wise, I will
not determine; 'tis a difficult question. Delrio the Jesuit, _Tom. 3. lib.
6._ Springer and his colleague, _mall. malef_. Pet. Thyreus the Jesuit,
_lib. de daemoniacis, de locis infestis, de Terrificationibus nocturnis_,
Hieronymus Mengus _Flagel. daem_. and others of that rank of pontifical
writers, it seems, by their exorcisms and conjurations approve of it,
having forged many stories to that purpose. A nun did eat a lettuce
[1249]without grace, or signing it with the sign of the cross, and was
instantly possessed. Durand. _lib. 6. Rationall. c. 86. numb. 8._ relates
that he saw a wench possessed in Bononia with two devils, by eating an
unhallowed pomegranate, as she did afterwards confess, when she was cured
by exorcisms. And therefore our Papists do sign themselves so often with
the sign of the cross, _Ne daemon ingredi ausit_, and exorcise all manner
of meats, as being unclean or accursed otherwise, as Bellarmine defends.
Many such stories I find amongst pontifical writers, to prove their
assertions, let them free their own credits; some few I will recite in this
kind out of most approved physicians. Cornelius Gemma, _lib. 2. de nat.
mirac. c. 4._ relates of a young maid, called Katherine Gualter, a cooper's
daughter, _an._ 1571. that had such strange passions and convulsions, three
men could not sometimes hold her; she purged a live eel, which he saw, a
foot and a half long, and touched it himself; but the eel afterwards
vanished; she vomited some twenty-four pounds of fulsome stuff of all
colours, twice a day for fourteen days; and after that she voided great
balls of hair, pieces of wood, pigeon's dung, parchment, goose dung, coals;
and after them two pounds of pure blood, and then again coals and stones,
or which some had inscriptions bigger than a walnut, some of them pieces of
glass, brass, &c. besides paroxysms of laughing, weeping and ecstasies, &c.
_Et hoc (inquit) cum horore vidi_, this I saw with horror. They could do no
good on her by physic, but left her to the clergy. Marcellus Donatus, _lib.
2. c. 1. de med. mirab._ hath such another story of a country fellow, that
had four knives in his belly, _Instar serrae dentatos_, indented like a
saw, every one a span long, and a wreath of hair like a globe, with much
baggage of like sort, wonderful to behold: how it should come into his
guts, he concludes, _Certe non alio quam daemonis astutia et dolo_, (could
assuredly only have been through the art