be confused with angels and devils who are pure spirits being in a final state of salvation or of judgment. He has written his book as a guide to confessors who have frequently, it seems, to protect men and women, often nuns or monks, who are plagued by spirits or tempted by spirit lovers, and to apportion penalties to those who have fallen. It is a great sin should they confuse their lovers with devils, for then they "sin through intention," but otherwise it is a venal sin, and seeing that incubi and succubi by reason of their "rational and immortal" spirits are the equal of man and by reason of their bodies being "more noble because more subtle," "more dignified than man," a commerce that does not "degrade but rather dignify our nature" (_et hoc homo jungens se incubo non vilificat, immo dignificat suam naturam_). The incubus, (or succuba) however, does, he holds, commit a very great sin considering that we belong to an inferior species. It is difficult to drive them away, for unlike devils they are no more subject to exorcism than we are ourselves, but just as we cannot breathe in the higher peaks of the Alps because of the thinness of the air, so they cannot come near to us if we make certain conditions of the air. They are of different kinds but always one or other of the four elements predominates, and those who are predominantly fiery cannot come if we make the air damp, and those that are watery cannot come if we use hot fumigations and so on. You can generally judge the kind by remembering that a man attracts spirits according to his own temperament, the sanguine, the spirits of fire, and the lymphatic, those of watery nature, and those of a mixed nature, mixed spirits; but it is easy to make mistakes. He tells of the case that came into his own experience. He was asked to drive a spirit away that was troubling a young monk and advised hot fumigations because it was by their means "a very erudite theologian" drove away a spirit who made passionate love in the form of "a very handsome young man to a certain young nun" after holy candles burning all night and "a crowd of relics and many exorcisms" had proved of but as little value as her own vows and fasts. A vessel made of "glass-like earth" containing "cubeb seed, roots of both aristolochies, great and small cardamon, ginger, long pepper, caryophylias, cinnamon, cloves, mace, nutmeg, calamite, storax, benzoin, aloes wood root, one ounce of triasandates and three pounds of half brandy and water," was set upon hot ashes to make it fume, and the door and window of the cell were closed. The young friar, a deacon of the great Carthusian priory of Padua, was further advised to carry about with him perfumes of musk, amber, chive, peruvian bark, and the like, and to smoke tobacco and drink brandy perfumed with musk. All was to no purpose for the spirit appeared to him in many forms such as "a skeleton, a pig, an ass, an angel, a bird" or "in the figure of one or other of the friars."