ubjoined sketches, read in connection with chapter XV.,
bear out what is affirmed.

St. Maurus had an encounter with Satan and a whole squadron of his
monsters in bodily shape. At Maurus' rebuke the troop vanished, but
not before they made the monastery shake, and brought the affrighted
monks to their knees.

St. Romualdus may be said to have had a five years' conflict with
Satan in visible forms. St. Frances had the faculty of seeing evil
spirits when people beside her perceived nothing but natural forms.
St. Gregory witnessed the devil entering into a man who indulged in
and loved lies. A monk who determined to throw off his habit and
forsake the monastery, was set upon by the devil in the form of a
black dog. Other monks who broke their vows shared no better. Because
a monk had been guilty of hoarding up a large sum of money, contrary
to the rules of his order, he was denied Christian burial, and his
body was cast upon a dunghill. After mass was said for the miser
thirty days, the deceased monk appeared to a brother of his order and
told him that he had been in purgatory till that day. From this
blessed liberation St. Gregory instituted the custom of saying thirty
masses for the dead. A gentleman in Rome, who was excommunicated by
St. Gregory for unlawfully putting away his wife, hired certain pagan
witches and sorcerers to torment the holy Pope. They caused the devil
to enter into the Pope's horse, that it might cast the rider and crush
him to death. The holy father, becoming aware of the plot, cast out
the devil, and struck the witches and sorcerers with blindness. St.
Gregory was entreated to restore the witches and sorcerers to sight,
but he refused to do so, lest they should be tempted to return to
their wicked art, and read books of magic and necromancy.

St. Benedict had his encounters with the tempter. One day the devil
transformed himself into a little blackbird, which fluttered about
him, and sang so sweetly that he was nearly drawn away from his
devotions and led into sin. By a higher power than his own he overcame
the enemy. He stripped himself of his clothes, and, casting himself on
a thicket of briars and thorns, mangled his body so severely that
blood ran from him in streams. The devil on one occasion endeavoured
to hinder the building of a monastery, and at another time he cast a
stone at a young monk and killed him. St. Benedict, in his goodness,
put the devil to flight, and restored the monk to l