, at least when someone wishes to exercise the act of marriage.
[margin: Sprenger, Malleus, part 2, question 1, chapter 7; Remigius, Demonolatry, book 2, chapter 5; Herodotus, book 2; Paul Aemilius, Life of Clotarius; Francis Guicciardini, History of Italy]
The sixth is if other natural drugs are applied, by which the power of performing is taken away in any way. These more common causes are known and available to almost all among the doctors.
The seventh cause is rarer: namely, the closing or excessive constriction of the woman’s parts, or the retraction, concealment, or true removal of the man’s genitals. Sprenger and Remigius set forth various narrations from their own time about a calamity of this kind in the male. As for retraction and concealment, perhaps that could happen naturally, although I doubt and incline to the negative opinion. As for removal, I am certain that it is always a mere illusion, even if, as elsewhere in the Malleus, the witch shows those members in birds’ nests. For she cannot take those things away except as human beings do, by cutting or some similar separation; and once they have been taken away she cannot restore them any more than human beings can. Therefore these modes, as they concern men, are illusory. As for women, just as this constriction can arise from natural diseases, so I think it can also be caused by a demon, both with respect to tightness in bones and with respect to tightness in fleshiness.
I said that there is a twofold impediment: one with respect to all persons, another with respect to one definite person only. In the former way I find that Amasis king of Egypt was punished; the latter is what the doctors call respective harmful magic. Thus we read that King Theodoric was affected: he could have intercourse with concubines, but could not with his wife alone. In the same way Galeazzo Sforza was struck by fraud so that he could not enjoy marriage with Isabella of Aragon.
[margin: Later canon-law and theology references on whether the impediment can be perpetual: chapters Requisisti and Si per sortiarias, 33, question 1; Cardinalis on that place; Abbas and others on De frigidis et maleficiatis; Navarrus, Consilia, book 4; the Master on book 4, distinction 34; Thomas, Durandus, Paludanus, Richard, Major, Soto, Vitoria, Ledesma, Palacio, and others cited by Enriquez at chapter 8, section 2, letter O]
I said, secondly, that one impediment is temporary and another perpetual, calling perpetual that which will last until death and cannot be removed by any natural remedy or otherwise lawfully. I know that with the Gloss some deny that any such perpetual impediment can be introduced by the Devil. But I also know that this statement of the Gloss is commonly rejected by the more learned canonists and theologians as repugnant to the sense, though not the words, of the text itself. Then too, why could the demon not impede intercourse repeatedly as he does once? Why could he not do it as often as God permits? Finally, the foundation of the Gloss is false, namely that this can always be removed by the author of the harmful magic. Later, in the last book, we shall teach that sometimes witches cannot heal what they have harmed. Nor would I doubt that the demon can destroy more than he can repair. What if he has cut off a member? He will no more be able to restore it than to restore life once taken away.
From these things I think, reader, you easily understand that Michael Montanus rashly takes these harmful magic acts away from the demon in book 1, chapter 21, On the Bones, so as to ascribe them to the powers of imagination. No one denies that imagination can render someone impotent for sexual acts. But to ascribe to imagination alone effects so varied and multiple - not even Orestes would say this in his lucid intervals. What place is there for imagination in a man otherwise strong, desirous, and hoping that he can, indeed not doubting it, the first time he is deceived by hope?
In the last place, there seems to be counted among this kind of harmful magic what Saxo Grammaticus reports in these words:
Men in the city of Karentia, when joined with women in intercourse, used to stick together in the manner of dogs, and could not be separated from them even after lingering for a long time. Sometimes both, suspended on poles from opposite sides, presented to the people a ridiculous spectacle by their unusual union.
[margin: Saxo Grammaticus, History of Denmark, book 14; Strabo, book 14]
Indeed these were beasts and not human beings. For among human beings, so bitter a calamity of human beings should draw out not laughter, but sobs and tears. Alas, what do sins not deserve? What retribution do they not extort from the most merciful God? It may be that the work of demons intervened here, and that God, using that hand as the hand of executioners, exacted this most dire kind of punishment from deserved guilt. If similar judgments were exercised today against adulterers and concubinaries, what poles would suffice? Certainly more people would love continence and turn away from obscene lusts.
It may also be that they were mere tricks of the demon. If they were not tricks, scarcely any natural reason can be given, unless you say that both the viscosity of seed and the dispositions of the member which are in beasts accustomed to stick together in this way were introduced into these human beings by the demon. I think this does not surpass his industry and powers.
What if the spring of Salmacis had something harmful magical thrown into it? Certainly what Strabo reports of it, namely that it made those who drank from it soft, I would refer not so much to a change into Hermaphrodites, as Ovid does, as to emasculation and, to use Varro’s word in another sense, womanization. For to those people, alien to the law and faith of Christ, this seemed, as if by necessary consequence - dreadful to say - that he who could not act should begin to suffer.
[margin: Ovid, Metamorphoses, book 4]
Among the rest, this is no small benefit of the Christian faith: that, with the worship of demons, those monstrous crimes urged and encouraged by demons, and deeply rooted in paganism, have at last in most regions utterly passed away.
[margin: Godescalcus Hollen, Praeceptorium, folio 20, letter A; Andrea Cesalpino, On the Investigation of Demons, chapter 10]