Cyprianus

[1] Manuscripts called or referring to Cyprianus had a dark reputation; in some versions, one obtained the text by renouncing one's baptism and devoting oneself to Satan.

In another medieval tradition, Cyprianus was a sorcerer who sought to seduce St. Justina, but was foiled and converted when she made the sign of the cross and he followed suit, freeing himself from the power of the devil.

[7] An anachronistic tale told in the printed Danish spell collection Oldtidens Sortebog ("Old Time Magic Book") makes Cyprianus to have been a pious and beautiful Mexican nun from the fourteenth century.

One typical spell to heal a sprained ankle went: The methods of contagion and transference are in use here; a sacred personage in an apocryphal story is confronted with a problem similar to that faced by the actual sufferer, who avails himself of their supernatural aid.

[10] An important aspect of the magical tradition was the performance of divination, often by pouring molten lead through a hole in a piece of flatbread into cold water, a practice called støyping ("molybdomancy").

This was done to divine the cause of rickets, which was often thought to be the result of a changeling, a huldrabarn or bytting, left in the place of a healthy child by the malicious huldra-folk.

In such legends, a servant, maid or someone else unexpectedly happens to find and read the Black Book, thus summoning the devil, while the owner, often a clergyman, is away.