Scotus Academicus, Tomus quartus: De Angelis

Note 1. Vital actions are of a twofold kind above all: some are said to be productive of an intrinsic term, which is called vital, because it either essentially depends on an intrinsic principle of life, both proximate and principal, or at least cannot naturally be brought about in any other way; of this kind are all the actions of the external and internal senses, and also of the sensitive appetite. Others, however, are actions of living things which, although they are performed by them in a vital mode and are such under that aspect, nevertheless produce terms that can be brought about by a non-vital action, such as progressive local motion, the formation of the voice, and the like; these can be called vital actions as to their mode, and not as to their substance, so that they may be distinguished from the former, which can be called vital essentially, or in their substance.

Note 2. From the Seraphic Doctor in 2. dist. 8. art. 3. q. 2., sensation can be taken in three ways, namely commonly, properly, and more properly. Commonly, to sense is the same as to know a thing as present, according to which mode Augustine takes it in the book De videndo Deo addressed to Paulina. In the second way, to sense is the same as to know a thing as it is here and now, and thus Boethius takes it, when he says that sense is of particulars, and intellect of universals. In the third way, to sense is the same as to receive, by means of a bodily organ, the species existing in matter apart from matter, and thus the Philosopher takes it in the second book de Anima, when he says that sense is receptive of species in matter apart from matter. In the two prior ways sense does not differ from intellect in reality, but in reason only, and in this way sensation can be admitted in an angel; for the angel knows a thing by his intellectual power as present, and as here and now, by directing his gaze upon it. In the third way, however, the sensitive power differs from the intellectual in reality and in reason, and in that third way sense is a power tied to a body, and in this way it does not befit an angelic spirit. So St. Bonaventure.

Note 3. From the same, ibidem,

Since the soul is united to the body in a threefold way, namely in the manner of a mover, or of a perfecter, or in both ways, so it has a threefold kind of operations with regard to the body: for some are operations that follow from the soul itself in the body as mover; some as perfection; some partly in this way and partly in that. Now the soul exercises in the body, in different ways, the operations that follow from it as mover and as perfection: for the operations that follow from the soul as mover it exercises through the body in such a way that it exercises those same operations upon the body itself, because it moves not only other bodies but also its own body. But the operations that follow from the soul in the body as its perfection the soul exercises in the > body through the body in such a way that it exercises them with the body, as is evident from the fact that the soul, with the eye closed, cannot see some body. The third operations, however, it exercises in the body in a manner as it were of both ways; and therefore the first befit the soul as mover, distinct from the movable thing; the second, as the form joined to matter. Therefore, since the angel is united to the assumed body not as perfection but as mover, it exercises the first operations fully in that same body; the second not at all; the third in a certain way yes, and in a certain way no. And this is better seen if we descend to examples: progressive motion, or whatever other motion, of the exterior members is from the soul in the body as mover, and therefore it befits an angel. But to sense through the organs of the body befits the soul as the perfection of those organs; for as the soul perfects the whole body, so the sight, or visual power, perfects the eye, and this does not befit the angel in the assumed body. But to laugh is an operation that partly befits the soul as mover, partly as perfection; for there is there a certain exhilaration of the heart, and this is from the soul as perfection; and there is also there a certain motion of the cheeks, and this is from the soul as mover. By reason of the first it does not befit the angel, but only by reason of the second.

So the Seraphic Doctor, with whom the Subtle Doctor agrees in many points, as he will show.

First conclusion. — Angels in assumed bodies can exercise operations of life that are performed through the motion of the body; but not those that necessarily proceed from the sensitive or vegetative faculties.

So the Doctor praised above, n. 4., where he explains the First part of the conclusion thus:

I say that the angel can cause local motion in the assumed body, and thus motion that seems to be progressive; also motion that would be of inspiration and respiration, the motion of the eyelids and of the hands and of similar things: and the reason is, because there is no body so imperfect in the universe that it has not something in its active power, as is evident of a heavy body with respect to the center.

So the Doctor. From which it is established that he grants that every vital action that is performed through the motion of the body the angel can elicit in the assumed body. He proves this, because no power should be denied to a spiritual substance that is granted to a body: but the power of acquiring a place is granted to bodies; therefore also to angels. Yet I confess that this proof is only a light conjecture, since this power could befit a body even though it did not befit a spirit, for many things befit bodies that do not square with spirits; for there is no body that cannot produce some corporeal quality, yet no spirit, as is commonly supposed, can effect this. The true reason, therefore, why an angel can effect this motion is that it can transfer a body from place to place; but it could not do this unless it could equally move it locally; therefore it can walk in the assumed body, etc. Hence we read of the angel Raphael that, while Tobias walked, he spoke, and effected other motions and gestures of the body.

The Doctor also indicates the Second part in the same place, namely that the operations that necessarily proceed from the sensitive or vegetative faculties cannot be produced by angels in assumed bodies; and this is first evident concerning the operations of the sensitive faculties:

Because, he> says, those are not naturally apt to be received except in a composite of an organ at least perfectly mixed and of the soul, insofar as it has a perfective power, neither of which is there, namely neither such a mixture nor a perfecting soul; and therefore, simply speaking, in such a composite body that he assumes there is no sensation. Also the operations that consist in truly acting, of which kind are the vegetative operations, do not befit that composite; for either those operations are naturally apt to belong to an animate composite, which is not there; or to a perfectly mixed body, as if flesh were to generate flesh: but neither is there. Likewise as to the vegetative acts that appear, if we speak of true nutrition, nothing there can be nourished; but if we speak of eating, which precedes nutrition, that is only the division of food by the local motion of the jaws, and its conveyance into the belly by local motion; then exhalation and resolution into humor, or into the elements, can take place; and these local motions can be brought about in the body by the active power of the angel. And as was said of the nutritive, so must be said of the augmentative, for there there is no nutrition or augmentation: yet there can be a true juxtaposition, if he himself should wish suddenly to add to his body other elements that can be imperfectly mixed, so as to bring about such an imperfect mixture, so that he might seem to grow.

