Machielsen, Jan  ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8492-0263 and de Rolley, Thibaut Maus
2026.
The mythmaker of the sabbat: Pierre de Lancre's Tableau de l'inconstance des mauvais anges et démons.
Machielsen, Jan, ed.
The Science of Demons: Early Modern Authors Facing Witchcraft and the Devil,
Routledge,
pp. 272-286.
(10.4324/9781003476153-24)
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Abstract
It is the summer of 1609, and an observer watches the children of Saint-Jean-de-Luz and Ciboure play. The two seafaring communities on opposing banks of the river Nivelle were connected by a bridge, and the observer may well have stood on it. At least he saw naked children play in the water below. Their ability to swim as the river water crashed into the Atlantic Ocean amazed him, disappearing as they did ‘a hundred thousand times in these great heaps, which were white like snowflakes, and by their very whiteness were like a headband which blinded us’ (46). 1 So rough was the sea that its movements were ‘capable of drowning the strongest courage of the most constant philosopher of the world’ (46). Yet, some children even dived head-down from the bridge in pursuit of some small piece of coin, only to emerge 500 feet from where they went in. To us this scene may appear idyllic, perhaps even glistening in the summer sun, but our observer, the Bordeaux judge Pierre de Lancre (1556-1631), saw something dark and sinister stirring underneath the surface with children at the very root of an evil conspiracy. 2
| Item Type: | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Date Type: | Publication |
| Status: | Published |
| Schools: | Schools > Global Humanities Schools > History, Archaeology and Religion |
| Publisher: | Routledge |
| ISBN: | 9781032759135 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Sep 2026 10:15 |
| URI: | https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/189264 |
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