Naturally, such an example set by the venerated leaders of thought exercised great influence throughout society, and all the more because it justified the carelessness and sloth to which ordinary humanity is prone. In the principal towns of Europe, as well as in the country at large, down to a recent period, the most ordinary sanitary precautions were neglected, and pestilences continued to be attributed to the wrath of God or the malice of Satan. As to the wrath of God, a new and powerful impulse was given to this belief in the Church toward the end of the sixth century by St. Gregory the Great. In 590, when he was elected Pope, the city of Rome was suffering from a dreadful pestilence: the people were dying by thousands; out of one procession imploring the mercy of Heaven no less than eighty persons died within an hour: what the heathen in an earlier epoch had attributed to Apollo was now attributed to Jehovah, and chroniclers tell us that fiery darts were seen flung from heaven into the devoted city. But finally, in the midst of all this horror, Gregory, at the head of a penitential procession, saw hovering over the mausoleum of Hadrian the figure of the archangel Michael, who was just sheathing a flaming sword, while three angels were heard chanting the Regina Coeli. The legend continues that the Pope immediately broke forth into hallelujahs for this sign that the plague was stayed, and, as it shortly afterward became less severe, a chapel was built at the summit of the mausoleum and dedicated to St. Michael; still later, above the whole was erected the colossal statue of the archangel sheathing his sword, which still stands to perpetuate the legend. Thus the greatest of Rome's ancient funeral monuments was made to bear testimony to this medieval belief; the mausoleum of Hadrian became the castle of St. Angelo. A legend like this, claiming to date from the greatest of the early popes, and vouched for by such an imposing monument, had undoubtedly a marked effect upon the dominant theology throughout Europe, which was constantly developing a great body of thought regarding the agencies by which the Divine wrath might be averted.
First among these agencies, naturally, were evidences of devotion, especially gifts of land, money, or privileges to churches, monasteries, and shrines—the seats of fetiches which it was supposed had wrought cures or might work them. The whole evolution of modern history, not only ecclesiastical but civil, has been largely affected by the wealth transferred to the clergy at such periods. It was noted that in the fourteenth century, after the great plague, the Black Death, had passed, an immensely increased proportion of the landed and personal property of every European country was in the hands of the Church. Well did a great ecclesiastic remark that "pestilences are the harvests of the ministers of God."(330)
(330) For triumphant mention of St. Hilarion's filth, see the Roman
Breviary for October 21st; and for details, see S. Hieronymus, Vita S.
Hilarionis Eremitae, in Migne, Patrologia, vol. xxiii. For Athanasius's
reference to St. Anthony's filth, see works of St. Athanasius in the
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. iv, p. 209. For the
filthiness of the other saints named, see citations from the Lives of
the Saints, in Lecky's History of European Morals, vol. ii, pp. 117,
118. For Guy de Chauliac's observation on the filthiness of Carmelite
monks and their great losses by pestilence, see Meryon, History of
Medicine, vol. i, p. 257. For the mortality among the Carthusian monks
in time of plague, see Mrs. Lecky's very interesting Visit to the Grand
Chartreuse, in The Nineteenth Century for March, 1891. For the plague
at Rome in 590, the legend regarding the fiery darts, mentioned by Pope
Gregory himself, and that of the castle of St. Angelo, see Gregorovius,
Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter, vol. ii, pp. 26-35; also Story,
Castle of St. Angelo, etc., chap. ii. For the remark that "pestilences
are the harvest of the ministers of God," see reference to Charlevoix,
in Southey, History of Brazil, vol. ii, p. 254, cited in Buckle, vol. i,
p. 130, note.
Other modes of propitiating the higher powers were penitential processions, the parading of images of the Virgin or of saints through plague-stricken towns, and fetiches innumerable. Very noted in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were the processions of the flagellants, trooping through various parts of Europe, scourging their naked bodies, shrieking the penitential psalms, and often running from wild excesses of devotion to the maddest orgies.
Sometimes, too, plagues were attributed to the wrath of lesser heavenly powers. Just as, in former times, the fury of "far-darting Apollo" was felt when his name was not respectfully treated by mortals, so, in 1680, the Church authorities at Rome discovered that the plague then raging resulted from the anger of St. Sebastian because no monument had been erected to him. Such a monument was therefore placed in the Church of St. Peter ad Vincula, and the plague ceased.
