Part 4

The secular medical art--that relying upon natural means--as either superfluous, or as strongly tainted with heresy, must be despised. Dissection, in order to investigate the structure of the human body, is presumption; it can even be asked with reason if it does not argue contempt for the doctrine of the final resurrection. The secular art of healing was consequently for a long time confined to the infidel Jews. But when princes and the opulent, weakly apprehending the insufficiency of the word, the relics and the consecrated remedies, had begun to keep physicians, the profane art of medicine became a lucrative profession, and schools for its cultivation were established under royal protection. Such is that of Salerno, which the warders of Zion can not regard without suspicion. It is a school which prescribes pedantic rules for diet, as if one's diet could protect against the attacks of the devil! The Greek pagan Hippocrates, who for a long time wandered about with Jews and Arabs, thus finds at last a settled abode within its walls,--Hippocrates who had to assert of demonianism (_morbus sacer_) itself that it is "nowise more divine, nowise more infernal, than any other disease!" When the teacher is such, what must the disciples be? The Church will not forbid absolutely the practice of medicine, since it may do some good in the case of external injury, or in time of pestilence; but she must keep strict watch over the orthodoxy of those who cultivate this art. At several councils (as at Rheims in 1131, the second Lateran in 1139, and at Tours, 1163) she has strenuously prohibited her servants from having any thing to do with this suspected profession. Experience has taught, however, not to exaggerate the dangers attending it. The secular physicians must frequently concede that such and such a sickness is caused by witchcraft, and consequently is of supernatural origin. Slanderers might allege that such a declaration is more convenient than an investigation into the causes of the disease in the natural way, and less unpleasant than acknowledging one's ignorance. But be this as it may: the concession implies a recognition of the supernaturalism of the Church, and may therefore be rather recommended than reprehended.

"It is," says Thomas Aquinas, "a dogma of faith that the demons can produce wind, storms, and rain of fire from heaven. The atmosphere is a battle-field between angels and devils. The latter work the constant injury of man, the former his melioration; and the consequence is that changeableness of weather which threatens to frustrate the hopes of husbandry. And when Lucifer is able to bestow even upon man--on sorcerers and wizards--the power to destroy the fields, the vineyards and dwellings of man by rain, hail and lightning, is it to be wondered at if the Church, which is man's protection against the devil, and whose especial calling it is to fight him, should in this sphere also be his counterpoise, and should seek from the treasury of its divine power, means adequate to frustrate his atmospheric mischiefs? To these means belong the church bells, provided they have been duly consecrated and baptized. The aspiring steeples around which cluster the low dwellings of men, are to be likened, when the bells in them are ringing, to the hen spreading its protecting wings over its chickens; for the tones of the consecrated metal repel the demons and avert storm and lightning" ("_Vivos voco, mortuos plango_, SULPHURA FRANGO," a common inscription on church bells). Tillers of the soil who desire especial protection from the Church for their harvests, pay it tithes for a blessing. During protracted drought the priests make intercession and inaugurate rain-processions, in which images of the Virgin are borne into the fields, which are sprinkled with holy water while the weather-collect is chanted.[23] If the fields are visited by hurtful insects, the Church has remedies against them also. It commands them in the name of God to depart, and if they do not obey, a regular process is instituted against them, which ends in their exemplary punishment; for they are excommunicated by the Church. Such processes were very frequently resorted to in the Middle Ages, and a couple of such instances will be cited.

