SPIRITUALISM.
CHAPTER II.
Before considering the merits of the third hypothesis for accounting for the phenomena of spiritualism, I propose to draw out at some length the church theory of magic and formal diabolic interference.
Magic, in the sense of a systematized use of and intercourse with the spiritual world by other means than authorized prayer and ritual, has been an idea familiar to all races and to all times. Its hostile or consciously diabolical character has depended upon the vividness with which it has appreciated the nature of God and his sanction of the religion which it is confronting, and upon its consequent inability to regard itself as an appendix to, rather than a contradiction of, religion. Hence, it has been peculiarly virulent when it has had to manœuvre in the face of the precise enunciations of Catholicism, as was the case in mediæval Christendom; whilst, on the other hand, in a system of tolerant eclecticism like that of pagan Rome or modern America, it has naturally adopted a milder form.
The accounts given of the origin of magic in pagan and rabbinical tradition are almost identical, and read much like a rude allegory of Christian theology. In the first, the fair and proud Lamia, beloved of Zeus, in revenge for being herself ousted and her children slain by Hera, takes general vengeance upon the subjects of Zeus. In. the second, Lilith, Adam's first wife, is ever seeking to destroy the children of her successful rival, Eve. According to the more common Catholic teaching, sundry of the angels, God's first creation, destined to be the first partners of his bliss, fell for resisting God's designs in behalf of his second creation, man, whose nature he was to espouse in the Incarnation; whence the devil's hatred of the children of men.
The fathers[94] considered that the rebel angels first taught men magic in the evil days before the Flood, and that the seeds of the black art were carried on into the new world by Cham. His grandson, Mesraim, or Zoroaster, was said to have used it extensively to give life and reality to the false worship which was his legacy to his children, the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Persians.
The worship of the hosts of heaven—the sun, moon, and stars—would seem to have been the earliest form of false worship, and all mythological research tends to show that this is, in fact, the core even of those cults which at first sight would seem most unlike it. The Persians were fire-worshippers, but fire was stolen from heaven; and one of the miracles recorded of Zoroaster was his drawing magic sparks from the stars. The name given him by his disciples was "the Living Star." The host of deities with which the Greek and Roman world was peopled, many of whom would at first sight suggest a purely terrestrial origin, for the most part group themselves round central figures, which, on examination, prove to be earthly reflections of astral influences—of the sun or moon gods and their supposed satellites.
According to the fathers, magic was the very life and soul of idolatry, and pagan worship was regarded as a union of conventional deception and diabolic energy, the one or other element predominating according to circumstances. Thus diablerie lay beneath such orderly institutions as, for instance, the national cultus of ancient Rome, like the volcanic fires of Vesuvius under the rich vineyards which they have in part created and for a while sustain.
But whilst it is to a great extent true that paganism was substantially little better than an organized diablerie, and the devil, as the strong man in the Gospel, was keeping his house in comparative peace, still the very elements of man's nature, despite his fall, did in various ways protest against the enemy and impede his action. The idea of a supreme God could not be wholly withdrawn from the minds and hearts of men, and many true prayers, despite the demon's elaborate machinery to intercept them, pierced the heavens. Nay, the very forms themselves of idolatry would often suggest thoughts and acts of worship which no evil influence could control; for the world had been given to men, and not to the demon. Even the senses, for all they were so many inlets of temptation, did, by bringing men under the wholesome influence of external nature, and by their equable excitation of his mental powers, tend, in fact, to break the fascinating grasp which the fiend would hold upon his imagination. The material world at once spoke to him of God, and housed him from the pitiless storm of spiritual influence with which he was assailed. Common sense was not without its power of natural exorcism, and true affection often grew and flowered where the devil only thought to have nurtured lust.
In the cults which express the religious sentiments of the more civilized nations, we meet with much that is humane and noble, whilst, at the same time, we are often shocked by manifestations of a very different character—rites in which the fire of the pit seems to have found a direct vent.
On the whole, in pre-Christian, as compared with Christian, times, the devil reigned. When the apostle would warn the faithful of the foes with whom they would have to contend, he says: "Our warfare is not against flesh and blood"—i.e. these are, under the circumstances, hardly worth considering—"but against principalities and powers; against the rulers of the world of this darkness; against spiritual wickedness in high places." It was by the direct onslaught of the early church upon the citadel of paganism—her forcing the devil, by the intolerable brightness of her presence, to show himself in his true colors—and by thus enlisting on her side all the more honest elements of human nature, that she gained the victory, and the devil was fairly outlawed. In the expressive language of the Theodosian Codex (ix. tit. xvi.), sorcerers are denounced as "aliens of nature," (peregrini naturæ). Still, for all this, the war was by no means over, and its character remained substantially what it had always been. The devil did not lose his power of working marvels, but, as in the case of Pharaoh's magicians, he was outdone and baffled.
I think there will be little difficulty in showing that the teaching of the church on the subject of the devil's power was in the earliest times substantially what it was in the middle ages and what it is now. The contrary has been maintained by Janus, and we must do him the justice to acknowledge that even reputable writers like Maffei and Cantù have gone some lengths in the same direction. As Janus is still quoted as an authority in this country, it will not be amiss to combine his refutation with the illustration of my subject.
Janus maintains in so many words that in the Christian Church "it was long looked upon as a wicked and unchristian error, as something heretical, to attribute supernatural powers and effects to the aid of demons"; that "for many centuries ... the popular notions about diabolical agency, nocturnal meetings with demons, enchantments and witchcrafts, were viewed and treated as a folly inconsistent with Christian belief"; that this doctrine continued until gradually ousted by the "threefold authority of the popes, Aquinas, and the powerful Dominican Order."[95] Now, I of course admit that the action taken by the authorities of the church in regard to particular phenomena of witchcraft has varied extremely with circumstances; but she has always held that the devil has the power, which he is sometimes allowed to exercise, either en rapport with human agents or independently of them, of working marvels which transcend the natural power of the particular nature in conjunction with which they are wrought, though not transcending the sphere of universal nature; and that these are done by rapid, imperceptible combinations of other natural powers. When theologians disputed as to whether the devil could do this or that particular marvel—for example, transport imprisoned witches through their prison-walls to the "Sabbath"—the dispute did not turn on the reality or non-reality of magic, but upon whether the marvel in question did or did not transcend the sphere of universal nature. On the other hand, theologians have always maintained that in a certain sense witchcraft is an absurdity, no craft at all, an ars nugatoria, as S. Thomas calls it, since it is founded upon no fixed principles, but depends for its issues on the free will of one who has been a deceiver from the beginning. The scholastics made a great point of insisting upon the essentially unscientific character of witchcraft, since the devil had taken advantage of the extraordinary thirst for learning which prevailed in the middle ages to present himself in the light of a guide to new realms of science.
