Symbolic Conflict and Ritual Agency at the Vauderie d’Arras

Symbolic Conflict and Ritual Agency at
the Vauderie d’Arras1

Matthew Champion, Queen Mary, University of London

At the Dominican chapter general in Langres in 1459, a Franciscan
hermit, Robinet de Vaux, was charged with participating in a heretical
‘synagogue ’, a gathering of heretics who worshipped demons.2 Armed

with evidence from Robinet’s trial, the Dominican inquisitor of Arras
Pierre le Broussart arrested Deniselle Grenier, a woman whom Robinet
had seen in Amiens, Douai and Arras.3 The evidence that Deniselle

provided to the inquisition in turn implicated Jean Lavite, a native of
Arras curiously named the ‘Abbe´ de peu de sens’ (‘Abbot of little

sense’). The Abbe´ was probably a leader of an urban confraternity; he

was apparently literate, a painter, and a composer of ballades in
honour of the Virgin Mary.4 Jean was arrested on 25 February 1460 and

charged with participating in a heretical sect of devil worshippers who

performed magic with the aid of demons. His evidence led to a series
of arrests and executions in Arras and to a thirty-year legal, political

and theological fracas which eventually drew the highest echelons of

power into its orbit. It is this series of events that became known as the
Vauderie d’Arras.

The word vauderie, and its cognate noun, vaudois, had originally

been used to describe the Waldensians, the heretical sect which arose
in Lyon in the later twelfth century.5 In the course of the fifteenth

century, Waldensianism (vauderie) gradually came to be one term for
a new heretical sect that performed magic with the aid of the Devil.6

In the documents surrounding the Vauderie d’Arras, the word vauderie

is used to describe the nocturnal meetings of these heretical vaudois.
Vauderie, by extension, also came to refer to the entire episode of the

Arras trials. The main sources for the events of the Vauderie are two

contrasting texts, the anonymous Recollectio casus, status et condicionis

Cultural History 3.1 (2014): 1–26
DOI: 10.3366/cult.2014.0052
f Edinburgh University Press
www.euppublishing.com/cult

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Cultural History

Valdensium ydolatrum … (hereafter Recollectio) and the Me´moires sur le
re´gne de Philippe le Bon duc de Bourgogne by the minor nobleman Jacques
du Clercq (hereafter Me´moires). The Recollectio is a treatise which
emerged out of the trials themselves, and was probably written by a
member of the Arras inquisition.7 It had a relatively small circulation.8
Du Clercq’s Me´moires contain descriptions of the executions of the
vaudois and records of the trial sermons which detail the sect’s
practices.9 Despite du Clercq’s obvious distrust of the Arras inquisitors,
his descriptions of vaudois’s gatherings and of the executions which
followed the trial intersect with those of the Recollectio.10

Earlier historians of the Vauderie d’Arras, such as Henry Charles Lea
and Otto Cartellieri, fashioned the ‘events’ of the trials into elegant
and compelling narrative histories.11 Gordon Singer’s 1974 thesis,
‘La Vauderie d’Arras, 1459–1491: An Episode of Witchcraft in Later
Medieval France’, continued this narrative mode, providing the most
thorough and useful synthesis of the events of the Vauderie.12 The most
significant recent study of the Vauderie is Franck Mercier’s La Vauderie
d’Arras: une chasse aux sorcie`res a` l’automne du Moyen Aˆ ge (2005).13
Mercier’s groundbreaking account has laid strong interpretive and
theoretically informed foundations for understanding the Vauderie
within a broader cultural history. For Mercier, drawing particularly
on Michel Foucault’s historicization of disciplinary regimes, the
inquisitorial rituals of punishment were designed to construct the
‘truth ’ of the Vauderie and to cement ecclesiastical and state power.14
The actions of the accused at their execution destabilized inquisitorial
truth and power.15

The aim of this article is to extend Mercier’s account through thickly
textured descriptions of the particular symbolic vocabularies and
actions which were used and appropriated by the accused vaudois
and the Arras inquisitors. Particular ritual actions in Arras achieved
powerful effects through the activation of deeply established symbolic
structures of Christian social and cosmic order. In these moments of
ritual agency, historical actors in often desperate situations used and
interpreted symbols to construct conflicting narratives of pasts,
presents and futures for particular audiences, from accused heretics
to inquisitors, and from the thronged crowds gathered at judicial
rituals to God.

***

Within the first year of the Arras trials, three sets of executions took
place, each described by Jacques du Clercq in his Me´moires.16 In du
Clercq’s account, the punishment rituals all follow the same structure.

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Symbolic Conflict and Ritual Agency at the Vauderie d’Arras

The accused vaudois, dressed in paper mitres decorated with images of
their homage to the Devil, were brought to the bishop of Arras’s
palace, where a large platform had been erected. Church services were
suspended; a large crowd arrived, some from as far as twelve leagues
away. An extensive trial sermon was preached outlining in detail the
activities of the vaudois, particularly their ‘synagogue ’ in the woods
outside Arras.17 The accused were then asked if they confessed to the
crime of vauderie, to which they answered yes. Following the sentence
they were led away to execution.

The public punishment was designed to effect a ritual transformation
and to insert the condemned vaudois into well-established narratives
of heretical behaviour – to create, in the words of John Arnold,
an ‘autonomous confessing subject’.18 The foundation of this
inquisitorial story was the pact made by the vaudoise with the Devil,
culminating in the gift of the soul to be held by the Devil in death.
The Recollectio describes this gift as follows:

On her knees, prostrate, [the vaudoise] adores the demon and does him
homage by showering kisses first on the hands or feet, with an offering
of one burning candle of black wax, more frequently served by the
familiar demon named N., or with the offering of some money. The
candle, received by the presiding demon or by someone near him, is
extinguished. Following this, when the presiding demon turns himself
around, the initiate kisses the rear of the presiding demon and then
gives her soul to the presiding demon to be held by him in death,
although she must swear more strictly not to reveal this in court.19

The trial sermon, as recorded by du Clercq, follows a similar pattern:

And in that place they found one another, tables laden with wine and
food, and there they saw a devil in the form of a goat, a dog, a monkey,
and sometimes as a man; and they made offerings and homages to the
said devil and adored him, and several of them gave him their souls, and
nearly all some part of their bodies; then they kissed the devil in the
form of a goat, on the rear, that is, on the arse, with burning candles in
their hands; and the said Abbe´ de peu de sens was the chief conductor
and master of ceremonies of those who made homage when they were
newly arrived; and after this homage was made they trampled on the
cross and spat on it out of spite for Jesus Christ and the Holy Trinity,
then they showed their arses towards the sky and the heavens out of spite
for God … 20

There is an unusual emphasis on candles in these accounts which
mirrors the importance of one particular candle to the city of Arras.

