The lives of
the saints, and the chronicles of the Middle Ages, were filled
with it. Poetry and painting accepted the idea and developed it.
Dante wedded it to verse, and at Venice this thought may still
be seen embodied in one of the grand pictures of Bordone: a
shipload of demons is seen approaching Venice in a storm,
threatening destruction to the city, but St. Mark, St. George, and
St. Nicholas attack the vessel, and disperse the hellish crew.[338]
The popes again and again sanctioned this doctrine, and it was
amalgamated with various local superstitions, pious
imaginations, and interesting arguments, to strike the fancy of
the people at large. A strong argument in favour of a diabolical
origin of the thunderbolt was afforded by the eccentricities of
its operation. These attracted especial attention in the Middle
Ages, and the popular love of marvel generalized isolated
phenomena into rules. Thus it was said that the lightning
strikes the sword in the sheath, gold in the purse, the foot in
the shoe, leaving sheath and purse and shoe unharmed; that it
consumes a human being internally without injuring the skin;
that it destroys nets in the water, but not on the land; that it
kills one man, and leaves untouched another standing beside him;
that it can tear through a house and enter the earth without
moving a stone from its place; that it injures the heart of a
tree, but not the bark; that wine is poisoned by it, while
poisons struck by it lose their venom; that a man's hair may be
consumed by it and the man be unhurt.
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