I said that the cause of permission is the vengeance of sin, and this indeed is the most frequent cause. Sometimes God punishes the sins of others in this way, but this is rarer. Thus, because of blessed Eleutherius’s excessive joy, the Devil again invaded the disciple whom he had left. Thus the Devil killed an infant because the parent had willingly listened to someone slandering a bishop. And not rarely children are atrociously punished by the demon because their parents have cursed them undeservedly. This happens both to take vengeance on the parents themselves and to provide examples. Caesarius supplies examples, and from him you have one concerning a husband, by whose unjust curse God was moved and permitted his wife to be afflicted by a demon.
[margin: Caesarius, Miracles; Genesis 3; Daniel 4; Psalm 77:49; Surius, May 25]
More frequently, and indeed for the most part, God punishes through the demon various sins belonging to the people themselves. I think it will be useful to many to enumerate certain ones here, so that those whom the foulness of sin does not move may be moved by the atrocity of the punishments.
The first sin, then, is pride, arising as contumacy against those to whom obedience is owed by right. Because of this the demons were thrown down from heaven, Adam was driven from Paradise, Nebuchadnezzar was so maddened that he believed himself a beast, and the Egyptians were punished by the sending of evil angels. Because of this parents were punished, those about whom John the Archpriest writes as follows in the life of St. Zenobius of Florence:
A certain pagan woman, noble and very rich, when her husband had died, had two surviving sons in this city. She had brought them up very delicately, and when they had already reached perfect age, on a certain day, being turned to anger, they beat their own mother savagely with many blows. The mother, impatiently abhorring this crime, cursed their bodies with dreadful imprecations, fell upon her knees, struck the earth with her hands, and with great groaning called upon Erinys and the other infernal plagues to madness against her sons. Demons heard her from the deep darkness; they attacked the young men and drove them into madness. Straightway, with doglike bites, they gnawed their own limbs. Servants ran together, a great cry arose, some brought ropes and others chains. The young men were bound, but they could not be restrained from their madness.
[margin: Augustine, City of God, book 22, chapter 8; the Louvain edition of new sermons of Augustine]
Another event that occurred not long afterward is narrated by St. Augustine, both the disease and the cure at the relics of St. Stephen being reported by an eyewitness, concerning ten brothers and sisters. So that you may see that those who curse, like parents, do not go unpunished, it is best to transcribe it from Paul’s own little book, which he offered to St. Augustine. Paul therefore says:
When we were still staying in our native Caesarea of Cappadocia, our brother, older by birth than we, afflicted our common mother with grave and intolerable wrongs, to such an extent that he did not hesitate even to lay hands on her. We, all her children gathered together, endured it patiently, so that we did not even say a word to our brother on behalf of our mother, asking why he was doing this. But she, driven by the goads of womanly grief, resolved to punish her careless son by cursing him. When, after cockcrow, she hastened to the sacred baptismal font to call God’s anger down upon the son I have mentioned, someone, in the likeness of our uncle, as it is understood, a demon, met her and first asked where she was going. She answered that she was going to curse her son because of intolerable insult. Then that enemy, because he could easily find a place in the heart of a raging woman, persuaded her to curse all of them. Inflamed by these viperous counsels, she rolled herself before the sacred font, seized it, and, with loosened hair and uncovered breasts, chiefly asked this from God: that, exiles from their homeland and wandering through foreign lands, they might terrify the whole human race by their example.
[margin: Alexander of Naples; Hebrew and Greek lexical note on the wording of Proverbs 30:17; Genesis 49:10 and Proverbs 30:17]
Soon effective vengeance followed the mother’s prayers. That same brother, older in age and guilt, was at once seized by such great trembling of the limbs as your holiness saw in me three days ago. Then, preserving the order in which we had been born, within one year the same punishment seized us all. But when our mother saw that her curses had reached such efficacy, she could not bear the consciousness of her impiety and the reproach of human beings any longer. She tightened a noose around her throat and ended a sorrowful life by a more sorrowful end. We all went out, unable to bear our shame, and, leaving our common homeland, were scattered in different directions.
The account of their liberation follows afterward, after a long pilgrimage and visits to holy places. I could add a third example from the writings of Alexander of Naples. In any case the prophecy of the Wise Man will always be fulfilled: “The eye that mocks his father and despises the bearing of his mother, let the ravens of the torrents pluck it out and the young eagles eat it.” Literally, the meaning is: let them be hanged on the gallows. By anagogy, both after death and even in this life, let them become portions and prey of demons.
[margin: 1 Kings 16:14; Lisiard in the life of St. Arnulf; Tobit 6-7; Mark 16:9; 1 Corinthians 5 and 7; Jerome, Life of Hilarion]
The second sin is hatred of neighbor, or envy. For as charity is the measurer of God, preparing a dwelling for the Holy Spirit, so the contrary vice builds a house and invites and introduces the Devil. Alexander proves this by the danger of a certain religious man, but Saul gives us firmer testimony: for this reason an evil spirit invaded him. Concerning hatred and desire for revenge, Bishop Lisiard supplies four examples in the life of St. Arnulf.
The third is carnal lust, and also conjugal intemperance. Because of this Asmodeus was permitted to kill Sarah’s seven bridegrooms; because of this seven demons occupied Mary Magdalene; because of this Paul delivered the incestuous Corinthian to Satan. And because curiosity about adornment and outward dissoluteness was directed toward this sin, the girl in St. Jerome was exposed to a demon sent by harmful magic. Therefore we see that more is permitted to harmful magic against lustful people, and against the marital act, which most people seek with an affection that is not right and perform with a shame and manner that is not fitting, than against other sinners.
