At Saragossa Peter Arbue, a canon and an ardent inquisitor, was slain in 1485 whilst praying in a church; and the threats against the hated Torquemada made him go in fear of his life, and he never went abroad without an escort of forty familiars of the Holy Office on horseback and two hundred more on foot.
A Norse belief found in Iceland is that the fylgia, a genius in animal form, attends human beings; and these animal guardians may sometimes be seen fighting; in the same way the Siberian shamans send their animal familiars to do battle instead of deciding their quarrels in person.
Naturally spirits of these latter kinds are more valuable as familiars than ordinary dead men's souls.
He went in secret to the palace at Coimbra, where Inez and the infante resided, accompanied by his three familiars, and by others who agreed with them.
Animistic in many of their features too are the temporary gods of fetishism, naguals or familiars, genii and even the dead who receive a cult.