Janus relies for the justification of his statement upon a document long known as a chapter of the Council of Ancyra, but generally acknowledged to be the utterance of some IXth century Frank council. I subjoin it at length, together with the kindred questions from the Penitentiary of Burchard. Over and above their controversial value, they have an antiquarian interest which I hope not to neglect:
"Neither must this be passed over, that certain wicked women, turning back after Satan, and seduced by the illusions and phantasms of demons, believe and profess that they ride by night with Diana, goddess of the pagans, or with Herodias and a countless multitude of women, upon certain beasts, and silently, and in the dead of night, traverse many lands, obeying her commands as their mistress, and were, on certain nights, summoned to do her service. And would that these only had perished in their faithlessness! for an innumerable multitude, deceived by this false opinion, believe these things to be true, and, so believing, deviate from the true faith, and relapse into the errors of paganism, in believing that aught divine and godlike can be besides God. Wherefore, priests in the churches under their charge should preach to the people with all earnestness, so that they may understand that these things are, in all respects, false, and that such phantasms are injected into the minds of the faithful, not by the spirit of God, but by the evil spirit.
"Verily, Satan himself, who transfigures himself into an angel of light, after seizing upon the mind of some silly woman, and subjugating her to himself by infidelity, thereupon transforms himself into the forms and semblances of various persons, and in dreams deceiving the mind which he holds in captivity, and showing it anon pleasant things, anon sad, anon known, anon unknown, leads it everywhere from the road; and whilst the spirit alone undergoes this, the unfaithful mind thinks that this is taking place, not in the soul, but in the body? But who, in dreams and visions of the night, is not carried out of himself, and does not see many things in his sleep which he had never seen awake? yet who is so silly and stupid as to think that all these things which take place in the spirit only, occur also in the body? seeing that Ezechiel the prophet saw the visions of the Lord in the spirit, and not in the body, and the Apostle John saw the mystery of the Apocalypse in the spirit, not in the body. 'At once,' he saith, 'I was in the spirit'; and Paul dared not say that he had been taken out of the body. Wherefore, all must be told that whosoever believes these things and the like loses the faith, and he who hath not the right faith in the Lord is not the Lord's, but his in whom he believes—that is, the devil's; for of our Lord it is written, 'By him all things were made.' Whoever, then, believes that it can happen that a creature should be changed into a better or a worse, or be transformed into another sort or species save by the Creator who made all things, and through whom all things were made, of a surety is an infidel, and worse than a pagan."
The following are passages from what Burchard transcribes as an ancient Roman Penitentiary, and are specimens of a practical application of the preceding chapter:
"Hast thou ever believed or taken part in the perfidious credence that enchanters and those that call themselves storm-senders can, by the enchantment of demons, excite storms or alter men's minds? If thou hast believed or taken part, thou shalt do penance for one year on the lawful Ferias.
"Hast thou believed or taken part in the credence that there be women who, by certain charms or incantations, can change men's minds, that is to say, from hatred to love, or from love to hatred, or can injure or abstract men's goods by their charms? If thou hast believed or been partaker, one year, etc.
"Hast thou believed that there be women who can do this, according to the saying of certain women beguiled by the devil, who maintain that they must of necessity and of precept so do—that is to say, must ride upon certain beasts, with a great multitude of fiends transformed into the semblance of women, which the foolish call Holda, and have been bound in fellowship with them? If thou hast been partaker in that belief, one year, etc."
The following points have to be considered in estimating the controversial value of this chapter as used by Janus: 1st. How far do its enunciations necessarily represent the theology of the universal church? 2d. Do the beliefs which the chapter condemns, or do they not, involve something more than the attribution of "supernatural powers and effects to the aid of demons"? As to the first, this chapter is no utterance of a council representing the church universal; for, even supposing it really to belong to the Council of Ancyra, this was not a general council. But, as Janus admits, the chapter is first quoted without any title by the Benedictine, Regino, Abbot of Prumium, in the diocese of Treves, who wrote about 906. It was first called a canon of Ancyra by Burchard, another Benedictine (1020), who extracted it from Regino's collection, and inadvertently headed it with the title belonging to another passage. There is no trace to be found of it in the early MSS. of either the Greek or Latin acts of the Council of Ancyra. It is not to be met with in any collection of canons previous to the XIth century. Baluze was no doubt right in suggesting that it was part of some old Frank capitulary as yet undiscovered.
Janus[96] says that Regino compiled the chapter in question from passages in the pseudo-Augustinian writing, De Spiritu et Anima—a sufficiently remarkable statement, if we consider that Regino wrote early in the Xth century, and that the De Spiritu et Anima, which contains passages from S. Bernard and Hugo of S. Victor, was certainly not composed before the XIIth century.[97]
But, it may be urged, on the strength of the passages from Burchard's Roman Penitentiary, the Roman Church had given its sanction to this chapter, and had embodied it in its practice, even before Burchard had assigned it its imposing title. To this I reply that the brothers Ballerini[98] produce an XIth century MS. of a Roman Penitentiary (Vatican Codex, 3830) identical with Burchard's, save that it is without certain passages, and among them this very interrogatory on magic. The Ballerini remark that the expression, "were-wolf," which occurs in a passage of the interrogatory which I have not quoted, evidently marks it as belonging to some local German council. I may add that the expression, "Holda," indubitably indicates the same nationality; Holda, or Holle, being the wandering moon-goddess of the Teutons.
As to the second point, the beliefs condemned clearly involve something more than the attribution of supernatural power to the devil—viz., the acknowledgment that there is something "divine and godlike beside the one God"; whence it follows that the fiend can exercise his power independently of God; can force the wills of men to his service "by necessity and precept"; and can change one thing into another wholly different. Now, all these points have been persistently condemned by the church of all ages. That this is the one admissible interpretation of the chapter will become more and more evident as we examine the teaching of previous and contemporaneous theology.