Therefore God was seen to punish a certain girl’s curious comparison of her own body with a statue of Venus by demonic possession, as blessed Prosper narrates. To a clean heart the promise of God is clear vision; to an unclean heart the demon’s sight and company are owed. The demon takes great delight in human obscenity. All witches are slaves of Venus, and no virgin remains among them, just as neither does celibacy remain among Calvinists and other haters of celibacy among the heretics. From this it appears that there is a great kinship among magic, heresy, and lust.
[margin: Prosper, On the Contemplative Life; Jerome and related patristic authorities in the margin]
When the sacrilegious violation of a vow, and a scandalous way of life according to one’s state, are added to the filth of lust, it is less surprising. Yet I shall give an example. Though it is very well known to many in almost recent memory, it cannot be recalled without horror. I conceal the name of the place. In the county of Flanders there is a priory. Three people were dwelling there as monks in name only, gluttons and keepers of concubines. Each had his own woman, and there was no shame. Together in feasting and lust, on a certain day after a drinking bout had been prolonged late into the night, one of them, who was less criminal, said, “Enough has been given to Bacchus and the belly. Thanks be to God, at least.” “Rather,” another more impudent man interrupted, “I give thanks, and think thanks should be given, to the evil demon, whom we serve.” When the table had been left amid laughter, each rushed to bed with his harlot.
They had scarcely lain down when, behold, into the dining room, through a door opening of itself, came a demon in the form of a huge, black, and savage hunter, and with him two little cooks. He walked about, looked around the beds with a grim face, and then said in a dreadful voice, “Where is the one who gave thanks to me? Here I am; I shall repay him.” He dragged the terrified man from the bed, almost breathing out his soul from fear, and ordered him to be fixed on a spit and roasted well over a bright fire. They obeyed promptly; the miserable man was roasted and most plainly died, while the others almost died from fear, and the smell of the roasted body filled the chamber. At last the hunter turned to the survivors, trembling under the bedcovers and scarcely alive: “You too,” he said, “deserve equal punishment, and the will is not lacking to me. I am forbidden by a greater power. I leave unwillingly and warn you: come to your senses, or worse things remain.”
[margin: Surius, life of St. Stanislaus, May 8]
The apparitions disappeared. Yet the others did not recover their senses or speech until broad daylight. When they rose, they found their companion dead and, so that you may not think it an empty vision, fully roasted. I do not know whether in several centuries anything more useful for example has happened. I know the place and the order, but I wrap both in silence.
The fourth cause that presents itself is unjust and cruel affliction or killing of righteous men. For this reason Ariobaldus, duke of the Lombards, was so gravely punished in Jonas’s life of St. Bertulph. Boleslaus, the impious king, because of the murder of St. Stanislaus, was struck by anathema, made insane, and devoured by his own dogs. Geila, wife of the duke of Franconia, had ordered St. Kilian killed. The matter was hidden, but God revealed the author in this way:
[margin: Surius, July 8; Serarius’s commentary on the life of Gregory of Agrigentum; Cyril, life of Daniel Stylites; Surius, December]
One of those who had slain the holy men with the sword was suddenly seized by a demon and began to cry with a great voice: “Kilian, you persecute me bitterly. I am consumed by fire; I cannot hide what I have done. I see the sword stained with your blood hanging over me.” Shouting such things for a long time and tearing himself with his own teeth, he passed from this present life to eternal punishments. Of such people it is written, “With double destruction you will destroy them, Lord.” Another man, also conscious of the killing of the saints, turned to rage and sought himself with the sword; his entrails poured out, and through the torments of the present time he passed to eternal torments. What sense was yours, unhappy Geila, when you saw such things and were increased in torments? You raged more. Not long afterward that beast of whom we speak was seized by torments and cried with whatever voice she could: “I am justly tortured, because I applied torturers to the holy men. I am rightly racked, because I prepared tortures for them. You press me sharply, Kilian; Colman, you kindle fire; Totnan, you supply fuel. Let it be enough for you to have conquered; you avenge your injuries too much. You are called Kilian from the chalice, but you pour for me a cup too bitter.” Having said these things, she was tortured miserably, so that she could scarcely be held by many. At last, with great torment, she went to the torments prepared for the Devil.
So far the author of the martyrdom of St. Kilian. To this also belongs the slanderous accusation of the same kind of people, as is clear from the woman who slandered St. Gregory of Agrigentum, as is read in the history of his life in Metaphrastes and Surius, and from another woman whom Cyril narrates in the life of St. Daniel Stylites, who falsely defamed the holy man. Shortly afterward the same author narrates there about a man, a woman, and children seized by a demon because of the father’s slander. Cursing against saints also belongs here, as against Malachy, according to St. Bernard in his life.
The fifth sin is the opposition of acknowledged truth, as in the Apostle and in the canons, and also apostasy from the faith, which St. Cyprian proved by the example of a certain woman.
[margin: 2 Thessalonians 2:10; canon law; Cyprian, On the Lapsed; 1 Timothy 1:20]
The sixth, which in these times, alas, is very frequent, is blasphemy. Because of it St. Paul permitted Alexander and Hymenaeus to be handed over for punishment. Thomas Waldensis, an eyewitness, narrates what happened in his presence around the year 1384 in this way:
I report a history which I, present there, saw with the eyes of my flesh in the cathedral church of St. Paul in London. The venerable archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel, son and brother of earls of blessed memory, was sitting, in place of judgment, on the episcopal seat, with Alexander, then bishop of the church of Norwich, and others assisting him. He was putting forward certain words and questions about faith in the Eucharist to a certain tailor from the region of Worcester, who had been caught in heresy. Since the man could not be bent in any way and wished to call the most holy host nothing other than blessed bread, he was finally ordered to pay reverence to the host. The blasphemer answered: “Truly,” he said, “a spider is worthier of reverence.” Immediately, from the high summit of the roof, an enormous spider, horrible to see, descended and came directly by its thread to the mouth of the blasphemer. And while the tailor was speaking, the spider tried diligently to enter through his polluted lips. The illustrious prince Thomas, duke of Oxford and then chancellor of the kingdom, stood by and saw the prodigy. The archbishop at once rose with the others and explained to all the people gathered there what the avenging hand of the Lord was doing against the blasphemer.
