s from
_Cotys_, or _Cotto_, Goddess of Vice, who presided in the assemblies
which were held at night, and where the Bacchantes gave themselves up
to all sorts of dissolute pleasures; but this is very different from
the witches' sabbath.

Others derive this term from _Sabbatius_, which is an epithet given to
the god Bacchus, whose nocturnal festivals were celebrated in
debauchery. Arnobius and Julius Firmicus Maternus inform us that in
these festivals they slipped a golden serpent into the bosoms of the
initiated, and drew it downwards; but this etymology is too
far-fetched: the people who gave the name of _sabbath_ to the
assemblies of the sorcerers wished apparently to compare them in
derision to those of the Jews, and to what they practiced in their
synagogues on sabbath days.

The most ancient monument in which I have been able to remark any
express mention of the nocturnal assemblies of the sorcerers is in the
Capitularies,[212] wherein it is said that women led away by the
illusions of the demons, say that they go in the night with the
goddess Diana and an infinite number of other women, borne through the
air on different animals, that they go in a few hours a great
distance, and obey Diana as their queen. It was, therefore, to the
goddess Diana, or the Moon, and not to Lucifer, that they paid homage.
The Germans call witches' dances what we call the sabbath. They say
that these people assemble on Mount Bructere.

The famous Agobard,[213] Archbishop of Lyons, who lived under the
Emperor Louis the Debonair, wrote a treatise against certain
superstitious persons in his time, who believed that storms, hail, and
thunder were caused by certain sorcerers whom they called tempesters
(_tempestarios_, or storm-brewers), who raised the rain in the air,
caused storms and thunder, and brought sterility upon the earth. They
called these extraordinary rains _aura lavatitia_, as if to indicate
that they were raised by magic power. In this place the people still
call these violent rains _alvace_. There were even persons
sufficiently prejudiced to boast that they knew of _tempetiers_, who
had to conduct the tempests where they choose, and to turn them aside
when they pleased. Agobard interrogated some of them, but they were
obliged to own that they had not been present at the things they
related.

Agobard maintains that this is the work of God alone; that in truth,
the saints, with the help of God, have often performed simila