iv. The Supernatural Element in the Book Paradise
IN perusing the lives of the holy men given in the Book
Paradise and in The History of the Monks the reader will find described a series of incidents and events in which the supernatural element plays a prominent part, and some critics have asserted that they constitute a proof that these works are not genuine. Palladius was, no doubt, credulous in respect of miracles and supernatural occurrences in general, but, in my opinion, the evidence that he was so is a proof that he lived at a time when the Christian world believed in the things which he describes, and the details given by him convince me that his knowledge of the particular events which he records was acquired at first hand. Those who are familiar with the magic of the Dynastic Egyptians find few miraculous occurrences in the histories of the monks of which parallels do not exist in the pagan literature of Egypt. The monks certainly rejected the old gods of the country, but the folk-lore survived, and with it the beliefs and superstitions which belonged to the mythology of a remote past and which were never wholly eradicated. To the Cross were transferred the powers and attributes of the old Egyptian amulet ankh, and the histories of the monks supply many instances of its use as an amulet. Thus when Anthony made over himself the Sign of the Cross the devil was straightway terrified ” (Vol. I, p. 10); and on another occasion the devil, seeing the Sign, “passed away quickly in the form of a flame of fire” (p. 16). Anthony protected himself against a being half-man half-ass by the Sign of the Cross (p. 44). One day the devil appeared to Macarius the Egyptian and explained his system of wiles and fraud; the chosen athlete” made the Sign over himself and the devil disappeared (p. 278). John of Lycus made the Sign over some oil which he sent to a woman who had cataract in her eyes; she smeared her eyes therewith three times, and after three days she saw (p. 322). Poemen made the Sign over a youth whose face had been turned backwards by the Evil One,” and the youth was healed (Vol. II, p. 144). A certain father was about to drink from a vessel, and when a holy woman made the Sign over it, the devil fell from the vessel in the form of a flash of fire (Vol. II, p. 269). The brethren said, “The demons fear and tremble, not only by reason of the Crucifixion of Christ, but even at the Sign of the Cross, whether it be depicted upon a garment or made in the air” (Vol. II, p.299). The name of the Cross” even was a word of power,”
wherewith Anthony put to flight the fiery phantoms which attacked him by night (Vol. I, p. 43).
The monks, like the Apostles (St. Matthew vii, 22) used the Name of Christ as a word of power. A haughty and insolent devil once appeared to Anthony, and said, ‘I am the power “ ‘of God,’” whereupon the old man blew a puff of wind at him, and rebuked him in the Name of Christ, and the devil and all his host disappeared (Vol. I, p. 33). On another occasion Anthony held converse with Satan, but when Satan heard him mention the “Name of Christ his form vanished and his words came to an end” (Vol. I, p. 35). One night when Satan had brought a troop of devils in the form of beasts against Anthony, at the mention of the Name of Christ Satan was driven away like a sparrow before a hawk” (Vol. I, p. 44). By the Name of Christ Anthony drove out a devil from a maiden (Vol. I, p. 59), and it was well known that he performed all his healings by means of prayer and the mention of the Name of Christ (Vol. I, p. 68). Now Anthony was an Egyptian, and he did in such matters as a pagan Egyptian priest would have done, only his prayer took the place of the old magical formula, and the Name of Christ was used instead of the name of an old Egyptian god. Abbâ Benus adjured a hippopotamus which devoured the crops in a certain village in the Name of Jesus Christ, and the beast departed forthwith, and did no further harm (Vol. I, p. 337); and the fathers went so far as to say that laymen might drive away devils by the Name of Christ and the Sign of the Cross (Vol. II, p. 300).
When we remember that Anthony was, notwithstanding his natural shrewdness and virtues, an uneducated Egyptian, we need feel no surprise at the stories of his conflicts with devils and phantoms. His wandering among the tombs must have made him familiar with the painted reliefs in them and with the figures of gods and mythological beings in whom his ancestors believed, and the vivid imagination which he inherited from his ancestors endued them with life and movement. He was unacquainted with the literature of ancient Egypt, for he could neither read nor write, and therefore he could not know that the paintings only represented the attempts made by funerary artists to give form to the weird conceptions of the supposed denizens of the other world, both good and evil, which his forefathers had evolved out of their own minds.
