penance being appointed for anyone receiving a magician into his house. St. Basil"s canons, more severe, appoint thirty years as the necessary atonement. Divination by lots or by consulting their sacred scriptures, just as afterwards they consulted Virgil, seems to have been a very favourite mode of discovering the future. The clergy encouraged and traded upon this kind of divination: in the Gallican church it was notorious. "Some reckon," the pious author of the "Antiquities of the Christian Church" informs us, "St. Augustin"s conversion owing to such a sort of consultation; but the thought is a great mistake, and very injurious to him, for his conversion was owing to a providential call, like that of St. Paul, from heaven." And that eminent saint"s confessions are quoted to prove that his conversion from the depths of vice and licentiousness to the austere sobriety of his new faith, was indebted to a legitimate use of the scriptures. St. Chrysostom upbraids his cotemporaries for exposing the faith, by their illegitimate inquiries, to the scorn of the heathen, many of whom where wiser than to hearken to any such fond impostures.
[35] Bingham"s _Origines Ecclesiasticae_, xvi.
St. Augustin complains that Satan"s instruments, professing the exercise of these arts, were used to "set the name of Christ before their ligatures, and enchantments, and other devices, to seduce Christians to take the venomous bait under the covert of a sweet and honey potion, that the bitter might be hid under the sweet, and make men drink it without discerning to their destruction." The heretics of the primitive, as well as of the middle, ages were accused of working miracles, and propagating their accursed doctrines by magical or infernal art. Tertullian, and after him Eusebius, denounce the arch-heretic Simon Magus for performing his spurious miracles in that way: and Irenaeus had declared of the heretic Marcus, that when he would consecrate the eucharist in a cup of wine and water, by one of his juggling tricks, he made it appear of a purple and red colour, as if by a long prayer of invocation, that it might be thought the grace from above distilled the blood into the cup by his invocation. A correspondent of Cyprian, the celebrated African bishop, describes a woman who pretended "to be inspired by the Holy Ghost, but was really acted on by a diabolical spirit, by which she counterfeited ecstasies, and pretended to prophesy, and wrought many wonderful and strange things, and boasted she would cause the earth to move. Not that the devil [he is cautious to affirm] has so great a power either to move the earth or shake the elements by his command; but the wicked spirit, foreseeing and understanding that there will be an earthquake, pretends to do that which he foresees will shortly come to pa.s.s. And by these lies and boastings, the devil subdued the minds of many to obey and follow him whithersoever he would lead them. And he made that woman walk barefoot through the snow in the depth of winter, and feel no trouble nor harm by running about in that fashion. But at last, after having played many such pranks, one of the exorcists of the Church discovered her to be a cheat, and showed that to be a wicked spirit which before was thought to be the Holy Ghost."[36]
[36] _Origines Ecclesiasticae_, xvi. The exorcists were a recognised and respectable order in the Church. See id. iii.
for an account of the _Energumenoi_ or demoniacs. The lawyer Ulpian, in the time of Tertullian, mentions the Order of Exorcists as well known. St. Augustin (_De Civit. Dei_, xxii. 8) records some extraordinary cures on his own testimony within his diocess of Hippo.
Christian witchcraft was of a more tremendous nature than even that of older times, both in its origin and practice. The devils of Christianity were the metamorphosed deities of the old religions. The Christian convert was convinced, and the Fathers of the Church gravely insisted upon the fact, that the oracles of Delphi or Dodona had been inspired in the times of ignorance and idolatry by the great Enemy, who used the priest or priestess as the means of accomplishing his eternal schemes of malice and mischief. At the instant, however (so it was confidently affirmed), of the divine incarnation the oracular temples were closed for ever; and the demons were no longer permitted to delude mankind by impersonating pagan deities. They must now find some other means of effecting their fixed purpose. It was not far to seek. There were human beings who, by a preeminently wicked disposition, or in hope of some temporary profit, were prepared to risk their future prospects, willing to devote both soul and body to the service of h.e.l.l. The "Fathers" and great expounders of Christianity, by their sentiments, their writings, and their claims to the miraculous powers of exorcising, greatly a.s.sisted to advance the common opinions. Justin Martyr, Origen, Tertullian, Jerome, were convinced that they were in perpetual conflict with the disappointed demons of the old world, who had inspired the oracles and usurped the worship of the true G.o.d. Nor was the contest always merely spiritual: they engaged personally and corporeally. St. Jerome, like St. Dunstan in the tenth, or Luther in the sixteenth century, had to fight with an incarnate demon.
