no means be given any other account, than that it is the effect of the Spirits. And this is the Appearance of armed Men fighting and encountering one another in the Sky. There are so many examples of these Prodigies in Historians, that it were superfluous to instance in any. That before the great slaughter of no less than fourscore thousand made by Antiochus in Jerusalem, recorded in the second of Maccabees Chapter 5. is famous. The Historian there writes, ‘That through all the City, for the space almost of fourty days, there were seen Horsemen running in the Air in cloth of Gold, and arm’d with Lances, like a band of Soldiers, and Troops of Horsemen in array, encountring and running one against another, with shaking of shields, and multitude of pikes, and drawing of swords, and casting of darts, and glittering of golden ornaments, and harness of all sorts.’ And Josephus writes also concerning the like Prodigies that happen’d before the destruction of the City by Titus, prefacing first, that they were incredible, were it not that they were recorded by those that were Eye-witnesses of them.
“The like Apparitions were seen before the Civil Wars of Marius and Sylla. And Melanchthon affirms, that a world of such Prodigies were seen all over Germany, from 1524 to 1548. Snellius, amongst other places, doth particularize in Amortsfort, where these fightings were seen not much higher than the house-tops; as also in Amsterdam, where there was also a Sea-fight appearing in the Air for an hour or two together, many thousands of men looking on.”
It is not said that it was actually the bodies of those who were dead who were thus seen passing by the walls of Narni, on the contrary we are given to understand that it was a spectral host, but with regard to those persons who were excommunicated we are to believe that physically they are bound by the ban, and that in the cases of resuscitation it is the actual body which appears. It is related in the fife of Libentius I, Archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, who died 4 January, 1013, ruling his see during the reign of King Svend Tdeskaeg,[51] that he excommunicated a number of pirates, and that one of them having been slain was buried on the Norwegian coast. Here by some chance well-nigh fifty years later the body was dug up, and being found intact most widespread terror ensued, until at length a bishop
