Part 23

Philip Wesselich, a monk of Knechtenstein near Cologne, an honest, simple-minded man, was miserably afflicted by a spirit about the year 1550. Sometimes he was carried up to the roof, at others thrust in among the beams of the belfry, often carried unexpectedly through the wall (_plerumque per murum transferebatur inopinato_) and knocked about generally. At length the spirit declared he was Matthew Duren, a former abbot, condemned to penance for having paid an artist insufficiently for a painting of the Blessed Virgin, so that the poor man went bankrupt and committed suicide, ‘which was true’. He could only be released if the monk went to Trèves and Aix and recited three masses in the respective cathedrals. The theological faculty of Cologne advised that he should do so, but the abbot Gerard, a man of firmness and intelligence, told the possessed man that he was a victim of diabolical deceptions, and that unless he put his trust in God, and pulled himself together, he should be publicly whipped. Whereupon the monk did so, and the devil left him and went elsewhere.[330]

A similar case was that of a young woman known to Weyer, who had convulsions in church whenever the ‘Gloria in excelsis’ was sung in German, and said she was possessed. It was observed, however, that she looked about for a soft place to fall on. She was therefore sent for by Weyer’s friend the Countess Anna of Virmont, who said she was about to sing the chant, and that if the demon attacked her she would soon drive him out. The young woman fell in the usual fit, on which the countess, _prudens et cordata matrona_, with the aid of her daughter pulled up her dress and gave her a good whipping. ‘She confessed to me afterwards that it completely cured her.’ Extreme diseases, adds Weyer, require, according to Hippocrates, extreme remedies, but care should be taken to distinguish suitable cases.[331]

The last and most important section of the book treats of the punishment of witches, who are to be carefully distinguished from poisoners and magicians, such as Faust, who are often wealthy men and spend much money in travel, books, &c., to learn diabolic arts; or deceivers, such as the mason who buried wolves’ dung in a cattle stall, and when the animals showed great excitement, said they were bewitched, and offered to cure them for a consideration. Such men, when proved to have done serious harm, are to be severely punished. The less guilty should be admonished, and among them are those who spread superstitious practices and persuade sick people that they are bewitched by some old woman.

This is all that the laws of Church or State require, and is a very different thing from seizing poor women possessed by diabolic delusions, or on the malicious accusations or foolish suspicions of the ignorant vulgar, and casting them into horrible dungeons, whence they are dragged to be torn and crushed by every imaginable instrument of torture, till, however guiltless they are, they confess to sorcery, since it is better to give their souls to God in innocence, even through flame, than longer endure the hideous torments of bloodthirsty tyrants. And should they die under torture or in prison, the accusers and judges cry out triumphantly that they have committed suicide, or that the devil has broken their necks.

Here follows a burst of indignant eloquence which would have cost Weyer dear had he fallen into the clutches of the witch-hunters, and which may be given in the terse vigour of the original:

‘Sed ubi tandem is apparuerit quem nihil latet, Scrutator cordium et renum, ipsius abstrusissimae etiam veritatis Cognitor et Iudex, vestri actus palam fient, O vos praefracti tyranni, O iudices sanguinarii, hominem exuti et caecitate ab omni misericordia procul remoti. Ad ipsius extremi iudicii tribunal iustissimum vos provoco, qui inter vos et me decernet ubi sepulta et culcata Veritas resurget vobisque in faciem resistet latrociniorum ultionem exactura.’[332]

Their credulity almost equals their cruelty, as shown by the belief that a certain old woman caused the excessive cold of the preceding winter, and by the absurd swimming test. What effect can denial of faith, evil intentions, or a corrupt fantasy have upon a person’s specific gravity, on which floating depends? Moreover, women usually float, since their specific gravity is less than that of men, as Hippocrates pointed out.[333] But nothing is too absurd for a witch inquisitor. Some fishermen at Rotterdam drew up their nets full of stones but fishless. This was clearly witchcraft, so they seized an unfortunate woman who confessed in her terror that she had flown out of the window through a hole the size of a finger-end, dived under the sea in a mussel-shell,[334] and there terrified the fishes and put stones in the nets. The woman, says Weyer, was evidently mad or deluded by the devil, but they burnt her all the same. Treachery and cruelty go together. A priest, having failed to make a witch confess, promised that if she would admit some small act of sorcery, he would see that she was released after some slight penance. Thereupon she confessed and was burnt alive.[335]