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Early in the twelfth century, the Blessed Virgin was believed to have
given a miraculous candle, the Sainte Chandelle, to heal a plague in
the city.21 A mixture of the candle’s wax with water provided the cure
for the plague (St Anthony’s Fire). The candle was preserved and
became the most famous relic of the town. The Sainte Chandelle
formed the basis of a confraternity which built a shrine for the candle
and carried it in procession on specific feast days.22 Between 1433 and
1435, the Abbot of St Vaast in Arras commissioned an altarpiece for
the abbey church portraying the presentation of Jesus in the temple
(Fig. 1).23 In the altarpiece, four women hold lighted tapers, one of
which may be a representation of the Sainte Chandelle.24 The fifth,
Mary, holds the infant Christ, the light of the world and, appropriately,
given the presence of Simeon to Mary’s left, a light to lighten the
Gentiles.25

A similar emphasis on homage and candles to that in the Vauderie
documents and in the Daret altarpiece is found in a group of early
illustrations depicting the Vauderie. In these images, the vaudois are
depicted adoring a demon, usually in the form of a goat, carrying
lighted candles (Fig. 2). The images can be read as parodies and
inversions of Daret’s altarpiece which transform correct devotion to
Christ into foul subservience to the Devil.

The significance of this inversion can be seen by tracing the meaning
of candles within various medieval religious practices. In his exposition
of Candlemas in the Legenda Aurea, Jacobus de Voragine, like Daret’s
altarpiece, connects the candle to the body of Christ: ‘The wax is a sign
of [Christ’s] body[;] … the wick signifies his most pure soul[;] … the
fire … stands for his divinity’.26 Similar symbolic relationships between
candles, bodies and souls can be found in numerous other medieval
liturgies, for example the rite of churching, a liturgy performed to
purify a woman after she had given birth. Following delivery new
mothers usually entered the church with a burning taper. But if their
child had miscarried or was stillborn, the taper would not be lit.27 Here
flame meant life; an unlit candle meant death.

This kind of meaning is involved in the widespread iconography of
the pious death, illustrated so vividly in the late-medieval ars moriendi
literature. In such images, a lighted candle is held at the point of
death. While the candle continues to burn, the soul of the believer is
received by a waiting angel or by God. In images like these, the hope
of eternal life is linked clearly with the burning candle. A strong
visual analogy arises between the rising flame of the candle and the
soul on the one hand, and the wax held by the dying body on the
other.

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Symbolic Conflict and Ritual Agency at the Vauderie d’Arras

Fig. 1 Jean Daret, Presentation in the Temple, c. 1435. Paris, Petit Palais, Muse´e des
Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris. Image reproduced by permission of the Petit
Palais, Muse´e des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris.

Such meanings of candles are also present in the liturgy for baptism.
At the end of the baptismal service, a burning candle was given to the
newly baptized infant, and the following prayer was said:

Receive this lamp, burning and irreproachable and guard your baptism,
so that when the servant declares that the Lord has come to the bridal
feast, you may be able to run to meet him together with the saints in the
heavenly hall, and you may have eternal life and live in the ages of ages.28

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Cultural History

Fig. 2 Unknown artist, Miniature pour le Traite´ du Crime de Vauderie, fifteenth
century. Paris, BnF, ms fr. 961, fol. 1r. Image reproduced by permission of the

Bibliothe`que Nationale de France.

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Symbolic Conflict and Ritual Agency at the Vauderie d’Arras

The imagery of this prayer draws particularly on the parable of the wise
and foolish virgins.29 The lighted candle of baptism becomes a sign for
the righteous life which will lead to the heavenly banquet. Unlike the
lamps of the foolish virgins, it is never extinguished and continues to
burn even into life beyond death. This interpretation was also standard
in commentary on the liturgy, like that of the twelfth-century
theologian Hugh of St Victor (c. 1096–1142):

A lighted candle is put into [the baptized child’s] hand, that he may be
taught to fulfil that part of the gospel where it is said: ‘ So let your light
shine before men, so that they may see your good works, and glorify your
father who is in heaven ’. Thus if he keeps the lamp inextinguishable, he
will enter the nuptials with the celestial spouse in the midst of the wise
Virgins.30

The association between candles and good works made by Hugh is
elaborated in the Legenda Aurea:

The lighted candle in the hand is faith with good works, for as a candle
without light is said to be dead, and as a light does not illumine without a
candle and seems to be dead, so works without faith and faith without
works can be called dead.31

If the lighted candle was a sign for a life of faith and good works, the
opposite is also true: the unlit candle was a sign of apostasy and evil
deeds.

This association of unlit candles with apostasy finds dramatic
expression in rituals of anathematization. Here, at the conclusion of
the rite, following the pronunciation of the anathema, candles play a
central role in embodying the anathematized heretic:

And it must be noted that, in the course of the anathema, twelve priests
of the bishop should be present holding lamps, that is, candles, burning
in their hands, which, at the conclusion, that is at the end of the
anathema, they ought to cast down onto the earth and trample with their
feet. These candles should, as with salt which has lost its savour, be
thrown away and put to no other use.32

Within these interconnected structures of meaning, the pact made by
the accused vaudoise, who handed her candle to the presiding demon,
can be seen as fully denying her baptism. Furthermore, the black wax
of the candle comes to represent her fallen body, given over to eternal
death. No longer clothed in the white of baptism, her body is a sign of
evil and damnation.33 Extinguishing the flame makes the vaudoise a

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member of the company of the foolish virgins who cannot enter the
bridal feast of eternal life, an apostate and a heresiarch whose Christian
light is extinguished. The unlit candle shows a soul without faith
dedicated to evil deeds. If we imagine an ars moriendi deathbed scene
redesigned to show the death of the vaudoise, the soul of the dying
heretic would be snatched by waiting devils as she holds an
extinguished black candle. The trial sermon seeks to make this the
fate of the vaudoise: the demon is said to hold her soul in death.

The future of those condemned for vauderie, outlined in the trial
sermon, was given visual form on the paper mitres worn by the
accused. Here, too, the emphasis was on the pact and its consequences.
Du Clercq records that the vaudois ‘were dressed with a mitre on which
was depicted the form of the devil in such a way as they confessed to
have made homage to him, and they were depicted on their knees
before the devil’.34 The image is a startling one: a condemned group
of men and women arrayed in mitres framed by the bishop’s palace.35

Mitres are, of course, a principal symbol of the episcopate. The
sentencing thus sets up a distinctly religious and organized image of
the sect of vaudois, in direct opposition to the proper order of the
Church, that is, as a sect of heretics. The paper mitre was the traditional
headgear of those condemned to death for heresy. Joan of Arc wore a
mitre with the words ‘heretic’, ‘relapsed’, ‘apostate’ and ‘idolatress ’
written on it.36 In 1445 the synod of Rouen decreed that invokers
of demons should be ‘preached’ wearing paper mitres.37 The mitre
worn by Jan Hus at his execution in 1415 showed three devils seizing
a soul.38 Hus’s execution reveals several layers of meaning associated
with the paper mitre which were current in the fifteenth century.
Peter of Mladonˇovice records that at his execution Hus was made to wear
a paper mitre eighteen inches high, on which ‘were shown three
horrible devils about to seize a soul and to tear it among themselves
with claws’ (Fig. 3).39 This fate also awaited the souls of the vaudois.

