Thomas Aquinas, whom all these authors were quoting explicitly (as in the Hammer) or paraphrasing (as Vinet and others did). Aquinas made this argument on at least three occasions.17

He then declared that the existence of witchcraft refutes the opinion of some people, whom he declined to name, ‘who say that demons do not exist, except in the imagination of the common people’. The ignorant and naiïve allow their imaginations to run rampant, and therefore ‘some figures can appear to the senses exactly as a man has thought of them, and then it is believed that he is seeing demons’. Vinet replied that the existence of demons is not imaginary: it is proved not only by the experiences of witches, but, moreover, by ‘the true faith, through which we believe that angels fell from heaven and are now demons’.15

The massive heretical movements of the twelfth through the early fifteenth centuries, especially Waldensians, Cathars, and Hussites, inspired worried theologians to imagine sordid and frightening encounters between demons and heretics as expressions of these groups’ enmity towards God and the established Church

but even the uneducated sometimes expressed scepticism, particularly when they refused official calls to denounce witches in their communities