estoit long, & gros comme l’un de leurs doigts.” That eminent scholar and demonologist, Ludovico Maria Sinistrari, O.S.F., tells us in his De Demonialitate “it is undoubted by Theologians and philosophers that carnal intercourse between mankind and the Demon sometimes gives birth to human beings; and that is how Antichrist is to be born, according to some doctors, for example, Bellarmine, Suarez, and Thomas Malvenda. They further observe that, from a natural cause, the children thus begotten by Incubi are tall, very hardy and bloodily bold, arrogant beyond words, and desperately wicked.” S. Augustine, De Ciuitate Dei, XV, 23, says: “Creberrima fama est multique se expertos uel ab eis, qui experto essent, de quorum fide dubitandum non esset, audisse confirmant, Siluanos et Panes, quos uulgo incubos uocant, inprobos saepe extitisse mulieribus et earum adpetisse ac perigisse concubitum; et quodsam daemones, quos Dusios Galli nuncupant, adsidue hanc immunditiam et tentare et efficere, plures talesque adseuerant, ut hoc negare impudentiae uideatur.” “And seeing it is so general a report, and so many view it either from their own experience or from others, that are of indubitable honesty and credit, that the sylvans and fawns, commonly called incubi, have often swived women, desiring and acting carnally with them; and that certain devils whom the Gauls called ‘Duses’ do continually practise this uncleanness and lure others to it, which is affirmed by such persons and with such weight that it were the height of impudence to deny it.” Charles René Billuart, the celebrated Dominican (1685-1757) in his Tractatus de Angelis tells us: “The same evil spirit may serve as a succubus to a man, and as an incubus to a woman.” The great authority of S. Alphonsus Liguori in his Praxis confessariorum, VII, n. iii, lays down: “Some deny that there are evil spirits, incubi and succubi, but writers of weight, eminence and learning, for the most part lay down that such is verily the case.” Sinistrari, as we have noted, says that the children born of the devil and a witch are “desperately wicked,” and we have just seen that persons of more than ordinarily evil fife are said to become Vampires.
With the exception of England,—for witches were invariably hanged among us,—the universal penalty for witchcraft
