La Voisin: Poisoner-for-Hire and Provider of Alleged Sorcery

Catherine Monvoisin, known as "La Voisin," was accused of witchcraft, found guilty, and executed in 1680 when she was about 40 years old. She practiced medicine, specifically midwifery, and performed abortions which were illegal in France at that time. But she was known as the local fortune teller, and was a commissioned poisoner, said to help women trapped in abusive marriages.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Criminally, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to Criminalia,
where we're exploring the intersection of history and true crime.
I'm Holly Fry and me Maria tru Marquis. In this
season we are talking about lady poisoners, and in today's episode,

(00:23):
we're going to look at the life of Katherine maulv
was a So let's say you lived in Paris in
the mid sixteen hundreds and you wanted to get rid
of someone such as an abusive husband or maybe a
rich family member for example, or maybe you wanted to
make a crush fall in love with you looking to
hold a black mass or have a secret abortion. Katherine
was at your service, or so people believed. Now let's

(00:47):
be clear, there is a lot of rumor and speculation
and even cover ups surrounding Katherine and what exactly she
did for her livelihood. So was she actually a high
priestess who burned babies in her furnace or was she
simply a palm reader who got caught up in the
scandal of the time. We're going to talk about it
all and then you can draw your own conclusions. So

(01:21):
Catherine was born in sixty probably in Paris, which is
where we know she lived as an adult. From a
very early age, it said that Catherine had a knack
for fortune telling. An accounts suggest that she was able
to read a person's body language so well that she
could convince them she knew things about them that she
couldn't possibly have known, which is a skill fortune tellers
called cold reading um and they work at it. It

(01:43):
doesn't usually come quickly, but by the time she was
nine she was already learning palmistry. And Catherine married Antoine,
mom was a jeweler, when she was still in her teens.
The couple went on to have at least three children,
including a daughter named Marguerite, who is going to play
a role later on in her mother's story. So her

(02:03):
family they lived a pretty comfortable life, that is until
the jewelry business that they had failed. Not wanting to
return to poverty like she grew up in, Catherine decided
to use her childhood interests in the arcane arts to
support her family, and she was very successful at it,
and she worked under a professional alias Loveoisin, which is
a playful pun on the French word for neighbor as

(02:25):
well as her last name. She told fortunes, and she
practiced hand and face readings from a discreet spot in
the overgrown garden in her yard. It sounds really kind
of lovely, you know, and that just bring you a
cup of tea and you get your palm red. I
literally when I was reading this story, was like, how
can I build the discreet garden in my yard where

(02:47):
I could too and in pretend to be getting readings
by lave Absolutely and for me there's like a lovely
tree swing at a little table anyway. Um, much like
what we were just talking about. Like, Catherine also a
lot of thought into her professional appearance and into the
atmosphere she provided for her clients, and she was all
about creating the experience. So speaking of that experience, let's

(03:11):
talk about her robes for a minute, because her robe
needs a little attention. Multiple sources refer to this accessory,
so we like to think that it actually did exist. Um.
It said that Catherine performed her spells while she wore
a crimson red velvet robe that was embroidered with gold eagles,
which she bought for what would be about an equivalent
in today's US dollars about two thousand dollars. I'm not

(03:34):
gonna lie like I might be shopping for red velvet
online while we talk about this. I don't doubt it.
I wish I was wearing it right now. I mean
I did get married in red velvet. So there's a
there's a historical press of it. Yeah, fortune tellers at
this time were available to indeed tell your fortune. But

(03:56):
as this research was playing out, it became apparent that
fortune tellers in Paris at the time, we're also often
women who could help you if you wanted to, say,
terminate a pregnancy. This was something of a coded catch
all term, this idea of a fortune teller. So as
a midwife, Catherine would have performed abortions, which were illegal

(04:16):
in France at this time. Some versions of her story
suggests she also helped facilitate secret adoptions um and as
far as we can tell, she provided her services to
anyone who needed assistance, and because of her discretion in
these matters, she had many high profile clients, including some
from the royal court. But things never change, right. Success
is always going to bring out haters, does not matter.