The account of Hus’s execution helps us understand another
possible function of the paper mitre. After the ‘offensive crown’
accidentally fell from Hus’s head, ‘some of the hired soldiers standing
by said: “Put it on him again so that he might be burned along with the
devils, his masters, whom he served here on earth. ”’40 The burning of
the mitre here represents both the burning of the crime itself and the
rejection of its ultimate author, the Devil.41 Two fundamental beliefs
seem to be in play. First, the image can participate in or embody the act
itself. Second, the act of burning in some way destroys the devils
themselves, the source of the evil, thus ridding the community of a
pollution.42

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Symbolic Conflict and Ritual Agency at the Vauderie d’Arras

Fig. 3 Unknown artist, The Burning of Jan Hus, c. 1434. Martiniz Bible, Library of
the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, fol. 11v. Image reproduced by
permission of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Use of the mitre was, however, not limited to its function as a sign of
heresy and criminality but also occurred as a sign of inversion of
proper earthly and ecclesiastical rule in the context of carnival. The
mitre of a boy bishop became a symbol of misrule and of a world
turned upside down.43 The mitre placed on the head of Jean Lavite,

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Cultural History

perhaps the leader of a carnival confraternity, may have been read in
such a way.44 The timing of the first arrests supports this interpretation.
Jean was arrested on 25 February 1460, two days before Ash
Wednesday.45 Deniselle Grenier, whose arrest led to Jean’s, was
arrested around the feast of All Saints in 1459.46 The arrests of these
vaudois therefore occurred at times when lay involvement in urban
ritual life was at its height and when evil was least under control: All
Hallows’ Eve and the last days of the carnival before Lent.47 The arrests
of members of an anti-Christian sect at times in the ritual calendar that
were associated with misrule and disorder may show ecclesiastical
anxieties about such behaviours.48 This reading of the mitre
strengthens the link between vauderie and the power of the Devil,
and creates the sect as an inversion of proper order, both social and
theological.

The fear of a carnivalesque world turned upside down was one
motivation for the prosecution of the vaudois. Jean Fauconnier, the
Franciscan suffragan bishop of Arras and the titular bishop of Beirut,
‘believed that there were bishops, nay, even cardinals who had been in
the said vauderie, and great masters …’.49 What more stunning
demonstration of the reality of this fear than eleven mitred vaudois
clearly visible to the crowd standing condemned in front of the Bishop
of Arras’s palace?

On one occasion when a paper mitre was not ready, the accused, one
Belotte Mouchard, was not brought for sentencing and execution,
demonstrating the importance of the mitres and their significance to
the trial.50 In the final set of condemnations in 1460, Collart de
Beaufort, the most highly ranked person arrested in the trials,
confessed without torture and was not burned, nor was he made to
wear a mitre. In the eyes of the inquisition, the mitre was thus most
probably a symbol, not only of guilt, but also of unwilling and
incomplete confession – confession which meant that the accused were
still obdurate heretics under the power of the Devil and therefore to be
executed.51

If, however, we accept du Clercq’s account of the first set of
executions, it becomes clear that this interpretation was not entirely
standard. Although already wearing the mitres, the accused women
were shocked by the sentence of death and, as they were being led
away, cried out that they had been promised a pilgrimage penance if
they confessed.52 Here we have an interpretation of the meaning of the
mitre which conflicts with that implied by the Arras inquisition. The
mitre, which appears to have been linked to improper confession and
eventual execution by the inquisition, was understood quite differently

10

Symbolic Conflict and Ritual Agency at the Vauderie d’Arras

by the victims themselves. The women were not symbolically illiterate,
passive or blind signs to be read by others. Rather, they most likely
understood their mitres as signs of the open and public confession of
their sins, their past crime and public humiliation.

For mitres were frequently used in rituals of humiliation and secular
punishment that did not result in death. Here, too, they had particular
meanings. As a sign of disgrace, they appeared in punishments for
both secular and sacred crimes.53 Such uses drew on the mitre’s
association with horns, portraying the criminal as bestial. This
difference in interpretation shows how the individual vaudois
interacted with specific cultural artefacts and plots, adapting and
interpreting them to create different narrative possibilities for
themselves.

The women’s misunderstanding reveals how conflicting
interpretations of a single ritual act exist at particular moments and
places. Through the trial sermon and the use of paper mitres, the
inquisition attempted to situate the accused within a clearly defined
and complex web of sin leading to eternal death at the hands of
vengeful demon masters. But despite the powerful tools used by the
inquisition to construct this future for the accused, their attempts were
undermined by the actions of the vaudois at the point of death: first, by
the cries of the women that they had been duped and, second, by the
symbolic actions of two men accused of belonging to the sect, Jean
Lavite and Colin de Bullecourt.54

Jean’s last words are recorded simply and directly by du Clercq:
‘Jesus autem transiens per medium illorum ibat’ (‘but Jesus, passing
through their midst, went on his way’).55 The phrase comes from the
end of an episode in Luke’s Gospel just after Jesus has endured testing
by the Devil in the wilderness.56 Jesus is teaching in the synagogue in
his home town, Nazareth. He is initially accepted, and his words
received with amazement. Using examples from the Old Testament,
Jesus proclaims that, just as God reached out to Gentiles like Naaman
in the time of the prophets, so too the power of God as revealed in
Jesus is not accepted in his home town. This was not a recipe for
cordial relations. The Nazarenes drive Jesus out and attempt to throw
him off a cliff. But, prefiguring his post-resurrection bodily freedom,
Jesus passes through their midst and goes on his way.

Jean’s appropriation of Jesus’s words as he faced death as a heretical
vaudois is rich with potential meaning. Investigating these possible
meanings requires a consideration of potential audiences: Jean; God;
the crowd watching the execution; du Clercq, the author of the text
in which the words are recorded; and the ecclesiastical authorities.

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For Jean, the story might provide the comforting prospect of a near-
supernatural escape. As he is about to suffer the death which Jesus had
escaped, the cry from the pyre may be read as a prayer: ‘Free me,
O Father, just as you freed your Son from unjust persecution’. Such a
prayer might also draw on the figurative meaning of the narrative,
becoming a prayer for resurrection. In this case, it is difficult to
separate prayer from confession of faith. The text might, then, become
an appropriation of Christ’s freedom from eternal death at precisely
the moment when death seems most certain. Considering the
preceding verses, such a message of defiance becomes more likely.
The prophet Jean is shown no honour in his home town, Arras. He is
taken by the authorities. The Nazarenes become symbols for the
inquisitors: ignorant and evil plotters intent on killing an innocent
man.

Given the startling applicability of the Luke passage to Jean’s
situation, it is tempting for the modern reader to conclude that du
Clercq was creatively distorting Jean’s actions – the literary chronicler
indulging in some intertextual play. This is perhaps why Gordon
Singer did not mention the episode, even though he formed his
narrative of the Vauderie around du Clercq’s account.57 But the biblical
words used by Jean were in wide circulation in the later Middle Ages;
they were not the preserve of a literary elite. The sentence was
inscribed on English coins from the early 1300s until the
Reformation.58 Such coins may also have been used as protective
amulets in battle.59 Sir John Mandeville records that the sentence was
used as a protection against thieves and enemies.60 Thus Jean’s words
might plausibly, and more simply, have been spoken by him as an
invocation of divine protection against evil.

