Chapter 30

THE REBELS' COMMUNION--SABBATHS--THE BLACK MASS.

We must now speak of the _Sabbaths_; a word which at different times clearly meant quite different things. Unhappily, we have no detailed accounts of these gatherings earlier than the reign of Henry IV.[52] By that time they were nothing more than a great lewd farce carried on under the cloak of witchcraft. But these very descriptions of a thing so greatly corrupted are marked by certain antique touches that tell of the successive periods and the different forms through which it had passed.

[52] The least bad of these is by Lancre, a man of some wit, whose evident connection with some young witches gave him something to say. The accounts of the Jesuit Del Rio and the Dominican Michaëlis are the absurd productions of two credulous and silly pedants.

* * * * *

We may set out with this firm idea that, for many centuries, the serf led the life of a wolf or a fox; that he was _an animal of the night_, moving about, I may say, as little as possible in the daytime, and truly living in the night alone.

Still, up to the year 1000, so long as the people made their own saints and legends, their daily life was not to them uninteresting. Their nightly Sabbaths were only a slight relic of paganism. They held in fear and honour the Moon, so powerful over the good things of earth. Her chief worshippers, the old women, burn small candles to _Dianom_--the Diana of yore, whose other names were Luna and Hecate. The Lupercal (or wolf-man) is always following the women and children, disguised indeed under the dark face of ghost Hallequin (Harlequin). The Vigil of Venus was kept as a holiday precisely on the first of May. On Midsummer Day they kept the Sabaza by sacrificing the he-goat of Bacchus Sabasius. In all this there was no mockery; nothing but a harmless carnival of serfs.

But about the year 1000 the church is well-nigh shut against the peasant through the difference between his language and hers. By 1100 her services became quite unintelligible. Of the mysteries played at the church-doors, he has retained chiefly the comic side, the ox and the ass, &c. On these he makes Christmas carols, which grow ever more and more burlesque, forming a true Sabbatic literature.

* * * * *

Are we to suppose that the great and fearful risings of the twelfth century had no influence on these mysteries, on this night-life of the _wolf_, the _game bird_, the _wild quarry_. The great sacraments of rebellion among the serfs, when they drank of each other's blood, or ate of the ground by way of solemn pledge,[53] may have been celebrated at the Sabbaths. The "Marseillaise" of that time, sung by night rather than day, was perhaps a Sabbatic chant:--

"Nous sommes hommes commes ils sont! Tout aussi grand coeur nous avons! Tout autant souffrir nous pouvons!"[54]

[53] At the battle of Courtray. See also Grimm and my _Origines_.

[54]

"We are fashioned of one clay: Big as theirs our hearts are aye: We can bear as much as they."--TRANS.

But the tombstone falls again in 1200. Seated thereon the Pope and the King, with their enormous weight, have sealed up man. Has he now his old life by night? More than ever. The old pagan dances must by this time have waxed furious. Our negroes of the Antilles, after a dreadful day of heat and hard work, would go and dance away some four leagues off. So it was with the serf too. But with his dances there must have mingled a merriment born of revenge, satiric farces, burlesques and caricatures of the baron and the priest: a whole literature of the night indeed, that knew not one word of the literature of the day, that knew little even of the burgher Fabliaux.

* * * * *

Of such a nature were the Sabbaths before 1300. Before they could take the startling form of open warfare against the God of those days, much more was needed still, and especially these two things: not only a descending into the very depths of despair, but also _an utter losing of respect for anything_.

To this pass they do not come until the fourteenth century, under the Avignon popes, and during the Great Schism; when the Church with two heads seems no longer a church; when the king and all his nobles, being in shameful captivity to the English, are extorting the means of ransom from their oppressed and outraged people. Then do the Sabbaths take the grand and horrible form of the _Black Mass_, of a ritual upside down, in which Jesus is defied and bidden to thunder on the people if He can. In the thirteenth century this devilish drama was still impossible, through the horror it would have caused. And later again, in the fifteenth, when everything, even suffering itself, had become exhausted, so fierce an outburst could not have issued forth; so monstrous an invention no one would have essayed. It could only have belonged to the age of Dante.

