In his book On the Seven Secondary Intelligences, Trithemius gives names to angels who govern particular provinces—by what authority I do not know—and assigns them separate jurisdictions. Asclepiades, a Greek; Rabbi Akiba, the Jew; Abraham Avenezra and Rabbi Azariel, Arabians, as I find them cited by Cicogna, add that these beings are not merely our governors: “From their harmony and discord flow good and evil dispositions.”

As they agree or disagree, so do we and our princes; as they stand or fall, so do we. Juno was a bitter enemy of Troy, Apollo a good friend, Jupiter neutral: “Venus favoured the Trojans; Pallas was hostile.” Some are always for us, others against us: “When one god presses us hard, another brings help.” They bring about religion, statecraft, public and private quarrels, and wars. Perhaps they delight in watching men fight, as men delight in fights between cocks, bulls and dogs, bears, and so on.

Plagues and shortages depend on them, as do our well-being and misfortune and almost all our individual affairs. For, as Anthony Rusca maintains in book 5, chapter 18, everyone has a good and a bad angel attending personally throughout life—what Iamblichus calls a daemon. These beings oversee promotions, losses, weddings, deaths, rewards and punishments, and, according to Proclus, every kind of function: “Some have generative power, others formative power,” and so forth. They are given different names according to their functions: Lares, Indigetes, Praestites, and the like.

When the Arcadians acted treacherously at the battle of Chaeronea, fought against King Philip for Greece’s liberty, they were, long afterwards, wretchedly slaughtered on the very same spot by the Roman Metellus, “the gods of Greece exacting vengeance,” as my author says. In smaller matters too, these writers hold that events turn out according to whether these good and evil guardian spirits favour or dislike us: “Those of Saturn do not agree with those of Jupiter,” and so on. A man under Saturn is unlikely ever to gain advancement.

They attribute the frequent promotion of base fellows—undeserving Gnathos and vicious parasites—while prudent, wise, virtuous and worthy men are neglected and unrewarded, to these ruling spirits or subordinate guardian spirits. According to their dispositions and the favour they show, people prosper, are governed or are overpowered. For, as Libanius supposes, in our ordinary conflicts and disputes “one guardian spirit yields and submits to another”: one spirit gives way and is overcome by another.

They attribute almost every individual event to these personal spirits; and, as Paracelsus adds, the spirits direct, teach, inspire and instruct people. No man was ever extraordinarily famous in any art or achievement, or became a great commander, without a familiar spirit to instruct him: Numa, Socrates, and many others, as Cardan illustrates in Secrets of Political Prudence, chapter 128. “Magicians indeed claim that God bestows a special grace upon them, that heavenly spirits instruct and teach them.”

But these are utterly erroneous paradoxes, “foolish, fabulous nonsense,” rejected by our theologians and Christian churches. It is true that, with God’s permission, they have power over us, and experience shows that they can harm not only our fields, cattle and possessions, but also our bodies and minds. At Hamelin in Saxony, on 20 June 1484, the Devil, in the likeness of a piper in multicoloured clothes, carried away 130 children who were never seen again.

People are often frightened out of their wits, carried off altogether, as Scheretzius illustrates in book 1, chapter 4, and tormented in various ways through his agency. Plotinus the Platonist, in Against the Gnostics, book 14, laughs to scorn those who believe that the Devil or spirits can cause such diseases. Many think he can act upon the body but not the mind. Experience declares otherwise: he can act upon both body and mind.

Tertullian holds this opinion in chapter 22: he can cause both sickness and health, and do so secretly. Taurellus adds that by hidden poisons he can infect our bodies and obstruct the workings of our internal organs without our perceiving it, “stealthily creeping into them,” says Lipsius, and so torment our souls: “And by harmful melancholy he drives people mad.”

For, being a spiritual body, he struggles with our spirits, says Rogers, and suggests—as Cardan puts it—“words without a voice, images without sight,” envy, lust, anger, and so on, according to the inclinations he sees in people.

Biarmannus explains adequately how he does this in his Oration against Bodin: he begins with the imagination and stirs it so powerfully that reason cannot resist. He acts upon the imagination through the humours, although many physicians think the Devil can alter the mind and produce this disease by himself. “Some physicians have thought,” says Avicenna, “that melancholy arises from a demon.”

Psellus and Rhazes the Arab, in the Continens, book 1, treatise 9, share the opinion that this disease proceeds especially from the Devil, and from him alone. Arculanus, chapter 6 of his commentary on Rhazes’s ninth book; Elianus Montalto, chapter 9; and Daniel Sennert, book 1, part 2, chapter 11, likewise affirm that the Devil can cause this disease, because those affected often prophesy or speak unfamiliar languages.

But this is “not without the intervention of a humour,” as he himself explains; nor does Avicenna mean otherwise: “If it arises from a demon, it is enough for us that the demon changes the bodily constitution towards black bile, and that its immediate cause is black bile.” The immediate cause is burnt choler, a claim that Pomponazzi also labours to establish.

Galgerandus of Mantua, a famous physician, in this way cured a possessed woman of his time who spoke every language: he purged her black bile. Hence, presumably, this humour of melancholy is called “the Devil’s bath.” Seeing his opportunity in such humours, the Devil often drives people to despair, fury, rage, and so forth, mingling himself among these humours.