More poignantly, the phrase appears in a folio of the Rohan Hours
depicting the moment of death (Fig. 4).61 Here, a man breathes his
last, saying, ‘Into your hands lord I commend my spirit, you have
redeemed me, Lord God’. Appearing robed in majesty at the upper
right of the image, Christ replies, ‘For your sins you shall do penance.
On judgement day you shall be with me’. This is clearly an image of
redemption – the soul, although snatched by the Devil, will be rescued
by the intervention of Christ and the armed archangel. A fragment of
the phrase ‘Jesus autem transiens per medium illorum ibat ’ appears
on the hem of Christ’s robe, a sign of God’s protection at the point of
death. How Jean may have meant the words becomes clearer – as an
invocation of divine aid and protection in the final moments of his life,
well within the realm of ecclesiastical discourse yet subverting the
inquisition’s application of it.

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Symbolic Conflict and Ritual Agency at the Vauderie d’Arras

Fig. 4 Master of the Rohan Hours, The Office of the Dead, c. 1420. Rohan Hours,
BnF ms lat. 9471, fol. 159r. Image reproduced by permission of the Bibliothe`que

Nationale de France.

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Cultural History

The inquisition, however, heard these words as a confirmation of the
Devil’s power over the vaudois, a final mockery of truth and reality
prompted by the demon, who lay in wait to snatch the souls of the
dying vaudois.62

One should not wonder, if at the point of death the Valdenses deny their
crime, appealing to divine judgment against their judges and saying that
they confessed under duress and that they are being executed without
due cause etc., invoking the sweet name of Jesus and calling on the saints
etc. They take it into their hearts that they have never been Valdenses,
and thus they wish to die blaming others. When they are great Rabbis in
the sect, they offer the following words: ‘ But Jesus, passing through their
midst, went on his way ’, since, as is well-known to many experts and is
written in tracts, if the Valdenses sicken during months or many days in
their beds, not detained by the Law but almost miraculously through
their own impulse, touched by God, in the beginning of their sickness
they confess completely the existence of the sect and their real part in it
with evil deeds. But since the demon waits at the heel, that is, since he
lies in wait to devour souls at the final point of death, when the priest is
summoned at the point of death, by the suggestion of the demon they
retract the reality and truth of that sect which had earlier been confessed
by them, so that they might be liars and their confession be incomplete.63

At issue was not only the individual salvation of the vaudois but a
justification of the sect’s punishment. The heretics’ last-minute
retractions reveal them to be impenitent, and hence continuing to
serve the demon. The final retractions call into question the reality and
truth of the sect’s existence.64 The author of the Recollectio realizes the
power of these retractions and seeks to use them to demonstrate the
demon’s secret duplicity.

If confession washed the penitent clean of sin, it would be unjust to
execute her. But retraction was the vindication of the pact between the
demon and the initiate into the sect, God’s justice meted out on a life
of sin:

It is not strange if the Valdenses depart justly into death in this way,
because they, who had rejected God unjustly for the greatest part of their
life, especially deserved [their death] in this life. For God is just, and
their sort of life moves towards their sort of death. This is most clear,
since, in their initiation into the sect and congregation, they gave their
soul to the demon to possess in death.65

Inquisitorial discourse thus once more used Jean’s action to show that
the Devil owned the souls of the vaudois.

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Symbolic Conflict and Ritual Agency at the Vauderie d’Arras

There is no record of the crowd’s response to Jean’s action. But du
Clercq does note their response to the condemned women’s cries that
they had confessed under duress and to their pleas for prayers for their
souls:

Their words and conduct caused the people to think and protest: some
of them said that it was wrong to put them to death; others said that the
Devil had made them speak thus and had forced them to revoke their
confessions so that they should be damned.66

The crowd was unsettled. Some followed the sanctioned inquisitorial
interpretation; others were less certain.

Just as Jean’s words called this interpretation into question by
invoking the protection of a just God, so too the ritual action of Colin
de Bullecourt used the systems of meaning drawn on by the inquisition
to undermine the ‘reality ’ created in the rituals of condemnation. Just
before he died, Colin ‘took, being close to death, three handfuls of
dirt or of grass in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit ’.67 What might Colin’s action mean? The significance of
the action is, once more, the appropriation of divine aid and
protection at the moment of death.

Burning at the stake annihilated the body. The formula that
reappears throughout du Clercq’s account of the trials is ‘and there
they were burnt and their bodies reduced to ash’.68 The desire to cause
the complete dispersal of the criminal’s body was so powerful that,
after burning, a criminal’s ashes were often thrown into a river.69
Conversely, a criminal’s body retained magical powers. The malefic
ointments and powders allegedly made by the vaudois included both
burnt bodies (of toads which had eaten the body of Christ) and the
ground bones of criminals collected from under the gibbet outside
Arras.70 Such beliefs demonstrate the power of the destroyed sinner’s
body to bring about evil. Through burning at the stake, vaudois like
Colin were written into these sorts of narratives. Their bodies were
supposed to become signs of evil, sin and death, with all possibility of
resurrection and heavenly ascension denied them.

But Colin’s action was designed to rewrite himself into the story of
Christ’s redemption. It resembles, most directly, the last rites. A proper
Christian death followed a clear ritual form: after confession and
absolution, made in the name of the Trinity, a last communion was
taken by the penitent Christian. Colin was denied this kind of death by
being cast in the role of a devotee of the Devil in the inquisitorial
drama. His response was to consecrate some earth or grass and partake

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Cultural History

of an improvised Eucharist.71 By taking this final communion, Colin
was attempting to incorporate himself into Christ’s body, avoiding the
destruction and annihilation of the body which awaited him at the
stake.

Colin’s communion was slightly unorthodox but not
unprecedented. The precedent for in extremis sacramental action by
the laity existed and was canonically accepted for the rites of baptism,
marriage and extreme unction. In the context of this ecclesiastical
sanction, an in extremis viaticum becomes far less startling. And it is
clear that examples existed for in extremis Eucharists that were not only
performed by the laity but also involved substances other than bread or
wine. The thirteenth-century Chanson de Raoul de Cambrai relates a pre-
battle makeshift communion of grass:

Many good men thus took communion
With three stems of grass, because there was no priest;
their souls and their bodies they commended to Jesus.72

The point of such a rite seems to have been both to protect against
death and to protect the faithful if they should die.

Such literary precedents also provide a possible explanation for the
presence of the threefold communion. In the large catalogues of lay
communion in the medieval period amassed by J.D.M. Ford and
George L. Hamilton, many Old French examples contain references to
three pieces of grass forming the symbolic Eucharist.73 Ford interprets
this as a reference to the division of the wafer into three pieces by the
priest during the sacrifice of the mass.74 But du Clercq’s account is
unclear about whether the substance was grass or earth. Both exist
within the tradition of lay communion and are symbolically associated
with each other. Earth’s symbolic potential as a sign of human
mortality and sinfulness shows how a communion with earth might be
seen as a sign of repentance and acknowledgement of the sinful body
tied to this world, while claiming the possibility of incorporation into
the community of the blessed.

But there is a sense in which Colin’s actions, and actions like those
described in the Chanson de Raoul de Cambrai, cannot be fully
understood in terms of their relation to normal Eucharistic practice.
Taking a handful of earth or three blades of grass (in the name of the
Trinity) does not correspond with simply receiving a wafer. The action
has a wider set of symbolic associations through the use of the
Trinitarian formula, and through the presence of three handfuls of
some substance, be it earth or grass. These associations link Colin’s
action with absolution and proper burial.

