TOUCHING FOR THE EVIL.
(Vol. iii., pp. 42. 93.)
There is ample evidence that the French monarchs performed the ceremony of touching for the evil.
In a MS. in the University Library, Cambridge[[18]], is this memorandum:—
"The Kings of England and Fraunce by a peculiar guift cure the King's evill by touching them with their handes, and so doth the seaventh sonne."—Ant. Miraldus, p. 384.
Fuller intimates that St. Louis was the first king of France who healed the evil. "So witnesseth Andrew Chasne, a French author, and others."[[19]]
Speaking of the illness of Louis XI., "at Forges neere to Chinon," in March, 1480, Philip de Commines says:
"After two daies he recovered his speech and his memory after a sort: and because he thought no man understood him so wel as my selfe, his pleasure was that I should alwaies be by him, and he confessed himselfe to the officiall in my presence, otherwise they would never have understood one another. He had not much to say, for he was shriven not long before, because the Kings of Fraunce use alwaies to confesse themselves when they touch those that be sick of the King's evill, which he never failed to do once a weeke. If other Princes do not the like, they are to blame, for continuall a great number are troubled with that disease."[[20]]
Pierre Desrey, in his Great Chronicles of Charles VIII., has the following passage relating to that monarch's proceedings at Rome in January, 1494-5:—
"Tuesday the 20th, the king heard mass in the French chapel, and afterwards touched and cured many afflicted with the king's evil, to the great astonishment of the Italians who witnessed the miracle."[[21]]
And speaking of the king at Naples, in April, 1495, the same chronicler says:—
"The 15th of April, the king, after hearing mass in the church of the Annonciada, was confessed, and then touched and cured great numbers that were afflicted with the evil—a disorder that abounded much all over Italy—when the spectators were greatly edified at the powers of such an extraordinary gift.
* * * * *
"On Easter day, the 19th of April, the king was confessed in the church of St. Peter, adjoining to his lodgings, and then touched for the evil a second time."[[22]]
Fuller, in remarking upon the cure of the king's evil by the touch of our English monarchs, observes:—
"The kings of France share also with those of England in this miraculous cure. And Laurentius reports, that when Francis I., king of France, was kept prisoner in Spain, he, notwithstanding his exile and restraint, daily cured infinite multitudes of people of that disease; according to this epigram:
'Hispanos inter sanat rex chæradas, estque
Captivus Superis gratus, ut antè fuit.'
'The captive king the evil cures in Spain:
Dear, as before, he doth to God remain.'
"So it seemeth his medicinal quality is affixed not to his prosperity, but person; so that during his durance, he was fully free to exercise the same."[[23]]
Cavendish, relating what took place on Cardinal Wolsey's embassy to Francis I., in 1527, has the following passage:—
"And at his [the king's] coming in to the bishop's palace [at Amiens], where he intended to dine with my Lord Cardinal, there sat within a cloister about two hundred persons diseased with the king's evil, upon their knees. And the king, or ever he went to dinner, provised every of them with rubbing them and blessing them with his bare hands, being bareheaded all the while; after whom followed his almoner distributing of money unto the persons diseased. And that done, he said certain prayers over them, and then washed his hands, and so came up into his chamber to dinner, where as my lord dined with him."[[24]]
Laurentius, cited by Fuller in the page already given, was, it seems, physician in ordinary to King Henry IV. of France. In a treatise entitled De Mirabili Strumarum Curatione, he stated that the kings of England never cured the evil. "To cry quits with him," Dr. W. Tucker, chaplain to Queen Elizabeth, in his Charismate, denied that the kings of France ever originally cured the evil
"but per aliquam propaginem, 'by a sprig of right,' derived from the primitive power of our English kings, under whose jurisdiction most of the French provinces were once subjected."[[25]]
Louis XVI., immediately after his coronation at Rheims, in 1775, went to the Abbey of St. Remi to pay his devotions, and to touch for the evil. The ceremony took place in the Abbey Park, and is thus described in a paper entitled Coronation of the Kings of France prior to the Revolution, by Charles White, Esq.:—
"Two thousand four hundred individuals suffering under this affliction, having been assembled in rows in the park, his majesty, attended by the household physicians, approached the first on the right. The physician-in-chief then placed his hand upon the patient's head, whilst a captain of the guards held the hands of the latter joined before his bosom. The king, with his head uncovered, then touched the patient by making the sign of the cross upon his face, exclaiming, 'May God heal thee! The king touches thee.' The whole two thousand four hundred having been healed in a similar manner, and the grand almoner having distributed alms to each in succession, three attendants, called chefs de goblet, presented themselves with golden salvers, on which were three embroidered napkins. The first, steeped in vinegar, was then offered to the king by Monsieur; the second, dipped in plain water, was presented by the Count d'Artois; and the third, moistened with orange water, was banded by the Duke of Orleans."[[26]]
The power of the seventh son to heal the evil (mentioned in the MS. I have cited) is humourously alluded to in the Tatler (No. 11.). I subjoin the passage, which occurs in a letter signed "D. Distaff."
"Tipstaff, being a seventh son, used to cure the king's evil; but his rascally descendants are so far from having that healing quality, that by a touch upon the shoulder, they give a man such an ill habit of body, that he can never come abroad afterwards."
I imagine that by the seventh son is meant the seventh son of a seventh son.
C. H. Cooper.
Cambridge, Feb. 4. 1851.
P.S. Since the above was written, I have observed the following notice of the work of Laurentius in Southey's Common Place Book, 4th Series, 478. (apparently from a bookseller's catalogue):
"Laurentius (And.) De Mirabili Strumas Sanandi VI. Solis Galliæ Regibus Christianissimis divinitas concessa, (fine copy,) 12s. Paris, 1609.
"This copy possesses the large folded engraving of Henry IV., assisted by his courtiers in the ceremony of curing the king's evil."
Footnote 18:[(return)]
Dd. 2. 41. fo. 38 b.
Fuller, Church History, edit. 1837, i. 228.
Danett's Translation. edit. 1614, p. 203.
Monstrelet edit. 1845, ii. 471.
Ibid. 476.
Fuller, Church History, edit. 1837, i. 227.
Cavendish, Life of Wolsey, edit. Singer, 1825, vol. i. p. 104.
Fuller, Church History, edit. 1837, i. pp. 227, 228.
New Monthly Magazine, vol. liii. p. 160.