The consideration of sex must be held, as I said. For if the other things are equal, the revelations of men deserve more faith. The reason is that this sex, being weaker, very often takes natural or demonic suggestions as divine. It also fashions many dreams for itself which it believes to be true, according to that proverb: “The old woman dreams what she wishes.” It abounds in very sharp and vehement passions, and therefore it thinks that what was born from passion proceeded from truth.
Women are also of a more moist and viscous nature. The moist is easily moved and receives various figures, but with more difficulty and more slowly ceases from motion. Therefore women imagine more quickly, while men nourish imaginations less pertinaciously. Since women have less strength in reason, and therefore also less prudence, it is easier for demonic suggestions to deceive them by a false and apparent likeness.
In their morals, besides lasciviousness, luxury, and avarice, which I noted from Apollonius, one must chiefly consider whether they are wandering, talkative, accusatory, greedy for praise, or diseased in the brain; and whether they thrust themselves into teaching or preaching in churches, or into the administration of the sacraments, without legitimate permission from their superiors, contrary to the doctrine of the Apostle. For women of this kind do not merely deceive themselves, but in the end are accustomed to drag even learned men headlong if they are too credulous toward them. Tertullian, the most learned man of his time, is witness. When he trusted the visions of little women, as in the matter of the quantity and color of the soul, he forgot the things he had written most learnedly and truly against these very women, and slipped into the most absurd errors.
[margin: Apollonius on the Montanist women; Tertullian, On the Soul, chapter 6, and related works on last things]
But our age has supplied a more illustrious example of this in Peru. I shall write it down in the words of Father Joseph de Acosta:
There was in this kingdom of Peru a man highly esteemed for that time, learned, a professor of theology, and likewise long held to be Catholic and pious, and almost a miracle of this world. He was so bound by familiarity with a certain little woman, who boasted that she was taught by an angel certain great mysteries and was sometimes rapt outside herself, or pretended to be rapt, as once another Phitumene or Maximilla of Montanus, that he often consulted her about the highest questions of theology. In everything he held her as an oracle, and proclaimed her full of great revelations and very dear to God, though she was otherwise sordid enough and endowed with very little sense, except for devising lies.
Therefore, whether she was seized by the Devil, which is easier to believe, when she suffered an ecstasy of this kind, or whether she cunningly feigned that story, as some prudent men judged, that theologian, because he heard great and marvelous things about himself from the little woman, and conceived that much greater things would come, willingly bound himself as disciple to her, whose spiritual father he was acting as.
What more? The man was led so far that he tried to perform miracles and persuaded himself that they were being done for him, although not even the slightest trace of a miracle existed. Because of these things, and because he had received from that prophetess some propositions alien from the sense of the Catholic Church, he was seized by the most holy judges of the Inquisition, while this whole kingdom was astonished. There, for almost five years, he was heard, endured, examined, and finally revealed to be the proudest and most insane of all men.
For since he most stubbornly asserted that an angel had been divinely given to him, from whom he learned whatever he wished, and then that he had obtained the highest familiarity and immediate colloquy with God himself, he was carried into such trifles that no one could persuade himself that they could be said except by a man wholly moved out of his mind. Yet he was of such sound sense, so far as the brain is concerned, that mine is not sounder.
Therefore he seriously affirmed that he would be both king and supreme pontiff, with the Apostolic See transferred to these kingdoms; and that sanctity had been granted to him above all the angels and heavenly choirs, and above all the apostles. He even said that the hypostatic union had been offered to him by God, but had not been admitted by him; that he was given as redeemer of the world as to efficacy, as he himself used to say, whereas Christ had been so only as to sufficiency. He said that the whole ecclesiastical state was to be abolished, and that he would issue other laws, easy and open, according to which the celibacy of clerics would be removed, a multitude of wives would be conceded, and the necessity of confession would be excluded.
He affirmed these and other things with such great contention that he held us astonished, because a man thinking such things did not go mad. Finally, after his deeds had been unfolded, and more than 110 propositions, heretical or alien from the sound doctrine of the Church, had been condemned, we were ordered, as is the custom of that sacred tribunal, to dispute with the man, if perhaps we could recall him to mind and faith. We came together with him at Quito, before the bishop of Quito and three others.
When he was brought in, the man defended his most lost cause with such freedom and fluency that even to this day I am astonished how far human pride can go. He professed that his doctrine could not be shown except by divine Scripture and miracles, because it was above all human reason. He said that by testimonies of Scripture he had proved it far more openly and effectively than Paul had proved that Jesus Christ was the true Messiah. He said that he had performed many miracles, and those so great that the resurrection of Christ was not greater. For he said that he had most truly been dead and had risen again, and that this had been shown most evidently.
