Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/185

Rh that numbers of delicate questions obtruded themselves. Do they never leave us? Do they know beforehand whether we shall be saved or lost? Had Christ a guardian angel? Will the Antichrist have one? Can the angel speak to our soul without visions? Do the angels lead us to good as devils lead us to evil?—Leave these subtle speculations to divines, concludes Gerson; let the faithful keep to simple and wholesome worship.

A hundred years after Gerson wrote, the Reformation attacked the cult of the saints, and nowhere in the whole contested area did it meet with less resistance. In strong contrast with the belief in witchcraft and demonology, which fully maintained their ground in Protestant countries, both among the clergy and the laity, the saints fell without a blow being struck in their defence. This was possibly due to the fact that nearly everything connected with the saints had become caput mortuum. Piety had depleted itself in the image, the legend, the office. All its contents had been so completely expressed that mystic awe had evaporated. The cult of the saints was no longer rooted in the domain of the unimaginable. In the case of demonology, these roots remained as terribly strong as ever.

When, therefore, Catholic Reform had to re-establish the cult of the saints, its first task was to prune it; to cut down the whole luxuriant growth of medieval imagination and establish severer discipline, so as to prevent a reflorescence.