In the fifth century, Cassian writes of the “sixth combat” with “weariness and distress of the heart,” saying that “this is ‘the noonday demon’ spoken of in the Ninetieth Psalm,” which “produces dislike of the place where one is, disgust, disdain, and contempt for other men, and sluggishness.” The section in question occurs in Psalms and would be literally translated from the Vulgate: “His truth shall compass thee with a shield: thou shalt not be afraid of the terror of the night. / Of the arrow that flieth in the day, of the business that walketh about in the dark: of invasion, or of the
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