[margin: Thomas Waldensis against Wycliffe on the Sacrament; Sophronius, Spiritual Meadow, chapter 47; Nicephorus, History, book 18, chapter 33; Bredenbach]
Is it not likely that a demon in the form of a spider beset that wretched man? Sophronius records a notable punishment for blasphemy against the Mother of God in these words:
In Heliopolis of Phoenicia there was a certain man named Gaianus, who in the theater blasphemed the holy Mother of God and offered the people a spectacle of blasphemy. The Mother of God appeared to him: “Do not, I beg you, do not wound your own soul in this way.” But he blasphemed her again, worse than before. Therefore she appeared to him a third time and repeated the same thing. Since he did not correct himself, but added still more to his blasphemies, she appeared to him at midday as he slept, said nothing, and marked his hands and feet with her finger. When he awoke, he found himself cut off from hands and feet. Thus the unhappy man, lying like a useless trunk, confessed to everyone the reason and manner for which he had suffered this, namely that he had been mercifully tormented because of blasphemies.
[margin: Nider, Formicarius, book 5]
If those whom the blessed themselves punish in person are so treated, must we not believe that similar blasphemers are handed over by God to evil spirits for torment because of the same sin? Nicephorus and Bredenbach narrate that similar things happened at another time at Constantinople and at Neomagus.
The seventh sin, no less frequent, is execration or evil imprecation, by which someone conditionally devotes himself to the demon. What I shall add next teaches that this is not usually void. Johann Caesarius writes in book 11 that a little woman who devoted herself to the demon was lifted up on high by the demon and never appeared anywhere again. Johannes Nider relates the following:
At the time when I was enrolled as a student of sacred theology at the University of Cologne, a certain girl of fifteen or sixteen years, sufficiently well composed in manners according to the world, was being raised outside her parents’ house, in the home of a certain kinswoman. When she accidentally broke a certain rather worthless earthen pot belonging to that kinswoman, the kinswoman was filled with anger at the negligence of the slip and against the guilty girl. The girl took this so much the harder because the vessel was very cheap. Therefore, moved to anger at the hour of taking food, she did not wish to eat, nor to present herself at table because of anger. Her kinswoman said, “You must eat.” But the girl said within herself, as she later reported to me and to the exorcist, words of this kind, muttering: “If I must eat, let it be in the name of the Devil.” So she approached the table, neglected the blessing of the table, which she knew well, and at the first morsel felt, as she thought, that a fly had been carried into her mouth. Since she could not cast it out by any skill, she swallowed it, and immediately she was possessed. Yet she always retained good use of reason, although she was often vexed enough by the demon.
When she was led back to her parents’ house with great sadness, and for a very long time no one was found who could free her, at last a certain brother of our order, now master Gotfridus Schlussel, professor of sacred theology, taking pity on the calamity of the parents and the girl, entered upon her exorcism with this prior agreement: if she were freed, no earthly thing would be given to the exorcist, but the girl, in her accustomed chastity, if she freely wished, would serve God thereafter and not in marriage. The aforementioned father therefore said Mass, the possessed girl offered the customary oblation, she was present at the same Mass throughout, and she was seen to be vexed in no way. When the office had been finished, after exorcism had been performed for a sufficiently long time, and the limbs of the girl’s body had been almost bruised by the exertion, the demon departed; and thus the girl afterward served the Lord in chastity.
You see here imprecation, and the blessing of the table omitted out of anger and contempt; you see the punishment; you see the liberation, with the offering of Mass, the purpose of virginity, and exorcism intervening. Let heretics laugh; do not despise safe and salutary things.
[margin: German legal disputation on witches, chapter on the malice of the Devil]
Shortly before, the same Nider had related another case concerning that notable judge of harmful-magicians, Peter, of whom we have spoken more than once:
After he had resigned his office and returned to the city of Bern, and was dwelling there, on a certain day he returned to the castle of Blankenburg, where his kinsman had been substituted in his office. In that same castle Peter wished to conduct certain business among people known to him. Then one witch and four men sharing her same wickedness, in a secret place, turned with all their strength the instruments of their art so that they might gravely injure or kill Peter by poison-workings; but these dealings of fraud were hidden from him. When night therefore came, Peter, blessing himself with the sign of the cross, went to bed. But he had resolved to rise during the night to write certain necessary letters, so that he might be able to leave that place early. When he awoke in the dead of night, it seemed to him unexpectedly that day was present. Deceived by the false light and angry with himself because, as he thought, he had neglected the night, and not arming himself as he should have done in the customary way, he put on his clothes, went down high steps toward the place where he had his writing tablets, and found the place locked. Burning with greater anger at this, and with murmuring, he climbed again toward his bed by the steps he had descended, uttering a single curse from indignation, by a very brief word, as if he were saying, “In the name of the Devil.” And behold, immediately in the densest darkness Peter was hurled headlong down the aforesaid steps, suffering so gravely that a servant who was sleeping below the stove in an inconvenient place was awakened. Going out to see what was happening, and having lit a lamp, he found his master Peter alone on the ground, deprived of the use of reason, bruised throughout all his members, and pouring much blood from his body.
He adds that after some time, by the confession of one of the guilty persons, it was learned that four harmful-magicians, with one witch, had thrown Peter down the steps in this way. Note here also how harmful the neglect of the sign of the cross was to Peter. Three stories, very worthy of reading, were inserted by a certain German jurist into his disputation on witches. I shall transcribe them in just as many words, lest if I use my own words I should seem to have represented anything with insufficient good faith.