(04:41):
It's the same game with different technology. But by the
mid sixteen sixties, Catherine and her act in her career
had become quite good, and she had grown so famous
around the city for her fortune telling skills that she
was challenged by a priest to prove she was not
a heretic. I feel like we have to comment on
how hard it is to prove that something isn't a thing,

(05:04):
prove it's not well, okay, um, So, fortune telling in
seventeenth century France was considered to be a pagan superstition
that we're using quotes around that by the Catholic Church.
Yet most people didn't actually agree with that assessment. Um.
And if the population had been pulled by say like
Gallop or the Harris pull like we would today, most

(05:26):
people would have said that they believed there was a
science behind it. Rather than rising above the priest's accusations
and just going about her business, Catherine defended herself. She
appeared before the professors at the Sorbund Theological College in
Paris and successfully defended the quote unquote science behind her practices.
She argued that if she did have any spiritual powers,

(05:48):
they were of course a gift from God, and that
was that really right? And that was that I mean,
good for her for defending herself. They were satisfied that
there was no heresy here um. But little did I
know what Catherine's business would expand into next. By the
sixteen seventies, Catherine grew her business to also include, what else, poisons.

(06:11):
It was believed that imbuing them with a magic spell
was what gave her poisons their potency, and it was
her work with poison that would eventually lead to, unfortunately,
her downfall. When we return, we're going to talk about
how Catherine might have also dabbled in performing black masses.

(06:39):
Welcome back to Criminalia, where we're looking into whether or
not Catherine tried to poison the King of France. We
have mentioned black masses in passing in this episode and
previously on the show, but we haven't really talked about
them in any detail yet. And the phrase tends to
conjure these images of satanic ceremony knees, but that's way oversimplified, right.

(07:03):
So in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, black masses weren't
always held with the intention of worshiping the devil um.
They were mostly actually held as theatrical events that were
intended as a way to protest against the Catholic Church
as well as to shock the community, and depending on
what sources you read, they maybe would end with an orgy,
maybe not. Madame de Montespan, one of King Louis the

(07:27):
fourteenth's favorite mistresses and mother to seven of his children,
was a frequent client of Catherine's, relying on her for
various magical powders and love potions for several years. So
when she suspected that the king was becoming interested in
another and younger woman, she again sought Katherine's services. So

(07:47):
Louis was actually interested in many, many women, and he
was notorious for his mistresses, and so she was going
to need a pretty powerful spell. So, as the story goes,
Catherine and a defrocked clergyman named Etienne Guibert performed a
black mass for her. So let's set the scene. Montespan

(08:08):
would have been lying naked on an altar and she
would have been holding a black candle in each of
her hands. The priest he would have placed an empty
chalice on her stomach, and Catherine would have performed a
human sacrifice, specifically an infant whose blood would be poured
into that chalice. There would have been a little more
hocus pocus going on, but that was pretty much the

(08:29):
end of the performance. Remember when we mentioned earlier that
Catherine had a daughter that would play into this story
as a witness to the event. That daughter, Marguerite, would
later testify that her mother's Black Mass rituals were just
a lot of smoke and mirrors. The altar, she claimed,
was actually a mattress that had just been elevated on
a few chairs. And the sacrifice, well it wasn't a

(08:52):
human infant that was later burned in a furnace. The blood,
she said, actually came from pigeons which had been purchased
and bled for the occasion. It's all about lighting. The
darker it is, the less you're going to see the maddress. Right,
we'll just throw a cloth over it. It's gonna be fine. Right.

