[1283] Pollich’s remark (“Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 3, p. 154, from Rebenstock) has been characterised quite wrongly by O. Waltz (“Zeitschr. f. KG.,” 2, 1878, p. 627) as spurious and a late interpollation. As a matter of fact it had merely been excluded from the Table-Talk by Aurifaber; see Seidemann in “Zeitschr. f. KG.,” 3, 1879, p. 305. Cp. vol. i., p. 86, n. 5.
[1284] Above, vol. i., p. 86.
[1285] Letter of Aug. 8, 1523, in Hipler, “Nikolaus Kopernikus und Luther,” 1868, p. 73. Höfler, “Adrian VI,” p. 320, n. 2, quotes a remark of Dantiscus on Luther: “affirmans eum esse dæmoniacum.” Janssen-Pastor, “Gesch. des deutschen Volkes,” 218, p. 194, n. 3.
[1286] “Sabbata,” St. Gallen, 1902, p. 65.
[1287] He refers simply to what he knew from some of Luther’s intimate friends “concerning his birth and past life up to the time of his becoming a monk.”
[1288] In his Exposition of the Ten Commandments, published in 1518 and frequently reprinted during his lifetime, “Werke,” Weim. ed., 1, p. 407; “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 12, p. 18: “Among the devils there are ‘incubi’ and ‘succubi,’ of which I shall speak more fully immediately,” which he then proceeds to do. The children are, according to him, abortions. According to a statement in the Table-Talk, however, they were “devils with bodies like the mother’s,” or stolen children, or changelings, like one he wished to have drowned because the devil constituted the soul in its body (“Werke,” Erl. ed., 6O, pp. 37-42). In his exposition of Genesis (cap. vi.) Luther admits the existence and activity of the said “incubi.” He declares he had heard from many persons credible instances and had himself met with such (!), and even appeals to St. Augustine (“Hoc negare impudentiæ videtur,” “De civ. Dei,” 15, c. 23); he remarks, however, that it was altogether false to believe that “anything could be born of a union of devil and man”; on the contrary, those taken for the devil’s offspring, some of whom he had seen, had either been distorted by the devil though not actually begotten by him, or were real devils who had either assumed flesh in appearance or borrowed it elsewhere with the devil’s help. “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 2, p. 127. Cp. N. Paulus, “Hexenwahn und Hexenprozess vornehmlich im 16. Jahrh.,” Freiburg, 1910, p. 35 f.
[1289] “Commentaria,” p. 2: “sive ex occulto aliquo cum dæmone commercio.”
[1290] The writing in question, “Ein Maulstreich,” etc., is not by Cochlæus but by Paul Bachmann. See above, p. 352, n. 3.
[1291] Paulus (p. 356, n. 3), p. 63 f., from Sylvius, “Zwei neugedruckte Büchlein,” 1533, p. 3´, and “Die letzten zwei Büchlein,” 1534. Cp. also his work of 1531, “Ein besonder nützliches ... Büchlein.”
[1292] Friedensburg (above, p. 356, n. 6), p. 554.