Exorcism--the magical or miraculous ejection of evil spirits by a solemn form of adjuration--was a universal mode of a.s.serting the superior authority of the orthodox Church against the spurious pretensions of heretics.[37]
[37] The art of expelling demons, indeed, has been preserved in the Protestant section of the Christian Church until a recent age. The _exorcising_ power, it is remarkable, is the sole claim to miraculous privilege of the Protestants. The formula _de Strumosis Attrectandis_, or the form of touching for the king"s evil (a similar claim), was one of the recognised offices of the English Established Church in the time of Queen Anne, or of George I.
Christian theology in the first age even was considerably indebted to the Platonic doctrines as taught in the Alexandrian school; and demonology in the third century received considerable accessions from the speculations of Neo-Platonism, the reconciling medium between Greek and Oriental philosophy. Philo-Judaeus (whose reconciling theories, displayed in his attempt to prove the derivation of Greek religious or philosophical ideas from those of Moses, have been ingeniously imitated by a crowd of modern followers) had been the first to undertake to adapt the Jewish theology to Greek philosophy. Plotinus and Porphyrius, the founders of the new school of Platonism, introduced a large number of angels or demons to the acquaintance of their Christian fellow-subjects in the third century.[38] It has been remarked that "such was the mild spirit of antiquity that the nations were less attentive to the difference than to the resemblance of their religious worship. The Greek, the Roman, and the barbarian, as they met before their respective altars, easily persuaded themselves that, under various names and with various ceremonies, they adored the same deities."[39] Magianism and Judaism, however, were little imbued with the spirit of toleration; and the purer the form of religious worship, the fiercer, too often, seems to be the persecution of differing creeds. Christianity, with something of the spirit of Judaism from which it sprung, was forced to believe that the older religions must have sprung from a diabolic origin.
The whole pagan world was inspired and dominated by wicked spirits. "The pagans _deified_, the Christians _diabolised_, Nature."[40] It is in this fact that the entirely opposite spirit of antique and mediaeval thought, evident in the life, literature, in the common ideas of ancient and mediaeval Europe, is discoverable.
[38] "The knowledge that is suited to our situation and powers, the whole compa.s.s of moral, natural, and mathematical science, was neglected by the new Platonists; whilst they exhausted their strength in the verbal disputes of metaphysics, they attempted to explore the secrets of the invisible world, and studied to reconcile Aristotle with Plato on subjects of which both these philosophers were as ignorant as the rest of mankind. Consuming their reason in those deep but unsubstantial meditations, their minds were exposed to illusions of fancy. They flattered themselves that they possessed the secret of disengaging the soul from its corporeal prison; claimed a familiar intercourse with demons and spirits; and by a very singular revolution, converted the study of philosophy into that of magic."--_The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, chap. xiii.
[39] The Egyptians, almost the only exception to polytheistic tolerance, seem to have been rendered intolerant by the number of antagonistic animal-G.o.ds worshipped in different parts of the country, enumerated by Juvenal, who describes the effects of religious animosity displayed in a faction fight between Ombi or Coptos and Tentyra.--_Sat._ xv.
[40] _Life of Goethe_, by G. H. Lewes.
