The Encyclopedia Of Demons And Demonology

Sinistrari, Lodovico Maria 235
The demon continued to visit Hieronyma at night. Enraged
at her resistance, one night he took huge roofing
flagstones to the bedroom and built a wall around the bed
that was so high, Hieronyma and her husband could not
get out without a ladder.
One evening, when the couple had guests for dinner,
the dining room table, set with plates and utensils and
loaded with food, abruptly disappeared. Just as the guests
were leaving—without their meal—a crash sounded in
the dining room. They found the table restored, and on
it a huge array of fine foods and foreign wines that had
not been there before. Everyone sat down and enjoyed
the meal. They adjourned to sit by the fire, and the table
once again disappeared, then reappeared with the original
food that had been prepared.
After months of these wearying annoyances, Hieronyma
went to the Church of St. James and prayed to
Blessed Bernadine of Feltre whose body was incorrupt.
She promised to wear a shapeless frock with a cord, like
those worn by the Franciscans, for an entire year, if the
saint would intercede and expel the incubus.
The day after she donned the frock was Michaelmas
Day, and Hieronyma went to mass. As soon as she set foot
on the threshold of the church, a gust of wind hit her and
her clothing fell off and disappeared, leaving her naked
and embarrassed. Two cavaliers covered her with their
cloaks and took her home. Six months went by before the
incubus returned the clothing.
Sinistrari wrote that the incubus harassed Hieronyma
for years. She never gave in, and at last he gave up and
went away for good. Such are many incubus attacks: The
demons attempt no act against religion but merely assail
chastity. “Consequently, consent is not a sin through ungodliness,
but merely through incontinence,” he said. It
is on the same level as bestiality and sodomy. These acts
differ, he said, from intentional intercourse with demons,
such as attributed to witches at sabbats and those who
had made pacts with the Devil.
Traits of Incubi and Succubi
Sinistrari agreed with his peers that demons could be
invisible and take corporeal form for the purpose of intercourse,
and women could become impregnated by
them. However, he argued, their passion had to spring
from the senses, and one could not have senses without
physical organs through a combination of body and soul.
Therefore, incubi are perfect, rational animals with rational
souls. They are not the same as the possessing evil
spirits, who flee at the signs of holiness or entice witches
into pacts, he said. Their behavior indicates they only
desire sex, and, as any rational animal does, they become
frustrated and angry when they do not get it.
As further evidence to support this argument, Sinistrari
pointed to the case of animals sexually harassed by
incubi. Since animals do not have souls, he said, the incubi
cannot have a purpose of ruining and damning their
souls. Again, the only purpose is sex.
Incubi do not cause illness but mistreat people by
beating them. They do not require the direction of a witch
or wizard to harass people; they undertake it of their own
choice and volition.
As evidence to support his assertions, Sinistrari cites
two cases of incubus attacks. One, related to him by a
confessor of nuns whom he trusted, concerned a young
noble maiden who lived in a convent. An incubus began
appearing to her day and night, making earnest and
impassioned pleas for sex with her. She resisted and, as
the attacks continued, sought help from EXORCISMs, relics,
blessings, prayer, and candles kept lit all night long.
The incubus persisted and kept appearing in the form of
a handsome young man.
The solution was discovered by an unnamed but eminent
theologian, who observed that the young woman had
a watery humor. Since like attracts like, according to the
prevailing views at the time, the demon had to be watery
in nature as well. The theologian prescribed a continual
suffumigation of the girl’s room. An earthenware and glass
vessel was filled with sweet calamus, cubeb seed, roots
of both aristolochies, great and small cardamom, ginger,
long-pepper, caryophylleae, cinnamon, cloves, mace, nutmeg,
calamite storax, benzoin, aloes-wood and roots, one
ounce of fragrant sandal, and three quarts of half-brandy
and half-water. The vessel was set on hot ashes to cook,
and the room was sealed.
When the incubus arrived, he would not enter the
room, repelled by the fumes. However, he still assaulted
the maiden if she went elsewhere, such as for a walk in
the garden. He hugged her and kissed her and remained
invisible to others.
The theologian prescribed that she carry on her person
pills and pomanders made of perfume from musk,
amber, civet, Peruvian balsam, and other exotic essences.
This threw the incubus off, and he permanently departed
in a black rage.
Sinistrari himself was involved in the second example
he cites. In the Carthusian monastery in Pavia, a
deacon named Augustine was attacked by a demon. All
spiritual remedies, including exorcism, failed. Sinistrari
prescribed the same fumes and perfumes that had been
effective in the earlier case. The demon continued to appear,
taking the forms of a skeleton, pig, ass, angel, bird,
another monk, and even the prior of the monastery.
As the prior, the demon completely fooled Augustine.
It heard his confession, genuflected, blessed his room
and bed with holy water, ordered the demon to desist,
and then vanished into thin air, betraying his real identity.
He then went to the vicar, appeared as the prior,
and asked for musk and brandy, saying he was very fond
of them.
Sinistrari deduced the demon had a fiery nature and
so prescribed the opposite, herbs that were “cold”: water
lily, agrimony, spurge, mandrake, house-leek, plantain,
henbane, and others. These were knit into two bundles,