Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/399

 INCUBI AND SUCCUBI. 353 cious. Caesarius tells us of one who faithfully served a knight for a long while, saved him from his enemies, and cured his wife of a mortal illness by fetching from Arabia lion's milk with which to anoint her. This aroused the knight's suspicions, and the demon confessed, explaining that it was a great consolation to him to be with the children of men. Fearing to retain such a servitor, the knight dismissed him, offering half of his possessions as a reward, but the demon would accept only five sous, and these he returned, asking the knight to purchase with them a bell and hang it on a certain desolate church, that the faithful might be called to divine service on Sundays. Froissart' s picturesque narrative is well known of the demon Orton, who served the Sieur de Corasse out of pure love, bringing to him every night tidings of events from all parts of the world, and finally abandoning him in consequence of his imprudent demand to see his nocturnal visitor. Froissart himself was at Ortais in 1385, when the Count of Foix miraculously had news of the disastrous battle of Aljubarotta in Portugal the day after it occurred, and the courtiers explained that he heard of it through the Sieur de Corasse. Thus, for good or for evil, the bar- riers which divided the material from the spiritual world were slight, and intercourse between them was too frequent to excite incredulity.* It was inevitable that this facility of intercourse should encour- age belief in the Incubi and Succubi who play so large a part in mediaeval sorcery, for such a belief has belonged to superstition in all ages. The Akkads had their Gelal and Kiel-Gelal, the Assyr- ians their Lil and Lilit, and the Gauls their Dusii, lustful spirits of either sex who gratified their passions with men and women, while the Welsh legends of the Middle Ages show the continuance of the belief among the Celtic tribes. The Egyptians drew a distinc- tion and admitted of Incubi but not of Succubi. The Jews ac- cepted the text concerning the sons of God and daughters of men (Gen. vi. 1) as proving that fruitful intercourse could occur be- tween spiritual and human beings, and they had their legends of the evil spirit Lilith, the first wife of Adam, who bore to him the in- numerable multitude of demons. The anthropomorphic mythol- ogy and hero-worship of Greece consisted of little else, and the
 * 1) Caesar. Heisterb. 111. 26, v. 9, 10, 35, 36.— Froissart, 111. 22.