CANON EPISCOPI
ca 900-writer unknown. Made public by Regino of Prum, Abbot of
Treves. Arguing that belief in witches flying through the air is a
delusion. About 1140-an Italian monk, Gratian incorporated it into
canon law, the Concordance of Discordant Cannons (Decretum).
Possibly the oldest written text with reference to flying with the Goddess
Diana.
The Canon caused problems later for those who wanted to argue that witches were able to fly
through the air.
Bishops and their officials must labor with all their strength to
uproot thoroughly from their parishes the pernicious art of
sorcery and malefice invented by the Devil, and if they find a
man or woman follower of this wickedness to eject them foully
disgraced from the parishes. For the Apostle says, "A man that
is a heretic after the first and second admonition avoid." Those
are held captive by the Devil who, leaving their creator, seek
the aid of the Devil. And so Holy Church must be cleansed of
this pest. It is also not to be omitted that some wicked women,
perverted by the Devil, seduced by illusions and phatasms of
demons, believe and profess themselves, in the hours of the
night, to ride upon certain beasts with Diana, the goddess of
pagans, and an innumberable multitude of women, and in the
silence of the dead of the night to traverse great spaces of
earth, and to obey her commands as of their mistress, and to be
summoned to her service on certain nights. But I wish it were
they alone who perished in their faithlessness and did not draw
many with them into the destructiion of infidelity. For an
innumerable multitude, deceived by this false opinion, believe
this to be true, and so believing, wander from the right faith
and are involved in the error of the pagans when they think that
there is anything of divinity or power except the one God.
....()
Taken from Witches and Witchcraft, Rosemary Ellen Guiley.
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