In late European mythology and literature, a cambion is a half-human half-demon offspring of an incubus, succubus, or other demon. In its earliest known uses, it was related to the word for change and was probably cognate with changeling. Since at least the 19th century, it has referred to the offspring of an incubus, succubus, or demon with a human.
History
The word cambion appeared on an early first century AD inscription in Gaul. Linguist Benjamin W. Forston IV opines that: William of Auvergne, in his 13th-century work De Universo, wrote of "cambiones, from cambiti, that is 'having been exchanged'" - the "sons of incubi demons" substituted for human babies. These infants constantly wail for milk and cannot be satisfied even by four nurses. Richard Firth Green notes that this "was to become the standard scholastic explanation for changelings throughout the Middle Ages." The earliest evidenced appearance of the word "cambion" in the sense of an offspring of two demons is in the 1818 French-Language Dictionnaire Infernal. The 1825 edition of that book has the following entry: English translation: In the Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology the cambion is again said to be the direct offspring of the incubus and the succubus, foregoing any need for human involvement. This same incarnation retained the absence of breath or a pulse until seven years of age, but was said to also have been incredibly heavy and to have cried upon being touched. Since at least the 19th century, "cambion" has taken on a further definition: the child of an incubus or a succubus with a human parent. In 1874, Victor Hugo's Toilers of the Sea defined a cambion as the son of a woman and the devil. It also appeared as a hybrid of human and demon in Dungeons and Dragon's 1983 Monster Manual II.
Human-demon hybrids
The concept of offspring born to humans and demons was a subject of debate in the Middle Ages. The influential Malleus Maleficarum, which has been described as the major compendium of literature in demonology of the fifteenth century, states that demons, including the incubus and the succubus, are incapable of reproduction: Because of this inability to create or nurture life, the method of the creation of a cambion is necessarily protracted. A succubus will have sex with a human male and so acquire a sample of his sperm. This she will then pass on to an incubus. The incubus will, in his turn, transfer the sperm to a human female and thus impregnate her. The text goes on to discuss at great length the arguments for and against this process being possible, citing a number of Biblical quotations and noted scholars in support of its arguments, and finally concludes that this is indeed the method used by such demons. However, the Malleus Maleficarum never uses the word cambion, referring to the children of incubi as campsores or wechselkinder.
Dante and his brother Vergil from the Devil May Cry series are cambions, being the offspring of the Demon Knight Sparda and human Eva, causing them both to have powers and white hair due to their heritage.
