Firetale (15 page)

Eagles of the
Death Metal, “Kiss
the Devil”

Somewhere in Medieval
Europe
.

Historians believe that the
Inquisition, which began in 1184, was merely a tool of the state
and the
Church in the struggle for power over the minds of mortals
and a way to eliminate the unwanted. That is the truth, but not the
whole truth. The Inquisition officially fought against heretics and
infidels until the nineteenth century, but those who suffered from
its actions included not only mere mortals but also the devil’s
seed, mongrels born of demons’ coition with mortal women. Over the
centuries, with fire, sword, and cross, the Inquisition turned
demionis into creatures of legend, mythical and
incorporeal.

The Church’s fight with mongrels began in
France in the 12th century. The beginning of the war of the Lord’s
servants against the devil’s spawn was quite mundane. In 1631, a
priest named Urbain Grandier arrived in the town of Loudun. He was
a well-known man but had not made a successful career. Grandier was
educated, smart, and had good connections, but, alas, had two major
drawbacks for a church minister: he loved young girls and openly
criticized the authorities. The Church could turn a blind eye to
priests’ venery as long as they did not flaunt their sins, but
Grandier felt no need to hide his love affairs. Of course, it was
difficult for a priest with the reputation of a fornicator to rise
in the Church hierarchy. The monastery of Loudun was the last
chance for Grandier to get out from under.

The monastery was small, but two
dozen nuns, Ursulines, were from noble families
that at first generously donated
to the church, and also had some political influence in France.
Grandier hoped to persuade Mother Superior Jeanne des Anges to give
him the position of canon, but it was too late. By the time Urbain
arrived, she had already chosen Father Mignon, known for his piety.
Grandier decided to get Mignon to resign, by telling the public
about his sins.

Urba
in began to preach, and his words
were full of stinging criticism of the clergy. The locals were
thrilled with such bold speeches. Commoners loved Grandier, and
people came from villages near Loudun to listen to him. Urbain
gladly enjoyed the fruits of his popularity, charming local
beauties, who were enthralled by the freethinker’s graceful
speeches and sharp mind.

Mignon and des Anges
complained
about Grandier to the ecclesiastical court, accusing him of
debauchery and disrespect for the rules of the clergy, arguing that
“in the church, he only gets down on one knee.” The churchmen
sentenced Grandier to banishment from Loudun. But the priest
appealed to the civil courts, and ultimately Urbain was freed from
the charges. Believing that now nothing threatened his position in
Loudun, the priest, who wanted revenge on des Anges and Mignon,
went further in his preachings. Starting with the exposure of
Mignon’s imaginary piety, Grandier finished with a pasquil on
Armand de Richelieu, the Secretary of State and Head of
Government.

On hearing this, the cardinal
was furious. Instigated by Richelieu, des Anges and Mignon accused
Grandier
of
one of the worst crimes of the time: practicing witchcraft. In the
monastery of the Ursulines, an epidemic of obsessions began,
initiated, the nuns claimed, by Urbain, who had thrown a bouquet
with a diabolical spell on it over the monastery fence. Day and
night, from behind the walls of the monastery, came wild laughter
and howling, and blasphemy and threats to the city were heard. When
Mother Superior appeared in the town, there were stigmata on her
hands. Des Anges told the townsfolk about terrible things, how nuns
were rolling on the floor in fits of madness, growling like
animals, and tearing their clothes as they prayed to Satan, not
God. It was as if they had turned into sleepwalkers, and in a state
of unconsciousness had called Grandier’s name.

It got to the point that the
Louvre
became
seriously worried. Events in Loudun, which had served before as a
curious topic for idle chatter, began troubling the king and the
court. Richelieu, acting as a true champion of the faith and with
the support of the king, sent to Loudun the investigator
Jean de
Laubardemont,
some exorcists to perform needed rituals, and doctors to
help the nuns, who were physically exhausted by the epidemic. The
Ursulines had begun to imitate possession even when des Anges
permitted them to rest. Sometimes they did things that Mignon had
not discussed with them—crawling on their stomachs, defecating in a
residential area, reading passages from the Bible
backwards.

The moment they arrived in the
town, the exorcists said that the Ursulines
had reached such an extreme level of
possession that driving out the demons of each nun individually was
pointless. Instead, they needed to look for the person who had
cursed them. Collecting evidence against Urbain, the exorcists
interviewed the Ursulines who behaved strangely. After providing
answers to all the questions, which they had memorized in advance,
they suddenly began spitting and barking. The doctors diagnosed
this as nervous stress associated with a long-term need to portray
insanity. After a short investigation,
de Laubardemont
unmasked a devil worshiper to
whom all the evidence pointed—Urbain Grandier. By order of the
investigator, Grandier was arrested and thrown into
prison.

While Urba
in was in prison, the
townspeople, who had been so captivated by his preachings, sent a
petition to the king asking for his release. But the commoners’
love, which Urbain liked to brag about, could not save him.
Subjecting Grandier to torture, de Laubardemont found irrefutable
proof of the priest’s guilt. A tiny barred window in his cell was
laid with stones so Grandier could never get enough air. Ordinary
people, according to the investigator, had suffocated, but the
Devil was supporting the apostate’s life. One member of the
commission sent by Richelieu held a red-hot iron crucifix against
Grandier’s lips, forcing the priest to jerk his head back. In his
records, de Laubardemont indicated that Urbain did not dare
venerate the cross. This removed all doubt that Grandier was a
sorcerer. Richelieu’s exorcists claimed that the weaker the
apostate became in prison, the less the demons would manifest
themselves in the nuns’ bodies. However, the girls, despite all
entreaties, continued to simulate the attacks, much to the chagrin
of de Laubardemont, who did not know how to calm the townsfolk. To
pacify the people, the investigator sentenced Grandier to be burned
at the stake, but without Urbain’s confession, which was required
in cases of witchcraft and deals with the Devil.