(09:12):
I love her performance, I just really do. That is
unless you read a different pile of books. So if
you're looking at the sources for what Katherine's Black Masses
were like, there's a problem when you look into historical records,
and especially records at the time when it was in
many people's best interest to spin a story or cover
things up. Um, some versions of this testimony don't mention

(09:34):
pigeons at all, actually, and instead tell tales of a
black mass with human sacrifice that shocked everyone, including authorities.
So to be clear, those were misrepresentations of Marguerite's testimony
where they kind of deleted all of the stuff that
made it a fairly mundane theatrical event and actually supported
the more sensational view right. Similarly, some versions of the

(09:57):
legend of Catherine spin her story with want to spend
a little differently. The alternate version and the one that
earns love was a place in this season, goes like this. So,
instead of holding a black mass to invoke some sort
of spell over the king to keep him from his
new mistress, montes Be conspired to poison him instead and
sought Catherine's help. The women agreed Katherine would poison an object,

(10:22):
and in this case, they decided it would be a
paper petition that they would put poison on and they
would hand it to the king. But this attempt failed,
and for the most boring reason. It's terrible, as there
were just simply too many other petitioners presenting papers to
the king that day, and Catherine, who had you know,

(10:44):
presumably waited in line for her turn, was just not
able to hand any papers directly to her alleged victim.
And the way that this version of the story ends
is that Catherine was scheming a new attempt on the
King's life when she was arrested. Now here's where things
start to go sideways in her story. Katherine had a rival,

(11:04):
and that was a woman named Marie Buss. So. Marie
was also a successful Parisian fortune teller, but she was
arrested after she couldn't stop bragging about her elite clientele,
which is very much the opposite of Catherine's discretion. So
you may know the idiom loose lips sink ships, and
it's pretty good policy, whether you're in the military or

(11:25):
whether you're a fortune teller. After Marie was arrested, she
did not hesitate to give up Katherine's name to the authorities,
and she just kept talking. At the top of her
agenda wasn't that Katherine was a poisoner, though Instead she
wanted authorities to know that Katherine performed illegal late term abortions,

(11:46):
burned the bodies in her furnace, and buried the remains
in her garden. Katherine's work as a midwife, caused quite
a stir in the rumor mill during the trial, where
it was the remains of anywhere between a thousand and
infants were exhumed from her garden, which kind of makes
me wonder what my neighbors might have buried in air garden,
But there's no actual evidence to suggest Catherine buried any

(12:10):
corpses in her yard infant adult pigeon for that matter. Catherine,
who around this time would have been about forty years old,
was accused of witchcraft and for providing her sorcery talents
to well a lot of people, but in particular to
members of the royal court. It was believed Catherine not
only had a network of apothecaries to facilitate the delivery

(12:32):
of her poisons, but that she also had a network
of abortion providers to whom she would refer her clients
and take a percentage of the prophet as most of
us would in this situation. Catherine denied everything she tried
to defend herself, claiming that Marie Boss had only made
those accusations against her because she was a rival fortune
teller and she was only trying to save herself from execution.

(12:55):
While that does sound like a plausible out. Marie and
her children were all executed just two months after Catherine's arrest,
So if she had been trying to save herself, that
was a poorly laid plan because it did not work.
It's kind of weird actually that Marie didn't see that
coming in her horoscope, I think, considering what she did
for a living. But once Catherine was arrested, an entire

(13:17):
network of alchemists, fortune tellers, and poisoners fell. She became
one of the main accused in the scandal that became
known as by historians the Affair of the Poisons. We
are going to dig into the Affair of the Poisons
a little bit more, but first we're gonna take a
little break. Welcome back to Criminalia. This isn't the first

(13:48):
time that we've talked about the Affair of the Poisons,
which took place during the reign of King Louis the
Fourteenth between sixteen seventy seven and sixteen eighty two in Paris.
As you'll recall from our previous episode, two years prior
to Catherine's arrest, Marie de Brenvillier was accused of and
executed for poisoning her father and her two brothers to

(14:08):
inherit their fortunes, and it was Marie's trial that kicked
off the scandal at which we quote all France trembled.
During the Affair of the poisons, hundreds of people were
accused of murder, conspiracy, witchcraft and satanism, and by the
time it was over, more than three people had been tortured, executed,
imprisoned or exiled, many of whom were members of the