16

Symbolic Conflict and Ritual Agency at the Vauderie d’Arras

Given the stress on confession throughout the trial records, Colin’s
final communion may be read in part as an absolution from his sin,
and thus a vindication of his final confession. What was his final
confession? In the eyes of the inquisition it was the crime of vauderie,
obeisance to the Devil. Colin, as we see him refracted through the
Me´moires, believed otherwise: he was wrongly condemned, his
confession extracted by torture: ‘he said that he was put to death
wrongly and that he had confessed under torture and would die, as
he believed, in true and good faith ’.75 This text, coming as it does
from just before he took the dirt or grass in his hands, shows how,
through his symbolic action, Colin might render his confession ‘true’
and ‘real ’.

Confession and penitence were central to a ‘good death’ in the
fifteenth century.76 The practice of deathbed confession was
transferred into burial rites which included strong penitential motifs,
including sprinkling the body in the grave with holy water or placing
coals with incense in the grave.77 In some monastic rites this
penitential absolution and purification extended to laying the body
of a dying monk in a bed of ashes.78 This directly evokes the penitential
rites of Ash Wednesday, in which the priest marks the sign of the cross
on the forehead of the penitent. Ash, dust and earth were all signs of
penitence. Earth symbolized the penitent’s acknowledgement of sin,
his or her humble origins as God’s mortal creature, and the desire to
be washed clean by absolution. The formula used in such an absolution
was that used by Colin: ‘in the name of the Father and of the Son and
of the Holy Spirit’.

Medieval Christianity insisted on the imbrication not only of
penitence and death but also of death and new life. This helps to
identify the wider sacramental resonances in Colin’s action. According
to Paul, the sting of death is sin, and to die to sin is to live to Christ and
put on an imperishable glorified body.79 Nowhere is this simultaneous
death and birth clearer than in the death of baptism:

How can we who died to sin go on living it? Do you not know that all of
us who have been baptised into Christ were baptised into his death?
Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that,
just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we
too might walk in newness of life.80

In this passage, Paul associates the repudiation of sin with the death
and burial of baptism. This baptism is a full participation in the body of
Christ and a guarantee of resurrection and eternal life.

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Cultural History

The connection of burial, baptism and repentance allows a fuller
reading of Colin’s actions. Just as the Christian believer is buried with
Christ in the baptism of death, so too Colin is buried with Christ
through his symbolic communion with handfuls of earth. The meaning
of this Eucharist can now be expanded to include resonances with the
wider sacramental and ritual structure of the medieval church, echoing
not only the Eucharist, extreme unction and burial but also the rite
of baptism. Colin’s invocation matches that used at the moment of
baptism: ‘I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and
of the Holy Spirit ’.81 Baptism is a rite of incorporation into the
community of the Church; Colin’s gesture can be read as a plea for
incorporation into the community of the Christian dead.

I am not arguing that Colin himself recognized all the ways in which
his symbolic communion harmonized with the variety of complex
associations between various sacramental and ritual actions associated
with the orthodox medieval Christian ‘good death’ (though he
probably recognized many of them). But it is clear that by
appropriating the gestures and vocabularies of proper Christian
penitence, death and burial, both Colin and Jean attempted to
construct a different future for themselves – a future of redemption,
hope and mercy. By beginning to trace the rich layers of meaning
associated with their actions, we can begin to see the various levels on
which this symbolic action disturbed the ‘truth’ and ‘reality’ of the
vauderie which inquisitorial ritual had attempted to construct.

***

A very different future was eventually granted to those convicted and
executed for vauderie, if only posthumously. After 1460 no executions
for vauderie were carried out in Arras.82 Legal procedures were
instituted which appealed the decisions of the inquisition to the
Parlement de Paris. Eventually, in 1491, the Parlement overturned
the inquisitorial condemnations and executions.83 Fines were levied
against the ecclesiastical authorities. Some of these were to be used to
establish ‘a service in the cathedral church of Arras, for the foundation
of a mass, chalice, books and vestments necessary for this, which will be
said and celebrated each day, perpetually ’ for the souls of those
wrongly executed.84 Then, in a complete reversal of the inquisitorial
rituals of condemnation, the evils perpetrated by the Arras trials were
to be denounced, and all their physical remains destroyed:

[A scaffold was to be erected] in the place where the said appellants and
others who had been executed had been publicly put on the scaffold,

18

Symbolic Conflict and Ritual Agency at the Vauderie d’Arras

preached and mitred; on which scaffold will be made a sermon, to
exhort the people to pray to God for the souls of those who were
executed, and to declare that it was an evil against the order and the
form of justice and a false trial and error, that they were condemned, put
on the scaffold, preached, mitred and executed; and, at the end of the
said sermon, all that remains of the said trial will, in the presence of the
said executioner, be destroyed and ripped up.85

Analysing the final decision of the Parlement is beyond the scope
of this article. But we are now able to recognize in it some
standard aspects of the cultural structures of late-medieval Arras.
Concern about public truth sits at the heart of both the inquisitorial
ritual and this final repudiation of the inquisition’s findings. Both use
the language of sin and salvation. Where the inquisition condemned
and excluded the vaudois from the community, the Parlement’s
decision proclaimed their absolution and reintegration. Special
attention is given to the specific location of the ritual, as well as to
the key features of the punishment: the sermon, the mitre and the
execution. The pollution of the vaudois was believed to have been
cleansed by the flames of the execution pyre; the pollution of the
inquisition was cleansed by the public destruction of the records of
the trials. In each case, these public rituals were the place where new
worlds were created, fusing structures of meaning with the world of
social practice.86

This, of course, raises theoretical questions about the role of these
events in maintaining and changing the traditional social and cultural
structures of fifteenth-century Arras. My analysis has shown some of the
ways in which meaning is formed by the creative action of human
agents who both perform and modify the many and various symbolic
structures available as part of their cultures. Neither meaning nor
cultural structures are static – they exist within the unfolding of time
over a rich historical sediment. The 1491 decision gains meaning when
analysed alongside the earlier rituals of the vauderie. Similarly, the
inquisitorial condemnations and individual responses analysed here
need to be understood within the complex webs of meaning associated
with other objects with deep symbolic associations: candles, mitres, the
words of Luke’s Gospel, grass and handfuls of dirt. Each action speaks
in different ways to different audiences, is seen in different ways by its
spectators and is performed with different intentions by its actors.
These words, images and objects are used by agents who do things with
them, creating new kinds of reality, always with residues and material
from the old.87

19

Cultural History

This study has attempted to gain insight into such culturally
resonant symbolic actions within the Vauderie d’Arras. Description of
the condemnation ritual has revealed how the inquisition attempted to
make the vaudois emblems of the reality of the vauderie through the use
of the public sermon and the mitres worn by the accused.
Interpretation of the individual actions of Jean Lavite and Colin de
Bullecourt has explored how symbolic vocabularies and gestures were
used to oppose the inquisition’s imposition of meaning. This instability
of meaning, a conflict between two mutually exclusive worlds created
simultaneously, was eventually resolved to an extent by the Parlement
de Paris. Whether or not Jean’s and Colin’s actions had any kind of
causal influence on the Parlement’s decision is unclear – the decision
of the Parlement was not simply the result of local protest but was also
caught up in, amongst other things, broader conflicts over sovereignty
within France and between France and Burgundy. Certainly, the
appeal to the Parlement took into consideration the actions of the
condemned.88 But the actions of Colin and Jean were not designed for
some earthly court – they were made in hope of a divine audience
before what they believed to be a higher justice. For Jean and Colin,
the actions provided hope for a future resurrection and eternal life, a
continued place within the Christian community which the Arras
inquisition was determined to deny.

