Compendium Maleficarum (illustrated witchcraft manual)

by making them known to us through the [confessions] themselves. But since the devil, who once had his dwelling in idols, as Jerome says, has been cast out from them; he has now fashioned worse Collation 7, ch. 32 idols in the minds of heretics. For Cassian, an author no less ancient than he is grave, affirms that he heard the devil saying that he had given birth to the impiety of false dogma through Arius and Eunomius. Therefore, it has happened that just as, after a war has ended, soldiers scattered here and there become plunderers by occupying the roads: so the demons, once the heresies that flourished at that time were destroyed, and the temples in which they were worshipped were as if overturned, have sought and continue to seek new dwellings in other men. And just as pestilence for the most part follows famine; so various kinds of curious arts follow heresy. The reason is this: because, just as in famine, peoples are forced to use inferior foods, from which it happens that a plague arises from corrupted humors: so while heretical depravity is flourishing, and men use the senses of Scripture in a corrupted way, they arrive at the Magical arts, which are like diseases of the mind. But because this plague, through an innate (though indirect) desire for knowledge, spread itself throughout the whole world in a short time; it held the Tartarean for the heavenly, the false for the true, and the harmful for the useful. For this reason, it moved very many men, equipped with sagacity, wisdom, and probity, to write in order to uproot these poisonous herbs. These authors, whom I have not neglected to read with all the industry I could, I have gathered into one, as if collecting crumbs from their rich table, as best I could.