Sublunary devils, and their kinds.] But be they more or less, Quod supra nos nihil ad nos (what is beyond our comprehension does not concern us).  Howsoever as Martianus foolishly supposeth, Aetherii Daemones non curant res humanas, they care not for us, do not attend our actions, or look for us, those ethereal spirits have other worlds to reign in belike or business to follow.  We are only now to speak in brief of these sublunary spirits or devils:  for the rest, our divines determine that the devil had no power over stars, or heavens; [1175]_Carminibus coelo possunt deducere lunam_, &C., (by their charms (verses) they can seduce the moon from the heavens).  Those are poetical fictions, and that they can [1176]_sistere aquam fluviis, et vertere sidera retro_, &c., (stop rivers and turn the stars backward in their courses) as Canadia in Horace, ’tis all false. [1177] They are confined until the day of judgment to this sublunary world, and can work no farther than the four elements, and as God permits them.  Wherefore of these sublunary devils, though others divide them otherwise according to their several places and offices, Psellus makes six kinds, fiery, aerial, terrestrial, watery, and subterranean devils, besides those fairies, satyrs, nymphs, &c.

Fiery spirits or devils are such as commonly work by blazing stars, fire-drakes, or ignes fatui; which lead men often in flumina aut praecipitia, saith Bodine, lib. 2.  Theat.  Naturae, fol. 221. Quos inquit arcere si volunt viatores, clara voce Deum appellare aut pronam facie terram contingente adorare oportet, et hoc amuletum majoribus nostris acceptum ferre debemus, &c., (whom if travellers wish to keep off they must pronounce the name of God with a clear voice, or adore him with their faces in contact with the ground, &c.); likewise they counterfeit suns and moons, stars oftentimes, and sit on ship masts:  In navigiorum summitatibus visuntur; and are called dioscuri, as Eusebius l. contra Philosophos, c. xlviii. informeth us, out of the authority of Zenophanes; or little clouds, ad motum nescio quem volantes; which never appear, saith Cardan, but they signify some mischief or other to come unto men, though some again will have them to pretend good, and victory to that side they come towards in sea fights, St. Elmo’s fires they commonly call them, and they do likely appear after a sea storm; Radzivilius, the Polonian duke, calls this apparition, Sancti Germani sidus; and saith moreover that he saw the same after in a storm, as he was sailing, 1582, from Alexandria to Rhodes. [1178]Our stories are full of such apparitions in all kinds.  Some think they keep their residence in that Hecla, a mountain in Iceland, Aetna in Sicily, Lipari, Vesuvius, &c.  These devils were worshipped heretofore by that superstitious Pyromanteia [1179]and the like.