Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/410

 394 SORCERY AND OCCULT ARTS. critics, Simon Magus is the Petrine designation of St. Paul, the partisans of the latter were not behindhand in recounting the tri- umph of their leader over the older thaumaturgists, for when he wrought wonders at Ephesus and the Jewish conjurers were put to shame, then " many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together and burned them before all men ; and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver." * Still more convincing was the incident which occurred to Marcus Aurelius in the Marcomannic war when, in the territory of the Quadi, he was cut off from water, so that his army was perishing from thirst. Though he had persecuted the Christians, he had re- course to the intervention of Christ, when a sudden tempest sup- plied the Romans abundantly with water, while the lightning slew the Teutons and dispersed them, so that they were readily slaugh- tered. When, finally, the new faith and the old met in their death- grapple, Eusebius describes Constantine as preparing for the strug- gle by calling around him his most holy priests and marching under the shade of the sacred Labarum. Licinius on his side collected diviners and Egyptian prophets and magicians. They offered sac- rifices and endeavored to learn the result from their deities. Oracles everywhere promised victory ; the sacrificial auguries were favorable ; the interpreters» of dreams announced success. On the eve of the first battle Licinius assembled his chief captains in a sacred grove where there were many idols, and explained to them that this was to be the decisive test between the gods of their ancestors and the unknown deity of the barbarians — if they were vanquished it would show that their gods were dethroned. In the ensuing combat the cross bore down everything before it ; the enemy fled when it appeared, and Constantine seeing this sent the Labarum as an amulet of victory, wherever his troops were sore bestead, and at once the battle would be restored. Defeat only hardened the heart of Licinius, and again he had recourse to his magicians. Constantine, on the other hand, arranged an oratory in his camp, to which before battle he would retire to pray with the men of God, and then sail vino: forth would give the signal for Jo O o — Hippol. Refut. omn. Haeres. Lib. ti. — Acts xix. 19.
 * Tertull. Apol. 23, 40.— Constitt. Apostol. vi. 9.— Aruob. adv. Gentes n. 12.