Urba
in was provided the possibility of
reconciliation with the Church. He needed to repent of his sins,
and if he did, he would first be strangled with a garrote and then
burned, but the nuns would not let him use this opportunity. Every
time he tried to speak, they splashed water from a bucket into his
face. Choking, Grandier could not say a word, and the investigator
announced that the devil-worshipper had abandoned reconciliation.
On August 18, 1634, Urban Grandier was burned alive.

However,
the nuns’ seizures did not end with
the death of Grandier, as the exorcists had promised. Moreover, the
epidemic had spread to the citizens of Loudun, and then to the
surrounding villages. The newly possessed exhibited the same
symptoms as the nuns. They sometimes spoke not with their own
voices but with the voices of the demons inside them, who called
Richelieu a fool who had bought into Lucifer’s lie, cursed the
churchmen as hypocrites, and prophesied the torments of
hell.

Inspired by internecine
intrigues
,
Richelieu, a practical man and a politician more than a servant of
the Church, completely excluded the possibility that the Loudun
events might have had a supernatural cause. It was important to the
Cardinal to eliminate the arrogant priest, who had maligned him
before the laity, and the charade of demonic possessions gave him
the opportunity to legally use his power against
Grandier.

Epidemic
possessions after the Grandier case
surprised the entire European Church. Its servants could only guess
if the Devil had been behind the Loudun events from the very
beginning or intervened when opponents of the disgraced priest had
celebrated their victory. Whatever it was, the story of Grandier,
combined with his diatribes, seriously spoiled the reputation of
the Church.

To combat devilish mockery, the churchmen
declared a real war on everything supernatural. To strike the enemy
even harder, Cardinal Antonio Marcello Barberini Seniore, Secretary
of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal
Inquisition, suggested the use of those whom the Inquisition
hunted—mediums and psychics. In the Middle Ages they also
erroneously believed in the seed of the devil, though the people
they burned at the stake along with witches, werewolves, and forest
monsters were not demionis.

Cardinal Barberini
found psychics who
could feel the supernatural to find monsters and beasts, even where
they were hiding from angry Inquisitors, and demanded that they use
their abilities to serve the Church. To save their own lives,
almost all the psychics agreed. Many later regretted it. Helping
the Church did not make their lives better. The Dominican monks,
the most ardent of the inquisitors, called themselves the Lord’s
dogs, and people who felt the magic, their bloodhounds. And,
indeed, they treated the mediums like dogs. The psychics and
mediums who worked for the Church spent the rest of their days in
chains and dirt. They were tortured and humiliated. Many were
blinded with a hot iron or had their tongues cut out, the
Inquisitors believing that the loss of some physical senses would
reinforce the sense of supernatural.

Enchained and
crippled
,
they went from town to town with the Inquisitors, finding more and
more new victims. They did it only to save their own lives. The
“bloodhounds” played a decisive role in the witch hunt across
Europe, and in America they were secretly used during the Salem
witch trials.

The more
efficient
ly
the psychics worked and the more evil they helped to destroy, the
less important they became to the Church. In 1782, in Switzerland,
Anna Göldi, the last witch in Europe, was executed, and by the end
of the 18th century, leprechauns and demons, werewolves and ghouls
had finally turned into fairy tales to frighten naughty children.
When the Inquisition had completed its task, its services were no
longer needed, and by the middle of the 19th century, a formidable
force that once had frightened even monarchs had become a relic of
antiquity. The number of mongrels, which had once inhabited towns
and forests by the thousands, decreased. And then Hell agreed to a
deal.

In an attempt to save
the lives of the few
surviving demionis, Lucifer made the Pactum with the Church,
according to which he was obliged to shepherd everyone with even a
drop of devil’s blood in their veins, and prevent them from harming
people. Those who violated this agreement willingly, stupidly, or
by order, would be destroyed. After the Pactum, the number of
reported cases of possessions decreased. Now, most demionis are the
descendants of those who survived the raids of the Holy
Inquisition.

The Church appointed Judges to oversee
compliance with the Pactum. Judges were the descendants of the
bloodhounds who once worked for the Inquisition. Many of the
psychics died, unable to endure life in shackles. The Church
treated those who survived cruelly. Among them were powerful
mediums who could clearly sense the presence of the supernatural.
These were bred like cattle, the Church hoping their offspring
would have special talents. Most of the children were born without
powers, but some had abilities that exceeded the previous
generation’s. They still could not use magic, but their sense of
the supernatural was heightened, and with these children, the
Church created Judges.

The
Judges’ upbringing was harsh. They
were raised to be physically and mentally prepared to murder
ungodly creatures. Judges knew how to destroy virunas, find a
cuegle, exhaust a genie. From childhood, they were like sponges
soaking up hatred for the creatures of the Devil. They were taught
to kill without regret or hesitation. Judges replaced those
inquisitors who had chosen to fight the creatures of Hell as the
best way to struggle for the purity of the faith. They became
wanderers, moving from country to country, from town to town, in
search of demionis. They ruthlessly hunted down and exterminated
those who had broken the Pactum. They didn’t care if a mongrel had
a mind or knew of the existence of the Pactum; a shred of evidence
of guilt was enough to execute the sentence. If they found a
mongrel, they watched it, and if they determined its guilt, they
killed it. And then they moved on, by order or by their psychic
senses.

Hunting
is still their purpose in life, and
the number of their “trophies” is the main subject of their rare
talks. They are educated, know languages and sciences, but best of
all, they know the art of the hunt and how to kill. Some bloodhound
descendants received not only heightened abilities, but also a bit
of madness. Such are the most difficult to control, and these are
the most dangerous Judges.