Laudator Temporis Acti

Augustine, Sermons 335D.3 (C. Lambot, "Nouveaux sermons de S. Augustin. IV-VII. 'De Martyribus'," Revue Bénédictine 50 [1938] 3-25 [at 4-5]; tr. Edmund Hill, with his notes):

People though who belong to "man,"⁶ who are not sons of man, only care about health or salvation here, and reckon there is no other sort to follow it when it's passed away; so when they find this health beginning to be endangered, even if they are called Christians, they seek out diviners, they send to the astrologers, they hang unlawful charms round their necks. They desire health and tie things round their necks; they bind the neck of the outer self, and stifle the throat of the inner self.⁷

But the one who says, "I won't do it"—when a friend suggests it, a neighbor mutters something about it, or a neighbor's maid, sometimes even his own old nurse⁸ —who says, "I won't do it; I'm a Christian. God prohibits this sort of thing. These are the sacraments of demons. Listen to the apostle: I do not wish you to become the associates of demons (1 Cor 10:20)"—well, he gets this answer from the one who is suggesting it: "Do it, and you'll get well. So-and-so and Such-and-such did it. What? Aren't they Christians? Aren't they believers? Don't they hurry off to church? And yet they did it and got well. So-and-so did it and was cured immediately. Don't you know Such-and-such, that he's a Christian, a believer? Look, he did it, and he got well."

6. An allusion to Ps 36:6, Men and cattle you will save, Lord.

7. The language, but not the thought, of 2 Cor 4:16.

8. Dematricula ejus; I am just guessing what this person could be; a wet nurse seems the most likely. She is unknown to Messrs Lewis & Short.

Homines autem pertinentes ad hominem, non filii hominis, quia non curant nisi istam salutem quam, cum transient, nullam existimant secuturam, quando eis coeperit salus ista periclitari, etiam si Christiani vocentur, sortilegos quaerunt, ad mathematicos mittunt, remedia illicita collo suo suspendunt. Salutem desiderant et collum sibi ligant, cervicem exterioris hominis ligant et guttur interioris suffocant.

Qui autem dicit: "Non facio" — suggerente amico, et mussitante vicino aut vicina ancilla, aliquando et dematricula eius — qui dicit: "Non facio: Christianus sum; Deus prohibet hoc; sacramenta sunt daemonum; audi Apostolum: Nolo vos socios fieri daemoniorum", respondetur illi ab illo qui suggerit: "Fac et sanus eris; ille et ille fecerunt. Quid? Non sunt Christiani? Non sunt fideles? Non ad ecclesiam currunt? Et tamen fecerunt et sani sunt. Ille fecit et continuo sanatus est. Illum non nosti quia Christianus est, fidelis? Ecce fecit et sanus est".

Lambot's note on dematricula (p. 5):

verbum penitus ignotum lexicographis; cum autem iterum occurrat infra l. 121, mutare illud non praesumpsi; idem significare videtur quod 'matercula'.

Id. 335D.5 (at 8):

So restrain yourselves from unlawful things, from amulets, from spells, from astrologers, from soothsayers. When you fall sick, don't go looking for such things, and don't withdraw from God, or you will perish. Instead, you will say with the apostle, For when I am weak, then it is I am powerful (2 Cor 12:10). You are lying on your sickbed, and are one of God's athletes. You can't move hand or foot, and you're fighting battles to the finish. The fever doesn't leave you, and your faith goes ahead to God. But to and behold, a neighbor at your bedside, and a friend and a maid, even perhaps, as I said, your old nurse, bringing wax and an egg in her hand and saying, "Do this and get better. Why prolong your illness? Tie on this amulet. I heard someone invoke the name of God and the angels over it, and you will get better. To whose care will you leave your widowed wife, to whose care your young children?"

Abstinete vos ergo ab illicitis rebus, a ligaturis, ab incantationibus, a mathematicis, a sortilegis. Cum aegrotatis, non talia requiratis et a Deo non recedatis, ne pereatis. Sed dices cum Apostolo: Cum enim infirmor, tunc potens sum. In lecto iaces et athleta Dei es. Non moves membra et peragis proelia. Febris non recedit et fides ad Deum praecedit. Sed ecce adstat vicinus et amicus et ancilla, etiam dixi, forte dematricula, ceram vel ovum manibus ferens et dicit: "Fac hoc et salvus eris. Quid prolongas tuam aegritudinem? Fac hanc ligaturam. Ego audivi qui nomen Dei et angelorum ibi invocat et eris sanus. Cui dimittis viduam coniugem tuam, cui teneros filios?

Alexander Souter, A Glossary of Later Latin to 600 A.D. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949), p. 94, s.v. dematricula, defines the word as "little mother." Cf. Georg Luck, Arcana Mundi, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), p. 510:

dematricula 'female purifier and healer'. Rather obscure figure, may be defined, e.g., as "friendly neighborhood witch."

See also Matthew W. Dickie, Magic and Magicians in the Greco-Roman World (London: Routledge, 2001; rpt. 2003), pp. 296-300.