So much for the endeavour to avert the wrath of the heavenly powers. On the other hand, theological reasoning no less subtle was used in thwarting the malice of Satan. This idea, too, came from far. In the sacred books of India and Persia, as well as in our own, we find the same theory of disease, leading to similar means of cure. Perhaps the most astounding among Christian survivals of this theory and its resultant practices was seen during the plague at Rome in 1522. In that year, at that centre of divine illumination, certain people, having reasoned upon the matter, came to the conclusion that this great scourge was the result of Satanic malice; and, in view of St. Paul's declaration that the ancient gods were devils, and of the theory that the ancient gods of Rome were the devils who had the most reason to punish that city for their dethronement, and that the great amphitheatre was the chosen haunt of these demon gods, an ox decorated with garlands, after the ancient heathen manner, was taken in procession to the Colosseum and solemnly sacrificed. Even this proved vain, and the Church authorities then ordered expiatory processions and ceremonies to propitiate the Almighty, the Virgin, and the saints, who had been offended by this temporary effort to bribe their enemies.
But this sort of theological reasoning developed an idea far more disastrous, and this was that Satan, in causing pestilences, used as his emissaries especially Jews and witches. The proof of this belief in the case of the Jews was seen in the fact that they escaped with a less percentage of disease than did the Christians in the great plague periods. This was doubtless due in some measure to their remarkable sanitary system, which had probably originated thousands of years before in Egypt, and had been handed down through Jewish lawgivers and statesmen. Certainly they observed more careful sanitary rules and more constant abstinence from dangerous foods than was usual among Christians; but the public at large could not understand so simple a cause, and jumped to the conclusion that their immunity resulted from protection by Satan, and that this protection was repaid and the pestilence caused by their wholesale poisoning of Christians. As a result of this mode of thought, attempts were made in all parts of Europe to propitiate the Almighty, to thwart Satan, and to stop the plague by torturing and murdering the Jews. Throughout Europe during great pestilences we hear of extensive burnings of this devoted people. In Bavaria, at the time of the Black Death, it is computed that twelve thousand Jews thus perished; in the small town of Erfurt the number is said to have been three thousand; in Strasburg, the Rue Brulee remains as a monument to the two thousand Jews burned there for poisoning the wells and causing the plague of 1348; at the royal castle of Chinon, near Tours, an immense trench was dug, filled with blazing wood, and in a single day one hundred and sixty Jews were burned. Everywhere in continental Europe this mad persecution went on; but it is a pleasure to say that one great churchman, Pope Clement VI, stood against this popular unreason, and, so far as he could bring his influence to bear on the maddened populace, exercised it in favour of mercy to these supposed enemies of the Almighty.(331)
(331) For an early conception in India of the Divinity acting through
medicine, see The Bhagavadgita, translated by Telang, p. 82, in Max
Muller's Sacred Books of the East. For the necessity of religious
means of securing knowledge of medicine, see the Anugita, translated by
Telang, in Max Muller's Sacred Books of the East, p. 388. For ancient
Persian ideas of sickness as sent by the spirit of evil and to be cured
by spells, but not excluding medicine and surgery, and for sickness
generally as caused by the evil principle in demons, see the
Zend-Avesta, Darmesteter's translation, introduction, passim, but
especially p. xciii. For diseases wrought by witchcraft, see the same,
pp. 230, 293. On the preferences of spells in healing over medicine and
surgery, see Zend-Avesta, vol. i, pp. 85, 86. For healing by magic in
ancient Greece, see, e. g., the cure of Ulysses in the Odyssey, "They
stopped the black blood by a spell" (Odyssey, xxix, 457). For medicine
in Egypt as partly priestly and partly in the hands of physicians, see
Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. ii, p. 136, note. For ideas of curing of
disease by expulsion of demons still surviving among various tribes
and nations of Asia, see J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough: a Study of
Comparative Religion, London, 1890, pp. 184-192. For the Flagellants and
their processions at the time of the Black Death, see Lea, History
of the Inquisition, New York, 1888, vol. ii, pp. 381 et seq. For the
persecution of the Jews in time of pestilence, see ibid., p. 379 and
following, with authorities in the notes. For the expulsion of the Jews
from Padua, see the Acta Sanctorum, September, tom. viii, p. 893.
Yet, as late as 1527, the people of Pavia, being threatened with plague, appealed to St. Bernardino of Feltro, who during his life had been a fierce enemy of the Jews, and they passed a decree promising that if the saint would avert the pestilence they would expel the Jews from the city. The saint apparently accepted the bargain, and in due time the Jews were expelled.
As to witches, the reasons for believing them the cause of pestilence also came from far. This belief, too, had been poured mainly from Oriental sources into our sacred books and thence into the early Church, and was strengthened by a whole line of Church authorities, fathers, doctors, and saints; but, above all, by the great bull, Summis Desiderantes, issued by Pope Innocent VIII, in 1484. This utterance from the seat of St. Peter infallibly committed the Church to the idea that witches are a great cause of disease, storms, and various ills which afflict humanity; and the Scripture on which the action recommended against witches in this papal bull, as well as in so many sermons and treatises for centuries afterward, was based, was the famous text, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." This idea persisted long, and the evolution of it is among the most fearful things in human history.(332)