07 Dec




















beasts the most beastly,... thou mad spirit,... thou bestial and foolish drunkard,... most greedy wolf,... most abominable whisperer,... thou sooty spirit from Tartarus!... I cast thee down, O Tartarean boor, into the infernal kitchen!... Loathsome cobbler,... dingy collier,... filthy sow (scrofa stercorata),... perfidious boar,... envious crocodile,... malodorous drudge,... wounded basilisk,... rust-coloured asp,... swollen toad,... entangled spider,... lousy swine-herd (porcarie pedicose),... lowest of the low,... cudgelled ass," etc. But, in addition to this attempt to disgust Satan's pride with blackguardism, there was another to scare him with tremendous words. For this purpose, thunderous names, from Hebrew and Greek, were imported, such as Acharon, Eheye, Schemhamphora, Tetragrammaton, Homoousion, Athanatos, Ischiros, Aecodes, and the like.(351) (351) See the Conjuratio on p. 300 of the Thesaurus, and the general directions given on pp. 251, 251. Efforts were also made to drive him out with filthy and rank-smelling drugs; and, among those which can be mentioned in a printed article, we may name asafoetida, sulphur, squills, etc., which were to be burned under his nose. Still further to plague him, pictures of the devil were to be spat upon, trampled under foot by people of low condition, and sprinkled with foul compounds. But these were merely preliminaries to the exorcism proper. In this the most profound theological thought and sacred science of the period culminated. Most of its forms were childish, but some rise to almost Miltonic grandeur. As an example of the latter, we may take the following:

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