Scotus Academicus, Tomus quartus: De Angelis

How great and how cruel is the demons' infestation and cruelty against men, neither a mind however penetrating nor even the most eloquent tongue suffices to think or express. For, says Tertullian in the Apologetico, cap. 22.

Their operation is man's overthrow: thus spiritual malice from the very beginning took its start in the destruction of men. And so upon bodies indeed they inflict both illnesses and certain bitter misfortunes; but upon the soul, sudden and extraordinary departures by force. To approach each substance of man, their own subtlety and fineness is at hand; much is permitted to spiritual powers, so that, invisible and insensible, they appear in their effect rather than in their act: if apples, fruits — some vice lying hidden at the mouth, I know not what — it hurls down the blossom, kills the sprout, wounds it at maturity, as if the air, assailed by a blind influence, pours out its pestilential breaths. Therefore by the same obscurity of contagion the breath of demons and of angels also drives the corruptions of the mind through furies, and foul madnesses, or savage lusts with various errors: of which this is the chief, that it devours those very men whose minds are captured and deceived, so that it may procure for itself proper food of incense and of blood offered to images and likenesses; and that, to whom it is a more careful pasture, it turns man away from the thought of true Divinity by false prestiges. — Hence excellently St. Chrysologus, serm. 11.

The devil, the author of evil, the origin of wickedness, the enemy of things, always the foe of the second man; he lays snares, prepares falls, digs pits, contrives ruins, goads bodies, pierces souls, suggests thoughts, sends in anger, gives virtues, hatreds, gives the vices of love, sows errors, begets discords, disturbs peace, dissipates affections, tears apart unity, savors evil enough, good nothing, violates divine things, tempts human things. And in serm. 16., weighing those words of Matth. 8, Two men having demons met him, coming out of the monuments, he says:

In the monuments the authors of death had made their seat; behold what cruelty, what frenzy, what rage of the demons against the human race! Although they cannot bear a man even for a short time, they are not content that men die, but they desire to bury living men: they commit themselves to sepulchres, so that they may reduce men to sepulchres: they feed on corpses, they are fattened on putrefaction; they delight in stench, whose whole pleasure is that men perish: but let us perceive what they contrive by frauds, what they attempt by evils, whose cruelty has no limit in the open. Truly it is so, for there are no truces, no peace, neither any limit nor end of hatred or of truce. The pride of God's enemies always ascends; malice is increased, cruelty gains strength: it loves to reap thistles for itself, while it bears thorns for us: it rejoices to increase its own punishments and to exacerbate its own torments, provided it summons as many as possible into a share of eternal torment, and, mocking this divine image washed white by the precious blood of Christ, discolors it, and delivers it, asserted into liberty, back to its former servitude: and with a plainly Cadmean victory it betrays itself by perishing, and through griefs turns the hostile sword into its own bowels. — For, says the same St. Chrys., serm. 17.

The devil's fault redounded to man's punishment; and, to the ruin of the wretch, the shut-in robber was being fattened: he exposes the wretched man to his snares — not as doer but as sufferer; he has a thousand arts of harming, he uses countless weapons, he leaves nothing unattempted, nothing untried, he sees the soul weak and timid, he goes about like a lion and threatens force; he knows the fearless and constant one, he puts on the fox, he lays aside the lion's skin: Alas, how many are, and have been, the parts of foxes? How many has the deceitful wrestler overthrown, ensnared by allurements and wiles?

Now the demon's principal purpose in vexing men is generally twofold: namely, to make God hostile to men, and to slander Him before men, and men before God. For he sneers at the providence of God and the governance of the world as not well ordered, nor running by just laws; since for the most part things go well for the wicked and ill for the good: that judgment often departs from justice, and all things are abandoned to chance and blind fortune. Nor with less zeal, diligence, and cunning does he act to accuse pious and faithful men before God. For there is no faith so firm of anyone that he does not traduce it and render it suspect of presumption or hypocrisy or inconstancy; no piety that he does not cavil at as mercenary and not supported by true causes, as is made manifest by the example of Job.

His principal arts, however, reveal themselves about the Church, whose integrity of faith, doctrine, and morals, as he cannot bear, so he strives to disturb and ruin; hence he calls light darkness, and darkness light; he travesties error as truth, but truth as error he for the most part sneers at, transforming himself into an angel of light, so that by corrupt dogmas he may ruin the purity of evangelical truth and doctrine. For he is that enemy man who, when the purest wheat of Catholic doctrine has been sown, oversows cockle. And he is the author, promoter, and fan of all scandals, schisms, and heresies, and there is nothing he does not contrive in order to close off to men the way of salvation. — Nor content with these, like a roaring lion he continually goes about seeking whom he may devour. He strives to ensnare men chiefly by three deceits and wiles. For he attacks them either with horrible specters to terrify, or with blandishments to allure, or he drives them with madness, obtaining and possessing their bodies, to show his cruelty in them, or finally he maddens them with delusions, to make them obedient to him and devoted in all things: wherefore something must here be briefly set forth concerning these three infestations of demons under the three following Paragraphs.

§. 1. — On the Various Apparitions, and Specters.

There are two kinds of apparitions, and likewise of illusions, by which men are commonly circumvented and deluded; one indeed natural; the other demonic. Natural I call all those unusual effects of nature deviating or bewitched, by which men are for the most part terrified, and take them for specters.

WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF NATURAL SPECTERS?

I answer that it is chiefly to be ascribed to an alteration of the senses; since an alteration of the senses is for the most part the cause why men think they perceive various and astonishing things, as is most evident in the example of the drunk, about whom St. Ambrose writes excellently in lib. De Elia et ieiunio, cap. 16.

Hence, he says, the vain images of the drunkard, uncertain sight, unstable gait; they often leap over shadows as if they were pits, the earth with its face nods beneath them, suddenly seems to rise and incline, and as if it were hurled down; fearing, they fall upon their faces and grasp the ground with their hands, or they seem to themselves to be shut in by mountains rushing together: a murmur in their ears, like the crash of a surging sea and shores resounding with the wave: if they have seen dogs, they think they are lions, and flee. Others are dissolved in unseemly laughter, others lament with inconsolable grief; others perceive irrational fears, they dream while awake, while sleeping they quarrel, etc.

It happens also sometimes by a lesion of the external senses that things appear otherwise than they truly are. Thus Aristotle relates of a certain man who, on account of a defect of the eyes, thought that his own image, or likeness, always hovered before him in the air as if in a mirror. He likewise testifies that he who has long fixed his eyes on the Sun, and quickly turned them away with the other eye, at first sees all things in a glaucous vision, soon reddish, and at last black, until that alteration of sight recedes. Injured hearing also is wont to deceive, as happens in those who suffer the imaginative disease (so they call it). Thus Cellius, lib. 3., cap. 18., relates that Theophilus the Physician, prudent in other respects, thought that when he had a fever, flute-players and horn-players stood near his little bed and continuously sounded a song in his ears: and when already well, he stubbornly contended that this had happened to him; but these things were a tedium to him, to another a certain pleasure. — But a more frequent and greater deception flows from the corruption of the phantasy, or from its inordinate and depraved affection and agitation, of which thing Guillelmus Parisiensis supplies examples and reasons in the 2nd part of De Universo, part 2., cap. 35. Examples indeed, and that from dreamers, the feverish, and the melancholic:

For those dreaming, he says, indubitably believe that they sometimes see and touch golden apples and silver masses. They even sometimes dispute within themselves whether it is truth or a dream, what is thus done among them. But to you there is no doubt that the truth of the golden apples or silver masses is not among them. Yet they themselves, if they could then be interrogated and answer during the dream, would affirm with an oath that they most certainly both see and touch the truth of those things. — I will set before you a second example in the feverish, who suffer alienations even while awake, and say that they see robbers, or other men, who seek to kill them, and cry out against them, and invoke the help of those standing by, and strive to rise from their beds to flee those whom they say they see. It seems to them also that they enter through windows so small, through which in no way could they enter. In this example it is manifest to you that neither with the feverish man, that is, neither in his interiors, are men of this kind: nor even in the house where they say they see them; so also sometimes they suffer the very same about the dead. It is manifest therefore that the mere imaginations, or phantasms, which are in the soul of the feverish man, suffice by themselves for the apparition, or showing, of men of this kind, and that it is not at all necessary that their bodies, or other bodies similar to them, be assumed by anyone or by any whatsoever. — I will set before you a third example in certain melancholics, who seem to themselves to see multitudes of armed men, and who ascend the walls of the cities in which they are, or enter their gates, and that they capture them. Whence they themselves, fearing to be captured by them, cry out terribly, and with trembling flee wherever and however they can. Nor can the contrary be persuaded to them in any way: on account of which there cannot cease in them fear, nor trembling, nor even shouting, nor flight, unless they are held back. I remember having seen a good and religious man, who, when he was explaining and narrating to me the sickness he suffered, even in the very narration seemed to himself to see great black mice, trying to climb up over his clothing to his head; this passion did not cease in him, on account of which he was in continuous horror and fear. — Nor is it a wonder if we are deluded about the things which are outside us, since indeed such phantasms lead us about ourselves into more incredible opinions and apparitions. For there was in my time a man who believed himself to be a rooster, with so pertinacious a belief that he could in no way be turned away from it. And he had even been brought to this, that he would in no way use human speech, but only imitated the rooster's voice with all his strength. There was also another who believed himself dead, indissuadably, and on account of this raved that he neither ought nor could eat at all among men or with living men, until another, feigning himself similarly dead, suggested to him that he both could and ought to eat with him, since he was dead just as he himself was, neither of them being with the living. You could also have heard and known, if you recall, of a certain one who always thought he saw a great water before him, and on account of this would not walk a single step, deterred by a phantasm of this kind.