It is noteworthy that many of the stories which relate the appearances of the Devil are told in connexion with men of Egyptian origin. Thus Palladius tells us (Vol. I, p. 115) that a certain Egyptian who wished to gain the love of another man’s wife hired a magician to employ his sorceries in order to make the woman love him or to make her husband hate her and cast her out; the magician failed to make the woman unfaithful, but he succeeded in transforming her into a mare. After three days the husband of the woman took the mare to Macarius the Egyptian, to whom God had revealed the matter, and when the brethren announced her arrival to the holy man, Macarius told them that the appearance of the woman to them in the form of a mare was due to an error of sight “ (hypnotic suggestion?) on the part of those who saw her. He then threw water which he had blessed over her, and she straightway appeared in the form of a woman to every man there; after eating some sacramental bread she was healed. To Macarius also they brought a man possessed of a fiery devil (Vol. I, p. 117), who, when he had eaten three baskets of bread and drunk three bottles of water, vomited them in the form of smoky vapour.” Under the treatment of Macarius the man became content with three pounds of food per day, and was healed. Nathaniel, another Egyptian recluse, was sorely tempted to leave his cell to help a young man whose laden ass was said to have fallen in the bed of the river. He refrained, however, and the young man, who was the Devil, and his ass disappeared in a whirlwind (Vol. I, p. 113). When Macarius the Alexandrian went to the garden of Jannes and Jambres seventy devils ” came forth against him in the form of ravens; these devils were, no doubt, mere birds, but the imagination of the saint turned them into devils (Vol. I, p. 119). On one occasion, when Macarius was one hundred years old, Palladius heard him striving with his soul and with Satan,” and saying to the Evil One, “Thoucanst do nothing unto me, get thee gone” (Vol. I, p. 124). One day a man possessed of a devil was brought to Paul the Simple and Anthony, and when the ordinary means failed to drive him out, Paul appealed to Christ, and swore that he would neither eat nor drink until the devil had come out of the man. Thereupon the devil cried out that he was being illtreated, and when he asked Paul where he should go, the holy man said, “To the uttermost depths of the abyss.” On this the devil came out, and transformed himself into a mighty dragon seventy cubits long,” which wriggled its way down to the Red Sea (Vol. I, p. 128). The serpent is a well-known representative of the Evil One in Egyptian mythology, and the length of the monster here given suggests that the holy man regarded the creature before him as akin to Apep, the arch-enemy of Horus and Ra. Pachomius, the Abbot of Tabenna, was also vexed by devils, and we are told (Vol. I, p. 290) that one day, whilst he was journeying in the desert of Ammon, “certain legions of devils rose up against him and thronged him, both on his right hand and on his left,” and they clung to him until he reached the monastery. On another occasion, when he and Theodore were walking through the monastery by night, a woman appeared to them whose beauty was so great as to be indescribable, and even Theodore, who looked at the phantom, was exceedingly perturbed, and his face changed colour (Vol. I, p. 304). In answer to his questions she told Pachomius that she was the daughter of the Calumniator, and that she had received power to fight against him.
Another survival of the old Egyptian belief in the power of men, under certain circumstances, to cast spells is recorded in the history of Apollo (Vol. I, p. 351). The ten villages which were round about his place of abode, near Hermopolis, i.e., the city of the god Thoth, were filled with men who worshipped a wooden idol, and they carried him in procession from village to village, whilst the priests and people danced before him. One day Apollo saw them carrying on their devilish sports,” and he knelt down and prayed, and immediately all the people became spell-bound where they stood, and being unable to move they were obliged to remain there the whole day long in the fierce heat of the sun, and each was parched with thirst. Then certain of the inhabitants sent oxen to drag away the idol, but they also became spell-bound, and could move neither the idol nor themselves. At length it was recognized that the sports had been stopped by Apollo, and the people sent and begged for his help. He went quickly and prayed over the men who were spell-bound, and removed the spell, and they at once believed in Christ, and burned their idol, and were baptized.
The supernatural powers of Apollo were exercised in many other ways. During a dispute in a village about certain boundaries, the leader of the barbarians declared that there could never be peace until death.” To this Apollo replied, “ It shall be as thou sayest, but none except thyself shall die; and the earth shall not be thy grave, but the bellies of wild beasts.” That night the man died, and on the following morning his remains were found horribly mangled by vultures and hyenas. The faith that was in the holy man enabled him to kill snakes, asps, vipers, and all kinds of reptiles, and in a time of famine he fed the hungry folk from baskets of bread which always remained full through his miraculous powers.
In connexion with Apollo mention is made of another Egyptian called Ammon, who slew a mighty serpent (Vol. I, p. 352). The monster was wont to slay sheep and cattle, and when the people begged the saint to free them from him, he went and knelt down at the place where the serpent usually passed, and prayed. Whilst he was praying, the serpent came and tried to strike him, but as soon as Ammon had called upon Christ to destroy him, the reptile burst asunder.
The instances quoted above are sufficient to illustrate the miraculous powers attributed to the ascetics of Egypt, and it is clear that the monks believed that they were able to cast out devils from the human body, and to destroy their evil works. The author of The History of the Monks boldly states that, at the time when he was writing, they raised the dead, and like Peter, walked on the water, and performed everything which the Redeemer and His Apostles performed.