Notes
1. I am grateful to Megan Cassidy-Welch, Miri Rubin, Miranda Stanyon, Simon
Williams, Charles Zika and the anonymous reviewer for Cultural History for their
comments on this essay.
2. Paul Fre´de´ricq, Corpus documentorum inquisitionis haereticae pravitatis Neerlandicae
(Gent: J. Vuylsteke, 1889–1906), vol. 1, pp. 346–7; Gordon Andreas Singer, ‘ La
Vauderie d’Arras, 1459–1491: An Episode of Witchcraft in Later Medieval France ’
(PhD dissertation, University of Maryland, 1974), p. 84.
3. Fre´de´ricq, Corpus, p. 347; Singer, ‘ La Vauderie ’, p. 85.
4. Fre´de´ricq, Corpus, p. 355; Singer, ‘ La Vauderie ’, pp. 17–19, 86.
5. Throughout, I use the noun vaudois predominately in the plural. When I refer to
specific members of the sect, gender is preserved: vaudois (m) and vaudoise (f). On
the origins of the Waldensians, see Gabriel Audisio, The Waldensian Dissent:
Persecution and Survival, c.1170–c.1570, Claire Davison (transl.) (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 6–25.
6. The seminal discussion is Joseph Hansen’s ‘ Die “ Vauderie ” im 15. Jahrhundert ’, in
Joseph Hansen, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Hexenwahns und der
Hexenverfolgung im Mittelalter (1901; Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1963), pp. 408–15. The
most important recent studies of the transformations of languages of heresy in the
later Middle Ages are Kathrin Utz Tremp, Von der Ha¨resie zur Hexerei: ‘ Wirkliche ’ und
imagina¨re Sekten im Spa¨tmittelalter (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2008); and

20

Symbolic Conflict and Ritual Agency at the Vauderie d’Arras

Wolfgang Behringer, ‘ How Waldensians Became Witches: Heretics and Their
Journey to the Other World ’, in E´ va Po´cs and Ga´bor Klaniczay (eds), Communicating
with the Spirits (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2005), pp. 155–92
(167–9). See also Singer, ‘ La Vauderie ’, pp. 63–83. For a summary of the term
particularly in relation to Jean Tinctor’s Invectives contre la secte de Vauderie, see
G. Gonnet, ‘ La Vauderie d’Arras ’, in I Valdesi e l’Europa (Torre Pellice: Societa` di
studi valdesi, 1983), pp. 101–13.
7. Franck Mercier, La Vauderie d’Arras: une chasse aux sorcie`res a` l’automne du Moyen Aˆ ge
(Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2006), pp. 30–1. Citations of the
Recollectio in this article are taken from the most recent edition: Hansen, Quellen,
pp. 149–83.
8. Mercier, La Vauderie d’Arras, p. 34. Only two manuscripts survive, Brussels KBR ms
11449–51, fols 1r–33r, and Paris BnF ms lat. 3446, fols 36r–57r.
9. Citations of the Me´moires in this article are taken from the extracts contained in
Fre´de´ricq, Corpus. See also Frederic de Reiffenberg (ed.), Me´moires du J. du Clercq, 4
vols (Brussels: Arnold Lacrosse, 1823), vol. 3, pp. 10–190. Relevant sections of the
Me´moires are also reproduced in J. Fr. Michaud, Nouvelle Collection des Me´moires relatifs
a` l’histoire de France depuis le XIIIe si`ecle jusqu ’a` la fin du XVIIIe sie`cle (Paris: Didier,
1857), pp. 605–40.
10. A third text by the cleric Jean Tinctor that was written in response to the Vauderie,
and appeared in Latin and French versions, falls outside the scope of this article,
which limits itself to ritual moments in the Vauderie. For a modern edition, see
E´ mile Van Balberghe, Jean Tinctor, Invectives contre la Secte de Vauderie (Tournai/
Louvain-la-Neuve: Archives du Chapitre Cathe´dral; Universite´ Catholique de
Louvain, 1999).
11. Henry Charles Lea, A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages (1888; New York:
Russell and Russell, 1955), vol. 3, pp. 519–34; Otto Cartellieri, The Court of Burgundy
(1926; London: Kegan Paul, 2005).
12. Singer, ‘ La Vauderie ’.
13. Mercier, La Vauderie d’Arras.
14. Ibid. pp. 289–94. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Alan
Sheridan (transl.) (London: Penguin, 1977).
15. Mercier, La Vauderie d’Arras, pp. 294–7.
16. Fre´de´ricq, Corpus, pp. 352–6, 371–2, 379–84.
17. See Mercier, La Vauderie d’Arras, pp. 291–2, for the ‘ reality effect ’ of the localization
of the crimes.
18. John H. Arnold, Inquisition and Power: Catharism and the Confessing Subject in Medieval
Languedoc (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), p. 11. On the
heretical tradition and its relationship to witchcraft, see Utz Tremp, Von der Ha¨resie,
pp. 624–33 (for the Vauderie).
19. Hansen, Quellen, p. 159. ‘ genibus provoluta adorat demonem et homagium facit,
deosculando primo manum aut pedum cum oblacione unius candele accense de
cera nigra, frequencius sibi ministrate a familiari demone nuncupato N., aut cum
oblacione alicuius monete. Que candela recepta a presidente aut propinquis sibi
extinguitur. Subsequenter cum se vertit presidens, deosculatur eadem recepta
ipsius presidentis posteriora, et tunc dat animam suam presidenti ab eo habendam
in morte; quamquam districtius iuret, hoc non revelare in iusticia. ’
20. Fre´de´ricq, Corpus, pp. 353–4. ‘ et en ce lieu trouvoient l’ung l’autre, les tables mises
chargie´es de vins et viandes; et illecq trouvoient ung diable en forme de boucq,