If it be urged that, anyhow, this chapter represents a more civilized legislation, one more consonant in its wise leniency with the sentiments of to-day, than that which prevailed in the last half of the middle ages, and, indeed, for some centuries longer, I must remind my readers that I have been engaged in refuting a specific allegation of Janus, to the effect that the theology of the church had undergone a substantial change on the subject of witchcraft. I admit, of course, fully that the system which prevailed for some centuries in church and state was calculated by its extravagant severity to provoke the evil it was intended to repress. This has been often admitted by Catholic writers. Cardinal de Cusa, in the first half of the XVth century, when legate a latere in the German Empire, used these weighty words: "Where men believe that these witchcrafts do produce their effect, there are found many witches; neither can they be exterminated by fire and sword; for the more diligently this sort of persecution is waged, so much the stronger grows the delusion; for the persecution argues that the devil is feared more than God, and that, in the midst of the wicked, he can work evil; and so the devil is feared and propitiated, and thus gains his end; and though, according to human law and divine sanction, they deserve to be utterly extirpated, yet we must act cautiously and with great prudence, lest worse come of it."[99] He goes on to say that he himself examined two witches, and found them to be half mad. He shut them up, and made them do penance. The name of the Westphalian Jesuit, F. Spee (A.D. 1631), is identified with the relaxation of the penalties against witches, as completely as that of Wilberforce with the abolition of slavery, or that of Howard with the reformation of prisons; although he was unable to accept the rationalist thesis, "It is impossible for one person to influence another, except through sensible mediums; and the devil is an absurdity." The rationalist text is, no doubt, the sovereignest remedy on earth for cruelty to witches; but in the same sense is the tenet, "All worship is absurd," the most effectual bar to idolatry; and there are other less costly remedies. Whatever may be said on the score of prudence, it cannot be denied that such witches as deliberately produced fatal mischief by acting upon the excited imaginations of their victims were justly put to death, and that the formal transference of allegiance from Christ to the devil was formal high treason against the constitution of Christendom. Abuses of justice had no doubt crept into local practice, such as that of putting the possessed person—that is to say, the devil within him—into the witness-box, in order to discover the witch. This arose from the delusion that the devil might, by certain formulas, be bound over to speak the truth. It is vehemently denounced by all the standard writers on the subject—i.e. Delrio and Carena. Pegna (De Cffic. Inquis., pars ii. tit. xii. §§ 26 and 27) points out that the Roman inquisition, contrary to the practice elsewhere, has always refused to submit a witch to the question on the evidence of a companion, or to accept the testimony of one witch as to another's presence at the "Sabbath," because of the great likelihood of delusion. Indeed, Rome seems to have been always comparatively just and moderate in her practice, and often singularly lenient. It was such specimens of provincial ecclesiasticism as the Spanish inquisition, in which the secular interest had the lion's share, that went furthest in active persecution; and these, again, in their cruel persecution of witches, as the learned editor of Hudibras, Dr. Zachary Grey, confesses, the sectaries of England and Scotland "much exceeded."[100] Perhaps this was owing to their still further separation from the centre of Christendom.
The arguments against execution for witchcraft of Spee and De Cusa come pretty much to this: 1st. The imaginations of these unhappy people are in such a condition that you cannot make out how much is reality, how much delusion, nor, again, how far they are free agents. 2d. The whole subject is one on which people's imaginations are so excitable, and imagination has so large a share in the productions of witchcraft, that fire-and-sword persecution breeds more mischief than it destroys.
If ever a belief in the substantial reality of spiritualism becomes established as of old, and—as will inevitably happen—spiritualism is used, not merely for amusement, but for mischief, the champions of civilization may be glad to avail themselves of these almost forgotten Catholic arguments against persecution.
This so-called chapter of Ancyra is so interesting an exhibition of the blending of classical and mediæval diablerie that I shall make no apology for interposing a detailed examination of its mythology. It will subserve my argument against Janus, by bringing out the idolatrous, and so far unreal, element of magic as that which naturally presented itself to the early church as the object of its denunciations.
Diana (Dia Jana) was one of the deities of ancient Latium; although a Latin federal temple was erected to her by Servius Tullius on the Aventine Hill, she never took any very high rank amongst the divinities of Rome, but remained the special patron of slaves and rustics—that is to say, the immediate cultivators of the soil.[101] Livy and Strabo tell us that this goddess was identical with the Ephesian Artemis—an acquaintance with whose cult the Latins might have obtained through the Phocean colony at Marseilles. Dr. Döllinger describes the Ephesian goddess as "a kind of pantheistic deity, with more of an Asiatic than an Hellenic character. She was most analogous to Cybele as physical mother and parent of all." S. Jerome (Proœm. ad Ephes.) says that the Ephesians worshipped Diana, "not the huntress who carries the bow and is high-girt, but that many-breasted one, which the Greeks call πολυμαστης."
The cultus of Diana in Italy, though substantially of a benignant character, seems to have been early qualified by the sterner rites of Thrace, where bloody flagellations had been accepted as a compromise for human sacrifice. Aricia, one of the oldest towns in Latium, boasted that its image of the goddess had been brought from Tauris.
Originally, Dr. Döllinger reminds us, neither the Roman Diana nor the Grecian Artemis were connected in any way with the moon. As the ancient Latin sun-god Janus' sister, Diana was the female divinity of the sun. Æschylus is generally said to be the first author who speaks of Artemis as the moon-goddess; whereas Hecate was an original goddess of the moon and of the night. Hence, when she came to be identified with Artemis, and through her with Diana, by an amalgamation of rites, Diana became undisputed goddess of the moon and of the mysterious realms of the night, the resort of ghosts and fays. Hecate was a Titan, the only one who retained power under the Zeus dynasty; hence her name, Titanis, or Titania, with which Shakespeare has familiarized us. Statius (Thebaid, lib. i.) applies this epithet to the moon:
"Titanis late mundo subvecta silenti
Rorifera gelidum tenuaverat aëra biga."
Virgil doubtless gives this title to the stars as to the moon's supposed satellites (Æneid, lib. vi.):
"Lucentemque globum lunæ Titaniaque astra."
In Lucian we have frequent mention of Hecate and her dogs; in a fragment of S. Maximus of Turin the same "aerial dogs" are referred to, and S. Hippolytus speaks of Diana and her dogs appearing in the magician's cauldron.
The amalgamated worship of Hecate and Diana, the queen of ghosts and the goddess of fertility, presents precisely those apparently incongruous elements which strike us in fairy mythology, where fairies, and ghosts, and witches combine so oddly in the web of mediæval folk-lore.
It was very long before the pagan element to which the chapter witnesses—the Manicheism which holds that there is something "divine and godlike beside the one God"—had ceased to hold a prominent place in the fancy of persons professedly Christian. S. Maximus of Turin, in the fifth century, thus warns the Christian farmers of North Italy of their responsibility in the idolatry of their servants: "My brother, when you know that your farm-servant sacrifices, and you do not prevent his immolation, you sin. Though you give him not the wherewithal, yet leave is granted him. Though he do not sin by your orders, yet your will co-operates in the fault. Whilst you say nothing, you are pleased at what your servant has done, and perhaps would have been angry if he had not done it. Your subordinate sins, not only on his own score, when he sacrifices, but on his master's who forbids him not, who, if he had forbidden him, would certainly have been without sin. Grievous indeed is the mischief of idolatry; it defiles those who practise it; it defiles the neighborhood; it defiles the lookers-on; it pierces through to those who supply, who know, who keep silent. When the servant sacrifices, the master is defiled. He cannot escape pollution when partaking of bread which a sacrilegious laborer has reared, blood-stained fields have produced, a black barn has garnered. All is defiled, with the devil in house, field, and laborers. No part is free from the crime which steeps the whole. Enter his hut, you will find withered sods, dead cinders—meet sacrifice for the demon, where a dead deity is entreated with dead offerings! Go on into the field, and you will find altars of wood, images of stone—a fitting ministration, where senseless gods are served on rotting altars! When you have looked a little further, and found your servant tipsy and bleeding, you ought to know that he is, as they call it, a dianatic, or a soothsayer."
