n the stage in his proper
person--1591. It is also noticeable that he is the only
Scripture character in the new form of the play retained from
the _miracles_ which delighted the spectators in the
fifteenth century, who were at once edified and gratified by
the corporal chastisement inflicted upon his vicarious back.

Magic and necromantic prowess was equally recognised in Southern
Europe. The Italian poets employed such imposing paraphernalia in
the construction of an epic; and Cervantes has ridiculed the
prevailing belief of his countrymen.[110]

[110] Benvenuto Cellini, the Florentine engraver, in his
amusing _Autobiography_, astonishes his readers with some
necromantic wonders of which he was an eyewitness. Cellini
had become acquainted and enamoured with a beautiful
Sicilian, from whom he was suddenly separated. He tells with
his accustomed candour and confidence, 'I was then indulging
myself in pleasures of all sorts, and engaged in another
amour to cancel the memory of my Sicilian mistress. It
happened, through a variety of odd accidents, that I made
acquaintance with a Sicilian priest, who was a man of
genius, and well versed in the Latin and Greek authors.
Happening one day to have some conversation with him upon
the art of necromancy, I, who had a great desire to know
something of the matter, told him I had all my life felt a
curiosity to be acquainted with the mysteries of this art.
The priest made answer that the man must be of a resolute
and steady temper who enters upon that study.' And so it
should seem from the event. One night, Cellini, with a
companion familiar with the Black Art, attended the priest
to the Colosseum, where the latter, 'according to the custom
of necromancy, began to draw marks upon the ground, with the
most impressive ceremonies imaginable; he likewise brought
thither _asaf[oe]tida, several precious perfumes and fire,
with some compositions which diffused noisome odours_.'
Although several legions of devils obeyed the summons of the
conjurations or compositions, the sorceric rites were not
attended with complete success. But on a succeeding night,
'the necromancer having begun to make his tremendous
invocations, called by their names a multitude of demons who
were the leaders of the several legions, and invoked them by
the virtue and power of the eternal uncreated God, who lives
for ever, insomuch that the