Europe's inner demons

In the evening, when the candles are lit, at the time when we celebrate the redemptive Passion of Our Lord, they bring together, in a house appointed for the purpose, young girls whom they have initiated into their rites. Then they extinguish the candles, so that the light shall not be witness to their abominable deeds, and throw themselves lasciviously on the girls; each one on whomever first falls into his hands, no matter whether she be his sister, his daughter or his mother. For they think that they are doing something that greatly pleases the demons by transgressing God’s laws, which forbid marriage between blood relatives. When this rite has been completed, each goes home; and after waiting nine months, until the time has come for the unnatural children of such unnatural seed to be born, they come together again at the same place. Then, on the third day after the birth, they tear the miserable babies from their mothers’ arms. They cut their tender flesh all over with sharp knives and catch the stream of blood in basins. They throw the babies, still breathing and gasping, on to the fire, to be burned to ashes. After which, they mix the ashes with the blood in the basins and so make an abominable drink, with which they secretly pollute their food and drink; like those who mix poison with hippo-eras or other sweet drinks. Finally they partake together of these foodstuffs; and not they alone but others also, who know nothing of their hidden proceedings.⁽⁸⁾

The Thracian is clear about the purpose behind these rites. The souls of those who take part in them are purged of every trace of divine influence and become die homes of demons. This applies equally to those who participate unknowingly: by eating child’s flesh they too fall into the clutches of demons. And elsewhere in his tract Psellos puts the whole matter in an eschatological perspective. It is because the End is near that these fearful deeds are being done. The coming of Antichrist is at hand, and it must be ushered in by monstrous doctrines and unlawful practices. The deeds of Saturn and Thyestes and Tantalus, when they devoured their offspring; of Oedipus, when he mated with his mother; of Cinyras, when he mated with his daughters — all these abominations are being repeated now, as signs that the Last Days have come. In other words, they are manifestations of the final, desperate effort of the demonic hosts in their struggle against God.

Up to the eleventh century western Christendom had been far less troubled than eastern Christendom by movements of religious dissent. But by the time Psellos wrote his attack on the Bogomiles, the West too was becoming uneasily aware of the presence of heretics in its midst. The authorities, ecclesiastical and secular alike, reacted sharply to this unfamiliar situation: heretics were not only burned, they were defamed as well. The first execution took place at Orléans in 1022. And in connection with this same incident tales of incest and cannibalism were bandied about for the first time in western Europe; for the first time, that is, since the great execution of Christians by pagans, at Lyons, more than eight centuries before.