But if you say, if eating is not a vital operation, then the argument for proving the true resurrection of Christ from his eating with his Disciples is worthless, which is against the holy Fathers. — I answer, that for proving his resurrection there are in the Gospel many other arguments more efficacious than this one, and thus along with the others it proves well, even if not by itself alone. Or I say that it was an eating ordered to true nutrition, for it is not unfitting that a glorious body can convert a non-glorious body into itself, just as it can be together with a non-glorious body; nor is it on that account corruptible, because it can convert another into itself; for God could make a glorious body in the least quantity, and augment it through eating, and yet nothing of what was nourished and augmented would be corrupted; but in such assumed bodies there is no nutrition, but only addition, or apposition.

So the Doctor. From which he concludes three things above all: First, that truly sensitive actions, or sensations, cannot be elicited by angels in assumed bodies, because those actions require a living organ, either as an effective principle, or as a receptive principle, or perhaps as a productive and receptive principle; therefore, since in assumed bodies there are no living organs — otherwise the assumed body would have to be judged vivified by the angel, and consequently the angel would be the act of the body, and in consequence would be a soul, and an incomplete substance naturally requiring to be in a body, all of which are absurd — therefore neither can those truly and properly sensitive operations be elicited in assumed bodies. He infers, secondly, that eating can be brought about by angels insofar as it is the crushing of food and its conveyance into the inner part, or stomach, but not insofar as it signifies the conversion of the food into the substance of the one fed; for, says the Seraphic Doctor, dist. 8. art. 3. quaest. 1., in perfect feeding or eating there is a twofold action: The first is the taking and consumption of the food; the second is the conversion and union of that food with the substance of the one fed. The first, he says, befits angels in the assumed body, not in pretense but truly, because they truly take and consume the food set before them; not so the second, for the food taken does not restore their need or loss; for that feeding is not in the angels from need, as it is in bodies truly nourished. Hence those foods taken by the angels either dissolve into the air or are carried away elsewhere. For this reason the angel Raphael said to Tobias: I seemed to eat with you: but I make use of invisible food; for by seeming to eat, he indicated that he truly took the food, divided it, and conveyed it into the inner part of the assumed body, but did not convert it into the substance of that same body.

Finally the Doctor infers that the eating done by Christ after the resurrection before the Disciples could truly take place through the conversion of the food into his substance, and therefore be true nutrition: namely because it does not seem unfitting that a glorious body, by the absolute power of God, can be nourished without the loss of any part previously possessed.

This opinion Suarez, undeservedly and without any reason whatever, marked as error in lib. 4. cap. 39., because, he says, it may seem excessive, or at least rash; both because, he says, it is against the common consent of the holy Fathers and of the Church; and also because it is against the impassibility, or perfection, of the risen body. But both these reasons, as well as that man's censure, appear utterly absurd; for first, groundlessly he feigns it to be against the sense of the Church, since on this matter not even a syllable is read among the Fathers. Secondly, he falsely supposes that nutrition cannot take place without the loss of the preceding parts; for which of the Philosophers besides Suarez ever dreamed this? Nutrition indeed takes place through the addition of a new part of substance, but it does not necessarily entail the loss of the preceding parts. Nor does what he again objects have any more truth, namely that if nothing was lost through the eating of Christ after his resurrection, it follows that his body was incomplete, or that through the substance added it was made in a way monstrous, since it would have a redundant portion of substance.

— For he answers that, since that added substance was small, the body of the Lord Christ could not be said to have anything exuberant, or beyond its natural lot and just proportion. Nor did it equally follow from this that he would be passible, since nothing of him perished through that nutrition. Suarez's censure, therefore, is vain.

You will say. Tertullian in lib. 3. adversus Marcionem, who contended that the body of the Lord Christ was only phantastic, but not true and solid, and proved this from the fact that the angels, in the phantasm of putative flesh, acted before Abraham and Loth, and yet truly both met with them, and were fed, and did what had been commanded them; Tertullian replies:

Know that not even that is to be conceded to you, that the flesh in the angels was putative, but true and solid human substance: for if it was not difficult for that putative flesh to exhibit true senses and acts, much more easily did it have to give true substance of flesh with true senses and acts.

Therefore Tertullian grants that the angels had, just as a true body, so also truly vital bodily operations.

I answer. Tertullian was utterly doubtful in solving this question, whether the angels ever had true bodies and true bodily vital operations; for indeed he teaches the negative part in the book De Carne Christi cap. 6., where he says of the angels: It is established, he says, that the angels did not bear their own flesh, that is, of a spiritual substance of nature, and if of some body, nevertheless of their own kind: but they were transformable for a time into human flesh, so that they could be seen and meet with men. And more openly in the book De Resurrectione Carnis cap. 62.: Because the angels, he says, were sometimes as men, eating, drinking, and stretching out their feet to the washing: for they had put on a human surface, their own substance remaining intact within. And so it seemed to Tertullian to suffice that it did not agree with the dogma of Apelles, who said the angels were created from airy substance; but what kind of bodies were assumed by them, true or masked, he held in doubt.

