THE SCENE: As long as there have been gullible people wanting predictions about the future, there have been unscrupulous people ready to take advantage of their credulity.
THE TEXT: It is not just demons that seduce men but also those who hold themselves out as diviners since they really know nothing of the future. I have heard of a woman who owned a great enclosed manor, with at the furthest end her house where she would speak with visitors. In the beginning she lived in the house with her household (familia). When her people indicated that strangers were coming to her, she would lurk in her chamber to hear why they were traveling and where they were coming from and other details (circumstancias) which her people astutely asked about. When she had heard all this, she hurried to another house by secret ways, working out en route how she would answer them. Someone from her household would lead the travelers by a roundabout route to the other house, making believe that it was very far away. Then when she met them she would greet them by their proper names and tell them the reasons for their journey, where they had been and other stuff. They thought she had total foreknowledge and had divined all this.
– De Supersticione, Stephen de Bourbon, 13th Century AD