Now all these illusions of the injured imaginative faculty are in a twofold difference, since, as the same Guillelmus subjoins, they are either fixed, or mobile after the manner of dreams: and mobile indeed are those which come to be from smokes, or vapors ascending to the brain, and in it not impressing and leaving an infection, but rather easily receding; on account of which they are shaken off together with the sleep itself as if vanishing, and of the infections left behind, others are easily abolished, on account of which, when the sickness itself ceases and the humor from which they were is purged, they no longer make one see or speak alien things, as before they did. Others, however, are of a more intimate and more tenacious infection, and more adherent, and therefore are difficult to cure, and make a man seem to himself to be a king, as I saw a patient who thought himself to be a bird, flying wherever he wished, and sometimes thought himself to be the Son of God, sometimes indeed the Holy Spirit, at times indeed the Messiah of the Jews, whom they still await, and whom the Christian people name the Antichrist, and this very thing he openly said, namely, that he himself was the Antichrist. With this disease there sometimes mingles itself the diabolical suggestion, which the Christian people call the spirit of blasphemy; and it is a most pernicious passion, since it is of intolerable and horrific vexation, and is curable only by divine power: it comes to pass sometimes from disease that someone seems to himself to be a wolf, and it nonetheless also comes to pass from diabolical suggestion.

ON DEMONIC SPECTERS.

Although, as we said above, the various delusions of men for the most part arise from their badly affected senses, and also from the disturbed operation of the phantasy; nevertheless it is certain that the devil often joins himself to these natural diseases, and abuses the propensity and infirmity of men for their infestation: For, says S. Aug., lib. 18. of the Questions,

this evil of the devil creeps through all the sensual entrances, gives itself to shapes, accommodates itself to colors, clings to sounds, subjects itself to odors, pours itself into tastes, and with certain mists fills all the passages of the intelligence; sometimes cruelly tormenting with pain and fear; sometimes jokingly distracting or mocking with amusements.

But that we may be able to recount in some order the various infestations and apparitions of the demons, it must be observed that some demons are called aerial, some aqueous, some terrestrial, others indeed subterranean, as Psellus notes after Orpheus, lib. De Daemonum natura. Those are called aerial who, says Trithemius in the book Quaestionum ad Maximilianum, qu. 5., flying through the air by God's permission, often disturb the air, stir up thunders and storms, and all together conspire to the destruction of the human race; and sometimes put on various forms, and change them the more often according to the variety of the affections with which they either come forth evoked by the spells of witches, or driven by perturbation to harm. For they have a wholly violent and furious manner, full of disturbances: whence, greatly harmed and perturbed, they for the most part contrive sudden snares, and while they make their incursions, partly they wish to lie hidden, partly they inflict violence. The witches, supported by the operation of these demons, are so much the more powerful for working witchcraft as they have obtained a higher one of their order as a concurrent. All these things, however, I would believe. In the life of S. Antony, S. Athanasius said that the air was full of demons: which Mercurius thrice-greatest had foretold: namely, that no part of the world is destitute of the presence of demons. These are Trithemius's words, whose last words are to be understood of the sublunar world, otherwise, as S. August. teaches, cap. 3. of De Agone Christiano, it is false: and so accept what he subjoins: The holy bishop Ambrose also said: The world is full of holy virtues, because it is full of wickednesses.

The second genus is called of terrestrial demons, of whom, says the same Trithemius, some dwell in forests and groves, who lay snares for hunters; others indeed live in fetid fields, who make travelers go astray by night; some linger in hidden and cavernous places: the rest, less furious and disturbed than the others, delight to dwell with men in the dark. These, however, were anciently given various names: whose names Saxo Grammaticus relates and describes, lib. 1. of the Saxonicae historiae, where among other things he has these:

The fierce chorus of Lemures is led on, and headlong through the breezes it runs, and sends forth vast sounds to the stars, Fauns join the Satyrs, and the band of Pans, mingled with the Manes, fights with savage face; with the Sylvans the Aquili meet, and the harmful Larvae with the Lamiae strive to share the path.

In a leap the Furies are poised; with them are crowded the Larvae, which Fantua, joined to the Simi, presses.

Now these various infestations and apparitions of demons Guillelmus Parisiensis clearly explains in the last part of De Universo, cap. 24., where he says:

there are also other delusions of the malignant Spirits, which they sometimes make in forests, and pleasant places, and leafy trees; where they appear in the likeness of girls, or matrons, with womanly and white ornament: sometimes also in stables with wax lights, from which droppings appear on the manes and necks of horses, and their manes carefully braided, and you will hear those who confess that they have seen such things, saying that it is true wax which had dripped from lights of this kind. It is manifest, however, to you, that it is easy for malignant spirits to gather true wax from wild honey, and from the works of sylvan bees, and from it to make a light. But on the part of men we have not yet heard that they have exercised a robbery of this kind: nor yet must it be doubted, that by the permission of the Creator they can sometimes do these things; but that they do not do these or other evils to men, is from the goodness of the Creator, who holds them bound like the most savage beasts, so that they do not harm men however much they wish. — Concerning those substances, however, which appear in houses, which they call night-ladies, and their Prince they call Lady Abundia, for this reason, that they are thought to bestow abundance of temporal goods on the houses which they frequent, you must know nothing else, nor otherwise, than just as you have heard of them: for that they seem to eat and drink is only an illusory vision, since it is manifest that spiritual substances cannot use corporeal foods or drinks. Then nothing of consumption or diminution appears in the corporeal foods and drinks, from which they seem to have taken, after their departure, or rather after they have vanished; on which account the folly of men and the madness of old women has so far prevailed, that they leave vessels of wine and receptacles of food uncovered, and do not at all stop or close them on the nights on which they believe them about to come to their houses. — The same, and in the same way, must be thought of the other malignant spirits, whom the vulgar call striges and lamias, and who appear by night in the houses in which little children are nursed, and seem to tear them, snatched from their cradles, or roast them with fire: they appear, however, in the form of old women, namely, who are neither truly old women, nor is it possible for them truly to devour children, for the cause which I have said. Sometimes, however, it is permitted them to kill the little ones as a punishment of the parents, for this reason, because parents sometimes love their little children to such a point that they do not love God. Usefully, therefore, and salubriously it is dealt with those parents, when the cause of the Creator's offense is removed. But the foolish, after their custom, take from that very thing from which they ought to be instructed an occasion of more detestable folly, on account of which it came to pass that malignant spirits, under the name and form of old women, in which they were believed to appear, acquired for themselves fear and honor, and the cult of idolatry, namely for this cause, that they might spare the little ones; that is, that they might neither tear them, nor roast them with fire. But the folly of our old women has wonderfully disseminated and advanced this opinion, and almost ineradicably fixed it in the minds of other women. Similarly, concerning the night-ladies, that they are good ladies, and that great goods are bestowed by them on the houses which they frequent, they have persuaded chiefly the women, and, to say it in one word, this old-womanish fatuity has retained and reserved almost all the relics of idolatry, and still does not cease to promote them.

To this point pertain all those specters of demons, by which they sometimes exhibit military battle-lines and the camps of warriors. We read indeed in Scripture, Gen. 32. and 4. Reg., cap. 6., that the Holy Angels appeared like cohorts of soldiers, both with the Patriarch Jacob, and to the Prophet Eliseus¹. Almost innumerable histories relate this very thing about demons: you will see more in Niderius, in the last book of the Formicarii. Leholerium, lib. 1., etc.

I would not deny, however, that those specters are sometimes made by souls released from the body, which sometimes, thus by God's permission, appear, that they may recall the living from vices; or, as Guillelmus Parisiensis, praised above, speaks, these apparitions come to be,

namely, of armed armies, to the terror of those who use arms, so that through the punishments which the abusers of arms are seen to suffer in these visions, they may be deterred from like things, and these are the things which the dead themselves disclosed in their apparitions. The souls of dead men are therefore permitted thus to appear to men, to deter them from the abuses of arms, and robberies, and cruelty, in killing men. But as I have predicted, neither are they true horses, nor true arms which appear there, nor true jousts, nor true battles, nor true courses or ridings, for the causes aforesaid; but only signs of such things, as in a vision they appear to make men be moved, and to be deterred from the aforesaid evils, and to solicit them about aiding the souls of the departed.

Here likewise occur those specters, which at certain times and places, or houses, are wont to exhibit tumults and various vexations, of which it would be superfluous to relate examples here, since indeed they are most well known among all.

Likewise such are those demons, about whom Ioannes Mellesius writes, lib. 3., cap. 11. and 12.

In Salmasia, he says, certain visible spirits are worshipped, who in the Ruthenian tongue are called Coltri, in German Koboldi, whom they believe to inhabit hidden places of the houses, or in a pile of wood, and they nourish them lavishly with every kind of food, for this reason, that they are wont to bring to their nourishers grain stolen by theft from others' granaries. When, however, those spirits wish to inhabit and be nourished somewhere, in this way they declare their will toward the father of the family: by night they heap up chips of wood in the house, and place various dung of animals in the milk-pails full of milk: and when the father of the family has noticed this, and has neither scattered the chips, nor the dung from the milk-pails, but has eaten of the polluted milk with all his household, then they are said to appear to him, and to remain there.

The same judgment applies to the specters of little men and little women of pygmy or dwarf shape, existing in many houses and performing nearly all the domestic services: think of tending horses, sweeping the house, and performing similar services, of which Olaus Magnus, lib. 3. cap. 11. says that the ancients among the French called them Desgoblins, des Folets, etc.

Last of all there offer themselves the specters of subterranean demons, who are said to guard treasures and also to dig out gold, of which Georgius Agricola gave an account in the chapter de animalibus subterraneis: In metallic mines, he says, they are found, and indeed fierce, or terrifying at their very appearance; for the most part they are troublesome to and hostile to miners. Such was the Annelberg demon, who killed more than twelve workmen with his breath in the cavern called by the rose-colored crown, a name left behind him however rich he was in silver. He emitted his breath from his mouth when he appeared in the shape of a horse with a long neck and fierce eyes. Of the same kind was Snebergius, clothed in a black cowl, who in the Georgina mine took up a workman from the earth and placed him in a higher spot, especially in a cavity once rich in silver, not without a rubbing of his body. A Jew was compelled to abandon a very profitable mine by a metallic demon, who frequently appeared to men in the shape of a goat bearing golden horns. But the Germans call some of them Sedatos, as the Greeks also call them κόβαλους, because they are imitators of men; for they laugh as if exulting with joy, and seem to do many things while accomplishing nothing. Others call them little mountain men, because they usually appear as dwarfs three spans tall: they seem to be little old men, and are dressed in the manner of miners, that is, in a glassy tunic, an undergarment, and a leather apron hanging about the loins. These are harmless to miners, although they sometimes harass workmen with gravel, yet they very rarely harm them unless provoked by laughter or abuse. They seem chiefly to work in those caverns in which metals are already being dug out, or where there is hope that they can be dug out. Kircher reports more about these subterranean demons in his book De Mundo subterraneo.

