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 252 SELECTIONS FROM EIGHT BOOKS OF MIRACLES ing the sacrifice. The deacon, having received the tower ^ in which the mystery of the Lord's body was contained, started with it to the door, and when he entered the church to place it on the altar, it slipped from his hand and floated along in the air and thus came to the altar, and the deacon was never able to lay hands on it; and I believe this happened for no other reason than that he was defiled in his conscience. For it was often told that he had com- mitted adultery. It was granted only to one priest and three women, of whom my mother was one, to see this ; the rest did not see it. I was present, I confess, at this festival at the time, but I had not the merit to see this miracle. A Fly might be a Demon {Ihid. ch. 103) Pannichius, a priest of Poitou, when sitting at dinner with some friends he had invited, asked for a drink. When it was served, a very troublesome fly kept flying about the cup and tr3dng to soil it. The priest waved it off with his hand a number of times, but it would go off a little and then try to get back, and he per- ceived that it was a crafty device of the enemy. He changed the cup to his left hand and made a cross with his right; then he divided the liquor in the cup into four parts and lifted it up high and poured it on the ground. For it was very plain that it was a device of the enemy.^ Miracles in Gregory's Family {Book on the Miracles of St. Julian., Ch. 23, 24) At that time my father's brother Gallus was bishop of Auvergne, and I do not think I should fail to tell how he was aided in his youth by a miracle of the saint. Now I have often described the ruin king Theodoric brought upon Auvergne, when none of their property was left to either old or young except the bare land which 1 The vessel used for the purpose indicated here, the " monstrance," was in the shape of a tower. Cf. DuCange, art. Turris. 2 The identification of flies with demons occurs also on page 237. For a similar case of disinclination to let a fly settle on a wine cup see Frazer, The Golden Bough, 8, 291.