In the VIth century, S. Cæsarius of Arles, in an almost contemporary "Life," is said to have cast out "a devil, which the rustics call a diana."[102]
In the XIIth, XIIIth, XIVth, and XVth centuries, this idolatrous cultus was not extinct. Montfaucon quotes part of a decree, in which Auger of Montfaucon, an ancestor of his own, Bishop of Conserans, in the South of France, at the close of the XIIIth century, found it necessary to denounce dianaticism: "Let no woman profess that she rides by night with Diana, goddess of the pagans, or with Herodias, or Bensozia, and raise a route of women to the rank of deities; for this is a diabolical illusion."[103]
In the Bollandist Life of S. James of Bevagna in Umbria, who died in 1301, we are told that the saint distinguished himself "by rebuking those women who go to the chase with Diana"; and in 1317, John XXII., in his bull addressed to the Bishop of Frejus, denounces those "who wickedly intermeddle with divinations and soothsayings, sometimes using Dianas."
In the XVth century, Cardinal de Cusa speaks of examining two women who "had made vows to a certain Diana who had appeared to them, and they called her in Italian Richella, saying she was Fortune."[104]
John of Salisbury, Bishop of Chartres in 1136, talks of this "Sabbath" company in language which is a curious medley of classical and mediæval phraseology. He speaks of the delusion of those "who assert that a certain night-bird (nocticulam, or, according to the generally received emendation, nocte lucam, the night-shiner, a synonyme for Hecate), or Herodias, or the lady president of the night, solemnize banquets, exercise offices of diverse kinds; and now, according to their deserts, some are dragged to punishment, others gloriously exalted."[105]
William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris in 1224, tells us a good deal about this queen of the ladies of the night. They call her, he says, "Satia (a satietate), and the Lady Abundia, from the abundance she is said to bestow upon the houses which she frequents." He goes on to say that these ladies are seen to eat and drink, yet in the morning the things are as they were. The pots and jars, however, must be left open, or they will go off in a huff. To guard against such visitations, Alvernus thinks, it was prescribed in the Levitical law that vessels should be covered, or accounted unclean. He speaks of the "old women amongst whom this delusion abides"; but it is evidently the cultus he regards as a delusion, and the belief that there are spiritual beings independent both of God and Satan, not the belief that these are real diabolical phenomena.[106] Even in classic times, it would seem that Diana and her crew fulfilled in some measure the office of household fairies:
"Exagitant et lar et turba Diania fures";[107]
and in another passage of the same poet we find what seems to be an early indication of the connection between witches and the feline race. When worsted by the first onslaught of the Titans, the gods thus chose their hiding-places:
"Fele soror Phœbi, niveâ Saturnia vacca,
Pisce Venus latult, Cyllenius ibidis alvo."[108]
But to return to the "ladies of the night." Alvernus says, "They sometimes enter stables with wax tapers, the drippings of which appear on the hairs and necks of the horses, whilst their manes are carefully plaited." May we not exclaim with Mercutio,
"This is that very Mab
That plaits the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elf locks in foul, sluttish hairs"?
Alvernus' expression is "guttatos crines," wax-clotted hairs. Shakespeare's Mab seems to have played the same trick upon human beings.
The Lady Abundia is distinctly identified with Diana's crew, nay, herself represents that goddess, in a most curious passage from an early MS. of the Roman de la Rose, which was a composition of this same thirteenth century:
"Et les cinq sens ainssi deçoivent
Par les fantosmes qu'ils recoivent
Dont maintes gens par leur folies
Quident estre par nuit estries
Errans avecque dame Habonde
Et dient que par tout le monde
Le tiers enfant de nascion
Sont de cette condition;
Qu'ils vont trois fois en la semaine
Si çon destinée les mainne,
Et par tous les ostiex se boutent
Ne clos ne barres ne redoutent
Ains' sen entrent par les fendaces
Par charnieres et par crevaces
Et se partent des cors les ames,
Et vont avec les bonnes dames
Par lieux forains et par maisons."[109]
Bensozia, or Bezezia, as she is called in the Glossarium Novum from some MSS. statutes of S. Florus, has been a great puzzle to antiquarians. Montfaucon is inclined to identify her with the domina noctis, or Abundia. The Glossarium Novum suggests desperately that it may be a name for Herodias' daughter. Mr. Baring-Gould, following Grimm, has unwittingly furnished, I think, the true solution. He thus comments upon a remark of Tacitus in his Germania—"a part of the Suevi sacrifice to Isis": "This Isis has been identified by Grimm with a goddess Ziza, who was worshipped by the inhabitants of the parts about Augsburg. Kuchlen, an Augsburg poet of the XIVth century, sings:
"'They built a great temple therein
To the honor of Zize, the heathen goddess.'"
This Ziza, Mr. Gould suggests, is no other than Holda, or Holle, the wandering moon-goddess of the Teutons, in other parts called Gôde, under which name she resembled Artemis as the heavenly huntress accompanied by her maidens; in Austria and Bavaria, Berchta, or Bertha (the shining); in Suabia and Thuringia, Hörsel, or Ursel; in other places, the night-bird, Tutösel. Bezezia would there be Bena Ziza—the good Ziza. Alvernus' "Satia" is, in all probability, an attempt to Latinize the sound, as "Abundia" the sense; and so the three names are reducible to one.
Although the suggestion of the Glossarium Novum is inadmissible, I cannot but feel that its attempt to introduce Herodias' daughter into the "Sabbath" crew is reasonable enough.
I should myself be tempted to think that Herodias should be understood as Herodias Junior. Not only is there a propriety in this, considering the daughter's antecedents, but it is clear that fancy was early busy with her name; witness the weird story told by the Greek historian, Nicephorus, of her setting to dancing on the ice in her mother's sight, and persisting therein until she gradually broke through, and finished by dancing her head off against the sharp edge. On the other hand, this is, of course, in the teeth of what must be accepted as the authentic account given by Josephus, who calls her Salome, and allots her two husbands and three children. Moreover, Cesare Cantù is able to produce a myth accounting for the mother's presence, though he omits all reference to his authority, which I have vainly attempted to discover. It is at least ben trovato: "Credevasi pure che Erodiade ottenuto il teschio del Battista volle bacciarlo, ma quello si ritrasse e soffio, di che ella fu spinta in aria, e ancora si va tutte le notte."[110] There is nothing surprising in meeting with Jewish features in the rites of mediæval magic, since Jews were notoriously the leading magicians, both in Christian and Moorish states; as, indeed, they had been before the Christian era, wherever they had been known throughout the pagan world. The term "Sabbath," as applied to the magic gathering, naturally suggests itself; but I think it is not really any direct outcome of Jewish influence. The word, before its use in diablerie, had come to be a general expression for a feast in the Spanish Peninsula, and had thence no doubt found its way into France and Germany. The Glossarium Novum gives an extract from the will of Sancho of Portugal (A.D. 1269): "Item ad unum Sabbatum faciendum mando duas libras."