* * * * *

It took place, I fancy, at one gush; an explosion as it were of genius raving, bringing impiety up to the height of a great popular passion-fit. To understand the nature of these bursts of rage, we must remember that, far from imagining the fixedness of God's laws, a people brought up by their own clergy to believe and depend on miracles, had for ages past been hoping and waiting for nothing else than a miracle which never came. In vain they demanded one in the desperate hour of their last worst strait. Heaven thenceforth appeared to them as the ally of their savage tormentors, nay, as itself a tormentor too.

Thereon began the _Black Mass_ and the _Jacquerie_.[55]

[55] The Peasants' war which raged in France in 1364.

In the elastic shell of the Black Mass, a thousand variations of detail may afterwards have been inserted; but the shell itself was strongly made and, in my opinion, all of one piece.

This drama I succeeded in reproducing in my "History of France," in the year 1857. There was small difficulty in casting it anew in its four acts. Only at that time I left in it too many of the grotesque adornments which clothed the Sabbath of a later period; nor did I clearly enough define what belonged to the older shell, so dark and dreadful.

* * * * *

Its date is strongly marked by certain savage tokens of an age accursed, and yet more by the ruling place therein assigned to woman, a fact most characteristic of the fourteenth century.

It is strange to mark how, at that period, the woman who enjoys so little freedom still holds her royal sway in a hundred violent fashions. At this time she inherits fiefs, brings her kingdoms to the king. On the lower levels she has still her throne, and yet more in the skies. Mary has supplanted Jesus. St. Francis and St. Dominic have seen the three worlds in her bosom. By the immensity of her grace she washes away sin; ay, and sometimes helps the sinner,--as in the story of a nun whose place the Virgin took in the choir, while she herself was gone to meet her lover.

Up high, and down very low, we see the woman. Beatrice reigns in heaven among the stars, while John of Meung in the _Romaunt of the Rose_ is preaching the community of women. Pure or sullied, the woman is everywhere. We might say of her what Raymond Lulle said of God: "What part has He in the world? The whole."

But alike in heaven and in poetry the true heroine is not the fruitful mother decked out with children; but the Virgin, or some barren Beatrice, who dies young.

A fair English damsel passed over into France, it is said, about the year 1300, to preach the redemption of women. She looked on herself as their Messiah.

* * * * *

In its earliest phase the Black Mass seemed to betoken this redemption of Eve, so long accursed of Christianity. The woman fills every office in the Sabbath. She is priestess, altar, pledge of holy communion, by turns. Nay, at bottom, is she not herself as God?

* * * * *

Many popular traits may be found herein, and yet it comes not wholly from the people. The peasant who honoured strength alone, made small account of the woman; as we see but too clearly in our old laws and customs. From him the woman would not have received the high place she holds here. It is by her own self the place is won.

I would gladly believe that the Sabbath in its then shape was woman's work, the work of such a desperate woman as the Witch was then. In the fourteenth century she saw open before her a horrible career of torments lighted up for three or four hundred years by the stake. After 1300 her medical knowledge is condemned as baleful, her remedies are proscribed as if they were poisons. The harmless drawing of lots, by which lepers then thought to better their luck, brought on a massacre of those poor wretches. Pope John XXII. ordered the burning of a bishop suspected of Witchcraft. Under a system of such blind repression there was just the same risk in daring little as in daring much. Danger itself made people bolder; and the Witch was able to dare anything.

* * * * *

Human brotherhood, defiance of the Christian heaven, a distorted worship of nature herself as God--such was the purport of the Black Mass.

They decked an altar to the arch-rebel of serfs, _to Him who had been so wronged_, the old outlaw, unfairly hunted out of heaven, "the Spirit by whom earth was made, the Master who ordained the budding of the plants." Such were the names of honour given him by his worshippers, the _Luciferians_, and also, according to a very likely opinion, by the Knights of the Temple.

