,
riding the diabolic goat through the clouds while the storm rages around
and beneath her; and we may read a rich collection of anecdotes, largely
contemporary, which establish the required doctrine beyond question.

The first and most natural means taken against this work of Satan in the
air was prayer; and various petitions are to be found scattered through
the Christian liturgies--some very beautiful and touching. This means of
escape has been relied upon, with greater or less faith, from those days
to these. Various medieval saints and reformers, and devoted men in
all centuries, from St. Giles to John Wesley, have used it with results
claimed to be miraculous. Whatever theory any thinking man may hold
in the matter, he will certainly not venture a reproachful word: such
prayers have been in all ages a natural outcome of the mind of man in
trouble.(225)

(225) For Guacci, see his Compendium Maleficarum (Milan, 1608). For the
cases of St. Giles, John Wesley, and others stilling the tempests, see
Brewer, Dictionary of Miracles, s. v. Prayer.

But against the "power of the air" were used other means of a very
different character and tendency, and foremost among these was exorcism.
In an exorcism widely used and ascribed to Pope Gregory XIII, the
formula is given: "I, a priest of Christ,... do command ye, most foul
spirits, who do stir up these clouds,... that ye depart from them, and
disperse yourselves into wild and untilled places, that ye may be no
longer able to harm men or animals or fruits or herbs, or whatsoever
is designed for human use." But this is mild, indeed, compared to some
later exorcisms, as when the ritual runs: "All the people shall rise,
and the priest, turning toward the clouds, shall pronounce these
words: 'I exorcise ye, accursed demons, who have dared to use, for the
accomplishment of your iniquity, those powers of Nature by which God in
divers ways worketh good to mortals; who stir up winds, gather vapours,
form clouds, and condense them into hail.... I exorcise ye,... that
ye relinquish the work ye have begun, dissolve the hail, scatter the
clouds, disperse the vapours, and restrain the winds.'" The rubric goes
on to order that then there shall be a great fire kindled in an open
place, and that over it the sign of the cross shall be made, and the one
hundred and fourteenth Psalm chanted, while malodorous substances, among
them sulphur and asafoetida, shall be cast into the flames.