The idea of Diana, Herodias, and Bezezia as a magic trinity, or, rather, as a triform manifestation of one deity, Latin, Jewish, and barbarian, was no unnatural outcome of a mixed race such as peopled Gaul and North Italy in the first centuries of the Christian era, and to such an idea the common image of the triple Hecate, "Tergeminamque Hecaten tria Virginis ora Dianæ," easily lent itself. Dr. Döllinger says: "Hecate was represented with three bodies or with three heads, as the goddess of the star of night, energizing in three spheres of action—in heaven, and earth, and sea—and at the same time in allusion to the three phases of the moon."[111] As Ben Jonson's witch sings:
"And thou three-formed star that on these nights
Art only powerful, to whose triple name
Thus we incline once, twice, and thrice the same."[112]
The extraordinary way in which polytheism has sought by an amalgamation of rites, and so of properties and personalities, to regain that unity of worship of which it is the formal negation, is a great distraction to antiquarians, who would fain distinguish precisely the various cults of paganism. Almost all the female deities occasionally interchange offices. Diana is especially a central figure, in which they all meet. Venus, Juno, Minerva, ordinarily representative of such opposite functions, are, under certain aspects, identified with Diana. Of Isis Dr. Döllinger says: "She often stepped into the place of Demeter, Persephone, Artemis, and Hecate, and became dispensatrix of food, mistress of the lower world and of the sea, and goddess of navigation. In some inscriptions she is pantheistically called 'the one who is all.'"[113]
"Fables," Sir Francis Palgrave says, truly enough, "have radiated from a common centre, and their universal consent does not prove their subsequent reaction upon each other, but their common derivation from a common origin."[114] None the less, however, the "subsequent reaction" is in many cases most real and important; itself testifying, doubtless, to a common origin, but at the same time productive of results of a distinctly conglomerate character. Often, too, properties which belonged to the original parent cultus, and which have been lost, or have fallen into abeyance in a derivative, have been restored to this last by amalgamation with another cult. For instance, the Ephesian Artemis, the parent, as is generally supposed, of the Latian Diana, was always associated with the practice of magic. Her garments were covered with mystic sentences, which obtained the name of "Ephesian Letters," and which were supposed to be potent charms. The deciphering and application of these sentences was a regular art in Ephesus; hence the magic books which the Ephesians burned in such numbers under the influence of S. Paul's preaching. On the other hand, the Latian Diana seems to have derived the most part of her magic properties from her amalgamation with Hecate.
Evidence is not wanting to show that the mediæval magical cultus owes its conglomerate character to something more than the accidental mingling of races, or the spontaneous action of polytheism which I have noticed.
The Gnostic heretics, and especially the disciples of Basilides, have left numerous records of their teaching and practice in the shape of engraved gems called abraxi, which have been discovered in great numbers throughout North Italy, Gaul, and Spain. If we look through the pages devoted to the illustration of these extraordinary relics in Montfaucon, we shall find almost all the peculiar emblems of mediæval magic, such as cocks and serpents, abracadabra, the triple Hecate, etc. But beyond this there is conspicuous the medley, so characteristic of mediæval magic, of sacred and profane, Christian and pagan, divine and diabolical; the names of God and of our Lord mixed with those of Latin and Egyptian deities, Old Testament prophets and local genii, piety and lewdness, grace and brutishness—loathsomely incongruous, one should fancy, even to unchristian eyes, as some royal banquet which harpies have defiled with blood and ordure.
Basilides himself (A.D. 125) seems hardly to have been responsible for these indecencies. He was an eclectic of the Hebrew-Alexandrian school, and, if we are to believe Neander, meant to teach a not unrefined monotheism by means of a vocabulary of symbols gathered from all quarters. But he had prepared a powerful machinery for evil, of which his unscrupulous disciples were not slow to avail themselves. The diabolical guild spread with extraordinary rapidity, and struck deep root on all sides. S. Irenæus writes against it and the kindred sect of the Valentinians in the IId century, and S. Jerome in the Vth century testifies to its influence in Gaul and Spain.
These Gnostics seem to have gradually identified themselves with another and even darker sect of the same family—the Ophites, or worshippers of the serpent; witness the vast number of serpent gems amongst the abraxi. With these Ophites, as with the Cainites, who closely resemble them, the demiurge, creator, or world-god, is not merely subordinate, but imperfect and evil, and hostile to the everlasting wisdom symbolized by the serpent. The malignant creator, jealous of his creature, throws about him the net of the law, restraining him from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; and from out of this net, the eternal wisdom, by the serpent as its intermediary and symbol, delivers him. And so it is that, in this perverse system, man's fall becomes his triumph, and the devil his redeemer. This principle was only carried out by the Cainites when they upheld Cain and Judas as the representatives of the higher wisdom and examples of heroic resistance to the tyranny of the demiurge. It must be admitted that it would be quite in keeping with their usual manner if they are responsible for the deification of Herodias. Of the Ophites, Origen reports that they admitted none to their assemblies who did not curse Christ.[115] This systematic, detailed perversion of Christianity is so perfectly in accord with what we are told of the mediæval Sabbath, where Christ was renounced and the Blessed Trinity reviled as a three-headed Cerberus, that, loath as are such historians as Neander and Gieseler to entertain anything so bizarre as devil-worship, they hardly know what else to call it. Amongst many special indications of a connection between Gnosticism and mediæval diablerie, I would remark the following: Alvernus speaks of the magic book in use in his day, entitled Circulus Major, wherein are instructions how to form the greater circle for the evocation of demons; also of a "greater" and "lesser" circle, and of other figures called "Mandal" and "Aliandet," wherein convene the four kings of the East, West, North, and South, with other demons beside.[116] Now, Origen speaks of the "greater and lesser circles" as rites of the Ophites. It is true that in Origen's description we do not hear of four kings, but of seven, who are styled the "seven princes," "lords of the seven gates"[117] "of the seven heavens"; but the number does not seem to be marked with any great precision; for Origen (cap. 31) reduced them to six, and it is the worship of the six angels that S. Boniface is said to have abolished in Germany in the VIIIth century.[118] Again, Alvernus admitted that his circles contained other demons besides the four kings.
The four kings are identified as a Gnostic subdivision of the seven spirits by Feuerardentius,[119] who says that, according to the Rabbins, Zamael was one of the four kings of evil spirits, and reigned in the East, and also one of the seven planetary spirits, and presided over Mars. He was the accuser of the Jews, as Michael was the defender. The Jews are said to pray in their synagogues, "Remember not, O Lord, the accusation of Zamael, but remember the defence of Michael." Michael is another of the seven planetary spirits, ruling, according to some, in Mercury, according to others, in the sun, and wielding the east wind. The Ophites, with their instinct for desecration, blended Michael and Zamael into one, calling them the "Serpens projectibilis," with two names.[120] Of Adalbert, the heretical worshipper of the six angels, who was discomfited by S. Boniface, we are told that "he pretended to hold intercourse with S. Michael."
It would seem that something very much like the ancient rites for evoking the four kings is still in use in Africa. Alvernus' account is: "The master smites the ground in front of him, toward the eastern quarter, with outstretched sword, and saith these words: 'Let the great king of the East come forth'"; and so on with the others. In the description of a modern incantation in Algiers, related in Experiences with Home, p. 158, we are told, "Loud thrusts and blows were heard on the ground, and several forms became visible, apparently issuing from the earth."
