Preface

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DEMON lALlTY
OR
Incubi and Succubi
BY THE REV. FATHER
SINISTRARI OF Ameno
( I T-l'" C E N T U R y4
Non' first translated into English . With the Latin Text
PARIS
Isidore LISEUX, 2, Rue Bonaparte
1879
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DEMONIALITY
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DEMONIALITY
OR
INCUBI AND SUGCUBI
A Treatise
wherein is shown that there are in existence on earth rational creatures besides man, endowed like him with a body and a soul, that are born and die like him, redeemed by our Lord Jesus-Christ, and capable of receiving salvation or damnation.
By the Rev. Father SINISTRARI OF Ameno (17U1 century)
Published from the original Latin manuscript discovered in London in the year 1873, and translated into French by Isidore Liseux Now first translated into English ■ With the Latin Text.
PARIS
Isidore LISEUX, 2, Rue Bonaparte.
1879
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PREFACE
TO THE FIRST EDITION [Pai'is, 1 87 5, Vt-8°)
was in London in the year 1872, and I hunted after old books :
Car que faire la bos, a moins qu'on ne bouquine? (1)
They caused me to live in past ages, happy to escape from the present, and to exchange the petty passions of the day for the peaceable intimacy of Aldus, Dolet or Estienne.
One of my favourite booksellers was Mr Allen, a venerable old gentleman, whose place of business was in the Euston road, close to the gate of Regent’s park. Not that his shop was particularly rich in dusty old books ; quite the
(0 What can one do over there, unless he hunts up old books ?
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reverse : it was small, and yet never filled. Scarcely four or five hundred volumes at a time, carefully dusted, bright, arrayed with symmetry on shelves within reach of one’s hand; the upper shelves remained unoccupied. On the right, Theology; on the left, the Greek and Latin Classics in a majority, with some French and Italian books; for such were Mr Allen’s specialties : it seemed as if he ab- solutely ignored Shakespeare and Byron, and as if, in his mind, the literature of his country did not go beyond the sermons of Blair or Macculloch.
What, at first sight, struck one most in those books, was the moderateness of their price, compared with their excellent state of preservation. They had evidently not been bought in a lot, at so much a cubic yard, like the rubbish of an auction, and yet the hand- somest, the most ancient, the most venerable from their size, folios or quartos, were not marked higher than 2 or 3 shillings ; an oc- tavo was sold I shilling, the duodecimo six pence : each according to its size. Thus ruled Mr Allen, a methodical man, if ever there was one; and he was all the better for it, since, faithfully patronized by clergymen, scholars and collectors, he renewed his stock at a rate which more assuming speculators might have envied.
But how did he get those well bound and well preserved volumes, forwhich, everywhere else, five or six times more would have been charged? Here also Mr Allen had his method, sure and regular. No one attended more assi- duously the auctions which take place every day in London : his stand was marked at the foot of the auctioneer’s desk. The rarest, choicest books passed before his eyes, con- tended for at often fabulous prices by Qua- ritch, Sotheran, Pickering, Toovey, and other bibliopolists of the British metropolis ; Mr Allen smiled at such extravagance ; when once a bid had been made^ by another, he would not add a penny, had an unknown Gutenberg or Valdarfer’s Boccaccio been at stake. But if oc- casionally, through inattention or weariness, competition slackened [habent sua fata libelli), Mr Allen came forward : six pence !, he whis- pered, and sometimes the article was left him ; sometimes even, two consecutive numbers, joined together for want of having separately met with a buyer, were knocked down to him, still for the minimum of six pence w'hichwas his maximum.
Many of those slighted ones doubtless de- served their fate ; but among them might slip some that were not unworthy of the ho- nours of the catalogue, and which, at any other time, buyers more attentive, or less whimsical
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might perhaps have covered with gold. This, however, did not at all enter into Mr Allen’s calculation : the size was the only rule of his estimate.
Now, one day when, after a considerable auction, he had exhibited in his shop pur- chases more numerous than usual, I especially noticed some manuscripts in the Latin lan- guage, the paper, the writing and the binding of which denoted an Italian origin, and which might well be two hundred years old. The title of one was, I believe : De Vencnis; of another : De Viperis; of a third (the present work) : De Dcemonialitate, et Incubis, et Suc- cubis. All three, moreover, by different au- thors, and independent of each other. Poisons, adders, demons, what a collection of horrors! yet, were it but for civility’s sake, I was bound to buy something; after some hesitation, I chose the last one : Demons, true, butincubi, Succubi : the subject is not vulgar, and still less so the way in which it seemed to me to have been handled. In short, I had the vo- lume for six-pence, a boon price for a quarto ; .Mr Allen doubtless deemed such a scrawl be- neath the rate of type.
That manuscript, on strong paper of the i7‘>> century, bound in Italian parchment, and beautifully preserved, has 86 pages of text. The title and first page are in the author’s
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hand, that of an old man ; the remainder is very distinctly written by another, but under his direction, as is testified by autographic side notes and rectifications distributed all through the work. It is therefore the genuine original manuscript, to all appearances unique and inedited.
Our dealer in old books had purchased it a few days before at Sotheby’s House, where had taken place (from the to the ifi*** of De- cember 1871) the sale of the books of baron Seymour Kirkup, an English collector, deceas- ed in Florence. The manuscript was inscri- bed as follows on the sale catalogue :
N» 145. Ameno ( R. P. Ludovicus Maria [Cotta] de\ De Dsmonialitate, et Incubis, et Succubis, Manuscript.
Sac. XVII-XVIll.
Who is that writer? Has he left printed works? That is a question I leave to biblio- graphers; for, notwithstanding numerous in- vestigations in special dictionaries, I have been unable to ascertain any thing on that score. Brunet [Manuel du libraire^ art. Cotta d’A- meno) vaguely surmises his existence, but confuses him with his namesake, most likely also his fellow-townsman, Lazaro Agostino Cotta of Ameno, a barrister and literary man of Novara. « The author, » says he, « whose real Christian names would seem to be Ludovico- MariOf has written many serious works... »
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The mistake is obvious. One thing is sure : our author was living in the last years of the i7‘** century, as appears from his own testi- mony, and had been a professor of Theology in Pavia.
Be that as it may, his book has seemed to me most interesting in divers respects, and I confidently submit it to that select public for whom the invisible world is not a chimera. I should be much surprised if, after opening it at random, the reader was not tempted to re- trace his steps and go on to the end. The phi- losopher, the confessor, the medical man will find therein, in conjunction with the robust faith of the middle ages, novel and ingenious views; the literary man, the curioso, will ap- preciate the solidity of reasoning, the clear- ness of style, the liveliness of recitals (for there are stories , and delicately told). All theologians have devoted more or less pages to the question of material intercourse between man and the demon; thick volumes have been written about witchcraft, and the merits of this work were but slender if it merely deve- loped the ordinary thesis ; but such is not its characteristic. The ground-matter , from which it derives a truly original and philoso- phical stamp, is an entirely novel demonstra- tion of the existence of Incubi and Succubi, as rational animals, both corporeal and spiritual
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like ourselves, living in our midst, being born and dying like us, and lastly redeemed, as we are, through the merits of Jesus-Christ, and capable of receiving salvation or damnation. In the Father of Ameno’s opinion, those beings endowed with senses and reason, tho- roughly distinct from Angels and Demons, pure spirits, are none other but the Fauns, Sylvans and Satyrs of paganism, continued by our Sylphs, Elfs and Goblins; and thus is con- nected anew the link of belief. On this score alone, not to mention the interest of details, this book has a claim to the attention of ear- nest readers : I feel convinced that attention will not be found wanting.