[112] Footnote: Melancthon, however, used to tell of a possessed girl in Italy who knew no Latin, but the Devil in her, being asked by Bonaroico, a Bolognese professor, what was the best verse in Virgil, answered at once:—
"Discite justitiam moniti, et non temnere divos,"—
a somewhat remarkable concession on the part of a fallen angel.
[113] This story seems mediaeval and Gothic enough, but is hardly more so than bringing the case of the Furies v. Orestes before the Areopagus, and putting Apollo in the witness-box, as Aeschylus has done. The classics, to be sure, are always so classic! In the Eumenides, Apollo takes the place of the good angel. And why not? For though a demon, and a lying one, he has crept in to the calendar under his other nnme of Helios as St. Hellas. Could any of his oracles have foretold this?
[114] Mr. Leckie, in his admirable chapter on Witchcraft, gives a little more credit to the enlightenment of the Church of England in this matter than it would seem fairly to deserve. More and Glanvil were faithful sons of the Church; and if the persecution of witches was especially rife during the ascendency of the Puritans, it was because they happened to be in power while there was a reaction against Sadducism. All the convictions were under the statute of James I., who was no Puritan. After the restoration, the reaction was the other way, and Hobbism became the fashion. It is more philosophical to say that the age believes this and that, than that the particular men who live in it do so.
[115] I have no means of ascertaining whether he did or not. He was more probably charged with it by the inquisitors. Mr. Leckie seems to write of him only upon hearsay, for he calls him Peter "of Apono," apparently translating a French translation of the Latin "Aponus." The only book attributed to him that I have ever seen is itself a kind of manual of magic.
[116] "With the names and surnames," says Bodin, indignantly, "of seventy-two princes, and of seven million four hundred and five thousand nine hundred and twenty-six devils, errors excepted."
[117] Cited by Maury, p. 221, note 4.
[118] There is a kind of compensation in the fact that he himself lived to be accused of sorcery and Judaism.