We can hardly avoid the conclusion that mediæval magic is a Gnostic tradition, and so additional light is thrown upon the vehement language in which the "chapter" denounces as heretical, and more than heretical—as something worse than paganism—every feature of a system which apparently aimed at nothing less than a pantheistic identification of good and evil through the deification of the devil.
I shall now proceed to show that antecedently to, and contemporaneously with, the legislation of the "chapter," there existed in the church a belief in the power of Satan and in the reality of magic differing not at all from that which prevailed in the middle ages. It is easy to make, as Maffei has done, a catena of fathers who speak in contempt of magic, some going so far as to call it a "nullity." The great fact that impressed the early Christians with regard to magic was that everywhere it was shrinking back before Christianity; that simple children, armed with the cross, were more than a match for the masters of devilish lore. They were full of that triumphant disenchantment and purification of nature so gloriously expressed in the concluding stanzas of Milton's "Nativity" ode. But men do not celebrate a triumph over nothing, neither can nothing be brought to naught. The question is, Did the fathers think it "heretical to attribute superhuman effects to the aid of demons"? It will be to the purpose to collect a few examples of the way in which they talked of two of the earliest and most generally accepted relations of magic—the account of Simon Magus' magic powers and Peter-stinted flight, and the legend of Cyprian and Jovita. It is altogether beside the point to insist that one or both of these relations are mere legends; the question is, what the fathers thought it consistent with the Christian faith to believe. I shall confine myself to passages which unmistakably exclude the hypothesis of mere jugglery.
Of Simon Magus, Justin Martyr (A.D. 133, Apol., i. 26) says that "he did mighty acts of magic by virtue of the art of the devils acting in him."
S. Hippolytus (A.D. 220, Refut., bk. vi.) says that he did his sorceries partly according to the art of Thrasymedes, in the manner we have described above, and partly also by the assistance of demons perpetrating his villany, "attempted to deify himself." This testimony as to the reality of the diabolical intervention is the more remarkable, as Hippolytus was a most keen exploder of the tricks of pagan magicians, amongst whom was Thrasymedes, and gives, in the work from which I quote, detailed accounts of how they produced their effects by powders and reflectors, so that people saw Diana and her hounds, and all manner of things, in the magic cauldron. Arnobius (A.D. 303, Advers. Gentes, lib. ii.) says, "The Romans had seen the chariot of Simon Magus and his fiery horses blown abroad by the mouth of Peter, and utterly to vanish at the name of Christ."
S. Cyril of Jerusalem (A.D. 350, Cat. vi. Illum.): "After Simon had promised that he would rise up aloft into the heavens, and was borne up in a demon chariot and carried through the air, the servants of God, throwing themselves on their knees, and manifesting that agreement of which Jesus spake—'If two of you be of accord concerning whatsoever thing you shall ask, it shall be granted'—by the javelin of their concord let fly at the magician brought him headlong to the ground."
S. Maximus of Turin (Serm. in Fest. S. Petri): "When that Simon said he was Christ, and declared that as a son he would fly up on high to his father, and straightway, lifted up by his magic arts, began to fly, then Peter on his knees besought the Lord, and by his holy prayers overcame the magic levity." The story of Cyprian and Jovita records the repeated but fruitless attempts of the heathen magician, Cyprian, to overcome the chastity of the Christian virgin, Jovita, by means of a lascivious demon, whom he employs as his agent, and how Cyprian is finally converted.
S. Gregory Nazianzen (Orat. 24) does not hesitate to speak thus: "He (Cyprian) tried all the more, and employed as his procurer no ancient hag of the sort fit for such things, but one of the body-loving, pleasure-loving demons; since the envious and apostate spirits are keen for such service, seeking many partners in their fall. And the wage of such procuration was offerings and libations, and the appropriation of the fumes of blood; for such reward must be bestowed upon those that are thus gracious."
As to S. Augustine, even Janus admits that this father does furnish an awkward passage (De Civ. Dei, xv. 23) about the commerce of demons with women, which "the Dominican theologians seized on"; "but the saint used it in mere blind credulity," and, though he never exactly retracted it, did retract "a similar statement (Retract., ii. 30)."[121] Unfortunately for Janus, no two statements could be more dissimilar. The statement which S. Augustine retracts is one limiting the devil's power; the statement which he does not retract is one in which it is precisely Janus' complaint that he exaggerates it. In matter of fact, S. Augustine is the great storehouse from which the scholastics have obtained almost all they have to say on diablerie.
S. Augustine, in his treatise, De Trinitate (lib. iii. cap. 8), having distinguished the creator of the "invisible seeds," the first elements of things, latent everywhere throughout the frame of nature, as the Creator, whereas all other authors are but producers, thus speaks (cap. 9): "What they (the evil spirits) can do by virtue of their nature, but cannot do through the prohibition of God, and what they are not suffered to do by the condition of their nature, is past man's finding out, except through the gift of God, which the apostle commemorates, saying, 'To another the discernment of spirits.' We know that man can walk, though walk he cannot unless he be permitted; so those angels can do certain things if allowed by more powerful angels at God's command, and cannot do certain other things, even if these allow them, because he suffers it not from whom their nature hath its native bounds, who, through his angels, very often prevents them doing such things as he allows them to be able to do."
De Civ. Dei, lib. xxi. cap. 6: "Demons are allured to dwell with men by means of creatures which not they, but God, has gifted with sweetness diverse after their kind; not as brutes are attracted by food, but as spirits by signs which are congruous to each one's pleasure—by various kinds of stones, herbs, trees, animals, charms, and rites. But in order that they should be so allured by men, they first seduce them with astutest cunning, either by breathing into their hearts a secret poison, or even by appearing in the deceitful guise of friendship, and make a few their scholars and the teachers of many. Neither would it be possible to learn, unless they first taught it, by what name they are invited, by what compelled; whence magic arts and their adepts have taken rise.... And their works are exceedingly numerous, which, the more marvellous we acknowledge them to be, the more cautiously we must avoid."
S. Isidore (Etym., lib. viii. cap. 9) says of magicians: "These trouble the elements, disturb men's minds, and, without any poison-draught, by the mere force of their charm, destroy life."
