Friar Bernardino, Witch-Finder of Sienna
Friar Bernardino, an intinerant preacher, made a decisive contribution to the later treatment and identification of witches. He railed against the old women who supposedly accompanied Herodius on Epiphany night. (Herodias, also known as Aradia, Diana, or Holda, is a lunar goddess who theoretically flies through the air at nights with cannibalistic witches.) What these elderly women actually did was help women who were sick, women in labour, and children who were bewitched. Bernardino claimed these women were instead subjects of Satan, and cases to be treated individually.
In 1427, Bernardino was charged with heresy, not because of his witch beliefs, but because he wanted to create a cult based on the name of Jesus. Pope Martin V ordered him to Rome. There, Bernardino's beliefs were ruled orthodox and he was released. He was allowed to preach again on the condition that he did not exhibit tablets with Jesus' name on them for worship.
Later on in the same year, Bernardino was able to find a woman who collaborated his Herodias stories. Her name was Finicella, and she claimed to have killed over thirty babies by sucking their blood. Bernardino then commenced preaching of an organized sect that killed babies and transformed themselves into animals, a belief fueled by the popular notion of conspiracies led by the Devil. The sabbat concept implies conspiracy: witches gather together to share veneration of Satan.
Bernardino died in 1444.
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Friar Bernardino, Witch-Finder of Sienna copyrighted 1996-1998 to Shantell Powell.