As to the person of the prophet or of the one who sees visions, many things must be considered.
First, his faith: whether it is sincerely Catholic. Therefore one must not believe revelations of demon-worshippers, such as that one said to have been made to Childeric, king of France, by the contrivance and explanation of Basina, who, though her husband was still living, had married him and was a witch; by this the French historians think the character of his posterity was declared. Read Gaguin, book 1. Nor should one believe the revelations of heretics.
For in the beginning of the Church Cerinthus fabricated false revelations and distinguished them with the names of the Apostles, as Caius and Dionysius of Alexandria handed down. Such were the prophecies of the followers of Marcus Magus; such were those of the prophetesses and of Montanus himself, as the ancient Fathers of that time handed down: Claudius Apollinaris, Miltiades, Apollonius, and Serapion, whose words Eusebius reports. Such were the revelations of the Archontics Martiades and Martianus, who forged a book that they called Revelations of the Prophets. Such too were the revelations of Manes, about which St. Augustine treats against Faustus. Such was the revelation of Julian the Apostate, which he narrates in the letter to Oribasius about the little tree. Such were those by which the Donatists tried to deceive Generosus, and those which Vincentius the Donatist used. Such were those by which the Messalians, deceived, boasted. Such in our times were the revelations of Munzer and the Anabaptists; such those of Campanus; such those of Justus Velsius and Francisco de la Cruz.
Such also, in this year 1601, were the two people here at Graz, husband and wife, who paid the penalty for their crime by hanging. They most stubbornly boasted that the Church remained unharmed among themselves alone. Therefore the father baptized their common children, and the mother answered in the manner of a sponsor. They predicted that the world would perish in this year, but their own death forestalled the destruction of the world.
[margin: Gaguin, book 1; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, books 3, 5, and 7; Irenaeus, book 1; Epiphanius on the Archontics; Augustine against Faustus and Epistle 165; Theodoret on heretical fables]
Britain once produced very many of this kind. For there was born in Cambria a certain Merlin, a most wicked magician. In vain do Ponticus Virunnius and Leland resist; this is the testimony about him of William of Newburgh, Polydore, and even Buchanan, otherwise most mendacious. Certainly the deeds handed down about him by Geoffrey of Monmouth prove that he was a magician. Beware of confusing this man, who lived in the time of Uther Pendragon, with another, Merlin the Scot, disciple of Helius Telesinus, who was himself also a seer. Because this second Merlin, as a master of astronomy and physics, is said to have been very skilled, to have predicted many things, and seems to be numbered among the other prophets of Britain: Kentigern, Samson, and Gildas. The writers of English affairs, Trevisa, Ranulphus, and Giraldus Cambrensis, noted this distinction between the Merlins.
There too were false prophets of false faith: John Ball, in the year 1391, as Walden testifies in the Bundle of Tares; and those called Eubages, saying that Christ had been born among the pagans, from whose sect were a certain Aquila and another called Perdix, as Christopher Mylus testifies. Of no dissimilar vanity are the prophecies of those who bring forward prophecies that overturn the decrees of general councils or of the Apostolic See, such as those ridiculous prophecies of Marion, the Paris advocate, concerning the Society of Jesus, vigorously refuted by Rene des Fons in the book Against Marion’s Pleading, chapters 5 and 6. For that Marion, to please Arnould, his son-in-law, and to make with him, Pasquier, and Dolet a four-horse team of the most shameless calumniators and sycophants of our time, did not hesitate to bring false prophecies into the middle before the most ample senate. Evidently Paris alone saw, one court alone produced, men whom so many centuries scarcely produced from such distant provinces: Pattacio, Medius, Ecebolius, and Lamponianus. Evidently it is worth so much to these Herostrati to be counted among informers and accusers, among slanderers and false complainants, and to be pointed at with the finger.
[margin: William of Newburgh, Polydore, Buchanan, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Trevisa, Ranulphus, Giraldus Cambrensis; Walden, Fasciculi Zizaniorum; Christopher Mylus; Rene des Fons, Contre le plaidoyer de Marion, chapters 5-6]
Second, one must ask whether they are persons seized by possession, for nothing should be believed in the revelations or prophecies of such people. Firmilian writes to Blessed Cyprian that many were deceived by a certain woman. By this argument Miltiades proves that the prophecies of Montanus were false: because he began to prophesy spontaneously, but continued unwillingly, seized by fury and madness.