The female s.e.x has been always most concerned in the crime of Christian witchcraft. What was the cause of this general addiction, in the popular belief, of that s.e.x, it is interesting to inquire. In the East now, and in Greece of the age of Simonides or Euripides, or at least in the Ionic States, women are an inferior order of beings, not only on account of their weaker natural faculties and social position, but also in respect of their natural inclination to every sort of wickedness. And if they did not act the part of a Christian witch, they were skilled in the practice of toxicology. With the Latin race and many European peoples, the female s.e.x held a better position; and it may appear inconsistent that in Christendom, where the G.o.ddess-Mother was almost the highest object of veneration, woman should be degraded into a slave of Satan. By the northern nations they were supposed to be gifted with supernatural power; and the universal powers of the Italian hag have been already noticed.
But the Church, which allowed no miracle to be legitimate out of the pale, and yet could not deny the fact of the miraculous without, was obliged to a.s.sert it to be of diabolic origin. Thus the _priestess_ of antiquity became a _witch_. This is the historical account. Physically, the cause seems discoverable in the fact that the natural const.i.tution of women renders their _imaginative_ organs more excitable for the ecstatic conditions of the prophetic or necromantic arts. On all occasions of religious or other cerebral excitement, women (it is a matter of experience) are generally most easily reduced to the requisite state for the expected supernatural visitation. Their hysterical (_hystera_) natures are sufficiently indicative of the origin of such hallucinations. Their magical or pharmaceutical attributes might be derived from savage life, where the men are almost exclusively occupied either in war or in the chase: everything unconnected with these active or necessary pursuits is despised as unbecoming the superior nature of the male s.e.x. To the female portion of the community are abandoned domestic employments, preparation of food, the selection and mixture of medicinal herbs, and all the mysteries of the medical art. How important occupations like these, by ignorance and interest, might be raised into something more than natural skill, is easy to be conjectured. That so extraordinary an attribute would often be abused is agreeable to experience.[41]
[41] Quintilian declared, "_Latrocinium_ facilius in viro, _veneficium_ in femina credam." To the same effect is an observation of Pliny: "Scientiam feminarum in _veneficiis_ praevalere."
According to the earlier Christian writers, the frailer s.e.x is addicted to infernal practices by reason of their innate wickedness: and in the opinion of the "old Fathers" they are fitted by a corrupt disposition to be the recipients and agents of the devil"s will upon earth. The authors of the _Witch-Hammer_ have supported their a.s.sertions of the p.r.o.neness of women to evil in general, and to sorcery in particular, by the respectable names and authority of St. Chrysostom, Augustin, Dionysius Areopagiticus, Hilary, &c. &c.[42] The Golden-mouthed is adduced as especially hostile in his judgment of the s.e.x; and his "Homily on Herodias" takes its proper place with the satires of Aristophanes and Juvenal, of Boccaccio and Boileau.[43]
[42] "They style a wife The dear-bought curse and lawful plague of life, A bosom-serpent and a domestic evil."
[43] The royal author of the _Demonologie_ finds no difficulty in accounting for the vastly larger proportion of the female s.e.x devoted to the devil"s service. "The reason is easy," he declares; "for as that s.e.x is frailer than man is, so is it easier to be entrapped in the gross snares of the devil, as was over-well proved to be true by the serpent"s deceiving of Eva at the beginning, which makes him the homelier with that s.e.x sensine:" and it is profoundly observed that witches cannot even shed tears, though women in general are, like the crocodile, ready to weep on every light occasion.
Reginald Scot gives the reasons alleged by the apologists of witchcraft. "This gift and natural influence of fascination may be increased in man according to his affections and perturbations, as through anger, fear, love, hate, &c. For by hate, saith Varius, entereth a fiery inflammation into the eye of man, which being violently sent out by beams and streams infect and bewitch those bodies against whom they are opposed. And therefore (he saith) that is the cause that women are oftener found to be witches than men. For they have such an unbridled force of fury and concupiscence naturally, that by no means is it possible for them to temper or moderate the same. So as upon every trifling occasion they, like unto the beasts, fix their furious eyes upon the party whom they bewitch.... Women also (saith he) are oftenlie filled full of superfluous humours, and with them the melancholike blood boileth, whereof spring vapours, and are carried up and conveyed through the nostrils and mouth, to the bewitching of whatsoever it meeteth. For they belch up a certain breath wherewith they bewitch whomsoever they list. And of all other women lean, hollow-eyed, old, beetle-browed women (saith he) are the most infectious."[44] Why _old_ women are selected as the most proper means of doing the devil"s will may be discovered in their peculiar characteristics. The repulsive features, moroseness, avarice, malice, garrulity of his hags are said to be appropriate instruments. Scot informs us, "One sort of such as are said to be witches are women which be commonly old, lame, blear-eyed, pale, foul, and full of wrinkles, poor, sullen, superst.i.tious, and _papists_, or such as know no religion, in whose drowsy minds the devil hath got a fine seat. They are lean and deformed, showing melancholy in their faces, to the horror of all that see them. They are doting, scolds, mad, devilish ...
