APPENDIX V

KNOTTING THE BREECHES LACES^*44

The canon Si per sortiarias atque maleficias¹ by Hincmar (d. 882), bishop of Reims, often reprinted, mainly in Gratian’s Decretum,² states that the consummation of a marriage can be prevented by magic and witchcraft. Those who use these evil spells should be excommunicated, we are told by the synodal statutes of Eudes of Sully (d. 1208), bishop of Paris, those of Pierre of Colmieu, archbishop of Rouen in 1245, and many others. In the Statuts et ordonnances de l’Église métropolitaine et primatiale de Lyon (1577), we read:

Let us forbid all evil spells, such as knotted breeches laces, charms, drinks, prolation of illicit and non-used words, all diabolical superstition and invention, in marriage, on pain of anathema and excommunication.

Those who practice them are called “magicians, sorcerers, and charmers [charmador for men and charmaressas for women],” and “should be excommunicated along with all those who resorted to them,” the Ritual du diocèse of Beauvais in 1637 tells us.

In the sixteenth century, in his Traicté enseignant en bref les causes des maléfices, sortilèges en enchanteries tant des ligatures et noeuds desguillettes,³ René Benoît (1521–1608), priest of Saint-Eustache of Paris, condemns those who unknot the breeches laces with the help of orisons that he describes as an “abominable and diabolical method.” And in 1702, the Oratorian Pierre Lebrun (1661–1729) gives us a little glimpse of how the breeches laces were knotted in his time:⁴

It is nonetheless this damnable wickedness [the impotence spell], this diabolical action in which fall those who . . . recite one of the verses of the Psalm Miserere mei Deus backward, who next say aloud the name and first name of the two newlyweds, while forming the knot the first time, slightly tightening it the second, and knotting it completely the third, and while saying how long they want it to remain knotted, which is observed for those who have not yet been married. But for those who have already been, the groom’s breeches laces are knotted during the church service when the priest blesses the ring, and the first and last names of the new couple are spoken aloud when he places the ring on the ring finger of the new wife.

Those who turn their hands around and entwine their fingers together starting with the little finger of the left hand, and continuing this way until both thumbs are touching, and do this when the groom presents the ring to his bride in the church. . . .

. . . Those who tie the penis of a wolf^5 *45 to the names of a newlywed man and woman; those who attach certain notes, or certain small pieces of cloth or fabric to the clothing of the new husband or wife; those who strike certain parts of their bodies with their hands in a certain way; those who speak certain words, which I do not wish to record, when they take each by the hand in the church; those who touch them with certain clubs or wands of a certain kind of wood; those on their wedding day make them drink certain liquors or eat certain cooked pasta; those who make with either the left or right hand certain figures in the air or on the ground, when the priest approaches to begin the wedding . . .

Lebrun next repeats all that Jean-Baptiste Thiers (1636–1703) had written on the unknotting of the breeches’ laces in his Traité des superstitions (1679). Johann Weyer cites other means of recovering sexual potency, such as this one: “He who has been bewitched and cannot have intercourse with his wife should urinate in his wedding ring (4.8), which Martin Delrio reused in 1611 when he criticized those who “piss through their betrothal ring, for fear that someone is knotting their breeches’ laces, or that they are being bewitched” (3.2, 472).