De Civ. Dei, lib. xxi. cap. 6: "Demons are allured to dwell with men by means of creatures which not they, but God, has gifted with sweetness diverse after their kind; not as brutes are attracted by food, but as spirits by signs which are congruous to each one's pleasure—by various kinds of stones, herbs, trees, animals, charms, and rites. But in order that they should be so allured by men, they first seduce them with astutest cunning, either by breathing into their hearts a secret poison, or even by appearing in the deceitful guise of friendship, and make a few their scholars and the teachers of many. Neither would it be possible to learn, unless they first taught it, by what name they are invited, by what compelled; whence magic arts and their adepts have taken rise.... And their works are exceedingly numerous, which, the more marvellous we acknowledge them to be, the more cautiously we must avoid."
S. Isidore (Etym., lib. viii. cap. 9) says of magicians: "These trouble the elements, disturb men's minds, and, without any poison-draught, by the mere force of their charm, destroy life."
Venerable Bede, in the VIIth century (in Luc., lib. iii. cap. 8), says of the commerce of incubi and succubi, which Janus tells us was an invention of the Dominicans, that "it is a matter as really true as it looks like a lie, and is notoriously attested by numbers." He tells us that a priest of a neighboring parish related to him that he had to exorcise a woman so beset, and to heal the ulcers which the devil had left upon her. These were all cured by blest salt, except the largest, which was not healed until the priest was told what to do by his patient. "If," said she, "you mix the oil consecrated for the sick with the same medicine (i.e. the salt), and so anoint me, I shall be at once restored to health; for I whilom saw in the spirit, in a certain far-off city, a girl affected with the same calamity cured in this way by the priest." He did as she suggested, and at once the ulcer consented to receive the remedy, which it had before rejected. Hincmar (De Divort. Loth. et Tetb., p. 654) says that certain women "a Dusiis in specie virorum quorum amore ardebant concubitum pertulisse inventa sunt"; and the context shows that he is not merely quoting S. Augustine, but bearing his own testimony; for he speaks of their exorcism. He proceeds to give an account of various kinds of witchery, with an unmistakable conviction of their reality, and clinches them with the wonderful story from the Life of S. Basil, by the pseudo-Amphilochius, in his time newly translated out of the Greek. It is the same story which Southey has turned to such good account in his All for Love; and certainly few mediæval legends surpass it in the realism of its diablerie. A young man obtains for his wife a girl, who is on the eve of taking the veil, by means of a charm got at the price of a compact written in his blood, surrendering his soul to the evil one. When the young man repents, and the devil insists on his bargain, S. Basil discomfits the fiend before the whole congregation, and wrings from him the fatal writing. Now, Hincmar was the leading prelate in the Gallic Church in the IXth century—that is to say, in the very church and the very century in which was almost certainly composed the "chapter" in which Janus supposes that all belief in witchcraft was condemned as heresy.
Ivo of Chartres, in the XIth century, one of the very authors whom, because they transcribe the "chapter," Janus appeals to as representatives of what he regards as the ancient tradition, speaks thus on the interpretation of Genesis vi. 2: "It is more likely that just men, under the appellation of angels or sons of God, sinned with women, than that angels, who are without flesh, could have condescended to that sin; although of certain demons who maltreat women many persons relate so many things that a determination one way or the other is not easy."[122]
When we come to the great scholastics of the XIIIth century, we find that where they have varied in aught from the teaching of their predecessors on the subject of magic, it was, on the whole, in the direction of moderation, or what would be called nowadays rationalism. For instance, in considering the question of diabolical intercourse with women, a belief in which, as we have seen, they had inherited from a line of theologians, they gave an explanation which, whatever may be said of it, at least repudiated the idea of an actual mixture of carnal and spiritual natures. Again, they were very careful to guard against the notion that there is anything that can be called with propriety an art-magic—i.e. that there is any other than an arbitrary connection between the charms used and the results obtained—which is more than can be said of some of their predecessors.
Janus (p. 258), with the operose mendacity which is his characteristic, pretends that the authority "of the popes, Aquinas, and the powerful Dominican Order" established the reality of the Sabbath rides; that in the XIVth and XVth centuries you might "be condemned as a heretic in Spain for affirming, and in Italy for denying, the reality of the Sabbath rides"; that some Franciscan theologians in the XVth century, amongst others Alfonso de Spina, in his Fortalitium Fidei, maintained the ancient doctrine asserting "belief in the reality of witchcraft to be a folly and a heresy"; that Spina "thought that the inquisitors had witches burned simply on account of that belief." "Tot verba tot mendacia"! The question of the reality or non-reality of the Sabbath rides has always been an open question. S. Thomas says nothing about them one way or the other. It is much more probable than not that he regarded those rides as fantastic, in accordance with the teaching of his masters, Albertus Magnus[123] and Alexander Hales.[124] That he never committed himself to the opposite view is pretty well assured by the fact that the great representative of "the powerful Dominican Order" in the XVth century, Cardinal Turrecremata, is an advocate of the view which makes the rides fantastic. We may add that his eminence got on very comfortably during his long residence in Italy, without being molested for his Spanish heresy.
As to Alfonso Spina, he, indeed, asserts the fantastic character of the Sabbath flights; but so little is he a disbeliever in diablerie that, not contented with maintaining its reality (Fortal., f. 146, p. 1, col. 1),[125] he contributes a rather grotesque instance of it from his own experience (f. 151, p. 1, col. 2).
He nowhere says that inquisitors had witches burned "simply on account" of their belief in the reality of the Sabbath. He recounts the burning of certain witches in Dauphiny and Gascony, who did hold their Sabbath meetings to be real, which view, as attributing a certain divine power to the devil, Spina thought could not be persisted in without heresy. (See fol. 152, p. 2, col. 1.) But they were burned because they were witches who had done real homage to the devil, although sundry of its circumstances might be imaginary.
The following passages may be accepted as examples of the doctrine on spiritualism of the principal scholastics of the XIIIth century.
S. Thomas, Sum. i. qu. 110, lays down that God only can work a miracle properly so called—i.e. a work beyond the order of the whole of created nature; "but since not every virtue of created nature is known to us, therefore, when anything takes place by a created virtue unknown to us, it is a miracle in respect to us; and so, when the devils do something by their natural power, it is called a miracle, quoad nos; and in this way magicians work miracles by means of devils." (In 4 Dist. vii. qu. 3.) "The devils, by their own power, cannot induce upon matter any form, whether accidental or substantial, nor reduce it to act, without the instrumentality of its proper natural agent.... The devils can bring to bear activities upon particular passivities, so that the effect shall follow from natural causes indeed, but beside the accustomed course of nature, on account of the variety and vehemence of the active virtue of the active forces combined, and the aptitude of the subjects;[126] and so effects which are outside the sphere of all natural active virtues they cannot really produce—as raise the dead or the like—but only in appearance."