It was very long before the pagan element to which the chapter witnesses—the Manicheism which holds that there is something "divine and godlike beside the one God"—had ceased to hold a prominent place in the fancy of persons professedly Christian. S. Maximus of Turin, in the fifth century, thus warns the Christian farmers of North Italy of their responsibility in the idolatry of their servants: "My brother, when you know that your farm-servant sacrifices, and you do not prevent his immolation, you sin. Though you give him not the wherewithal, yet leave is granted him. Though he do not sin by your orders, yet your will co-operates in the fault. Whilst you say nothing, you are pleased at what your servant has done, and perhaps would have been angry if he had not done it. Your subordinate sins, not only on his own score, when he sacrifices, but on his master's who forbids him not, who, if he had forbidden him, would certainly have been without sin. Grievous indeed is the mischief of idolatry; it defiles those who practise it; it defiles the neighborhood; it defiles the lookers-on; it pierces through to those who supply, who know, who keep silent. When the servant sacrifices, the master is defiled. He cannot escape pollution when partaking of bread which a sacrilegious laborer has reared, blood-stained fields have produced, a black barn has garnered. All is defiled, with the devil in house, field, and laborers. No part is free from the crime which steeps the whole. Enter his hut, you will find withered sods, dead cinders—meet sacrifice for the demon, where a dead deity is entreated with dead offerings! Go on into the field, and you will find altars of wood, images of stone—a fitting ministration, where senseless gods are served on rotting altars! When you have looked a little further, and found your servant tipsy and bleeding, you ought to know that he is, as they call it, a dianatic, or a soothsayer."
In the VIth century, S. Cæsarius of Arles, in an almost contemporary "Life," is said to have cast out "a devil, which the rustics call a diana."[102]
In the XIIth, XIIIth, XIVth, and XVth centuries, this idolatrous cultus was not extinct. Montfaucon quotes part of a decree, in which Auger of Montfaucon, an ancestor of his own, Bishop of Conserans, in the South of France, at the close of the XIIIth century, found it necessary to denounce dianaticism: "Let no woman profess that she rides by night with Diana, goddess of the pagans, or with Herodias, or Bensozia, and raise a route of women to the rank of deities; for this is a diabolical illusion."[103]
In the Bollandist Life of S. James of Bevagna in Umbria, who died in 1301, we are told that the saint distinguished himself "by rebuking those women who go to the chase with Diana"; and in 1317, John XXII., in his bull addressed to the Bishop of Frejus, denounces those "who wickedly intermeddle with divinations and soothsayings, sometimes using Dianas."
In the XVth century, Cardinal de Cusa speaks of examining two women who "had made vows to a certain Diana who had appeared to them, and they called her in Italian Richella, saying she was Fortune."[104]
John of Salisbury, Bishop of Chartres in 1136, talks of this "Sabbath" company in language which is a curious medley of classical and mediæval phraseology. He speaks of the delusion of those "who assert that a certain night-bird (nocticulam, or, according to the generally received emendation, nocte lucam, the night-shiner, a synonyme for Hecate), or Herodias, or the lady president of the night, solemnize banquets, exercise offices of diverse kinds; and now, according to their deserts, some are dragged to punishment, others gloriously exalted."[105]
William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris in 1224, tells us a good deal about this queen of the ladies of the night. They call her, he says, "Satia (a satietate), and the Lady Abundia, from the abundance she is said to bestow upon the houses which she frequents." He goes on to say that these ladies are seen to eat and drink, yet in the morning the things are as they were. The pots and jars, however, must be left open, or they will go off in a huff. To guard against such visitations, Alvernus thinks, it was prescribed in the Levitical law that vessels should be covered, or accounted unclean. He speaks of the "old women amongst whom this delusion abides"; but it is evidently the cultus he regards as a delusion, and the belief that there are spiritual beings independent both of God and Satan, not the belief that these are real diabolical phenomena.[106] Even in classic times, it would seem that Diana and her crew fulfilled in some measure the office of household fairies:
"Exagitant et lar et turba Diania fures";[107]
and in another passage of the same poet we find what seems to be an early indication of the connection between witches and the feline race. When worsted by the first onslaught of the Titans, the gods thus chose their hiding-places:
"Fele soror Phœbi, niveâ Saturnia vacca,
Pisce Venus latult, Cyllenius ibidis alvo."[108]