In contrast to this, Weyer describes the method of dealing with witchcraft in the duchy of Cleves. In 1563 a farmer, finding his cows gave less milk than usual, consulted a witch-finder, who told him that one of his own daughters had bewitched them. The girl, deluded by the devil, admitted this and accused sixteen other women of being her accomplices. The magistrate wrote to the duke proposing to imprison them all, but the latter, probably at Weyer’s instigation, replied that the witch-finder was to be imprisoned, the girl to be instructed by a priest and warned against the delusions of demons, and the sixteen women in no way to be molested.[336]

An old woman of eighty was arrested at Mons on charge of witchcraft, the chief evidence being that her mother had long ago been tortured to death on a similar charge. To make her confess they poured boiling oil over her legs, which produced blisters and ulcers, and her son hearing of it sent her a roll of lint to put round them. This was supposed to make magic bandages by the aid of which the woman might escape, and the son was promptly arrested. The mother was to be burnt in a few days, and her son would probably have followed, when Weyer, by permission of the Duke of Cleves, visited Count William of Mons and explained his views on witchcraft. He also examined the old woman, who was so broken down that she fainted several times, and finally obtained the release of both.[337]

Theologians (says Weyer in conclusion) may object that he is only a physician and bid him keep to his last. He can only reply that St. Luke was a physician, and that he is one of those who hope by the mercy of God and grace of Christ to attain that royal priesthood of which St. Paul and St. John speak. Finally he is ready to submit all he has said to the judgement of the Church, and to recant any errors of which he may be convicted.

The Church answered by putting his name on the _Index_ as an _auctor primae classis_, that is, one whose opinions are so dangerous that none of his works may be read by the faithful without special permission, while his book was solemnly burnt by the Protestant University of Marburg.[338] The Duke of Alva, then engaged in his notorious work in the Netherlands, used his influence to get Weyer removed from his position at the court of Cleves. In this he was aided by the duke’s increasing melancholia and ill health, which were considered by many a judgement upon him for his protection of Weyer and neglect of witch-burning. In 1578 Weyer resigned his post to his son Galen, and in 1581 witch-hunting commenced in the duchy of Cleves. Weyer, however, as befitted the chivalrous defender of outraged womanhood, enjoyed the friendship and protection of Countess Anna of Techlenburg, at whose residence he died, 1588, aged seventy-two.

The work on _The Deceptions of Demons_ has been aptly compared to a torch thrown out into the darkness, which for a moment brightly illumes a small space and then disappears. It made a temporary sensation, and was welcomed by a few of the more enlightened spirits of the time; it saved the lives of some unfortunate women (being successfully quoted the very year after publication in defence of a young woman at Frankfort, who confessed she had flown through the air and had intercourse with the devil), and it marks the beginning of an open and persistent opposition to the witch mania. Spee also has a curious story showing the influence of Weyer’s book:

‘A great prince invited two priests to his table, both men of learning and piety. He asked one of them whether he thought it right to arrest and torture persons on the evidence of 10 or 12 witches. Might not the devil have deceived them in order to make rulers shed innocent blood, as certain learned men had lately argued, “thereby causing us pangs of conscience”? The priest stoutly maintained that these pangs were needless, for God would never allow the devil to bring innocent men to a shameful and horrible death in this way; and so he (the prince) might continue the witch trials as usual. He persisted in this, till the prince said, “I am sorry, my father, you have condemned yourself and cannot complain were I to order your immediate arrest, for no less than 15 persons have sworn you were with them at the witch dances”, and he produced the records of their trials in proof. Then the good man stood like butter in the sun in the dog-days, and had nothing more to say for himself.’[339] #/

But it had little effect on the superstition itself, which reached its height during the following half-century; and the author is compelled by his religious beliefs to admit so much that his position is hardly tenable. Indeed, his premisses had already been granted by the witch-hunters themselves. The jurist Molitor, for instance, admits that much witchcraft is imaginary and due to the deceptions of demons, but while the physician argues that these deceptions are rendered possible by disease, and are themselves largely of the nature of disease, so that the victims deserve pity and medical treatment rather than burning, the lawyer asserts that a person can only be so deceived by his free will, and therefore a woman who believes she has made a compact or had intercourse with the devil is as deserving of punishment as if she had actually done so.[340]

