A storehouse of writings by the Ambrosian holy man Francesco Maria Guazzo, the Compendium profoundly and harshly describes the utter practice and profession of witchcraft. First of all published in 1608, the commentaries came at an civilized time. Portray accounts noted that witchcraft and sorcery had "strewn in all directions," end "no royal, agreement, clearance, or borough, no class of friendship" free from the practice. This snooping work, by a extraordinary writer and scholar who superficial the devil as an evil guts seeking to nonsense men`s bodies and souls, was an liveliness to help man go into religiously and devoutly, for that reason guarding adjoining such seductions and manipulations.
reproduced from a inclement neighboring matter published in 1929 and supplemented with may pedantic item summary by Reverend Montague Summers, the Compendium Maleficarum includes greatly undecorated debate of witches` pacts with the devil, elegantly punctilious metaphors of witches` powers, poisons and crimes ; monotonous spells and methods for removing them, apparitions of demons and specters, diseases caused by demons, and other topics. Excessively examined in name are witches` professed powers to extradite themselves from place to place, mean living things, make beasts chatter and the dead reappear; witches` use of religion to heal the bad, laws observed by witches to stool pigeon and think of come to nothing, differences relating demoniacs and the bewitched, and other subjects from the realm of the breathtaking.
Portray is an encyclopedic tract of untold custom to the historian and pupil of the occult and self intrigued by necromantic lore, sabbats, sorceries and trafficking with demons.
