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| Chapter VI.
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Chapter VI.
“I am enraged in
heart, believe me, and, through vexation, I seem to lose my senses: do
Christian men not believe in the miraculous powers of Martin, which the
demons acknowledged?
“The monastery of the blessed man was at two
miles’ distance from the city; but if, as often as he was to come
to the church, he only had set his foot outside the threshold of his
cell, one could perceive the possessed roaring through the whole
church, and the bands of guilty133
ones trembling as
if their judge were coming, so that the groanings of the demons
announced the approach of the bishop to the clerics, who were not
previously aware that he was coming. I saw a certain man snatched up
into the air on the approach of Martin, and suspended there with his
hands stretched upwards, so that he could in no way touch the ground
with his feet. But if at any time Martin undertook the duty of
exorcising the demons, he touched no one with his hands, and reproached
no one in words, as a multitude of expressions is generally rolled
forth by the clerics; but the possessed, being brought up to
him, he ordered all others to
depart, and the doors being bolted, clothed in sackcloth and sprinkled
with ashes, he stretched himself on the ground in the midst of the
church, and turned to prayer. Then truly might one behold the wretched
beings tortured with various results—some hanging, as it were,
from a cloud, with their feet turned upwards, and yet their garments
did not fall down over their faces, lest the part of their body which
was exposed should give rise to shame; while in another part of the
church one could see them tortured without any question being addressed
to them, and confessing their crimes. They revealed their names, too,
of their own accord; one acknowledged that he was Jupiter, and another
that he was Mercury. Finally, one could see all the servants of the
devil suffering agony, along with their master, so that we could not
help acknowledging that in Martin there was fulfilled that which is
written that ‘the saints shall judge angels.’E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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