Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/55

Rh been done, but they were not present at its performance. It was this credulous habit of mind that irritated Agobard. He disdained to allege scientific reasons to overthrow what was in its nature so unreasonable. He could only fall back on the same broad religious principles which had guided him in his repudiation of images. There he says that our relation to God must be direct and without the intervention of sensible objects: (capp. ix., xiv. pp. 273 D, 274 F.) here, conversely, that God's relation to nature is immediate and least of all conditioned by the artifices of men. He acknowledges that (capp. i., xiv. pp. 271 D, E, 274 F.) almost every one, in these regions, noble and simple, citizen and countryman, old and young, believes that storms are under human control, and attributes the work of God to man. (cap. xi. p. 273 H.) He spares no words in condemning this infidelity which believes partly in God, partly that God's words are of men; hopes partly in God, partly in men. (cap. xv. p. 274 H.)

With equal vigour he opposed superstitions which tended to the profit of the church. To his straightforward vision they were the more dangerous, since they degraded the church with the people, instead of maintaining it pure, as a light shining in darkness. (Ep. ad Barth. episc. Narbon. de quorundam illusione signorum, i. p. 281 D, E.) There was an epidemic at a place, so he writes to bishop Bartholomew of Narbonne, the causes of which were traced to the activity of evil spirits. The terrified people crowded to the church and lavished offerings of silver and gold and cattle, whatever they possessed, at the feet of saint Firmin. The bishop in perplexity wrote to Agobard for advice: his answer was a warning against the faithlessness implied in trusting to the power of the saint to ward off visitations which proceed from the hand of God. The devil no doubt is at work, but not in the way these people supposed: his action is far less physical than mental: he is seen to prevail over some men, not so much for the purpose of striking them down as of deluding them. It is difficult to overestimate the change which the acceptance of Agobard's view would have caused in the popular beliefs of the middle ages. The continual visitations of evil spirits of which the history is full would then have