Extract from "The Geography of Witchcraft" by Montague Summers, London,
Throughout the whole history of Witchcraft there is no history so hideous as that of Madeleine Bavent, Mathurin Picard, and Thomas Boulle. Nowhere have I read so hideous a confession. The details are so utterly abominable that even the soul of a priest steeped in the fires of the confessional, whom no human aberration can shock or surprise, shudders and sickens at the dark mass of turpitudes which are as tlic stench and vomit of the pit of hell.
In 1616 at Louviers, a busy little old-world town of Normandy situate on the river Eure, some seven-and-twenty miles from Rouen, was founded the convent of S. Louis IX and S. Elizabeth of Hungary, for a community of Regular Tertiaries of the Third Franciscan Order. Their first director was an old priest named David, shortly to be succeeded by Mathurin Picard, the vicar of Mesnil-Jourdain, whose curate, Thomas Boulle, assisted him, and upon his death in 1842 was installed with full responsibility in his room.
By some unhappy fate, it was more than mere chance, without design-all three were adherents of the Manichees, concealing their Satanism under the disguise of orthodox sanctity. From the commencement they set to work to corrupt the hapless religious whose faithful pastors and guardians they should have been, and instead of lifting their souls to heaven they dragged them down to the nethermost inferno.
As early as l634 there were indications that something was seriously amiss. Two or three Sisters were seized with fits of an abnormal nature, now standing rigid in some paralytic trance, now foaming on the ground in an epilepsy and writhing as some boneless contortionist of the circus arena. Matters, however, seem to have been hushed up for a while, although the infamous Picard ran some danger of being exposed. He was, in truth, the Chief Officer and Grand-Master of all the witches and devil-worshippers throughout the district. Having seduced and entirely subjected to his will an unfortunate nun, Madeleine Bavent, he used her as his instrument, his associate, and intermediary.
There can be no doubt, I think, that Picard must have possessed extraordinary Hypnotic powers, and Madeleine Bavent is probably not to be accounted morally responsible for the orgy of crime into which she was plunged. The details are known from the confession which she wrote in prison at the instance of the Abbe de Marets, an Oratorian, who helped and counselled her in those hours of penitence and remorse.
Several nights a week she was awakened just before Matins, that is to say about midnight, but one of the nuns, and conducted to the Sabbat. It is clear that Picard had provided himself with false keys so that he could gain admission to any part of the cloister at any hour.
She declared that she never used any ointment or recited any spell, but that she was conveyed to the Sabbat by the power of Picard without knowing how she arrived there, obviously in a state of trance. The exact place where the Sabbat took place she could not identify, but it was presumably in some house not far from the convent.
It was a long and narrow room, lighted by flares and the candles upon the Devil's altar which had been erected there. This certainly suggests a cellar. A number of persons dressed as priests were present, and some in grotesque masking habits, half-animal, half-human. She never assisted at any adoration of the demon in the form of a goat, and the rites were seldom followed by a banquet. The Black Mass of Satan was continually said at the altar.
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