Europe's inner demons

39 The basic source for the Kyteler affair is T. Wright, Narrative of the proceedings against Dame Alice Kyteler for sorcery, London, 1843 (Camden Society); this is a contemporary source. The Annals of Ireland (in Chartularies of St Mary’s Abbey, Dublin, ed. J. T. Gilbert, vol. II, London, 1884 (Rolls Series), pp. 362-4) are a less reliable source, as they cannot have been composed before 1370 and may even date from the end of the fifteenth century. Holinshed’s account in his Chronicle of Ireland, London, 1587, p. 69, is based on the Annals.

40 Proceedings, Additional Note, pp. 59–60.

41 Annals of Ireland, p. 362. This detail sounds like a piece of genuine folklore, deriving from the period itself.

42 Proceedings, p. 2.

43 Ibid., p. 1.

44 Ibid., p. 2.

45 Ibid., p. 31.

46 Ibid., p. 32.

47 Ibid., p. 14.

48 Ibid., p. 40.

49 Ibid., pp. 36-7.

50 On Ledrede see the article in the Dictionary of National Biography.

51 Proceedings, pp. 22-3, 27.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE NIGHT-WITCH IN POPULAR IMAGINATION

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1 Pliny, Historia naturalis, VIII, 22.

2 Q. Serenus Sammonicus, De Medicina, lix, 1044-7, cd. Keuchen, Amsterdam, 1662, p. 34.

3 Ovid, Fasti, VI, lines 131-68.

4 Petronius, Satyricon, cap. 134.

5 Ovid, Amores, I, beginning of Eighth Elegy.

6 Lucius Apuleius, The Golden Ass, chapter 16.

7 Sextus Pompeius Festus, De verbortim significatione Fragmentum (Pat. lat. vol. 95, col. 1668).

8 Pactus legis Salicae, tit. Ixiv, 1–3 (ed. K. A. Eckhardt, vol. II, 1, Göttingen, 1955, pp. 349-51). The passage which refers to the witch’s cannibalism as real is to be found in a relatively late version, dating from 567-96; cf. Eckhardt, op. cit., vol. I, 1954, pp. 216-18.

9 Pactus Alamannorum, Fragmentum II, para. 31, in MGH Leges, sectio I, vol. V, part 1, p. 23.

10 Edictus Rothari, 197, 198 (in Leges Langobardorum, ed. F. Beyerle, Witzenhausen, 1962, p. 53).

11 Ibid., 376 (ed. Beyerle, p. 91).

12 Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae, para. 6, in MGH Leges, sectio II, vol. I, pp. 68-9. H. Jankuhn (“Spuren von Anthropophagie in der Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae”, in Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen. I. Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Göttingen, 1968) argues that the capitulary proves the existence of witchcraft practices which included cannibalism. I am not persuaded.

13 P. Piper (ed.), Notkers und seiner Schule Schriften, vol. I, 1883, p. 787. The text is in Old High German.

14 Text in H. J. Schmitz, Die Bussbücher und die Bussdisziplin der Kirche, vol. I, Mainz, 1883, p. 446 (para. 170 of chapter 5 of the Corrector).

15 Text in Hansen, Quellen, pp. 638-9.

16 Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imperialia, lib. iii, cap. 86

17 c.g. in the classic German work known as Soldan-Heppe-Bauer: Geschichte der Hexenprozesse, vol. I, Munich, 1911, pp. 86-9.

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18 Text in Regino of Prüm, Libri de synodalibus causis et disciplinis ecclesiasticis, ed. F. G. A. Wasserschleben, Leipzig, 1840, p. 354.

19 Twice, in fact: in Book 19 (the Corrector), chapter 5, para. 90, and also in Book 10, chapter 1, para. 3. On the variants of the canon, in Regino and in Burchard: J. B. Russell, Witchcraft in the middle ages, pp. 75–80, 291-3.

20 Corrector, chapter 5, para. 70.

21 Gregory of Tours, Historia Francorum, VII, 15.

22 Acta Sanctorum, 8 July, p. 616.

23 Ratherius, Praeloquiorum libri, I, 10, in Pat. lat., vol. 136, col. 157.

24 Reinardus Vulpes, ed. F. J. Mone, Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1832, lib. I, lines 1143-64.