Here I pass over the various forms of animals, and indeed also of men, which the demon sometimes puts on in order to mock, terrify, or deceive men; various things are reported about these apparitions, the substance of which Delrio recounts: when he wishes to offer a specimen of familiarity and fidelity, he takes the form of a Cat or a Dog: of Cats, he says, the daily confession of the witches gives assurance, of which we shall say something in paragraph 3: of the Dog Cornelius Agrippa had sure knowledge. If someone is to be carried somewhere, he appears to him in equine form, as Olaus testifies concerning Hadingus, lib. 3. De Comite Matisconensi, and Peter of Cluny in his book De Miraculis. If he is to pass through a narrow place or a crevice, or to mock guards, he becomes a bat, a mouse, or a weasel. If he is to tear a flock, or rage against beasts and men, he puts on a wolf: if he wishes to terrify or disturb someone, now he sings, as a great and furious cock, as with Pacomius; as a crow or vulture with S. Romuald; as a little fox with S. Hilarion; as a serpent with Leonard of Corbeia; as a Dragon with S. Margaret. — But if he wishes to lead someone to evil by the appearance of good, he sometimes appears in a form breathing some piety: thus in the figure of our Lord Jesus Christ, crowned with golden and shining ornaments and also with a diadem, he dared to appear to the holy Bishop Martin of Tours, so as to induce that holy man to adore him as Christ himself: but when his fraud was detected, he said to him: The Lord Jesus Christ foretold that he would come not clothed in purple, or gleaming with a diadem: at the hearing of which he vanished. Another Father, when the demon offered himself to him in the form of Christ, said with closed eyes that he did not wish to see Christ in this life, but in Heaven. Another, to one appearing under a similar form, objected: See to whom you are sent, for I am not he who may deserve to see Christ. — It is read also in the Legend of S. Jerome that the demon put on the form of the holy Sylvanus, Bishop of Nazara, who was most dear to S. Jerome, and that in the same form he attacked a certain woman lying in bed at night, so as to provoke her to lust, and when she cried out, he hid himself under the bed in the same form, and being found there, pretended that he was Sylvanus the Bishop, so as to brand the man of God with so great an infamy, and so vanished; such was the opinion of many about Sylvanus, until the demon himself, in a possessed body, exposed the trick and the fraud.

You will ask. How can demons, with specters assumed, play with the eyes of men?

The Seraphic Doctor answers in 2. dist. 8. qu. 3. that on this matter the opinion of the Authors is varied, but chiefly threefold: for some thought that this delusion occurs in a threefold way:

For, they say, the demon can play with our senses, either by influencing from above, by moving phantasms from within, or by presenting species from without. First indeed by influencing from above: they say this can happen in such a way that since the demon by his nature is superior to bodily sense, and since superior things are by nature meant to influence inferior ones, the demon can impress upon sense, both interior and exterior, the species which he has in himself: which nevertheless are less spiritual in the receiver than in the giver: because what is received in something is according to the mode of the receiver, not according to the mode of the thing received. Similarly, by moving phantasms from within, they say it can happen just as it happens to a man from the movement of phantasms, and the outflow from the organ, that the sensitive power is excited inwardly and a dream is made in which it seems to the man that he sees or hears the truth, when the phantasm of a thing reaches the organ of sight or hearing. So also in our case, the demon can make the phantasms existing in the interior organ flow out to the organs of the senses: and thus it seems to the man that he sees or senses the very thing, while from that phantasm the organ is formed: and the intention of sense is turned upon it, and he judges of the likeness as if it were the truth. But by presenting a species from without, he can deceive the sense in this way; for each thing is by nature meant to give its species to a susceptible subject; and if there were something that not only received a species but could also hold it, it could be carried about and presented to someone as the truth; as the Moon is shown in a well. Since therefore it is not hidden from the demon, by the nature of a mirror-like thing, that there are things not only receptive of species but also retentive of them: by means of that he can present to our senses as the truth any species he wills, of whatever thing he wills; and when they take it for the truth, they are deceived.

This opinion, however, the Seraphic Doctor rejects:

For, he says, it does not seem possible that a spiritual substance, which has in itself wholly immaterial species, can impress them upon the senses, since it is altogether a disproportionate power. Nor does it seem that species go back from the interior organ, since that is a retrograde order. Besides, it is very marvelous if the demon found so great a mirror, in which in its magnitude and breadth he could show a whole castle, as has sometimes been shown to many. It is marvelous also if anyone sees a thing in such a way that he cannot see the mirror.

Marvelous too is the nature of such a bodily thing, which can receive and hold a species: since we see that a species cannot simply be separated from the mirror of the object.

He subjoins the second opinion, and affirms it as the more probable; namely,

that the demon can deceive the senses, either by showing as present what is not, or by showing otherwise than it is, or by hiding what is present. He does the first indeed by offering a species: the second he does by varying the sense or the object. The third he does by imposing an impediment. The first can be understood thus: when phantasms existing within are offered with strong presentation to the interior power itself, or the interior power is strongly intent upon them, the likeness of a thing seems to be the truth. This is manifest through nature; for in a frenzied man, on account of the ascent of fumes to the brain from some slight external occasion, it seems to him that he sees many things which are not present to him, or that he hears. Similarly, through a strong conversion of intention, the phantasm seems to be the truth: as S. Augustine illustrates in the book De Trinitate, that a certain man with such conversion of thought dwelt on the image of a certain woman that it seemed to him, even while awake, that he was carnally joined to her. In this way the demon can either convert the intention to the image, or by sending in certain vapors change the animal spirit, and vary the phantasms in diverse ways, and offer them to the intention, and thus make diverse things appear to a man; and he uses this way most frequently; and the sign of this is, because he never makes a man sense anything whose image he does not have in the interior organ of the imaginative power; for he never makes the blind naturally dream of colors, nor the deaf of sounds, nor does he represent such things to them while awake or in dreams. — The second mode we can understand thus: that a thing appears to the sense in another way, or under another disposition, than it naturally is, can happen on account of some variation on the part of the organ; as when a bloody humor or fiery vapor descends to the eyes, it seems to the man that the things outside are red: or on account of some variation on the part of the object; as it sometimes happens that, by the burning of a candle made from the fat of a serpent and the arrangement of the straws, the straws seem to be serpents by a natural operation. It is similar with certain powers of some mineral things. And because this mode is not hidden from the demons, and they are swift ministers, powerful to bring at once what is necessary for these things: therefore they frequently delude our senses, showing a thing otherwise than it is, while they make it appear otherwise than it really is: which indeed happens by a slight variation induced in it around the organ or the object: which variation does not change the form; but it is only from a certain accidental adhesion, and is as a passion, not a passible quality. — The third mode we can understand thus: a thing which is at hand can be hidden from our sense, without visible obstacle, in two ways; either because the power of sense is prevented from reaching the sensible thing; or because the sensible species is prevented from reaching the sense: and in both ways the sense is prevented from perceiving what is at hand for it. Both of these must be believed to be quite possible to the power of the demon, and therefore he is said to be able in this way to make a man invisible > which however is not certain; yet if it is, that it can happen in this way is not very incredible.

§. 2. — On the energumens and demoniacs.

That demons sometimes enter and torment human bodies is certain. This indeed is made known by many texts of Sacred Scripture, especially those in which the sacred Evangelists testify that Christ the Lord cast out demons. Thus Luc. 11. after Christ the Lord cast out the demon which was mute, and the sick man spoke, the Scribes and Pharisees, led by envy, said: In Beelzebub, Prince of demons, he casts out demons; by which words they supposed that demoniacs were given, nay rather they knew that he who had been cured had been a demoniac. Nor does he reproach them for that faith which they had, but only shows that he casts out demons not in such a power, but by the finger of God. So likewise Christ himself very often cast out demons from human bodies; thus among the holy Evangelists is narrated that famous casting out of the legion of demons which possessed one man: and by the same Evangelists it is often narrated that miracles were wrought by Christ Jesus concerning the casting out of demons from the bodies of men, they themselves crying out and testifying that violence was being done to them, in that they were being driven from their own dwelling places: and in S. Luke the Disciples said: Even the demons are subject to us in thy name: and in Ss. Luke, Mark, and Matthew the lunatic demoniac is cured by Christ: but that sacred Scripture would not assert that demons were cast out and driven from human bodies unless they had truly been within. — Next, it itself says quite clearly that those demons entered and went out of bodies, and were cast out; which things can neither can nor ought to be explained except by asserting that they truly were within, and were from there driven out: for if they did not enter and go out of bodies, to what purpose the words of the Lord in S. Mark: Go out, unclean spirit, from this man? To what purpose the petition of the demons saying: Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them? and that: The unclean spirits, going out, entered into the swine? This faculty, however, of casting out demons Christ the Lord bestowed not only on his Apostles, but also on the ministers of the Church, and on the faithful endowed with holiness. Hence in the very cradles of the nascent Church the Fathers and Historians of the Church narrate that innumerable demons, almost, were cast out from the bodies of men by the works of exorcists. Thus especially Tertullian, ad Scapulam, c. 2. Demons, he says, we not only despise, but truly overcome, and daily put to shame, and expel from men, as is known to very many. And S. Cyprian, in the Epistle to Demetrianus, Proconsul of Africa, speaks thus about the demons repelled by himself and other Exorcists:

O! if you would wish to hear them and see them, when they are adjured and tormented by us with spiritual scourges and the torments of words, when they are cast out from the possessed bodies, when wailing and groaning with a human voice, and feeling under divine power the scourges and blows, they confess that the judgment is to come, etc.

