THE THEOLOGIANS AND DEMONOLOGICAL JUDGES.
Magic, or the science of magic, then served as a basis, as we have said before, for mythology and legends and was noticeable in the dogmas of all religions, for, as Saint Augustin observes, “In order to penetrate the mystical senses of fictions and allegories, and the parables contained in sacred history, it is necessary to be versed in the study of occult science, of which numerals make part.”[51]
But from the Greek dæmon, or the Sapiens of Plato, Christianity made a demon, a fallen angel, who wished to people his empire with the souls of the unbaptized; he is borrowed from the Jews with Beelzebub, Asmodeus, Satan, and their numerous colleagues. After Jesus, who was tempted by the Devil, and who delivered those possessed by devils, we see the apostles and saints visited in turn by the angels of God and also by spirits of evil, who fight battles among spiritual armies. These are only visions, apparitions of angels or demons who are vanquished before the anointed of the Lord.
Mankind wished to participate in the honors and emotions of communicating with supernatural beings; it is for this purpose that humanity addressed magicians and practitioners of Occultism. So we see in the first ages of Christianity the Bishops were uneasy in regard to magicians by reason of the popularity of the latter, notwithstanding the peasantry had submitted to the dogmas of the Church.
Paul Lacroix, the learned bibliophile, cites as the most ancient monument made mention of in this connection, an aggregation of shadowy women collected for a mysterious purpose, who devoted themselves to making magical incantations; this fragment is gathered from the Canons of a Council which, he thinks, was held before the time of Charlemagne. It treats of aerial flights that these sorcerers made, or thought they made, in company with Diana and Herodias, i.e., “Illiud etiam non est omitendum quod quædam sceleratæ mulieres, retro post Satanam conversæ, demonum illusionibus et phantasmatibus seductæ, credunt et profitentur se nocturnis horis, cum Diana, dea paganorum, vel cum Herodiate et innumera multitudine mulierum, equitare super quasdam bestias, et multarum terrarum spacia intempestæ noctis silentio pertransire ejusque jussionibus velut dominæ obedire, et certis noctibus ad ejus servitium evocari.”[52]
Which, being freely translated, reads: “We must not forget that impious women devoted to Satan, were seduced by apparitions, demons and phantoms, and avowed that during the night they rode on fantastic beasts along with Diana, a Pagan goddess, or Herodias and an innumberable throng of women. They pretended to traverse immense space in the silence of the night, obeying the orders of the two demon-women as those of a sovereign, being called into their service on certain given occasions.”
We can understand from this that if Christianity silenced Pagan oracles, it did not authorize magicians to put the spiritual world aside. The clergy accepted the evidence of the witnesses of grace, but refused that of the profane, who were only inspired by demons; they recognized in the latter the power of giving men illusions of the senses, of cohabiting with virgins under the form of incubi and with men under the form of succubi,—demons who could insinuate themselves through natural orifices into all the cavities of the body, and possess mortals.
Theologians have described all the pains endured by those possessed,—pangs in their thoracic and abdominal organs which, made by the demons, forced their victims to speak, sing, move, to be in a condition of anæsthesia or hyperæsthesia, following the imp’s will; in other words, the possessed were subject to infernal action. To the worship of spirits the first Bishops of the Church substituted a foolish fear of demons.
From this exaggeration of the power of evil genii over man surged the silly terrors and superstitious fears of damnation, which were the starting-point of aberration among the first demonomaniacs. It was for these unfortunates that the clergy invented exorcisms and great annual ceremonies destined to deliver those possessed by demons, ceremonies at which the Bishops convened the people and the nobles to assist, in order to show the triumphs of the Church over Satan and his imps.
The theatrical arrangement of these assemblages certainly induced some apparent cures—making the faithful cry out “a miracle, truly;” but who does not know that all affections of the nervous system love to be treated at the hands of thaumaturgists? To invent demons to have the glory of defeating them and to deliver mankind from their influence,—such appears to have been the objective point of the primitive Christian Church. This was certainly a clever trick in theological magic, and, if the end did not seem to justify the means to critical philosophic eyes, we may admit, at least, that it was better to exorcise the possessed than to burn them alive at the stake, as was done some centuries later.