In the year 1474, the may-bug committed great depredations in the neighborhood of Berne. When the authorities of the city had sought relief from the bishop of Lausanne, Benoit de Montferrand, against this scourge, he determined to issue a letter of excommunication, which was solemnly read by a priest in the churchyard of Berne. "Thou irrational, imperfect creature, thou may-bug," thus the letter commenced, "thou whose kind was never enclosed in Noah's ark! in the name of my gracious lord, the bishop of Lausanne, by the power of the glorified Trinity through the merits of Jesus Christ, and by the obedience you owe the Holy Church, I command you may-bugs, all in common and each one in particular, to depart from all places where nourishment for men and cattle germinates and grows." The letter ends with a summons to the insects, to present themselves on the sixth day thereafter, if they do not disappear before that time, at one o'clock, P. M., at Wivelsburg, and assume the responsibility before the court of the gracious lord of Lausanne. This letter was likewise read from the pulpit while the congregation, kneeling, repeated "three Paternosters and three Ave Marias." Arrangements were made beforehand for a legal trial with strict attention to all professional forms. Among these was of course that the accused should have a lawyer. But when no advocate in Berne would consent to appear in behalf of the insects, the bishop devised the plan of summoning from hell the shade of an infamous lawyer named Perrodet, who had died a few years previously, and of directing him to plead the cause of the may-bugs with the same diligence he had so often displayed in his lifetime in defence of vile clients. But in spite of many summons, neither Perrodet nor his clients deigned to appear. After the expiration of the time fixed for beginning the defence, and when certain doubts concerning the proper form of procedure had been removed, the episcopal tribunal finally gave its verdict, which was excommunication in the name of the Holy Trinity, "to you, accursed vermin, that are called may-bugs, and which can not even be counted among the animals." The government ordered the authorities of the afflicted district to report concerning the good effects of the excommunication; "But," a chronicle of the time complains, "no effect was observed, because of our sins."

Since any neglect of legal forms was thought to deprive a judgment of its magical as well as legal power, the most scrupulous care was exercised in the conduct of these frequently recurring processes against may-bugs, grasshoppers, cabbage-worms, field-rats and other noxious vermin. There is yet extant a detailed and luminous document by the learned Bartholomeus Chassanæus (born 1480), in which the question if, and how, such pests should be proceeded against in the courts is carefully considered: whether they should appear personally or by deputy; whether they are subject to a spiritual or a secular tribunal, and if the penalty of excommunication can be applied to them. He proves on many grounds that the jurisdiction to which they are accountable is the spiritual, and that they may properly be excommunicated. Still the question of jurisdiction remained unsettled, and a civil prosecution of the field-rats in Tyrol, 1519-20, proves among other things that a secular tribunal sometimes considered itself justified in deciding such suits. The peasant Simon Fliss appeared before William of Hasslingen, judge in Glurns and Mals (Ober-In-valley), as plaintiff against the field-rats which were committing great depredations in his parish. The court then appointed Hans Grinebner, a citizen of Glurns, to be the advocate of the accused, and furnished him, before witnesses, with the requisite commission. Thereupon the plaintiff chose as his advocate Schwarz Minig, and obtained from the tribunal upon demand a warrant of authority for him likewise. On the day of trial, the Wednesday after St. Philip's and St. James's day, many witnesses were examined, establishing that the rats had caused great destruction. Schwarz Minig then made his final plea that the noxious animals should be charged to withdraw from mischief, as otherwise the people of Stilf could not pay the annual tithes to their high patron. Grinebner, counsel for the defence, could not and would not make exception to the testimony, but tried to convince the court that his clients "enjoyed a certain right of usufruct which could hardly be denied them." If the court were of another opinion and considered it best to eject them, he yet hoped they would first be granted another place where they could support themselves. Besides there should be given them at their departure a sufficient escort to protect them against their enemies, whether cat, dog, or other adversaries; and he also hoped that, if any of the rats were pregnant, time might be allowed them to be delivered and afterwards depart in safety with their progeny. The decision was rendered in the following terms: "After accusation and defence, after statement and contradiction, and after due consideration of all that pertains to justice, it is by this sentence determined that those noxious animals which are called field-rats must, within two weeks after the promulgation of this judgment, depart and forever remain far aloof from the fields and the meadows of Stilf. But if one or several of the animals are pregnant, or unable on account of their youth to follow, then shall they enjoy during further two weeks safety and protection from every body, and after these two weeks depart."

We can form some impression of the immense power of prayer and exorcism when we consider that the influence of the will and the idea expressed in the word co-operate in them with the power of the word itself as a mere form. For the material word, the sound caught by the ear, the formula, as such, exercises a magical effect without one's knowing its meaning. The mass of the people with their ignorance of the official language of the Church and of learning, would be badly off if those "Paternosters" and "Ave Marias," committed to memory without understanding them, should be spiritually ineffectual,--if the Latin mass to which the congregation listens should be wanting in edifying and sanctifying power because it is not comprehended. The formularies of the Church established at different times and for various purposes are for this reason of high importance and must be followed conscientiously.[24] A single proof of their extraordinary power may be instanced here. In the year 1532 the devil brought into the heavens a huge comet, which threatened earth and man with drought and pestilence; but the pope solemnly banished the forbidding omen,--and behold! in a short time it disappeared, having day by day diminished through the power of the papal anathema. What a holy word may avail by virtue of its sound (_flatus vocis_) alone, is indicated in the legend of the tame starling, which was saved from the claws of the hawk just at the moment its death-agony had forced from it the words it had learned to repeat "Ave Maria."