Venerable Bede, in the VIIth century (in Luc., lib. iii. cap. 8), says of the commerce of incubi and succubi, which Janus tells us was an invention of the Dominicans, that "it is a matter as really true as it looks like a lie, and is notoriously attested by numbers." He tells us that a priest of a neighboring parish related to him that he had to exorcise a woman so beset, and to heal the ulcers which the devil had left upon her. These were all cured by blest salt, except the largest, which was not healed until the priest was told what to do by his patient. "If," said she, "you mix the oil consecrated for the sick with the same medicine (i.e. the salt), and so anoint me, I shall be at once restored to health; for I whilom saw in the spirit, in a certain far-off city, a girl affected with the same calamity cured in this way by the priest." He did as she suggested, and at once the ulcer consented to receive the remedy, which it had before rejected. Hincmar (De Divort. Loth. et Tetb., p. 654) says that certain women "a Dusiis in specie virorum quorum amore ardebant concubitum pertulisse inventa sunt"; and the context shows that he is not merely quoting S. Augustine, but bearing his own testimony; for he speaks of their exorcism. He proceeds to give an account of various kinds of witchery, with an unmistakable conviction of their reality, and clinches them with the wonderful story from the Life of S. Basil, by the pseudo-Amphilochius, in his time newly translated out of the Greek. It is the same story which Southey has turned to such good account in his All for Love; and certainly few mediæval legends surpass it in the realism of its diablerie. A young man obtains for his wife a girl, who is on the eve of taking the veil, by means of a charm got at the price of a compact written in his blood, surrendering his soul to the evil one. When the young man repents, and the devil insists on his bargain, S. Basil discomfits the fiend before the whole congregation, and wrings from him the fatal writing. Now, Hincmar was the leading prelate in the Gallic Church in the IXth century—that is to say, in the very church and the very century in which was almost certainly composed the "chapter" in which Janus supposes that all belief in witchcraft was condemned as heresy.
Ivo of Chartres, in the XIth century, one of the very authors whom, because they transcribe the "chapter," Janus appeals to as representatives of what he regards as the ancient tradition, speaks thus on the interpretation of Genesis vi. 2: "It is more likely that just men, under the appellation of angels or sons of God, sinned with women, than that angels, who are without flesh, could have condescended to that sin; although of certain demons who maltreat women many persons relate so many things that a determination one way or the other is not easy."[122]
When we come to the great scholastics of the XIIIth century, we find that where they have varied in aught from the teaching of their predecessors on the subject of magic, it was, on the whole, in the direction of moderation, or what would be called nowadays rationalism. For instance, in considering the question of diabolical intercourse with women, a belief in which, as we have seen, they had inherited from a line of theologians, they gave an explanation which, whatever may be said of it, at least repudiated the idea of an actual mixture of carnal and spiritual natures. Again, they were very careful to guard against the notion that there is anything that can be called with propriety an art-magic—i.e. that there is any other than an arbitrary connection between the charms used and the results obtained—which is more than can be said of some of their predecessors.
Janus (p. 258), with the operose mendacity which is his characteristic, pretends that the authority "of the popes, Aquinas, and the powerful Dominican Order" established the reality of the Sabbath rides; that in the XIVth and XVth centuries you might "be condemned as a heretic in Spain for affirming, and in Italy for denying, the reality of the Sabbath rides"; that some Franciscan theologians in the XVth century, amongst others Alfonso de Spina, in his Fortalitium Fidei, maintained the ancient doctrine asserting "belief in the reality of witchcraft to be a folly and a heresy"; that Spina "thought that the inquisitors had witches burned simply on account of that belief." "Tot verba tot mendacia"! The question of the reality or non-reality of the Sabbath rides has always been an open question. S. Thomas says nothing about them one way or the other. It is much more probable than not that he regarded those rides as fantastic, in accordance with the teaching of his masters, Albertus Magnus[123] and Alexander Hales.[124] That he never committed himself to the opposite view is pretty well assured by the fact that the great representative of "the powerful Dominican Order" in the XVth century, Cardinal Turrecremata, is an advocate of the view which makes the rides fantastic. We may add that his eminence got on very comfortably during his long residence in Italy, without being molested for his Spanish heresy.
As to Alfonso Spina, he, indeed, asserts the fantastic character of the Sabbath flights; but so little is he a disbeliever in diablerie that, not contented with maintaining its reality (Fortal., f. 146, p. 1, col. 1),[125] he contributes a rather grotesque instance of it from his own experience (f. 151, p. 1, col. 2).
He nowhere says that inquisitors had witches burned "simply on account" of their belief in the reality of the Sabbath. He recounts the burning of certain witches in Dauphiny and Gascony, who did hold their Sabbath meetings to be real, which view, as attributing a certain divine power to the devil, Spina thought could not be persisted in without heresy. (See fol. 152, p. 2, col. 1.) But they were burned because they were witches who had done real homage to the devil, although sundry of its circumstances might be imaginary.
The following passages may be accepted as examples of the doctrine on spiritualism of the principal scholastics of the XIIIth century.
S. Thomas, Sum. i. qu. 110, lays down that God only can work a miracle properly so called—i.e. a work beyond the order of the whole of created nature; "but since not every virtue of created nature is known to us, therefore, when anything takes place by a created virtue unknown to us, it is a miracle in respect to us; and so, when the devils do something by their natural power, it is called a miracle, quoad nos; and in this way magicians work miracles by means of devils." (In 4 Dist. vii. qu. 3.) "The devils, by their own power, cannot induce upon matter any form, whether accidental or substantial, nor reduce it to act, without the instrumentality of its proper natural agent.... The devils can bring to bear activities upon particular passivities, so that the effect shall follow from natural causes indeed, but beside the accustomed course of nature, on account of the variety and vehemence of the active virtue of the active forces combined, and the aptitude of the subjects;[126] and so effects which are outside the sphere of all natural active virtues they cannot really produce—as raise the dead or the like—but only in appearance."
De Malo, qu. xvi. art. 9: "The devils can do what they do, 1st, Because they know better than men the virtue of natural agents. 2d. Because they can combine them with greater rapidity. 3d. Because the natural agents which they use as instruments can attain to greater effects by the power and craft of the devils than by the power and craft of men."
Alexander Hales, Sum., pars 2, qu. 42, art. 3, says that nothing, however wonderful, "is a miracle which takes place in accordance with the natural or seminal order, but every miracle holds of the causal ratio (creative cause) only," (L.C. qu. 43). He admits that these marvels of the seminal order are miracles secundum modum faciendi—a term equivalent to S. Thomas' quoad nos.
Albertus Magnus, Op., tom. xviii. tract viii. qu. 3, art. 1, points out that the miracles of Pharao's magicians are called lies, "not because they are unreal (falsa in se), but because the devils have always the intention of deceiving in those works which they are allowed to do."
To sum up, the doctrine of the scholastics on the subject of the devil's power comes to this: The devil is a great artist, who can present incomparable shows to the senses and the imagination, and a supreme chemist, who can combine natural agents indefinitely, and can elicit in a twinkling the virtual contents of each combination; but he can create, and, strictly speaking, originate, nothing external to himself. They knew that, in mercy to mankind, Almighty God was ever restraining the devil in the exercise of this power; but they conceived that the power itself continued unaltered. It was generally admitted that the devil could not raise a dead man to life, or restore a sense, as the sight, when really destroyed. But such acts were regarded by the scholastics as precisely instances of the creation or origination of such a mode as could not be the outcome of any mere combination of natural agents, and which, therefore, must require the fiat of the Creator. At the same time, it must be admitted that they often found it difficult to distinguish in fact between the operation of the limits of the devil's finite nature and the result of the habitual reservation of Almighty God.
