[margin: Apocalypse 20:2; Matthew 8:31; 3 Kings 22:22; Job 1:12 and 2:6; Job 41:34; Psalm 90:5-7 and 13]
Since that ancient dragon is bound until the day of judgment, he can harm no one unless God has permitted it, and only so far as God has permitted it. St. Leo says:
And since they have no power over anyone beyond what divine justice has permitted, whether it deigns to correct its own people by discipline or to exercise them by patience, they nevertheless work deceit with a most cunning art, so that they may seem, by the free choice of their own power, either to harm or to spare. And by the wickedness of simulation they deceive many, which is grievous to say, so that some fear to have them angry and wish to have them appeased, though the favors of demons are more harmful than all wounds, because it is safer for a person to have deserved the Devil’s hostility than his peace.
[margin: Sprenger, Malleus, part 2, question 1, principal question 2; Augustine, City of God, book 21, chapter 14]
So Leo writes in Sermon 19 on the Passion of the Lord. To enter the swine the demon asked leave of Christ; nor could lying prophets be made for Ahab, nor Job be afflicted, without divine permission. With this observed, there is no power that can be compared with him who is over the earth.
Therefore, since harmful-magicians inflict evils through the demon, it follows that they can harm all those whom God does not forbid them to harm. Yet God defends all who sincerely hope in him: he delivers them from the snare of the hunter and from the harsh word, from fear by night, from the arrow flying by day, from the assault and the noonday demon; and he grants them the strength to walk upon the asp and the basilisk and to trample the lion and the dragon, that is, to overcome every force and escape every ambush of the princes of darkness.
I say first, then, with God permitting it, which I also presuppose in what follows, that the confederate of a lower demon could harm the confederate of a higher demon, not by his own power, but by the force of license received, because that higher demon cannot resist the divine will. Otherwise, if God allows them to act according to the ordinary law, only the confederates of a higher demon can harm those of lower or equal demons. For the ordinary law is the law by which God allows them to act among themselves as much as they can; but the strength and power of harmful-magicians depend on the power of the demon with whom they have a pact. Thus an old witch killed a young witch in Sprenger. Thus the contests of magicians often end with the death of one of the principal combatants, as I taught in the preceding book.
[margin: Leviticus 18:21; Psalm 105:37; 4 Kings 23:10; Jeremiah 32:35; Jaquier, Flagellum Fascinariorum; Sprenger, Malleus; Binsfeld on harmful magic]
Second, they very frequently are accustomed to harm little children, with God permitting it. With respect to the baptized, this is because they are thus preserved from many sins and are snatched happily into heaven, safe because malice will not change their understanding. God also permits this as a punishment of the parents, or for their testing, as St. Augustine bears witness. Before baptism has been received, God not rarely permits them to be killed, lest, because of the actual sins which he foresaw they would commit if they lived, they should acquire for themselves a heavier damnation; nor on that account is God cruel or unjust, because they deserved death for original sin alone.
Indeed, we see that demons lay snares very often for those not yet washed by the sacred water, and rejoice in their death, because the harmful-magicians who kill them then sin far more gravely and offend God more atrociously. For they destroy souls and bodies at once, wholly innocent and harmless, especially if they are their own children, whom witches often offer to the demon and kill, just as the Canaanites and worshippers of Moloch once did, and as the barbarian Temixtitan Indians have done in our own times. Monstrous crimes of this kind of child-murder are narrated about a certain Armorican baron by Nicolas Jaquier, and about a Swiss witch by Sprenger.
[margin: Grillandus, question 7, number 39; Ananias, book 4, On the Nature of Demons; Remigius, Demonolatry, book 1, chapter 2]
Why do they especially harm such a tender age? There are many causes. This age is weaker for resisting and less cautious for guarding itself; nor can they detect, reveal, or accuse the witches’ attempts. They also seek from these children instruments for harmful magic. For they are persuaded that if they cut out and eat the hearts of infants in a fixed number, they will obtain endurance of all torments to such a degree that they cannot be brought to confession of their crimes. They also make from the little bodies of slain infants that famous ointment which Grillandus says is called in Italy the pagan ointment.
I say third that, without doubt, when they use natural poisons, they can equally harm good people and bad, with God nevertheless permitting it. In actual fact, however, they more often harm the bad and sinners than the just and good. For God often grants more right to the tyrant over slaves than over the sons and friends of God; yet even these he sometimes permits to be harmed because of the greater good of those who suffer.