neither obtaining for their service and pains, nor yet by their art, nor yet at the devil"s hands, with whom they are said to make a perfect visible bargain, either beauty, money, promotion, wealth, worship, pleasure, honour, knowledge, or any other benefit whatsoever." As to the preternatural gifts of these hags, he sensibly argues: "Alas! what an unapt instrument is a toothless, old, impotent, unwieldy woman to fly in the air; truly, the devil little needs such instruments to bring his purposes to pa.s.s."[45]
[44] _Discoverie of Witchcraft_, book xii. 21.--We shall have occasion hereafter to notice this great opponent of the devil"s regime in the sixteenth century. We may be inclined to consider a more probable reason--that spirits, being in the general belief (so Adam infers that G.o.d had "peopled highest heaven with spirits masculine") of the masculine gender, the recipients of their inspiration are naturally of the other s.e.x: evil spirits could propagate their human or half-human agents with least suspicion and in the most natural way.
[45] _Discoverie_, i. 3, 6.--Old women, however, may be negatively useful. One of the writers on the subject (John Nider) recommends them to young men since "_Vetularum aspectus et colloquia amorem excutiunt_."
Dr. Glanvil, who wrote in the latter half of the seventeenth century, and is bitterly opposed to the "Witch-Advocate" and his followers, defends the capabilities of hags and the like for serving the demons. He conjectures, "Peradventure "tis one of the great designs, as "tis certainly the interest, of those wicked agents and machinators industriously to hide from us their influences and ways of acting, and to work as near as "tis possible _incognito_; upon which supposal it is easy to conceive a reason why they most commonly work by and upon the weak and the ignorant, who can make no cunning observations or tell credible tales to detect their artifice."[46] The act of bewitching is defined to be "a supernatural work contrived between a corporal old woman and a spiritual devil" ("Discoverie," vi. 2). The method of initiation is, according to a writer on the subject, as follows: A decrepit, superannuated, old woman is tempted by a man in black to sign a contract to become his, both soul and body. On the conclusion of the agreement (about which there was much cheating and haggling), he gives her a piece of money, and causes her to write her name and make her mark on a slip of parchment with her own blood. Sometimes on this occasion also the witch uses the ceremony of putting one hand to the sole of her foot and the other to the crown of her head. On departing he delivers to her an imp or familiar. The familiar, in shape of a cat, a mole, miller-fly, or some other insect or animal, at stated times of the day sucks her blood through teats in different parts of her body.[47] If, however, the proper vulgar witch is an old woman, the younger and fairer of the s.e.x were not by any means exempt from the crime. Young and beautiful women, children of tender years, have been committed to the rack and to the stake on the same accusation which condemned the old and the ugly.
[46] _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, part i. sect. 8.
[47] _Grose"s Antiquities_, in Brand"s _Popular Antiquities of Great Britain_.
CHAPTER II.
Charlemagne"s Severity--Anglo-Saxon Superst.i.tion--Norman and Arabic Magic--Influence of Arabic Science--Mohammedan Belief in Magic--Rabbinical Learning--Roger Bacon--The Persecution of the Templars--Alice Kyteler.
