lar mind. In
sculpture, painting, and literature it appeared in forms ever more and
more striking. The lives of saints were filled with it. The cathedral
sculpture embodied it in every part. The storied windows made it all
the more impressive. The missal painters wrought it not only into prayer
books, but, despite the fact that hardly a trace of the belief appears
in the Psalms, they illustrated it in the great illuminated psalters
from which the noblest part of the service was sung before the high
altar. The service books showed every form of agonizing petition for
delivery from this dire influence, and every form of exorcism for
thwarting it.

All the great theologians of the Church entered into this belief and
aided to develop it. The fathers of the early Church were full and
explicit, and the medieval doctors became more and more minute in
describing the operations of the black art and in denouncing them.
It was argued that, as the devil afflicted Job, so he and his minions
continue to cause diseases; that, as Satan is the Prince of the power
of the air, he and his minions cause tempests; that the cases of
Nebuchadnezzar and Lot's wife prove that sorcerers can transform human
beings into animals or even lifeless matter; that, as the devils of
Gadara were cast into swine, all animals could be afflicted in the same
manner; and that, as Christ himself had been transported through the air
by the power of Satan, so any human being might be thus transported to
"an exceeding high mountain."

Thus the horror of magic and witchcraft increased on every hand, and in
1317 Pope John XXII issued his bull Spondent pariter, levelled at the
alchemists, but really dealing a terrible blow at the beginnings of
chemical science. That many alchemists were knavish is no doubt true,
but no infallibility in separating the evil from the good was shown by
the papacy in this matter. In this and in sundry other bulls and
briefs we find Pope John, by virtue of his infallibility as the world's
instructor in all that pertains to faith and morals, condemning real
science and pseudo-science alike. In two of these documents, supposed
to be inspired by wisdom from on high, he complains that both he and
his flock are in danger of their lives by the arts of the sorcerers;
he declares that such sorcerers can send devils into mirrors and finger
rings, and kill men and women by a magic word; that they had tried to
kill him by piercing a waxen image of hi