You will say 1. S. Hildegarde, as we read in lib. 3. Of her Life cap. 20. testifies that she saw in a true vision a certain Energumen, and

that she (he says) by the permission of God was possessed and overshadowed by a certain blackness and smoke of diabolical congestion, which oppressed the whole sensuality of that rational soul, and did not allow her to sigh from her elevated intellect; just as the shadow of a man or of another thing, or smoke, covers and pours over what is opposed to it, whence she lost her right senses and acts, and inconveniently cried out and was silent more often. And while I was thinking, and wishing to know, how the diabolical form, that is, substance, enters a man, I saw and received the answer, that the devil in his form, as he is, does not enter a man; but he overshadows and covers him with the shadow and smoke of his blackness: for if his form were to enter a man, his members would sooner be dissolved than a straw be scattered by the wind. Wherefore God does not permit him to enter a man in his form, but pouring over him the things said above he drives him to madness and inconveniences, and through him as through a window he cries out, and moves his members outwardly, while nevertheless he is not within them in his form interiorly, the soul meanwhile being as it were lulled, and ignorant of what the flesh of the body does.

therefore the demons do not truly enter the bodies of the Energumens. — I deny the consequence. for nothing against the assertion of the present truth is proved from the aforementioned revelation; for in that revelation several things seem to be wrong: First, because at the beginning only obsession, not possession, is described. Second, because this inquiry was of little necessity and rather curious. Third, because what he says is suspect, that God does not permit the devil to possess bodies according to his essence, as he is accustomed to be in his own place. For the common distinction of the Theologians establishes this difference between the obsessed and the possessed: that in the latter the demon is present, as he was sometimes in statues of idols, and this is indicated by the swellings and many other things which are seen in the possessed. Fourth, because there is no reason; for the form of the demon, or his spiritual substance, is not so contrary to the body that it would at once destroy it, even against his will, by the mere entrance. Fifth, because the soul is not always lulled when the demon obsesses or possesses an Energumen, as is apparent; because we often see them recall all the things they have done. Finally, all the holy Theologians have always so spoken and opined, as to say that the demon enters the body of the afflicted person and goes out of it, not indeed entering it so as to inform it, or as they say, to integrate it as a part of it; but only so as to use it as a place or as an organic instrument.

You will say 2. Two spirits cannot occupy the same definitive place: but the soul occupies the whole body: therefore the demon cannot occupy it.

I distinguish the major. they cannot occupy the same place according to the same mode of existing, I concede: according to a diverse mode, I deny. But the soul is in the body not as in a place, but as the form informing and vivifying the body; the demon however is in it as an assisting mover, moving that body; wherefore the soul, which is a spirit conjoined, and the demon, who is a separate spirit, can have diverse operations in the same body: the soul indeed will be able to vegetate, nourish, and make the body sensitive: the demon truly to move it locally, and to vex it.

You will ask. For what causes do demons possess bodies?

I answer. this happens chiefly for five causes: Demons invade and possess the bodies of men, as John Nider explains in his Formicary cap. 11, sometimes for their own greater merit of the possessed, sometimes for another's slight fault, sometimes for their own venial fault, sometimes for another's grave sin, and sometimes for their own great crime.

Of the first it is clear in the Dialogue of Severus, the dearest disciple of S. Martin, where a certain Father of most holy life is said to have been so endowed with the grace of expelling demons, that they were put to flight not only by his own words, but even by the letters and hairshirt of the same Father. But when the Father was most celebrated before the world, he felt himself tempted by vainglory. Although he resisted that vice manfully, yet in order that he might be humbled the more, he prayed God with his whole heart that he might be possessed by a demon for five months; and it was done. For he who was possessed had to be at once bound, and to hold all things in common with the demoniacs: but when the fifth month was finished, he was freed both from all vainglory and from the demon. Of the second, how one may be possessed for another's slight fault, B. Gregory gives the example of B. Eleutherius the Abbot, a most simple man, who, while he was spending the night near a monastery of virgins, without his knowledge they ordered a little boy to be placed at his cell, who was vexed by a demon every night, but that same night he was freed from the demon through the presence of the Father. He, when he had learned the thing done, and the boy had now been placed in the monastery of the holy man, and after many days had passed was somewhat immoderately glad about the liberation of the boy, said to his confreres: Brethren, the devil was jesting with those Sisters. But when he came to the servants of God, he did not presume to approach this boy. And behold, at once the devil began to vex the boy, and with difficulty, but that same day, he was freed through the tears and fastings of the holy man and the confreres. Of the third, namely of one's own venial sin, it is clear through Cassian, in the first Conference of Abbot Serenus, speaking of Moses: Moses, he says, in the desert, since he was a singular and incomparable man, on account of the reproach of one word, which disputing against Abbot Macharius he uttered somewhat harshly, having been forestalled by a certain opinion, was straightway delivered to so dire a demon, that he was forced to thrust into his mouth the human excrements supplied to him by him; that this scourge the Lord had brought upon him for the sake of purgation, lest namely there should rest in him the stain of a momentary fault, the swiftness of his cure demonstrated, with the cause being shown. For as soon as Abbot Macharius had prostrated himself in prayer, quicker than speech the wicked spirit, put to flight, departed from him. Similar to this seems what S. Gregory relates in the Dialogues 1.² about a certain handmaid of God in the Monastery of Virgins, who, entering the garden there, seeing a lettuce and desiring it, which she forgot to bless with the sign of the cross, eagerly bit it, and seized by a demon she fell, and was vexed, until straightway calling the blessed Father Equitius who was there, she was freed through the same. Of the fourth cause, of which it has been said that someone is possessed for another's grave sin, it is clear in the same place through B. Gregory; for as he relates, Fortunatus the Bishop had driven out the devil from a possessed man. Late therefore the same devil, in the form of a pilgrim, began to cry out through the streets of the city: O the holy man Fortunatus, he cast out of the inn a pilgrim: whom a certain man invited to his inn. And seeking the cause of the expulsion, he rejoiced over the derogation of the holy man which he heard from the feigned pilgrim. Thereafter however the devil attacked the boy, and threw him into the coals, and shook out his soul; and so the wretched father understood of the first whom he had received into his inn. — Of the fifth cause, of one's own and commonly great crime, both in Sacred Scripture > and in the Passions of the Saints we read; for thus 1. Reg. 15. Saul, disobedient to God, was possessed.

Thus John Nider.

But in what manner, and for what reason, the demon enters human bodies, S. Bonaventure teaches in 2. dist. 8. 1. par. art. 2. q. 7.

It must be said, he says, that as the Evangelical text intimates, and Augustine also in the book De divinatione daemonum, the demons by the nature of their subtlety and spirituality can penetrate whatever bodies, and subsist in them without any obstacle and impediment; but by reason of their power they can move and disturb those bodies in which they are; for as a spirit cannot be penetrable to a spirit, so neither can a body resist a spirit: therefore the demons, as far as the power and subtlety of nature goes, can enter human bodies, and can also vex them, unless they are prohibited by a superior power: and when they are permitted to enter and vex, then they are said to obsess bodies. The Lord permits this, however, either for the manifestation of his glory, or for the punishment of sin, or for the correction of the sinner, or for our instruction: but for which determinately of these causes he permits it, is hidden from human industry, for this reason, that the judgments of God are hidden: yet this is plain, that they do not happen unjustly, and therefore he does not permit such things without cause.

Origen has similar things in book 8 against Celsus, where, refuting the saying of that most bitter adversary of the Christians, that the demons by their own power preside over the parts of the world and over the dispensation of things; when he had said that this indeed befits the holy angels, but that the demons are only the authors of evils and calamities, he adds that these are the works of demons, or of executioners,

by a certain divine judgment, having this power at certain times, either for converting men and restraining them from the unbridled license of vices, or for exercising the human race in the use of reason; that by means of those adversities those who will piety constantly and do not depart from virtue may become conspicuous for their excellence to spectators both visible and invisible.... and by the law of God no demon has obtained a prefecture of earthly things; but on account of his malice perhaps certain places are assigned to them, where there is no knowledge of God and of the pious life, or where all things are alien from his countenance; perhaps that the Word, the moderator of all, constituted them as fit guardians and torturers of the wicked, that they might command with their vices those who, despising God, are unwilling to serve him.

But what are the signs by which it can be certainly recognized that a demon has invaded and agitates some body, is not so easily determined. For it sometimes happens that those who appear to be Energumens are not truly such; in them many things are feigned, some from disease, none from the demon. Wherefore, in order that it may be judged whether a demon truly inhabits and torments a body, there must first be investigated, says Herinx, disp. 4. qu. 9. the origin of the obsession, and the mode of entering, and especially the effects and signs of the entrance itself, of which sort are, apart from any suspicion of a divine miracle, a sudden knowledge of a foreign tongue, of the art of reading, or the like, speech about sublime things which the afflicted never learned; knowledge of the absent, revelation of hidden things, operations exceeding the powers of men. Likewise, that the afflicted cannot endure sacred relics, the names of the Saints, and especially of Jesus and of the most Holy Trinity, exorcisms, etc. especially when they are applied with the man himself unaware. Likewise if he is altogether forbidden to speak, or to utter holy names, to confess, to communicate, etc. To these are added the indications which can prudently be drawn from a sudden change of the state of the body, of the countenance, of morals, or from the mode of the external affliction. Judgment about the obsession is more easily given, however, when all, or the principal of the alleged signs concur: especially when he reveals, in some idiom previously unknown, things absent and hidden, etc. But in what manner demons are to be expelled by Exorcists, and by what means and prayers they are to be used, various Doctors set forth at length, especially our own Jerome Mengo of Vitelli in his Flagellum of demons; more briefly however in the Fustis of demons, namely two books published by him; and also Anthony Stampa of Clavesana, in the book De Fuga Satanae. But before the others the Roman Ritual, and also the Diocesan Pastoral, are to be consulted. The Exorcist however ought above all to take care that he be endowed with a living faith and confidence in God, with a pure conscience and humility of soul, armed with fasting and prayer, not desirous of catching vain glory, or of any base temporal gain, but for the cause of necessity or charity alone ought he to undertake and begin this arduous work. Wherefore he must first of all guard against contention of voice, and also against the excitation of passions or affections, with which some weary themselves in vain: but rather let him labor at eliciting acts of faith, hope, and charity: he must guard likewise against useless, vain, and curious questions and interrogations, etc. But the one to be exorcised is first to be admonished that by salutary confession he cleanse his conscience from every sin with all the diligence and piety he can, that he be fortified with the sacred synaxis, pray frequently, fast, and use the sign of the cross, blessed water, the relics of the saints, the figure of the Lamb of God marked in blessed wax, and other sacred amulets, and excite faith and confidence in God: nor, if the cure be deferred, let him fall in spirit, being always ready to subject himself to the ordinance of God: resting especially on this consolation, that by this temporal agitation of the demons he will escape the eternal torment which they would have to inflict on the reprobate. Thus Herinx.

