Note 84 — Chapter I

The practice of magic with small waxen images into which pins were thrust, impious words being uttered at the same time, was at least as old in France as the beginning of the fourteenth century. In 1330 Robert of Artois employed it to compass the death of Philip of Valois and his queen; just as two centuries and a half later the adherents of the League resorted to the same device to destroy Henry III. and Henry of Navarre. See note L to the Heptameron (edit. cit.), i. 170. Jean de Marcouville (Recueil mémor. Paris, 1564, Cimber et Danjou, iii. 415) alludes to similar sorcery just after the death of Philip the Fair, in 1314. It was therefore no "Italian sorcery" introduced into France by Catharine de' Medici, as M. De Félice seems to suppose (Hist. des prot. de France, liv. ii. c. 17).