he Devil's mark was at one time believed to be a mark fixed upon a witch by the Devil at
his or her initiation. It was also called the sigillum diaboli or Devil's seal. Devil's marks
[stigmata diabolic] or the devil's seal [sigillum diabolic] occur in nearly all reports of witches
or witch trials and illustrate how perverted intelligence and hysterical stupidity could misinterpret
natural phenomena and so bring about the murder of thousands of men and women and children.
Any sensible person may make a case that without doubt it would be extremely unwise of the
Devil to be helpful enough to mark witches in this way, so that they may be more effortlessly
exposed. To counter this line of reasoning, the witch-hunters maintained that the Devil's mark
was of a very specialized characteristic, and it took quite a significant expertise and familiarity
to find it. Consequently, a veritable society of witch-prickers, as they were eventually to be
called, existed at one time in Scotland. These men extensively circulated the principle and
idea that witches were marked in a very clever, often invisible style; but that on the other
hand, the Devil's mark could be revealed by them, because it was numb and without feeling, and
when a pin was pushed in it wouldn't bleed. An alleged witch would therefore be handed over to
the witch-pricker, who would strip her naked, sometimes in public, and proceed to search her
for the Mark of the Devil. As these men were paid by results, and made a livelihood of their
trade, it may be safe to say that they would rarely, if ever, fail to find something that they
would say was the Devil's mark; unless, of course, they were well-bribed not to do so.
The devil's mark was often confused with the witch's mark, and later witch hunters accepted
either as sufficient proof to establish witchcraft. The terms came to be used interchangeably
throughout the persecutions, even by some demonologists; the distinction was that the devil's
mark resembled a scar, birthmark, or tattooing, whereas the witch's mark was a protuberance on
the body at which the familiars were supposed to suck - an essentially English conception.
Some of the witch-prickers made use of a trick bodkin, which would only appear to penetrate
the skin, when in fact the point was retracted inside the hilt. So by means of a simple conjuring
device they seemed to the horrified onlookers (who, impelled by religious duty, had flocked to
see a naked woman being tortured), to have driven a point into her flesh, without her feeling
anything or any blood issuing forth. If they had previously been using a real bodkin, which
caused sufficient agony and flow of blood to convince the spectators of the seriousness of the
trial, and then by sleight of hand switched to the fake one, the effect was very striking and
realistic.
According to the theories current in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the devil
sealed the compact with the witches by giving them some mark of identification on the body,
just like a rancher branding his cattle. One of the earliest writers to stress these marks was
the famous Calvinist theologian, Lambert Daneau, in his Les Sorciers (1564), translated into
English as A Dialogue of Witches (1575). There is not a single witch, said Daneau, "upon whom
[the devil] doth not set some note or token of his power and prerogative over them." Judges
should always, when suspects are presented to them, "pull [out hair] and shave, where occasion
shall serve, all the body over, lest haply the mark may lurk under the hair in any place."
Sinistrari, one of the later demonologists, similarly believed:
"The demon imprints on [the witches] some mark, especially on those whose constancy he suspects. That mark, however, is not always of the same shape or figure; sometimes it is the likeness of a hare, sometimes like a toad's foot, sometimes a spider, a puppy, a dormouse. It is imprinted on the most secret parts of the body; with men, under the eyelids or perhaps under the armpits, or on the lips or shoulders, the anus, or elsewhere; with women, it is generally on the breasts or private parts. Now, the stamp which makes these marks is simply the devil's talon." (De Demonialitate)
Eventually, after they had caused many executions, the cheats of these rogues became so notorious
that in 1662 the practice of 'pricking for witchcraft' was forbidden by law, unless it was done
by special Order in Council; and when some of the men concerned received prison sentences for
their frauds, the practice died out.
However, in the days of witch-hunting, almost any natural mark or peculiarity could be
passed off as the Devil's mark, if someone was determined to convict a person as a witch.
The descriptions of this supposed sigillum diaboli were vague and variable. Sometimes it was
said to be a blue spot, sometimes something like the print of a toad's foot, sometimes a
physical peculiarity of almost any kind. Thus, when King Henry VIII had fallen out of love
with Anne Boleyn, he accused her among other things of witchcraft, and declared that a certain
natural oddity of her person was the Devil's mark.
Finding such marks was the best proof of a witch and was in itself sufficient to justify
torture (as Nehring wrote in 1666) or sentence of death (Scot, Discovery of Witchcraft, 1584).
Cotton Mather threw his weight with the witch prickers:
"I add, why should not witch marks be searched for? Divers weighty writers describe the properties, the qualities of those marks. I never saw any of those marks, but it is doubtless not impossible for a surgeon, when he sees them, to say what are magical."
