The Phantom World; or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c.Calmet, Augustin
Religion
The Phantom World; or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c.
Calmet, Augustin
Apparitions; Demonology; Spirits
The dead man appeared a third time, and implored the cure to assist
him in this extremity; he did so, and restored the value of the ox;
but as the rest exceeded his power, he gave alms, and recommended Guy
to the worthy people of his acquaintance; and he appeared no more.
Richer, a monk of Senones,[357] speaks of a spirit which returned in
his time, in the town of Epinal, about the year 1212, in the house of
a burgess named Hugh de la Cour, and who, from Christmas to Midsummer,
did a variety of things in that same house, in sight of everybody.
They could hear him speak, they could see all he did, but nobody could
see him. He said he belonged to Clexenteine, a village seven leagues
from Epinal; and what is also remarkable is that, during the six
months he was heard about the house, he did no harm to any one. One
day, Hugh having ordered his domestic to saddle his horse, and the
valet being busy about something else, deferred doing it, when the
spirit did his work, to the great astonishment of all the household.
Another time, when Hugh was absent, the spirit asked Stephen, the
son-in-law of Hugh, for a penny, to make an offering of it to St.
Goeric, the patron saint of Epinal. Stephen presented him with an old
denier of Provence; but the spirit refused it, saying he would have a
good denier of Thoulouse. Stephen placed on the threshold of the door
a Thoulousian denier, which disappeared immediately; and the following
night, a noise, as of a man who was walking therein, was heard in the
church of St. Goeric.
Another time, Hugh having bought some fish to make his family a
repast, the spirit transported the fish to the garden which was behind
the house, put half of it on a tile (_scandula_), and the rest in a
mortar, where it was found again. Another time, Hugh desiring to be
bled, told his daughter to get ready some bandages. Immediately the
spirit went into another room, and fetched a new shirt, which he tore
up into several bandages, presented them to the master of the house,
and told him to choose the best. Another day, the servant having
spread out some linen in the garden to dry, the spirit carried it all
up stairs, and folded them more neatly than the cleverest laundress
could have done.
A man named Guy de la Torre,[358] who died at Verona in 1306, at the
end of eight days spoke to his wife and the neighbors of both sexes,
to the prior of the Dominicians, and to the professor of theology, who
asked him several questions in theology, to which he replied very
pertinently. He declared that he was in purgatory for certain
unexpatiated sins. They asked him how he possibly could speak, not
having the organs of the voice; he replied that souls separated from
the body have the faculty of forming for themselves instruments of the
air capable of pronouncing words; he added that the fire of hell acted
upon spirits, not by its natural virtue, but by the power of God, of
which that fire is the instrument.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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