One of the items still preserved is a sum of money paid for keeping a fire burning in hell's mouth.

Says Hase (as above, p.

42): "In wonderful satyrlike masquerade, in which neither horns, tails, nor hoofs were ever...

wanting, the devil prosecuted on the stage his business of fetching souls," which left the mouths of the dying "in the form of small images." Not only the popular art but the popular legends embodied these ideas.
The chroniclers delighted in them; the Lives of the Saints abounded in them; sermons enforced them from every pulpit.

What wonder, then, that men and women had vivid dreams of Satanic influence, that dread of it was like dread of the plague, and that this terror spread the disease enormously, until we hear of convents, villages, and even large districts, ravaged by epidemics of diabolical possession!( 358) (358) I shall discuss these epidemics of possession, which form a somewhat distinct class of phenomena, in the next chapter.
And this terror naturally bred not only active cruelty toward those supposed to be possessed, but indifference to the sufferings of those acknowledged to be lunatics.