Barthelemi de Lepine, in speaking thus, only followed the traditions of the Fathers of the Church; of Saint George, Saint Eparchius, Saint Bernard, Innocent VIII., and of Antonio Torquemada, who were the historians of the _incubi_ of their times, and launched anathemas against the _possessed_ of the Demon of luxury. The Jesuit father Costadau wrote, in his treatise _De Signis_, _apropos_ of incubism: “The thing is too singular to treat lightly. We would not believe it ourselves had we not been convinced by personal experience with the Demon’s malice, and, on the other hand, find an infinity of writings of the first order from Popes, theologians, and philosophers, who have sustained and proved that there are men so unfortunate as to have shameful commerce and other things more execrable with such demons.” Another Jesuit, Martin Antoine del Rio, published six books (_Disquisitiones Magicæ_) in 1599, in which his credulity attained the limit of fanaticism, thus making the good priest one of the most redoubtable enemies of demonomania. Such were the doctrines on which reposed the theocratical pretensions of the theologians. It is not astonishing that the last years of the Middle Ages, during the time religious struggles reached their highest period of exacerbation, owing to the quarrels between the Court of Rome and the Reformation, witnessed the multiplication in the number of demonomaniacs to such an extent that the whole world commenced to believe in the power of demons. “At this unfortunate time,” remarks Esquirol, “the excommunicated, the sorcerers and the damned were seen everywhere; alarmed, the Church created tribunals, before which the devil was summoned to appear and the _possessed_ were brought to judgment; scaffolds were erected, funeral pyres were lighted around stakes, and demonomaniacs, under the names of sorcerers and possessed, doubly the victims of prevailing errors, were burnt alive, after being tortured to make them renounce pretended compacts made with the Evil One. There was a jurisprudence against sorcery and magic as there were laws against theft and murder. The people, seeing the Church and Princes believing in the reality of these extravagances, were positively persuaded as to the existence of demons.” No authority raised itself to protect these miserable possessed people; justice, philosophy, and science remained subjected to theology, becoming more and more the accomplices of an autocratic and ever-intolerant Church.