ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL BELIEFS 11 



in and preached a militant demonology. He taught that the 

 Devil really exists as the chief of a whole horde of demons. 

 Hence he conceived the idea that various forms of pest harm- 

 ful to man can arise as the result of tricks of the Devil and 

 the spirits of evil subservient to him. 



The practical results of this hypothesis manifested them- 

 selves in the numerous trials of witches who were charged 

 with letting loose mice and other pests on to the fields and 

 thus destroying the sown seed. And it is well known that 

 Catholic bishops also used all sorts of spells and exorcisms 

 in an effort to cast out worms, mice, cockchafers and other 

 harmful creatures from the fields of those who had been 

 confided to their care. According to Uhland, the Swiss and 

 Tyrolese bishops in the sixteenth century laid the curses of 

 the Church on all sorts of agricultural pests and, according 

 to Bodenheimer, ceremonies of this sort persisted until the 

 end of the eighteenth century.^" 



We have dwelt at some length on the views of Thomas 

 Aquinas because, to this day, his teaching is acknowledged 

 by the Catholic Church as the only true philosophy. Thus, 

 the Western Church has retained through all the centuries 

 the principle of the spontaneous generation of living things 

 according to which living things originate from inanimate 

 matter as a result of animation by a spiritual principle. 



The standpoint of the theological authorities of the Eastern 

 Churches is similar. In this matter they rely chiefly on the 

 pronouncements of Basil the Great. The opinions on this 

 subject of the outstanding and active participants in the work 

 of the Russian Church, Dimitrii Rostovskii and Theofan 

 Prokopovich, though formulated as late as the eighteenth 

 century, may serve as an illustration. Dimitrii, bishop of 

 Rostov, lived in the time of Peter I and in his works Ajinals 

 relating shortly the acts from the beginning of the world 

 until the birth of Christ (1708) he wrote that Noah did 

 not take in his ark those animals which are capable of spon- 

 taneous generation ; they were destroyed on the ground by 

 the flood and then arose anew. 



Moreover, from the moisture of the earth, from decay and 

 putrefaction, there arise mice, toads, scorpions and other 



