How, as it were,
they Deprive Man of his Virile Member.
We
have already shown that they can take away the male
organ, not indeed by actually despoiling the human body
of it, in the manner which we have already declared. And
of this we shall instance a few examples.
In the town
of Ratisbon a certain young man who had an intrigue with
a girl, wishing to leave her, lost his member; that is
to say, some glamour was cast over it so that he could
see or touch nothing but his smooth body. In his worry
over this he went to a tavern to drink wine; and after
he had sat there for a while he got into conversation
with another woman who was there, and told her the cause
of his sadness, explaining everything, and demonstrating
in his body that it was so. The woman was astute, and
asked whether he suspected anyone; and when he named
such a one, unfolding the whole matter, she said: “If
persuasion is not enough, you must use some violence, to
induce her to restore to you your health.” So in the
evening the young man watched the way by which the witch
was in the habit of going, and finding her, prayed her
to restore to him the health of his body. And when she
maintained that she was innocent and knew nothing about
it, he fell upon her, and winding a towel tightly about
her neck, choked her, saying: “Unless you give me back
my health, you shall die at my hands.” Then she, being
unable to cry out, and growing black, said: “Let me
go, and I will heal you.” The young man then relaxed
the pressure of the towel, and the witch touched him
with her hand between the thighs, saying: “Now you
have what you desire.” And the young man, as he
afterwards said, plainly felt, before he had verified it
by looking or touching, that his member had been
restored to him by the mere touch of the witch.
A similar
experience is narrated by a certain venerable Father
from the Dominican House of Spires, well known in the
Order for the honest of his life and for his learning.
“One day,” he says, “while I was hearing
confessions, a young man came to me and, in the course
of his confession, woefully said that he had lost his
member. Being astonished at this, and not being willing
to give it easy credence, since the opinion of the wise
it is a mark of light-heartedness to believe too easily,
I obtained proof of it when I saw nothing on the young
man's removing his clothes and showing the place. Then,
using the wisest counsel I could, I asked whether he
suspected anyone of having so bewitched him. And the
young man said that he did suspect someone, but that she
was absent and living in Worms. Then I said: ‘I advise
you to go to her as soon as possible and try your utmost
to soften her with gentle words and promises’; and he
did so. For he came back after a few days and thanked
me, saying that he was whole and had recovered
everything. And I believed his words, but again proved
them by the evidence of my eyes.”
But there are
some points to be noted for the clearer understanding of
what has already been written concerning this matter.
First, it must in no way be believed that such members
are really torn right away from the body, but that they
are hidden by the devil through some prestidigitory art
so that they can be neither seen nor felt. And this is
proved by the authorities and by argument; although is
has been treated of before, where Alexander of Hales
says that a Prestige, properly understood, is an
illusion of the devil, which is not caused by any
material change, but exists only in the perceptions of
him who is deluded, either in his interior or exterior
senses.
With
reference to these words it is to be noted that, in the
case we are considering, two of the exterior senses,
namely, those of sight and touch, are deluded, and not
the interior senses, namely, common-sense, fancy,
imagination, thought, and memory. (But S. Thomas says
they are only four, as has been told before, reckoning
fancy and imagination as one; and with some reason, for
there is little difference between imagining and
fancying. See S. Thomas, I, 79.) And these senses, and
not only the exterior senses, are affected when it is
not a case of hiding something, but the causing
something to appear to a man either when he is aware or
asleep.
As when a man
who is awake sees things otherwise than as they are;
such as seeing someone devour a horse with its rider, or
thinking he sees a man transformed into a beast, or
thinking that he is himself a beast and must associate
with beasts. For then the exterior senses are deluded
and are employed by the interior senses. For by the
power of devils, with God's permission, mental images
long retained in the treasury of such images, which is
the memory, are drawn out, not from the intellectual
understanding in which such images are stored, but from
the memory, which is the repository of mental images,
and is situated at the back of the head, and are
presented to the imaginative faculty. And so strongly
are they impressed on that faculty that a man has an
inevitable impulse to imagine a horse or a beast, when
the devil draws from the memory an image of a horse or a
beast; and so he is compelled to think that he sees with
his external eyes such a beast when there is actually no
such beast to see; but it seems to be so by reason of
the impulsive force of the devil working by means of
those images.