Elizabeth, daughter of the king of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, was married to Joachim I, elector of Brandenburg. In order that she might have sustenance when the queen died, her husband assigned to her the town of Spandau, at the confluence of the Spree and Havel. While she was still living, a certain soldier traveling through the March, being detained by sickness, lay down in an inn and handed over a purse full of money to the hostess to keep safe. After several days, when he recovered, he asked for the purse. The greedy woman, because she found it hard to lose such a sum of money, deliberated with her husband whether she ought to return it. They formed a plan that the woman should deny the deposit. Therefore, when the soldier asked again for his property, she confidently denied that she had received anything. She pretended to be amazed at the impudence of the soldier who dared to demand something when he had given nothing to be kept. The soldier, moved by indignation at the matter, in turn accused the hostess of treachery. Therefore the husband, as though defending his wife, drove the soldier out of the house. The soldier, before the doors and irritated by the hostess’s crime, drew his sword as though about to attack the man and struck the door. The host called upon the neighbors for help and complained that his house was being attacked. The officers ran up and led the soldier away to prison because he had committed public violence.
After several days, the senate of the town sent the account of the deed elsewhere and asked that the sentence be written out. It was established that houses had been attacked publicly; therefore sentence was brought that the soldier should be punished with the last penalty. When the day of judgment was now near, the Devil came to the captive in prison, told him what sentence the judges would pronounce, and promised that he would free him from this danger, on condition that he give himself to the Devil. The soldier steadfastly answered that he would rather die, although innocent. When the Devil had exaggerated the danger with many words and still had not bent the soldier’s mind, at last he promised liberation without any condition. “When you come into court,” he said, “say that you are unskilled in forensic business and need an advocate. I shall stand by you, covered with a blue cap and adorned with feathers. Ask, therefore, that they order me to plead your case.” The soldier, who thought he would do this without impiety, said that he would use this counsel.
On the next day he was led into court, and the advocate covered with a blue cap was also present. When the accuser demanded that the soldier be punished by capital punishment because of public violence, the soldier answered that he was unskilled in forensic business and asked that this advocate of his be allowed to speak on his behalf. The judges granted it. There the Devil argued learnedly from law that a person from whom the quarrel and the beginning of the tumult had not arisen should not be punished with capital punishment. He said that the soldier had been violently driven out and robbed by the hostess. He ordered the purse to be sought and showed the place. When the host vehemently denied it, adding even dreadful imprecations that the Devil should seize and destroy him if he had done it, and when he repeated this imprecation with an invocation of the Devil several times, then the advocate, now abandoning forensic disputation, attacked the host, seized him by the thighs, and carried him with a crash through the windows and through the middle of the forum, while everyone shuddered; nor was the host’s body ever found afterward.
Here you see greed as the cause of imprecations and injustice, and how God avenged it through his executioner. Things not unlike these are narrated by Cantipratanus:
When three drinking-companions had grown warm in a tavern, a conversation arose about the immortality of the soul and the punishments of hell. One of them, more impudent, said that he considered all this to be trifles and inventions of priests, and the others jokingly applauded him. Meanwhile there came in a certain man, great in stature and dark in body, and sitting down he asked, “What are these conversations? Why the laughter?” The insolent man tells him and adds that, if anyone were bidding, he would sell his soul for no great price, and would even contribute the money to the common drinking fund. “And you,” said the stranger, “at what price do you value it for me?” Without delay they agreed on the price. This man devoted his soul to the buyer; the buyer paid. They drank vigorously with the money in hand. Then toward night the buyer said, “It is time for each one to go to his own. But tell me this by your law: if someone has bought a horse bound by a halter, does he not have the right to lead the horse away with the halter?” And with the word, he seized the seller, trembling before everyone’s eyes, lifted him into the air, and dragged him with himself to hell, to see what he had refused to believe. This dealer was indeed a merchant of souls, of whom the king of Sodom was a figure when he said, “Give me the souls; take the rest for yourself.”
With similar terror, but with better success, a Spanish soldier named Captain Bravo, whom I often saw here in Belgium twenty-two years ago, when I was still serving in the world, was warned by God. He was overly given to dice, and prone in gambling to cast dire curses against himself as well as against others. One day, when unlucky numbers leapt up for him while he sought gain in play, boiling with anger, he prayed most dreadful things upon his own head; and suddenly, in the presence of many who were there, he was lifted by an invisible hand up to the ceiling and, after a time, was set down on the floor with a face more like that of a dead man than a living one. He would have been happy if, just as he retained that deathly pallor during the whole remaining time of his life, so too he had cast off his greed for gaming.
The jurist in Silesia continues:
A certain nobleman, when he had invited guests and the hour of the banquet was already near, and the preparation made, but he was disappointed in his hope because the guests excused themselves and did not appear, burst out in anger into these words: “Let all the demons come, then, if no human being can be with me.” Having said this, he went out of the house into the church, where the pastor of the church was preaching, and listened for some time so that he might digest his anger. While he remained in the church, horsemen, huge and black, came into the courtyard of the house and ordered the house-servant to call his master and tell him that guests were present. The terrified servant went to the church and told these things to his master, who, not knowing what counsel to take, consulted the pastor. The pastor broke off the sermon and gave this advice: that the whole household should leave the house. When this was being done and the male and female servants were hurrying away, they happened to forget an infant lying in a cradle and sleeping, and did not take him with them.
