Pierre de Rosteguy de Lancre’s 1612 book, Tableau de l'inconstance des mauvais anges et démons (Tableau of the Inconstancy of Evil Angels and Demons), is the most sensationalist account of a sabbat, the nocturnal gathering of witches, ever written. Recounting a witch hunt the judge had conducted in the French Basque country in 1609, the book is replete with allegations of cannibalism, vampirism and a great deal of demonic sex.
Historians have not quite known what to do with de Lancre, who may have executed as many as 80 women and men as witches. They’ve either desperately tried to make him out to be the very “picture of the Catholic Reformation man”. Or they descend into unhelpful denunciations of his “attitude bordering on imbecility”.