Most human beings have some blemish, which could be considered a devil's mark. Warts, moles,
and various kinds of nevus (forming spots or elevations of red or purplish color) are common,
as are other kinds of dry tough excrescences on the skin, and the various species of corns. Old
wounds might leave scarred tissue. Any unusual pigmentation would be interpreted as a curious
shape; a later age would see strawberries in birthmarks.
There are various traditions of what this peculiarity was. One account says that Anne Boleyn
had a rudimentary extra finger on one hand; another states that she had an extra nipple on one
breast. Whatever it was, Henry seized on it to declare "he had made this marriage seduced by
witchcraft; and that this was evident because God did not permit them to have any male issue".
The extra nipple or 'witch's teat' was supposed to be a particularly certain and damning
mark of the Devil; because this was bestowed upon a witch in order that she could give suck to
her familiar, when the latter took animal or reptile form. Sometimes even male witches were
accused of maintaining familiars in this way. 'Evidence' of this nature was particularly
frequent in witch trials in Britain. The Act of Parliament of King James I against witchcraft
specifically mention those who "consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward any
evil and wicked spirit to or for any intent of purpose"; making it an offence punishable by
death.
Now, the fact is that the occurrence of extra nipples on the human body is quite well known
to medical science. It is not common; but it is by no means such an unheard-of thing as people
might suppose, and it is a perfectly natural.
Such supernumerary nipples, as doctors term them, usually occur on what is called 'the milk
line', an imaginary line running through the normal location of the breasts on either side, up
past the armpit to the shoulder, and downwards from the breasts towards the pelvic region.
However, in some cases, though more rarely, such nipples are found in other places on the body
also. Medical authorities have estimated that supernumerary nipples can be found in from one to
two per cent of the population.
Such natural features were considered potential devil's marks, made to signalize the recipient's
subjection, his constant fear and obedience, to the Devil. The experts held that if a man or
woman, knowing the danger of being found with such a mark, consented to be so branded, he had
voluntarily entered into a pact with the Devil and were therefore a witch. The priest Gaufridi
in 1611 confessed: "These marks were made as a sign that I shall be a good and faithful servant
to the Devil all my life long."
The marks were sought in any part of the body, perhaps on the left shoulder (according to
Boguet), or, especially in England, on a finger. A victim of Inquisitor Jacquier (about 1450)
had on his hip a mark made by the devil's hoof. But if the mark was not immediately visible,
the witch prickers pried into more intimate hiding places, as Del Rio suggested in his Disquisitionum
Magicarum (1599), searching the sexual and excretory organs. To assist discovery, as well as to
expose hidden amulets, the witch was generally shaved round the genitals, often in public. At
North Berwick, the witches participated in a sort of ceremony, at which "the devil doth lick
them with his tongue in some privy part of their body, before he doth receive them to be his
servants, which mark commonly is given them under the hair in some part of their body." When
Agnes Sampson, one of the accused, was shaved, "the devil's mark was found upon her privities."
In 1658, another Scottish witch, Margaret Taylor, at Alloa, confessed that the devil, "in the
likeness of a young man with gray clothes and a blue cap . . . gave her his mark . . . in her
secret member."
Jacques Fontaine, doctor to King Henry IV of France, in his Des Marques des sorciers et de
la réele possession que le diable prend sur le corps des hommes (1611), maintained that
"writers . . . who say that it is difficult to distinguish devil's marks from natural
blemishes, from a carbuncle, or from impetigo, clearly show that they are not good doctors."
Presumably one of the best-educated and most scientific men in France at the beginning of the
seventeenth century, Dr. Fontaine gave details of how the devil made these marks.
"Some say that Satan makes these marks on them with a hot iron and a certain unguent which he applies under the skin of witches. Others say that the devil marks the witches with his finger, when he appears in human form or as a spirit. If it were done with a hot iron, it would necessarily follow that on the part so marked there would be a scar, but the witches testify that they have never seen a scar over the mark. . . . But it is not necessary to prove this, for the devil, who does not lack knowledge of medications and has the best of them, has only to mortify that place. As for the scar, the devil is such a skillful worker that he can place the hot iron on the body without causing any scar."
Fontaine was one of the four doctors appointed to examine Father Louis Gaufridi, the priest
charged with witchcraft, on whose body he found three devil's marks.
A famous case in medical history is that of a woman called Therese Ventre, who was written
about by two French scientists in 1827. Madame Ventre not only had two normal breasts, but an
extra breast on the outside of her thigh, which was sufficiently developed to give milk. A
contemporary picture shows her holding a baby in her arms and feeding it in the normal way,
while another small child is taking milk from the breast on her thigh. If this lady had lived
a couple of centuries previously, she would certainly have been condemned as a witch.
As might be expected, a wart or corn would not bleed and would be insensitive to pricking
with a needle; such a reaction proved witchery. An old scar might be similarly insensitive.