Tremendous as was the power of the witch in earlier Christendom, it was not yet degraded into the thoroughly diabolistic character of her more recent successors. Diabolism advanced in the same proportion with the authority of the Church and the ignorant submission of the people. In the civil law, the Emperor Leo, in the sixth century, abrogated the Constantinian edict as too indulgent or too credulous: from that time all sorts of charms, all use of them, beneficial or injurious, were declared worthy of punishment. The different states of Europe, founded on the ruins of the Western Empire, more or less were engaged in providing against the evil consequences of sorcery. Charlemagne pursued the criminals with great severity. He "had several times given orders that all necromancers, astrologers, and witches should be driven from his states; but as the number of criminals augmented daily, he found it necessary at last to resort to severer measures. In consequence, he published several edicts, which may be found at length in the "Capitulaire de Baluse." By these every sort of magic, enchantment, and witchcraft was forbidden, and the punishment of death decreed against those who in any way evoked the devil, compounded love-philters, afflicted either man or woman with barrenness, troubled the atmosphere, excited tempests, destroyed the fruits of the earth, dried up the milk of cows, or tormented their fellow-creatures with sores and diseases. All persons found guilty of exercising these execrable arts were to be executed immediately upon conviction, that the earth might be rid of the curse and burden of their presence; and those who consulted them might also be punished with death."[48]
[48] M. Garinet"s _Histoire de la Magic en France_, quoted in _Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions_.
The Saxons, in the fifth century, imported into Britain the pagan forms of the Fatherland; and the Anglo-Saxon (Christian) laws are usually directed against practices connected with heathen worship, of which many reminiscences were long preserved. Their Hexe, or witch,[49] appears to be half-divine, half-diabolic, a witch-priestess who derived her inspiration as much from heavenly as from h.e.l.lish sources; from some divinity or genius presiding at a sacred grove or fountain. King Athelstan is said to have made a law against witchcraft and similar acts which inflict death; that if one by them be made away, and the thing cannot be denied, such practicers shall be put to death; but if they endeavour to purge themselves, and be cast by the threefold ordeal, they shall be in prison 120 days; which ended, their kindred may redeem them by the payment [in the universal style of the English penalties] of 120 shillings to the king, and further pay to the kindred of the slain the full valuation of the party"s head; and then the criminals shall also procure sureties for good behaviour for the time to come; and the Danish prince Knut denounces by an express doom the noxious acts of sorcery.[50]
Some of the witches who appear under Saxon domination are almost as ferocious as those of the time of Bodin or of James; cutting up the bodies of the dead, especially of children, devouring their heart and liver in midnight revels. Fearful are the deeds of Saxon sorcery as related by the old Norman or Anglo-Norman writers. Roger of Wendover ("Flowers of History") records the terrible fate of a hag who lived in the village of Berkely, in the ninth century. The devil at the appointed hour (as in the case of Faust) punctually carries off the soul of his slave, in spite of the utmost watch and ward. These scenes are, perhaps, rather Norman than Saxon. It was a favourite belief of the ancients and mediaevalists that the inhospitable regions of the remoter North were the abode of demons who held in those suitable localities their infernal revels, exciting storms and tempests: and the monk-chronicler Bede relates the northern parts of Britain were thus infested.[51]
[49] The Saxon "witch" is derived, apparently, from the verb "to weet," to know, _be wise_. The Latin "saga" is similarly derived--"Sagire, sentire acute est: ex quo _sagae_ a.n.u.s, quia malta _scire_ volunt."--Cicero, _de Divinatione_.
[50] A curious collection of old English superst.i.tions in these and their allied forms, as exhibited in various doc.u.ments, appears in a recent work of authority, ent.i.tled "Leechdoms, Wort-Cunning, and Starcraft of Early England.
Published by the authority of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty"s Treasury, under the direction of the Master of the Rolls." Diseases of all sorts are for the most part inflicted upon mankind by evil demons, through the agency of spells and incantations.
[51] Strutt derives the "long-continued custom of swimming people suspected of witchcraft" from the Anglo-Saxon mode of judicial trial--the ordeal by water. Another "method of proving a witch," by weighing against the Church Bible (a formidable balance), is traced to some of their ancient customs. James VI. (_Demonologie_) is convinced that "G.o.d hath appointed, for a supernatural sign of the monstrous impiety of witches, that the water shall refuse to receive them in her bosom that have shaken off them the sacred water of baptism and wilfully refused the benefit thereof."
