On Witches and Female Soothsayers

Sigmund: Since we are discussing the corruption and disturbance of the elements, I thought it would not be inappropriate to ask if they [demons] can also inflict diseases upon humans, and especially infants, and harm them with the help of demons.

Conrad: I have heard from many women how various illnesses have befallen children lying in their cradles. Indeed, sometimes a child appeared with a twisted nose, or another with an eye plucked out. Accursed women, when they were eventually caught, asserted and even confessed under torture that they had inflicted such things on the children out of envy for the parents, with the help of demons.

Sigmund: You have heard that I will not be satisfied with such confessions extorted through fear. What other reason or authority, therefore, can you bring forward?

Conrad: We have already learned above, on the authority of the first book of Job referring to Job 1:18-19, that the devil crushed Job's children by summoning a wind, and they died. Deign also to hear the Blessed Augustine in the twenty-first book of The City of God, chapter eighteen, where he says: "It is written that a heavy yoke is upon the sons of Adam from the day they come forth from their mother's womb until the day of their burial in the mother of all [the earth]." This must be fulfilled to such an extent that even little ones—though already released by the bath of rebirth the sacrament of Baptism from the bond of original sin original sin (originalis peccati): the Christian doctrine of inherited sin from Adam which alone held them—suffer many things, and some even suffer the attacks of malignant spirits. Behold, Augustine feels that children suffer the attacks of demons, etc. Likewise, the Blessed Jerome, in a letter to Paula concerning the death of Blaesilla original: "Bressille", says: "What is the reason that often two-year-olds and three-year-olds, still suckling at their mother's breasts, are corrupted by a demon?" etc. Behold, therefore, it is shown by Holy Scripture and the authority of the Holy Fathers that the devil sometimes has the power to corrupt children and infants and to harm them.

Sigmund: We have just spoken of infants. What, then, of the elderly and adults?

Conrad: We have seen many old men limping and crippled who asserted that this happened to them through the witchcraft witchcraft (maleficio): specifically harmful magic intended to cause physical injury of those accursed women.

Sigmund: And what does Scripture think...