Incubus/Succubus

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Incubus/Succubus

A demon spirit that has sexual intercourse with mortals. The concept may have arisen from the idea of the commerce of gods with people, which was rife in pagan times. The male demon said to have intercourse with women is called the incubus and the female demon who seduces men the succubus. The demons were generally believed to appear most frequently during sleep or in nightmares. During the witchcraft scare of the late medieval period these demons, when associated with an individual witch or sorcerer, were known as familiars.

Belief in incubi and succubi goes back to ancient times but was incorporated into Christian belief in the medieval period. Such churchmen as Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) discussed the demons.

The Incubus

The Description of Scotlande of Hector Boethius as translated in the first volume of Holinshed's Chronicles (1577), has three or four notable examples of these demons, which are corroborated by Jerome Cardan. One of these, concerning an incubus, is quoted in the quaint language Holinshed used:

"In the year 1480 it chanced as a Scottish ship departed out of the Forth towards Flanders, there arose a wonderful great tempest of wind and weather, so outrageous, that the master of the ship, with other the mariners, wondered not a little what the matter meant, to see such weather at that time of the year, for it was about the middle of summer. At length, when the furious pirrie and rage of winds still increased, in such wise that all those within the ship looked for present death, there was a woman underneath the hatches called unto them above, and willed them to throw her into the sea, that all the residue, by God's grace, might yet be saved; and thereupon told them how she had been haunted a long time with a spirit dailie coming into hir in man's likenesse. In the ship there chanced also to be priest, who by the master's appointment going down to this woman, and finding her like a most wretched and desperate person, lamenting hir great misfortune and miserable estate, used such wholesome admonition and comfortable advertisements, willing her to repent and hope for mercy at the hands of God, that, at length, she seeming right penitent for her grievous offences committed, and fetching sundrie sighs even from the bottome of her heart, being witnesse, as should appeare, of the same, there issued forth of the pumpe of the ship, a foule and evil-favoured blacke cloud with a mighty terrible noise, flame, smoke, and stinke, which presently fell into the sea. And suddenlie thereupon the tempest ceased, and the ship passing in great quiet the residue of her journey, arrived in saftie at the place whither she was bound." (Chronicles, vol. 5, p. 146, 1808 ed)."

In another case related by the same author, the incubus did not depart so quietly. In the chamber of a young gentlewoman who was the daughter of a nobleman in the country of Mar there was found "a foule monstrous thing, verie horrible to behold." For the love of this "Deformed," nevertheless, the lady had refused sundry wealthy marriages. A priest who was in the company began to repeat St. John's Gospel, and "suddenlie the wicked spirit, making a verie sore and terrible roaring noise, flue his waies, taking the roofe of the chamber awaie with him, the hangings and coverings of the bed being also burnt therewith."

Jean Bodin, author of Démonomaie (1580) cites the case of Joan Hervilleria, who at age 12 was solemnly betrothed to Beelzebub by her mother, who was afterward burned alive for contriving this clandestine marriage. According to the story, the bridegroom was respectably attired and the marriage oath simple. The mother pronounced the following words to the bridegroom: "Ecce filiam meam quam spospondi tibi." Then, turning to the bride, she stated "Ecce amicum tuum qui beabit te." Joan was not satisfied with her spiritual husband alone, however. She became a bigamist by intermarrying with real flesh and blood.

In another story Margaret Bremont, in company with her mother and others, was in the habit of attending diabolic trysts. She and the others were burned alive by Adrian Ferreus, general vicar of the Inquisition.

Magdalena Crucia of Cordova, an abbess, was more fortunate. Suspected by her nuns of magic—an accusation convenient when a superior was at all troublesome—she anticipated their charge. Going before Pope Paul III, she confessed a 30-year intimacy with the devil and obtained pardon.

The Succubus

Old rabbinical writings relate the legend of how Adam was visited during a 130-year period by female demons and had intercourse with demons, spirits, specters, lemurs, and phantoms. Another legend relates how, under the reign of Roger, king of Sicily, a young man was bathing by moonlight. He thought he saw someone drowning and hastened to the rescue. Having drawn from the water a beautiful woman, he became enamored of her, married her, and had by her a child. Afterward she disappeared with her child, which made everyone believe that she was a succubus.

The historian Hector Boece (1465-1536), in his history of Scotland, relates that a handsome young man was pursued by a female demon who would pass through his closed door and offer to marry him. He complained to his bishop, who enjoined him to fast, pray, and confess his sins, and as a result the infernal visitor ceased to trouble him.

The witchcraft judge Pierre de Lancre (1553-1631) stated that in Egypt an honest blacksmith was occupied in forging during the night when a demon appeared to him in the shape of a beautiful woman. He threw a hot iron in the face of the demon, which at once took flight.

More Accounts of Incubi and Succubi

Among the many writers who reflected upon the incubus/ succubus were Erastus, in his tract de Lamiis; Jakob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer in Malleus Maleficarum (1486), which contains a report of a nun who slept with an incubus in the form of a bishop; H. Zanchius in de Operibus Del, (1597, 16, 4); G. Dandini in Aristotelis Tres de Anima (1610); J. G. Godellman in Tractatus de Magis (1591); M. A. Del Rio in Disquisitionum Magicarum (1599); and F. M. Guazzo in Compendium Maleficarum (1608).

An interesting treatise on the subject is the nineteenth-century hoax Demoniality or Incubi and Succubi, supposedly by one Fr. L. M. Sinistari of Ameno, first translated and published by the bibliophile Isidore Liseux in Paris in 1879. It was later translated into English by Montague Summers (Fortune Press, London, 1927; reprinted B. Blom, New York, 1972).

In the early nineteenth century the issue of the incubus/ succubus, which had been dismissed by many as outdated superstition was raised again by the emerging science of psychoanalysis. Possibly the most important discussion is that of Ernest Jones, a Freudian psychoanalyst in his famous treatise On the Nightmare (1951).