сн. x Whether Witches Can by their Art Create any Living Thing

It is die opinion of S. Augustine {De JL Trinitate, III, 7), supported by all other Theologians, particularly S. Thomas and S. Bonaventura, that witches can in a moment produce im-Jierfect animals, such as flies, worms, rnes and such insects and other animab which are generated by putrefaction; not by creating them, but by applying activetopassive principles. It is usually the demon who, in accordance with his pact with the witch, produces such animals by the application of active to passive forces: for the witches themselves for the most part do not know how they are produced, and are ignorant of the causes: as when the devil gives a witch a litde dust which she throws into the air, and there are born various kinds of locusts and grasshoppers and mice and caterpillars and suchlike animals. The devil could also, having produced such things, tend them and nourish them and give them breath in remote places where they appear to be generated; as among rocks, where imperfect animals are often born, such as flies and mice and similar things. And I believe that this is what happened in the case of those dogs mentioned by William of Newburgh {Hist. Anglorim, I, 28) as follows. A huge stone was being split open in a certain quarry, when there appeared two dogs equal in size to that stone; and from no perceptible hole there sprang these same dogs, which were of the kind called harriers, but fierce-looking, strongly smelling and very shaggy; and one of them, it is said, quickly disappeared. But the other, which is said to have been extraordinarily voracious, was kept in luxury for several days by Henry, Bishop of Winchester. These dogs could not, I think, have been generated except from prolific semen; but the devil was able to take them from their mother's womb and hide them in that place. Demons can also bring forth strange monsters, like that in Brazil which is seventeen palms high, has a lizard's skin, very swollen paps, the forelegs of a lion, deadly eyes and a flaming tongue: or like those monsters in the forests of Saxony, of half human appearance, which were captured in 1240 (Anania, De Natura Daemonum, IV). Unless perhaps such were the issue of an abominable coition of men and beasts, which is undoubtedly the cause of most monsters. For in this way in the Marsic war Alcippe gave birth to an elephant. And Alexander ab Alexandro,* II, telb us that in the year 1278 in Switzerland a woman gave birth to a lion. So in 1471 at Pavia one produced a cat, and another at Brixcn a dog. So in 1531 a woman of Augsburg brought forth at one (...)

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