Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 42.djvu/174

 162 in again. Here we have an example of the reconciliation and harmonious co-operation of religion and science, which so many earnest thinkers of to-day are rather futilely striving after.

The latest expression of the views of the Catholic Church on demoniacal possession is contained in a pamphlet just printed at Munich, in which the casting out of a devil in Wernding is fully and officially reported by the exorcist himself, Father Aurelian, and the case "critically elucidated for the people" by Richard Treufels. (Die Teufelsaustreibung in Wernding. Nach dem Berichte des P. Aurelian für das Volk kritisch beleuchtet von Richard Treufels. München: Schuh & Cie., 1892. Pp. 14. Treufels is doubtless a pseudonym chosen by the author to indicate that his feet are planted on the rock of faith.)

The report itself is substantially as follows: On Shrove Tuesday, February 10, 1891, a boy, ten years of age, named Michael Zilk, the eldest son of a miller living near Wernding, in Bavaria, began to act in a very strange manner. He could not say his prayers nor hear another person pray without falling into fits of rage. The same effect was produced by the sight of a crucifix or of holy water, and by passing near a sacred shrine or a church. A physician was consulted, but without avail; equally ineffective were the benedictions pronounced by Parson Seitz, of Dürrwangen; finally, recourse was had to the capuchins of Wernding, where Father Aurelian took the case in hand, and, after a long process of spiritual or magical diagnosis, consisting in the utterance of various forms of benediction and incantation, declared that all the symptoms indicated demoniacal possession. This opinion was indorsed by the Right Reverend Bishop Pancratius, of Augsburg, who saw the boy May 12, 1891, and, "in the full consciousness of his episcopal power and dignity," called upon the unclean spirit to come out of him, but the obstinate imp refused to obey. At length, after special permission was obtained from Bishop Leopold, of Eichstadt, to whose diocese Wernding belongs, the ceremony of exorcism was solemnly performed.

We need not here enter into a detailed description of the hocus-pocus, which began on the morning of July 13th, and ended with the expulsion of the demon or demons (for there seem to have been ten of them) on the evening of the next day. So great was the strength imparted to the boy by the indwelling devils that half a dozen men could hardly carry him into the presbytery of the cloister church, where the conjuration was to be performed in the presence of the parents and a few friars and devout laymen. The results, however, were wholly unsatisfactory, and in the afternoon the scene of the ceremony was transferred to the choir of the church; but even then no response was elicited, until Father Aurelian threatened to bring in the monstrance and compel the