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Witch 2
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Witchcraft in France
AS IN MOST COUNTRIES, RURAL WORKERS AND LOWER-CLASS TOWNSFOLK HAD FOR CENTURIES RELIED ON ‘WISE WOMEN’ TO MAKE LIFE A LITTLE EASIER
By Mike George
Mike George is our regular contributor on wildlife and the countryside in France. He is a geologist and naturalist, living in the Jurassic area of the Charente
Many of these did a really good service by their knowledge of “simples” or botanical sources of healing drugs. Others made a bit of money by using their “skills” to locate lost objects or people, probably by means of listening to gossip and putting two-and-two together, at least to find missing people. Yet others ran a sort of Citizens’ Advice service, but with a more basic and earthy brief than would be the case in today’s government offices! However, when in the late Middle Ages the world began to get a bit smaller, and commerce raised its ugly head, business men and professional charlatans began to view such procedures as competition. What was the easiest way to stifle this competition? Have it declared illegal, or, better, accursed and contrary to religion! It could also be politically useful, too. Most English and all French people know Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc), who was tried and convicted of, among other things, witchcraft. Incidentally, it was not the English who put her on trial but the Burgundian French, who themselves had no desire for the return of the Old French Monarchy (although certainly the English interests were in sympathy with the trial). In England, the witchcraft approach began to take hold. Parliament became interested, and there was a Witchcraft Act. Then the King began to take an interest. Up until then, most English monarchs were concerned with politics and foreign foes and staying alive, but James 1st found himself with sufficient leisure and interest to have a go at more homely matters, like tobacco-smoking and witchcraft. Despite much that has been written to the contrary, English witches were rarely ‘Burned at the Stake’. That was the punishment for treason or for being a Catholic. Witches were usually hanged –much quicker and less costly. In France, however, burning was considered far more suitable, and was widely used. Sadly, the political and geographic state of France meant that control of these matters was far from central. Also, no Witchcraft Act or its equivalent was ever passed, so there was no proper prescription for what constituted witchcraft or how it should be punished. People and courts made it up very much as they went along, and court records were either not kept or deliberately destroyed ‘for the good of the populace’. All we have to go on are records of executions and registrations of death. So it rumbled on for a few hundred years until a really big case hit the French headlines. Louis 14th, the ‘Sun King’, was a self-absorbed monarch with three major obsessions: his personal image, his prowess in bed and his paranoia about his own safety. The court was a hotbed (in every sense) of intrigue and scheming for position and preferment, and in such an environment, extreme measures could be – and were – taken. Louis had been on the throne since 1643. By the mid1670s, the court was described as ‘The most libertine Court in Europe’ and Louis was quite happy with that. Then strange things began to happen. Poisoning had always been looked upon as an Italian pastime (see Lucrezia Borgia), but now members of the Court of France began suffering from strange maladies, of which they subsequently died. What autopsies there were merely reported that, ‘The internal organs seemed blackened and corroded’. Of course, someone was solving a few problems with a dose or two of, probably, arsenic, but such a thing was not understood in those days and besides, one couldn’t admit that the Court of the Sun King harboured murderers! But a bit of witchcraft… Louis summoned Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie, the Paris Chief of Police, who had made a name for himself by ‘cleaning up’ Paris. Now he had an even tougher brief: root out the problems that were woven through the French court like threads in a tapestry. With Louis’s agreement, a special commission was set up. It was called La Chambre Ardente (the Court of Fire) because it was held in a large and windowless room and therefore had to be lit at all times by flaming torches. At first all went well. Suspicion fell on Marie-Madeleine-Marguerite d'Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers, and her contact, one Gaudin de Sainte-Croix, who had learned the secrets and methods of poison administration in prison from one Egidio Exili, an Italian with a very doubtful past. These two were tried and executed by burning, but the problem was not solved. Strange deaths continued. The situation became so critical that King Louis’ foodtaster himself hired a taster to taste first what he, as taster, was supposed to taste. It is said that the reason Vichyssoise Soup is today served cold is that, by the time all the tasting had been done, cold was the only way that the King knew the soup! Eventually another potential source of poisoning knowledge was identified, one Catherine Monvoisin, known as ‘La Voisin’, a member of the Parisian underworld who sold all sorts of strange materials to anyone who wanted them. Under interrogation she started to name her contacts, and by the time she was burned to death a few months later, Police Chief La Reynie knew just how widespread was the problem. However, this threw up a worse problem for Louis. One of the people that Madame La Voisin named was Françoise Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart, Marquise of Montespan, Louis’ favourite mistress! So fond was he of her that he had acknowledged her sons as his own, and heaped position and status upon them. Faced with the possibility of his favourite’s crimes, Louis temporised, wavered, and finally declared that it was all a mistake. The Chambre Ardente was wound up in 1682, and all its records destroyed. Poor old Chief La Reynie was probably glad to go back to old-fashioned, comprehensible crime. It is estimated that, in the course of the investigation, 442 people were charged with crimes, of which 23 were banished and 34 executed. Louis lived until 1715, despite his paranoia.
