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Black Mass

According to the inquisitors, the Black Mass epitomized the worship of Satan and perverted the most holy mystery of Christian worship—the Christian mass. Evidence of such occurrences was confirmed in the confessions forced from accussed witches and sorcerers, who claimed that the devil had mass said at his Sabbat. Pierre Aupetit, an apostate priest of the village of Fossas, France, was burned for celebrating the mysteries of the Devil's mass. Instead of speaking the holy words of consecration, the frequenters of the Sabbat were alleged to have said: "Beelzebub, Beelzebub, Beelzebub." The devil in the shape of a butterfly flew around those who were celebrating the mass, who then ate a black host, which they were obliged to chew before swallowing.

It is possible that the concept of the Black Mass derived from underground traditions of Cathar heretics, who were put down by orthodox Christianity during the fourteenth century. The Cathars believed in two gods, the God of light and the Prince of darkness, the maker of all material things. However, the idea of a Black Mass only became operative in the fifteenth century when the Roman Catholic Church turned on the "witches" as followers of Satan, whom because they believed in the magic of the Christian mass, hence could conceive a vulgar misuse of its powers. Several printed accounts which may have fueled the concept document strange occurrences, including the 1335 story of a shepherd found nude performing a parody of the mass and the 1458 story of a priest who mixed semen with the holy oil used for annointing people.

However, Satanism, as defined by the Church at the end of the fifteenth century, existed solely in the imaginaton of the inquisitors. Its ideas and practices were carried from generation to generation by the writings of Christians involved in the pursuit of witches and the stamping out of its practice. No evidence of anyone actually holding a Black Mass appears until the seventeenth century in France, when police arrested a fortune-teller named Catherine Deshayes, known as "La Voisin." Allegedly committing poisonings and sacrilege, La Voisin was a well-known abortionist, and was suspected of providing infants for ritual sacrifice in a Black Mass conducted by a libertine priest, Abbé Guibourg. These masses were purportedly celebrated on the body of a naked woman. It was claimed that at the moment of consecration of the host, an infant's throat was cut, the blood was poured into the chalice, and prayers were offered to the demons Asmodeus and Ashtaroth. Other obscene rites were associated with the host.

At the trial of La Voisin, evidence was given that some Black Masses had been held at the request of the royal mistress the Marquise de Montespan, in order to retain the favor of Louis XIV. Other masses were associated with murder and poison plots, and many famous names were involved. Over 300 individuals were arrested, although fewer than half were tried; de Montespan was spared. La Voisin was subjected to brutal torture for three days, but she would not confess to poisoning, and on February 22, 1680, she was burned alive.

The modern Black Mass seems to have appeared as part of the magical revival in late ninteeth-century France. J. K. Huysmans is generally credited with reintroduing Satanism and the Black Mass in his book La-Bas (Down There), which includes a detailed description of a Satanic service. More recently the Church of Satan in San Francisco has based its much publicized diabolism upon a rejection of the Christian ethics of self-denial and humility. Its founder, Anton La Vey, published his own version of a Black Mass.