San Antonio light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1911-1993, 1926-01-24
Woman Thrown by the Devil in
Trance, in Which She Could Feel
Neither Knife Nor Fire. Painting
by Albert Keller.

daughter as a reward and he became
great and honored nobleman.
Abel Delarue, French farmer, CON
fessed with much detail how he had been
carried away by a demon with the feet of
"A bull to an assembly of Satan and his
worshippers. He induced another farmer
to go with him. For this crime Delarue
was burned to death. .si,s
One of the most famous cases rec''rt 80,
occurred in the town of ARR, in winch
certain men and women were accused
of transporting themselves whittier they
pleased by virtue of compact with the
devil Suddenly they were carried to for
ests and deserts, where they found assem-
bled great numbers of both sexes and
with them a devil in the form of man.
whose face they never saw. This devil
read his commandments, in what way they
were to worship him; then each person
kissed his back, and he gave them some
pieces of money. Many of these unfortu-
mates were tortured and executed.
The devil has been commonly repre-
scented as a kind of dragon with cloven
feet, goats horn and long tall This
conception appears to have originated
with the ancient Babylonians and 'Assyr-
ians over 1000 years ago, for in their
sculptures are shown many monsters hav-
ing all or many of these characteristics.
St. Dunstan, the most remarkable Of
Anglo-Saxon saints, declared the devil
with horns and tail appeared to him, and
that he boldly seized the fiend's nose with
a pair of red-hot pincers. Martin Luther
stated that the devil visited him while he
was translating the Bible and that he
threw his heavy inkwell at it, crying, Get
thee behind me, Satanw
Another strange superstition is that
wild beasts-usually wolves-enter the
bodies of men and women, who then act
like animals, tearing and devouring their
friends. This form Of madness is known
as "lycanthropy." In ancient times those
who were possessed by this mania were
sometimes called "were-wolves." The
people absolutely believed that the Devil
put the nature of the beasts into the bod
les of the men and drove out their souls.
The simple minded peasants of those days
were convinced that the only way to cure
a sufferer from wolf-madness was to cut
off his head and drive an ash stake
through his heart.
II is an unquestioned fact that thou
sands of persons in the past have suffered
from wolf-madness and gone about tear
ing and mutilating their fellow men.
They were usually put to death by the
blood-thirsty rulers of ancient times. 1t
is equally interesting to find that this
form of madness still occurs frequently
today and that it has been treated by
peasants in remote regions with the bar
barous cruelty of medieval times.
A recent outbrea' occurred in Brittany.
Julie JOHN, peasant girl of Pedran, in
Brittany, whose father had been killed
in the war who was struggling to support
a little brother, went mad, imagined she
was wolf and killed her brother by tear
ing his throat with her teeth.
Throughout the middle ages there was
a belief in all countries in the universal
activity of the devil and his subordinate
demons through unholy compacts with
witches and sorcerers. 1t is rather shock
TO find that such beliefs keep their hold
SO strongly on modern France.