Which indeed ought not seem marvelous, since blessed Augustine himself, referring to this perplexing question lib. 3. De Trinitate, cap. 1, confesses that it exceeds the powers of his attention; and blessed Bernard followed him, Homilia 5. in Cantica.

Moreover, he says, whether natural bodies belong to those spirits, as ours belong to men, or whether the spirits themselves, when there is need, take bodies, and again, the work being finished, lay them down into that same matter from which they were taken, to be dissolved? I do not wish you to inquire into this: the Fathers seem to have held different views on such things, nor is it clear to me whence I should teach one or the other, and I confess my ignorance; but I judge that the knowledge of these things contributes little to our profit.

But as to the speech that angels frequently form in assumed bodies, our Alensis, qu. 35. memb. 4., ascribes to them the power by which they can form a voice similar to the human not only through the assumed body as through instruments serving the human voice like organs, but even without any assumed human body at all; which also all antiquity attests, which remembers oracles not only in statues and idols, but also in caves, trees, beasts, and even in skulls uttered by the demon.

Yet I would judge that speech formed by angels is not properly so called, since this action, no less than those described above, is vital; nor does it, properly speaking, signify only the sound formed in the air, but also the manner of its formation, namely that it be made immediately through one's own vital organs, and from the motion of the phantasy, and with the intention of signifying something. And although an angel can form in the air, or in the assumed body, a sound similar to that, and materially of the same nature as the sound of the human voice, yet he cannot fashion that same sound formally, since that sound of angelic speech is not made through vital organs, nor through the alteration of the phantasy, nor with the intention of signifying something. Therefore angels speak in assumed bodies only in about the manner in which someone artfully expresses the sound of the human voice by means of some instrument, say a pipe or a trumpet, or in the way hollow valleys and fissures of walls, and likewise the recesses of caves, echo back a received and reverberated voice in a most articulate manner.

— But it must be observed that demons speaking in bodies for the most part use a shrill, hissing, confused, obscure, weak, puny voice, and as it were from a tun, or through a cracked shell, as Remigius admits in lib. 1. De Demonolatria c. 8.; but the devil, when he appears and speaks in an assumed body, can be seen and heard only by those whom he wishes, while remaining altogether hidden from the rest: and that naturally; if, namely, with respect to some and not with respect to others, he brings an impediment on the part of the object or of the organ, as if he should so obstruct the medium that the species are not carried through it to the eye or the hearing; or if he forbids those similitudes to be directed to others, while to those by whom he wishes to be heard and seen he allows the images and sounds to pass freely, and draws their imagination to nothing else.

Second conclusion. — Angels in assumed bodies cannot truly per se generate any perfect animal.

So the Theologians commonly, with the Doctor praised above, n. 5.

As to generation, he says, it must be said that it takes place by the power of the seed shed by the male into the female, in which the power of the father is preserved, as is commonly said: if he himself can receive that seed from someone by submitting, and preserve it in its natural quality suitable to his natural generation, until he pours it forth; he himself does nothing there except that he first receives into that assumed body that which he afterwards locally moves into someone upon whom he lies: and if that seed, before it is received into the womb, does not lose its natural quality, generation can take place through it, just as if he truly transferred what first fell into that same womb. And in this way generation is attributed not indeed to the good angel — God forbid that he mix himself in such vile things — but to the demon, because the same one first as succubus and afterwards as incubus receives the seed first poured forth by the one shedding it, and then pours it into the womb.

— The same has the Seraphic Doctor in the same dist. art. 3. q. 1., where he proves that demons cannot generate per se: first,

because generation is the production of a thing similar in species, but a demon assuming a body is not made like a man, but like a demon; therefore it cannot generate a man. Next, in order for generation to occur, it is necessary, according to the Physicians, that a threefold spirit concur, natural, vital, animal; and according to the Philosopher a threefold heat, namely the heat of the soul, the heat of the heaven, and the heat of the element; therefore, since the demon can have in the assumed body neither the animal spirit nor the animal heat, it seems that it can in no way generate. Finally, to generate is not an act of soul and body dividedly, but conjointly; but from the demon and the body there is not made one thing; therefore it can never pass through the body into the act of generating.

He adds, however, that two things concur to generation, namely the faculties and the constitution of the seed, as well as the transfusion and reception of that same seed:

the first, he says, belongs to that one alone to whom God gave the propagative power, and this in no way befits demons assuming a body; but the second, namely the reception and transfusion of the seed, can befit them; for first they submit to men in the form of women, that they may receive from them the seed of pollution, and with a certain cunning they preserve it in its power, and afterwards, by God's permission, they become incubi, and pour it into the vessels of women, from which transfusion men can be generated.

Delrio persuades this same truth with very many examples in lib. 2. Magiarum quaestionum q. 15. For antiquity, he says, thrusts forth its own offspring, begotten by demons in the guise of human form, as semi-gods: Hercules, Sarpedones, Servios Tullos; Anglia, Merlin; Pannonia, the Huns, born of the Arlunian Gothic striges and Fauns. Helinandus, lib. 4. Chronicorum, affirms that the family of Beauvais was raised up from a demon succubus. Chiesa, cap. 27. p. 2. histor. Perus., writes that in Hispaniola the demon Crocoton was accustomed to mingle with women, and that from this two-horned dwarfs are born.

