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358 Readings in European History Nevertheless the merciful Virgin, overcome by their prayers, summoned the demons who had caused the deed and enjoined upon them that, as they had caused the scandal to religion, they must bring it to an end. As they were not able to resist her commands, after much anxiety and various conferences, they found a way to remove the in- famy. In the night they placed the monk in his church, and, repairing the broken receptacle as it was before, they placed the treasure in it. Also after replacing the money in it they closed and locked the Chest which the matron had opened. And they set the woman in her room and in the place where she was accustomed to pray by night. When the monks found the treasure of their monastery, and their brother praying to God just as he had been accus tomed to do, and the husband saw his wife, and the money was found just as it had been before, they became stupefied and wondered. Rushing to the prison, they saw the monk and the woman in fetters just as they had left them ; for one of the demons was seen by them transformed into the likeness of a monk and another into the likeness of a woman. When everybody in the whole city had come together to see the miracle, the demons said in the hearing of all, " Let us go, for sufficiently have we deluded these people by causing them to think evil of religious persons." And, saying this, they suddenly disappeared. Then all threw themselves at the feet of the monk and of the woman and demanded pardon. Behold how great infamy and scandal and what inesti- mable damage the devil would have wrought against religious persons, if the blessed Virgin had not aided them. IV. THE PRIVILEGE OF BENEFIT OF CLERGY Richard of Bury, bishop of Durham, a celebrated book collector of the early fourteenth century, wrote a charm- ing little volume in praise of books, the Philobiblon. Among other things he gives the complaint of the books