From Scandinavia the Normans must have brought a conviction of the truths of magic; and although they had been long settled, before the conquest of England, in Northern France and in Christianity, the traditional glories of the land from which were derived their name and renown could not be easily forgotten. Not long after the Conquest the Arabic learning of Spain made its way into this country, and it is possible that Christian magic, as well as science, may have been influenced by it. Magic, scientifically treated, flourished in Arabic Spain, being extensively cultivated, in connection with more real or practical learning, by the polite and scientific Arabs. The schools of Salamanca, Toledo, and other Saracenic cities were famous throughout Europe for eminence in medicine, chymistry, astronomy, and mathematics. Thither resorted the learned of the North to perfect themselves in the then cultivated branches of knowledge.
The vast amount of scientific literature of the Moslems of Spain, evidenced in their public libraries, relieves Southern Europe, in part at least, from the stigma of a universal barbaric illiteracy.[52] Several volumes of Arabian philosophy are said to have been introduced to Northern Europe in the twelfth century; and it was in the school of Toledo that Gerbert--a conspicuous name in the annals of magic--acquired his preternatural knowledge.
[52] The royal library of the Fatimites consisted of 100,000 ma.n.u.scripts, elegantly transcribed and splendidly bound, which were lent, without avarice or jealousy, to the students of Cairo. Yet this collection must appear moderate if we believe that the Ommiades of Spain had formed a library of 600,000 volumes, 44 of which were employed in the mere catalogue. Their capital, Cordova, with the adjacent towns of Malaga, Almeira, and Murcia, had given birth to more than 300 writers; and above 70 public libraries were opened in the cities of the Andalusian kingdom.--_Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, lii.
The few in any way acquainted with Greek literature were indebted to the Latin translations of the Arabs; while the Jewish rabbinical learning, whose more useful lore was enc.u.mbered with much mystical nonsense, enjoyed considerable reputation at this period. The most distinguished of the rabbis taught in the schools in London, York, Lincoln, Oxford, and Cambridge; and Christendom has to confess its obligations for its first acquaintance with science to the enemies of the Cross.[53] The later Jewish authorities had largely developed the demonology of the subjects of Persia; and the spiritual or demoniacal creations of the rabbinical works of the Middle Ages might be readily acceptable, if not coincident, to Christian faith. But the Western Europeans, before the philosophy of the Spanish Arabs was known, had come in contact with the Saracens and Turks of the East during frequent pilgrimages to the tomb of Christ; and the fanatical crusades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries facilitated and secured the hazardous journey. Mohammedans of the present day preserve the implicit faith of their ancestors in the efficacy of the 113th chapter of the Koran against evil spirits, the spells of witches and sorcerers--a chapter said to have been revealed to the Prophet of Islam on the occasion of his having been bewitched by the daughters of a Jew. The Genii or Ginn--a Preadamite race occupying an intermediate position between angels and men, who a.s.sume at pleasure the form of men, of the lower animals, or any monstrous shape, and propagate their species like, and sometimes with, human kind--appear in imposing proportions in "The Thousand and One Nights"--that rich display of the fancy of the Oriental imagination.[54] Credulous and confused in critical perception, the crusading adventurers for religion or rapine could scarcely fail to confound with their own the peculiar tenets of an ill-understood mode of thought; and that the critical and discriminating faculties of the champions of the Cross were not of the highest order, is ill.u.s.trated by their difficulty in distinguishing the eminently unitarian religion of Mohammed from paganism. By a strange perversion the Anglo-Norman and French chroniclers term the Moslems _Pagans_, while the Saxon heathen are dignified by the t.i.tle of _Saracens_; and the names of Mahmoud, Termagaunt, Apollo, could be confounded without any sense of impropriety. However, or in whatever degree, Saracenic or rabbinical superst.i.tion tended to influence Christian demonology, from about the end of the thirteenth century a considerable development in the mythology of witchcraft is perceptible.[55]
[53] Chymistry and Algebra still attest our obligation by their Arabic etymology.