Just over a century after the appearance of Weyer’s book (1664)

‘Sir Thomas Brown of Norwich, the famous physician of his time, was desired by my Lord Chief Baron [Hale] to give his judgement [in a case of witchcraft]. And he declared that he was clearly of opinion That the Fits were natural, but heightened by the devil co-operating with the malice of the witches at whose instance he did the villanies. And he added, That in Denmark there had been lately a great Discovery of Witches, who used the very same way of afflicting persons by conveying pins into them.’

The jury ‘having Sir Thomas Brown’s Declaration about Denmark for their encouragement, in half an hour brought them in guilty.... They were hanged maintaining their innocence.’[341]

Had Brown been better acquainted with _The Deceptions of Demons_ he might have hesitated to make that ‘Declaration about Denmark’, but Weyer’s early opponent, Bishop Binsfeld, has no difficulties. Quoting Origen (in Matt. xvii. 15) he exclaims, ‘Physicians may say what they like, we who believe the Gospel hold that devils cause lunacy’ and many other diseases.[342] But for a demon to cause disease or do other harm, two things are requisite, the permission of God and the free will of some malicious person, witch, or sorcerer. The physician, Weyer, has denied the possibility of a compact with the devil, but is easily refuted by Scripture and Church authority. Did not the devil try to make a compact with Christ Himself?[343] Similarly he has no difficulty in showing that the Hebrew word for witch means much more than ‘poisoner’, and, given the almost universal beliefs of the age, it must be admitted that Brown and the bishop have the best of the argument.

In the opening chapter of his well-known work on rationalism, Lecky says that the decline of the belief in witchcraft ‘presents a spectacle not of argument and conflict, but of silent evanescence and decay’; it was ‘unargumentative and insensible’. Scot’s work ‘exercised no appreciable influence’, and, so far as the result was concerned, he, Weyer, and their like might as well have kept quiet and waited for the change to be effected by ‘what is called the spirit of the age’, that is, ‘a gradual insensible yet profound modification of the habits of thought’ due to ‘the progress of civilization’. This theory has been ably criticized elsewhere.[344] The truth it contains seems to be that argument would not have sufficed to change public opinion about witchcraft, without the aid of changes in other matters, and especially the development and success of scientific investigation. Such discoveries as the motion of the earth and circulation of the blood, when generally accepted (which was not till late in the seventeenth century), showed that the learned as well as the vulgar might be utterly mistaken in important beliefs supported by apparently good evidence, and that scientific methods of attaining truth differed widely from those of the witch-hunters.

The progress of civilization by practically abolishing the use of torture would alone have immensely diminished the number of victims, and of those ‘confessions’ on which the belief was fed. To use military language, the witch mania was an ugly and formidable redoubt connected with other forts and entrenchments. It suffered somewhat from the bombardment by Weyer and Scot, but could only be finally demolished by a general advance of the forces of science and civilization. But if every one had trusted to ‘the spirit of the age’ rather than disturb his neighbours’ beliefs, we might still be burning our grandmothers.

Though born in what is now Holland and educated in France, German writers claim Weyer as their countryman and compare him with Martin Luther. The monk of Wittenberg is indeed a fine figure with his ‘Here stand I; I cannot otherwise, God help me!’ But he had half Germany behind him; both princes and populace were ready to protect him. Weyer stood practically alone, and if he escaped being burnt by jurists and theologians, had a fair chance of being lynched by an enraged mob as a sorcerer and protector of witches. There was little to save him from torture and death but the strength of mind of Duke William of Cleves, who came of an insane family and already showed signs of melancholia.

Weyer was happily spared such a trial of his fortitude, but none the less does he deserve our admiration as the chivalrous champion of womanhood, who first, with vizor up and lance in rest, greeted, alas! not, like the knights of legend, by prayers and blessings but by threats and imprecations, went forth to do open battle with the hideous monster which had so long tortured and slain the innocent and helpless.