Concerning judges and ministers of justice in particular, the question is asked whether they can harm these also. The opinion commonly repeated, and received also by some learned men, is that they cannot do so because of a special privilege granted to them. They use two reasons. They take one from experience and outcome, but that is neither perpetual and uniform, nor does it never fail. Ananias adds another reason: that if they could harm judges, they would seem to have some right over God himself, because they would have a right over those who perform God’s office. That reason would have force if they could do this absolutely and not only within the limits of God’s permission. But since this whole power depends on the nod of God permitting it, the reason is not very solid. Could not the Devil, the Jews, and the Romans do harm to Christ himself, who is judge of the demons, and even drive his members onto the cross? Was not Job a king and judge, and nevertheless stripped of all his goods and his body covered by the demon with a dreadful ulcer? Yet who would infer from this that the demon had any right over God himself? Surely no one, because all know that whatever power there was had been granted from above by God the Father of lights. So also it could be given by the supreme judge to the demon at this time, and yet no proper right over the judge would belong to him on that account, but only a delegated right.
[margin: Nider, Formicarius, final book]
Certain examples are put forward, among which is the author of the Formicarius:
As for public justice, all the harmful-magicians of whom I spoke above bore witness, by word and by experience, that by the very fact that they are captured by the officials of justice of the commonwealth, at once all power of their harmful magic is enfeebled. Hence, when the often-mentioned judge Peter wished to capture the famous Stadelein through his servants, such trembling was struck into their hands and bodies, and such a foul stench slipped into their nostrils, that they almost despaired whether they would dare to attack the harmful-magician. The judge said to them, “Attack the wretch safely, because, once touched by public justice, he will lose all the powers of his wickedness.”
Thus Nider thought that this force by privilege did not belong to judges before the accused had been captured. Monstrelet also, in book 4 of his Chronicles, when treating of Edelin, seems to confirm this. Yet if a divine privilege had been granted to all judges, since God’s works are perfect, and since capture itself is such a necessary and principal part of the execution of justice, I do not doubt that it too would be included. Therefore harmful magic would not prevail even to mock the officers who captured the accused. But I think that Peter’s firm trust in God was of more help to him here than that supposed privilege.
[margin: Ananias, addendum to book 4, On the Nature of Demons]
What then? Sprenger himself reports, and we have reported it too, that even on the very pyre a witch condemned by the judge’s sentence inflicted leprosy on the executioner by her breath alone, although she herself was not leprous. And when I was living in Paris thirty years ago, common rumor said that a famous magician, whom I often saw, named Master Gonin, when he had been condemned to the noose for various crimes, so mocked the judges that they saw, in place of him, the mule of the first president hanging from the gallows. I assert nothing; but I often heard this report spread abroad. Certainly that man survived the trial.
Ananias more prudently restricts this privilege to those judges who are worthy of the name, who keep God before their eyes and perform their office rightly and properly. For those whom greed blinds, whom ambition drags, whom cruelty or desire for revenge drives, and who, led by curiosity, devise many things wrongly, he says are often so attacked and assailed by the demon that at times they do not escape death. This seems very plausible to me, and fitting to divine providence and justice. Yet I do not think any charter of a special privilege exists even with respect to these. Therefore I judge that judges’ piety, firmness of faith, and zeal for justice very often obtain this from God. Because these are lacking in some judges, God strips even them of this special shield and exposes them to harm.
There is also this: the demons themselves not only do not take it badly that these vilest slaves of theirs are handed over to the flames, but frequently almost put them into the judges’ hands. Why then would a demon harm a judge when he has desired that the accused be condemned and killed? From where then, you ask, did this opinion arise? These harmful acts are of two kinds. Some do not have a natural power of harming; those are the kind they use more often. Others have a physical and lethal power; God does not permit the demon to suggest such things to witches against judges, who are the vicars of God. Or, if he does permit him to suggest such things, nevertheless he makes the witches offer other things instead, or use the natural things improperly, and so they become ineffective.
[margin: cross-reference to book 5, section 7, letter D; Grillandus, question 6, number 19]
When they have often experienced this, they confess that they cannot harm judges, whom they could harm if God did not impede them or restrain his concurrence with the harmful things. Seek more in book 5, section 7, letter D.