By far the most important field for the activity of the 'strega' lay, as has been said, in love-affairs, and included the stirring up of love and of hatred, the producing of abortion, the pretended murder of the unfaithful man or woman by magical arts, and even the manufacture of poisons.Owing to the unwillingness of many persons to have to do with these women, class of occasional practitioners arose who secretly learned from them some one or other of their arts, and then used this knowledge on their own account.The Roman prostitutes, for example, tried to enhance their personal attractions by charms of another description in the style of the Horatian Canidia.Aretino may not only have known, but have also told the truth about them in this particular.
He gives a list of the loathsome messes which were to be found in their boxes--hair, skulls, ribs, teeth, dead men's eyes, human skin, the navels of little children, the soles of shoes and pieces of clothing from tombs.They even went themselves to the graveyard and fetched bits of rotten flesh, which they slyly gave their lovers to eat--with more that is still worse.Pieces of the hair and nails of the lover were boiled in oil stolen from the ever-burning lamps in the church.The most innocuous of their charms was to make a heart of glowing ashes, and then to pierce it while singing:
'Prima che'l fuoco spenghi, Fa ch'a mia porta venghi;Tal ti punga mio amore Quale io fo questo cuore.'
There were other charms practiced by moonshine, with drawings on the ground, and figures of wax or bronze, which doubtless represented the lover, and were treated according to circumstances.
These things were so customary that a woman who, without youth and beauty, nevertheless exercised a powerful charm on men, naturally became suspected of witchcraft.The mother of Sanga, secretary to Clement VII, poisoned her son's mistress, who was a woman of this kind.
Unfortunately the son died too, as well as a party of friends who had eaten of the poisoned salad.
Next comes, not as helper, but as competitor to the witch, the magician or enchanter--'incantatore'--who was still more familiar with the most perilous business of the craft.Sometimes he was as much or more of an astrologer than of a magician; he probably often gave himself out as an astrologer in order not to be prosecuted as a magician, and a certain astrology was essential in order to find out the favourable hour for a magical process.But since many spirits are good or indifferent, the magician could sometimes maintain a very tolerable reputation, and Sixtus IV, in the year 1474, had to proceed expressly against some Bolognese Carmelites, who asserted in the pulpit that there was no harm in seeking information from the demons.Very many people believed in the possibility of the thing itself; an indirect proof of this lies in the fact that the most pious men believed that by prayer they could obtain visions of good spirits.Savonarola's mind was filled with these things; the Florentine Platonists speak of a mystic union with God; and Marcellus Palingenius gives us to understand clearly enough that he had to do with consecrated spirits.The same writer is convinced of the existence of a whole hierarchy of bad demons, who have their seat from the moon downwards, and are ever on the watch to do some mischief to nature and human life.He even tells of his own personal acquaintance with some of them, and as the scope of the present work does not allow of a systematic exposition of the then prevalent belief in spirits, the narrative of Palingenius may be given as one instance out of many.
At San Silvestro, on Soracte, he had been receiving instruction from a pious hermit on the nothingness of earthly things and the worthlessness of human life; and when the night drew near he set out on his way back to home.On the road, in the full light of the moon, he was joined by three men, one of whom called him by name, and asked him whence he came.Palingenius made answer: 'From the wise man on the mountain.' 'Ofool,' replied the stranger, 'dost thou in truth believe that anyone on earth is wise? Only higher beings (Divi) have wisdom, and such are we three, although we wear the shapes of men.I am named Saracil, and these two Sathiel and Jana.Our kingdom lies near the moon, where dwell that multitude of intermediate beings who have sway over earth and sea.' Palingenius then asked, not without an inward tremor, what they were going to do at Rome.The answer was: 'One of our comrades, Ammon, is kept in servitude by the magic arts of a youth from Narni, one of the attendants of Cardinal Orsini; for mark it, O men, there is proof of your own immortality therein, that you can control one of us: Imyself shut up in crystal, was once forced to serve a German, till a bearded monk set me free.This is the service which we wish to render at Rome to our friend, and he shall also take the opportunity of sending one or two distinguished Romans to the nether world.' At these words a light breeze arose, and Sathiel said: 'Listen, our messenger is coming back from Rome, and this wind announces him.' And then another being appeared, whom they greeted joyfully and then asked about Rome.
His utterances are strongly anti-papal: Clement VII was again allied with the Spaniards and hoped to root out Luther's doctrines, not with arguments, but by the Spanish sword.This is wholly in the interest of the demons, whom the impending bloodshed would enable to carry away the souls of thousands into hell.At the close of this conversation, in which Rome with all its guilt is represented as wholly given over to the Evil One, the apparitions vanish, and leave the poet sorrowfully to pursue his way alone.
