Then cometh the
lion, breatheth upon them, and bringeth them to life.... Thus it is
that Jesus Christ during three days was deprived of life, but God
the Father raised him gloriously."
Pious use was constantly made of this science, especially by
monkish preachers. The phoenix rising from his ashes proves the
doctrine of the resurrection; the structure and mischief of monkeys
proves the existence of demons; the fact that certain monkeys have
no tails proves that Satan has been shorn of his glory; the weasel,
which "constantly changes its place, is a type of the man
estranged from the word of God, who findeth no rest."
The moral treatises of the time often took the form of works on
natural history, in order the more fully to exploit these religious
teachings of Nature. Thus from the book _On Bees_, the Dominican
Thomas of Cantimpre, we learn that "wasps persecute bees and make war
on them out of natural hatred"; and these, he tells us, typify the
demons who dwell in the air and with lightning and tempest assail
and vex mankind--whereupon he fills a long chapter with anecdotes
of such demonic warfare on mortals.
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