§ 136. DEMONOLOGY AND THE DAKK AKTS. 883
"the o}d enemy of souls" — antiquus host-is. Sometimes re sort was had to sprinkling the room and all its furniture with holy water, — a sort of disinfecting process — and the imps would disappear.
De Voragine tells how St. Lupe, as he was praying one night, felt great thirst. He knew it was due to the devil and asked for water. When it was brought, he clapped a lid on the vessel, "shutting the devil up quick." The prisoner howled all night, unable to get out.1
Salimbene gives a droll case of a peasant into whom the devil entered, making him talk Latin. But the peasant tripped in his Latin so that " our lector laughed at his mistakes." The demon spoke up, " I can speak Latin well enough, but the tongue of this boor is so thick that I make sorry work wielding it."2 Luther's easy explanation of mice, fleas, and other pests as the devil's creations, is called up by the following statement : A certain Cistercian, Richalmus, of the thirteenth century, in a book on the devil's wiles, said, " It seems incredible but it is true, it is not fleas and lice which bite us but what we think is their bites are the pricks of demons. For those little insects do not live off our blood, but from perspiration, and we often feel such pricks when there are no fleas."3
These incidents may be brought to a close by the follow ing interesting conversation reported by Caesar of Heisterbach as having been carried on by two evil spirits who had pos sessed two women who got into a quarrel. " Oh, if we had only not gone over to Lucifer," said one, " and been cast out of heaven I " The other replied, " Hold your peace, your re pentance comes too late, you couldn't get back if you would." " If there were only a column of iron," answered the first, " though it were furnished with the sharpest knives and saws, I would be willing to climb up and down it till the last judg ment day, if I could only thereby make my way back to glory. "
1 Temple ed., V. 88.
2 Coulton, From St.. Francis, etc., p. 298.
3 Lib. revelationum de insidiis et versutiis dcemonum, quoted by Cruel, Deutsche Predict, p. 268.
884 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
These stories are records of what were believed to be real occurrences. The denizens of the lower world were every where present in visible and invisible form to vex and tor ment saint and sinner in body and soul. No voice is heard protesting against the belief. It is refreshing, however, to have at least one case of scepticism. Thus Vincent de Beauvais tells of a woman who assured her priest that she and other women were under the influence of witchcraft and had one night succeeded in getting into the priest's bed chamber through the keyhole. After in vain trying to persuade her that she was laboring under a delusion, the priest locked the door and putting the key into his pocket, gave her a good drubbing with a stick, exclaiming, " Get out through the keyhole now, if you can."
II. The Theological Statement. — The wildest popular con ceptions of the agency of evil spirits are confirmed by the theological definitions of Peter the Lombard, Albertus Mag nus, Bonaventura, Thomas Aquinas, and other Schoolmen. According to the mediaeval theology, the devil is at the head of a realm of demons who are divided into prelacies and hierarchies like the good angels.
The region into which the devil and his angels were cast down was the tenebrous air. There, in the pits of darkness, he and his followers are preserved until the day of final judgment. Their full degree of torment will not be meted out to them till then. In the meantime, they are permitted to trouble and torment men.1 For this view such passages as Matt. 8 : 29 and Luke 8 : 31 are quoted.
Albertus Magnus, who, of all the Schoolmen, might speak on such a subject with precision, fixed the exact location of the aery realm. Following the philosophers, as he said, he defined three zones in the superterrestrial spaces : the higher, lower, and the middle zone.2 The higher zone is light and tranquil, constituted of thin air and very hot. Its light is great in proportion to the propinquity of that sphere to the
1 Dcemones in hoc aere caliginoso sunt ad nostrum exercitium. Th. Aq., Summa, I. 64, 4. So also P. Lomb., II. 7, 6.
2 Zonas, interstitia. In sent., II. 6, 5, Borgnet's ed., XXVII. 132.