3.
And as he who is the common Saviour of mankind, by his invisible and Divine power as the good shepherd, drives far away from his flock, like savage beasts, those apostate spirits which once flew through the airy tracts above this earth, and fastened on the souls of men; 1 so this his friend, graced by his heavenly favor with victory over all his foes, subdues and chastens the open adversaries of the truth in accordance with the usages of war.
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This is an allusion to what was afterwards known as Vampireism,--a belief of unknown antiquity and especially prevalent in various forms in the East. Rydberg (Magic of the Middle Ages, p. 207) describes the mediaeval form thus: "The vampires, according to the belief of the Middle Ages, are disembodied souls which clothe themselves again in their buried bodies, steal at night into houses, and suck from the nipple of the sleeping all their blood." (Cf. Perty, d. myst. Ersch. 1 [^1872], 383. 91; Görres' Chr. myst. Vol. 3, etc.) Similar in nature was that notion of the spirits who sucked away the breath of sleeping persons, which has left its trace in the modern superstition that cats suck away the breath of sleeping children. ↩
