St. Bernard begins by curing the woman's mind, by giving her a stick, which she was to place by her side in the bed. This staff sufficed for the first impression; but to dispose her for a complete cure, he exorcises the demon, and then anathematizes him, with all the éclat he possibly could: the bishops are assembled in the cathedral, the people repair thither in crowds; the circumstance is recounted in pompous terms; the evil spirit is threatened; the tapers are extinguished—all of them striking ceremonies: the woman is moved by them, and her imagination is restored to a healthy tone.
Jerome Cardan[[327]] relates two singular examples of the power of imagination in this way; he had them from Francis Pico de Mirandola. "I know," says the latter, "a priest, seventy-five years of age, who lived with a pretended woman, whom he called Hermeline, with whom he slept, conversed, and conducted in the streets as if she had been his wife. He alone saw her, or thought he saw her, so that he was looked upon as a man who had lost his senses. This priest was named Benedict Beïna. He had been arrested by the Inquisition, and punished for his crimes; for he owned that in the sacrifice of the mass he did not pronounce the sacramental words, that he had given the consecrated wafer to women to make use of in sorcery, and that he had sucked the blood of children. He avowed all this while undergoing the question.
Another, named Pineto, held converse with a demon, whom he kept as his wife, and with whom he had intercourse for more than forty years. This man was still living in the time of Pico de Mirandola.
Devotion and spirituality, when too contracted and carried to excess, have also their derangements of imagination. Persons so affected often believe they see, hear, and feel, what passes only in their brain, and which takes all its reality from their prejudices and self-love. This is less mistrusted, because the object of it is holy and pious; but error and excess, even in matters of devotion, are subject to very great inconveniences, and it is very important to undeceive all those who give way to this kind of mental derangement.
For instance, we have seen persons eminent for their devotion, who believed they saw the Holy Virgin, St. Joseph, the Saviour, and their guardian angel, who spoke to them, conversed with them, touched the wounds of the Lord, and tasted the blood which flowed from his side and his wounds. Others thought they were in company with the Holy Virgin and the Infant Jesus, who spoke to them and conversed with them; in idea, however, and without reality.
In order to cure the two ecclesiastics of whom we have spoken, gentler and perhaps more efficacious means might have been made use of than those employed by the tribunal of the Inquisition. Every day hypochondriacs, or maniacs, with fevered imaginations, diseased brains, or with the viscera too much heated, are cured by simple and natural remedies, either by cooling the blood, and creating a diversion in the humors thereof, or by striking the imagination through some new device, or by giving so much exercise of body and mind to those who are afflicted with such maladies of the brain that they may have something else to do or to think of, than to nourish such fancies, and strengthen them by reflections daily recurring, and having always the same end and object.
Footnotes:
[[322]] Gen. vi. 1, 2.
[[323]] Athenagorus and Clem. Alex. lib. iii. & v. Strom. & lib. ii. Pedagog.
[[324]] Joseph. Antiq. lib. i. c. 4.