Demonologia

by J. S. Forsyth

On another occasion, during the time he was preaching to a very numerous congregation, who were listening to him, a temptation of vain glory invaded him, and he heard a voice within him saying, see, how all the people do attend unto your words. He was just going to leave off preaching to mortify this temptation, but perceiving it was the Devil who had addressed him, for the purpose of interrupting his sermon, he turned about his head to the tempter, and thus coolly spoke to him—As I did not begin this sermon for thee, so neither will I end it for thee, and so went on preaching as before. He was always very sickly, and not only rejoiced that he was so himself, but he judged it fit that all monks ought to be so: for which reason he built Claraval, and all his other monasteries, in low damp places.

Bernard laboured hard to bring all his monks to an uninterrupted attention to their devotions; and having one day, as he was riding, been told by a peasant, “that he found that to be an easy thing;” he promised him the mule he rode upon, if he would but say the Lord’s prayer without any distraction of thought. The peasant began the prayer, but before he got half through it, he confessed that “it came into his mind, whether with the mule he was to have the saddle and bridle also.”

Being at Pavia, a woman possessed of a devil was brought before him; but before Bernard had time to utter a word to the woman, the devil cried out, “do you think that such an onion and leek carrier as this, is able to throw me out of possession?” Upon which Bernard ordered the woman to be carried to St. Sirus’ church, in which, though Sirus had previously dispossessed all that had ever come before him, he would not do it at this time, that Bernard might have the honour of it himself. The devil, however, set them both at defiance, and in a scoffing manner told them, that neither little Siry nor little Barny should turn him out. But the devil was mistaken for once in his life; little Barny, as he styled him, soon served an ejectment upon him. To another woman in the same city, on whom the devil had lain in a very dishonest manner, he gave a stick, with which she so belaboured him, that he never troubled her any more.

After Bernard had persuaded the kings of England and France to submit to the Pope; but not being able to prevail upon the Duke of Aquitaine, he went one day to him with the sacrament in his hand, when the Duke threw himself down at his feet; on which Bernard gave him a lusty kick, and bade him rise and acknowledge the true Pope. The Duke rose immediately, and being thus kicked into it, made his submission, and acknowledged the Vicegerent of Heaven.

The seventh order of monks is the Cælestine, instituted by Petrus Moronus, who having afterwards become Pope, took the name of Cælestine. This poor monk was persuaded by Cardinal Cagestan, who took the name of Boniface the 8th, to abdicate the Roman chair, that he might spend his whole time in devotion. But his successor, Boniface, fearing that were he at liberty in his monastery, it might come into his head to return to the pontifical chair, kept him a close prisoner as long as he lived.

The eighth order of monks is the Williamite, called also the order of Montes Virginis, and of Montis Oliveti, instituted by one William, a noble Italian, which at one time possessed 47 monasteries. There were Hermits who were likewise called Williamites, from William, Duke of Aquitaine, but they were amalgamated with the mendicant order of the monks of St. Austin.

The ninth order was the Sylvestern. There was also another instituted by the nobles of Milan, called the Humiliate, who having quarrelled with Cardinal Borromeus, Archbishop of Milan, dissolved the order and seized all their revenues, which were immense.

All the preceding orders, besides the Carthusians, were all under the Benedictine rule, whose monks were both the oldest and richest pertaining to the Roman church, in which the monastic rules are four in number—namely, the rule of St. Bazil, St. Austin, and St. Benedict.

The order of monks under St. Austin’s rule, as it was called, were the canons regular, the Premonstratenses; the Dominicans; the Hieronomites, in various shapes; the Servites; the Jesuits; the Crucigeri; the Boni Jesu; the Trinitarians; the Eremites of St. Augustin; the Theatines; the Pautestæ; the military orders of St. John of Jerusalem, of St. James of Compostella, of the Teutonick order, of St. Lazarus, and of St. Mauritius.

The Dominican order, of which only we shall here allude, is the third under the rule of St. Austin, was instituted about the beginning of the 13th century, and is both the first mendicant order and the first order that had a solemn confirmation from the Pope. They are very numerous, and have still many convents in Spain and Portugal.