36 THE CHURCH
concerned with the part played by magical agency: an angel saves
a damsel from death; the Aoe Maria, said with devotion, over-
k comes a devil; the crucifix makes a sign of anger and stops its
ears; the power of St Dominic's prayers draws down the Virgin
and two angels to anoint a sick man, and so on. The mere
reminder of such compilations as those earliest Lives of the
Fathers in the Desert; the Dialogits Miraculorum of Caesarius
of Heisterbach, or the Gesta Romanorum, should be sufficient to
satisfy us of the medieval belief in the widespread nature of
supernatural powers working for and against mankind.
Not only the teaching but the services did much to inculcate
the belief in magic. We have seen that the unlettered could but
imperfectly follow the service of the Mass, and superstition was
actively encouraged by the talcs told of the wonders worked by
the Host, and of the benefits which came to those who had re-
cently received the Sacrament. Such tales reposed on the theo-
logical doctrine of the opus operatum—the virtue of Masses even
apart from the disposition of the worshipper or recipient. Hence,
there was no witchcraft which the Host could not perform, and
thus arose a body of tales.
Because these stories glorified the Sacrament the layman wan en-
couraged to believe that the saying of a Mass could remove iron
fetters from a knight's body, or sustain a miner who had been buried
in a pit; that a man whose sickness prevented him from receiving the
bread in the usual way received it through his side near his heart; that
blindness would not strike the fortunate eyes which saw the Host
carried to the sick. To increase the offerings of the devout they were
told that a penny offered at Mass would secure an increase of worldly
wealth as well as freedom from their sins.1
What wonder if men went further for themselves, and regarded
the Host as a charm and placed it among the beehivesS to prevent
the death of the bees, or scattered it in fragments over the
cabbages to keep off caterpillars.2
In addition to the kindly magic of the Saints and of the re-
formed pagan gods there was still the fearful and ever-present
black magic of the Devil. He was all-powerful, and in lonely
places, by the shores of lake and forest, and in the desolate
1 Maiming, op. cit. 79.
* Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dist. IX, §§ 8