And it need
not seem wonderful that devils can do this, when even a
natural defect is able to effect the same result, as is
shown in the case of frantic and melancholy men, and in
maniacs and some drunkards, who are unable to discern
truly. For frantic men think they see marvellous things,
such as beasts and other horrors, when in actual fact
they see nothing. See above, in the question, Whether
witches can turn the minds of men to love and hatred;
where many thing are noted.
And, finally,
the reason is self-evident. For since the devil has
power over inferior things, except only the soul,
therefore he is able to effect certain changes in those
things, when God allows, so that things appear to be
otherwise than they are. And this he does, as I have
said, either by confusing and deluding the organ of
sight so that a clear thing appears cloudy; just as
after weeping, owing to the collected humours, the light
appears to different from what it was before. Or by
operating on the imaginative faculty by a transmutation
of mental images, as has been said. Or by some agitation
of various humours, so that matters which are earthy and
dry seem to be fire or water: as some people make
everyone in the house strip themselves naked under the
impression that they are swimming in water.
It may be
asked further with reference to the above method of
devils, whether this sort of illusions can happen
indifferently to the good and to the wicked: just as
other bodily infirmities can, as will be shown later, be
brought by witches even upon those who are in a state of
grace. To this question, following the words of Cassian
in his Second Collation of the Abbot Sirenus, we
must answer that they cannot. And from this it follows
that all who are deluded in this way are presumed to be
in deadly sin. For he says, as is clear from the words
of S. Antony: The devil can in no way enter the mind or
body of any man, nor has the power to penetrate into the
thoughts of anybody, unless such a person has first
become destitute of all holy thoughts, and is quite
bereft and denuded of spiritual contemplation.
This agrees
with Boethius where he says in the Consolation of
Philosophy: We had given you such arms that, if you
had not thrown them away, you would have been preserved
from infirmity.
Also Cassian
tells in the same place of two Pagan witches, each in
his own way malicious, who by their witchcraft sent a
succession of devils into the cell of S. Antony for the
purpose of driving him from there by their temptations;
being infected with hatred for the holy man because a
great number of people visited him every day. And though
these devils assailed him with the keenest of spurs to
his thoughts, yet he drove them away by crossing himself
on the forehead and breast, and by prostrating himself
in earnest prayer.
Therefore we
may say that all who are so deluded by devils, not
reckoning any other bodily infirmities, are lacking in
the gift of divine grace. And so it is said in Tobias
vi: The devil has power against those who are subject to
their lusts.
This is also
substantiated by what we told in the First Part in the
question, Whether witches can change men into the shapes
of beasts. For we told of a girl who was turned into a
filly, as she herself and, except S. Macharius, all who
looked at her were persuaded. But the devil could not
deceive the senses of the holy man; and when she was
brought to him to be healed, he saw true woman and not a
horse, while on the other hand everyone else exclaimed
that she seemed to be a horse. And the Saint, by his
prayers, freed her and the others from that illusion,
saying that this had happened to her because she had not
attended sufficiently to holy things, nor used as she
should Holy Confession and the Eucharist. And for this
reason, because in her honesty she would not consent to
the shameful proposal of a young man, who had caused a
Jew who was a witch to bewitch the girl so that, by the
power of the devil, he turned her into a filly.
We may
summarize our conclusions as follows: - Devils can, for
their profit and probation, injure the good in their
fortunes, that is, in such exterior things as riches,
fame, and bodily health. This is clear from the case of
the Blessed Job, who was afflicted by the devil in such
matters. But such injuries are not of their own causing,
so that they cannot be led or driven into any sin,
although they can be tempted both inwardly and outwardly
in the flesh. But the devils cannot afflict the good
with this sort of illusions, either actively or
passively.
Not actively,
but deluding their senses as they do those of others who
are not in a state of grace. And not passively, by
taking away their male organs by some glamour. For in
these two respects they could never injure Job,
especially in regard to the venereal act; for he was of
such continence that he was able to say: I have vowed a
vow with my eyes that I shall never think about a
virgin, and still less about another man's wife.
