Question II
IF it be in accordance with the Catholic Faith to maintain that in order to bring about some effect of magic, the devil must intimately cooperate with the witch, or whether one without the other, that is to say, the devil without the witch, or conversely, could produce such an effect.
And the first argument is this: That the devil can bring about an effect of magic without the co-operation of any witch. So S. Augustine holds. All things which visibly happen so that they can be seen, may (it is believed) be the work of the inferior powers of the air. But bodily ills and ailments are certainly not invisible, nay rather, they are evident to the senses, therefore they can be brought about by devils. Moreover, we learn from the Holy Scriptures of the disasters which fell upon Job, how fire fell from heaven and striking the sheep and the servants consumed them, and how a violent wind threw down the four corners of a house so that it fell upon his children and slew them all. The devil by himself without the cooperation of any witches, but merely by God’s permission alone, was able to bring about all these disasters. Therefore he can certainly do many things which are often ascribed to the work of witches.
And this is obvious from the account of the seven husbands of the maiden Sara, whom a devil killed. Moreover, whatever a superior power is able to do, it is able to do without reference to a power superior to it, and a superior power can all the more work without reference to an inferior power. But an inferior power can cause hailstorms and bring about diseases without the help of a power greater than itself. For Blessed Albertus Magnus in his work De passionibus aeris[1] says that rotten sage, if used as he explains, and thrown into running water, will arouse most fearful tempests and storms.
Moreover, it may be said that the devil makes use of a witch, not because he has need of any such agent, but because he is seeking the perdition of the witch. We may refer to what Aristotle says in the 3rd book of his Ethics. Evil is a voluntary act which is proved by the fact that nobody performs an unjust action merely for the sake of doing an unjust action, and a man who commits a rape does this for the sake of pleasure, not merely doing evil for evil’s sake. Yet the law punishes those who have done evil as if they had acted merely for the sake of doing evil. Therefore if the devil works by means of a witch he is merely employing an instrument; and since an instrument depends upon the will of the person who employs it and does not act of its own free will, therefore the guilt of the action ought not to be laid to the charge of the witch, and in consequence she should not be punished.
But an opposite opinion holds that the devil cannot so easily and readily do harm by himself to mankind, as he can harm them through the instrumentality of witches, although they are his servants. In the first place we may consider the act of generation. But for every act which has an effect upon another some kind of contact must be established, and because the devil, who is a spirit, can have no such actual contact with a human body, since there is nothing common of this kind between them, therefore he uses some human instruments, and upon these he bestows the power of hurting by bodily touch. And many hold this to be proven by the text, and the gloss upon the text, in the 3rd chapter of S. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians:[2] O senseless Galatians, who hath bewitched you that you should not obey the truth? And the gloss upon this passage refers to those who have singularly fiery and baleful eyes, who by a mere look can harm others, especially young children. And Avicenna[3]
- ↑ “De passionibus.” This treatise on physical science may be found in Vol. IX. of Abbé Borgnet's edition of the “Opera omnia.”
- ↑ “Galatians.” iii, i. The original Greek is (
Greek characters); Curtius doubts the etymological connexion between (Greek characters) and Latin “fascino” as from a root (Greek characters). In classical times the charm was dissolved by spitting thrice. Cf. Theocritus, VI, 39: (Greek characters).
- ↑ “Avicenna.” Abn Ali Al Hosian Ibn Addallah Ibn Sina, Arabian physician and philosopher, born at Kharmaithen, in the province of Bokhara, 980; died at Hamadan, in Northern Persia, 1037. It should be noted that the Schoolmen were aware of the pantheistic tendencies of Avicenna's philosophical works, and accordingly were reluctant to trust to his exposition of Aristotle.
