Paul Lacroix, the learned bibliophile, cites as the most ancient monument made mention of in this connection, an aggregation of shadowy women collected for a mysterious purpose, who devoted themselves to making magical incantations; this fragment is gathered from the Canons of a Council which, he thinks, was held before the time of Charlemagne. It treats of aerial flights that these sorcerers made, or thought they made, in company with Diana and Herodias, _i.e._, “_Illiud etiam non est omitendum quod quædam sceleratæ mulieres, retro post Satanam conversæ, demonum illusionibus et phantasmatibus seductæ, credunt et profitentur se nocturnis horis, cum Diana, dea paganorum, vel cum Herodiate et innumera multitudine mulierum, equitare super quasdam bestias, et multarum terrarum spacia intempestæ noctis silentio pertransire ejusque jussionibus velut dominæ obedire, et certis noctibus ad ejus servitium evocari_.”[52] Which, being freely translated, reads: “We must not forget that impious women devoted to Satan, were seduced by apparitions, demons and phantoms, and avowed that during the night they rode on fantastic beasts along with Diana, a Pagan goddess, or Herodias and an innumberable throng of women. They pretended to traverse immense space in the silence of the night, obeying the orders of the two demon-women as those of a sovereign, being called into their service on certain given occasions.” We can understand from this that if Christianity silenced Pagan oracles, it did not authorize magicians to put the spiritual world aside. The clergy accepted the evidence of the witnesses of grace, but refused that of the profane, who were only inspired by demons; they recognized in the latter the power of giving men illusions of the senses, of cohabiting with virgins under the form of _incubi_ and with men under the form of _succubi_,—demons who could insinuate themselves through natural orifices into all the cavities of the body, and possess mortals. Theologians have described all the pains endured by those possessed,—pangs in their thoracic and abdominal organs which, made by the demons, forced their victims to speak, sing, move, to be in a condition of anæsthesia or hyperæsthesia, following the imp’s will; in other words, the possessed were subject to infernal action. To the worship of spirits the first Bishops of the Church substituted a foolish fear of demons. From this exaggeration of the power of evil genii over man surged the silly terrors and superstitious fears of damnation, which were the starting-point of aberration among the first demonomaniacs. It was for these unfortunates that the clergy invented exorcisms and great annual ceremonies destined to deliver those possessed by demons, ceremonies at which the Bishops convened the people and the nobles to assist, in order to show the triumphs of the Church over Satan and his imps.