Citing Old Testament references, the Church had never doubted that intercourse between different types of beings was wrong and brought terrible consequences (although it should be remembered that they did not have a very high opinion of intercourse between beings of the same species either!). But a minor theological theme became an hysterical outbreak in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the nature of the activity altered radically from an assault or temptation on the part of the demon to willing compliance by the (usually female) mortal - a witch. Those who had intercourse with demons were changed from victims into the perpetrators of the most heinous and bestial sin. Most early accounts of incubi involved nuns as victims, although there were also virtuous women and priests. Erotic dreams, considered to be assaults from sexual demons, clearly served a purpose in such a sexually repressed environment to offset the revulsion that people felt for their own sublimated drives.

Although there were sexual demons of both genders, in practice incubi vastly outnumbered succubi as a consequence of women more frequently indulging in demonic intercourse - their intellectual passivity and the weakness of their moral nature made them more vulnerable.

The Inquisition prosecuted women for intercourse with devils from around the middle of the fifteenth century; a hundred years later it was an obligatory charge associated with witchcraft. The resultant children were unavoidably afflicted by their circumstances of their conception and were always bold, arrogant and wicked. They were thought to be tall and large, although also sometimes to be deformed: an Angela de Labarthe of Toulouse gave birth to a monster with a wolf's head and a snake's tail in 1275, for example, and there is no doubt that many women went to the stake for producing children with birth defects. It was conjectured that many historical figures were conceived demonically, an accusation which eventually came to serve as a term of abuse. Romulus and Remus, Plato, Alexander the Great, Caesar Augustus, Scipio Africanus, Merlin, the father of William the Conqueror, Martin Luther and even entire nations were accused.

There is absolutely no doubt that belief in sexual demons was put to cynical use: a Bishop Sylvanus, cited in the Malleus Maleficarum who had been accused of lewdness by a nun was found crouched under her bed. His (succesful!) defence was that an incubus had adopted his form to descredit him.

Incubi were notoriously difficult to drive away. A fifteenth century authority recommended five methods of repulsion: sacramental confession, the sign of the cross, exorcism, moving away and excommunication "prudently employed by holy men". Folk remedies included garlic and the placing of a stone with a naturally-worn hole though its middle on a piece of string above the bed.

The book of Unnatural Predators covers the history and habits of Sexual Predators in detail. To find out more, just join our mailing list.