Canon Episcopi
The Canon Episcopi is one of the most influential and paradoxical ecclesiastical texts of the Middle Ages concerning witchcraft. Composed around c. 900 CE, it articulated an early official Church position that would shape—and later conflict with—developing demonological thought for centuries. While the Canon acknowledged belief in witchcraft as devil-inspired, it simultaneously declared the phenomena themselves to be illusory, the result of deception rather than physical reality.
The origins of the Canon Episcopi remain uncertain. It was first made widely known at the beginning of the 10th century by Regino of Prüm, Abbot of Trier (Treves), who mistakenly presented it as an ancient authority dating back to the fourth century. This attribution greatly enhanced its credibility. Around 1140, the Italian monk and jurist Gratian incorporated the Canon Episcopi into his monumental compilation of canon law, the Decretum (also known as the Concordance of Discordant Canons). From that point onward, the Canon Episcopi became embedded in the highest levels of ecclesiastical law.
Doctrine and Meaning
The Canon Episcopi defined witchcraft as a form of diabolical delusion, not as an objective, physical practice. It explicitly denied that witches possessed the power to fly through the air, travel vast distances, or transform themselves into animals or birds (see flying; metamorphosis). Those who believed such things to occur physically were described as “stupid and foolish” and guilty of infidelity.
However, the Canon did not deny that such experiences could occur in spirit. It acknowledged that demons could manipulate perception, inducing vivid dreams, visions, and spiritual journeys that felt entirely real to those experiencing them. These phenomena were understood as psychological or spiritual deceptions imposed by Satan, not acts carried out by the body.
A central image within the Canon is that of women who believe they ride at night with Diana, accompanied by multitudes of other women, traversing great distances in silence. This belief, according to the Canon, was a pagan error, seducing Christians away from true faith and into superstition. The danger lay not in physical harm, but in theological corruption.
A Theological Dilemma
The Canon Episcopi posed a serious problem for later medieval demonologists, particularly from the 12th century onward, who increasingly asserted the physical reality of witchcraft practices such as flight, metamorphosis, and attendance at sabbaths. To reconcile this contradiction, complex and often strained arguments were developed.
One solution held that even if witches flew only in spirit or imagination, they were equally guilty as if they had done so bodily, because the intent and diabolical alliance remained the same. This reasoning helped justify the growing belief that witches were heretics by definition, and therefore inherently bound by a Devil’s pact. In this way, theological emphasis shifted from what witches could physically do to what they were believed to consent to.
Ironically, although the Canon Episcopi denied the physical reality of witch flight, its vivid imagery of women riding through the night with Diana helped inspire later concepts of the demonical sabbath. Over time, demonologists transformed what the Canon had framed as illusion into elaborate narratives of corporeal assemblies, ritualised devil worship, and sexual excess.
Decline and Legacy
By the mid-15th century, inquisitors and demonologists increasingly dismissed the Canon Episcopi as outdated. Texts such as the Malleus Maleficarum rejected its scepticism and embraced a fully literal interpretation of witchcraft. Nevertheless, the Canon’s influence lingered well into the early modern period, continuing to shape debates about the nature of witchcraft for at least two centuries.
Today, the Canon Episcopi is recognised as a crucial document illustrating an earlier, more restrained ecclesiastical view of witchcraft—one that emphasised delusion over conspiracy and illusion over physical crime. Its gradual abandonment marks a decisive turning point in the history of European witch persecutions.
The Text of the Canon Episcopi
> Bishops and their officials must labour with all their strength to uproot thoroughly from their parishes the pernicious art of sorcery and malefice invented by the Devil, and if they find a man or woman follower of this wickedness to eject them foully disgraced from their parishes.
For the Apostle says, “A man that is a heretic after the first and second admonition avoid.” Those are held captive by the Devil who, leaving their creator, seek the aid of the Devil. And so Holy Church must be cleansed of this pest. It is also not to be omitted that some wicked women, perverted by the Devil, seduced by illusions and phantasms of Demons, believe and profess themselves, in the hours of the night, to ride upon certain beasts with Diana, the goddess of pagans, and an innumerable multitude of women, and in the silence of the dead of the night to traverse great spaces of earth, and to obey her commands as of their mistress, and to be summoned to her service on certain nights.
But I wish it were they alone who perished in their faithlessness and did not draw many with them into the destruction of infidelity. For an innumerable multitude, deceived by this false opinion, believe this to be true, and so believing, wander from the right faith and are involved in the error of the pagans when they think that there is anything of divinity or power except the one God.
Wherefore the priests throughout their churches should preach with all insistence to the people that they may know this to be in every way false and that such phantasms are imposed on the minds of infidels and not by the divine but by the malignant spirit. Thus Satan himself, who transfigures himself into an angel of light, when he has captured the mind of a miserable woman and has subjugated her to himself by infidelity and incredulity, immediately transforms himself into the species and similitudes of different personages and deluding the mind which he holds captive and exhibiting things, joyful or mournful, and persons, known or unknown, leads it through devious ways, and while the spirit alone endures this, the faithless mind thinks these things happen not in the spirit but in the body.
Who is there that is not led out of himself in dreams and nocturnal visions, and sees much when sleeping which he has never seen waking? Who is so stupid and foolish as to think that all these things which are only done in spirit happen in the body, when the Prophet Ezekiel saw visions of the Lord in spirit and not in the body, and the Apostle John saw and heard the mysteries of the Apocalypse in the spirit and not in the body, as he himself says “I was in the spirit”? And Paul does not dare to say that he was rapt in the body.
It is therefore to be proclaimed publicly to all that whoever believes such things or similar to these loses the faith, and he who has not the right faith in God is not of God but of him in whom he believes, that is, of the Devil.
For of our Lord it is written “All things were made by Him.” Whoever therefore believes that anything can be made, or that any creature can be changed to better or to worse or be transformed into another species or similitude, except by the Creator himself who made everything and through whom all things were made, is beyond doubt an infidel.
SEE ALSO:
FURTHER READING:
- Baroja, Julio Caro. The World of the Witches. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975. First published 1961.
- Lea, Henry Charles. Materials Toward a History of Witchcraft. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1939.
- Russell, Jeffrey Burton. Witchcraft in the Middle Ages. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1972.
SOURCE:
The Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft and Wicca written by Rosemary Ellen Guiley – Copyright © 1989, 1999, 2008 by Visionary Living, Inc.