Girolamo Folengo, Anti-Witch Writer

In 1519, Girolamo Folengo wrote the decidedly paranoid Macarronea. In it, Folengo says:

Not only do old hags bestride cats and goats and pigs, but many dignitaries too, and civic officials and those who administer justice to the people in the august senate range themselves to be governed under Gulfora's sway. They observe the days of Jupiter; they anoint their limbs, hurrying to pay court to the Mistress, who is called Gulfora.

Folengo goes on to describe a so-called academy of witchcraft:

There is another spot, thrice one hundred arms long, where a swarm of old hags teach alas! how many maidens. A thousand old witches, as instructors do, reveal the rites that must be learned: how to achieve their wishes by yielding to Venus: how to anoint themselves and produce thunder in the sky; how to blight crops and vines by hailstorm; how to change their bodies into different forms (Wedeck 126, 157).

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Girolamo Folengo, Anti-Witch Writer copyrighted 1996-1998 to Shantell Powell.