Black Mass In The Holy Empire

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Eupraxia of Kiev, a half-sister of Vladimir, became notorious all over Europe for her divorce from the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV on the grounds that he had attempted a black mass on her naked body.

A Black Mass is a ceremony supposedly celebrated during the Witches' Sabbath, which was a sacrilegious parody of the Catholic Mass.

In the Middle Ages, beginning with the Latin writings of the Goliards, the Roman Catholic Mass was drawn from or elaborated upon to create parodies of it for certain Church festivities. Thus, there was a mass parody called "The Feast of Asses", in which Balaam's Ass (from the Old Testament) would begin talking and saying parts of the mass. A similar parody was the Feast of Fools. Other Middle Age parodies of the Mass, also written in ecclesiastical Latin, were "drinkers' masses" and "gamblers' masses," which lamented the situation of drunk, gambling monks, and instead of calling to "Deus" (God), called to "Bacchus" (the God of Wine). Some of these Latin parody works are found in the medieval Latin collection of poetry, Carmina Burana, written around 1230. The Catholic Church, however, eventually reacted by condemning them as sacrilegious and blasphemous. 

Additionally, the Rite of the Mass was not completely fixed, and there was a place at the end of the Offertory for the Secret prayers, when the priest could insert private prayers for various personal needs. These practices became especially prevalent in France (see Pre-Tridentine Mass). As these types of personal prayers within the Mass spread, the institution of the Low Mass became quite common, where priests would hire their services out to perform various Masses for the needs of their clients — such as blessing crops or cattle, achieving success in some enterprise, obtaining love, or cursing enemies (one way this latter was done was by inserting the enemy's name in a Mass for the dead, accompanied by burying an image of the enemy). However, such practices were condemned by the Church as sacrilegious. 

A further source of late Medieval and Early Modern involvement with parodies and alterations of the Mass, were the writings of the European witch-hunt, which saw witches as being agents of the Devil, who were described as inverting the Christian Mass and employing the stolen Host for diabolical ends. The witch-hunter's manuals such as the Malleus Maleficarum and the Compendium Maleficarum give details relating to these supposed practices.

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Eupraxia of Kiev (1070 – July 10, 1109 AD) was the daughter of Vsevolod I, Prince of Kiev and second wife of Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor. She was the sister of Vladimir Monomakh.

She assumed the name Adelheid upon her coronation.

During Henry's campaigns in Italy, he took Eupraxia-Adelheid with him and kept her sequestered at Verona. She escaped in 1093 and fled to Canossa, where she sought the aid of Matilda of Tuscany, one of Henry's enemies. She met with Pope Urban II, and on his urgings Eupraxia-Adelheid made a public confession before the church Council of Piacenza. She accused Henry of holding her against her will, of forcing her to participate in orgies, and of attempting a black mass on her naked body. Those accusations were confirmed in turn by Conrad, who stated that this was the reason he turned against his father.

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Henry IV (German: Heinrich IV) (11 November 1050 – 7 August 1106) ascended to King of the Germans in 1056 at the age of six. From 1084 until his forced abdication in 1105, he was also referred to as the King of the Romans and Holy Roman Emperor.

 

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