§. 3. — On Witches, Striges, and Sortiarii.

Besides those most lost men who make a covenant with the demon, so that by his aid they may be able to declare and judge of things future or hidden; and besides those nefarious Magi and enchanters who strike a pact with the demon, so that with him operating and helping they may be able to perform and fulfill the marvelous and stupendous things they desire, of whom it will be more opportune for us to speak when we treat of Divination and Magic in the Disputation De fide; there are also others, no less execrable than the aforesaid, who, stripping off all divine religion entirely, and trampling underfoot all things however sacred with a horrible impiety, subject themselves wholly to the command of the demon, so that at his nod they exercise and carry out all that malice or crime or infidelity can be devised among other men by those who in any way are devoted to the devil. — These most lost men, however, are given a various name; but they are called by the more common and usual name of Sortiarii, not only from the lots entered into with the demon, but also from the witchcrafts procured. And since among these worst professors of the diabolical art there are far more women than men; for this reason because that sex, on account of its excessive credulity, is more prone to deception, and also more inclined to lust, hence the feminine name is also customarily given to those execrable men: for they are called lamiae and Striges: of which appellations several reasons can be given. They are called, I say, lamiae from the Greek word λάμος, which signifies gluttony, by which reason a fish devouring all things, even whole men, is called lamia by Nicander of Colophon, as testified by Eustath. on Odyss. 13; in which sense also Philostratus, in the life of Apollonius of Tyana, names as a lamia a fierce animal devouring boys, expelled from Corinth by Apollonius himself. In the same signification it is taken in Isaia 34. where the prophet, signifying beforehand the perpetual devastation of Idumaea, says that not one stone will remain placed upon another, nor will it be any longer a dwelling of men, but that demons and satyrs will be the inhabitants there, and that the lamia will abide there, doubtless a savage animal and most troublesome to men. Diodorus Siculus narrates in lib. 20. of his Library, that the lamia was represented by the ancients as a woman of outstanding beauty, since all her children died, driven into rage by this event, she snatched all the infants of other women from their arms and straightway killed and sucked them, whence the fame is that on account of the fierceness of her mind she was transformed into a beast. Dion describes the lamia in the African history as like a wild beast, having a most elegant countenance of a woman, ruling the breasts and bosom for beguiling travelers, with modest and pleasing eyes: but in place of feet to have the head of a serpent, and to be a scaly serpent which devours a man most greedily as soon as he comes near. Jeremiah also, Thren. 4. v. 3. as he pursues the cruelty and fierce mind of the Jews toward their needy neighbors, writes: but also the lamiae have laid bare the breast, they have suckled their whelps: the daughter of my people is cruel, like the ostrich in the desert. — Since therefore those most lost women employ all their effort to bring forth evils to men by the aid of demons, and are most hostile to them, they are rightly and justly called lamiae. — They are also called striges, a word derived from strix, which is a nocturnal and troublesome bird, so called from the hissing which it makes; of which Lucan says in lib. 6. what the fearful screech-owl, what the nocturnal strix, they bewail. This bird, I say, attempts to attack children still at the breast, that it may suck from their little bodies the vital blood. For which cause those most lost women who are devoted to the demons are called Striges, for this reason because under the masked shape of a cat they usually attack sleeping little children, and suck their blood through the groin. But the lamiae, since according to Philostratus in the life of Apollonius they are most inclined to Venus, and desire to devour human flesh; wherefore they provoke to lust the handsome men whom they meet, that they may the more easily bring death upon them, and afterwards be sated with their flesh. For this reason also that name is given to those nefarious followers of the devil. But I have judged that a few things about them must be briefly related here from the most learned authors of every kind, in whose hands alone is the faith of what is to be said below.

It should be known, therefore, first of all, as Paulus Grillandus relates in his treatise on Sortilege, number 26, Delrius in his magical disquisitions book 2, question 16, Laurentius Anianus On the nature of demons book 4, chapter 4, and also our own Alphonsus a Castro in the book On the Impious Heresy of the Sortilegae, chapter 4, that

whoever wishes to profess this diabolical sect is first led by him who teaches him before the tribunal of the demon, seated upon a certain throne in the manner of a king. For the demon shows himself to them in a certain visible and corporeal figure, that by a counterfeit sign he may persuade them of his false majesty and dominion. Brought before him, therefore, he who prepares to profess this sect must at once renounce baptism and abandon all the documents of the Christian faith. Next it is required that he reject all the ecclesiastical sacraments; he must cast away the cross, the images of the immaculate Virgin and of all the other saints whatsoever, and trample them under his own feet. Yet this trampling of the images need not be done at once in the presence of the demon himself, but it is enough that he promise to do it afterward, as soon as the occasion offers itself. These things done, he binds and obliges himself to the demon as to a perpetual prince or king, vowing in his hands that he will be faithful to him forever, and obedient to all his commands. After this, touching a certain book containing certain obscure and unknown pages, he promises under oath that he will never return to the faith of Christ, nor keep the divine precepts, but only those things that shall be commanded by that prince himself, namely the demon. He promises besides that he will come as often as he is called to the nocturnal assemblies, and will perform the sacrifices that he sees done in those nocturnal hours; that he will pour out prayers and show to him the worship of prayer; and finally that he will do all other things that he sees done there by the others. When this vow and oath have been uttered by him, the demon, who sitting on the throne had shown himself to him as a king, presenting a cheerful countenance, promises him, thus standing, that he will give him — which he does not possess in himself — perpetual felicity and immense joys, and whatever pleasures he shall desire to have in this world; and finally he promises and pledges that after this life he will give him things far greater. Then he appoints one demon for his guardianship and instruction, who is to accompany him perpetually, serve him in all things, and grant him everything he shall desire. To this demon destined for guardianship, among other things, this peculiar office is committed: that as often as it is necessary to go to the nocturnal assemblies, he announce this to his little client and carry him to the place of assembly. This demon, who is given as a patron for guardianship, the professors of this diabolical art themselves call the Magister, the Martinet, or Martinellus.

Thus Alphonsus.

Delrius adds that when all have rendered their homage to the demon sitting in the manner of a king on his throne, all are summoned to a banquet. And he notes that diverse tables are usually set, laden with three or four kinds of foods, sometimes most delicate, sometimes very insipid, to which individuals are assigned according to their dignity or wealth. Sometimes each one's own demon sits beside him; sometimes the malefici on one side, and each one's demon opposite. Nor does his table lack a blessing worthy of this assembly, consisting wholly of blasphemous words, in which they profess Beelzebub himself to be the creator, giver, and preserver of all things. The same is the act of thanksgiving they offer when the tables are removed. They are present at the banquet sometimes with face uncovered, sometimes veiled with a linen cloth or other covering, or even masked in person. After the banquet each demon takes in hand the disciple whom he guards, and that everything may be done with the most absurd ritual possible, turning their backs to one another and joining hands in a circle, tossing their heads in the manner of the possessed, they lead dances; not infrequently holding burning candles in their hands, with which, kissing them before the demon, they adore, and sing in honor of the demon fescennine songs most obscene. Or they dance to the drum or pipe of someone sitting in a forked tree, and perform everything ridiculously and contrary to the custom of the rest. Then they most foully mingle with their demon lovers. Ioannes Bodinus, in De daemonomania book 2, chapter 4, writes that a huge black he-goat presides over the assemblies of the witches, addressing those standing about with human speech; all dance within his compass, then each one kisses the hinder parts of the goat with a burning candle. This done, the goat is consumed by fire, from whose ashes each takes some, that with it they may kill the ox of an enemy, the sheep of this one, the horse of that one, and afflict this man with languor, that one with death. Finally the devil cries out with a terrible voice these words: avenge yourselves, or you shall meet death; and so each returns by the help of the devil by the way he came.

When sacrifices are made, they are usually made at once at the beginning, after the adoration has been performed; yet they often make sacrifices also apart from the assembly. Finally they add that each is to recount his deeds since the last time; and the graver and more execrable these have been, the more abundantly are they praised; if there are none, or they are not atrocious enough, the sluggish are most savagely beaten by the demon, or by a certain wicked elder; lastly, with powders (which some write to be the ashes of that he-goat which the demon had assumed, and which they adore, suddenly consumed by flame before their eyes), or with other poisons received, often even with the duty of harming imposed on each without being told; and the pseudo-god's decree of the demon having been pronounced, avenge yourselves; otherwise you shall die, that you may recognize a law contrary to the law of charity, each seeks his own home, if it be near, on foot; if more distant, carried.

The assemblies are for the most part begun either in the silence of midnight, when the power of darkness prevails, or sometimes at midday, whence there are those who relate that well-known saying of the Psalmist about the noonday demon. And Aben-Ezra writes that certain days and hours are observed by the Magi. The striges seem to have various fixed days in different regions. In Italy they frequent the night that precedes Friday, and that about the middle of the night. The striges of Lorraine meet on the nights that precede Thursday and Sunday, as Remigius testifies, book 1, chapter 14; in others it is read to be the night that precedes Tuesday.