— This same truth St. Augustine confirms in the books De Civitate Dei; for although in lib. 3. cap. 2. he spoke doubtfully, whether Venus could bear Aeneas from the union with Anchises, let us leave it in the middle: for a question of almost this kind arises in the Scriptures, where it is asked whether the apostate angels lay with the daughters of men? when, with the giants born, that is, men excessively large and strong, the earth was filled; nevertheless in lib. 15. cap. 23.¹ he determines the question in these words:

The report is exceedingly widespread, and many confirm that they have heard it from those with experience of such things, or from those who had the experience from persons whose good faith cannot be doubted, that Silvans and Fauns, whom the common people call Incubi, have been wanton with women and have coveted and accomplished intercourse with them; and that certain demons, whom the Gauls name Dusii, constantly attempt and effect this uncleanness — and they assert such things about it that to deny it would be shamelessness.

This very thing the Gloss confirms on those words of Genesis: The sons of God seeing the daughters of men, etc., where it says that it is not incredible that giants were begotten not by men but by angels, or by certain demons who are wanton with women.

William of Paris also proves it in part 3 of De Universo, chapter 25, where, after saying that the nation of the Huns was generated from demons of this kind, and likewise that the whole island of Cyprus was ravaged and inhabited by the sons of demons, he demonstrates by many arguments that demons can beget men, assuming and infusing not only human seed but even that of certain animals which have a certain affinity with man in generation; and he confirms this with the following example:

know, he says, that in the province of Saxony a certain bear (Ursus) carried off the wife of a certain soldier and brought her into the cave in which he dwelt, and there kept her for many days and years, and begat sons by her in the same place; and afterwards, when that woman was recovered and restored to her husband, they lived with the same woman and later became soldiers; and although they were true men of bear-like nature, this appeared in them, that their countenances inclined somewhat toward the likeness of bears' faces; and they were called Ursini, taking their surname from their father, namely the Bear, by whom they had been begotten. It should be known, moreover, that the bear is like men in two respects, namely in that they couple as married folk do; and when they are skinned, the whole shape of their body appears like that of men, on account of which many have abhorred the eating of their flesh, namely as though it were the eating of human flesh. It is therefore no wonder if bear-seed also approaches human seed with so great a likeness that it can be applied to it in a union suitable for generation. But to one who understands, is it not known that diabolical spirits of this kind can easily and suddenly present and apply to the women whom they thus deceive the seeds of animals which they know to be suitable for generation?

From these things he gathers below that the famous report, spread abroad by popular opinion, about Merlin is not improbable — namely that in Great Britain he is said to have been the son of an incubus demon — nor is that impossible. But that the same Merlin was held to be a Prophet in that same region, because he was seen to have prophesied many things about things to come, this can not undeservedly be believed to have happened by paternal instruction or teaching; for it is certain that demons know many things about the future and other hidden matters, and sometimes reveal them to others, not to say their own sons. He adds, moreover, that incubus demons are more hostile to women endowed with beautiful hair for a manifold reason: either because, he says, women of this sort devote excessive care to the dressing, adorning, and dyeing of their hair; or because they have been accustomed to strive to inflame those who look upon them with that beauty toward their own lust; or because women insolently glory in it. And perhaps they endure this temptation from wicked spirits unto the terror of divine severity, that they may cease from such adornment, fearing to inflame men to their lustful concupiscence, while they see the very demons seeming to instigate and provoke them to it.

Burchard, Abbot of Belleval, reports something similar in the life of St. Bernard, chapter 6, where he narrates that when that saint had come to Nantes, he found there a woman who was tormented by a certain wanton devil. That lascivious devil appeared to her in the form of a soldier of exceedingly handsome aspect, and falsely inclined her heart toward love of him, inwardly by hidden suggestion, outwardly by flattering speech.

