Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/791

Rh air rather than in aspersions and adjurations and benedictiones locorum.

Essentially the same method is to be pursued in freeing stables and cattle from demons, only other formulas of benediction are used, such as the benedictus stabuli, or pabuli, or jumentorum, or medicinæ pro animalibus, as the case may be. The first thing to be done is to bore holes in the four corners of the doorcase and to fill them with bits of Easter candles and other consecrated objects. Great efficacy is attributed to this procedure, "since doors have a symbolical significance, on account of which the Jews were commanded to smear the door-posts with the blood of the paschal lamb." Signs of the cross are also to be burned in the hair of the cattle between their horns and in the manes of horses while pronouncing in Latin the words "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." Curiously complicated knots and intricate twists and tangles in the hair of animals "are always signs of demoniac infestation." Some eleven years ago the cattle of a peasant in Dr. Bischofberger's parish had their jaws so cramped and contracted that they could hardly eat. The demoniac attack, although severest at feeding time, extended more or less over the whole day and night. If the cows succeeded in getting a little fodder into their mouths, they would keep it there almost motionless for half an hour or more, and only swallow just enough to keep them alive, and after four or five weeks they were all reduced to the verge of starvation. Our learned doctor of divinity then went through with the prescribed benedictions of kine, fodder, stall, etc., as above mentioned, and standing before each animal in turn said, "I command you, demon, in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that you desist from tormenting this creature of God and no longer disturb it in the exercise of its natural functions." Gradually they began to chew their food slowly, and no sooner was a cross burned in the tuft of hair between the horns than they fell to and ate with a ravenous appetite.

In another case with which he had to deal he found the devil more obstinate. A peasant woman had suffered from various ailments, and after giving birth to a child fell into a state of extreme nervous prostration. The præceptum probativum indicated demoniac infestation. By the use of consecrated oil and the proper benedictions the evil spirit was cast out of the woman, but went into the stable, where the cattle became strongly agitated. The bovine benedictions expelled it from the cattle, when it returned to the woman, from whom it passed into her husband and children, but, owing to their good health and bodily soundness, it could find no firm foothold there and was easily driven out, whereupon it went back to the woman and one of the cows. A