But that the demon does not transport these striges except when first anointed with ointment, he does for various reasons: either that they may be bolder by means of the ointment, or because they are the more delicate for bearing that horrible compact of Satan in an assumed body; for by the unction of these he sometimes stupefies the senses, and persuades the wretches that the ointment contains the greatest power. At other times, however, he does this that he may mimically shadow the sacraments sacredly instituted by God, and by these quasi-ceremonies procure reverence and veneration for his orgies. But that the power of the ointment contributes nothing to the transportation is evident also from this: that even if those who, out of a certain curiosity, desiring to be present at the assembly, anoint themselves at the appointed time of the meeting are in truth carried through the air thither (God, as has been often proved, permitting this, to punish the incredulous curiosity of so rash a boldness), yet if anyone, firm in faith and armed with charity, should anoint himself with it in order to confound the frauds of the demon, and to dissipate them for the confirmation of the true faith, without doubt, as Binsfeldius rightly infers, no transportation would follow; because here every pact with the demon ceases, nor would God permit it. And therefore, when the witches anoint themselves outside the times appointed for the assembly, they do not fly away nor are they carried off, because they did not pact this. They know this, and therefore do not anoint themselves except when the signal of the assembly has been heard. Sometimes they are warned by their Martinellus, sometimes by the voices of the flying company of the witches' Queen, sometimes otherwise, according to Spineus, chapter 30. There are, however, certain malefici who, by a peculiar pact, for a certain fixed sign, whether an unction, or the placing of a cap or cloak, or whatever else, are carried elsewhere when they will; but what I have said is more frequent. —

But the ointment with which the witches are anointed, compounded after this art, Paracelsus reports in his occult philosophy: from the fresh flesh of newborn infants cooked in the form of a pulp, and mixed with soporific herbs, such as poppy, solanum, hemlock, etc.; when they have anointed themselves with it and pronounced certain words suggested by the demon, they fly off at once by the help of the devil through chimneys and windows. Ioannes Baptista Porta of Naples adds, book 2, chapter 26, of Natural Magic: by boiling the fat of boys in a brazen vessel they take it from the water, thickening what from the boiling settles last and lowest. Thence they store it, and continually put it to use: with this they mix eleoselinum, aconite, poplar leaves, and soot; or otherwise thus: common sionacorum, pentaphyllon, the blood of a bat, soporific solanum, and oil (though they mix different things, they differ little from these); they make them up together, anoint all the parts, rubbing them beforehand until they grow red and the heat is recalled, and what was congealed by cold becomes rarefied. That the flesh may be relaxed and the pores opened, they add fat or oil supplying its place, that the force of the juices may descend within and become the more potent and lively; I do not doubt that this is the cause. Thus they seem on such nights to be carried through the air to banquets, the sounds of dancing, and the embraces of beautiful youths, which they especially desire. So great is the force of the imagination, the habit of impressions, that almost that part of the brain which is called the memorative is full of things of this kind; and since they themselves are by the proneness of nature very ready to believe, they so take on the impressions that their spirits are altered, thinking of nothing else by night or day; and they are helped to this because they feed on nothing but beets, chestnut roots, and legumes.

You will ask. Whether the striges are in truth carried by the demon to the assemblies.

I answer. that this seems the more probable opinion to the most weighty men who have written on this subject. For so judge Laurentius Ananias, book 1, On the Nature of Demons; Ioannes Franciscus Leonis, Bishop of Thelesis, in the book On Sortilege; Alphonsus a Castro, opusc. On Sortilege; Grillandus, book 2, On Sortilege, question 7; Delrius, book 2, question 16; and many others, whom he himself cites there.

Therefore the truth of this answer is proved; for otherwise that real transportation of the witches would be denied; either because the devil could not accomplish it; or because God would not permit it; or finally because it can be urged by no testimony worthy of faith: but neither of these can be affirmed; therefore the striges must truly be said to be really carried to their diabolical assembly. The minor is proved as to the first part, namely that the demon can carry the bodies of witches with the swiftest motion to the most distant places; for above we proved that angels can move bodies, which is granted not only to the holy but also to the perverse; for the demons retained their natural endowments, and therefore the same natural power toward bodies that the holy angels have; but it is evident from Holy Scripture that angels carried various bodies. For we read in Daniel, chapter 14, that the Prophet Habakkuk was carried by an angel by the hair from Judea to Babylon in a brief space of time, and brought back thence. Similarly, Acts 8: Philip the deacon was carried by the spirit from the desert to Azotus. Saint Mark also testifies, chapter 5, that the demons cast out from the body of a man by the command of Christ the Lord, and having entered the swine, precipitated them into the sea. Therefore the demons can truly carry bodies. — It is confirmed by the very experience of various examples, which no one can deny without insolence. For first, the most weighty and most holy Fathers relate that Simon Magus was seen before Saint Peter to fly, lifted into the air by the rowing of demonic wings. Thus, with Clement the Roman in book 6 of the Apostolic Constitutions, Egesippus relates it, book 3, and Cyril of Jerusalem in Catechesis 6, and the rest: the same of the Abbot the Scythian Origen testifies, book 3, against Celsus, and Nazianzen, Epistle 22. The History of the Angles also proposes Badudus, King of Britain, as flying by this art, but with an unhappy end like the former. Ioannes Magnus testifies the same of Henry, King of the Swedes, namely that whichever way that King turned his cap, he was suddenly carried by the help of demons into that region; Nangiacus in his Chronicle affirms that Berengarius, heretic and magician, was present in Rome the same night, and also in the Church of Tours, in which he chanted the lesson. Similar things Peter Cluniacensis relates of the Count of Mâcon, namely that, mounted on a black horse, he was borne up through the air. Therefore it is established that the demon can truly carry bodies, and by the same examples it is equally established that God sometimes permits this very thing. — The third part of the same minor is also proved, namely that this very thing is established by testimonies worthy of faith. First indeed by all those attestations and confessions which were taken from the witches themselves, both by the Inquisitors and by the judges deputed to their juridical interrogation and condemnation; whose varied examples Paulus Grillandus sets forth, book 2, On Sortilege, question 7; Alphonsus a Castro, chapter 15, adding that he knew he could bring many other testimonies of things that had happened in Spain through most faithful witnesses; Bartholomaeus Spineus, master of the sacred Apostolic Palace, question On the witches, chapter 17; Nicolaus Remigius, book 1 of Daemonolatria, chapter 14; all of which it does not please me to copy out here for the sake of brevity. From all these examples it is established that the striges are truly carried from place to distant place.

It is added that all the witches, though subjected to torture in diverse places, yet with one mouth all confess the same things even to the last breath of life; and all affirm that when they must be carried by their bearers, they are warned beforehand not to protect themselves with the sign of the cross, nor invoke the name of God, nor utter any voice; they say too that if any one is not invited by her lover, the danger of death impends over her that year.

It is confirmed 1. from the fact that not infrequently, the assembly having been suddenly broken up, tables and silver furniture have been found which, afterward recognized by their owners, their wives confessed they had carried with them to the assembly. Next, those Sortiarii and striges note diligently all the places, and the foods, and all the surroundings; they distinguish trees, rivers, fields, houses; they often salute and address those they meet on the way; they are also seen not rarely by other Catholic men of sound mind going to the assembly or returning from it; sometimes they are even seen and caught naked. Finally this very thing is established by what the striges themselves relate, either before their course or after it. For from the process of their condemnation it is established that sometimes, before they go to the diabolical assembly, they carry with them the most sacred Host reserved by them to a determined place, which, as Bartholomaeus Spineus says, they offer to the Devil, provoking it before him with various injuries and mockeries, trample it under foot, and sometimes even hand it over to be eaten by mice, dogs, and — what is horrible to say — even toads; all which things cannot happen in a dream; for waking, they do not find the Host they had before; which is a sign that it was truly lacerated, trampled, and given over to the vilest animals by those execrable witches, as they relate. — Other offerings likewise presented convince of the same thing, as, the navels of boys, a cock, a hen, and other things of this kind, which the demons commonly require for their sacrilegious sacrifices. That things are thus, and that these orgies of the demons do not appear after the offering, is testified to have been proved a thousand times by various processes published on this matter by the judges. — From the same witches relating, it is established that when they are first carried to the course, and, the faith of Christ and baptism having been denied before the Mistress of the course, they make homage to the demon; they receive, the same demon handing it to them, a handful of earth, which, carried with them and found really among their possessions and kept, these most wicked persons use during the whole time of their life for working witchcraft, not only upon children but even upon men and women of whatever age, casting that little earth upon those persons they wish to destroy. But if all these things happened in dreams, or delusively, they would by no means find them afterward among their possessions while awake.

It confirms 2. From the fact that those most lost witches languish two days of every week, namely the morning of Friday and of Monday, because from the swiftest carrying-back by which they are received into their own places during the preceding nights, they suffer, when set down, a kind of vertigo, and on this account, lying in bed, they rest almost that whole morning. By this affection also, as it were a most open and clearest sign of their character, they are held most vehemently suspect of being witches, where especially they otherwise devote themselves to illusory works.

It confirms 3. From the fact that they testify in words and deeds, while they reside in that diabolical assembly, that they have known one another and been companions; and that while on the course they did and said together things which afterward they relate in harmony, just as those who are awake agree in relating what they did or said together while awake; and the sign of the most manifest truth is that these things are not done in dreams; for if one dreamed, or were deluded, or even both, they would by no means so agree with one another; for we do not experience — indeed it is judged impossible and against nature — that it should happen to two men to see in dreams, or to think that they did or said this or that, without any difference at all, as is proved to happen in such cases. For very often several of them go and return together, so that there is now no reason or appearance for denying that these things happen corporally and in waking. The same Bernardus Penna of Como teaches and proves in his treatise on the witches, from the fact that, he says, all of this pestiferous sect, whether men or women, confess as it were with one mouth and one tongue that they observe everywhere the same manner uniformly in all things, in denying the faith, and baptism, and the Lord God, and the blessed Virgin Mary,

and in trampling the cross, and adoring the devil himself, and making fidelity by touching his hand with their left hand behind the back, and in all the other things, each and every one, which happen in such a play or assembly: so that all agree in the same, and have always agreed from the beginning of that sect down to the present time, as is clearly established from the confessions of all of them made everywhere throughout Italy in the hands of our Inquisitors, and written in the processes formed against them: which could not be, and they would not so conform themselves in all things, if these things happened to them fantastically and in dreams, especially since phantasms and dreams vary according to the variety of causes and the quality of persons, according to place and time.

