CHAPTER XXXVI.
In Bojotro, a place mentioned above, the humble teacher perceived that three monks of his monastery were stained with horrid pride. When he had ascertained that each of them upon being visited with reproach was hardened in his sin, he prayed that the Lord should receive them into the adoption of sons, and deign to reprove them with the paternal lash. Before he had ended his tearful prayer, the three monks were in one and the same instant seized violently by the devil and tormented, and with cries confessed the stubbornness of their hearts.
Let it not seem to any one cruel or wrong, that men of this sort are delivered "unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh," as the blessed apostle teacheth, "that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." For Saint Ambrose, bishop of Milan, said that the slave of Stilicho, who was found to be the |90 author of forged letters, ought to be delivered unto Satan, that he might not dare to commit such crimes in the future; and at the same moment, while the word was yet in the bishop's mouth, the unclean spirit seized the slave and began to rend him. Sulpicius Severus, too, relates, on the authority of Postumianus, that a certain man, admirable for his great virtues and miracles, aiming to drive out from his heart the vanity of ostentation into which he had fallen, procured by entreaty "that power over him might be given the devil for five months, and he be made like those whom he himself had healed." And Sulpicius says, a little further on, that accordingly "he was seized by the devil, held in chains, and endured everything which those possessed by devils are wont to suffer; until, finally, in the fifth month he was cured, not merely from the devil, but (what he needed and desired more) from the fault."
So the man of God turned over the three monks to the brethren, and subjected them for forty days to the bitter remedy of fasting. When the days were fulfilled, he spake a prayer over them, and plucked them forth from the power of the devil, and bestowed upon them soundness not only of body but of mind. As a result of this event, the saint was held in enhanced awe and terror, and a greater fear of discipline possessed the rest.