“This doctrine of demons was so intimately intermixed with the dogmas of this perfected religious system by the Fathers of the Church,” says Sprengel, that “it is not astonishing authors attributed many phenomena of nature to the influence of demons.” One of the most celebrated doctors of the Church, Origen, of Alexandria, in his Apology for Christianity, remarks: “There are demons that produce famines, sterility, corruption of the air, epidemics; they flutter surrounded by fogs in the lower regions of the atmosphere, and are drawn by the blood of their victims in the incense that the pagans offer them as their Divinity. Without the odor of sacrifice, these demons could not preserve their influence. They have the most exquisite senses, are capable of the greatest activity, and possess the most extended experience.”
Saint Augustin had already written that demons were the agents of the diseases of Christians, and attacked even the new-born who came to receive baptism.
The Church taught that these demons acted through the intermediary of fallen creatures who were in revolt against God and his holy ministers. Such were the sorcerers and female mediums, who were met among ruins, in rocky cavern, and in other hidden and obscure places. For a morsel of bread or a handful of barley such creatures could be consulted; one could demand from them the secrets of the future, instruments for revenge, charms to secure love.
Among these sorcerers there were old panderers, who knew, from personal experience, all practices of debauchery, and who gave the name of vigils to the saturnalia indulged in among villagers on certain nights, gatherings composed of bawds and pimps, to which were invited numerous novices in libidinousness. These sorcerers and witches also knew the remedies that young girls must take when they wish to destroy the physiological results of their imprudences, and what old men need to restore their virility. They knew the medicinal qualities of plants, especially those that stupified. Perhaps a few of these sorcerers discovered, from magical incantations, the epoch of deliverance from Feudal morals, the abolition of servitude, equality and liberty. One thing is certain, however, i.e., that the clergy saw nothing in them save enemies of the Church and religion, creatures who were dangerous to society and deserving only destruction, per fas et nefas, by exorcism, by fire—indeed, even by the accusations tortured out of insane persons.
Thus, Pope Gregory IX., in a letter addressed to several German Bishops in 1234, described the initiation of sorcerers as follows: “When the master sorcerers receive a novice, and this novice enters their assembly for the first time, he sees a toad of enormous size—as large, in fact, as a goose. Some kiss its mouth, others its rear. Then the novice meets a pale man, with very black eyes, and so thin as to appear only skin and bones; he kisses this creature, too, and feels a chill as cold as ice. After this kiss it is easy to forget the Catholic faith. The sorcerers then assemble at a banquet, during which a black cat descends from behind a statue that is usually placed in the center of the gathering. The novice kisses the rear anatomy of this cat, after which he salutes, in a similar manner, those who preside at the feast and others worthy of the honor. The apprentice in sorcery receives in return only the kiss of the master; after this the lights are extinguished and all manner of impure acts are committed among the assemblage.“[53]
This was the belief, then, of those who a few years later composed the “Tribunal of the Inquisition” and accepted the banner of Loyola, and shortly afterwards again a member of the congregation of Saint Dominick and professor of theology, Barthelemi de Lepine, convinced of the existence of demons and Demonidolators, showed himself to be a furious adversary of the sorcerers in a famous dissertation, which was immediately adopted by his co-religionists. He affirmed that “the possessed go to the sorcerers’ meetings in body or in spirit and have carnal intercourse with the devil; that they immolate children, transforming them into animals notably cats; that they have obscene visions, and it is best to exterminate them, for their number is growing legion.”
Barthelemi de Lepine, in speaking thus, only followed the traditions of the Fathers of the Church; of Saint George, Saint Eparchius, Saint Bernard, Innocent VIII., and of Antonio Torquemada, who were the historians of the incubi of their times, and launched anathemas against the possessed of the Demon of luxury.
