Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/400

 384 SORCERY AND OCCULT ARTS. name of Satyr has passed into a proverb. The simpler and purer Latin pantheon had yet its Sylvans and Fauns, who, as St. Augus- tin tells us, " are commonly called Incubi." The medical faculty in vain explained the belief by Ephialtes or nightmare, and rec- ommended for it belladonna rather than exorcisms. Though St. Augustin, who did so much to transmit pagan superstitions to suc- ceeding ages, hesitates to believe in the possibility of such powers on the part of aerial spirits, even he dares not deny it, and though Chrysostom ridiculed it, other authorities accepted it as a matter of course. Thus it came to be received as a truth which few thought of disputing. In 1249 an incubus child was born on the Welsh marches, which in half a year had a full set of teeth and the stature of a youth of seventeen, while the mother wasted away and died. The belief grew still more definite as perfected processes of trial enabled judges to extort from their victims whatever confes- sions they desired, such as that of Angele de la Barthe, who, in the Toulousain in 1275, admitted that she had habitual intercourse with Satan, to whom, seven years before, at the age of fifty-three, she had borne a son — a monster with a wolf's head and a serpent's tail, which she fed for two vears on the flesh of vear-old babies whom she stole by night, after which it disappeared ; or those of the witches of Arras, in 1460, who were brought to confess that their demon lovers wore the shapes of hares, or foxes, or bulls. Innocent YIII. asserts the existence of such connections in the most positive manner, and Silvester Prierias declares that to deny it is both unorthodox and unphilosophical, and could only be prompted by sheer wantonness.* Liaisons of this kind would be entered into with demons, and it. — Joseph. Antiq. Jud. i. 3. — Augustin. de Civ. Dei in. 5 ; xy. 23. — Gualt. Mapes de Nugis Curialium Dist. n. c. xi., xii., xiii. — Paul. iEginet. Instit. Med. in. 15. — Chrvsost. Houiil. in Genesim xxn., No. 2. — Clem. Alexand, Stromat. Libb. in., t. (Ed. Sylburg. pp. 450. 550). — Tertull. Apol. adv. Gentes, c. xxii. ; De Came Christi c. vi., xiv. — Hincmar. de Divort. Lothar. Interrog. xv. — Guibert. Noviogent. de Vita sua Lib. in. c. 19. — Caesar. Heisterb. in. 8, 11, 13. — Gervas. Tilberien. Otia Imp. Decis. in. c. 86. — Matt. Paris, ann. 1249 (p. 514).— Chron. Bardin. (Vaissette, IV. Pr. 5). — Memoires de Jacques Du Clercq, Liv. iv. c. 8. — Innoc. PP. VIII. Bull. Summis desider antes, 2 Dec. 1484. — Silv. Prieriat. de Stri- gimagar. Lib. I. c. 2 ; Lib. n. c. 3.
 * Fr. Lenormant, La Magie chez les ChaldSens, p. 36. — Plutarch, vit. Numae,