21

Cultural History

de quien, de singe et aulcune fois d’homme; et la faisoient oblations et hommaiges
audit diable et l’adoroient, et lui donnoient les plusieurs leurs ames et a peine tout
ou du moings quelque chose de leurs corps; puis baisoient le diable en forme de
boucq au derriere, c’est au cu, avec candeilles ardentes en leurs mains; et estoit
ledit Abbe´ de peu de sens le droit conducteur et le maitre de les faire faire
hommaige, quant ils estoient nouveaux venus; et, apre`s celle hommaige faite,
marchoient sur la croix et racquoient de leur salive sus, en depit de Jesus Christ et
de la Sainte Trinite´, puis montroient le cu vers le chiel et le firmament, en despit de
Dieu ’.
21. Carol Symes, A Common Stage: Theatre and Public Life in Medieval Arras (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2007), pp. 85–92; Penny Howell Jolly, ‘ Learned Reading,
Vernacular Seeing: Jacques Daret’s Presentation in the Temple ’, The Art Bulletin,
82:3 (2000), pp. 428–52 (441–2); Kay Brainerd Slocum, ‘ Confre´rie, Bruderschaft
and Guild: The Formation of Musicians ’ Fraternal Organisations in Thirteenth and
Fourteenth-Century Europe ’, Early Music History, 14 (1995), pp. 257–74 (259).
22. Symes, Common Stage, p. 91; Jolly, ‘ Learned Reading ’, p. 441, fig. 17.
23. On the altarpiece, see Vera F. Vines, ‘ The Arras Altarpiece of Jacques Daret: A
Reassessment of the Artist on the Basis of His Only Documented Work ’ (PhD
dissertation, University of Melbourne, 1981).
24. Jolly, ‘ Learned Reading ’, pp. 441–2.
25. Ibid. p. 441.
26. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, William Granger
Ryan (transl.) (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), vol. 1, p. 149. See
also Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400–
c.1580 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), p. 18, n. 23.
27. Susan C. Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Ritual: An Interpretation of Early Modern
Germany (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 120–1; Paula Rieder, On the Purification of
Women: Churching in Northern France, 1100–1500 (New York: Palgrave, 2006), p. 29.
28. Cambrai Mediothe`que Municipal ms 226, fols 32v–33r. ‘ Accipe lampadem
ardentem et irreprehensibilem, et custodi baptismum tuum, ut cum dominus ad
nuptias venerit, tu possis ei occurere obviam ei, una cum omnis sanctis eius, in aula
celesti, habeasque vitam eternam. Et vivas in secula seculorum. Amen ’. The text is
taken from the rite of the archdiocese of Cambrai.
29. Matt 25:1–13.
30. Translated in Bryan D. Spinks, Early and Medieval Rituals and Theologies of Baptism:
From the New Testament to the Council of Trent (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), p. 141.
31. Jacobus de Voragine, Golden Legend, p. 149.
32. Michel Andrieu, Le pontifical romain au Moyen-Aˆ ge. Tome III. Le pontifical de Guillaume
Durand, Studi e testi 88 (Vatican: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1940), 3.8.15,
p. 614. ‘ Et est notandum quod in prolatione anathematis debent duodecim
sacerdotes episcopum circumstare et lucernas, id est candelas ardentes, in manibus
tenere, quas in conclusione, id est in fine anathematis, proicere debent in terram et
pedibus conculcare; que candele debent, sicut sal infatuatum, proici et ad nullum
usum ulterius ponit. ’ I am most grateful to the anonymous reviewer for drawing
this ritual to my attention.
33. The only other mention of black candles in medieval and early-modern literature
which I have been able to trace is from an execution procession for a condemned
criminal in eighteenth-century Italy. See Lionello Puppi, Torment in Art: Pain,
Violence, and Martyrdom (New York: Rizzoli, 1991), p. 50.

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Symbolic Conflict and Ritual Agency at the Vauderie d’Arras

34. Fre´de´ricq, Corpus, p. 353. ‘ et illecq furent mitre´s d’une mitre ou estoit peinct la
figure du diable en telle maniere qu’ils avoient confesse´ lui avoir fait hommaige, et
eulx a genoux, peincts devant le diable ’.

35. See Sharon Strocchia, ‘ Theatres of Everyday Life ’, in Roger J. Crum and John. T.
Paoletti (eds), Renaissance Florence: A Social History (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006), pp. 55–80, 494–7 (56), for the use of buildings as
‘ viewing frames ’.

36. Jules Quicherat, Proce`s de condamnation et de re´habilitation de Jeanne d’Arc, dite La
Pucelle … (Paris: J. Renouard et Cie, 1841), vol. 4, p. 459.

37. Giovanni Domenico Mansi, et al., (1901), Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova Et Amplissima
Collectio, (Paris: H. Welter, 1901), vol. 35, p. 27. See also Lea, History of the Inquisition,
p. 515; Mercier, La Vauderie d’Arras, p. 282.

38. Peter of Mladonˇovice, An Account of the Trial and Condemnation of Master John Hus in
Constance, translated in Matthew Spinka, John Hus at the Council of Constance (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1965), pp. 89–234 (231). On Hussite heresy in and
around Arras, see Utz Tremp, Von der Ha¨resie, pp. 631–2.

39. Peter of Mladonˇovice, Account, 231.
40. Ibid. p. 232.
41. Mitchell B. Merback, The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel: Pain and the Spectacle of

Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (London: Reaktion, 2001), p. 135.
42. John Revell Reinhard, ‘ Burning at the Stake in Medieval Law and Literature ’,

Speculum, 16:2 (1941), pp. 186–209 (190); Merback, The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel,
p. 136.
43. Natalie Zemon Davis, ‘ The Reasons of Misrule: Youth Groups and Charivaris in
Sixteenth-Century France ’, in Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 1975), pp. 97–123. See also Robert W. Scribner,
‘ Ritual and Popular Religion in Catholic Germany at the Time of the Reformation ’,
Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 35:1 (1984), pp. 44–77 (59–60).
44. Little is known of Jean’s specific confraternity membership. See Singer, ‘ La
Vauderie ’, pp. 17–19; Mercier, La Vauderie d’Arras, p. 101.
45. Fre´de´ricq, Corpus, p. 347.
46. Ibid. p. 346; Singer, ‘ La Vauderie ’, p. 85, citing A.N., X2A32, fol. 29v.
47. Davis, ‘ Reasons of Misrule ’, pp. 104–5. The association between vauderie and
carnival is further emphasised in the Recollectio, which describes a meeting of the
sect on St Martin’s Eve. See Hansen, Quellen, p. 164; Charles Zika, The Appearance of
Witchcraft (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 65, 245.
48. See Davis, ‘ Reasons of Misrule ’, p. 98.
49. Fre´de´ricq, Corpus, p. 352. ‘ il croioit qu’il y avoit des eveques, voires des cardinaux,
qui avoient este´ en ladite vaulderie, et de grands maitres ’. See also Singer, ‘ La
Vauderie ’, p. 90.
50. Singer, ‘ La Vauderie ’, p. 93; Mercier, La Vauderie d’Arras, p. 291.
51. Compare Singer, ‘ La Vauderie ’, p. 105.
52. Fre´de´ricq, Corpus, pp. 354–5.
53. Esther Cohen, The Crossroads of Justice: Law and Culture in Late Medieval France
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993), pp. 165, 184. See also Puppi, Torment in Art, p. 15;
Mercier, La Vauderie d’Arras, pp. 290–1.
54. On Jean Lavite, see above, p. 1. The sources do not permit a reconstruction of Colin
de Bullecourt’s biography.
55. Fre´de´ricq, Corpus, p. 355.