The Jesuit father Costadau wrote, in his treatise De Signis, apropos of incubism: “The thing is too singular to treat lightly. We would not believe it ourselves had we not been convinced by personal experience with the Demon’s malice, and, on the other hand, find an infinity of writings of the first order from Popes, theologians, and philosophers, who have sustained and proved that there are men so unfortunate as to have shameful commerce and other things more execrable with such demons.”
Another Jesuit, Martin Antoine del Rio, published six books (Disquisitiones Magicæ) in 1599, in which his credulity attained the limit of fanaticism, thus making the good priest one of the most redoubtable enemies of demonomania. Such were the doctrines on which reposed the theocratical pretensions of the theologians.
It is not astonishing that the last years of the Middle Ages, during the time religious struggles reached their highest period of exacerbation, owing to the quarrels between the Court of Rome and the Reformation, witnessed the multiplication in the number of demonomaniacs to such an extent that the whole world commenced to believe in the power of demons. “At this unfortunate time,” remarks Esquirol, “the excommunicated, the sorcerers and the damned were seen everywhere; alarmed, the Church created tribunals, before which the devil was summoned to appear and the possessed were brought to judgment; scaffolds were erected, funeral pyres were lighted around stakes, and demonomaniacs, under the names of sorcerers and possessed, doubly the victims of prevailing errors, were burnt alive, after being tortured to make them renounce pretended compacts made with the Evil One. There was a jurisprudence against sorcery and magic as there were laws against theft and murder. The people, seeing the Church and Princes believing in the reality of these extravagances, were positively persuaded as to the existence of demons.”
No authority raised itself to protect these miserable possessed people; justice, philosophy, and science remained subjected to theology, becoming more and more the accomplices of an autocratic and ever-intolerant Church.
Among the magistrates, historians and publicists, who were the most ardent supporters of the Inquisition, we may mention J. Bodin, of Angers, who published, in 1581, a work entitled Demonomanie. He shows that the victims of demonomania enjoy perfect integrity of the mental faculties and are in every sense responsible, before Courts of Ecclesiastical Justice and Parliaments, for their impure relations with supernatural beings, and he logically concludes that all Demonomaniacs should be committed to the stakes and burnt alive. “Meantime,” says this amiable author, “we can deliver the possessed by exorcisms, and animals may be thus exorcised as well as men.” To the support of his thesis he then brings an immense collection of ridiculous stories, which are not supported by evidence. He says: “Those possessed by a demon can spit rags, hair, wood and nails from their mouths.” He cites the case of a possessed woman who had her chin turned towards her back, tongue pushed out of the mouth, a throat which furnished sounds analogous to the crowing of a crow, the chatter of a magpie and the song of the cuckoo. Finally, he pretends that the devil may speak through the mouth of the possessed and use all the idioms, known and unknown; that he can deflower young girls and give them voluptuous sensations, etc.
This work of J. Bodin is, in reality, the argument of a public prosecutor, presented with passion and prejudice, having all the erroneous arguments of the Inquisitors, so that the latter were more than satisfied at convincing the secular magistrates and fixing their jurisdiction as to the crime of sorcery. On the other hand, the same year that Bodin gave publicity to his inhuman side of the question, the Essays of Michel Montaigne appeared in Paris, in which this celebrated writer appealed to philosophy. He demanded that human life should be protected from fantastic accusations, and made that famous response to a Prince who showed him some sorcerers condemned to death: “In faith, I would rather prescribe hellebore than hemlock faggots, as they appear to be more insane than culpable.” Montaigne concluded one of his essays on this subject with the satirical remark: “It is placing a high valuation on human conjecture when we cook a man alive for an opinion.”
Meantime, Bodin had reasoned against Montaigne. But the one remained the ignorant prosecutor of the Middle Ages, while the other was an immortal philosopher, whom Colbert certainly quoted before presenting to Louis XIV. the famous edict of 1682, which forbade in the future “the cooking alive of sorcerers.”