— It confirms, secondly, from the fact that such persons have many times, in many places, going or returning from their said play, been really and truly seen, recognized, and caught by Catholic persons:

For, he says, to speak of those of whom I have more certain knowledge, when I was proceeding in past years in the Valletelina, namely in the land of Ponte of our Diocese of Como, inquiring against this pestiferous race of witches, it was told me by credible persons that, when a certain man one night a little before dawn had been seen and recognized by two Catholic persons in the said play of the witches, near certain vineyards close to the said land of Ponte toward Abdua, leaving the said play, coming home with those two persons, he begged them not to accuse him before me, nor to divulge that they had seen him in such a play, as is legitimately established in the processes which I then made there; which indeed evidently appears to have been not fantastically, nor in dreams, but really and corporally. Moreover, a certain girl of eight or ten years, named Antonia, her father and mother brought to me in the said land of Ponte, who in the presence of them and of many others related to me how, one night called by a certain grandmother of hers named Magdalena, she rose from bed, and was carried with that grandmother of hers to a certain place sufficiently distant from the said land of Ponte, where she saw and recognized several persons dancing in a meadow with the said grandmother: and when afterward she was carried back again to the said land of Ponte to the house of her dwelling: all which she afterward solemnly confessed to me, Magdalena being in the hands of my office, and being asked by me whether she had led any person to that play, as is legitimately established from the process formed against her. Several other persons also, both in the said land of Ponte, and in the land of Barbeni of the said valley, and also in the land of Clavena of our aforesaid Diocese, were recognized and caught by diverse persons existing in the aforesaid play with the devil, as those who saw them juridically related to me, and the very ones seen and caught confessed in the processes formed against them, as appears in them. Which things, if anyone consider well, could by no means have been seen nor caught so clearly by others, if they had happened to those witches in dreams or fantastically.

Finally it is confirmed. From the fact that the Catholic Church does not punish crimes unless they are certain and manifest, nor holds as heretics any but those who have been manifestly detected in heresy. Chapter consuluisti, 2, question 5. But for many years now she holds the witches to be heretics, and commands them to be punished by the Inquisitors and delivered to the secular arm, as is evident from the books of Sprenger, Nider, Jacquier, and experience teaches. Therefore either the Church errs, or those err who flatly deny these things: but whoever shall say that the Church errs in a matter pertaining to the faith, let him be Anathema maranatha.

Cumanus relates an example declaring the truth of this transportation.

In Mendrisio, he says, a town of the diocese of Como, it happened now almost fifty years ago, that when a certain Inquisitor there, named Master Bartholomaeus de Vomate, Dominus Laurentius de Concoretto, the Potestas, and Ioannes de Fossato, Notary, were proceeding against these witches, one day that Potestas, led by a certain curiosity, wishing to experience whether the witches truly and corporally went to the play, an agreement having been made, went one Thursday evening with his Notary and a certain other person outside the town to a certain place, as that witch had foretold: and while those three were near there, they saw there many persons gathered before a certain one, who was the devil in the form of a he-goat, sitting in the manner of some great Lord: and behold, suddenly all those persons gathered there, at the command of the devil, so beat that Official and all his companions, God permitting it on account of their curiosity, with staves, that from such beatings that Official, and the Notary, and the other third man died within fifteen days.

These are his words; which being done, this real and personal transportation is sufficiently proved. Nevertheless those who call it into doubt

Object first. The Canon of the Council of Ancyra, by which it is ordained that the Bishops and their Ministers take cognizance of the sacrilegious and the witches, in these words:

The Bishops and their Ministers should strive with all their strength that they utterly root out of their parishes the pernicious art of sortilege and witchcraft, invented by the devil; and if they find any man or woman a follower of this kind of crime, foully dishonored, they shall cast them out of their parishes: for the Apostle says to Titus 3: A man that is a heretic, after the second and third correction, avoid; knowing that he who is such is subverted; for they are subverted, and held captive by the devil, who, having forsaken their Creator, seek succors from the devil, and therefore it beseems holy Church to be cleansed from such a pest. Nor must that be omitted, that certain wicked women, turned back after Satan, seduced by the illusions and phantasms of demons, believe and profess that in the hours of night they ride with Diana, the goddess of the Pagans, or with Herodias, and an innumerable multitude of women, upon certain beasts, and traverse many spaces of lands in the space of the unseasonableness of night, and obey her commands as of their Mistress, and are summoned on certain nights to her service. Then he declares that the demon works all these things by the illusion of phantasms in the time of sleep, whence he subjoins: And since the spirit alone suffers this, the infidel mind thinks these things happen not in the mind, but in the body. For who is not led out of himself in dreams and nocturnal visions, and sees much sleeping that he would never see waking? Who indeed is so stupid and dull as to think that all these things, which are done in the spirit alone, happen also in the body? Then further below: Therefore it must be announced publicly to all, that whoever believes such and like things loses the faith, and he who has not the right faith in the Lord, this one is not his, but his in whom he believes, that is, the devil's.

Franciscus Penna answers. that the aforesaid decree does not stand against those things which have been said in confirmation of the real transportation of the witches;

For there, he says, there is no question of the Lamiae and witches, but of certain heretics who believed that Diana had been converted into a goddess, and that a creature can be changed or transformed from one substance into another: whence the aforesaid Canon subjoins: Whosoever therefore believes that any creature can be made, or changed for better or worse, or transformed into another species or likeness, except by the Creator himself, who made all things, and through whom all things were made, is without doubt an infidel, and worse than a pagan.

Alphonsus a Castro and Delrius answer. that, granted that that Canon truly belongs to the Council of Ancyra — which nevertheless most deny, because it does not exist today in the Greek or Latin exemplars of this Council — they answer, I say, that certain things are narrated in that Canon which by the nature of things cannot be accomplished by the demon; as to ride with Diana or Herodias, since there is no Diana a goddess, nor does that Herodias ride anywhere on earth, seeing that she is tormented in hell. Likewise, that they ride upon any beasts which cannot traverse such spaces so quickly, and through the air. Likewise, to acknowledge any divine nature besides God is truly heretical. Wherefore those things are justly proscribed and condemned by the Canon: but the Canon does not condemn as heretical that anyone believe that those things are done by the demon which do not surpass his powers, of which kind is that transportation of the witches. Therefore the true explication of the Canon is that those are to be judged heretics who believe: first, that there is some goddess called Diana or Herodias; second, that anyone is transported to serve such a goddess; third, that anyone can be converted by another than God into another species. But the Canon does not judge those to be heretics who contend that the witches and Sortiarii are personally transported to places far distant.

Therefore I do not deny that frequently the Lamiae fall through the power of the ointment into a deep sleep, and that the devil impresses upon their imagination in sleep such phantasms of flight and dances, and holds them in such a phantasm until they wake, their body meanwhile resting in bed or couch. For that fraudulent master supplies them with certain natural drugs, with which, when they have anointed and rubbed themselves, they trust that they will soon fly forth through the chimney, and wander far and wide through the air to dances, sweetest banquets, embraces, and most pleasing spectacles of things: which things, nevertheless, the skilled one pours into them through a thousand dreams, when, unaware, they shall slip down from the unction of the wholly soporific ointment into the deepest and lethargic sleep, as Wierus left written, chapter 2, On the Lamiae.

They object 2. Various examples, by which it is established that the anointed women, who were called witches, were not so transported, but were found lying in the same place sunk in heavy sleep; in proof of which thing Bartholomaeus Spineus brings forward four examples.

Indeed even in the life of Saint Germanus it is read that, when on a certain night a table was being laid again for supper in the guesthouse, wondering, he asked the hosts for whom supper was being prepared? and it was answered him, for those good men and women who wander by night. Therefore the Saint resolved to keep watch, and behold a multitude of men and women coming to the table, whom, commanding them not to depart, the whole household having been roused, he asked whether they recognized any of them? These saying that all were neighbors, men and women, the houses of each having been searched, he found all lying in their beds. Therefore at once he adjured them all, who confessed that they were demons.

I answer first. that these things do indeed sometimes happen for various reasons, both on the part of God and on the part of the demon. On the part of God, indeed, sometimes by His hindering the pacts made with the Magicians from being kept; namely, to curb the curiosity of men, but most of all of the Inquisitors and Judges, who, led by useless and vain curiosity, sometimes wish to test whether witches, so anointed, are truly transported in person elsewhere. On the part of the devil, however, who sometimes deceives the witches by not moving them from their place, so that he may thus persuade the Judges and Princes that what is reported about such transports is false, and so impede the execution of justice. The pact is therefore frustrated whenever he hopes for a greater destruction of the human race from it.

I answer second. that sometimes the demon also substitutes certain phantoms bearing the likeness of the witches and sorcerers in their place, so that they are thought not to have been transported, but to have remained there.

You will insist. the demon would far more easily do each of these things individually with each of the witches: therefore no cause appears why he transports the witches to the frequenting of their conventicles.

I deny the consequence. for many advantages, says Delrio, he reaps from this. First, through this society and the fellowship of many, they are more vehemently fostered and hardened in malice. Second, in this way the sins of individuals are aggravated by their participation in the crime. Third, by such enticements and the various inducements that are made there, he more easily entangles many. Fourth, the multitude makes them bolder for evil; it takes away the fear of God and of men, and inflames them by mutual imitation to greater crimes, as coals joined together are wont to do. Fifth, the nefarious pleasure seems the greater the more it becomes known to many. Sixth, they are converted with the more difficulty the more witnesses to whom they have bound themselves to the demon, and by the frequency of their acts they have, as it were, acquired a certain habit.

Delrio adds. that these transports, about which inquiry is made, can happen in four ways: First, by thought alone, which Sacred Scripture calls being transported in spirit: such was that vision of Ezechiel, chap. 8., where it is said: And the likeness of a hand was put forth and took me by a lock of my head, and the spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heaven, and brought me in the vision of God into Jerusalem, etc. For the last word sets the manner upon the preceding words, lest we think that this was a transport similar to that by which Habacuc was carried off, of which Daniel chap. 14. Sometimes they travel to the gatherings on their own feet, as Remigius and Binsfeldius relate. Third, they are truly transported by the demon as to body and local motion. Fourth, sometimes it can happen that they themselves do not know whether they were transported bodily or only in opinion.

Of their charioteers or bearers Paracelsus in his great Phil. writes thus:

the lovers of the witches, or their riders, are spirits, invisible indeed in themselves, yet perceptible to the touch like the wind, and they can receive a fictitious form at the will of the witches, and at certain times and places celebrate feasts with their witches, and carry them to the appointed place without any injury, no otherwise than a strong wind carries a feather lifted from the earth about in the air, until it deposits it in a certain place.