The greatest miracle of those unhappy times is, the greater abundance found at the nightly communion of the brotherhood, than was to be found elsewhere by day. By incurring some little danger the Witch levied her contributions from those who were best off, and gathered their offerings into a common fund. Charity in a Satanic garb grew very powerful, as being a crime, a conspiracy, a form of rebellion. People would rob themselves of their food by day for the sake of the common meal at night.

* * * * *

Figure to yourself, on a broad moor, and often near an old Celtic cromlech, at the edge of a wood, this twofold scene: on one side a well-lit moor and a great feast of the people; on the other, towards yon wood, the choir of that church whose dome is heaven. What I call the choir is a hill commanding somewhat the surrounding country. Between these are the yellow flames of torch-fires, and some red brasiers emitting a fantastic smoke. At the back of all is the Witch, dressing up her Satan, a great wooden devil, black and shaggy. By his horns, and the goatskin near him, he might be Bacchus; but his manly attributes make him a Pan or a Priapus. It is a darksome figure, seen differently by different eyes; to some suggesting only terror, while others are touched by the proud melancholy wherein the Eternally Banished seems absorbed.[56]

[56] This is taken from Del Rio, but is not, I think, peculiar to Spain. It is an ancient trait, and marked by the primitive inspiration.

* * * * *

Act First. The magnificent _In troit_ taken by Christendom from antiquity, that is, from those ceremonies where the people in long train streamed under the colonnades on their way to the sanctuary, is now taken back for himself by the elder god upon his return to power. The _Lavabo_, likewise borrowed from the heathen lustrations, reappears now. All this he claims back by right of age.

His priestess is always called, by way of honour, the Elder; but she would sometimes have been young. Lancre tells of a witch of seventeen, pretty, and horribly savage.

The Devil's bride was not to be a child: she must be at least thirty years old, with the form of a Medea, with the beauty that comes of pain; an eye deep, tragic, lit up by a feverish fire, with great serpent tresses waving at their will: I refer to the torrent of her black untamable hair. On her head, perhaps, you may see the crown of vervein, the ivy of the tomb, the violets of death.

When she has had the children taken off to their meal, the service begins: "I will come before thine altar; but save me, O Lord, from the faithless and violent man (from the priest and the baron)."

Then come the denial of Jesus, the paying of homage to the new master, the feudal kiss, like the greetings of the Temple, when all was yielded without reserve, without shame, or dignity, or even purpose; the denial of an olden god being grossly aggravated by a seeming preference for Satan's back.

It is now his turn to consecrate his priestess. The wooden deity receives her in the manner of an olden Pan or Priapus. Following the old pagan form she sits a moment upon him in token of surrender, like the Delphian seeress on Apollo's tripod. After receiving the breath of his spirit, the sacrament of his love, she purifies herself with like formal solemnity. Thenceforth she is a living altar.

* * * * *

The Introit over, the service is interrupted for the feast. Contrary to the festive fashion of the nobles, who all sit with their swords beside them, here, in this feast of brethren, are no arms, not even a knife.

As a keeper of the peace, each has a woman with him. Without a woman no one is admitted. Be she a kinswoman or none, a wife or none; be she old or young, a woman he must bring with him.

What were the drinks passed round among them? Mead, or beer, or wine; strong cider or perry? The last two date from the twelfth century.

The illusive drinks, with their dangerous admixture of belladonna, did they already appear at that board? Certainly not. There were children there. Besides, an excess of commotion would have prevented the dancing.

This whirling dance, the famous _Sabbath-round_, was quite enough to complete the first stage of drunkenness. They turned back to back, their arms behind them, not seeing each other, but often touching each other's back. Gradually no one knew himself, nor whom he had by his side. The old wife then was old no more. Satan had wrought a miracle. She was still a woman, desirable, after a confused fashion beloved.

