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This fifteenth-century French manuscript contains the poem by Martin le Franc, Le champion des dames, a defence of virtuous women. It was possibly created by Barthélemy Poignare.
The present picture shows the marginal drawings on folio 105v depicting two Waldensian witches, one astride a broom and the other sitting upon a stick. Named heretics in 1215, Waldensians followed the teachings of Peter Waldo, a layman who began preaching in Lyon in the late 1170s.
One of the stock beliefs about witches was that they could travel through the sky on broomsticks.
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