The Hammer of Witches

Physical injuries are not invisible but are rather perceptible to the senses. Therefore, they can also be caused by demons. Furthermore, from the Scriptures, we see the injuries brought upon Job—where fire fell from heaven and consumed his household and flocks in a single blow, and a whirlwind striking the house killed his children—were works performed by a demon by himself, without any witch maleficus a male practitioner of harmful magic assisting, solely by divine permission. Therefore, by similar reasoning, this can apply to other harms usually ascribed to witches. This is also clear regarding the seven husbands of the virgin Sarah a reference to the Book of Tobit, where the demon Asmodeus kills Sarah's husbands on their wedding nights whom a demon killed.

Furthermore, whatever a lower power can do without the help of a higher power, a higher power can also do without the help of a lower power. But a lower power can stir up hailstorms and cause infirmities without the help of a higher power. For Albertus Magnus original: "albertus"; a 13th-century Dominican friar and polymath says in his On the Properties of Things that if sage is rotted in certain ways, as he describes there, and thrown into a fountain, it will cause marvelous storms in the air.

Furthermore, if it is argued that a demon uses a witch not out of necessity but because of the perdition spiritual ruin or damnation he seeks for her, the opposite is found in Aristotle’s Ethics, Book III: Malice is voluntary. He proves this by the fact that no one acts unjustly while voluntarily not wishing to be unjust, nor does one commit adultery while voluntarily not wishing to be incontinent. Because of this, legislators punish the wicked as people who voluntarily perform evil works. Therefore, if a demon acts through a witch, he acts through her as an instrument. And since an instrument depends on the will of the principal agent and does not act voluntarily, if he joins with her, the action should not be imputed to her, nor consequently should she be punished.

But on the contrary, some say he can effect nothing in the lower worlds without witches. First, regarding generation: every action occurs through contact. And because there is no contact between a demon and bodies, since he has nothing in common with them, he therefore uses some instrument, influencing it with the power of hurting through contact. Related to this is the idea that witchcraft can be done without the help of demons, as proven by the text and the Gloss standard medieval biblical commentary on Galatians 3: "O senseless Galatians, who has bewitched you original: "fascinauit" that you should not obey the truth?" The Gloss says some have burning eyes who, by their gaze alone, infect others, and especially children. Avicenna a famous Persian philosopher and physician also says this

in his On Nature, Book VI, the final chapter, saying: "Often the soul acts upon a foreign body just as it does upon its own, just as is the work of the bewitching eye original: "oculi fascinantis"; the evil eye and the working of the estimative power." original: "estimatio"; the mental faculty by which animals or humans perceive intentions or dangers, such as a sheep fearing a wolf instinctively Algazel a Persian theologian and philosopher also puts forward the same opinion in Book V of his Physics, Chapter 2.

Avicenna also thinks—though he does not hold to it in that specific place—that the imaginative power virtus ymaginatiua the faculty of the soul that forms and retains mental images can change foreign bodies even without sight; here he extends the power of the imagination too far. We understand the "imaginative power" here not as distinct from other internal sensory powers (such as common sense, phantasy, and estimation), but as including all those internal powers.

But hold this to be true: that such an imaginative power can transform the body to which it is joined—that is, the body in which it resides. For example, a man can walk upon a beam that is in the middle of a road. But if it were placed over deep water, he would not dare to walk upon it, because the form of falling would be impressed vehemently in his soul’s imagination. His physical matter and the power of his limbs obey this imagination, and they do not obey its contrary—namely, walking straight. In this regard, this change agrees with the eye of the bewitcher, in that it first changes its own body, but not a foreign body, which is the type of change we are now discussing.

Furthermore, if it is said that such a change is caused by a living body through the soul into another living body, the opposite is shown by the fact that blood flows from the wounds of a murdered person at the presence of the killer the medieval belief in 'cruentation,' where a corpse was thought to bleed if the murderer approached it. Therefore, even without the power of the soul, bodies can produce marvelous effects. Likewise, a living man passing near the corpse of a murdered person, even without sensing it, is shaken by terror.

Furthermore, just as natural things have certain hidden virtues virtutes occultas properties of objects that cannot be explained by the four elements (hot, cold, wet, dry), such as magnetism for which a reason cannot be assigned by man—such as the magnet attracting iron, and many things which Augustine enumerates in The City of God, Book XXI—so too women can use certain things to effect changes in foreign bodies without the help of demons, which also exceed our reason. And because they exceed it, we should not...