Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 87

For of the thing which I relate, the most holy man Eleutherius, an aged Father, whose memory I have made above (chapter 14), was a witness, and took care to make this known to me: that in the city of Spoleto a certain girl already of marriageable age, the daughter of a certain leading man, burned with desire for the heavenly life, and her father strove to bar her from the way of life; but despising her father, she took up the habit of holy conversation. From which it came about that the father made her disinherited of his substance, and bestowed on her nothing else save six ounces of one little possession. But provoked by her example, many girls of nobler birth began to be converted at her side, and, their virginity dedicated to the Almighty Lord, to serve Him.

But on a certain day this same abbot Eleutherius, a man of venerable life, had come to her for the sake of exhortation and edification, and was sitting conversing with her about the word of God; when suddenly from that same estate, which she had received in the six ounces from her father, a countryman came with a gift. And while he stood before them, he was seized by a malignant spirit, fell down, and began to be tormented with excessive gnashings and bellowings. Then the holy woman rose up, and with an angry countenance commanded with loud cries, saying: 'Go out from him, wretch, go out from him, wretch.' At her word the devil at once answered through the mouth of the tormented man, saying: 'And if I go out of this one, into whom shall I enter?' Now by chance a little pig was feeding near by. Then the holy woman commanded, saying:

'Go out from him, and enter into this pig.' It at once went out from the man, seized upon the pig into which it had been ordered, killed it, and departed. PETER: I would like to know whether she ought at least to have granted the pig to the unclean spirit. GREGORY: The deeds of Truth are the rule set forth for our action. For to our very Redeemer it was said by the legion which held the man: 'If Thou cast us out, send us into the herd of swine' (Matt. 8:31). He drove this legion out of the man, and permitted it to enter into the swine and to send them into the abyss. From which matter this too is gathered, that without the permission of Almighty God the malignant spirit has no power against man, seeing that it could not enter into the swine unless it were permitted.

To Him, therefore, it is necessary that we willingly submit ourselves, to whom all adverse things also are subjected unwillingly, so that we may be so much the more powerful than our enemies, as we are made one with Him, the Author of all things, through humility. But what wonder is it, if certain elect men placed in the flesh can do many things marvelously, whose very bones, though dead, for the most part live in many miracles?