London, 1888. After Satanist Edward Sinistrari is condemned to hang for ritual murder of four girls, he escapes from the gallows at Newgate Prison, leaving a bloody trail in his wake. DCI Charles Collingwood is assigned to track Sinistrari down. But just as he is closing in on his quarry, Jack The Ripper begins his murderous rampage. In a London awash with blood, Collingwood is about to discover the full force of Sinistrari's diabolic powers and vengeance. But who is he, and can he be stopped?

This 17th century treatise on demonology, written by the respected theologian, Catholic priest, and exorcist, Rev. Father Sinistrari, examines a particular class of spirits known as the incubus and succubus. These minor demons crave sex and often attack their victims while they sleep. Though incubus and succubus are considered less dangerous than possessing demons, they can be relentless in pursuit of their desire and grow violent when resisted. Demoniality advances novel theories about occult biology, claiming demons can reanimate corpses to have sex and impregnate victims with demonic seed to produce offspring who are "tall, hardy, bold and wicked." An expert on witchcraft and sexual sin, Rev. Father Sinistrari included sections on related phenomena, including: bestiality, necrophilia, demonic pacts, witchcraft, witches' marks, devil worship and magical beings such as fauns, centaurs and elves. Father Sinistrari was a learned Franciscan Friar who used deductive reasoning to examine the characteristics of the spirit world. For example, do demons have mass? He concludes they do, but determines they are porous-allowing for their supernatural feats of passing through objects and appearing from nowhere. He also classified the demonic spirits by their actions, explaining that some seek out corrupt pacts with witches or wizards, while others are parasitic and indiscriminately attack the innocent. As a primer on demonic behavior, Demonality is extremely detailed. Father Sinistrari was schooled in the sciences of the time, including herbalism, alchemy, elements, humors and the symptoms of witchcraft-even serving as an advisor to the notorious Inquisition. Because of this, he focuses on diagnoses and remedies to expel the pests, using his alchemical knowledge to devise herbal formulas for countering a demon's specific elemental nature. These elaborate herbal recipes are similar to the elixirs found in a magician's grimoire or a witch's book of shadows. The title of the book is a play on the word bestiality, which conveys Father Sinistrari's belief that copulating with demons is, similarly, a sinful act and a crime. But while incubus and succubus are spirits doing evil deeds, Father Sinistrari is not dismissive of their salvation. He advances the theological argument that these minor demons have souls, and can be saved from damnation. He distinguishes them from the more vulgar type that tend to possess humans in terrifying displays. As proof, he shows how this latter class of demon greatly fears religious relics, while incubus and succubus do not object when in their presence: clear evidence, according to Sinistrari, that they are not damned, but are likely in limbo. As a prominent exorcist of his time, Father Sinistrari encountered victims of demonic activity on a regular basis. Many of the afflicted were, ironically, nuns and priests in the service of God or people under their care. In one story, a young maiden of noble birth is romantically pursued by a spirit that, out of frustration with her chastity, finally attacks her. Another story involves a nun who disappeared to her cell where two voices are heard along with groaning and the creaking of her bed. A rival nun drilled a hole through the partition and saw an attractive young man lying with her sister who mysteriously disappeared when the two were confronted. References to demonic attack were carved into stone four thousand years ago long before Jesus Christ, the greatest exorcist of them all, walked the earth. As Christianity took hold, encounters with these entities were often laid out in moral terms. Father Sinistrari took a different approach: applying reason to understand this curious phenomenon along with theology, history and science. The result is this interesting treatise.

Explores this dark aspect of folklore and religion and the role that demons play in the modern world. Includes numerous entries documenting beliefs about demons and demonology from ancient history to the present.

Who are the familiar spirits of classical culture and what is their relationship to Christian demons? In its interpretation of Latin and Greek culture, Christianity contends that Satan is behind all classical deities, semi-gods, and spiritual creatures, including the gods of the household, the lares and penates.But with In the Company of Demons, the world’s leading demonologist Armando Maggi argues that the great thinkers of the Italian Renaissance had a more nuanced and perhaps less sinister interpretation of these creatures or spiritual bodies. Maggi leads us straight to the heart of what Italian Renaissance culture thought familiar spirits were. Through close readings of Giovan Francesco Pico della Mirandola, Strozzi Cigogna, Pompeo della Barba, Ludovico Sinistrari, and others, we find that these spirits or demons speak through their sudden and striking appearances—their very bodies seen as metaphors to be interpreted. The form of the body, Maggi explains, relies on the spirits’ knowledge of their human interlocutors’ pasts. But their core trait is compassion, and sometimes their odd, eerie arrivals are seen as harbingers or warnings to protect us. It comes as no surprise then that when spiritual beings distort the natural world to communicate, it is vital that we begin to listen.

The definitive compilation on witchcraft and witch hunting in the early modern era exploring significant people, places, beliefs, and events. Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition is the definitive reference on the age of witch hunting (approximately 1430–1750), its origins, expansion, and ultimate decline. Incorporating a wealth of recent scholarship in four richly illustrated, alphabetically organized volumes, it offers historians and general readers alike the opportunity to explore the realities behind the legends of witchcraft and witchcraft trials. Over 170 contributors from 28 nations provide vivid, documented descriptions and analyses of witchcraft trials and locations, folklore and beliefs, magical practices and deities, influential texts, and the full range of players in this extraordinary drama—witchcraft theorists and theologians; historians and authors; judges, clergy, and rulers; the accused; and their persecutors. Concentrating on Europe and the Americas in the early modern era, the work also covers relevant topics from the ancient Near East (including the Hebrew and Christian Bibles), classical antiquity, and the European Middle Ages.

How have major civilizations of the last two millennia treated people who were attracted to their own sex? In a narrative tour de force, Louis Crompton chronicles the lives and achievements of homosexual men and women alongside a darker history of persecution, as he compares the Christian West with the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, Arab Spain, imperial China, and pre-Meiji Japan. Ancient Greek culture celebrated same-sex love in history, literature, and art, making high claims for its moral influence. By contrast, Jewish religious leaders in the sixth century B.C.E. branded male homosexuality as a capital offense and, later, blamed it for the destruction of the biblical city of Sodom. When these two traditions collided in Christian Rome during the late empire, the tragic repercussions were felt throughout Europe and the New World. Louis Crompton traces Church-inspired mutilation, torture, and burning of sodomites in sixth-century Byzantium, medieval France, Renaissance Italy, and in Spain under the Inquisition. But Protestant authorities were equally committed to the execution of homosexuals in the Netherlands, Calvin's Geneva, and Georgian England. The root cause was religious superstition, abetted by political ambition and sheer greed. Yet from this cauldron of fears and desires, homoerotic themes surfaced in the art of the Renaissance masters--Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Sodoma, Cellini, and Caravaggio--often intertwined with Christian motifs. Homosexuality also flourished in the court intrigues of Henry III of France, Queen Christina of Sweden, James I and William III of England, Queen Anne, and Frederick the Great. Anti-homosexual atrocities committed in the West contrast starkly with the more tolerant traditions of pre-modern China and Japan, as revealed in poetry, fiction, and art and in the lives of emperors, shoguns, Buddhist priests, scholars, and actors. In the samurai tradition of Japan, Crompton makes clear, the celebration of same-sex love rivaled that of ancient Greece. Sweeping in scope, elegantly crafted, and lavishly illustrated, Homosexuality and Civilization is a stunning exploration of a rich and terrible past.