Book contents
Chapter 12
from Question 1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2015
Summary
WHO could make an account of their having inflicted other illness in the bodies of humans, like blindness or very sharp pains and agonies? Nonetheless, let us bring forward a few of the things which we have clearly seen with our eyes, and which came to the notice of one of the inquisitors.
Once when an inquisition was being conducted into sorceresses in the town of Innsbruck, the following occurrence was related among others. A respectable person who was joined in marriage to a member of the Archduke's retinue testified in the presence of a notary (and so on, according to legal requirement), that when she was acting as a servant to one of the citizens when she was a maiden, it happened that his wife grew weak with a severe headache. A certain woman arrived to heal it and was able to lessen the pain with her charms and certain other practices. “I carefully watched her procedure and saw that|when she poured water into a dish, the water rose up into another jar contrary to the nature of water.” (The woman also used other ceremonies, which it is unnecessary to relate.) “I observed that the headache in the lady was not being lessened as a result of these procedures, and in some outrage I uttered the following words to the sorceress. ‘I don't know what you are doing. You are merely doing superstitious things, for your own benefit.’ Then the sorceress immediately rejoined, ‘Three days from now, you will tell whether or not they are superstitious,’ 311 which the outcome of the situation proved. For on the morning of the third day, while I was sitting and holding a spindle, great pain suddenly attacked my body, first in the internal areas, so that there was no part of the body on which I did not feel terrible jabbings.
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- The Hammer of WitchesA Complete Translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, pp. 361 - 366Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009