The demons began to feast and shout, to look out through the windows in the forms of bears, wolves, cats, and human beings, and to display cups filled with wine, roasts, and fish. When the neighbors, the nobleman, the pastor, and others saw these things, the father said, “Ah, where is my infant?” He had scarcely said this when one of the demons carried his infant to the window in his arms, as if about to show him to the parents. The nobleman, wholly terrified and anxious about the child’s safety, asked a faithful servant, “Tell me, I beg you, what should I do?” The servant said, “Master, I shall commend and entrust my life to my God, and in the name of the Lord I shall enter, and by the help and favor of God I shall see how to take away the infant.” “Good,” said the nobleman; “may God be with you, help you, and strengthen your courage.”
The servant, having received a blessing from the pastor and the others, entered. Before the room in which the demons were gathered, he fell on his knees, commended himself to God, and opened the door with this intention. He saw demons of horrible appearance sitting, standing, walking about, crawling, and running together against him with one rush and shouting, “Hui, hui! What is this to you?” Sweating, but nevertheless divinely strengthened, he addressed the demon who was carrying the infant: “Give the infant to me.” “By no means,” the demon answered. “This infant is already mine. Tell your master to come and receive the infant.” The servant replied: “I am now performing the duty of my vocation, in which God has placed me, and I know that whatever I do in this duty is pleasing to God. Therefore, by reason of my office, and by the help, name, and power of Jesus Christ, I take the infant away from you and restore him to his father.” Then he himself seized the infant and embraced him in his arms. The demons answered nothing except, while shouting, “Hui, rogue! Hui, rogue! Leave the infant, leave him, or we shall tear you to pieces.” But he, not caring for the demonic threats, went away unharmed, and returned the unharmed infant to his noble father. Afterward, when several days had passed, the demons vanished, so that the nobleman could move again into the house with his whole family.
You see what punishments the father paid for an ill-considered word; you see that the demon’s power was closed off from an innocent little boy. For when the writer says that the servant received a blessing from the pastor and the others, this means, indiscriminately, from the priest and clerics. I suspect this to be the invention of a Lutheran man, confusing the distinction of orders.
The third narration follows:
In Saxony, a wealthy maiden promised marriage to a handsome young man of poorer fortune. He, foreseeing what would happen, answered that she was very rich, and because of the fickleness of her sex would scarcely keep faith. She, on the contrary, began to curse herself with these dreadful words: “If I marry another than you, then may the Devil snatch me away at that wedding.” What happened? After some interval she changed her mind, married another, and spurned the first bridegroom, who once and again reminded her of the promise and the dreadful imprecation. But she, disregarding all this, celebrated the wedding with the other bridegroom, leaving the former one behind. On the wedding day itself, while relatives, friends, and guests were joyful, the bride, her conscience awake, became unusually sad. At last two devils, under the form of two horsemen, came to the wedding house. They were received and brought to the table. After the tables were removed, a dance began, and the bride was joined to one of them, as to a stranger, for the sake of honor. When he had danced with her twice, he finally lifted her from the sight of parents and friends, with utmost groaning and lamentation, through the door and up into the air. On the next day her parents and sad friends sought the bride, to bury her if she had perhaps fallen; but behold, the same companions came to them, carrying back the clothing and gold, with these words added: “Power was granted us by God not over these things, but over the bride.”
[margin: Caesarius, life of St. Engelbert of Cologne, book 2, chapter 14, in Surius for November; Polydore Vergil, English History, book 8]
Thus she was handed over, body and soul, to the Devil, because she violated the promise of marriage and despised the imprecation added to it. Caesarius gives another example concerning someone who cursed a martyr, called madness upon himself, was immediately seized by fury, and the next day was consumed in so horrible a way. To this also should be referred a case concerning Earl Godwin, who, when by perjury he had called death upon himself, was suddenly choked by a morsel of bread.
[margin: Bredenbach, book 6, collation, chapter 25; Munster in the Cosmography]
The eighth sin is usually usury. Witches confess that they can inflict no harmful magic on those who devote themselves to alms. On the contrary, stories are told of virgins who lent salt at usury and were cruelly vexed by demons sent through harmful magic. The first point must be understood about those who give alms to women whom they do not know to be witches. For those who know that they are witches and nevertheless give to them, Bredenbach thinks, can be harmed by harmful-magicians. It is no wonder if God hates such people as patrons of witches and therefore permits them to be harmed.
The ninth I count as hardness and lack of mercy toward the poor. To omit that bishop of Mainz, who, as I think, was killed by demons in the form of mice because in a time of famine he had dishonored the poor by calling them mice and had decided that they should be persecuted, I shall add a more recent case from Peter Bizarus:
[margin: marginal comment that increasing obstinacy increases punishment; marginal note that the demons appeared in the form of cattle]
In Swabia, bordering on Bavaria and Franconia, there was a certain nobleman, very rich and powerful, named Rickbergerus, whose yearly revenues extended beyond thirty thousand gold coins. Although he was considered worthy of no common praise in the other actions of his life, nevertheless he suffered from unspeakable greed. Thus it happened that every day he studied to accumulate wealth by right and wrong, and to drag everything to himself. When he foresaw the dearness of grain that followed the next year in that region, he filled his barns with wheat and crops and began selling them at a great price, so that the natives, compelled to buy food from him because of his inexhaustible greed, either perished outright from hunger or, if they wished to be fed and supported, were reduced to great poverty and want, because he sold grain and the rest of that kind so dearly to them.