[54] A common tradition is that Soliman, king of the Jews, having finally subdued--a success which he owed chiefly to his vast magical resources--the rebellious spirits, punished their disobedience by incarcerating them in various kinds of prisons, for longer or shorter periods of time, in proportion to their demerits. For the belief of the followers of Mohammed in the magic excellence of Solomon, see Sale"s _Koran_, xxi. and xxvii. According to the prophet, the devil taught men magic and sorcery. The magic of the Moslems, or, at least, of the Egyptians, is of two kinds--high and low--which are termed respectively _rahmanee_ (divine) and _sheytanee_ (Satanic). By a perfect knowledge of the former it is possible to the adept to "raise the dead to life, kill the living, transport himself instantly wherever he pleases, and perform any other miracle. The _low_ magic (_sooflee_ or _sheytanee_) is believed to depend on the agency of the devil and evil spirits, and unbelieving genii, and to be used for bad purposes and by bad men." The _divine_ is "founded on the agency of G.o.d and of His angels, &c., and employed always for good purposes, and only to be practised by men of probity, who, by tradition or from books, learn the names of those superhuman agents, &c."--Lane"s _Modern Egyptians_, chap.
xii.
[55] Its effect was probably to enlarge more than to modify appreciably the current ideas. A large proportion of the importations from the East may have been indebted to the invention, as much as to the credulity, of the adventurers; and we might be disposed to believe with Hume, that "men returning from so great a distance used the liberty [a too general one] of imposing every fiction upon their believing audience."
Conspicuous in the vulgar prejudices is the suspicion attaching to the extraordinary discoveries of philosophy and science.
Diabolic inspiration (as in our age infidelity and atheism are popular outcries) was a ready and successful accusation against ideas or discoveries in advance of the time. Roger Bacon, Robert Grostete, Albert the Great, Thomas of Ercildoun, Michael Scot--eminent names--were all more or less objects of a persecuting suspicion. Bacon may justly be considered the greatest name in the philosophy of the Middle Age. That anomaly of mediaevalism was one of the few who could neglect a vain and senseless theology and system of metaphysics to apply his genius to the solid pursuits of truer philosophy; and if his influence has not been so great as it might have been, it is the fault of the age rather than of the man. Condemned by the fear or jealousy of his Franciscan brethren and Dominican rivals, Bacon was thrown into prison, where he was excluded from propagating "certain suspected novelties" during fourteen years, a victim of his more liberal opinions and of theological hatred. One of the traditions of his diabolical compacts gives him credit at least for ingenuity in avoiding at once a troublesome bargain and a terrible fate. The philosopher"s compact stipulated that after death his soul was to be the reward and possession of the devil, whether he died within the church"s sacred walls or without them.
Finding his end approaching, that sagacious magician caused a cell to be constructed in the walls of the consecrated edifice, giving directions, which were properly carried out, for his burial in a tomb that was thus neither within nor without the church--an evasion of a long-expected event, which lost the disappointed devil his prize, and probably his temper. "Friar Bacon" became afterwards a well-known character in the vulgar fables: he was the type of the mediaeval, as the poet Virgil was of the ancient, magician. A popular drama was founded on his reputed exploits and character in the sixteenth century, by Robert Greene, in "Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay;" but the famous Dr. Faustus, the most popular magic hero of that time on the stage, was a formidable rival. While his cotemporaries denounced his rational method, preferring their theological jargon and scholastic metaphysics; how much the Aristotle of mediaevalism has been neglected even latterly is a surprising fact.[56]
[56] The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge have not exhibited the same impatience for a worthy edition of the works of Bacon with which Clement IV. expected a copy of the _Opus Majus_. His princ.i.p.al writings remained in MS. and were not published to the world until the middle of last century.
