§ 61. THE REVIVAL OF MONASTICISM. 817
the dying gave on returning for a moment to consciousness seem to have been generally accepted.1
The miraculous belonged to the monk's daily food. He was surrounded by spirits. Visions and revelations occurred by day and by night.2 Single devils and devils in bands were roaming about at all hours in the cloistral spaces, in the air and on foot, to deceive the unwary and to shake the faith of the vigilant. The most elaborate and respectable accounts of monks, so beset, are given by Peter the Venerable in his work on Miracles, by Caesar of Heisterbach, and Jaco bus de Voragine. Caesar's Dialogue of Miracles and Voragine's G-olden Legend are among the most entertaining story books ever written. They teem with legends which are accepted as true. They simply reflect the feeling of the age, which did not for a moment doubt the constant manifes tation of the supernatural, especially the pranks and mis demeanors of the evil one and his emissaries.
Peter the Venerable gives a graphic picture of how these restless foes pulled the bedclothes off from sleeping monks and, chuckling, carried them to a distance, how they impu dently stood by, making fun while the modest monastic attended to the necessities of nature,3 and how they threw the faithful to the ground, as at night they went about through convent precincts making uholy thefts of prayer."4
Peter tells a good story of a poor monk who suddenly saw before him an immense demon standing at his bedside, who with difficulty bore his weight with his wings. Two others
1 See Cfesar of Heisterbach, Dial., XI. 6,19, etc. ; pulsata est tabula defunctorum pro eo. Strange ed. II. 274, also Hodges, Fountains Abbey, p. 115.
2 Guido said of his brother St. Bernard, " One thing I know and am assured of by experience that many things have been revealed to him in prayer." Migne, 185, 262.
8 Eos sibi densiorie astitisse.
4 Prceterea quosdam nocturnis horis, aliis quiescentibus sancta orationum furta qucerentes et eadcm causa claustrum et ecclesiam peragrantes, multis aliquando terroribus appetebant ita ut in e.orum aliquos visibiliter, irruerent et ad terram verberando prosternerent. De miraculis, 1. 17 ; Migne, 189, 888.
318 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
appeared at once and exclaimed to the first, " What are you doing here ? " " I can do nothing," was the reply, " on account of the protection which is given by the cross and the holy water and the singing of psalms. I have labored all night and can do nothing." The two replied, "We have come from forcing a certain Gaufrid to commit adultery and the head of a monastery to fornicate with a boy, and you, idle rogue, do something, too, and cut off the foot of this monk which is hanging outside his bed." Seizing a pickaxe which was lying under the bed, the demon struck with all his might, but the monk with equal celerity drew in his foot and turned to the back side of the bed and so escaped the blow. Thereupon the demons took their departure.1 *Mt is fair to suppose that many of these experiences were mere fancies of the brain growing out of attacks of indigestion or of headache, which was a common malady of convents.2 */
The assaults of the devil were especially directed to induce the monk to abandon his sacred vow. Writing to a certain Helinand, Anselm mentions the four kinds of assault he was wont to make. The first was the assault through lust of the pleasures of the world, when the novice, having recently entered the convent, began to feel the monotony of its retired life. In the second, he pushed the question why the monk had chosen that form of life rather than the life of the parish priest. In the third, he pestered him with the question why he had not put off till late in life the assump tion of the vow, in the meantime having a good time, and yet in the end getting all the benefits and the reward of monkery. And last of all, the devil argued A\hy the monk had bound himself at all by a vow, seeing it was possible to serve God just as acceptably without a vow. Anselm an-
1 De mirac., I. 14 ; Migne, 189, 877.
2 C?esar of Heisterbach, Dial., IV. 30, VII. 24. See Kaufmann's ed., II. 87, note.