Upon the power of the word as its foundation, rests the papal custom of consecrating bread, wine, oil, salt, tapers, water, bells, fields, meadows, houses, standards and weapons. "With such abuses, such superstition, and diabolical arts was the priesthood filled during papal ascendency"--thus complains an old Protestant theologian who had an eye to that surplus of magic which the Catholic Church possessed over and above that of the Lutheran, but who was blind to the common welfare--"and therefore such things are in vogue even among common men. What was the chief thing in the mass if not the wonder-working words of blessing, when the priest pronounced the four words or the six syllables '_Hoc est corpus meum_' (this is my body) over the bread, breathed upon it, and made the sign of the cross three times over it, pretending that the bread was thereby converted into the flesh of Christ? In the same way he transformed the wine in the chalice into the blood of Christ, though no such power is given to syllables and words. He bound the Holy Ghost in the water, the salt, the oil, the tapers, the spices, the stone, wood or earth, when he consecrated churches, altars, churchyards, when he blessed the meat, the eggs, and the like, and when on Easter Eve he consecrated the fire that it should do no damage (though I, God save me, have found out that our village was utterly consumed four days after such consecration), when he baptized and sanctified bells that their ringing might dispel evil influences, quiet tempests, and the like."

The organization of monasteries is to be regarded as the defensive system of the Church, guarding and protecting the territory it has conquered from the devil. As the Mongolian on his irruption into Europe found innumerable steeps crowned with strongly fortified castles, the very number of which deterred from any attempt at siege, so Satan and his hosts find the Christian world strewn with spiritual strongholds, each of which encloses an arsenal filled with mighty weapons for offensive as well as defensive warfare. Every monastery has its master magician, who sells _agni Dei_, conception-billets, magic incense, salt and tapers which have been consecrated on Candlemas Day, palms consecrated on Palm Sunday, flowers besprinkled with holy water on Ascension Day, and many other appliances belonging to the great magical apparatus of the Church.

This consecrated enginery being so various and complete, it might have been expected that the people would be content, and seek no further expedients than these constantly at hand. But, alas! a people's magic of infernal origin is abroad, and rampant by the side of the holy magic of the Church; and by it Satan tempts the careless, the curious and the irresolute. Even many priests are tainted with it. The holy Boniface, and many popes and monkish chroniclers after him, bitterly lament that the lower clergy compound love-potions and practice divinatory arts, using even the holy appurtenances of the Church, as the host, to fortify the efficacy of their diabolical charms.

Since the Church tries to reduce all conditions of life to harmony with itself, it naturally follows that it sets its seal also to human jurisprudence. The ordeals which it has found employed by some of the nations it has converted, exactly suit its system. It receives them, consequently, as resting on a right idea,[25] makes them what they were not before, a common practice, and gives detailed rules concerning the chants, prayers, conjurations and masses with which they should be accompanied. When a person under accusation or suspicion is to undergo the ordeal by water, for example, the priest is to lead him to the church, and cause him kneeling to pronounce three formulas in which God is implored for protection. Then follow mass and the holy communion. When the accused receives the wafer the priest says: "Be this flesh of our Lord thy test to-day." Then in solemn procession the throng of witnesses repair to the spot where the test is to take place. The priest conjures the water, expelling the demons common to this element, and commands it to be an obedient instrument of God for revealing innocence or crime. The accused is dressed in clean garments, kisses the cross and the gospel, recites a Paternoster and makes the sign of the cross. Then (in the ordeal by hot water) his hand is held in a boiling cauldron: or he is thrown with his hands pinioned and a rope about his waist, into a river. If he does not then sink, his guilt is proved. The ordeal by fire consists in walking over glowing coals, or carrying red-hot iron, or in being dragged through flames clad in a shirt saturated with wax. By the test of fire the genuineness of relics is also sometimes tested. When in A. D. 1010 some monks who had returned from Jerusalem exhibited the towel with which the disciples had wiped the feet of Christ, some doubts of its genuine character were raised, but were all removed by this test. One of the most common of all ordeals is the duel.

