16th century AD

21. See Nogues, Moeurs d'autrefois, 7-8 and n. 1; Henri Gelin, "Les noueries d'aiguillette en Poitou," Revue des etudes rabelaisiennes 8 (1910): 122-133; Robert Favreau, "La sorcellerie en Poitou a la fin du moyen age," Bulletin de la societe des antiquaires de l'ouest 4th Series, 18 (1985): 133-154; J. Bruyn Andrews, "Traditions, superstitions et coutumes du Mentonnais (Alpes-Maritimes)," Revue des traditions populaires 9 (1894): 213-263; Robert Jalby, Sorcellerie et medicine populaire en Languedoc (Nyons, 1974), 132-135; and J.-P. Pinies, Figures de la sorcellerie languedocienne (Paris, 1983), 99.

22. Leproux, Medicine, magie, et sorcellerie, 222-225; idem, Du berceau a la tombe. Contributions au folklore charentais (Paris, 1959), 172-175; and A. Lamontellerie, "Carte mythologique de la France: departement de la Charente-Maritime," Bulletin de la societe de mythologie francaise 26 (April-June 1957): 52-53.

23. Nogues, Moeurs d'autrefois, 7; and Lamontellerie, "Carte mythologique," 53.

24. Francois Crespet, Deux livres de la Mine de Satan (Paris, 1590), 276.

25. Jean Bodin was born at Angers in 1530. See his De la demonomanie des sorciers, first impression Paris, 1580. I have used the 1586 Antwerp edition. See here Book II, 97-100.

26. See A.D. de la Fontenelle de Vaudore, ed., Journal de Guillaume et de Michel Le Riche, avocats du roi a Saint-Maixent de 1534 a 1586 (Saint-Maixent, 1846; reprint Geneva, 1971), 209-210.

27. Guillaume Bouchet, Les serees, vol. 1 (Paris, 1873-1882), 184-195.

28. See Jean Baptiste Thiers, Traite des superstitions qui regardent les sacrements, vol. 4 (Paris, 1700-1704), 567-594. The erudite Swiss patrician Thomas Platter (brother to the renowned physician Felix Platter), while studying medicine at Montpellier and travelling the French Midi in the late 1590's, reports wide public apprehension of the nouement in the vicinity of Uzes compelling local brides and grooms to avoid city churches and obtain their nuptial benediction with the fewest possible witnesses in the little sanctuaries of neighboring villages. The newlyweds returned to town only for celebration of a marriage banquet. Felix Platter's own widely influential medical opinions about the reality and incurable nature of the nouement may also have formed during residence in Languedoc and exposure to ambient public fears of the curse. See Felix et Thomas Platter a Montpellier 1552-1559-1595-1599. Notes de voyage de deux etudiants Balois (Montpellier, 1892), 376-377.

29. Bodin, De la demonomanie, Book II, 99.

30. See Thomas de Cauzons, La magie et la sorcellerie en France, vol. 2 (Paris, 1901-1913; reprint Osnabruck, 1974), 459-463, "Les sorciers en Normandie." Cauzons gives multiple examples of local cures accused of and reprimanded for magically affecting the health of their parishioners.

31. Gelin, "Les Noueries," 132.

32. Jalby, Sorcellerie et medicine populaire, 134. See also Revue des traditions populaires 16 (1907): 132.

33. See Sebillot, Le folklore de France, vol. 4, 237-238 and n. 1,238.