Demoniality; or, Incubi and SuccubiSinistrari, Ludovico Maria
Religion
Demoniality; or, Incubi and Succubi
Sinistrari, Ludovico Maria
Catholic Church -- Doctrines; Demonology -- Early works to 1800
dictu! comparuit denuo Dæmon, manens tamen extra cameram, nec ingredi
voluit, et cum divexatus illum interrogasset, quare de more intrare
non auderet, multis verbis injuriosis jactatis contra me, qui talia
consulueram, disparuit, nec amplius reversus est.
72. Here is the other story. In the great Carthusian Friary of Pavia
there lived a Deacon, Austin by name, who was subjected by a certain
Demon to excessive, unheard of and scarcely credible vexations;
although many exorcists had made repeated endeavours to secure his
riddance, all spiritual remedies had proved unavailing. I was consulted
by the Vicar of the convent, who had the cure of the poor clerk.
Seeing the inefficacy of all customary exorcisms, and remembering the
above-related instance, I advised a fumigation like unto the one that
has been detailed, and prescribed that the Deacon should carry about
his person fragrant pills of the same kind; moreover, as he was in the
habit of using tobacco, and was very fond of brandy, I advised tobacco
and brandy perfumed with musk. The Demon appeared to him by day and by
night, under various shapes, as a skeleton, a pig, an ass, an Angel,
a bird; with the figure of one or other of the Friars, once even with
that of his own Abbot or Prior, exhorting him to keep his conscience
clean, to trust in God, to confess frequently; he persuaded him to
let him hear his sacramental confession, recited with him the psalms
_Exsurgat Deus_ and _Qui habitat_, and the Gospel according to St John:
and when they came to the words _Verbum caro factum est_, he bent his
knee, and taking hold of a stole which was in the cell, and of the
Holy-water sprinkle, he blessed the cell and the bed, and, as if he had
really been the Prior, enjoined on the Demon not to venture in future
to molest his subordinate; he then disappeared, thus betraying what
he was, for otherwise the young deacon had taken him for his Prior.
Now, notwithstanding the fumigations and perfumes I had prescribed,
the Demon did not desist from his wonted apparitions; more than that,
assuming the features of his victim, he went to the Vicar’s room, and
asked for some tobacco and brandy perfumed with musk, of which, said
he, he was extremely fond. Having received both, he disappeared in the
twinkling of an eye, thus showing the Vicar that he had been played
with by the Demon; and this was amply confirmed by the Deacon, who
affirmed upon his oath that he had not gone that day to the Vicar’s
cell. All that having been related to me, I inferred that, far from
being aqueous like the Incubus who was in love with the maiden above
spoken of, this Demon was igneous, or, at the very least, aerial, since
he delighted in hot substances such as vapours, perfumes, tobacco
and brandy. Force was added to my surmises by the temperament of the
young deacon, which was choleric and sanguine, choler predominating
however; for, those Demons never approach but those whose temperament
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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