Page:The history of Witchcraft and demonology.djvu/139

 Madrid, how black with shadows, dangerous, and utterly lonesome was the pathless countryside! Not infrequently the witches of necessity carried lanterns to light them on their journey to the Sabbat. The learned Bartolomeo de Spina, O.P., in his Tractatus de Strigibus et Lamiis (Venice, 1533), writes that a certain peasant, who lived at Clavica Malaguzzi, in the district of Mirandola, having occasion to rise very early one morning and drive to a neighbouring village, found himself at three o’clock, before daybreak, crossing a waste tract of considerable extent which lay between him and his destination. In the distance he suddenly caught sight of what seemed to be numerous fires flitting to and fro, and as he drew nearer he saw that these were none other than large lanthorns held by a bevy of persons who were moving here and there in the mazes of a fantastic dance, whilst others, as at a rustic picnic, were seated partaking of dainties and drinking stoups of wine, what time a harsh music, like the scream of a cornemuse, droned through the air. Curiously no word was spoken, the company whirled and pirouetted, ate and drank, in strange and significant silence. Perceiving that many, unabashed, were giving themselves up to the wildest debauchery and publicly performing the sexual act with every circumstance of indecency, the horrified onlooker realized that he was witnessing the revels of the Sabbat. Crossing himself fervently and uttering a prayer he drove as fast as possible from the accursed spot, not, however, before he had recognized some of the company as notorious evil-doers and persons living in the vicinity who were already under grave suspicion of sorcery. The witches must have remarked his presence, but they seem to have ignored him and not even to have attempted pursuit. In another instance Fra Paolo de Caspan, a Dominican of great reputation for piety and learning, reports that Antonio de Palavisini, the parish priest of Caspan in the Valtellina, a territory infected with warlocks, most solemnly affirmed that when going before daybreak to say an early Mass at a shrine hard by the village he had seen through clearings in the wood an assembly of men and women furnished with lanterns, who were seated in a circle and whose actions left no doubt that they were witches engaged in abominable rites. In both the above cases the lanterns were not required in the