And when he had obtained the woman's consent, spreading out his arms, he placed her feet upon one of his hands; and with the other hand he covered her head, and endowed her with himself as the sign of this covenant. Now she had a husband, a valiant soldier, but wholly ignorant of so execrable a commerce. Therefore that most impure adulterer abused her invisibly, even while her husband lay in the same bed, and he tormented her with incredible lust. The evil lay hidden only six years, nor did the lost woman reveal the disgrace of so great a crime. But in the seventh year she was confounded within herself and was terrified, both on account of the abomination of so continuous a filthiness and on account of the fear of God, by whose judgment she feared at every moment to be intercepted and damned. She fled to the Priests and confessed her sin. She made pilgrimage to holy places and implored the intercession of the saints; but no confession, no prayer, no largesse of alms availed her. Daily, as before, and more importunely she was infested by the demon. Finally so great a crime was poured forth into public: which her husband, having heard and learned of it, abominated the intercourse. Meanwhile the man of God had come with his company to the aforesaid place; and when the unhappy woman heard of his arrival, trembling she cast herself at his feet. Weeping floods of tears she opened to him her horrible passion and long-standing deception, and that whatever commands had been imposed upon her by the Priests had profited her nothing. She added that her oppressor had foretold her his coming and had menacingly forbidden her to go before his presence, because it would profit her nothing, and that he (the Abbot withdrawing) who had been her lover would become her cruelest persecutor. Hearing these things, the man of God consoles the woman with kindly words; and promising help from Heaven, he commands her to return on the following day (for night was already at hand), trusting in the Lord. Returning in the morning, when she had related to the man of God the blasphemies and threats which she had heard that same night from her incubus: do not heed, says the man of God, his threats, but take this staff of ours and place it on your bed, and let him do what he can. The woman did what had been commanded, and reclining on her bed, fortified with the sign of the cross, she places the staff beside her. Straightway > he is present, but he does not presume to approach either the accustomed work or the bed itself: yet he threatens most fiercely that when the man of God had departed he would return to her torments. The Lord's day was drawing near, and the man of God wished to be summoned to the Church by edict of the Bishop. And when on that day a great multitude had gathered in the Church, during the solemnities of Mass, with the Bishops Gothfrid of Chartres and Brictius of Nantes accompanying him, he himself ascended at the ambo and proclaimed that all who were in the Church should hold lighted candles in their hands. And doing this himself with the Bishops and Clerics, he publicly discloses the unheard-of audacities of the devil, and with the subscription of all the faithful who were present he anathematizes the fornicating spirit, who had burned even against his own nature in so horrendous pollutions; and by the authority of Christ he forbids access both to her and to all women thereafter. And so, when those Sacramental lights were extinguished, the whole power of the devil was thereafter extinguished, and after the woman had communicated following her confession the enemy never afterward appeared to her, but driven out beyond return he fled away.

Laurentinus Ananias reports something similar in book 1 of De natura daemonis, chapter 3, as having happened in the region of Marrea, in which not many years ago a certain girl, lovely and outstanding in beauty, and no less illustrious by birth, long refusing marriage, was found to be with child; and when her parents were anxiously inquiring about who had perpetrated such a violation, the girl of her own accord confessed that she had exercised venery both by night and by day with a certain youth; but that she did not know who he was, or whence he came or was. At these things the parents could not but be greatly astonished, anguished in mind and afflicted; and when at last they were taught by a maidservant that a man was having dealings with their daughter in the bedchamber, without any delay, with torches and tapers lighted, since it was night, they came running, and with the doors unlocked they saw a huge and horrendous monster, exceeding all human credence and most terrible of all, hanging from their daughter's embrace. Straightway they summon a priest approved in life and morals, who, while he was reciting the words of the Gospel of St. John, The Word was made flesh, the demon, with a very great and horrendous clamor raised, and terror struck and left behind him, after his own manner vanished, at the same time carrying off the ceiling of the bedchamber: but this most unhappy woman, three days later, gave birth to a monster no less horrendous, which, lest it be nourished and reared to the utter ignominy of the family, a pyre having been built after the custom, was consumed by flames.

Now the reason why demons make themselves incubi or succubi is not for the sake of grasping delight or carnal pleasure; since, being pure spirits, they cannot perceive such delight: but this is the chief reason, that through the vice of lust they may injure the whole nature of man, both of body and of soul, and thus render men more prone to all vices.

You will say 1. A demon is devoid of life and the origin of death: therefore he cannot be the author and origin of a vital act. — I answer. this vital power is not in the demon but in the seed itself; just as the power of heating is not in the cup of the one offering the drink, or in the vessel for pouring wine, but in the wine itself. But if it is asked whose son a man thus begotten may be; I answer that he is not the son of the demon but the son of the man whose seed was taken. And when it is urged that nothing is superfluous in the works of angels as in those of nature: this I concede; but when it is inferred that the demon can both receive and infuse seed indivisibly: I answer that this is true; but he rather does this visibly, as succubus and incubus, that thus by such filthiness he may infect the body and soul of man and woman.

You will say 2. A demon and a man differ in species: therefore from this coupling offspring cannot follow. — I answer. that there is no such consequence, both because from horse and ass, and from other animals discrepant in species, Mules, Thoes, Leopards, Panthers, and other hybrids are begotten; and because generation is not here attributed to the demon but to the man whose the seed is, as St. Thomas rightly says in the sixth Quodlibet, article eight, ad sextum; and therefore here man is born from man, as he is ordinarily born from male and female.

You will insist. Generation is accomplished through the formative power which is in the seed, the living body being resolved: but the body assumed by demons is not living: therefore demons cannot generate. Further, the principle of begetting is the heart: therefore since the demon lacks a heart, the cordial power is equally wanting to him, tempering the heat as is required. Finally, the seed has no generative power except so long as the animal heat is retained in it: but it must needs evaporate because of the great distance to which it is sometimes carried by the demon, etc. — I answer to the first. that the demon in this matter conducts himself not after the manner of a principal cause but of an instrumental one, applying the true seed necessary for generation: which he can assuredly perform, as was said above. To the second I say, whether the power of begetting arises from the heart or from the brain, the genital spirit is infused into the seed itself at the very moment of the seed's separation from the human body; and the demon merely preserves this spirit with its heat. For demons can employ certain means for the preservation of the seed, lest the vital heat evaporate; they can also move so swiftly and carry the seed so that those spirits cannot flow away: from which the answer to the last objection is clear.