Among countless others, a certain poor man, burdened with children, came to him with six talers and begged him to take the money and give him a certain measure of wheat, promising that he would shortly pay in good faith the remaining part of the money owed to him. But he, with proud face and angry eyes, ordered him to leave at once and to bring with him the rest of the money if he wanted grain. Thus the wretched and sorrowful man went away, cursing him. A few days later, when Rickbergerus had sent one of his servants into the granary to inspect it in the usual way, he received from him on his return the report that three black oxen were inside, devouring the grain. But the one who reported this, falling sick in bed the next day, migrated from life not long afterward. The same thing happened to a certain son-in-law whom his father-in-law had sent there to see whether the matter stood as the first man had reported, for he also saw oxen and horses. When Rickbergerus wished to become more certain about this event, he himself decided to go into that place. He went to the door of the granary and, through certain cracks, saw the whole granary full of various and innumerable herds, all of which were consuming the crops. He was so terrified by this spectacle that he immediately became furious and insane, did many mad things, and at last had to be bound with chains. This horrible case brought great wonder, both in that province and especially in the imperial court, which had known him before as a very prudent man.
[margin: reference to two magicians in the same theme of begging alms and vengeance]
So Bizarus writes, narrating things memorable in Europe that he himself had noted after the year 1560. In this threefold vision, God, increasing the punishment according to the measure of the fault, patiently waited and strove to call him back to repentance.
It is noted by a certain writer that witches, on whom Satan has imposed the necessity of always harming someone, when enemies are lacking, beg alms. If someone with means, not knowing they are witches, refuses them, he is in great danger. Thus at Poitiers in 1567 two magicians confessed that one day, dirty and needy, they begged for alms before the doors of a very wealthy head of household. When it was refused, they cast a spell, and all the servants in the house died in raging madness.
The tenth sin is mockery of the sacred mysteries; to the same head belongs abuse and contempt of the ceremonies and sacraments of the Catholic Church. God avenges this daily, and the heretics continue to despise it. Take a few examples concerning individual cases. Concerning the Dutchman who imitated the sacrifice of the Mass in mockery in the year 1574 and was cruelly punished, Bredenbach should be read. It is established that Novatus was vexed by the evil one because he had not received chrism or exorcisms in baptism.
[margin: Bredenbach, book 1, collation, chapter 39; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book 6, chapter 33; Victor of Vita, On the Vandal Persecution, book 1; Optatus, Against Parmenian, book 2; Cyprian, On the Lapsed; Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs, chapter 87; Surius, November 8, life of St. Godefrid, book 3, chapter 12]
Victor of Vita writes that a certain Arian named Proculus, who made shirts and drawers for himself from the cloths of the altar, devoured his own tongue in pieces, doubtless possessed, and was consumed by a most shameful death. According to Optatus, dogs attacked the Donatists who poured out the Eucharist upon those to whom they had thrown it. St. Cyprian is our authority that many in his own time were filled with unclean spirits because of unworthy reception of the Eucharist, and I remember reading two striking examples in Gregory of Tours and in the life of St. Godefrid, bishop of Amiens. It will suffice to transcribe the example from Gregory of Tours:
When Epachius the priest had rashly presumed to perform things of which he was unworthy, he fell flat by divine judgment and died. For when he had gone to the church to celebrate the vigil of the Lord’s nativity, at every moment of the hours he went out from the temple of God and into his house, where he drained cups full of wine from foaming goblets, so that many affirmed they had seen him drinking even after cockcrow that very night. But because he was of senatorial family and there was no one more noble in worldly dignity in that village of Ricomagus, he was asked to celebrate the solemnities of Mass. The wretched man, soaked with wine, did not hesitate to approach what anyone who is fasting can hardly handle without fear when conscience terrifies him. When the sacred words had been completed, and the sacrament of the Lord’s body had been broken, and he himself had received it and distributed it to others to eat, he suddenly uttered a voice like a horse’s neigh, fell to the ground, and with foam from his mouth cast out the sacred particle of the mystery itself, which he had not been able to crush with his teeth. He was carried from the church in the hands of his own people. Nor was he thereafter without the sickness of epilepsy; through each lunar course he always endured its increases and decreases, because the unhappy man in no way abstained from excessive drinking of wine.
[margin: Bredenbach, Livonian War, page 27; life of St. Hugh of Lincoln, chapter 23, in Surius, tome 6]
The horse-neigh shows that this epileptic was an energumen; and deservedly, because, like horse and mule, he did not discern the body of the Lord. Bredenbach records a similar punishment for violating the fast, but in the kind of food, in these words:
A few years ago, after the people of Dorpat had gone over to Lutheran doctrine, on the Friday immediately before the solemn feast of Easter, when the sermon of the Lutheran ecclesiastic had ended and the citizens were returning from the church sacred to the Virgin Mother of God, one man invited another citizen and familiar friend to dinner, asked him to accompany him home, and said he had an excellent Westphalian ham prepared. The other, not much offended, answered that he had a splendid boiled chicken which he wished to bring as his contribution. When they sat down at table, one of them, wishing to eat a certain bone of the chicken, almost swallowed it without noticing; since he could neither pass it down nor extract it, he was choked that very day. On the next day, Easter, the other was seized by an evil spirit, and not long afterward, driven by madness and fury, he breathed out his soul together with the demon.
So Bredenbach writes in the Livonian War, page 27.
[margin: Peter of Cluny, Miracles, book 2; life of St. Remaclus, book 3, in Surius for September]
To this belongs contempt of excommunication. When St. Hugh, bishop of Lincoln, had excommunicated certain stubborn people, and they did not make much of it, they suddenly vanished. Another soldier was invaded by the Devil the following night because of the same cause, and his soul was suddenly torn out. Others also who were excommunicated by him were strangled by the Devil. Read about them in the life written by his contemporary.
