The Encyclopedia Of Demons And Demonology

30 Black Mass
One famous form of the Black Mass was the Mass of
St. Secaire, said to have originated in the Middle Ages in
Gascony for the purpose of cursing an enemy to death
by a slow, wasting illness. Montague Summers provides
a description of it in The History of Witchcraft and
Demonology:
The mass is said upon a broken and desecrated altar in
some ruined or deserted church where owls hoot and
mope and bats flit through the crumbling windows,
where toads spit their venom upon the sacred stone. The
priest must make his way thither late attended only by
an acolyte of impure and evil life. At the first stroke of
eleven he begins; the liturgy of hell is mumbled backward,
the canon said with a mow and a sneer; he ends
just as midnight tolls.
The Mass of St. Secaire requires a triangular black
host and brackish water drawn from a well in which the
corpse of an unbaptized baby has been tossed.
History
Magical uses of the Mass and alleged perversions of the
Mass are almost as old as Christianity itself. In the second
century, St. Irenaeus accused the Gnostic teacher
Marcus of perverting the Mass. The Gelasian Sacramentary
(ca. sixth century) documents masses to be said for
a variety of magical purposes, including weather control,
fertility, protection, and love divination. Masses
also were said with the intent to kill people; these were
officially condemned as early as 694 by the Council of
Toledo.
The magical significance of the Black Mass lies in the
belief that the Holy Mass involves a miracle: the transubstantiation
of the bread and wine into the body and blood
of Christ. If the priest, as magician, can effect a miracle
in a Holy Mass, then he surely can effect magic in a mass
used for other purposes. Priests who attempted to subvert
the Holy Mass for evil purposes, such as cursing a person
to death, were condemned by the Catholic Church as
early as the seventh century.
Magical uses of the Mass increased in the Middle
Ages. The beginnings of the organized Black Mass as part
of Devil worship coincides with the expansion of the Inquisition
and rising public fears about the evil powers of
witches. The first witch trials to feature accusations of
sabbats, Devil’s PACTs, and Black Masses all occurred in
the 14th century.
In 1307, the powerful and wealthy Order of the Knights
Templar was destroyed on accusations of conducting
blasphemous rites in which Christ was renounced and
idols made of stuffed human heads were worshipped. The
Knights Templar also were accused of spitting and trampling
upon the cross and worshipping the Devil in the
shape of a black cat. Members of the order were arrested,
tortured, and executed.
In 1440, GILLES DE RAIS, a French baron, was arrested
and accused of conducting Black Masses in the cellar
of his castle in order to gain riches and power. He was
charged with kidnapping, torturing, and murdering more
than 140 children as sacrifices. He was convicted and
executed.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, priests in France were
arrested and executed for conducting Black Masses. Many
of the masses were theatrical events intended for social
shock and protest against the church; the seriousness of
the actual “Devil worship” was dubious. For example, in
1500, the cathedral chapter of Cambrai held Black Masses
in protest against their bishop. A priest in Orléans, Gentien
le Clerc, tried in 1614–15, confessed to performing
a “Devil’s mass,” which was followed by drinking and a
wild sexual orgy.
Black Masses figured in high-profile POSSESSION cases,
such as the LOUVIERS POSSESSIONS in 1647. Ursuline nuns
said they had been bewitched and possessed and were
forced by chaplains—led by Abbé Thomas Boulle—to
participate nude in Black Masses, defiling the cross, trampling
upon the host, and having sex with demons.
The height of the theatrical, anti-Catholic Black Mass
was reached in the late 17th century, during the reign of
Louis XIV, who was criticized for his tolerance of witches
and sorcerers. It became fashionable among nobility to
hire priests to perform erotic Black Masses in dark cellars.
The chief organizer of these rites was Catherine
Deshayes, known as “La Voisin,” a witch who told fortunes
and sold love philters. La Voisin employed a cadre
of priests who performed the masses, including the ugly
and evil Abbé Guiborg, who were gold-trimmed and lacelined
vestments and scarlet shoes.
The mistress of Louis XIV, the marquise de Montespan,
sought out the services of La Voisin because she feared
the king was becoming interested in another woman. Using
Montespan as a naked altar, Guiborg said three Black
Masses over her, invoking Satan and his demons of lust
and deceit, BEELZEBUB, ASMODEUS, and ASTAROTH, to grant
whatever Montespan desired. While incense burned, the
throats of children were slit and their blood poured into
chalices and mixed with flour to make the host. Whenever
the mass called for kissing the altar, Guiborg kissed
Montespan. He consecrated the host over her genitals and
inserted pieces in her vagina. The ritual was followed by
an orgy. The bodies of the children were later burned in a
furnace in La Voisin’s house.
When the scandal of the Black Masses broke, Louis
arrested 246 men and women, many of them some of
France’s highest-ranking nobles, and put them on trial.
Confessions were made under torture. Most of the nobility
received only jail sentences and exile in the countryside.
Thirty-six of the commoners were executed, including La
Voisin, who was burned alive in 1680.
Louis kept Montespan out of the trials, but she suffered
great humiliation and disgrace. When Louis’ queen,
Maria Theresa, died in 1683, he married another woman,
Madame de Maintenon.