DEDICATION

Because they did not know what to ask from which of these deities, they were finally forced to despair. We, however, having been enlightened by the celestial grace of God’s kindness, know that all these male and female gods—by whatever name they are sold—were thrust upon men who were ignorant of the true God through the fraud of the Devil.

For this Apostate Lucifer, the first and most ancient of all, having been cast down from heaven into the dark air, considered it beneath his dignity that he—who had wished not only to be made equal to the Son of God, but even to surpass him—should one day be subjected and laid low, to be trodden under his [the Son's] feet. Because of such a mark of infamy inflicted upon him (as that most wicked and malicious Schemer Latin: veterator, literally an "old hand" or "sly fox" thought), since he could not take revenge on God, he burned with a monstrous and implacable hatred for his Creator. He meditated on how he might craftily deceive the most excellent part of humanity the soul and cast them down with himself into places full of horror and fear.

Soon after the world was founded, he therefore attacked the first human beings—and from among them, Eve of the "weaker sex" a common historical idiom for women—leading them away from the obedience owed to God. He did this by suggesting that tasting the fruit plucked from the tree (the eating of which was prohibited under the loss of eternal salvation) would lead them to everlasting life. Having performed this first feat of his wickedness, he drove Cain to lay snares for his brother Abel, because Cain saw that the sacrifice of the firstborn of the flock was pleasing to God, while his own offering, poured out from the fruits of the earth, was rejected.

Later, he took possession of the Giants, born from the "Sons of God" (that is, of Princes) and the "daughters of men" (namely, of atheists). He breathed his own diabolical arts into them, as if they were made for the oppression of the rest of the mortals of that age, and for the service of lust and every kind of malice. But because these Giants, though warned for one hundred and twenty years regarding their conversion and repentance resipiscentia: literally "returning to one's senses" or coming to a better mind, did not obey...