NAMES.
Toward the middle of the fifteenth century, it was the fancy of the wits and learned men of the age, particularly in Italy, to change their baptismal names for classical ones. As Sannazarius, for instance, who altered his own plain name “Jacopo” to “Actius Syncerus.” Numbers did the same, and among the rest, Platina the historian, at Rome, who, not without a solemn ceremonial, took the name of “Callimachus,” instead of “Philip.” Pope Paul II., who reigned about that time, unluckily chanced to be suspicious, illiterate, and heavy of comprehension. He had no idea that persons could wish to alter their names, unless they had some bad design, and actually scrupled not to employ imprisonment, and other violent methods, to discover the fancied mystery. Platina was most cruelly tortured on this frivolous account; he had nothing to confess, so the pope, after endeavouring in vain to convict him of heresy, sedition, &c. released him, after a long imprisonment.
Formerly there were many persons surnamed Devil. In an old book, the title of which does not recur, mention is made of one Rogerius Diabolus, lord of Montresor.
An English monk, “Willelmus, cognomento Diabolus,” and another person, “Hughes le Diable, lord of Lusignan.”
Robert, duke of Normandy, son to William the Conqueror, was surnamed “the Devil.”
In Norway and Sweden there were two families of the name of “Trolle,” in English “Devil,” and every branch of these families had an emblem of the “Devil” for their coat of arms.
In Utrecht there was a family of “Teufels,” or “Devils,” and another in Brittany named “Diable.”