Many events likewise indicate a loose state of morals. The history of the _incubes_ and _succubes_, filling some space in every treatise on demonology, is a most curious feature of the morals of the day. The existence of demons who made a practice of assailing the virtue of girls and boys was admitted by some of the fathers of the Church,[177] who quoted the words of Genesis in support of the singular doctrine. They were of two kinds: _incubi_, from the Latin _incubare_, male demons who assailed the chastity of girls; and _succubæ_, female demons who robbed boys of their innocence. The old chronicles are full of accounts of the mischievous deeds of these evil spirits. As might be expected, the _incubi_ were more numerous and more enterprising than the _succubæ_. For one boy who confessed that a female demon had attacked him in his sleep, and compelled him to minister to her sensuality, there were a score of girls who furnished very tolerable evidence of having yielded their virginity to creatures of the male gender, who, they were satisfied, could be none other than devils. The ecclesiastical writers of the period have preserved a number of scandalous stories of the kind, which were so well credited that Pope Innocent VIII. felt impelled to issue a bull on the subject, and provide the faithful with an efficacious formula of exorcism. Females, most of whom appeared to be nuns, confessed that they had been subject to the scandalous visits of the demons for long periods of time, and that neither fasting, nor prayer, nor spiritual exercise could release them from the hated plague. Some girls were brought to admit a similar intercourse, and were burnt at the stake as partakers of the nature of sorceresses.[178] Married women made similar confessions. They stated that they were able to affirm that intercourse with demons was extremely painful; that their frigid nature, combined with their monstrous proportions, rendered their society a severe affliction, independently of the sin. It was noticed that the women, married or single, who applied to the ecclesiastical authorities for relief from this curious form of torment were almost invariably young and pretty.