There was one rough but popular
classification into greater and lesser devils. The former branch was
subdivided into classes of various grades of power, the members of
which passed under the titles of kings, dukes, marquises, lords,
captains, and other dignities. Each of these was supposed to have a
certain number of legions of the latter class under his command. These
were the evil spirits who appeared most frequently on the earth as the
emissaries of the greater fiends, to carry out their evil designs. The
more important class kept for the most part in a mystical seclusion, and
only appeared upon earth in cases of the greatest emergency, or when
compelled to do so by conjuration. To the class of lesser devils
belonged the bad angel which, together with a good one, was supposed to
be assigned to every person at birth, to follow him through life--the
one to tempt, the other to guard from temptation;[1] so that a struggle
similar to that recorded between Michael and Satan for the body of Moses
was raging for the soul of every existing human being. This was not a
mere theory, but a vital active belief, as the beautiful well-known
lines at the commencement of the eighth canto of the second book of "The
Faerie Queene," and the use made of these opposing spirits in Marlowe's
"Dr. Faustus," and in "The Virgin Martyr," by Massinger and Dekker,
conclusively show.
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