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History of the Franks

St Gregory of Tours, tr. Dalton, 1927

Book 6, 35. Of the Death of Mummolus the Prefect, and of Women Slain

While these things befell, it was told the queen that her dead son had been taken from her by witchcraft and incantations, and that the prefect Mummolus, who had long been odious in her sight, was privy to the fact. It happened that the prefect was feasting in his house, and one from the court was lamenting that a boy dear to him had been carried off by the dysentery. The prefect answered: ‘I have always at hand a herb which if one attacked by dysentery shall drink, he shall be made whole even though his case were desperate.’ These words, reported to the queen, inflamed her to greater fury. She arrested and put to the torture sundry women of Paris, whipping them into a confession of all that they knew. They avowed that they were witches, and admitted that they had done many to death, adding this, which in my judgement is beyond belief: ‘O queen, we have given thy son for the life of the prefect Mummolus.’ Thereat the queen caused to be applied yet fiercer tortures; some of the women she had put to the sword, others burned, others fixed in the spokes of wheels so that their bones were broken. She then withdrew to the royal residence of Compiègne with the king, and there revealed to him all that she had learned regarding the prefect. The king sent messengers with the order that he should be brought before him. He was first examined, then loaded with chains and subjected to torture. He was hung on a beam with his hands bound behind his back, and in that posture questioned as to what he knew of these sorceries, but he confessed to none¹ of the misdeeds above related. Yet he did admit that he had often received from these women unguents and potions to win for him the favour of the king and queen. When he was taken down from this punishment, he called an executioner to him, and said: ‘Tell my lord the king that I feel no pain from all the tortures that I have undergone.’ When the king heard this, he said: ‘It must be true, then, that he is a sorcerer, if such punishment as this hath not hurt him.’ Mummolus was next racked by rope and pulley and flogged with triple thongs until the very torturers were tired out. After this splinters were driven beneath the nails of his fingers and his toes. Not until the sword which was to cut off his head was on the point of falling did the queen grant him his life. But there followed an indignity not less bitter than death. For all that he possessed was taken from him, and he was sent in a cart to his native city of Bordeaux. On the way he had a rush of blood,² and was hardly able to reach his destination; not long afterwards he breathed his last.

The queen now took and burned all the valuable things that had belonged to her dead boy, precious objects and garments of silk or furs; it is said that they filled four carts. The gold and silver was melted down and so kept, that nothing might remain intact to recall the days of her mourning for her son.

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