Such were the prophecies of the Quercetensian nuns in the year 1491, about whom Christianus Massaeus writes as follows:
In the same year, around the feast of the Chair, terrible to say, demons began to inhabit and possess the monastery of the ladies of Quercetum. They miserably vexed them for four years and the same number of months. You would often have seen them run through the fields like dogs, fly through the air like birds, climb into trees like cats, hang from branches, imitate the voices of various animals, reveal secrets, and prophesy about future events. Finally, whenever lord Henry, bishop of Cambrai, or lord Aegidius Nettelet, dean of the same church, men of virtues, came to exorcise them, they would say: “Behold, that horned man is now on the road; he is coming to threaten us.” After many remedies had been applied from every side, their names were sent to Rome and were read by Alexander VI on the Lord’s Supper day during the divine sacrifice, but nothing helped. Joanna Potier, who is said to have given the beginning to the evils, began to play with the Devil from the ninth year of her age. He accused her of communicating unworthily in the monastery 434 times. But because he is a liar, we do not stand upon those words. She herself, brought to Cambrai, more than forty years old, died in prison around the feast of Martin. The others were freed after four years, in the month of June.
John Molinet of Valenciennes narrates the same history, though a little differently, in his unpublished Belgian Chronicle. I shall report what is in book 6 from that manuscript, which Peter Oranus of Liege, a most distinguished jurist and senator of proven justice, took care to have copied for me in very good faith. Wholly similar were the divinations of the Indians, who, after taking the seed of cohoba, are thrown out of themselves and then, when the frenzy has ceased, prophesy. Peter Cieza writes about them in part 2 of the History of Peru, chapter 27. Such too were those of Libussa of Bohemia, in Dubravius, book 2 of the History of Bohemia.
[margin: Firmilian to Cyprian; Eusebius on Miltiades and Montanus; Christianus Massaeus, Chronicle, book 20; John Molinet’s Belgian Chronicle; Peter Cieza, History of Peru, part 2, chapter 27; Dubravius, History of Bohemia, book 2]
Third, one must ask whether sincerity of faith, integrity of life and morals, and virtues commend the person, or whether notable vices and imperfections dishonor him. Therefore one must not believe the proud, the ambitious, the impatient, the carnal, the drunken, those who foster anger, practice hatred, sow disagreements, defame others, or scrape together money by these means. Nor should one believe hypocrites who display certain singular signs of affected devotion and penance that have not been approved by ecclesiastical superiors.
These things are confirmed by the judgment of Apollonius, one of the earliest Fathers, who argued from this that the prophecies of the Montanists were false: both because Maximilla and Quintilla had abandoned their husbands, and because they were greedy for money, practiced usury, played with dice and tables, and received payment for prophecies; and because they were lascivious, given to cosmetics, care of the body, and expensive luxury of clothes. Gerson too writes thus:
Every deep-rooted passion has its own lesion and its own demon, as Origen says. This is clear in those captured by love, in the jealous, in the angry, in the envious, and in the greedy.
Hence the poet says: “Those who love fashion dreams for themselves.” Plainly these are the shades that the poet sang each person suffers; this is the dread desire that becomes a god for each one.
[margin: Eusebius on Apollonius and the Montanists; Gerson on the demon of each passion; poetic allusions to self-fashioned dreams and desire]
The vices of each soul are usually detected by various signs: from the friends and companions to whom they are better known; from their actions and opinions; for example, if they presume to be instructed by God about every one of their actions; if they despise the counsels and judgments of others; if outside they imitate the Curiuses, but within they live the Bacchanalia; if they lead around little women loaded with sins; if, without legitimate vocation and mission, they thrust themselves into the offices of preaching, of hearing confessions, and other things of this sort, as that pseudo-hermit Peter the tailor of Antwerp used to do.
The same is true if in their other actions, morals, and exercises they are vain, rash, imprudent, and indiscreet, especially in mental prayer. For example, if, while they are still imperfect and are still in the purgative way, they hurl themselves into the unitive way; or if, as soon as they begin to pray, without suitable preparation, they presume to hold themselves merely passively, and, making no effort on their own part, wait for the divine influx. For if anything is that rock of rashness against which most spiritual people strike and suffer shipwreck through dangerous illusions and the foulest heresies of the Begards, Beguines, Dulcinists, Lollards, Illuminati, and others, this is certainly it.
