Jean Bodin

Legal witch-finder of Paris. Author of De La Demonomanie des Sorciers (Of the Demonomania of Witches), demonologist, judge, and French lawyer, Jean Bodin was a respected and educated man. Having judged many witchcraft trials, Bodin gathered all that he had learned about witchcraft into Demonomanie. Bodin offered one of the first legal definitions of a witch: "One who knowing God's laws tries to bring about some act through an agreement with the Devil." The fifteen crimes committed by witches were listed in Demonomanie:

1. Denial of God.

2. Cursing God and blaspheming.

3. Giving honour to the Devil by worshipping him and making sacrifices.

4. Dedication of children to the Devil.

5. Murdering children before they have been baptised.

6. Pledging to Satan children yet in the womb.

7. Spreading propaganda about the cult.

8. Honouring oaths sworn in the name of the Devil.

9. Incest.

10. Murdering men and little children to make broth.

11. Disinterring the dead, eating human flesh and drinking blood.

12. Killing by means of poisons and spells.

13. Killing cattle.

14. Causing famine on the land and infertility in the fields.

15. Having sexual intercourse with the Devil.

A number of questionable courtroom procedures were recommended by Bodin:

• "A person once accused should never be acquitted, unless the falsity of the accuser is clearer than the sun."

• Children were to be forced to indict their parents.

• Suspicion alone of witchcraft warranted torture, "for popular rumor is almost never misinformed."

• The names of informers were never to be told.

In addition, Bodin "urged local authorities to encourage secret accusations by placing a black box in the church for anonymous letters."

A woman with no witches' mark or stigma diabolicum was more suspicious than one with such a mark. According to Bodin, this is because "the Devil needed to mark only those of his accomplices of whose loyalty he could not be entirely sure. So the lack of a witch mark was no proof of a woman's innocence; on the contrary, it was evidence that she enjoyed a position of special trust in the kingdom of evil."

Bodin was equally as cruel in his views on sentencing. He believed in the most painful and gruesome executions, and still feared that the witches were receiving insufficient punishment. He said, "Whatever punishment one can order against witches by roasting and cooking them over a slow fire is not really very much, and not as bad as the torment which Satan has made for them in this world, to say nothing of the eternal agonies which are prepared for them in hell, for the fire here cannot last more than an hour or so until the witches have died."

According to Bodin, any judge who did not order the execution of a witch should himself be executed.

Jean Bodin reminded princes that the crime of the witch was lèse-majesté against God, a crime infinitely more heinous than any earthly criminal act. The laws against witches were divine, not secular, and no prince had the power to avoid prosecuting or to pardon such an offender. For Bodin, it was better that a few unfortunate innocents should burn than that a witch should go unpunished.

The following excerpt from Demonomanie backs up this viewpoint:

Now, if there is any means (sic) to appease the wrath of God, to gain his blessing, to strike awe into some by the punishment of others, to preserve some from being infected by others, to diminish the number of evil-doers, to make secure the life of the well-disposed, and to punish the most detestable crimes of which the human mind can conceive, it is to punish with the utmost rigor the witches... Now, it is not within the power of princes to pardon a crime which the law of God punishes with the penalty of death - such as are the crimes of witches.

Moreover, princes do gravely insult God in pardoning such horrible crimes committed directly against his majesty, seeing that the pettiest prince avenges with death insults against himself.

Those too who let the witches escape, or who do not punish them with the utmost rigor, may rest assured that they will be abandoned by God to the mercy of the witches. And the country which shall tolerate this will be scourged with pestilences, famines, and wars; and those which shall take vengeance on the witches will be blessed by him and will make his anger to cease. Therefore it is that one accused of being a witch ought never to be fully acquitted and set free unless the calumny of the accuser is clearer than the sun, inasmuch as the proof of such crimes is so obscure and so difficult that not one witch in a million would be accused or punished if the procedure were governed by the ordinary rules.