I will tell one more story from Florilegus, under the year 1058. He is a trustworthy historian of our own nation, and tells it so confidently, as something discussed throughout Europe in those days. A young gentleman of Rome, on his wedding day, went walking in the fields after dinner with his bride and friends, and towards evening went to the tennis court for recreation. While playing, he put his ring on the finger of a nearby bronze statue of Venus. When he had played enough and finished his game, he went to retrieve the ring, but Venus had bent her finger inwards, and he could not remove it.

Unwilling to keep his companions waiting, he left it there, intending to retrieve it the next day or at a more convenient time. He went to supper and then to bed. That night, when he was about to consummate the marriage, Venus stepped between him and his wife—who neither saw nor felt her—and told him that she was his wife: by placing that ring on her finger, he had pledged himself to her. She troubled him for several nights afterwards.

Not knowing how to escape his predicament, he appealed to a certain Palumbus, a learned magician of that time. Palumbus gave him a letter and instructed him to go at a specified hour of the night to a particular crossroads on the edge of town, where old Saturn would pass in procession with his companions, as he commonly did, and hand the letter to Saturn himself.

The young man was bold and did as instructed. When the old fiend had read the letter, he called Venus, who was riding ahead of him, and ordered her to return the ring. She immediately obeyed, and the gentleman was freed.

I find many such stories in various authors to confirm what I have said, among them the especially notable story of Philinium and Machates in Phlegon’s treatise On Marvellous Things. Although many disagree, I for my part will assent to Lactantius, book 14, chapter 15:

“God sent angels to protect human beings; but while they lived among us, that wicked ruler of the whole earth, burning with lust, gradually enticed them into this vice and defiled them through intercourse with women.” And Anaxagoras, On the Resurrection: “Many of those spiritual beings, overcome by love of maidens and by lust, fell; from them were born those whom we here call giants.”

Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Sulpicius Severus, Eusebius and others accordingly describe two falls of angels: one at the beginning of the world, the other shortly before the Flood, as Moses teaches us. They openly declare that these spirits can beget children and have sexual intercourse with women.

In Japan in the East Indies, at the present time—if we may believe travellers’ accounts—there is an idol called Teuchedy. Each month one of the most beautiful virgins of the country is brought to him and left in a private room in the Fotoqui, or temple, where she sits alone to be deflowered. At certain times Teuchedy, thought to be the devil, appears to her and has sexual intercourse with her. Every month a beautiful virgin is taken in. The old man can tell by what means she comes out.

In that magnificent temple of Jupiter Belus in Babylon there was a beautiful chapel, says Herodotus, who saw it himself. In it stood “a splendidly furnished bed and a golden table beside it”—a fine bed, a table of gold, and so forth. No one entered it except one woman, chosen by their god, as the Chaldaean priests told him; and their god himself lay with her, as was also done in ancient times at Thebes in Egypt.

So you see, this is nothing new: the devils themselves, or their trickster priests, have played such pranks in every age. Many theologians firmly dispute it; but I will conclude with Lipsius that, since “the examples, testimony and confessions of those unfortunate women are so evident on the other side, and so numerous, even in our own town of Louvain,” it is likely to be true.

“I will add one thing: I believe that in no past age—I know not what fate governs this unhappy time—have so many lecherous devils, satyrs and spirits appeared or shown themselves as in our own, as the daily accounts and recorded judicial sentences reveal.”

Read more on this question in Plutarch’s Life of Numa; Augustine’s City of God, book 15; Weyer’s On the Deceptions of Demons, book 3; Gerald of Wales’s Journey through Wales, book 1; the Hammer of Witches, part 1, question 5; Jacobus Reussus, book 5, chapter 6, page 54; Godelmann, book 2, chapter 4; Erastus; Valesius’s Sacred Philosophy, chapter 40; John Nider’s Fornicar, book 5, chapter 9; Strozzi Cicogna, book 3, chapter 3; Delrio; Lipsius; Bodin’s Demonology, book 2, chapter 7; Pererius on Genesis, book 8, chapter 6, verse 2; King James; and others.