Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/397

 THE SPIRIT WORLD. 381 task. The numberless references to the character and attributes of demons in patristic literature show how large a space the sub- ject occupied in the thoughts of men and the confidence which was felt in the accuracy of knowledge concerning it.* Origen informs us that every man is surrounded by countless spirits eager to help or harm him. His virtues and good deeds are attributable to good angels ; his sins and crimes are the work of demons of pride and lust and wrath, and of all passions and vices. Powerful as these are, however, the human soul is still su- perior to them and can destroy their capacity for evil ; if a holy man baffles the spirit of lust who has tempted him, the conquered demon is cast into outer darkness or into the abyss, and loses his potency forever. This was received throughout the Middle Ages as orthodox doctrine. Gregory the Great tells us how the nun of a convent, walking in the garden, ate a lettuce-leaf without making the cautionary sign of the cross, and was immediately possessed of a demon. St.' Equitius tortured the spirit with his exorcisms till the unhappy imp exclaimed, " What have I done? I was sitting on the leaf and she ate me ; " but Equitius would listen to no ex- cuse and forced him to depart. Caesarius of Heisterbach relates a vast number of cases proving the perpetual interference of demons with human affairs, though he asserts as a well-known fact that Satan drew with him only one tenth of the hosts of heaven, and he proceeds to show, on the authority of Gregory the Great, that at the Day of Judgment the saved will be nine times as numerous as the devils, and of course the damned greatly more in excess ; yet at the death-bed of a monk of Hemmenrode fifteen thousand demons gathered together, and at that of a Benedictine abbess more assembled than there are leaves in the forest of Kottinhold. Thomas of Cantimpre, though less profuse in his illustrative ex- amples, is equally emphatic in showing that man is surrounded with evil spirits, who lose no opportunity to tempt, to seduce, to mislead, and to vex him. The blessed Eeichhelm, Abbot of Schongau, about 1270, had received from God the gift of being Instit. v. 22.— Testam. XII. Patriarch, i. 2-3.— Angustin. de Divin. Daemon, c. 3, 4, 5, 6 ; de Civ. Dei xv. 23, xxi. 10 ; Enarrat. in Psalm. 61, 63.— Isidor. His- palens. Lib. de Ord. Creatur. c. 8.
 * Minuc. Felic. loc. cit.— Tertull. Apol. adv. Gentes c. 22— Lactant. Divin.