THE ‘TRACTATUS DE CAUSIS ET INDICIIS MORBORUM’

كتاب الاسباب والعلامات

ATTRIBUTED TO MAIMONIDES

By Reuben Levy

Among modern authorities on Arabian medicine, the opinion has been widely held that the position of Maimonides as a medical writer must depend mainly upon an unpublished work from his hand, known as the _Tractatus de Causis et Indiciis Morborum_.[345] It is here sought to demonstrate that the Bodleian MS. (Marsh 379), hitherto regarded as containing this work, is in reality by another author, while the Paris MS. (Bibliothèque Nationale, Ancien Fonds 411),[346] the only other alleged copy of the _Tractatus de Causis et Indiciis Morborum_, contains in fact no such work. Moreover, evidence will be adduced showing that it is not probable that Maimonides composed a treatise of this scope.

For their information concerning the _Tractatus_, the modern bibliographers evidently rely entirely on entries in the catalogues of the respective libraries. The 1739 Catalogue of Arabic and Hebrew MSS. in the Bibliothèque Nationale contains the following entry:[347] ‘Codex bombycinus, Aleppo in bibliothecam Colbertinam anno 1673 illatus, quo continetur R. Mosis Maemonidae de morborum causis et illorum curatione tractatus, Arabice, charactere Hebraico.’ Careful examination of the manuscript disclosed the fact that it contained no fewer than four works of Maimonides, viz. on Poisons,[348] on Asthma,[349] the _Tractatus de Regimine Sanitatis_,[350] and the _Tractatus de Morbo Regis Aegypti_,[351] all bound together in confusion.[352] All these are known to be by Maimonides, and there is nothing besides them in the volume.

There has always been a good deal of confusion about the works _de Regimine Sanitatis_ and _de Morbo Regis Aegypti_. The former is variously known as _de Regimine Sanitatis, de Cibo et Alimento, de Dietetica_, ‘the letter to the Sultan’, or as ‘the Consultation concerning (the Sultan) Al Afḍal’.[353] The latter also has a number of titles, such as _de Causis Accidentium,[354] de Morborum Causis et Curatione_, and _Responsum ad Regem Raqqa_, in addition to its title of _de Morbo Regis Aegypti_. In 1514, in Venice the two treatises were printed together in Latin as one work.[355]

Leclerc[356] has made confusion worse confounded by saying that ‘ce que l’on a désigné sous les titres, _De Morbo Regis Aegypti, De Causis Accidentium, De Causis et Indiciis Morborum, De Cibo et Alimento_, ne sont autre chose que tout ou partie du même ouvrage’.[357] No doubt he was led into making this statement partly by the fact that Wüstenfeld[358] gives the title of _de Causis et Indiciis Morborum_ both to the Bibliothèque Nationale MS. (which Leclerc knew as _de Causis Accidentium_) and to the Bodley MS.

The entry concerning the latter in Uri’s Bodleian Catalogue of 1787[359] reads as follows:

‘Codex bombycinus, anno Hegirae 765, Christi 1363 exaratus, folia 116 implens. Comprehendit succinctum de omnium corporis humani morborum causis, signis et remediis tractatum ab Ibn Hobaish Hierosolymitano ex Hebraica lingua in Arabicam conversum, cui sectiones sex supra centum sunt. Initium fit a morbis capitis; finis in elephantiasi. Composuit Musa Ben Maimun Alcortubi, Israelita. [Marsh 379.]’

The MS. bears upon one of its pages the title

هذا كتاب الاسباب والعلامات الحكيم ’موسى بن ميمون القرطبي الاسرايلي

‘This is the book of the causes and symptoms, by the Doctor Mûsa ibn Maimûn the Cordovan, the Israelite.’ (Plate XLI.)

