set in motion a hagiographic tradition in which saints cast out demons or repel tempting devils by blowing at them. Of Saint Pachomius, for example, it is said that "defending his brow with the sign of the cross, he blew upon [the demon] and immediately he fled … ; blowing upon him, he said, 'depart from me, devil.'" And of Saint Goswin that "a demon stood before Saint Goswin saying 'surely you see that I am Christ …' and … therefore Saint Goswin exsufflated vigorously, saying 'depart foe …,' and immediately … the devil vanished." Saint Justina is reported to have similarly unmasked a series of increasingly subtle and powerful demons, finally melting the prince of demons himself: "blowing upon the devil, she immediately melted him like wax and … felt herself freed from all temptation." And Saint Felix is said to have destroyed idols and uprooted sacred trees by like means. The breath of the saints was credited with healing, as well as exorcistic, powers from an early period. Gregory of Nyssa says of Gregory Thaumaturgus ('Gregory the magician') that he needed to resort to "no finicking and laborious" magic, but "there sufficed, for both the casting out of demons and the healing of bodily ailments, the breath of his mouth." Similar powers are attributed to the Irish saints: kindling lamps, curing dumbness. This theme, too, persists in later hagiographic and quasi-hagiographic texts, appearing, for example in the Estoire del saint graal as the agency by which a madman is miraculously restored. Among English texts, Felix's Life of Saint Guthlac relates that in order to give relief to a boy afflicted by madness, he "washed him in the water of the sacred font and, breathing into his face the breath of healing [or 'spirit of salvation'], drove away from him all the power of the evil spirit," illustrating the difficulty of distinguishing healing from exorcism in an era in which madness was attributed to demonic possession. The miracle that Bishop John performed, according to Bede, on behalf of Herebald, is another example, since it involved a sufflation that was seemingly exorcistic, catechetical, and curative simultaneously. Magic and folk medicine Tertullian remarked to his wife about Christian practices: "will you not seem to be doing magic?" in the eyes of a non-believer. Celsus (according to Origen) reports the use of exsufflation by Egyptian magicians. Plotinus seems to attack its use