Inquisitors and magistrates were then most
thoroughly in accord with popular wishes if they burnt her.
By far the most important field for the activity of the 'strega' lay,
as has been said, in love-affairs, and included the stirring up of love
and of hatred, the producing of abortion, the pretended murder of the
unfaithful man or woman by magical arts, and even the manufacture of
poisons. Owing to the unwillingness of many persons to have to do with
these women, class of occasional practitioners arose who secretly
learned from them some one or other of their arts, and then used this
knowledge on their own account. The Roman prostitutes, for example,
tried to enhance their personal attractions by charms of another
description in the style of the Horatian Canidia. Aretino may not only
have known, but have also told the truth about them in this particular.
He gives a list of the loathsome messes which were to be found in their
boxes--hair, skulls, ribs, teeth, dead men's eyes, human skin, the
navels of little children, the soles of shoes and pieces of clothing
from tombs. They even went themselves to the graveyard and fetched bits
of rotten flesh, which they slyly gave their lovers to eat--with more
that is still worse. Pieces of the hair and nails of the lover were
boiled in oil stolen from the ever-burning lamps in the church.
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