* * * * *

Act Second. Just as the crowd, grown dizzy together, was led, both by the attraction of the women and by a certain vague feeling of brotherhood, to imagine itself one body, the service was resumed at the _Gloria_. The altar, the host, became visible. These were represented by the woman herself. Prostrate, in a posture of extreme abasement, her long black silky tresses lost in the dust; she, this haughty Proserpine, offered up herself. On her back a demon officiated, saying the _Credo_, and making the offering.[57]

[57] This important fact of the woman being her own altar, is known to us by the trial of La Voisin, which M. Ravaisson, Sen., is about to publish with the other _Papers of the Bastille_.

At a later period this scene came to be immodest. But at this time, amidst the calamities of the fourteenth century, in the terrible days of the Black Plague, and of so many a famine, in the days of the Jacquerie and those hateful brigands, the Free Lances,--on a people thus surrounded by danger, the effect was more than serious. The whole assembly had much cause to fear a surprise. The risk run by the Witch in this bold proceeding was very great, even tantamount to the forfeiting of her life. Nay, more; she braved a hell of suffering, of torments such as may hardly be described. Torn by pincers, and broken alive; her breasts torn out; her skin slowly singed, as in the case of the wizard bishop of Cahors; her body burned limb by limb on a small fire of red-hot coal, she was like to endure an eternity of agony.

Certainly all were moved when the prayer was spoken, the harvest-offering made, upon this devoted creature who gave herself up so humbly. Some wheat was offered to the _Spirit of the Earth_, who made wheat to grow. A flight of birds, most likely from the woman's bosom, bore to the _God of Freedom_ the sighs and prayers of the serfs. What did they ask? Only that we, their distant descendants, might become free.[58]

[58] This grateful offering of wheat and birds is peculiar to France. In Lorraine, and no doubt in Germany, black beasts were offered, as the black cat, the black goat, or the black bull.

What was the sacrament she divided among them? Not the ridiculous pledge we find later in the reign of Henry IV., but most likely that _confarreatio_ which we saw in the case of the philtres, the hallowed pledge of love, a cake baked on her own body, on the victim who, perhaps, to-morrow would herself be passing through the fire. It was her life, her death, they ate there. One sniffs already the scorching flesh.

Last of all they set upon her two offerings, seemingly of flesh; two images, one of _the latest dead_, the other of the newest-born in the district. These shared in the special virtue assigned to her who acted as altar and Host in one, and on these the assembly made a show of receiving the communion. Their Host would thus be threefold, and always human. Under a shadowy likeness of the Devil the people worshipped none other than its own self.

The true sacrifice was now over and done. The woman's work was ended, when she gave herself up to be eaten by the multitude. Rising from her former posture, she would not withdraw from the spot until she had proudly stated, and, as it were, confirmed the lawfulness of her proceedings by an appeal to the thunderbolt, by an insolent defiance of the discrowned God.

In mockery of the _Agnus Dei_, and the breaking of the Christian Host, she brought a toad dressed up, and pulled it to pieces. Then rolling her eyes about in a frightful way she raised them to heaven, and beheading the toad, uttered these strange words: "Ah, _Philip_,[59] if I had you here, you should be served in the same manner!"

[59] Lancre, 136. Why "Philip," I cannot say. By Satan Jesus is always called John or _Janicot_ (Jack). Was she speaking of Philip of Valois, who brought on the wasting hundred years' war with England?

* * * * *

No answer being outwardly given to her challenge, no thunderbolt hurled upon her head, they imagine that she has triumphed over the Christ. The nimble band of demons seized their moment to astonish the people with various small wonders which amazed and overawed the more credulous. The toads, quite harmless in fact, but then accounted poisonous, were bitten and torn between their dainty teeth. They jumped over large fires and pans of live coal, to amuse the crowd and make them laugh at the fires of Hell.

Did the people really laugh after a scene so tragical, so very bold? I know not. Assuredly there was no laughing on the part of her who first dared all this. To her these fires must have seemed like those of the nearest stake. Her business rather lay in forecasting the future of that devilish monarchy, in creating the Witch to be.