You will say finally. That it is not to be believed that God concurs to an act of this kind, or infuses a soul into such a body born of such a coupling, and adds the crown to the work of the demon begun. — I answer. that the demon, as regards the operation of nature, is here merely an instrument, and only applies the principal agent, which is the true human seed: but that God concurs to the ultimate disposition of the organic body born of human seed: and that what is involved is merely accidental, and morally only the sin of the witch and the malice of the demon. Therefore God, as the author of nature, helps nature, but is not at the service of sin, of which He is not the author. Add that, if arguments of this kind had any force, it would follow that offspring could be begotten neither from fornication, nor from adultery, nor from incest.

I answer. that the case is different, because in these the order of nature is observed, but not in that demoniacal wedlock. — But this answer does not dissolve our rejoinder: for the order of nature is observed as regards the principal physical principles of generation; for nature merely demands that offspring be born of the prolific seed of the man duly mixed with the seed of the woman.

You will ask 1. Whether sons can be born also from a man with an incubus, and from a demon as succubus.

I answer. that it seems more probable that they cannot. For mothers supply more things for the generation of offspring and for childbirth than fathers; for the touch of the body is required, that the seed in the mother's womb may be changed into an organic body, and that most perfect architecture of the human body be completed; there is required also the continuous operation of the vegetative soul in nourishing the fetus, and other secrets of nature almost innumerable; all of which a demon in an assumed body can perform I greatly doubt, nay rather I judge that he cannot. Hence I shall steadfastly affirm that what certain histories of the French relate about the Counts of Poitou descended from Melusine the Siren and a noble man, as well as what we related above from William of Paris about the family of the Ursini propagated from a bear, must be reckoned among oft-repeated old wives' tales. I should therefore judge that the boys whom we read to have been born of a succubus demon were either supposititious, being the true offspring of another woman secretly taken away by the demon: or masked demons under the appearance of a little child newly born, and growing as it were through feeding and nursing after the manner of a true growing boy. An example of the former kind very many Authors relate with Delrio, book 2, q. 15, concerning a certain noble Bavarian, who, because he bore the death of his wife too impatiently, asserted that on a certain night a woman had returned and said that she had been raised up, the demon having assumed the appearance of the deceased woman: who thereafter lived with her husband as the aforesaid woman, and received children from him: but when that husband had been admonished many times by that masked wife to abstain from revilings and blasphemies, and yet did not amend his life, on a certain day, in the sight of this man, the lying wife herself vanished, leaving there a woman's garment and the little children whom she had secretly received from elsewhere and had supposed to be begotten of herself. — For the latter kind, however, of the demon's fraud in assuming the form of a little child born of a succubus demon, Ulricus adduces an example in his Dialogue on Pythonical Women, chapter 6.

This happened in the kingdom of Sicily in the reign of Roger, that a certain man, vigorous and skilled in the art of swimming, bathing in the sea about twilight while the moon shone, seized by the hair a woman swimming behind him, thinking she was one of his companions who wished to duck him; and speaking to her he could not extort a single word, and he led her, wrapped in a cloak, to his house, and at length solemnly took her in marriage. When he was at one time rebuked by a certain companion because he had accepted a phantom, terrified he grasped his sword, threatening in the sight of the same woman to kill the son whom he had had by her, unless she should speak and say whence she was. What, she said, woe to you wretch, you are destroying a useful wife by forcing me to speak; I would have been with you and it would have gone well with you, had you permitted me to keep the silence enjoined upon me? But now hereafter you shall not see me, and straightway she vanished. But the boy grew up and began to frequent the baths; until one day that phantastical woman snatched the same boy away in those same waves before many, him whom, had he been her true son, she ought to have driven from the sea to the shore. So far he.

To the proof of demoniacal fraud of this kind belong the little children themselves whom the demons sometimes substitute for women, as if begotten by them, and who are commonly called Changelings, that is, Exchanges, says William of Paris in the last part of De universo, chapter 25, as it were exchanged and substituted by the parent women in place of their own sons. They are said, moreover, to be so insatiable with milk that, even after exhausting the breasts of four nurses, they persist in being wasted and thin; yet most weighty, and at last after some years they utterly vanish. The Italians call them Vagitations, from their continual crying. Delrio judges that such was the boy whom a certain beggar carried about on his shoulders through Galicia with the utmost exhaustion; for when the beggar was afterwards apprehended, he confessed that the boy had been a masked devil, who had promised him that he would allure all men to give him alms so long as he was thus carried about in the habit of a sickly boy wrapped in bandages.

You will ask 2. Whether demons can produce animals of themselves?

I answer 1. That imperfect animals, as flies, worms, frogs, and insects of this kind and others, which are born from putrefaction, demons can produce quickly; not indeed by creating, but by applying actives to passives. So St. Augustine, book 3 of De Trinitate, chapter 7. And it is proved by examples almost innumerable, by which it is established that Magicians, having received a powder from the devil and cast it into the air, usually at once produce various species of locusts, cankerworms, mice, and various plagues of similar little animals. Thus also they can produce certain geese more imperfect, such as are wont to be generated from the fallen fruits of trees rotting in the sea, or from the timbers of rotten ships. — I answer 2. That they can also produce the animals which are called perfect; not indeed by applying actives to passives, since these are not born from putrefaction but from the prolific seed of parents: but they can produce them in the manner in which they do men, namely by receiving from an animal the seed emitted, as an incubus demon, and afterwards infusing it into another animal, as a succubus. A demon could also cunningly take away animals already born, and in remote places where they seem to have been born, cherish, nourish, and effect their respiration; since not rarely among stones are found not only flies, mice, and similar imperfect living things: but even sometimes perfect ones: for William of Newburgh relates in the Historia Anglorum, chapter 28, that while in a certain quarry a huge rock was being split with iron tools, there appeared two dogs filling in that rock a place capable of themselves, without any breath, understand any perceptible one: but they seemed to be of that kind of dogs which they call greyhounds, but with fierce countenances, heavy of odor, devoid of hair; and one of them, as is said, quickly expired, but the other, of, as they say, stupendous voracity, Henry, Bishop of Winchester, kept for many days in his delights. He adds, moreover, that in another stone was found a toad having a golden chain about its neck. I judge that this chain was added by a demon; for the toad itself could have been born in the same place, for in the coal mines of Liège huge flints are sometimes found in which live toads are enclosed, hidden as it were in the cradles of their nativity. So Delrio, book 2, qu. 14.

