pre-eminently the Christian devils, if we may venture to
employ the term, and the evil spirits of popular belief. There is,
however, extant a collection of magic formulae against various ailments in
which pagan gods appear: Hercules and Juno Regina, Juno and Jupiter, the
nymphs, Luna Jovis filia, Sol invictus. The collection is transmitted in a
manuscript of the ninth century; the formulae mostly convey the impression
of dating from a much earlier period, but the fact that they were copied
in the Middle Ages suggests that they were intended for practical
application.

A problem, the closer investigation of which would no doubt yield an
interesting result, but which does not seem to have been much noticed, is
the European conception of the heathen religions with which the explorers
came into contact on their great voyages of discovery. Primitive
heathenism as a living reality had lain rather beyond the horizon of the
Middle Ages; when it was met with in America, it evidently awakened
considerable interest. There is a description of the religion of Peru and
Mexico, written by the Jesuit Acosta at the close of the sixteenth
century, which gives us a clear insight into the orthodox view of
heathenism during the Renaissance. According to Acosta, heathenism is as a
whole the work of the Devil; he has seduced men to idolatry in order that
he himself may be worshipped instead of the true God. All worship of idols
is in reality worship of Satan. The individual idols, however, are not
identified with individual devils; Acosta distinguishes between the
worship of nature (heavenly bodies, natural objects of the earth, right
down to trees, etc.), the worship of the dead, and the worship of images,
but says nothing about the worship of demons. At one point only is there a
direct intervention of the evil powers, namely, in magic, and particularly
in oracles; and here then we find, as an exception, mention of individual
devils which must be imagined to inhabit the idols. The same conception is
found again as late as the seventeenth century in a story told by G. I.
Voss of the time of the Dutch wars in Brazil. Arcissewski, a Polish
officer serving in the Dutch army, had witnessed the conjuring of a devil
among the Tapuis. The demon made his appearance all right, but proved to
be a native well known to Arcissewski. As he, however, made some true
prognostications, Voss, as it seems at variance with Arcissewski, thinks
that there must have