I find it handed down in certain writings of Fr. John Maldonatus on the demons, that when they wish to be transported bodily, they then anoint themselves with an ointment made from the fat of an infant's little body: when they wish to take part in the gatherings only in a dream, they then lie on their left side: but when they prefer, while awake, to behold whatever is done in the gathering as if it were done before them, then by the work of the demon they vomit from their mouth a certain thick vapor, in which they behold the images of the deeds as in a mirror.

You will ask 2. Whether, and what evils the devil inflicts on men through the witches?

I answer. that almost innumerable and most hostile evils are sometimes inflicted on men by the demon through those execrable sorcerers and nefarious witches. First, by the help of these most abandoned beings he lies in wait for little children still crying in their cradles, that having drained and drunk their blood, he may take their life from them. For this reason sorcerers and witches most often put on the masked form of a cat or a tomcat, that chiefly by night they may attack children lying in their little beds, and suck their blood through the navel.

Ovid recalls this in lib. 6. of the Fasti, where, of the striges, which he likens to ill-omened birds, he sings thus:

By night they fly, and seek children in need of a nurse, And snatch bodies from their cradles and defile them. They are said to tear the suckling flesh with their beaks, And have their throat full of the blood they have drunk. Striges is their name: but the reason for this name Is that they are wont to screech horribly in the night.

Others add that the nocturnal striges offer breasts infected with corruption and poison to nursing infants.

Whence the poet Serenus

Moreover, if perchance the black strix presses upon the little boys, Infusing breasts venomous with putrid corruptions

Therefore in the places where Jewish women in childbed lie, they are wont to write against the walls: Lilit, begone! who, as they trifle, is wont to disturb women in childbed, and is most troublesome to nursing infants.

Of this infestation, however, Bartholomaeus Spineus brings forward very many examples in chap. 18. and 19., one of which I here transcribe.

A certain man, he says, chap. 18., Andreas Magnatius of Bergamo, an inhabitant of Ferrara, told me this winter, that he learned from a certain kinsman of his residing at Venice what happened in former years: that a certain girl, I mean, who dwelt with her Mother at Bergamo, was found by night at Venice in the bedchamber of the said kinsman of his; when she was found in the morning naked, and recognized, because she was his cousin, and they asked her how she had come thither, or was there, and why? She, weeping, after she was clothed by them, told these things which I insert below, saying: This night, when I was awake in bed, I saw my mother, who thought I was sleeping, rising from her bed, and, stripped of her shift, anointing her body with a certain ointment which she took from a little vessel drawn out from under the boards. And immediately, mounting upon a certain staff taken up, prepared there, in the manner of one riding, she was carried out through the window, and was by me from then on nowhere seen there. And when I too, rising from bed, had anointed my body, as my mother had done, being led out through the window, I was immediately carried to this place, where I saw my mother lying in wait for this boy lying in bed: terrified at which, when I had seen my mother also troubled at my arrival, and threatening, I invoked the name of the Lord Jesus and of the Blessed Virgin, and from then on I did not see my mother, and I remained here naked and alone. When these things were heard from the girl, that kinsman wrote all these things down, and told them to the Inquisitor of Bergamo, by whom the woman was seized, and exposed to torments, and confessed all things: and she added that she had been carried by the demon more than fifty times, to kill that boy, the son of the aforesaid kinsman: but yet she had never prevailed, because she always found him well fortified by his parents with the sign of the Cross and holy prayers.

Another like to this, transcribed by us from the same author, you have above in quest. 3. On the activity of the demons.

But why God permits that nefarious witches should thus lie in wait for little children, Delrio brings forward various causes in lib. 2. quest. 5. First, indeed, God permits this with respect to the baptized: because, he says, thus preserved from many sins they are snatched away to heaven, destined to live happy forever, and secure that malice will not change their understanding. God also permits this as a punishment of the parents, or for their probation, as S. Augustine witnesses lib. 21. De Civit. Dei, cap. 14. Before baptism, however, is received, God not rarely permits them to be killed, lest on account of the actual sins which He saw they would commit if they lived, they acquire for themselves a heavier damnation: nor will God on that account be cruel, or unjust, because for original sin alone they deserved death. Truly, we see that for those not yet washed with the sacred water, for the most part, the demons lay snares, and rejoice in their slaughter. Because then those who kill them, the malefactors, sin far more grievously, and offend God more atrociously, for they destroy plainly innocent and harmless ones in soul and body alike, especially if they kill their own children, whom the witches are often wont both to offer to the demon and to kill: as of old the Chananaeans and the worshippers of Moloch used to do.

But why they harm especially so tender an age, there are many causes. This age is weaker to resist, is more incautious to beware, cannot detect, or reveal, or accuse their attempts: they also seek from these the instruments of their witchcraft; for they are persuaded that if they have cut out and eaten the hearts of a certain number of infants, they will obtain the endurance of all torments, so that they cannot be brought to the confession of their crimes. They also make from the little bodies of slain infants that horrible ointment of theirs, which Grillandus says is called in Italy unguentum paganum.

Sprenger adds. in part 2. quest. 1. chap. 13. that wicked midwives especially lie in wait for newly born little children; on which matter he brings forward various examples, one or two of which I transcribe.

It happened, he says, in the Diocese of Basel, in the town of Dann, that a certain woman, who perished by burning, confessed that she had killed more than forty children in such a way, that when they came out of the womb, she would thrust a needle into their heads through the crown all the way into the brain. Another also, in the Diocese of Strasbourg, confessed that she had killed children beyond number, namely because the number was not certain. She was, however, detected in this manner: for when she had been called from one town to another for the sake of assisting a certain woman in childbirth, her office completed, when she wished to return to her own home, as she went out of the gate of the town, by chance the arm of a newly born child fell to the ground out of the linen with which she was girded, and in which the arm had also been wrapped. When this was seen by those who were sitting within the gate, while she passed by, having lifted it from the ground, thinking it a piece of flesh, they looked at it more carefully, and when they had recognized that it was not a piece of flesh, but the arm of a child, by the joints of the limbs, having held counsel with the magistrates, and it being found that the infant had died before baptism and lacked its arm, the witch is seized, exposed to questions, and the crime is uncovered: and so, as was said before, she acknowledged that she had killed infants beyond number. But neither is this horrible deed to be passed over in silence in detestation of so great a crime; for where they do not kill the infants, yet they offer them to the demons to be execrated in this manner. For when the infant is born, the midwife, where the woman in childbed is not herself a witch, then, as if about to do some work for the reviving of the infant, carries it out of the chamber, and raising it up, immolates it to the prince of the demons, namely Lucifer, and to all the demons; and this she places over the fire in the place of the kitchen.

I answer 2. that by the help of the demons the witches sometimes produce innumerable and immense evils for men: and this is established by various histories and examples, as may be seen among the Authors praised above; for, to pass over the witchcrafts of insomnia, of love, of poison, of abortion, of binding, of hatred, of arson, and other things of this kind, it is certain that the witches and sorcerers produce various kinds of diseases in men. Of this truth many examples are at hand, which the aforesaid Authors relate at length, most of all Sprenger in part 2. of the Malleus maleficarum qu. 1. chap. 11., as also Delrio lib. 3. par. 1. qu. 4. sect. 5., Grillandus, and others: which nefarious power, indeed, with God so permitting, they exercise upon men of every condition, as Delrio demonstrates at length in q. 5., even sometimes upon the very Judges who condemn them to punishments and penalties. For what is commonly reported, that the witches have no longer any power of witchcraft as soon as they fall into the hands of justice, Laurentius Ananias, lib. 4. De Natura Daemonum, restricts this only to those Judges who, having God before their eyes, rightly and duly perform their office: for those whom avarice blinds, whom ambition draws, whom cruelty or love of vengeance stimulates, are often so received and attacked by the demon, that sometimes they do not escape death. Wherefore with the aforesaid Authors I think it must be said more truly, that this privilege of immunity is granted to those Judges alone who join firmness of faith and zeal of justice with piety, which because they are lacking to very many, therefore, lacking this peculiar help of God, they are not immune from the attacks of the demons and witches.

You will ask finally. for what cause God permits the demon to rage through the witchcrafts of the sorcerers against innocent men?

I answer. that God permits these witchcrafts for various causes. First, because from this the glory of God is supremely increased through the glorious manifestation of certain of His attributes. First, indeed, His gentleness appears in governing; because since He has given the demon free will, He judges that perpetual violence is not to be done to him, namely by hindering his accomplishing that which he most desires, namely, to rage against the human race. Mercy likewise shines forth from this upon the human race; because if the devil were permitted to harm as much as he wishes and is able, no one would be unharmed; therefore God the more often denies him the faculty of harming, nor allows him to harm as much as he would wish; so that from this it may appear that He Himself bears care for human nature. Wisdom also shines forth from this, because since God permits the devil to use his natural powers, yet by His grace He sometimes brings it about that he is overcome and vanquished by the patience of the men whom the devil was endeavoring to provoke and cast down. And so it happens that the sins of the witches are turned into merits for other men. Finally, justice is proved, but tempered with mercy, because He punishes the offenses of men in the life of men in such a way that nothing remains to be paid in the other life.

The greatest utility of men also appears from this; for those who are harmed by witchcraft, first their patience is exercised, their constancy is strengthened, their devotion is enkindled, and men deviating from piety are recalled to penance, and to the use and frequenting of the sacraments of the Church. Second, from this it is established whether they truly love God or not; for then those who do not love God have recourse to forbidden arts: those who love God, they patiently endure, and commit themselves to the divine will and protection. Third, these assaults of the demons pave an easy way to every work of the virtues, for affliction is wont to give understanding, and to keep souls from sins and destruction, and also to recall them from their committed offenses. Delrio relates and weighs several other causes of this divine permission in lib. 3. quest. 7.

Here there would remain to be added the remedies by which all those witchcrafts of the demon and of the witches could be both guarded against and repelled: but we will set these forth in a more fitting order, when our discourse will be about the witchcrafts and incantations in the Treatise on the Virtues and Vices, especially those opposed to living and perfect Faith.

In the meantime I would have you keep that faith strengthened by hope, enkindled by charity (friendly Reader): for faith is a shield (says S. Paul to the Ephesians 6.) in which we can extinguish all the fiery darts of the most wicked one: for the Lord Christ says in Mark 16. These signs shall follow them that believe: in my name they shall cast out demons: they shall speak with new tongues: they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.

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