You will ask 3. Whether demons can change bodies into another species?

I answer. that they cannot; for all such transformations that are read of are illusory and deceiving: for neither, for example, can a human soul inform a beast-like body, as neither can the soul of a lion a horse's body, or the soul of a horse a human body; because each substantial form, in order to give its own being by informing, requires dispositions proper and suitable to itself, and the proper organization of its own body; hence the soul is defined: the act of an organic body. Whence it comes about that neither can a brute soul inform a human body, nor a human one a brute body. Therefore the soul of a man will not be able to migrate into a beast's body so as to inform it, much less will it be able, if it is with its body, to change an animal. This St. Augustine proves excellently lib. 18. De Civit. Dei, cap. 18, where, speaking of the juggleries of demons by which the most famous Sorceress Circe is said to have changed the companions of Ulysses into swine, he says:

nor indeed do demons create by nature, if they do anything such as this question which we are treating is concerned with; but they change, in appearance only, things which were created by the true God, that they may seem to be what they are not. Therefore I should not believe that, by any art or power of demons, not only the mind but not even the body can truly be converted into bestial limbs or lineaments: but that man's phantastic spirit, which is varied even by thinking or dreaming through innumerable kinds of things, and although it is not a body, yet assumes forms like bodies with marvelous swiftness: the bodily senses of man being lulled or oppressed, can by some ineffable manner be brought into a corporeal figure to the senses of others, so that the very bodies of the men may lie somewhere, living indeed, but much more heavily and vehemently than in sleep with their senses closed. And that phantastic spirit, as it were embodied, may appear in the likeness of some animal to the senses of others, and the man himself may also seem to himself to be such, as he could seem such to himself in dreams, and may carry burdens, which burdens, if they are true bodies, are carried by demons to make sport of men, some beholding true bodies of burdens, part false ones of beasts. For a certain man named Praestantius related that it had happened to his father that he should take that poison by means of cheese in his house, and should lie on his bed as if sleeping, who nevertheless could in no way be aroused: after some days, however, he said that he had awakened as it were, and had related as it were dreams which he had suffered, namely that he had been made a horse, and had carried grain among the other beasts of burden to the soldiers, which is called retica, because it is carried to the nets; and that it was found that this had been done as he narrated: yet these things seemed to him his own dreams. Another also declared that in his house during a night, before he rested, he had seen coming to him a certain Philosopher very well known to him, and that he had expounded to him certain Platonic matters which he had previously, when asked, refused to expound; and when he had been asked by the same Philosopher why he did in his house what he had denied to the petitioner in his own house: I did not do it, he said, but I dreamed that I did it: and hence to the other, waking, it was exhibited through the phantastic image, what the other saw in dreams. These things have come to us not from witnesses of any quality whatsoever whom we should think it unworthy to believe, but from those relating them whom we should not judge to have lied to us. Wherefore that men are said, and it has been committed to letters by the Gods, or rather demons, that the Arcadians are wont to be converted into wolves, and that Circe changed the companions of Ulysses by meats after that manner, seems to me to have been able to happen in the way I have said, if however it was done.

Thus St. Augustine.

James Sprenger relates in the second part of De mallei maleficarum, q. 2,

that in the city of Salamina of the kingdom of Cyprus, when a certain youth, together with the others from a ship there putting in, that they might procure for themselves necessaries of food, had received eggs from a poisoning woman and witch for a price, and had eaten one of them while returning to the ship, straightway as if deprived of his mind and made mute, he was unable to conjecture what had happened to him; while he wished to board the ship he suffered repulse from his companions, they seeing and thinking him an ass. Wherefore, as the woman had admonished him, he returns to her house, and served her in the manner of an ass for three years, carrying away the necessaries of the house in timbers and grains, and whatever had to be carried he bore as a beast of burden; this consolation being left to him, that although he was reckoned a beast of burden by all others, yet by the very sorcerers dwelling together or apart he was recognized as a true man by his humanly manner of conversing in gait, posture, and habit. Therefore when three years had elapsed, while one day before noon he had entered the aforesaid city, and the woman followed from afar, it happened that a certain Church, in which the divine mysteries were being celebrated, the youth thus bewitched was passing by: who, hearing the known bell for the elevation of the Body of Christ, turned himself to the Church, and while he did not dare to enter on account of blows and expulsion, from outside he fixed his knees and hinder legs in the earth, and raising his fore feet, that is hands, joined together, from his asinine head, as was thought, he beholds the Sacrament in the elevation. When certain Genoese Merchants had espied so great a prodigy, wondering they follow the ass, and conferring among themselves about the wondrous work, behold the witch follows the ass with a staff: and because, as was premised, witchcrafts of this kind are much practiced in those parts, at the instance of the Merchants, by the Judge the ass is seized together with the witch, and being interrogated and exposed to tortures she confesses the crime, and promises to restore the youth to his own form, that she may be able to return to her house. Therefore, having been dismissed and returned home, the youth is reduced to his pristine form, and she again being seized, received the due vengeance for what she had committed, and the youth returned to his own home with joy.

