Osculum infame

The osculum infame is mentioned in nearly every single recorded account of a Witches' Sabbath and in confessions – most of which were extracted under torture.

[1] Although most common in Europe, no illustrations of it exist in the publications of English persecutions, possibly as torture was not regularly employed in the questioning of those accused.

[3] Reported in Newes from Scotland, declaring the damnable Life of Doctor Fian (1592) by W. Wright:[3][4] ...and seeing that they tarried over long, hee at their coming enjoyned them all to a pennance, which was, that they should kisse his buttockes, in sign of duety to him, which being put over the pulpit bare, every one did as he had enjoyned them.The pamphlet provided the first descriptions of the osculum infame to the English population.

[2] Belief held that the Devil demanded the kiss of shame in forms other than human, including rams, black cats, and toads.

Errores Haereticorum, a medieval tract, claims that the Cathars took their name "from the term cat, whose posterior they kiss, in whose form Satan appears to them.