Nevertheless the devil knows that he has great power
over sinners (see S. Luke xi: When a strong man
armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace).
But it may be
asked, as to illusions in respect of the male organ,
whether, granted that the devil cannot impose this
illusion on those in a state of grace in a passive way,
he cannot still do so in an active sense: the argument
being that the man in a state of grace is deluded
because he ought to see the member in its right place,
when he who thinks it has been taken away from him, as
well as other bystanders, does not see in in its place;
but if this is conceded, it seems to be contrary to what
has been said. It can be said that there is not so much
force in the active as in the passive loss; meaning by
active loss, not his who bears the loss, but his who
sees the loss from without, as is self-evident.
Therefore, although a man in a state of grace can se the
loss of another, and to that extent the devil can delude
his senses; yet he cannot passively suffer such loss in
his own body, as, for example, to be deprived of his
member, since he is not subject to list. In the same way
the converse is true, as the Angel said to Tobias: Those
who are given to lust, the devil has power over them.
And what,
then, is to be thought of those witches who in this way
sometimes collect male organs in great numbers, as many
as twenty or thirty members together, and put them in a
bird's nest, or shut them up in a box, where they move
themselves like living members, and eat oats and corn,
as has been seen by many and is a matter of common
report? It is to be said that it is all done by devil's
work and illusion, for the senses of those who see them
are deluded in the way we have said. For a certain man
tells that, when he had lost his member, he approached a
known witch to ask her to restore it to him. She told
the afflicted man to climb a certain tree, and that he
might take which he liked out of the nest in which there
were several members. And when he tried to take a big
one, the witch said: You must not take that one; adding,
because it belongs to a parish priest.
All these
things are caused by devils through an illusion or
glamour, in the manner we have said, by confusing the
organ of vision by transmuting the mental images in the
imaginative faculty. And it must not be said that these
members which are shown are devils in assumed members,
just as they sometimes appear to witches and men in
assumed aerial bodies, and converse with them. And the
reason is that they effect this thing by an easier
method, namely, by drawing out an inner mental image
from the repository of the memory, and impressing it on
the imagination.
And if anyone
wishes to say that they could go to work in a similar
way, when they are said to converse with witches and
other men in assumed bodies; that is, that they could
cause such apparitions by changing the mental images in
the imaginative faculty, so that when men thought the
devils were present in assumed bodies, they were really
nothing but an illusions caused by such a change of the
mental images in the inner perceptions.
It is to be
said that, if the devil had no other purpose than merely
to show himself in human form, then there would be no
need for him to appear in an assumed body, since he
could effect his purpose well enough by the aforesaid
illusion. But this is not so; for he has another
purpose, namely, to speak and eat with them, and to
commit other abominations. Therefore it is necessary
that he should himself be present, placing himself
actually in sight in an assumed body. For, as S. Thomas
says, Where the Angel's power is, there he operates.
And it may be
asked, if the devil by himself and without any witch
takes away anyone's virile member, whether there is any
difference between one sort of deprivation and the
other. In addition to what has been said in the First
Part of this work on the question, Whether witches can
take away a member, he does actually take it away, and
it is actually restored when it has to be restored.
Secondly, as it is not taken away without injury, so it
is not without pain. Thirdly, that he never does this
unless compelled by a good Angel, for by so doing he
cuts off a great source of profit to him; for he knows
that he can work more witchcraft on that act than on
other human acts. For God permits him to do more injury
to that than to other human acts, as has been said. But
none of the above points apply when he works through the
agency of a witch, with God's permission.
And if it is
asked whether the devil is more apt to injure men and
creatures by himself than through a witch, it can be
said that there is no comparison between the two cases.
For he is infinitely more apt to do harm through the
agency of witches. First, because he thus gives greater
offence to God, by usurping to himself a creature
dedicated to Him. Secondly, because when God is the more
offended, He allows him the more power of injuring men.
And thirdly, for his own gains, which he places in the
perdition of souls.
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