author
Ludovico Maria Sinistrari
1622–1701
A 17th-century Franciscan theologian, jurist, and writer whose work ranged from church law to some of the era’s most curious writings on demonology. His name is often remembered today for the strange afterlife of one controversial treatise, but his career inside the Catholic world was much broader than that.
2 Audiobooks
De la démonialité des animaux incubes et succubes
by Ludovico Maria Sinistrari
Demoniality; or, Incubi and Succubi
by Ludovico Maria Sinistrari
About the author
Born in Ameno, Italy, on February 26, 1622, he became a Franciscan priest and built a reputation as a learned teacher of philosophy and theology. Sources describe him as an Italian religious author who studied in Pavia, entered the Franciscan order, and later taught students there.
He also worked in church legal and administrative circles. He is associated with the Roman Inquisition and wrote on ecclesiastical law as well as theology, including De Delictis et Poenis. That combination of scholarship and legal expertise made him more than a curiosity: he was a serious figure in the Catholic intellectual world of his time.
Modern readers most often encounter him through De Daemonialitate et Incubis et Succubis, a treatise linked to his name and centered on demonology. Whether approached as theology, cultural history, or an example of early modern beliefs, his writings offer a vivid glimpse into the fears, arguments, and imagination of seventeenth-century Europe.