Guazzo, in his Compendium Maleficarum, related such an instance at Brindisi in November 1590:
"When Claudia Bogarta was about to be tormented, she was shaved to the skin, as the custom is, so that a scar was revealed on the top of her bare brow. The inquisitor then suspecting the truth, namely, that it was a mark made by the devil's claw, which had before been covered by her hair, ordered a pin to be thrust deep into it. And when this was done, she neither felt any pain, nor was the slightest drop of blood seen at the wound. Yet she persisted to deny the truth, saying that the insensitivity [torporam] was caused a long time ago by a blow from a stone."
Later, she was tortured until she confessed. A refinement of the visible devil's marks was
the invisible devil's marks. Pricking with a needle until some insensitive spot, which did not
bleed, was allegedly found could also discover these.
The tremendous emotional shock of being publicly stripped and examined amidst the jeering
of a crowd of morbid curiosity-seekers could well produce temporary anesthesia. One such
example was spotted by a perspicacious judge at the 1649 witch trial at Newcastle-on-Tyne,
promoted by a roving professional "finger man" who was ultimately exposed, but not before he
had caused the death of 220 persons, for each of whom the authorities paid him at least twenty
shillings:
"The said reputed witch finder acquainted Lieutenant Colonel Hobson that he knew women, whether they were witches or no by their looks, and when the said person was searching of a personable and good-like woman, the said Colonel replied and said, Surely this woman is none and need not be tried. But the Scotsman said she was, for the town said she was, and therefore he would try her. And presently in sight of all the people, [he] laid her body naked to the waist, with her clothes over her head, by which fright and shame, all her blood contracted into one part of her body. And then he ran a pin into her thigh, and then suddenly let her coats fall, and then demanded whether she had nothing of his in her body but did not bleed. But she being amazed replied little. Then he put his hand up her coats and pulled out the pin, and set her aside as a guilty person and child of the Devil. And [he] fell to try others, whom he made guilty.
"Lieutenant Colonel Hobson, perceiving the alteration of the foresaid woman, by her blood settling in her right parts, caused that woman to be brought again, and her clothes pulled up to her thigh, and required the Scot to run the pin into the same place, and then it gushed out of blood, and the said Scot cleared her, and said she was not a child of the Devil." [See further, Pricking.]
One or two orthodox demonologists discounted the importance of the devil's mark. Del Rio
argued that devil's marks were not always insensitive, and sometimes real witches might pretend
to feel pain when pricked, a deception against which other authorities warned (e.g., Michaëlis
in 1582). Binsfeld, in his De Confessionibus Maleficorum (1589), suggested examiners might
imagine a mark; and if the Devil knew his followers could be so easily recognized, he would not
insist on the stigma (hence the development of the theory of invisible marks). Del Rio agreed
on this point with Binsfeld and added that the mark was often of short duration, and that
innocent people with birthmarks or moles were sometimes unjustly punished.
Binsfeld and Del Rio did not understand what dangerous heresy lay in their slight demurrals.
One grain of common sense might have destroyed the whole theory of witchcraft. Therefore, against
these two demonologists, whose opinions exercised some influence, a professor of law at the
University of Cologne, Peter Ostermann, wrote (in 1629) a whole treatise on the necessity and
validity of devil's marks, drawing heavily upon and summarizing all the earlier authorities
(e.g., Bodin, Remy, De Lancre). Not one person could be produced, he said, who, having the mark,
had lived a blameless life; no one convicted of sorcery had ever been found without the mark.
It was the proof of proofs and more infallible than either accusations or confessions. His
Commentarius Juridicus was a summary of both popular and official opinions at the height of the
witch belief.
References and Notes:
- Fontaine, Jacques. Discours des marques des sorcier et de la réelle possession que le diable prend sur le corps des hommes. (Lyons, 1611; Arras, [c. 1850])
- Jordanaius, Joannes. Disputatio Brevis et Categorica de Proba Stigmatica. (Cologne, 1630)
- Ostermann, Peter. Commentarius Juridicus. (Cologne, 1629)
- Sinistrari, Ludovico Maria. De Daemonialitate et Incubis et Succubis. (Latin with French translation, Paris, 1875, Limited edition)
- Daneau, Lambert. Les sorciers. ([? Geneva] 1564; Deux traités, Paris, 1579)
- Daneau, Lambert. (English translation by R. W. [? Thomas Twyne]) A Dialogue of Witches. ([London] 1575)
- Sinistrari, Ludovico Maria. (Latin with English translation by Isidore Lisieux) Demoniality or Incubi and Succubi. (Paris, 1879, ltd. ed.)
- Sinistrari, Ludovico Maria. (English translation by Montague Summers) Demoniality. (London, 1927)
- Gardiner, Ralph. England's Grievance Discovered in Relation to the Coal Trade. (London, 1655, 1749)