As a matter of fact it is no such thing. This title, together with an extra title-page and colophon in the same hand, is a much later addition to the MS., which also has a fragment of some other medical work--at present unidentified--bound up with it. The folios of the MS. which deal with the _Tractatus_ have been bound together in extreme disorder, but examination of them has shown that they really form a fragment of the second book of ‫المختار قي الطبّ‬, the _Delectus de Medicina_, by ‫مهذب الدين ابو الحسن على بن احهد البغدادي‬, Muhaḏḏib ed Din Abu’l Hasan Ali Ibn Aḥmad of Bagdad.[360]

Ibn Abi ‛Uṣaibia (1203-1269)[361] gives a life of this writer and a list of his works, which includes the _Delectus de Medicina_. According to him, Muhaḏḏib ed Din was born at Bagdad in A.H. 515 (= A.D. 1121), and after studying medicine and philosophy settled at Mosul. Later he became the physician of the Shah Arman, chieftain of Khalāt on Lake Van in Armenia, in whose service he amassed great wealth. He completed the _Delectus_ at Mosul in the year A.H. 560 (= A.D. 1164), and died there in A.H. 610 (= A.D. 1213), with the reputation of being first physician of his time.

Another fragment of the same work of Muhaḏḏib ed Din, which includes most of the contents of the Bodleian MS., besides a good deal of material which has been lost from the latter, exists in the British Museum.[362] The Leyden Library contains a unique copy of the work in three books. This is claimed to be complete by the Catalogue of the library,[363] although Bar Hebraeus [1226-1286]--Catholicus of the Jacobite (Monophysite) Church[364]--says that the work ran into four parts.[365] The three books of the Leyden MS. treat (i) of generalities (i.e. Anatomy, Physiology, and the general causes of disease), (ii) of medicaments, and (iii) of particular diseases and their treatment.

The Bodleian and British Museum MSS. contain part of the third book, which was probably in general use by itself as a dictionary of medicine. The British Museum copy has only lost the earlier chapters of this third part, but the Bodleian MS., although possessing a few more chapters at the beginning, is far less complete in the other portions.[366]

Wüstenfeld and the bibliographers that followed him have evidently derived their information concerning these MSS. from the catalogues of the Bodleian Library and of the Bibliothèque Nationale. No mediaeval bibliographer has up to the present been found who mentions this book of Maimonides.[367] Wüstenfeld’s usual authority for his statements is the great thirteenth-century medical biographer, Ibn Abi ‘Uṣaibia. But, though the latter gives a life of the Hebrew physician and a list of his writings,[368] he makes no mention of the _Tractatus de Causis et Indiciis Morborum_. Moreover, this _Tractatus_ has no place in Haji Khalfa’s admirable bibliography of Arabic works, which contains notices of four books bearing the title _De Causis et Indiciis Morborum_, not one of which is by Maimonides. Lastly, neither the historian Al Qifty in his _Classes philosophorum et astronomorum et medicorum_,[369] nor Bar Hebraeus, who is said to have plagiarized him,[370] notice the work in their sketches of the physician’s life.

The Bodleian MS. alleged to contain the _Tractatus_ is one of a collection of over seven hundred volumes bequeathed to the library on his death, November 2, 1713, by Narcissus Marsh, Archbishop successively of Cashel, Dublin, and Armagh. Most of his Oriental MSS. had been procured for him either in the East by Robert Huntington, Bishop of Raphoe and chaplain to the English merchants at Aleppo, or at the sale of Golius’s library at Leyden in October 1696.[371] Golius was a Dutch orientalist, born at Leyden in 1596. He studied medicine and Oriental languages at the University of Leyden, and after leaving it he accompanied a French embassy to Morocco in 1622. He remained in Morocco for two years, and while there collected various MSS. On his return in 1624 he was appointed to the Chair of Arabic at Leyden, but was allowed a period of leave for travel in the East before taking up his appointment. He took with him a grant of money for the purchase of MSS., and these to the number of over two hundred are now deposited in the University Library at Leyden. On several occasions during his travels in Arabia attempts were made by Arab chiefs to detain him for his medical knowledge, but he returned safely and later wrote a number of works mainly concerned with Arabic. He died in 1667.

Among the MSS. which Golius himself procured for the Leyden Library was that of the _Delectus_. It is at least unlikely therefore that such a profound Arabist, who was also a medical man, would have bought the Bodley fragment for a genuine work of Maimonides; the primary responsibility for the error thus probably rests with Huntington. However that may be, it was Uri, in his catalogue of the Bodleian MSS., who first published the error, and from him it was passed on to the modern bibliographers.