Demoniality; or, Incubi and Succubi
Demoniality; or, Incubi and Succubi is a seventeenth-century Latin treatise by the Franciscan theologian Ludovico Maria Sinistrari of Ameno, recovered from a manuscript discovered in a London bookshop in 1872 and first printed by Isidore Liseux. Sinistrari sets out to prove a startling thesis: that rational creatures other than humans dwell on earth, possessing bodies and souls, born and dying like us. From this premise he examines the incubi and succubi of demonological lore, arguing they are not mere spirits but corporeal beings, and weighs the moral and canonical gravity of carnal union with them.
The work matters as a curious bridge between scholastic theology, demonology, and what later readers saw as a startling anticipation of ideas about non-human intelligent life. Sinistrari handles a sensational subject with the rigor of a canon lawyer, probing sin, nature, and the limits of orthodox doctrine. Long suppressed and nearly lost, it survives as a singular document of early-modern thought, equal parts theological inquiry, juridical argument, and unsettling speculation about creatures sharing our world.
How it begins
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 By the Rev. Father SINISTRARI of Ameno (17 th century) Published from the original Latin manuscript discovered in London in the year 1872, and translated into French by Isidore Liseux Now first translated into English With the Latin Text. PARIS Isidore LISEUX, 2, Rue Bonaparte. 1879 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION ( Paris, 1875, in-8 o ) I was in London in the year 1872, and I hunted after old books: Car que faire là bas, à 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 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.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain.