Look at the conception of religion held by Gregory. It seems most explicable, not by the creed he thrusts at us or by any traditional elements interpreted in a traditional sense, but by the living attitude toward the supernatural which he held. Two words are always recurring in his writings; sanctus and virtus,[1] the first meaning sacred or holy, and the second the mystic potency emanating from the person or thing that is sacred. These words have in themselves no ethical meaning and no humane implications whatever. They are the key-words of a religious technique and their content is wholly supernatural. In a practical way the second word is the more important. It describes the uncanny, mysterious power emanating from the supernatural and affecting the natural. The manifestation of this power may be thought of as a contact between the natural and the supernatural in which the former, being an inferior reality, of course yielded. These points of contact and yielding are the miracles we continually hear of. The quality of sacredness and the mystic potency belong to spirits, in varying degrees to the faithful, and to inanimate objects. They are possessed by spirits, acquired by the faithful, and transmitted to objects.
There was also a false mystic potency. It emanated from spirits who were conceived of as alien and hostile, and, while it was not strong as the true "virtue," natural phenomena yielded before it and it had its own miracles, which however were always deceitful and malignant in purpose. This "virtue" is associated with the devil, demons, soothsayers, magicians, pagans and pagan gods, and heretics, and through them is continually engaged in aggressive warfare on the true "virtue."[2]
For the attainment of the true mystic potency asceticism was the method. This was not a withdrawal from lower activities of life to gain more power for higher activities, but it was undertaken in contempt of life, and in the more thoroughgoing cases the only restraint was the desire to avoid self-destruction, which was forbidden. Almost every known method of self-denial and self-