(14:30):
inner circles of the highest French society. Nicola de la Reine,
who was the chief of police, tracked all sorts of
accusations to a number of fortune tellers, alchemists, and even
fallen priests throughout Paris. He described finding tools and potions,
including everything from viles, vats and jars to crystals, poisonous

(14:51):
ingredients such as belladonna and other we quote strange implements,
which always makes me think of like, um, Johnny Depp
in Sleepy Hollow, And you know he like draws pictures
of all of his strange strange exactly, and I think
of like his his like thick leather bound books of

(15:14):
all his drawings and his goggles, and um. So the
subsequent investigation of potential poisoners led to accusations of witchcraft,
which doesn't surprise any of us. Some confessed under torture,
as one does, and gave authorities lists of their clients.
The Court of Justice formed a new group to handle

(15:34):
the investigation. This was known as the Burning Court, and
it's described as being a lot like regular court, but
in dark mode. Like literal dark mode, the windows were
covered and the room was lit only with torches. Any
records kept were for the King's eyes only, and the
most famous prisoner tried and convicted there was Catherine. A

(15:57):
formal order was issued allowing for her to be tortured
like everyone else caught in this net, but it was
never actually put to use, and Catherine was never subjected
to the rack, broken on the wheel, or given the
water cure. It's not that she necessarily had friends in
high places who helped her escape all of it, but
she did to be to be frank. But historians believed

(16:20):
that there was likely a high level of fear surrounding
her arrest, and specifically that Catherine would name names of
influential clients if she were tortured um and we couldn't
have that, of course, not these these are not names
that the King would have wanted included in the public record. Remember,
his mistress would have been implicated, and as like the

(16:40):
first one at that top, Yeah, like here's my best client. Uh.
And going back on his word that investigators should spare
no one regardless of their rank, King Louis the fourteen
is said to have suppressed all sorts of information about
Catherine's case. So, instead of the usual methods of torture,
which how I just named a few of popular at

(17:00):
the time, authorities instead took advantage of the fact that
Catherine was well known to be a high functioning alcoholic,
and they interrogated her while they kept her intoxicated. Initially,
during her inebriated interrogation, she kept quiet. And here is
where we have some differing versions of things. Yet again,
so some accounts go on to say that she did

(17:21):
eventually implicate a number of people, including the King's mistress
and other individuals in the French court, but most accounts
say she did no such thing. Similarly, it appears to
also be debated whether or not she confessed to any
of her alleged crimes. Most accounts again suggest she never
did confess, but In the end, the debate over whether

(17:43):
love wasn't confessed or not is ultimately of no consequence,
because Catherine went on trial in February of She was
found guilty to no one surprised and sentenced to death
for both witchcraft and poisoning. She was burned at the
stake on February less than a week after her trial ended.

(18:03):
The affair of the poisons would go on for another
two years after Catherine's execution, um and those were two
very intense years of accusations and arrests in that vein.
It wasn't until after her execution that Catherine's list of clients,
as well as the details of her black masses and
her connections to the Royal court were all revealed by

(18:26):
her daughter, who authorities brought in for questioning. Why did
they ask for testimony well after the trial and execution
were over, you might be wondering. It seems they were
just trying to get their hands on Catherine's client list,
which leads me to believe that she really didn't give
it up under her intoxicated interrogation. But the bottom line
is that they got it. It was Marguerite's statement that

(18:49):
implicated the Royal Mistress Madame de Montespan as well as
other aristocrats including the Duke de Luxembourg, the Comtest de
Sisson and her sister, the Duchess de Bouillon, and the
Comtest de Gramont. And it was Catherine's client list that
motivated the king to classify this testimony as secret. As well.

