St. Martin, like many other saints, possessed the wonderful power of bringing the dead to life. It was said he had dominion over devils and men, over the heavens and the elements, over diseases, and over all birds and beasts of the field.
So holy was St. Catherine, that, when she died, angels carried her body to Mount Sinai and buried it there, that her persecutors might not discover where she was laid. From her place of sepulture a sweet smell long continued to pervade the neighbourhood.
Although it would appear that all saints had many gifts and graces, certain of them possessed peculiar talents denied to others. St. Francis Xaverius, for instance, held the elements in his power. He was almost constantly at war with the devil and the flesh. To frighten away the one he kept ringing a bell by night, and to subdue the other he wore a hair shirt, lived on spare diet, and slept on hard boards or lay on the cold ground.
St. Nicholas was so uncommonly good a Catholic, that, even when an infant at the breast, he would not suck his mother's breast but once on the Wednesdays and Fridays. He, too, controlled the winds and waves, and sent the evil spirit away howling through the tempest.
St. Ambrose, of ever blessed memory, controlled sorcerers and necromancers, and made even the evil spirits obedient to him. On the day of the saint's death the devils flew away, crying that they were tormented by St. Ambrose.
St. Lucy raised her mother from the dead, and conquered demons.
St. Anastasia had power over Satan, and was for two months sustained by bread from heaven. And what shall we say of St. Thomas and many of the other saints who triumphed so gloriously in their day? St. Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, we are told, endured martyrdom twice—once in life, and again after death. To subdue the flesh, he scourged himself until the blood ran down his body. He kept long night vigils, and wore a hair shirt. In a vision he was told that he would illustrate the Church with his blood—a prediction that was fulfilled. It being proved that Henry II. was implicated in the foul deed, he had to do penance in public and private before being absolved. Many years afterwards, Henry VIII. commanded the dead saint to be summoned before him, and having condemned him as a traitor, directed his name to be erased from the catalogue of saints; forbade, under pain of death, his day to be celebrated, or his name to be mentioned as a saint; and ordered that his name should be blotted out of every book and calendar in which it appeared. The revengeful king also commanded that the saint's relics should be burned, and the ashes thereof scattered to the winds.
With the following old tale in verse we close our collected information on Demonology—a tale founded upon one of the most extraordinary events recorded in the annals of the human mind. Not a century and a half ago all the circumstances which form the romance, with the addition of many others nearly as ridiculous, were not only firmly believed by the peasants of a few Sclavonian villages, among whom they were supposed to have happened, but were received as truths, and seriously commented upon by learned divines and physicians of the surrounding provinces. A superstition somewhat similar appears to have prevailed in Bohemia and Silesia previous to the days of Dr. Henry More, who details several of the stories to which it gave rise, in his Philosophical Works:—
"I left the chaulkie Cliftes of olde Englònde,
And paced thro' many a Countrie faire to see,
Thorowe the Reaulme of Greece and Holie-Londe,
Untill I journeied into sadde Hongrìe.
I sawe olde Cecrops' Towne, and famous Rome;
But Davyd's holie place I liked beste:
I sawe dire Sightes before I found my Home,
But much the direst at the Towne of Peste.