Note 435 — Chapter VI · RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE (Continued)

The art of evoking the spirits which hover about us, and of entering by their aid into relations with the absent or the dead—an art largely practised in France and Germany—was quite as pagan as the Italian mythology. Trithemius, the famous abbot of Spanheim, laid down dogmatic rules for it. Many spirits came without being summoned. There were amiable spirits among them, simple domestic goblins who made themselves useful. At the moment of death Agrippa was thus attended. There were also troublesome fiends, like those tricksy sprites who visited women in the darkness of the night. Jean Mansel relates the story of an unhappy woman tormented every night by a sort of unconscionable husband, who was no other than a jovial demon. At last, worn out, she consults a hermit, who directs her to raise her arms at the critical moment towards a sacred picture; with the result that the demon takes flight, not without cursing the hermit.