Black Mass

What it is

The Black Mass is a ceremony celebrated by Satanic groups. It takes the Catholic Mass, the Church's chief rite, traced to apostolic times, and reverses it on purpose: its makers intend the result as sacrilege and blasphemy. Christian sources alleged such ceremonies, in varying shapes, across many centuries, but only the modern versions are directly attested. Nineteenth-century French books spread the idea widely, and a 1954 study, The Satanic Mass, began the revivals that different groups perform today. In older records the rite usually appears through prosecution: witch-hunt manuals and trial papers describe accused witches serving the Devil with an inverted service, and one French criminal investigation preserved the details of a modified Mass said by a priest for the king's mistress.

Where it comes from

Accusations start early. Writing in the fourth century, the heresiologist Epiphanius of Salamis charged a Gnostic sect, the Borborites, with a distorted Eucharist involving menstrual blood and semen, and Saint Augustine described a group he called Catharistas, said to mix sexual fluids into flour for a sacrament. Inside the medieval Church the rite was looser than it later became: French priests inserted private prayers for personal needs, festive parodies such as the Feast of Asses and the Feast of Fools circulated, and the Goliard poets wrote drinkers' and gamblers' Masses, collected around 1230 in the Carmina Burana. From the sixteenth century to the nineteenth, France supplied most of the stories, from Jean Bodin's tale of Catherine de' Medici through the Affair of the Poisons to Michelet and Huysmans. H.T.F. Rhodes' 1954 book began the modern revival.

How it is done

Suspects in the Basque witch-hunts described an altar in black cloths and the Devil as celebrant: he heard confessions that counted churchgoing as sin, raised a black round object instead of the Host, saying 'this is my body', and gave a bitter drink from a black chalice. A 1597 French account has a ring drawn with a rod of holly, candles lit from a black candle between a goat's horns, a turnip dyed black lifted at the Elevation, water instead of wine, and dancers circling with their backs turned. The Guibourg rite in Paris was another kind again: a Catholic Mass modified with formulas from grimoires.

Tools and materials

Nearly every object in the records inverts a Mass object, usually dyed or swapped. Accounts list black altar cloths, black vestments, a missal, a chalice holding water instead of wine, and a black round object or a turnip dyed black standing in for the Host. The candles are black, lit from a single black flame between the goat's horns in one tale. Witch-hunt writers add the stolen Host, said to be put to diabolical ends, and the Guibourg rite used a consecrated Host laid on a woman's body. Other tools include a rod of holly for drawing the circle and a black book of spoken words.

What it is for

Modern groups perform the rite as an act of sacrilege and blasphemy, a parody meant as such. In the older records the purposes were practical. Medieval priests sold Votive Masses said to bless crops and cattle, bring success in an enterprise, obtain love, or curse enemies, one way being to name the enemy within a funeral Mass and bury an image of him. The Guibourg Mass served love: a Host consecrated on the body of Madame de Montespan was believed to hold magical power, and went into love potions meant to keep the love of Louis XIV. In the Basque account the Devil's sermon promises rest in the next life to followers who endure poverty in this one.

Who does it

Who performs it depends on the period. Today the celebrants are members of Satanic groups, each keeping its own version. In trial records the celebrant is the Devil himself, served by accused witches, or a figure dressed as a priest. In medieval France the performers could be clergy in fact: a surplus of clerics and monks, younger sons sent to religious universities who needed a livelihood, took paid work saying Masses for clients. In the Paris case the priest Étienne Guibourg celebrated and Catherine Monvoisin performed with him, until the Affair of the Poisons ended with her execution and his imprisonment.

Peoples and places

France is the heart of the story, from the private Masses of the medieval French Church to the Affair of the Poisons, the Basque accounts collected across the Spanish border in the village of Zugarramurdi, and the nineteenth-century books that spread the idea. The Basque case stands apart: academics including Emma Wilby argue that its rich descriptions grew out of a local peasantry devoted to unorthodox ritual, from cursing Masses to forbidden magical conjurations using Catholic elements. Earlier still, the Church Fathers named small sects, the Borborites and the Catharistas, and the medieval Latin world produced the Goliard poets and the Cathars, groups some historians link to the earliest hints of 'black' Masses.

What people believe

Behind the rite stands a belief in the power of the Mass itself. The Church treats the Mass as its chief ritual, and medieval Christians held that power lay in the consecrated Host, which is why a stolen Host was thought useful for dark work, and why love potions were built on one. The inversion follows the same logic: a cross made with the left hand, vestments without a cross, confessions in which churchgoing counted as sin, worship turned towards the Devil. In the Basque account the Devil preaches as a good god who will reward hardship with rest in the next life. Witch-hunt writers framed the whole picture as the work of witches serving Satan.

When it is done

One French trial account places a witches' gathering on Saint John's Eve, and describes general meetings every Wednesday and Friday of each month, attended by more than sixty people, each carrying a black candle lit from one flame between the goat's horns. Medieval festive parodies of the Mass belonged to the calendar too: the Feast of Asses and the Feast of Fools were entertainments of particular festivities, at times half-tolerated in practice though never accepted by Church authorities.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Scholars read the rite differently from accusers and believers. Only its modern forms are attested; the centuries of earlier ceremonies rest on Christian allegations. Emma Wilby and other academics argue that the detailed Basque accounts of 1609 to 1614 grew out of an interplay between interrogators eager to find evidence of the rite and a peasantry whose religion was itself unorthodox, full of cursing Masses, liturgical misrule and Catholic ritual objects used in forbidden conjurations. Some historians have postulated that the wandering Goliard clerics at times offered heretical Masses for hire, since they, the Cathars and the accused witches all seemed to threaten the Papacy in Rome.

Compare and confuse

The Black Mass sits close to several neighbouring things. Witch-hunt writing ties it to the Witches' Sabbath, the night assembly where witches were said to meet the Devil; Florimond de Raemond's 1597 book The Antichrist gives the first complete picture of Mass blasphemy inside that setting. It also shades into the Church's own borderland: Votive Masses said for pay, cursing Masses, and the drinkers' and gamblers' Masses of the wandering clerics, which mocked the rite in Latin verse. Some historians postulate that these clerics at times performed heretical Masses as well.

Law and persecution

The Church condemned the paid and cursing Masses as superstitious, sacrilegious abuses, though they went on in secret, and it never accepted the festive parodies of the Feast of Asses and the Feast of Fools. Secular law struck hardest in the Affair of the Poisons, a criminal investigation that ended with Catherine Monvoisin executed and Étienne Guibourg imprisoned. The witch-hunts were legal proceedings too: manuals such as the Malleus Maleficarum of 1487 and the Compendium Maleficarum of 1608 recorded the supposed practices, and the Basque trials of 1609 to 1614 produced the fullest accounts, given by suspects in villages such as Zugarramurdi.

Today

The Black Mass as performed now is a revival. Its popular form came first from books: in nineteenth-century France, Jules Michelet's Satanism and Witchcraft and Joris-Karl Huysmans' Là-bas made the ceremony widely known. The modern revival itself began with H.T.F. Rhodes' study The Satanic Mass, which appeared in London in 1954, and a range of Satanic groups now perform their own versions of the rite.

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Good reading and sources

• Encyclopaedia BritannicaArticle

• Black Mass on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data