St. Augustine on Incubi, Succubi, and the Nephilim

By: Jay

I wrote an old artilce on Sacred Tradition and the Book of Enoch, and it’s always interesting to see what St. Augustine said on a subject. In his masterful City of God he speaks of the issue of incubi, succubi and the Nephilim.  He was, of course, the first father to rigorously oppose the idea of the “giants” in Genesis 6 as being the offspring of women and fallen angels, causing it to fall into ill favor until the Middle Ages.  Instead, following the lead of a minority of earlier fathers, he argued instead that the Nephilim were the godly line of Seth which had apostatized by inter-marrying with the ungodly line of Cain, wit the enduying moral disintegration bringing God’s wrath in the flood. 

It was 10 years ago when I read the City of God, so I didn’t recall this, but oddly, St. Augustine makes the same argument I made for Sacred Tradition in my article mentioned above on Jude and the Book of Enoch, although, of course, he views the texts status as apocryphal.  Oddly, on another note, while admitting the existence of incubi and succubi, fauns and satyrs, he will not admit that the angels could have mated.  However, while there are difficulties as to how an angel could produce offspring considering that the angelic nature is different from human nature, Nicholas Remy, the famed late medieval Inquisitor and statesman discusses this at length in the first 20 pages or so of his classic update of the Malleus Maleficarum, titled, “Demonolatry: the Historical Practice of Witchcraft” which has now been reprinted and become available from Dover Books for those interested.  Remy agrees with St. Augustine that they cannot actually produce offspring, but the text contains lengthy footnotes by certain Domincans of his era that argued in favor of the angelic offspring which are enlightening. Read more of this post