Venefica

Disclaimer

This is NOT a page about Wiccans or neo-pagans, and I do not advocate the belief that Wiccans are Satan-worshippers and/or baby-killers. I am well aware that they are not. This is a starting point for historical research into the great witch craze of 1100-1700 AD. And please, don't ask me for spells.

Venefica

A venefica is a witch who uses philtres and poisons (Wedeck 140).

Those skilled in the art of poisons were greatly feared and were believed to possess supernatural powers, with which they could both heal and kill. There is no reason to assume, however, that these specialists acted collectively, worshipped the Devil, or made pacts with evil spirits. Indeed, veneficium was orignially altogether distinct from the ecclesiastical notion of diabolical witchcraft. For example, the Benedictine abbot Johann Trithemius, author of Antipalus Maleficorum (1555), distinguished between those practitioners who caused injury by using deadly drinks, herbs, and roots, and witches who were in league with the Devil. According to Weyer's De Praestigiis (1568), "Witches [are] poor ignorant creatures, old and powerless, who without instruction imagine themselves, in their desperation and degradation, to be the cause of the evils which God sends to man and beast. Unlike magicians, they have no books, nor exorcisms, nor signs, nor other monstrous things, nor teachers except a corrupt imagination or a mind diseased by the devil. They are also to be distinguished from Veneficae, who injure men and beasts by poisons swallowed or rubbed in, or by their breath." Pierre de Lancre also recognized two types of witches: those who dealt in poisons and botanical drugs, and those who performed their occult feats miraculously with the aid of Satan (Sidky 204).

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Venefica is copyrighted 1997-1998 to Shantell Powell.