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From all these sources, but especially from our sacred books
and the writings of Plato, this theory that mental disease is
caused largely or mainly by Satanic influence passed on into the
early Church. In the apostolic times no belief seems to have been
more firmly settled. The early fathers and doctors in the
following age universally accepted it, and the apologists
generally spoke of the power of casting out devils as a leading
proof of the divine origin of the Christian religion.
This belief took firm hold upon the strongest men. The case
of St. Gregory the Great is typical. He was a pope of exceedingly
broad mind for his time, and no one will think him unjustly
reckoned one of the four Doctors of the Western Church. Yet he
solemnly relates that a nun, having eaten some lettuce without
making the sign of the cross, swallowed a devil, and that, when
commanded by a holy man to come forth, the devil replied: "How am
I to blame? I was sitting on the lettuce, and this woman, not
having made the sign of the cross, ate me along with it.
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