Francesco Maria Guazzo
In 1608, the Italian demonologist Francesco Maria Guazzo wrote Compendium Maleficarum. A member of the Congregation of S. Ambrose ad Nemus, Guazzo was one of the most authoritative of the older writers upon witchcraft. In his Compendium Maleficarum, he drew up eleven headings under which witchcraft was then held to consist:
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The candidates conclude a pact with the Devil.
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They turn their backs on the Catholic faith, God, Christ, Our Lady, the Saints, and they forswear the Sacraments.
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They throw away their rosaries, trample the Cross, Holy Medals, and Agnus Dei on the ground.
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They vow obedience to the Devil and pay him homage. They make oaths not to return to Christianity, but to attend without fail all the sabbats.
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They promise to seduce others into the worship of Satan.
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They become baptized in the name of Lucifer, Belzebuth, and other demons. They take new names.
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They "cut off a piece of their own garments, and as a token of homage tender it to the Devil, who takes it away and keeps it."
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The Devil draws a circle on the ground and all the candidates reaffirm their oaths to him.
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They ask Satan to take their names out of the book of Christ and to instead inscribe them in his own book.
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The witches promise to offer sacrifices to Satan at stated times: "once a fortnight, or at least once a month, the murder of some child, or some mortal poisoning, and every week to plague mankind with evils and mischiefs, hailstorms, tempest, fires, cattle-plagues and the like."
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"The Demon imprints upon the Witches some mark."
The Compendium Maleficarum also states, "threatening or beating witches is the best way to remove spells cast by them."
Kramer and Sprenger's Malleus Maleficarum provided a precedent for this view:
In the town of Ratisbon a certain young man who had an intrigue with a girl, wishing to leave her, lost his member; that is to say, some glamour was cast over it so that he could see or touch nothing but his smooth body. In his worry over this he went to a tavern to drink wine; and after he had sat there for a while he got into conversation with another woman who was there, and told her the cause of his sadness, explaining everything, and demonstrating in his body that it was so. The woman was astute, and asked whether he suspected anyone; and when he named such a one, unfolding the whole matter, she said: 'If persuasion is not enough, you must use some violence, to induce her to restore to you your health.'
So in the evening the young man watched the way by which the witch was in the habit of going, and finding her, prayed her to restore to him the health of his body. And when she maintained that she was innocent and knew nothing about it, he fell upon her, and winding a towel tightly round her neck, choked her, saying: 'Unless you give me back my health, you shall die at my hands.' Then she, being unable to cry out, and with her face already swelling and growing black, said: 'Let me go, and I will heal you.' And the young man, as he afterwards said, plainly felt, before he had verified it by looking or touching, that his member had been restored to him by the mere touch of the witch.
Guazzo relates a story in which blasphemy is ranked a greater sin than lechery: three monks fall victim to demonic wiles, and habitually slept with prostitutes. One night, one of the monks bestowed latria (divine honour) upon Satan, rather than upon God, for his meal. All three were amused by the blasphemy, and
they left the table with laughter and went off to the dormitory, each with his wench.
Right away, three demons burst in through the bolted door and grabbed the blaspheming monk. They impaled him on a spit and cooked him so that "the room was full of the stench of burned flesh." The next morning, the surviving monks discovered his body "quite blackened and burned."