(19:09):
As a result of the affair of the poisons, some
measures were put in place to limit the availability of
poisonous ingredients to professions that actually did need them, and
that was determined by the King. I can't think of
what those professions specifically would be, but they certainly didn't
include fortune tellers. I'm trying to think of professions that
would involve legitimate purchase of poisons. Right. You could be

(19:31):
handling rodents. You could be a farmer. You have to
clear out rodents from your your insecticides and your plants.
But like dietmatians, Earth isn't going to kill anybody, right,
probably possibly people in the medical field, right, pharmacology would
include That be difficult because the apothecaries might need it,
but they might not be given in tricky But no

(19:55):
fortune tellers for sure, definitely not palm reader. So Holly,
it's time. It's time in our episode today to talk
about what's your poison? Well, I know you had one idea,
Well it was it was My idea was an ounce
of warm pigeon blood. I didn't really want anybody to

(20:18):
have to drink that, but I did. I did see
while I was sort of looking up, you know, different
drinks that might appropriate, be appropriate for Catherine, that you
could make a blood stained rim of your chalice, just
with some red jail food coloring and corn syrip. Which
I'm not real handy with things like that, So I
set that aside as a note to self, like, oh,
that sounds perfect. Actually, that'd be great for the Halloween season, right,

(20:41):
dripping down the edge of your chalice, I thinks delicious?
So what are you putting in? So thinking of Catherine,
who I personally think was wrongfully maligned, I kept thinking
about her robes, and so I wanted to do something
that had a velvety feel and texture, which naturally led

(21:01):
me to a place that not everyone likes to go.
So please come with me of a cocktail involving an egg.
Take us there, I'm a little scar Do you like
eggy cocktails? I love them. I always thought I didn't
like them, and then I started drinking them, and I'm like,
why have I not been doing this? So I don't
like eggs, so I'm kind of loath to try. And

(21:24):
this might delight you. This might delight you. So this
is just something that I'm calling love was. And you
start with two ounces of BlackBerry moonshine. You could also
do another berry if you can't get BlackBerry, one ounce
of raspberry syrup and then an egg white and I
just put that in a mixer and I hit it

(21:45):
with my immersion blender and it became this beautiful pink, velvety,
yummy nous. I bet the texture was. It was absolutely beautiful.
And I poured that over ice and then I topped
it with about two and a half ounces of ginger
ale I Maria, I might be a genius. So while

(22:07):
you're I'm like writing this down, I'm like, I'm just
I'm just gonna send it to you. I would encourage people. Obviously,
there are some some safety things you want to consider
when using egg particularly anybody. I mean, if you're pregnant,
you should not be drinking this cocktail anyway. Probably um
for two reasons but yeah, so if if there's a

(22:27):
sensitivity there, obviously I would not encourage it. But if
you are a person who is you know, careful with
your food handling and has no reason not to eat
a rock, um, it's actually quite delicious. And egg white
in particular really adds this beautiful, rich fluffiness to cocktails

(22:48):
that um I, like I said, I have fallen in
love with in the last several years, and this one
it just it just feels like freakishly decadent, even though
it's really not. It's really quite a light cock tale,
even though it has syrup in it, because the moonshine
is not a very heavy thing. It has the berry flavor,
but it's not super sweet, so it's not very heavy.

(23:08):
And then the ginger ale is one of the lighter
sodas in my opinion, I actually ended up using diet
ginger ale for mine, and so it was very light
it was, but it still felt very decadent in a
little bit um like a nod two witchy things but
also velvety, like her beautiful robes that egg Way gave

(23:29):
it like the little actually know how they were saying
that Catherine's poison got a little bit more potent because
she put a magic spell on it. That's the egg
white in your drink. Yeah, if you don't like, if
you're absolutely like, no way, there's no way I'm touching
egg white in a cocktail. You could make this exact
thing without it, it just won't have that same level
of you know, richness, because it really does. It becomes

(23:50):
like a very thick, puffy thing. It's quite lovely. So
while you're drinking that, I'm I want to go make
one right now, so I will just instead thank you
one for joining us today. If you want to subscribe
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(24:13):
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