The eleventh sin is the plundering and stripping of temples and sacred things. Peter of Cluny, after he had recounted many things of this kind that had been openly and frequently committed by a certain count of Macon, commemorates that man’s unhappy and horror-filled departure from life in this way, for the terror and correction of our heretics:
On a solemn day, when he was sitting in his own palace at Macon, and a multitude of both soldiers and people of different rank stood around him, suddenly an unknown man, sitting on a horse, entered through the door of the palace, while all saw and wondered, rode all the way up to the count, and said that he wished to speak with him. Telling him to rise and follow him, he displayed a sign which he had commanded. The count, constrained by invisible power and no longer able to resist, rose and proceeded to the door of the house. There, finding a horse prepared and being ordered by the rider to mount, he climbed on. That man seized the reins of the horse on which he was sitting and immediately began to carry him through the air in swift course while all looked on. When the whole city, moved by his immense cry and miserable wailing, had run together for such an unseen spectacle, they gazed at him in amazement as he ran through the air as long as they could follow him with the natural sharpness of their eyes. Since they heard him for a long time shouting, “Help me, citizens, help me,” and yet could not help him, at last he was withdrawn from human sight and became, as he had deserved, an eternal companion of demons.
So that man paid for his plundering and sacrileges both in this life and in the next. A certain steward named Orgerius afterward imitated this man’s ways. Because he had not committed as grave an offense, he was severely warned in this life, so that, if he were wise, he might avoid punishment for the future life. The same venerable abbot adds that when Orgerius tried to open the gate through which that miserable count had been carried off, a gate that had always afterward remained blocked, he was invisibly snatched by the Devil and lifted up a great space into the air before the eyes of those present; but immediately released, he fell, his body was gravely bruised, and his arm was broken by the sudden fall. Two other examples exist in book 3 of the life of St. Remaclus, which may be read in Surius for September.
I shall add a fifth example of the punishment which soldiers suffer after death when they had not kept their hands from the plundering of churches, although they had died in grace. The same author declares this by a certain vision, which, in order to show that it had been established by completely certain faith, he accompanied with many details that I judged should be omitted. He could have placed it in the preceding book, in the chapter on the apparitions of the dead; yet it will not be inconveniently recounted here, since here also various punishments are narrated for those who, like that count of Macon, were sacrilegious. Peter the Venerable therefore introduces Peter Engelbert, now a monk and turned from secular to spiritual warfare, speaking in this way:
[margin: Peter of Cluny, Miracles, book 1, chapter 28]
At the time when Alfonso, king of Aragon, held the kingdom of the greater Alfonso, king of Spain, already dead, it happened that against certain men who were resisting him in the region called Castile, he stirred up an army and commanded by edict that from each house of his kingdom single foot soldiers or horsemen should be sent there. I, compelled by the edict, sent to the army one of the mercenaries serving me for wages, named Sancho. A few days passed, and when all who had been in that expedition returned to their own homes, he also returned home. Not long afterward, in the human way, he was seized by sickness, and after not struggling long with the disease, he died.
Almost four months after his departure from life, while I was at Stella in my house during the winter season, lying in bed by the fire, suddenly that same Sancho appeared to me while I was still awake. Sitting by the fire and turning the coals this way and that, as though to warm himself or make the fire brighter, he showed himself to me much more clearly. He was naked and without any clothing, except for a small, cheap covering, with which he veiled the more shameful parts of the body. When I saw him, I said, “Who are you?” “I am,” he said, “Sancho, your servant.” “What are you doing here?” I asked. “I am going,” he said, “to Castile, and a great army is accompanying my journey, so that where we sinned, there also we may pay the penalties owed to our sins.” “And why,” I asked, “have you turned aside here?” “I have hope of pardon,” he said, “and if you are willing to show mercy, you will be able to obtain swifter rest for me.” “How?” I asked. “When I was recently present in the expedition you know, invited by hostile license, I invaded a church with certain companions, plundered the things found inside, and, on my return, carried away priestly vestments besides. For this in particular I am afflicted, subjected to dreadful punishments, and I beg help from you, as from my lord, with as many prayers as I can. You will be able to assist me if you make an effort to help me with spiritual benefits. I also ask that you entreat my lady, your wife, in my name and acting in my place, not now to delay paying eight solidi which she owed me by mercenary right for my service. What she would have paid for the needs of the flesh if I were still alive, let her, by giving it to the poor, bestow on my soul, which is much more in need of it.”
[margin: reference to the same Peter Engelbert vision and the punishment of sacrilegious soldiers]
Since I was now much emboldened by this speech of his, I asked, “What has happened to our fellow citizen Peter Deioca, recently deceased? I beg you, if you know anything about him, tell me.” “The works of mercy,” he said, “which he often performed, but especially during the past famine, have joined him to the rest of the blessed and have made him a sharer of eternal life.” When he answered me so promptly and easily, I added, “And what of Bernitius, another citizen of ours, who died a little while ago, as you know? Is anything known to you?” “Hell possesses him,” he said, “because, being appointed to settle the disputes of this town and decide them by judgment, he often judged unjustly, seduced by gifts or favor; and because he did not fear cruelly to take away from a certain poor widow a piece of bacon, such as it was, the support of her life for the time.”
Then, inflamed with desire to seek greater things, I added, “Could anything be known to you about our king Alfonso, who died a few years ago?” At this a certain other man, sitting on the window nearest my head, began to say: “Do not ask this man what he does not know, because his recent arrival in our regions has not yet allowed him to know it. But to me, who from the day of my death have had five years of residence with spirits of this kind, it could not be unknown what you ask concerning the king.” Astonished at the sound of a new voice and wishing to see the author of the voice, I turned my eyes toward the window and, helped by the moonlight, which then clearly illumined the whole space of the house, I saw a man sitting in the lower ledge of the window. Since I saw him in the same clothing in which I had seen the other, I asked, “And who are you?” “I am,” he said, “a companion of the one whom you see, and I am going to Castile with him and many others.” “And do you know anything about King Alfonso, as you were saying?” “I know,” he said, “where he was, but truly I do not know where he is now. For after he had been tormented for some time with sharp tortures among the guilty, he was afterward taken from them by the monks of Cluny. From then on I am wholly ignorant what was done with him.”