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Cultural History

56. Luke 4:14–30.
57. Singer, ‘ La Vauderie ’, p. 94. Unlike Singer, Mercier does mention the episode. He

does not, however, explore its possible meanings. Mercier, La Vauderie d’Arras,
p. 295.
58. John Evans, ‘ The First Gold Coins of England ’, Numismatic Chronicle, series 3:20
(1900), pp. 218–51 (245–7); William Camden, Remains Concerning Britain (London:
J. R. Smith, 1870), p. 203.
59. Ellen Ettlinger, ‘ British Amulets in London Museums ’, Folklore, 50:2 (1939),
pp. 148–75 (60–1).
60. Martin de Albuquerque (ed.), ‘ Jesus autem per medium illorum ibat ’, Notes and
Queries, 18 (1856), pp. 358–9; Edina Bozoky, ‘ Les Moyens de la protection prive´e ’,
Cahiers de recherches me´die´vales et humanistes, 8 (2001), pp. 175–92, available at http://
crm.revues.org/397. Other examples of the text’s circulation in the fifteenth-
century Low Countries include Firminius Caron’s use of the Lenten antiphon on
the text as the basis of a mass setting, and its appearance on a Flemish merchant’s
leather casket now held in the British Museum; The British Museum, ‘ Talbot
Casket ’, www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/
search_object_details.aspx?objectid=49139&partid=1&searchText=Tal
bot+casket&fromADBC=ad&toADBC=ad&titleSubject=on&numpages=10&
orig=%2fresearch%2fsearch_the_collection_database.aspx&currentPage=1
(accessed 17/12/2013). See also John Cherry, ‘ The Talbot Casket and Related Late
Medieval Leather Caskets ’, Archaeologia, 107 (1982), pp. 131–40 (133). The
inscription also appears on another medieval leather casket at Lucca Cathedral
and on the right cheek guard of a helmet found in the fifteenth-century Newport
Ship. See Cherry, ‘ Talbot Casket ’, p. 138; Friends of the Newport Ship, S.O.S. The
Newsletter of the Friends of the Newport Ship, 15 (2009), http://newportship.org/assets/
docs/newsletters/SOS_15.pdf (accessed 17/12/2013).
61. Marcel Thomas (ed.), The Rohan Master, A Book of Hours (New York: George
Braziller, 1973), plate 63. See also Eamon Duffy, Marking the Hours: English People
and Their Prayers, 1240–1570 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 94.
62. On the following, compare Mercier, La Vauderie d’Arras, pp. 295–6.
63. Hansen, Quellen, pp. 178–9. ‘ Non est mirandum, si in morte Valdenses abnegent
suum casum, appellantes de iudicibus ad divinum iudicium et dicentes, quod vi
confessi sunt et sine causa moriuntur etc., nominantes dulce nomen Ihesus et
invocantes sanctos etc., et quod capiunt in animas eorum, quod numquam fuerunt
Valdenses, et sic volunt mori excusantes alios, et quando magni rabini sunt in
secta, proferunt verba sequencia: “ Ihesus autem transsiens [sic] per medium
illorum ibat ”, quoniam, ut satis scitum est a multis expertis et in tractatibus
scriptum, si egrotent Valdenses per menses aut dies multos in lecto suo, non
detenti per iusticiam et quasi miraculose, motu proprio, tacti a deo, in principio
egritudinis confiteantur integre eciam istam sectam et realitatem eius cum
maleficiis, tamen quia demon maxime insidiatur calcaneo, id est fini et morti
ad devorandas animas, iuxta punctum mortis evocato sacerdote, suggestione
demonis revocabunt realitatem et veritatem istius secte prius per eos confessate, ut
mendaces sint et confessio integra non sit. ’ See also Mercier, La Vauderie d’Arras,
pp. 295–6.
64. Reality and illusion are central concerns in wider debates about the authority of the
canon Episcopi in prosecuting the new witch sect in the fifteenth century. For the
most recent scholarship on these debates, see Martine Ostorero, Le diable au sabbat.

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Symbolic Conflict and Ritual Agency at the Vauderie d’Arras

Litte´rature de´monologique et sorcellerie (1440–1460) (Florence: Sismel, editioni del
galluzo, 2011).
65. Hansen, Quellen, p. 179. ‘ Neque ab re est, si iuste derelinquant Valdenses adeo in
morte, qui specialiter in vita hoc meruerunt iniuste relinquentes deum per longa
tempora vite; iustus enim est deus, et talis vita trahit ad talem mortem; et precipue,
cum in recepcione ad sectam et congregacionem dederint animam suam demoni
habendam in morte. ’
66. Fre´de´ricq, Corpus, p. 355. ‘ Lesquelles paroles et manieres qu’elles tenoient, meirent
le peuple en grande pense´e et murmure: sy disoient les aulcuns que c’estoit a tort
qu’on les faisoit mourir, les aultres disoient que le diable leur avoit commande´
d’ainsi dire et qu’ils se rappellassent adfin qu’ils fuissent damne´s. ’
67. Fre´de´ricq, Corpus, p. 372. ‘ prist, luy estant prest de mourir, trios paulx de terre ou
d’herbe, et au nom du Pere et du Fils et du Saint Esprit ’.
68. Ibid. pp. 371–2. ‘ et illecq ards et leurs corps ramene´s en pouldre ’.
69. Peter of Mladonˇovice, Account, p. 234. See also Merback, The Thief, the Cross and the
Wheel, p. 136.
70. Fre´de´ricq, Corpus, pp. 354, 381.
71. Mercier sees the verbal content of Colin’s action as less important than its corporeal
and gestural aspects. The words are, however, the means by which Colin consecrates
the elements of his Eucharist – without them, his Eucharistic elements would
remain simply earth or grass. This division between words, bodies and gestures is
extremely difficult to map onto the unity of word, body and gesture which
constituted medieval liturgical practice. Mercier, La Vauderie d’Arras, p. 295.
72. ‘ Mains gentix hom s’i acumenia/ de troi poux d’erbe, q’autre prestre n’i a;/ s’arme
et son cors a Jhesu commanda ’. Sarah Kay (ed.), Raoul de Cambrai (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1992), pp. 150–1. See also Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in
Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 335.
73. George L. Hamilton, ‘ The Sources of the Symbolical Lay Communion ’, The
Romanic Review, 4 (1913), pp. 221–40; J.D.M. Ford, ‘ “ To Bite the Dust ” and
Symbolical Lay Communion ’, PMLA, 20:2 (1905), pp. 197–230. Hamilton uses
Colin’s action as an example on pages 238–9.
74. Ford, ‘ “ To Bite the Dust ” ’, pp. 200, 211.
75. Fre´de´ricq, Corpus, p. 372. ‘ dit qu’on le faisoit mourir a tort, et ce qu’il avoit
confesse´, avoit este´ a la forche de gehenne, et mourut, comme il sembloit, en vraye
et bonne foy ’.
76. Mercier rightly notes that the actions of the accused conform to the good death
described in the ars moriendi literature. Mercier, La Vauderie d’Arras, pp. 294–5. See
also Paul Binski, Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1996), pp. 33–47.
77. For a local liturgy, see, for example, Cambrai Mediathe`que Municipale ms 225. See
also Philippe Arie`s, The Hour of Our Death, Helen Weaver (transl.) (London: Allen
Lane, 1981), pp. 141–2.
78. Ibid. p. 162.
79. 1 Cor. 15:55; Rom. 6:11; 1 Cor. 15:53.
80. Rom. 6:2b–4. See also Binski, Medieval Death, p. 42.
81. On this formula, see Spinks, Early and Medieval Rituals, pp. 140–51.
82. The best summary of the final stages of the process is Singer, ‘ La Vauderie ’,
pp. 133–44.
83. Fre´de´ricq, Corpus, pp. 476–83.

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