The foregoing have been but signs which indicated the future, and no matter how striking the form an interpretation was necessary. But there are a few cases recorded where a person is apparently given to see into the future and somehow is permitted to know what is going to occur, without any medium whatsoever, and furthermore is impelled to speak out what he knows. We find that a Roman senator and his wife enter the temple of Jupiter and as they do so a priest who has all the symptoms of demoniac possession, cries out, “Aquest mugier trae en el uientre cosa que destruya de rayz aqueste grand templo et menuzara todos los dios que en el estan.”[87] The event foretold did come to pass when the child referred to became a friend of the emperor and thereby succeeded in having the temple destroyed. Then is added the significant statement that this happened just 1000 years after Rome was founded.
The agent used to convey the message is usually a person, but it may be an animal. An ox tells his master of the future;[88] or even an idol in a heathen temple imparts the knowledge that the temple will stand only “fasta que parriesse uirgen”[89].—The temple fell when Christ was born.
CHAPTER VII
Visions
The two terms dream and vision seem to have been only vaguely differentiated in the period we are studying, just as even at the present time they are often used almost synonymously. In las Cantigas we find:
“ ... et log’ o meninno
se fillou ben a dormir
et uiú en uijon á Madre” (No. 53),
and
“et dormindo, uiù en uijon
Santa María con grand’az” (No. 68),
but in No. 336 the person certainly was not asleep, for:
“El aquest assí fazendo
e con o demo luitando,
non estand’ en un estado,
mais caend’e leuantando,
uiú en uijon a Reynna
dos cëos, et él chorando
lle disse....”
A similar confusion of the two words is characteristic of the other works of Alfonso X.