He brought forth Scriptures from memory, since he had no book and had even been deprived of the Breviary: from the Prophets, from the Apocalypse, from the Psalms, and from other places, so many and so long that even his memory was a marvel. But he adapted them to his fictions and allegorized them so that anyone would either laugh or weep. Lastly, if it pleased us to deal with miracles, he said he would willingly display them at once. The man said these things in such a way that he seemed either to think us mad, or to be mad himself.
For he boasted that by revelation it had become known to him that the most serene Don John of Austria had been defeated by the Turks in the naval battle, and that the kingdom of Spain was already almost lost by the most unconquered Philip, and that a council was being held at Rome to consider deposing Gregory and substituting another. He said that he told us these things because, since they were known to us by certain messengers, we should know that they had become known to him only by divine means. And although they were all so false that they could not be more false, they were nevertheless asserted by him as if most known to us.
Finally, since we had made no progress by disputing for two days, and he had been brought with the rest to the public spectacle, as is customarily done in Spain, he kept looking into heaven, waiting for fire to come from heaven upon the inquisitors and upon all of us who were proceeding against him, as the Devil had promised him. But no fire seized us from on high; rather, flame took that king, pontiff, redeemer, and lawgiver, and reduced him to ashes.
Thus far Father Joseph. Behold the fruit of incautious conversation with little women under pretext of confessions, and of too much readiness in believing. First came things that pertained to his own praise; soon things pertaining to others and to the public state of the Church; finally things pertaining to the mysteries of faith and doctrine of morals. Credulity born from hidden pride and self-love produced heresy, and a certain most vain affectation of divinity, with incredible blindness of mind. Thus a most worthless little woman deceived a man famous for learning and wisdom.
[margin: Joseph de Acosta, On the Last Times, book 2, on Francisco de la Cruz and the Peruvian Inquisition; Don John of Austria, Philip II, and Gregory XIII in Del Rio’s narrative; Pedro de Ribadeneyra, Life of Ignatius, book 5, chapter 10, on Magdalena de la Cruz]
Thus also Magdalena de la Cruz imposed on many at Cordoba, and not many years have passed in Belgium since, in one of the cities of Hainaut, a certain religious woman was believed to be possessed and was brought to the superior of the same order so that she might be exorcised. While the matter dragged on and she began to speak successively with different voices, one of them, thinner, pretended to be God and Christ our Lord, while another, coarser voice imitated the demon. This latter openly poured out many impious things; the former certain things that seemed to pertain to piety. Thus it was believed, by people by whom it least should have been believed, that now Jesus and now the Devil spoke in her.
The matter, full of danger and deceit, progressed so far that the little woman dared, with solemn rite, as if Christ were speaking through her, to consecrate the unbloody host, with the words of the canon pronounced; and, alas for grief, pious people, but either unlearned or incautious, received from this priestess, though not according to the order of Melchizedek, the blessings of unleavened bread consecrated by her, which ought rather to be called execrated, and, as if they were the true body of the Lord, with candles brought and set before them, placed them on the altar and venerated them.
Yet here there were two signs of imposture: both that she was possessed, and that she dared to usurp a priestly and male office. But, Lord, free us from similar things. We are human beings; we can be deceived.
Because of dangers of this kind and similar ones, Gerson adds:
This must especially be considered: how such little women converse with their confessors and instructors. If they devote themselves to continual conversations under the pretext now of frequent confession, now of a long narration of their visions, now of any other discussion, believe those who have experience, namely Augustine and lord Bonaventure: there is hardly another plague either more effective for harming or more incurable.
This admonition is worthy of golden letters. For how many falls of stars from heaven have come from this? How many who began in the spirit are consummated in the flesh?
Father Le Loyer adds another rule: more should be attributed to the revelations of virgins than of widows, and more to those of widows than of married women. I admit that this is true when the other things are equal, because a virgin is purer, and God is a lover of purity; therefore we read of more revelations of virgins, and a virgin thinks how she may please God, while a married woman’s heart is more distracted even than a widow’s heart. But if the sanctity is not equal, more should be believed to a holy married woman than to a lascivious widow; more to widows who truly are widows than to virgins who anxiously desire marriage, are wandering, or are not very recollected.
[margin: Ribadeneyra on Magdalena de la Cruz; Hainaut possession narrative; Gerson on confessors and visionary women; Le Loyer, On Specters, book 4, penultimate chapter]