[1237] Stress is laid on this reservation. Corn. Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia, cap. 39.
[1238] Septimo Decretal, l. c.
[1239] Zodiacus Vitae, xv. 363-549, comp. x. 393 sqq.
[1240] Ibid. ix. 291 sqq.
[1241] Ibid. x. 770 sqq.
[1242] The mythical type of the magician among the poets of the time was Malagigi. Speaking of him, Pulci (Morgante, canto xxiv. 106 sqq.) gives his theoretical view of the limits of dæmonic and magic influence. It is hard to say how far he was in earnest. Comp. canto xxi.
[1243] Polydorus Virgilius was an Italian by birth, but his work De Prodigiis treats chiefly of superstition in England, where his life was passed. Speaking of the prescience of the dæmons, he makes a curious reference to the sack of Rome in 1527.
[1244] Yet murder is hardly ever the end, and never, perhaps, the means. A monster like Gilles de Retz (about 1440) who sacrificed more than 100 children to the dæmons has scarcely a distant counterpart in Italy.
[1245] See the treatise of Roth ‘Ueber den Zauberer Virgilius’ in Pfeiffer’s Germania, iv., and Comparetti’s Virgil in the Middle Ages. That Virgil began to take the place of the older Telestæ may be explained partly by the fact that the frequent visits made to his grave even in the time of the Empire struck the popular imagination.
[1246] Uberti, Dittamondo, 1. iii. cap. 4.