Tableau de l'inconstance des mauvais anges et démons  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Related e

Wikipedia Wiktionary Shop Featured: Rhombicuboctahedron by Leonardo da Vinci

Tableau de l'inconstance des mauvais anges et démons (1612) is a book by Pierre de Lancre.

Quoting from the Tableau at length, P.G. Maxwell-Stuart clarifies De Lancre's legal orientation on the evidence of witchcraft in Labourd:

The confessions of male and female witches are in agreement with indicia so strong that one can maintain they are genuine, real, and neither deceptive nor illusory. This relieves judges of any misgiving they may have. For when they confess to infanticide, parents find their children have been suffocated or their blood completely sucked out of them. When they confess to digging up corpses and violating the sacred nature of graves, one discovers that bodies have been torn from their graves and are no longer found where they had been put. When they confess they have given a piece of their clothing to Satan as a pledge, one finds this tell-tale scrap upon their person. When they say they have cast evil on such and such a person or animal, (and sometimes they confess they have cured them), it is self-evident they have been subject to malefice, they have been wounded, or they have been cured. Consequently, this is not an illusion. Here is the first rule which makes us see clearly what the witch has done, either through her confession strengthened by compelling indicia and very great, very strong presumptions, or by irreproachable witnesses. (Tableau Book 6, discourse 5, section 5, in Maxwell-Stuart's Witch Hunters: Professional Prickers, Unwitchers and Witch Finders of the Renaissance, 2003, 1st ed., p. 33)

See also

• Witch-hunt
• Sorginak (Basque witches)
• Inquisition
• Witchcraft and children