Catalog of Magic by brother Rudolph (few fragments)

July 26th

Translation mine (warning —a strong language and misogyny from the XIII century)

Even Eve, the first mother, spread the germs of idolatry to her daughters. The germ was carried by a Devil under the disguise of the serpent. And her daughters are all silly women who want to know more than is fit and proper for them. So women follow in Eve’s footsteps with those pagan practices:

• to put children to sleep, they put them in a sack and tie it closely
• they use dirty bunches of straw, used to clean the hearth, to wash their children at the bathtime
• they put cut off ears of rabbits, and legs of moles into their children’s cradles to make them fall asleep
• when a child is born, they only show the big toe of a said child to their husbands at first
• they cut three pieces from a birthing membrane to put in their husbands’ food, so it will make them love their children more
• they put an egg into the first bath for a newborn, and then give this egg to the father of a child
• when carrying a child from the christening, they stomp on an egg on the threshold of their home
• during the bath of a newly christened child, they put a black hen alive into a fire and then when it is burning, they dance around the hearth
• the bath water then they pour out next to the house of another woman who just had a child or is pregnant — to make that other child cry and their child tranquil
• unmarried women, to find the name of their future husband, take five stones, name those stones after men they fancy, put the stones into a fire, and then into cold water. Which named stone will crack — that will be the name of a future husband
• to keep their husbands faithful, they bury a live hen, and after it is dead, they take a heart of a hen, grind it, and put it into a meal made for a husband
• when they move into a new house, they bury pots filled with gifts made for the house spirits and gnomes in four corners of the house, so they will help and protect them
• first Sunday after a child is born, they put them on a cow while making the cuckoo sounds

They make all those practices and even more unspeakable ones, going back to pagan beliefs without any regard for the blood and the martyr death of our savior Jesus.