Bede had full faith in it, and narrates various anecdotes in support of it.

St.Thomas Aquinas gave it his sanction, saying in his all authoritative Summa, "Rains and winds, and whatsoever occurs by local impulse alone, can be caused by demons." "It is," he says, "a dogma of faith that the demons can produce wind, storms, and rain of fire from heaven." Albert the Great taught the same doctrine, and showed how a certain salve thrown into a spring produced whirlwinds.

The great Franciscan--the "seraphic doctor"-- St.Bonaventura, whose services to theology earned him one of the highest places in the Church, and to whom Dante gave special honour in paradise, set upon this belief his high authority.

The lives of the saints, and the chronicles of the Middle Ages, were filled with it.

Poetry and painting accepted the idea and developed it.