Firetale

by Dante Graves

  Chapter 11: Judgment

  “Who’ll love the devil, who’ll sing his song?”

  Eagles of the Death Metal, “Kiss the Devil”

  Somewhere in Medieval Europe.

  Historians believe that the Inquisition, which began in 1184, was merely a tool of the state and the Church in the struggle for power over the minds of mortals and a way to eliminate the unwanted. That is the truth, but not the whole truth. The Inquisition officially fought against heretics and infidels until the nineteenth century, but those who suffered from its actions included not only mere mortals but also the devil’s seed, mongrels born of demons’ coition with mortal women. Over the centuries, with fire, sword, and cross, the Inquisition turned demionis into creatures of legend, mythical and incorporeal.

  The Church’s fight with mongrels began in France in the 12th century. The beginning of the war of the Lord’s servants against the devil’s spawn was quite mundane. In 1631, a priest named Urbain Grandier arrived in the town of Loudun. He was a well-known man but had not made a successful career. Grandier was educated, smart, and had good connections, but, alas, had two major drawbacks for a church minister: he loved young girls and openly criticized the authorities. The Church could turn a blind eye to priests’ venery as long as they did not flaunt their sins, but Grandier felt no need to hide his love affairs. Of course, it was difficult for a priest with the reputation of a fornicator to rise in the Church hierarchy. The monastery of Loudun was the last chance for Grandier to get out from under.

  The monastery was small, but two dozen nuns, Ursulines, were from noble families that at first generously donated to the church, and also had some political influence in France. Grandier hoped to persuade Mother Superior Jeanne des Anges to give him the position of canon, but it was too late. By the time Urbain arrived, she had already chosen Father Mignon, known for his piety. Grandier decided to get Mignon to resign, by telling the public about his sins.

  Urbain began to preach, and his words were full of stinging criticism of the clergy. The locals were thrilled with such bold speeches. Commoners loved Grandier, and people came from villages near Loudun to listen to him. Urbain gladly enjoyed the fruits of his popularity, charming local beauties, who were enthralled by the freethinker’s graceful speeches and sharp mind.

  Mignon and des Anges complained about Grandier to the ecclesiastical court, accusing him of debauchery and disrespect for the rules of the clergy, arguing that “in the church, he only gets down on one knee.” The churchmen sentenced Grandier to banishment from Loudun. But the priest appealed to the civil courts, and ultimately Urbain was freed from the charges. Believing that now nothing threatened his position in Loudun, the priest, who wanted revenge on des Anges and Mignon, went further in his preachings. Starting with the exposure of Mignon’s imaginary piety, Grandier finished with a pasquil on Armand de Richelieu, the Secretary of State and Head of Government.

  On hearing this, the cardinal was furious. Instigated by Richelieu, des Anges and Mignon accused Grandier of one of the worst crimes of the time: practicing witchcraft. In the monastery of the Ursulines, an epidemic of obsessions began, initiated, the nuns claimed, by Urbain, who had thrown a bouquet with a diabolical spell on it over the monastery fence. Day and night, from behind the walls of the monastery, came wild laughter and howling, and blasphemy and threats to the city were heard. When Mother Superior appeared in the town, there were stigmata on her hands. Des Anges told the townsfolk about terrible things, how nuns were rolling on the floor in fits of madness, growling like animals, and tearing their clothes as they prayed to Satan, not God. It was as if they had turned into sleepwalkers, and in a state of unconsciousness had called Grandier’s name.

  It got to the point that the Louvre became seriously worried. Events in Loudun, which had served before as a curious topic for idle chatter, began troubling the king and the court. Richelieu, acting as a true champion of the faith and with the support of the king, sent to Loudun the investigator Jean de Laubardemont, some exorcists to perform needed rituals, and doctors to help the nuns, who were physically exhausted by the epidemic. The Ursulines had begun to imitate possession even when des Anges permitted them to rest. Sometimes they did things that Mignon had not discussed with them—crawling on their stomachs, defecating in a residential area, reading passages from the Bible backwards.

  The moment they arrived in the town, the exorcists said that the Ursulines had reached such an extreme level of possession that driving out the demons of each nun individually was pointless. Instead, they needed to look for the person who had cursed them. Collecting evidence against Urbain, the exorcists interviewed the Ursulines who behaved strangely. After providing answers to all the questions, which they had memorized in advance, they suddenly began spitting and barking. The doctors diagnosed this as nervous stress associated with a long-term need to portray insanity. After a short investigation, de Laubardemont unmasked a devil worshiper to whom all the evidence pointed—Urbain Grandier. By order of the investigator, Grandier was arrested and thrown into prison.

  While Urbain was in prison, the townspeople, who had been so captivated by his preachings, sent a petition to the king asking for his release. But the commoners’ love, which Urbain liked to brag about, could not save him. Subjecting Grandier to torture, de Laubardemont found irrefutable proof of the priest’s guilt. A tiny barred window in his cell was laid with stones so Grandier could never get enough air. Ordinary people, according to the investigator, had suffocated, but the Devil was supporting the apostate’s life. One member of the commission sent by Richelieu held a red-hot iron crucifix against Grandier’s lips, forcing the priest to jerk his head back. In his records, de Laubardemont indicated that Urbain did not dare venerate the cross. This removed all doubt that Grandier was a sorcerer. Richelieu’s exorcists claimed that the weaker the apostate became in prison, the less the demons would manifest themselves in the nuns’ bodies. However, the girls, despite all entreaties, continued to simulate the attacks, much to the chagrin of de Laubardemont, who did not know how to calm the townsfolk. To pacify the people, the investigator sentenced Grandier to be burned at the stake, but without Urbain’s confession, which was required in cases of witchcraft and deals with the Devil.