Thus Sprenger.

Palladius relates something similar in the life of St. Macharius, writing that a certain maiden, by the aid of a certain Jew with magical arts converted, as it seemed, into a mare, was brought to blessed Macharius, whose sight the devil could not make sport of: for although all beheld her as a daughter, that is as a mare, yet St. Macharius beheld her as not masked under that equine form, and by his prayers obtained from God that she should be free from all that illusion; and he said to her that this witchcraft had been permitted by God because she frequented the Sacraments more negligently, although otherwise she lived honestly and devoutly.

Delrio relates something stupendous in the place cited, as having happened not long ago near Dixmude in Flanders: that when a tavern-keeper woman had had a complaint with a certain rustic about the price to be paid for the beer she had served, she said angrily that on that day he would not be able to board the boat which he had left at the river's bank and push it from the bank with poles; which indeed came to pass as the woman had threatened: for when he had expended all his strength in vain to draw that boat from the bank, he called two or three Soldiers to his aid, who, when they had long labored together in vain, at length they espy in the bilge of the boat a ghastly toad regarding them with gleaming eyes. One of the soldiers could not endure it, but with the point of his sword, pierced and swollen at the throat, threw it into the water. It rolls over on its back as if lifeless, belly upturned; the others impose other wounds on it as it flounders, and suddenly the boat is released. Joyful, the rustic leads his helpers back to the same inn from which he had departed; he asks for drink, the maidservant offers it; he asks where the hostess is? He hears that she is very ill and yielding up her soul in bed. What, I say, do you take me for a fool, you silly girl? Scarce half the hour has elapsed since I left her there sound and wicked as you are? I am going to see what this means. He enters the bedchamber, he finds the woman with her neck and belly pierced with wounds, lacerated, and expiring. Whence, he exclaims, these wounds? The maidservant professes not to know, nor that the woman had, so far as she knew, set foot out of the house. They go to the Magistrate; the wounds, inflicted with cut and thrust, are found in the very places in which the soldiers had marked the toad, which appeared nowhere.

From these things, therefore, it is established that that transformation of men is not true, but only masked, which either Magicians by diabolical art, or the devil himself effects. And this in divers manners; for he is wont sometimes to substitute another body, and while those men are absent and lulled asleep somewhere in a hidden place, he himself, having assumed a wolf's body, either formed from the air and circumposed about himself, performs those things, who think that the men were wrought by that miserable one absent and sleeping. Which stratagem, made manifest to all by a certain Saint, William of Paris narrates in the last part of De universo, chapter 13.

There was, he says, a certain one possessed, and for days the wicked spirit used to seize him, and so demented him that he believed himself to be a wolf: but in the days of the seizure the devil used to hurl him into a hidden place, and there leave him as if dead; but in the time of such concealment the devil entered into a wolf, or showed himself to men in the very form of a wolf, and made terrific incursions against men and animals, so that they fled from his face, fearing to be devoured by him. There was also a report that that man became a wolf for days. And this the man himself believed, as I said before. He believed moreover that he was that very wolf which made incursions of this kind. Which having been heard, a holy man came into that region in which these things were being done, and preached to the men that what they believed about that man was not true, namely that he became a wolf: and being brought to the place in which he lay as if dead, he showed the man to the people, who had come to such a spectacle; and before the men, he having been aroused and freed from such vexation, he showed to him and to the bystanders the wolf which that man believed himself to be, as he also himself confessed before the men who were present.

Sometimes, however, he circumposes about the very men the skins of beasts, most fitly put on outwardly: which happens when he gives them a wolf's skin to be hidden in the hollow of some tree-trunk, as is established from the confessions of certain persons. Finally, sometimes on the part of the Magician he circumposes an aerial image of a beast, and applying members to members so far as the likeness permits, accommodates head to head, mouth to mouth, belly to belly, foot to foot, arms to arms. This is wont to happen when they use for this certain injunctions, or words conceived in the mind alone; in which last case, indeed, it is nothing wonderful if afterwards they are found truly wounded in those human members which in the beast's body had received the blow; for the circumambient air yielded lightly, and the wound was truly implanted in the body. Which confirms

Of this also, he says, of the apparent conversion of Witches into Cats, another witness in this city of Ferrara, Philip by name, asserted to me with a certain artifice under judicial oath in this year, that some three months ago a certain witch had imposed upon him, that he should not forbid to come about the boy (perchance bewitched by himself) whom he had undertaken to cure, if he should see any cats fawning upon and mocking him. Therefore on the same day, after she had departed, an hour later he himself and his wife saw a great cat, and hitherto unseen by them, which was approaching the boy with swift step: and when the parents had often driven it away out of fear, at last they burned with impatience at the coming vexation of its approach: and the door being shut, that man most grievously struck the cat fleeing hither and thither for a long time with a spear, and at length it got out by a window. From that time, however, that old witch lay in bed for very many days, her whole body broken and wounded.

So Spina.