Having said these things, he turned his words to his companion, who was sitting by the fire: “Rise, and let us now begin to complete the journey undertaken. Behold, the army of companions following us has filled all the roads, both inside and outside the town, and since they have passed us very swiftly, they urge us to follow them in haste.” At this voice Sancho rose and, with a tearful voice, repeating what he had earlier requested, said: “I beg you, master, do not forget me. I also beg you to urge my lady, your wife, so that what she owed to my body she may restore to my wretched soul.” Having said these things, both immediately disappeared. I at once woke my wife, who was sleeping in bed beside me, with a loud voice, and, before telling her what I had seen or heard, asked whether she owed anything to Sancho, our common mercenary, as wages. She answered, which I had never heard from anyone except the dead man, that she still owed him eight solidi. I could no longer doubt in any way, since both the dead man’s report and the woman’s confirmation gave faith to the matter. In the morning I received those eight solidi from my wife, added from my own what seemed fitting, distributed them to the poor for the salvation of the one who had appeared, and procured for him, by my request and effort, the helps of holy Masses from priests, for the fuller remission of his sins.
In this vision, so clear, so certain, so worthy of trust, we are taught that the works of the dead follow them. These soldiers, because they had died after confession and had erased the fault by the sacrament of penance, suffered expiatory punishments for a time for the penalty owed to sin. The other man, because he had not confessed and had neglected to abolish the fault of his crime, was handed over to eternal torments. Catholics have the choice of both sorts; heretics, who reject confession and deny purgatory, have only the latter left to them, which they acknowledge and admit.
To this head is also reduced mockery of holy men, which God is not accustomed to leave unpunished. Something of this kind is written in the very ancient life of St. Carilephus:
A certain woman named Gunda, whom the secret supplanter had deceived, wished to mock the Holy Spirit. Having taken on male clothing, she tried to enter the monastery of the most blessed Carilephus, in order to test whether his prophecy was true, which had foretold that permission to enter that place would never be given to the female sex. But by the just judgment of God, before she had even seen the closed entrances of the monastery, she was seized by the Devil and fell backward, and was so shamefully vexed by him that I am ashamed to say it. He drove her head between her thighs, and thus it came about that the face with which she had tried to impress false kisses on the sacred thresholds was forced to kiss the unclean parts of her own body; and the sex which she had wished to conceal under male clothing was displayed openly to all who wished to see it. This event caused women thereafter not to dare approach that dwelling.
Would that even the little women of our time, when this example is told to them, would be restrained in their boldness. Sometimes God permits such things also because the observance of feast days has been rashly violated, as happened to the man who performed servile work on the feast of St. Philastrius, according to blessed Rampertus of Brescia in the treatise on the translation of St. Philastrius.
The twelfth cause is supplied by the pusillanimity and despair of many people. Oppressed by grief, they either do not ask help from God or distrust that they can be rescued from evils; for this reason many also submit themselves to the demon as to an assisting force. Excessive curiosity also supplies a cause, when we shamelessly seek to know what it is not at all fitting to investigate. The first point is clear from the history of Theophilus the steward, which Eutychianus, patriarch of New Rome and an eyewitness, left to us. I touched on it briefly elsewhere; here I shall pursue it at more length in the words of the author:
When Justinian was ruling, a certain Theophilus was steward of the church in the town of Adana in Cilicia. He was pleasing to many and was judged worthy of the episcopal office, which nevertheless he constantly refused. When he was falsely accused by rivals and removed from the office of steward, he fell into such weakness of mind and such impiety that, following the exhortation of a magician like Judas, he denied Christ and his mother Mary by a shameful written bond, delivered himself wholly to the rule of Satan, who had shown himself to him, and obtained the office. What would the wretched man do here, conscious to himself of so foul a crime? Wholly disturbed in mind, so that he could scarcely remain anywhere, and thinking that, with God angry at him, he was the demon’s slave, he changed his plan at last and decided to flee to the most holy Mother of God. He sought the temple sacred to her, where night and day, with much fasting joined to them, he tirelessly poured out his prayers and supplications and began to give a great sign of true penitence.
The text then gives Theophilus’s prayer, very pious and truly belonging to a penitent, humble, and contrite spirit. What more? It adds:
[margin: Surius, tome 3, July; Rampertus of Brescia, On the Translation of St. Philastrius]
Theophilus remained in this temple of Mary for forty days, making no end of praying, weeping, and lamenting, so great was the fervor of his penitence. At last, by the help of the sacred Virgin, he received back, wonderful to tell, his written bond signed to the Devil, by which he had abjured Christianity, and returned to the grace of God.
This history, which is salutary to all who by the just judgment of God fall into the hands of the malignant enemy or of his members, harmful-magicians, and which offers a certain and effective remedy, is found in the Greeks in Metaphrastes, and among the Latins in Peter Damian and Sigebert. Later, concerning curiosity, the matter is handed down by St. Augustine and inserted in Gratian’s Decree.
Sometimes these things are permitted by God because of venial faults, especially in those whose holiness and grace are to be made known to everyone. This happened to Abbot Moses in Cassian because of slight anger; to a certain religious woman in St. Gregory because of hasty and light gluttony; and to a certain religious man, because of tepidity and distraction in prayer, in the writer of the life of St. Bernard. Their healing increased the fame of St. Bernard, St. Equitius, and St. Macarius, through whom God freed them.
[margin: Metaphrastes in Surius for February, tome 1; Peter Damian, sermon 1 on the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary; Sigebert in the Chronicle; Gratian, Decree, canon 26, question 5, from Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, book 2, chapters 22-23]