Meantime, there was still a century to attain before one of the Prime Ministers of France put an end to all trials for sorcery, and during the intervening period there were other purveyors of the death penalty by the stake-burners of the Inquisition; among these were the celebrated Boguet, Criminal Judge of Bourgogne, and Pierre de l’Ancre, his colleague of Aquitanus, cited by Calmeil as the most fanatical judges of their day.
Boguet, in his Discours des Sorciers, wrote: “There were in France only three hundred thousand under King Charles IX., and they have since increased more than half as much again. The Germans prevent their growth by burning at the stake; the Swiss destroy whole villages at one time; in Lorraine the stranger may see thousands existing with but few executions. It is difficult to understand why France cannot purge itself of these creatures. These sorcerers walk around by thousands and multiply on earth like caterpillars in our gardens. I wish I could enforce punishment according to my ideas, for the earth would soon be purged of those possessed. For I fain would collect them all in one mass and burn them alive in a single bonfire.”
Pierre de l’Ancre, Councillor to the Parliament of Bordeaux, published in 1613 his Tableau de l’inconstance des mauvais anges et demons, and in 1622 his Incredulite et mecreance du sortilege pleinement convaincue. In these two works the author treats all questions regarding sorcery, and declares that in his capacity of judge he believes it a mistake to spare the life of any individual accused of magic, as he considers sorcerers as the enemies of morality and religion, and accuses them of having found means of “ravishing women even while they laid in the embraces of their husbands, thus forcing and violating the sacred oaths of marriage, for the victims are made adulterous even in the presence of their husbands, who remain motionless and dishonored without power to prevent; the women mute, enshrouded in a forced silence, invoking in vain the help of the husband against the sorcerer’s attack, and calling uselessly for aid; the husband charmed and unable to offer resistance, suffering his own dishonor with open eyes and helpless arms.
“The sorcerers dance around the bed in an indecent manner, like at a Bacchanalian feast, accoupling adulterously in a diabolical fashion, committing execrable sodomies, blaspheming scandalously, taking insidious carnal revenges, perpetrating all manner of unnatural acts, brutalizing and denaturalizing all physical functions, holding frogs, vipers, and lizards, and other deadly animal poisons in their hands, making stinking smells, caressing with lascivious amorousness, giving themselves over to horrible and shameful orgies.”
Thus says the Prosecutor of the Council of Bordeaux, but he fails to support his statements by a single material fact, not even one individual case being proven. His trials show nothing but a few poor demented women, who responded always in the affirmative to the obscene and indecent questions of the judges and prosecutors employed by the Most Holy Inquisition.
A sad thing philosophy registers celebrated names during this Age. We mention only those of Rene Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Nicholas Malebranche, Thomas Hobbes, Francis Bacon, Leibnitz, and the immortal Newton. Unfortunately these great geniuses could not take part in the struggle between the clerical party and free thinkers. Honored as scholars, their Governments never asked their advice on questions claimed to be under the control of religious orders. The clergy had all the latitude they desired in writing the history of demonology, and also the evidence wrung from those accused of sorcery—vague responses drawn out by fear, by torture, by suggestion imposed in the obscurity of a penitential tabernacle. A witness of veracity, as we have before stated, never gave testimony as to the conduct of the sorcerers at the secret vigils. Their invocations on initiation, their famous inunctions used on the body, with magical ointments while in a condition of absolute nudity; their equestrian position on broom sticks; their flying tricks up the chimney and their bewitched reunions when horned devils rode on their shoulders, are legendary recitals which could only be accepted by ignorant fanatics and judges firm in the Faith. How a man with the seeming intelligence of Prosecutor Bodin, who was delegated by the State, who wrote six works on The Republic and The Constitution—works which have been compared in point of ability as ranking with Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Law; how a publicist of talent could support such stories as we have mentioned in his work on sorcery is a matter of profound amazement. Yet, Bodin testifies as to his faith in the story of that peasant of Touraine “who found himself naked, wandering around the fields in the morning,” and who gave as an explanation of his conduct that he had surprised his wife the night before as she was making preparations to go to a sorcerers’ vigil, and that he had followed his better half, accompanied by the Devil, as far as Bordeaux, many leagues away. Bodin also believed the narration of that girl from Lyons “whom the lover perceived rubbing herself with magical ointment preparatory to attending a sorcerers’ vigil; and the lover, using the same ointment, followed his girl and arrived at the vigil almost as soon as she.”
