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38 resolved themselves into the creatures of a disordered imagination; the latter, not the former, being the work of the devil: those who believed in his direct visitation, not its supposed victims, were really under his influence. (cap. vii. p. 282 C.) For his success, Agobard explains, requires a receptivity on men's part, lack of faith or delight in vanity; and with these favourable conditions he can indeed lead them helplessly to destruction and death. Agobard gives elsewhere a remarkable illustration. (De grand. xiv. pp. 274 H sq.) A few years since, he says, ''a certain foolish story went abroad when there was a murrain of oxen: it was said that Grimoald, duke of Benevento, sent out men with powder to scatter over the fields and mountains, meadows and springs, forasmuch as he was enemy to the most Christian emperor Charles; by reason of which powder the oxen died. For this cause we have heard and seen many persons to be apprehended and certain slain.'' Agobard comments on the absurdity of the tale. He asks why only the oxen and no other animals suffered, and further how the murrain could extend over so large a tract of land, when if all the inhabitants of Benevento, men, women, and children, each with three wagons full of powder, had been employed, they could not possibly have sprinkled powder enough. But, what, he adds, ''was most strange, the prisoners themselves bare testimony against themselves, affirming that they had that powder, and had scattered it. Thus did the devil receive power against them by the secret but righteous judgement of God, and so greatly did he prevail that they themselves were made false witnesses unto their own death.''

But the influence of the devil, in Agobard's mouth, is actually little more than the conventional expression – for Agobard was before all things orthodox – for men's proclivity to unreason and faithlessness. Superstition