But in proof of the prevalence of the popular suspicion, not even the all-powerful spiritual Chief of Christendom was spared. Many of the pontiffs were charged with being addicted to the "Black Art"--an odd imputation against the vicars of Christ and the successors of St. Peter. A charge, however, which we may be disposed to receive as evidence that in a long and disgusting list of ambitious priests and licentious despots there have been some popes who, by cultivating philosophy, may have in some sort partially redeemed the hateful character of Christian sacerdotalism. At a council held at Paris in the interest of Philip IV., Boniface VIII. was publicly accused of sorcery: it was affirmed that "he had a familiar demon [the Socratic Genius?]; for he has said that if all mankind were on one side and he alone on the other, he could not be mistaken either in point of fact or of right, which presupposes a diabolical art"--a dogma of sacerdotalism sufficiently confident, but scarcely requiring a miraculous solution. This pope"s death, it is said, was hastened by these and similar reports of his dealings with familiar spirits, invented in the interest of the French king to justify his hostility. Boniface VIII."s esoteric opinions on Catholicism and Christianity, if correctly reported, did not show the orthodoxy to be expected from the supreme pontiff: but he would not be a singular example amongst the numerous occupants of the chair of St. Peter.[57]
[57] Leo X. (whose tastes were rather profane than pious) instructed or amused himself by causing to be discussed the question of the nature of the soul--himself adopting the opinion "redit in nihilum quod fuit ante nihil," and the decision of Aristotle and of Epicurus.
John XXII., one of his more immediate successors, is said to be the pope who first formally condemned the crime of witchcraft, more systematically anathematised some hundred and fifty years afterwards by Innocent VIII. He complains of the universal infection of Christendom: that his own court even, and immediate attendants, were attached to the devil"s service, applying to him on all occasions for help. The earliest judicial trial for the crime on record in England is said to have occurred in the reign of John. It is briefly stated in the "Abbreviatio Placitorum"
that "Agnes, the wife of Odo the merchant, accused Gideon of sorcery; and he was acquitted by the judgment of iron." The first account of which much information is given occurs in Edward II."s reign, when the lives of the royal favourites, the De Spencers, and his own, were attempted by a supposed criminal, one John of Nottingham, with the a.s.sistance of his man, Robert Marshall, who became king"s evidence, and charged his master with having conspired the king"s death by the arts of sorcery.[58] Cupidity or malice was the cause of this informer"s accusation. One of the distinguishing characteristics in its annals was the abuse of the common prejudice for political purposes, or for the gratification of private pa.s.sion.
[58] _Narratives of Sorcery and Magic_, by Thomas Wright.
At the commencement of the fourteenth century the persecution and final destruction of the Order of the Knights Templars in the different countries of Europe, but chiefly in France (an instance of the former abuse), is one of the most atrocious facts in the history of those times. The fate of the Knights of the Temple (whose original office it had been to protect their coreligionists during pilgrimages in the Holy City, and whose quarters were near the site of the Temple--whence the t.i.tle of the Order) in France was determined by the jealousy or avarice of Philip IV. Founded in the first half of the twelfth century as a half-religious, half-military inst.i.tution, that celebrated Order was, in its earlier career, in high repute for valour and success in fighting the battles of the Cross. With wealth and fame, pride and presumption increased to the highest pitch; and at the end of 150 years the champions of Christendom were equally hated and feared. Their entire number was no more than 1,500; but they were all experienced warriors, in possession of a number of important fortresses, besides landed property to the amount, throughout their whole extent, of nine thousand manorial estates. When the Holy Land was hopelessly lost to the profane ambition or religious zeal of the West, its defenders returned to their homes loaded with riches and prestige if not with unstained honour, and without insinuations that they had betrayed the cause of Christ and the Crusades. Such was the condition of the Temple when Philip, after exhausting the coffers of Jews and Christians, found his treasury still unfilled. The opportunity was not to be neglected: it remained only to secure the consent of the Church, and to provoke the ready credulity of the people. Church and State united, supported by the popular superst.i.tion, were irresistible; and the destined victims expected their impending fate in silent terror. At length the signal was given.