As to that poor peasant who was found naked and alone in the field and forced to denounce his wife to the authorities, Bodin remarks impressively, “The woman confessed and was condemned to be burnt at the stake.”
Pierre de l’Ancre was never able to prove his stories by sentinels, sergeants, guards, or policemen, as to the appearance of the demon he described in his Traite sur les demons; a spirit that showed itself as a large blood-hound or as a wild bull. It is true that in another part of his book he demonstrates the changeable character of his Devil, and gives the following description, which methinks is more worthy the pen of an insane man rather than that of a magistrate: “The Devil of the sabbat (vigil) is seated in a black chair, with a crown of black thorns, two horns at the side of the head and one in the forehead with which he gores the assemblage. The Devil has bristling hair, pale and troubled looking face, large round eyes widely opened, inflamed and hideous looking, a goatee, a crooked neck, the body of a man combined with that of a billy goat, hands like those of a human being, except that the nails are crooked and sharp pointed at the ends; the hands are curved backwards. The Devil has a tail like that of a jackass, with which, strange to say, he modestly covers his private parts. He has a frightful voice without melody; he preserves a strange and superb gravity, having the countenance of a person who is very melancholy and tired out from overwork.”
This was the spirit of the lieutenants of justice called on by the Inquisitorial clergy to fix the penalty for the crime of sorcery. “Sorcery being a crime,” say they with the spirit of conviction, “consented to between man and the Devil; the man bowing to adore Satan, and receiving in exchange a part of his infernal power.”
According to this compact, “The demon unites carnally with the sorcerer and female medium likewise; these unite themselves with Satan, denying God, Christ and the Virgin, and profaning all objects of sanctity by their profane presence.
“They become zealots for evil and render eternal homage to the Prince of Darkness.
“They are baptized by the Devil and dedicate to his service all children born to them by nature.
“They commit incests, poison people, and bewitch and work cattle to death.
“They eat the carrion from the rotting bodies of hanged criminals.
“They enter into a Cabalistic circle laid out by the accursed one, and matriculate in a secret order which is engaged in all manner of outrages against society; they accept secret marks that affirm their complete vassalage to Satan.
“Finally, they repudiate all authority other than that of the master in the Cabala (Kabbala), and, abomination above all, they incite the people to revolt.”
Meantime, while the Judges and Inquisitors pursued all intelligent people with the most wicked determination, Leloyer published his monograph on specters,[54] whose doctrines are closely connected with modern Spiritualistic theories.
This celebrated Councillor wrote that the soul, the spiritual essence which animates the organism, may be distracted and separated from the body for an instant, as we see in cases of ecstacy.
Now, we know that this nervous phenomenon, which may be natural, when connected with catalepsy, hysteria and somnambulism, or provoked when it is produced experimentally on subjects in a hypnotic condition, almost always coincides with an acute moral impression and a suspension of one or more of the senses. It is during the duration of this phenomenon that the soul, according to Leloyer, performs far-off journeys,—not orthodox, however, for we are told that during the period of such ecstacies, following cataleptic immobility, seven of these ecstatics were burned alive at Nantes in 1549.
In another chapter, he adds that souls may, after death, impress themselves on our senses by taking fantastic forms. He supports this opinion by the incident relative to a daughter of the famous Juriscouncillor of the sixteenth century, Charles Dumoulin, who appeared to her husband and told him the names of assassins; and of the specter who informed the Justice of the crime committed by the woman Sornin on her husband, that the soul of Commodus appeared so often to Caracalla.