  Urbain was provided the possibility of reconciliation with the Church. He needed to repent of his sins, and if he did, he would first be strangled with a garrote and then burned, but the nuns would not let him use this opportunity. Every time he tried to speak, they splashed water from a bucket into his face. Choking, Grandier could not say a word, and the investigator announced that the devil-worshipper had abandoned reconciliation. On August 18, 1634, Urban Grandier was burned alive.

  However, the nuns’ seizures did not end with the death of Grandier, as the exorcists had promised. Moreover, the epidemic had spread to the citizens of Loudun, and then to the surrounding villages. The newly possessed exhibited the same symptoms as the nuns. They sometimes spoke not with their own voices but with the voices of the demons inside them, who called Richelieu a fool who had bought into Lucifer’s lie, cursed the churchmen as hypocrites, and prophesied the torments of hell.

  Inspired by internecine intrigues, Richelieu, a practical man and a politician more than a servant of the Church, completely excluded the possibility that the Loudun events might have had a supernatural cause. It was important to the Cardinal to eliminate the arrogant priest, who had maligned him before the laity, and the charade of demonic possessions gave him the opportunity to legally use his power against Grandier.

  Epidemic possessions after the Grandier case surprised the entire European Church. Its servants could only guess if the Devil had been behind the Loudun events from the very beginning or intervened when opponents of the disgraced priest had celebrated their victory. Whatever it was, the story of Grandier, combined with his diatribes, seriously spoiled the reputation of the Church.

  To combat devilish mockery, the churchmen declared a real war on everything supernatural.
To strike the enemy even harder, Cardinal Antonio Marcello Barberini Seniore, Secretary of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition, suggested the use of those whom the Inquisition hunted—mediums and psychics. In the Middle Ages they also erroneously believed in the seed of the devil, though the people they burned at the stake along with witches, werewolves, and forest monsters were not demionis.

  Cardinal Barberini found psychics who could feel the supernatural to find monsters and beasts, even where they were hiding from angry Inquisitors, and demanded that they use their abilities to serve the Church. To save their own lives, almost all the psychics agreed. Many later regretted it. Helping the Church did not make their lives better. The Dominican monks, the most ardent of the inquisitors, called themselves the Lord’s dogs, and people who felt the magic, their bloodhounds. And, indeed, they treated the mediums like dogs. The psychics and mediums who worked for the Church spent the rest of their days in chains and dirt. They were tortured and humiliated. Many were blinded with a hot iron or had their tongues cut out, the Inquisitors believing that the loss of some physical senses would reinforce the sense of supernatural.

  Enchained and crippled, they went from town to town with the Inquisitors, finding more and more new victims. They did it only to save their own lives. The “bloodhounds” played a decisive role in the witch hunt across Europe, and in America they were secretly used during the Salem witch trials.

  The more efficiently the psychics worked and the more evil they helped to destroy, the less important they became to the Church. In 1782, in Switzerland, Anna Göldi, the last witch in Europe, was executed, and by the end of the 18th century, leprechauns and demons, werewolves and ghouls had finally turned into fairy tales to frighten naughty children. When the Inquisition had completed its task, its services were no longer needed, and by the middle of the 19th century, a formidable force that once had frightened even monarchs had become a relic of antiquity. The number of mongrels, which had once inhabited towns and forests by the thousands, decreased. And then Hell agreed to a deal.

  In an attempt to save the lives of the few surviving demionis, Lucifer made the Pactum with the Church, according to which he was obliged to shepherd everyone with even a drop of devil’s blood in their veins, and prevent them from harming people. Those who violated this agreement willingly, stupidly, or by order, would be destroyed. After the Pactum, the number of reported cases of possessions decreased. Now, most demionis are the descendants of those who survived the raids of the Holy Inquisition.

  The Church appointed Judges to oversee compliance with the Pactum. Judges were the descendants of the bloodhounds who once worked for the Inquisition. Many of the psychics died, unable to endure life in shackles. The Church treated those who survived cruelly. Among them were powerful mediums who could clearly sense the presence of the supernatural. These were bred like cattle, the Church hoping their offspring would have special talents. Most of the children were born without powers, but some had abilities that exceeded the previous generation’s. They still could not use magic, but their sense of the supernatural was heightened, and with these children, the Church created Judges.

  The Judges’ upbringing was harsh. They were raised to be physically and mentally prepared to murder ungodly creatures. Judges knew how to destroy virunas, find a cuegle, exhaust a genie. From childhood, they were like sponges soaking up hatred for the creatures of the Devil. They were taught to kill without regret or hesitation. Judges replaced those inquisitors who had chosen to fight the creatures of Hell as the best way to struggle for the purity of the faith. They became wanderers, moving from country to country, from town to town, in search of demionis. They ruthlessly hunted down and exterminated those who had broken the Pactum. They didn’t care if a mongrel had a mind or knew of the existence of the Pactum; a shred of evidence of guilt was enough to execute the sentence. If they found a mongrel, they watched it, and if they determined its guilt, they killed it. And then they moved on, by order or by their psychic senses.

  Hunting is still their purpose in life, and the number of their “trophies” is the main subject of their rare talks. They are educated, know languages and sciences, but best of all, they know the art of the hunt and how to kill. Some bloodhound descendants received not only heightened abilities, but also a bit of madness. Such are the most difficult to control, and these are the most dangerous Judges.