There are two rocks for people deceived in this way. One is credulity concerning opinions equally false and erroneous, and proud stubbornness; and sometimes certain most foul and execrable sins gradually creeping in even with those deceiving angels. The other is weakening of health and injury to the brain, not only in little women, but also in men who are otherwise neither frivolous nor foolish, but who are drunk on this sweet and poisoned leisure, and on the cup of contemplative, unfruitful, titillating influx of the bodily senses, from which every cooperation of the will and aid of the intellect has been removed, and therefore merit too. It would be very long to recount plainly the recent examples known to us of those who were thrust into this pit by indiscreet and unlearned masters. Nor is it useful, since both the blind and the guides of the blind still survive. Would that the dangers of those people might make the rest cautious, even if late.
To the same point belong those who bear insults, examinations, and the judgments of others, which less approve their manner of proceeding or their sayings, or do not believe them, with difficulty and impatience. Finally, they would not be content to lack revelations of this sort and to have them granted rather to others; instead they take excessive pleasure in them, and are touched by a blind love of this gift. For the demon is accustomed to mock each person through that which he viciously loves.
St. Leo writes prudently:
The Devil knows into whom he should insert the snares of gluttony, to whom he should apply the incitements of lust, into whom he should pour the poison of envy, to whom he should offer the bait of greed. He knows whom he may deceive by joy, whom he may trouble by sadness, whom he may lead astray by error; and he seeks causes for harming where he sees each person more diligently occupied.
Gregory of Nyssa confirms the same thing in the life of Moses. Before all the rest, those are fit to be deceived who by nature hold tenaciously to their own opinion, think that they alone are wise, and spit out the rest as mushrooms. Such was the man in Cassian who threw himself into a well; such afterwards was Brother John of Rupescissa, three hundred years ago; such in our own time was Francisco de la Cruz in Peru, about whom later.
[margin: Peter the tailor of Antwerp; Begards, Beguines, Dulcinists, Lollards, and Illuminati; Leo, sermon on circumcision; Gregory of Nyssa, life of Moses; Cassian; John of Rupescissa; Francisco de la Cruz]
Fourth, the constitution of the body must be considered. For if health is not very firm; if it shows an excess of black bile; if the bodily habit has been deformed more than is right by fasting or sleeplessness; if the brain is injured, or the person is excessively apprehensive, or has a turbid and over-vehement imagination, because such people, as the saying goes, even while awake think that they see, hear, and taste things which they perceive neither by taste, nor hearing, nor eyes. The demon easily imposes on such people, because when images of false things present themselves they cling to them tenaciously and assent to them. This is accustomed to happen to epileptics, so that, stirred by the diseased force, they prophesy. Therefore in earlier years those were not cautious enough who made so much of the divinations of one person affected in this way. I shall narrate from Gerson a history of an epileptic woman worthy of admiration, book 3, section 16, at the end, folio 223.
Fifth, Gerson adds that it matters what kind of person he is and has been, how he is educated, to what things he is accustomed, with whom he has associated, in what things he has delighted; whether he is poor or rich. “In the rich,” he says, “pride and ambition must be feared; in the poor, feigning.” But this observation is taken from matters very remote and uncertain. The next is better.
Sixth, difference of age and sex must not be neglected. For if the age is bent and falling, there is danger of delirium; if childish, of levity and of an imaginative disease, because children have a brain more moist than is proper and full of vapors, which are stirred by a small matter. Therefore demons once loved to pour out oracles through children as more suitable for their attempts; and they do so even today in crystal-divination and hydromancy. As to the female sex, it is agreed that it is more suspect. But this will be treated separately in the following section.
Seventh, one must consider whether the person is a veteran in spiritual exercise, or only a novice; whether the Devil has otherwise tried to deceive him in this way, or has deceived him; whether the things previously revealed to him were true, and also what things were true and what false. If he is a beginner, fraud must be greatly feared, because, as Gerson says, “novice fervor is quickly deceived if it has lacked a director, especially in adolescents and women, whose ardor is too greedy, variable, unbridled, and therefore suspect.” By this indication Francisco Pico first detected the falsity of a certain revelation and vision. Afterwards other indications were added, as that the Devil, in the form of Christ the Lord, began to persuade certain vain things mixed with good things.
[margin: Gerson, book 3, section 16; note on children in crystal-divination and hydromancy from Nider, Preceptorium; Francisco Pico, On Foreknowledge, book 9, chapter 3]