The author of the Spectres attributes to supernatural beings the frights experienced by certain persons who live in haunted houses. Every night they are awakened by the sound of noises,—blows resound on the floor and raps come on the partitions; every few minutes there are peals of ghostly laughter, whistling, clapping of hands to attract attention; these nervous persons see spirits and are startled at sudden apparitions of the dead; specters seize them by the feet, nose, ears, and even go so far as sit on their chests. Such houses are said to be the rendezvous of demons.
The persons spoken of by Leloyer are to-day known as mediums producing physical effects, and the phenomena observed centuries since are evidently the same as those investigated by William Crookes, with the collaboration of Kate Fox and Home.[55]
“In the ecstacy of sorcerers,” resumes Leloyer, “the soul is present, but is so preoccupied by the impressions that it receives from the Devil, that it cannot act on the body it animates. On awaking, such ecstatics may remember things they have seen, events in which they have assisted, as in the case when the soul temporarily abandons its earthly tenement.”
Meanwhile, it is but fair to observe that the author makes certain reservations; he admits that ecstacy and hallucination may be provoked by a pathological condition of the nervous system, and are not always the result of the work of demons. He also comments on a certain number of vampires remaining in a lethargic sleep, from a nervous condition, after returning from a sorcerer’s vigil, a fact which, according to Calmeil, was of a nature to throw the theories of the Councillors of the Inquisition into disfavor.
The theory of the author of Spectres resembles considerably, as will at once be noticed, that of the first Magii and the modern doctrine of Spiritualism. Leloyer, besides, has gathered a number of facts to support his affirmations; among others, he cites the observation given him by Philip de Melanchton, the learned Hellenist and author of the famous confession of Augsburg. This was a spiritual manifestation experienced by the widow of Melanchton’s uncle: One day, while weeping and thinking of the dear lost one, two spirits appeared to her suddenly,—“one habited in the stately, dignified form of her husband, the other specter in the garb of a gray friar. The one representing her husband approached her and said a few consoling words, touched her hand and disappeared with his monkish companion.”
Melanchton, although one of the chiefs of the Reformation, was still imbued with the ideas of the Romish Church; after some hesitation he concluded that the specters seen by his aunt were demons. The same phenomena have been observed by modern mediums; William Crookes, the celebrated London scientist, relates facts to which he has been witness which are even more extraordinary than the one we have just narrated.
Jerome Cardan, of Paris, the celebrated mathematician, renowned for his discovery of the formula for resolving cubic equations, solemnly affirmed that he had a protecting spirit, and never doubted the reality of this apparition. Cardan also tells how his father one evening received a visit from seven specters, who did not fear to enter into an argument with the learned old man.
Imagination, exalted by chimerical fear of demons, sees the work of these evil-doing spirits on every hand, in gambling, in sickness, in accidents, in infirmity, in all the ordinary accidents of life. The sorcerers are accused of attacking man’s virility by witchcraft. The victims say that some one has knotted their private organs (noue l’aiguilette). This pretended catastrophe in magic, the origin of which dates back to times of antiquity, may be classed among abnormal physiological effects under the influence of a moral cause, fear, timidity, and certainly the suggestion of a feeble mind.
Such are the sorcerers that Bodin accuses, perhaps not without reason always, since we see that impotency in some young melancholic subjects who appear easily impressed with fantastic notions.
“Sorcerers,” says Bodin, “have the power to remove but a single organ from the body, that is, the virile organ; this thing they often do in Germany, often hiding a man’s privates in his belly, and in this connection Spranger tells of a man at Spire who thought he had lost his privates and visited all the physicians and surgeons in the neighborhood, who could find nothing where the virile organs had once been, neither wound nor scar; but the victim having made peace with the sorcerer, to his great joy soon had his treasure restored.”
There was no need of this kind of witchcraft, pour nouer l’aiguilette, in a timid boy, already subjugated by fear of the devil. Certainly, if the sorcerers had ideas of that force which is known to-day as suggestion, they could very easily destroy the virile power of the subject by governing his will and thoughts, his physical and moral personality. When we can confiscate the physical anatomy of a man he is reduced to all manner of impotencies. Who will affirm that suggestion is not one of the mysteries of sorcery?