preternatural interposition. Next to the belief in the second coming
of Christ, the doctrine which most influenced the action of the early
church was that of a spiritual world and its hierarchy. Terrestrial
things were ruled by all sorts of spiritual beings.

Some philosophers, as well as the founders of different religions,
expelled demons, and the Christians fully recognized the power
possessed by the Jewish and gentile exorcists; the followers of
Christ, however, claimed to be in many respects the superior of all
others. The fathers maintained the reality of all pagan miracles as
fully as their own, except that doubt was sometimes cast on some forms
of healing and prophecy. Demons which had resisted all the
enchantments of the pagans might be cast out, oracles could be
silenced, and unclean spirits compelled to acknowledge the truth of
the Christian faith by the Christians, who simply made the sign of the
cross, or repeated the name of the Master.

The power of the Christian exorcists was shown by still more wonderful
feats. Demons, which were sometimes supposed to enter animals, were
expelled. St. Hilarion (288-371), we are told, courageously confronted
and relieved a possessed camel. "The great St. Ambrose [340-397] tells
us that a priest, while saying mass, was troubled by the croaking of
frogs in a neighboring marsh; that he exorcised them, and so stopped
their noise. St. Bernard [1091-1153], as the monkish chroniclers tell
us, mounting the pulpit to preach in his abbey, was interrupted by a
crowd of flies; straightway the saint uttered the sacred formula of
excommunication, when the flies fell dead upon the pavement in heaps,
and were cast out with shovels! A formula of exorcism attributed to a
saint of the ninth century, which remained in use down to a recent
period, especially declares insects injurious to crops to be possessed
of evil spirits, and names, among the animals to be excommunicated or
exorcised, moles, mice, and serpents. The use of exorcism against
caterpillars and grasshoppers was also common. In the thirteenth
century a bishop of Lausanne, finding that the eels in Lake Leman
troubled the fishermen, attempted to remove the difficulty by
exorcism, and two centuries later one of his successors excommunicated
all the May-bugs in the diocese. As late as 1731 there appears an
entry on the municipal register of Thonon as follows: '_Resolved_,
that this town join with other parishes of this province in