For Peter the Venerable, St Bernard's friend and contemporary, the reader should consult chaps. xxi-xxiii of S. R. Maitland's Dark Ages, or the monograph by M. Demimuid, Pierre le Vénérable (Paris, 1895). He was one of the greatest abbots of the greatest monastery in Christendom; and we have precise evidence of the reasons why he wrote his Book of Miracles and why Balthasar Beller printed them at Douay in 1595.

Peter writes in his first Prologue: "Seeing that the grace of miracles hath a place of no small dignity among the gifts of the Holy Ghost, as a grace of such profit to other men that it hath been the chief means of liberating the world from the darkness of infidelity and of bestowing the eternal light of truth; since, moreover, even now in the hearts of many of the faithful, to whom it hath been given to see this light, faith is increased by this grace of miracles, and hope grows, and truth is confirmed; for these reasons, I am often indignant to think that those wonders which are wrought in our days perish and are buried in barren silence, no man applying his mind to write them down, though, if published abroad, they might profit all that read them. Therefore, since I could compel no man to this task but myself, I have chosen to undertake the task in such style as I could command." In the Prologue to his Second Book, he speaks far more bitterly of the neglect of such writings and studies in his own time as compared with the past, and in Latin Christendom as compared with Egyptians, Greeks, and Hebrews.

Beller, his printer and editor, dedicates the book to the Abbot of St-Vaast d'Arras, Privy Councillor to Philip II of Spain. He had planned a series of the most noteworthy books of the Middle Ages1 "of the older fathers, who not only lived in better ages than our own, but strove to leave the purer thoughts of their minds to posterity ...among whom not the least place is due to this Peter, whose learning and piety have rightly earned for him, side by side with the blessed Bede, the title of Venerable." In these days "wherein Catholics decay by their own fault, and heretics grow from day to day in unbridled fury," he thinks it will be of great profit to prove how richly Catholicism, and Catholicism alone, is endowed with the grace of miracles. We have here, therefore, a book which both twelfth-century and sixteenth-century monasticism recognized as typical and authoritative.

The following extract, from Book I, chap. xiv, is characteristic of the frequent presence of visible demons in the monasteries (Migne, Pat. Lat. vol. 189, col. 877). It is also interesting through Peter's answer to a question which besets the modern reader on almost every page of these medieval records, but which it required some real spirit of criticism to raise in the twelfth century.

1 This he partly fulfilled in his editions of Vincent of Beauvais, Thomas of Chantimpré, Jacques de Vitry, etc.

THE BESETTING DEMONS

At another time another brother, who was a carpenter1, lay by night in a place somewhat removed from the rest. The place was lighted with a lamp, as is customary in the dormitories of monks. While he lay on his bed, not yet asleep, he beheld a monstrous vulture, whose wings and feet were scarce able to bear the load of his vast body, labouring and panting towards him, until it stood over against his bed. While the brother beheld this in amazement, behold! two other demons in human form came and spake with that vulture - or rather, that fiend - saying, "What doest thou here? Canst thou do any work in this place?" "Nay", said he; "for they all thrust me hence by the protection of the crossand by sprinkling of holy water and by muttering of psalms. I have laboured hard all this night, consuming my strength in vain; wherefore I have come hither baffled and wearied. But do ye tell me where ye have been and how ye have prospered." To which the others made reply: "We are come from Châlons, where we made one of Geoffrey of Donzy's knights fall into adultery with his host's wife. Then again we passed by a certain monastery, where we made the master of the school to fornicate with one of his boys. But thou, sluggard, why dost not thou arise, and at least cut off the foot of this monk, which he hath stretched in disorderly fashion beyond his bedclothes?" Whereupon the other seized the monk's axe which lay under the bed, and heaved it up to smite with all his force. The monk, seeing the axe thus raised aloft, withdrew his foot in fear; so that the demon's stroke fell harmlessly upon the end of the bed; whereupon the evil spirits vanished forthwith. The brother who had seen this vision related it all forthwith, next morning, to the aforesaid father Hugh2, who sent to Châlons and to Tournus to assure himself of the truth thereof. Here, searching narrowly into those things which the demons had asserted, he found that these ministers of lies had told the truth.

But some man will say: "Seeing that the evil spirits far surpass all human cunning in the subtlety of their malice (for their natural nimbleness is clogged by no bodily weight, whereby they are rendered free in all their motions and all the more sagacious by long experience), how is it that they betray their wicked designs or deeds to men's ears3? Do they not understand how often men are saved from their most subtle snares by these revelations of there wiles, and the demons are thus frustrated of their purpose? Wherefore, then, did they betray their evil deeds in the hearing of that brother, and confess themselves unable to work the wickedness that they desired?" To this we must answer that, great as are their powers for evil, and prompt as is their will to deceive us, yet by God's hidden disposition they are oftentimes so wondrously and incomprehensibly caught in their own false wiles, that they are sometimes compelled unwillingly to serve that human salvation which is always contrary to their desire.

1 He was therefore probably a lay-brother

2 Fifth Abbot of Cluny, sainted by the Roman Church. It will be noted that Peter, at this second mention, betrays the actual name of the monastery where the scandal had taken place.

3 It needed a narrator of Peter's intellectual distinction to raise this question in the twelfth century, though it is suggested to the modern mind by almost every medieval miracle in which demons are represented as playing a visible or audible part.

(Coulton IV, p.109-111)