God, invoked by the servants of the Church, keeps his protecting hand over innocence. Every doubt of this truth argues faint-heartedness bordering on atheism. This thought lies at the foundation not only of the different kinds of ordeals, but also of the torture, which, constantly extended and intensified under the auspices of the Church, was a form of trial sparing the judge much labor, and leading to the goal more surely than the collation of testimony, which, besides being irksome, hardly ever brings full assurance. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego felt no pain in the fiery furnace. God gives to innocence upon the rack, if not insensibility to pain, at least strength to endure it. But even the arch-fiend, to a certain extent, can protect his subjects. In the case of heretics and witches it is therefore needful to resort to the intensest torture; to exhaust, so to speak, to the last drop, the springs of pain in human nerves, under the hand of skilled tormentors. If then the instruments of torture are previously conjured and sanctified by the priest, and if he stands at the side of the accused ready to interrupt with constant question the diabolic formulas of alleviation which undoubtedly the sufferer murmurs inwardly, then a candid and reliable confession may reasonably be expected, in spite of all efforts to the contrary by the devil. In the "Witch-hammer" (Malleus Malificarum) the ecclesiastical and magical plan of justice celebrates its triumph. This work, bearing the sanction of the pope, contains full directions for the judge presiding in witch-trials. It is, in fact, a hammer which crushes whatever it falls upon. The judge who carefully follows these directions may be confident that Satan himself can not save any one who is under accusation; only God and his holy angels can rescue him, by direct miracle, from death in the flames.[26]

He who finds a judicial system which appeals constantly to the intercession of God of questionable value, may consider that the history of the Church, the experiences of its saints and servants are a succession of divine miracles. God is not chary of his miracles when recognized, and the servants of the Church are in possession of the apostolic power and mandate to perform them.

Another question is, how are the divine miracles to be distinguished from the infernal? All attempts of the acutest scholastics to establish a rule of definite separation for these two kinds of miracles have failed. They are revealed under identical forms, and even the moral perceptions can detect no difference, since Satan is able to transform himself into an angel of light. Reason must also acknowledge its incapacity even in this respect, and rely on the Holy Ghost ever active in the Church and especially in its head. The power of divine truth and inspiration which was poured out upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost, has been transmitted like a magnetic stream from Peter, the first bishop of Rome, to his successors by the laying on of hands, and is in a certain measure imparted, by the sacrament of ordination, to every member of the clerical hierarchy.

* * * * *

The survey of the magic of the Church which has been presented above, ought perhaps to be completed, not by pursuing the tedious path which lies before us through continued description of ecclesiastical customs and opinion, but by simply formulating the general truth: _Every symbol, every external token, to which is attributed an independent power for sanctification and an immediate moral influence, is Magic._ May the Protestant reader, for whom we are here writing, examine with this maxim in how far the Reformation, which aims to restore to internal authority--the reason and free-will of the individual--its rights, has succeeded in its task. Luther and Calvin assailed many magical usages, and pruned many branches from the tree of dualism, but still allowed its vigorous trunk to remain unscathed. But a dualistic religious system must, on account of the unreasonable cosmical theory on which it rests, sooner or later attack again the inner authority and make itself the sole and absolute external one. It must of necessity degenerate to a statuary fetichism or fall before a complete unitarian reformation. Our day witnesses the conflict between these opposite ideas. On the one side, the belief in a personal spiritual adversary of mankind, preached to the masses from a thousand pulpits, hangs suspended like a sword of Damocles over the head of civilization; on the other side, philosophy and the science of nature diffuse a rational and unitarian theory of the universe and human existence through a constantly enlarging circle. To him who wishes to take part in this all-important struggle, we would commend these words of the noble Bunsen:[27] "Wherever in religion, or state, or civilization, in art or science, the inner is developed more strenuously, and the spiritual earnestly sought after, be it with more or less transformation of what is existing, there progress is at hand; for from the inner, life comes to the external, from the centre to the circumference. There is also the way which leads to life. There new paths are opened to the soul, and genius lifts its wings with divine assurance. If this is true, the contrary must take place wherever the external life is more and more exalted, where the token supersedes more and more the essence, the symbol and the external work the inner act and conscience, where the superficies is taken for the content, the outer monotony for life's uniformity, and appearances for truth. There a luckless future is in waiting, whatever be the aspect of the present."

III.

THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED.