CHAPTER XI

Whether there Truly are Incubus and Succubus Devils; andwhether Children can be Generated by Copulation with them.
Argument. Natee all the Theologians and
learned Philosophers are agreed, and it has been the experience of all times and all nations, that witches practise coition with demons, the men with Succubus devils and the women with Incubus devils. Plato in the Cratylus, Philo, Josephus, and the Old Synagogue; S. Cyprian, S. Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Ter- tullian, and others have clearly proved that devils can at will fornicate with women. But a more substantial proof is to be found in S. Jerome on Ephes- tans vi, and S. Augustine (Civ. Dei. XV, 23), who is followed by the con- sensus of all Theologians, and especi- ally by S. Isidore, chapter 8. The same belief is championed in the Bull of Pope Innocent VIII * against witches. : This truth can be proved by argu- ment. For demons can assume the bodies of dead men, or make for them- selves out of air a palpable body like that of flesh, and to these they can im-