And here it may not unnaturally be objected that the large allowance I have made to natural powers, and to the devil's power of manipulating them, tends to lessen the effect of the argument from miracles. No doubt it tends to reduce a considerable number of miracles from the category of logical proof to that of rhetorical argument. Where the miracle is supposed wholly above nature, it is a proof that God is with those who work it; but where it is not beyond the sphere of universal nature, it can, for the most part, only offer a greater or less persuasion dependent upon circumstances. However, such natural miracles, so to call them, approximate more or less closely to logical cogency in proportion as they manifest themselves as the victors in a war of miracles; for it cannot be supposed that in such a war God should allow himself to be worsted, or that Satan should be divided against himself. When God first presented himself as a wonder-worker before human witnesses, it was as developing and modifying in a supernatural manner the powers of nature—nay, of local, Egyptian nature—and outdoing and discomfiting the magicians "who did in like manner." A recent Catholic commentator, Dr. Smith, in his very learned work, The Book of Moses, points out in detail "the analogy which most of the plagues present with the annual phenomena of the country."[127] Of the prelude to the plagues, the conversion of the rod of Moses into a serpent, he says: "Even at the present day, the descendants, or at least representatives, of the Psylli ... can change the asp into a rod stiff and rigid, and at pleasure restore it to flexibility and life by seizing the tail and rolling it between their hands."
In his treatment of the first plague, he gives the following account of the annual phenomenon: "For some time before the rise, the Nile assumes a green color; it then becomes putrid and unfit to drink. Gradually, about the 25th June, a change comes on; the green color and putrid odor disappear; the water becomes clear again, then takes a yellow tinge, which passes into an ochreous red; until for ninety days before the inundation gains its greatest height, it is popularly called the red water. 'On the first appearance of the change,' says an eye-witness, 'the broad, turbid tide certainly has a striking resemblance to a river of blood.'[128] ... At the moment foretold by Moses, the miraculous rod is lifted up and waved over the stream; instantaneously the red attains all its intensity of color; the fish, which in ordinary years live on through the gradual habituation to a different state, now perish in numbers from the very suddenness of the change; and the putrid odor, which usually exhales from it before the rise, comes back again in consequence of this mortality. The blood-red hue is not confined to the spot where Pharao and his magicians stood. It spreads at once into the various channels into which the river divides itself, into the canals which are carried through the land for irrigation, into the lakes and ponds which served as reservoirs, into all the collections of Nile-water, and the very vessels of stone and wood which were commonly used both in town and country for private cisterns. The consequence is that at the very time the water begins to sweeten, it becomes again undrinkable; the Egyptians loathe the water, a draught of which is esteemed one of the greatest luxuries they can enjoy; and, as the inhabitants still do when anything prevents them from drinking of the river, 'they digged round about the river for water, for they could not drink of the water of the river.'"
Of the plague of frogs, the same author remarks: "Such a nuisance was not unknown in some other countries, and there are instances of the inhabitants being in consequence driven from their settlements, as Athenæus remarks of the Pœonians and Dardanians, Diodorus of the Antariats of Illyria, and Pliny of some Gaulish nation. But in Egypt they are not unfrequently equivalent to a plague. Indeed, Hasselquist believes that every year that would be the result, were it not for the species of stork, called ardea ibis, which in the month of September comes down in large flocks to feed upon the small frogs then beginning to swarm over the country."
As regards the third plague, that of the ciniphs, or Egyptian mosquito, Dr. Smith thinks that the magicians could not produce them, because at that time of the year they were not yet out of the egg. This, as we have seen, is not the doctrine of the scholastics, and is hardly consistent with the idea that the magicians were anything more than conjurers. I would suggest that the mosquitoes had to do something more than show themselves and crawl in order to vindicate their reality as plagues. Doubtless the magicians and their familiars hatched the eggs; and there the effete creatures were, with knock-knees, and flaccid trunks, and languid appetites; but they were as though they were not when the orthodox mosquitoes sounded their horns for the banquet, and put in their stings with all and more than all their native vigor. Well might the magicians exclaim in anguish, "This is the finger of God."[129] Abbot Rupert, a writer of the XIIth century, gives precisely the same rationale of the magicians' failure, whilst maintaining that their successes were of the nature of phantasmagoria.
Of the remaining plagues, the fourth, that of flies, was too like the third for the magicians to hope for success; and when at the sixth plague they seem again to take heart, behold, they cannot "stand before Moses for the boils that are upon them." The dreadful sequel, closing in darkness and death, would seem to have simply swept them away in its tide of horror.
So far, then, from there being any reason for shrinking from the idea of a miraculous competition, in which the spirit of man, the demon, and Almighty God enter the lists together, we ought rather to rejoice at the recurrence of the very conditions which God is wont to choose for the scene of his most triumphant manifestations.
I have thus drawn out the Catholic idea of diablerie, because I believe that one of the causes most active in spiritualism—a cause necessary to the evolution of a great number of its phenomena—is the devil. In matter of fact, to this cause these phenomena have been for ages universally attributed. It may, then, fairly claim to be the hypothesis in possession. In the concluding chapter, I hope to consider the amendment which spiritualists, as a rule, suggest—viz., that the spirits whom they admit with us to be the causes of the phenomena are not devils, enemies of God and man, but the souls of the departed in varying stages of perfection.
TO BE CONTINUED.
FOOTNOTES:
[94] Cotelerius in lib. iv. Recogn. S. Clementis, p. 452.
[95] Eng. trans., p. 250.
[96] P. 250, note.
[97] Preface to Edit. Benedict. S. Augustin.
[98] De Antiq. Collect. Can, pars iv. cap. 12.
[99] Vita Cardinal de Cusa. By Hartzheim, S.J. Pars ii. cap. 8.
[100] Note to canto iii.
[101] See Döllinger's Gentile and Jew (Darnell's translation), vol. ii. p. 49.
[102] Act. Sanct. Aug., 27.
[103] L'Antiq. Expliq., lib. iii.
[104] Vita, Hartzheim, l. i.
[105] Polycrat., l. ii. p. 13.
[106] De Univ., p. 948.
[107] Ovid, Fasti, lib. v. line 141.
[108] Metam. v. fab. 7.
[109] Ducange, sup. (Diana).
[110] Storia Univ., lib. xv. cap. 15.
[111] Vol. i. p. 101.
[112] Masque of Queens.
[113] Vol. ii. p. 177.
[114] Quart. Rev., vol. xxii. p. 370.
[115] Cont. Cels., lib. vi. c. 28.
[116] De Univ., tom. i. p. 1037.
[117] Cont. Cels., lib. vi. c. 38.
[118] Life, by Mrs. Hope, p. 186.
[119] Iren., Ed. Ben. Var. Annot., p. 230.
[120] Iren., cap. xxx. p. 111.
[121] P. 252.
[122] Decret., pars xi. cap. 105.
[123] Tom. xviii. tract. viii. qu. 30, art. 2, memb. 2.
[124] Pars ii. qu. 166, memb. 6.
[125] Edit. Nuremberg, 1485.
[126] Cf. Scotus Oxon, lib. ii. dist. 18.
[127] Vol. i. p. 320 et seq.
[128] Osburn, Israel in Egypt.
[129] In Exod. viii.