History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

by Andrew Dickson White

(332) On the plagues generally, see Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle
Ages, passim; but especially Haeser, as above, III. Band, pp. 1-202;
also Sprengel, Baas, Isensee, et al. For brief statement showing
the enormous loss of life in these plagues, see Littre, Medecine et
Medecins, Paris, 1875, pp. 3 et seq. For a summary of the effects of
the Black Plague throughout England, see Green's Short History of the
English People, chap. v. For the mortality in the Paris hospitals,
see Desmazes, Supplices, Prisons et Graces en France, Paris 1866. For
striking descriptions of plague-stricken cities, see the well-known
passages in Thucydides, Boccaccio, De Foe, and, above all, Manzoni's
Promessi Sposi. For examples of averting the plagues by processions, see
Leopold Delisle, Etudes sur la Condition de la Classe Agricole, etc., en
Normandie au Moyen Age, p. 630; also Fort, chap. xxiii. For the anger of
St. Sebastian as a cause of the plague at Rome, and its cessation when
a monument had been erected to him, see Paulus Diaconus, cited in
Gregorovius, vol. ii. p. 165. For the sacrifice of an ox in the
Colosseum to the ancient gods as a means of averting the plague of 1522,
at Rome, see Gregorovius, vol. viii, p. 390. As to massacres of the
Jews in order to avert the wrath of God in pestilence, see L'Ecole et la
Science, Paris, 1887, p. 178; also Hecker, and especially Hoeniger, Gang
und Verbreitung des Schwarzen Todes in Deutschalnd, Berlin, 1889. For
a long list of towns in which burnings of Jews took place for this
imaginary cause, see pp. 7-11. As to absolute want of sanitary
precautions, see Hecker, p. 292. As to condemnation by strong
religionists of medical means in the plague, see Fort, p. 130. For a
detailed account of the action of Popes Eugene IV, Innocent VIII, and
other popes, against witchcraft, ascribing to it storms and diseases,
and for the bull Summis Desiderantes, see the chapters on Meteorology
and Magic in this series. The text of the bull is given in the Malleus
Maleficarum, in Binsfield, and in Roskoff, Geschichte des Teufels,
Leipzig, 1869, vol. i, pp. 222-225, and a good summary and analysis of
it in Soldan, Geschichte der Hexenprocesse. For a concise and admirable
statement of the contents and effects of the bull, see Lea, History of
the Inquisition, vol. iii, pp. 40 et seq.; and for the best statement
known to me of the general subject, Prof. George L. Burr's paper on
The Literature of Witchcraft, read before the American Historical
Association at Washington, 1890.

In Germany its development was especially terrible. From the middle of the sixteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth, Catholic and Protestant theologians and ecclesiastics vied with each other in detecting witches guilty of producing sickness or bad weather; women were sent to torture and death by thousands, and with them, from time to time, men and children. On the Catholic side sufficient warrant for this work was found in the bull of Pope Innocent VIII, and the bishops' palaces of south Germany became shambles,—the lordly prelates of Salzburg, Wurzburg, and Bamberg taking the lead in this butchery.

In north Germany Protestantism was just as conscientiously cruel. It based its theory and practice toward witches directly upon the Bible, and above all on the great text which has cost the lives of so many myriads of innocent men, women, and children, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Naturally the Protestant authorities strove to show that Protestantism was no less orthodox in this respect than Catholicism; and such theological jurists as Carpzov, Damhouder, and Calov did their work thoroughly. An eminent authority on this subject estimates the number of victims thus sacrificed during that century in Germany alone at over a hundred thousand.

Among the methods of this witch activity especially credited in central and southern Europe was the anointing of city walls and pavements with a diabolical unguent causing pestilence. In 1530 Michael Caddo was executed with fearful tortures for thus besmearing the pavements of Geneva. But far more dreadful was the torturing to death of a large body of people at Milan, in the following century, for producing the plague by anointing the walls; and a little later similar punishments for the same crime were administered in Toulouse and other cities. The case in Milan may be briefly summarized as showing the ideas on sanitary science of all classes, from highest to lowest, in the seventeenth century. That city was then under the control of Spain; and, its authorities having received notice from the Spanish Government that certain persons suspected of witchcraft had recently left Madrid, and had perhaps gone to Milan to anoint the walls, this communication was dwelt upon in the pulpits as another evidence of that Satanic malice which the Church alone had the means of resisting, and the people were thus excited and put upon the alert. One morning, in the year 1630, an old woman, looking out of her window, saw a man walking along the street and wiping his fingers upon the walls; she immediately called the attention of another old woman, and they agreed that this man must be one of the diabolical anointers. It was perfectly evident to a person under ordinary conditions that this unfortunate man was simply trying to remove from his fingers the ink gathered while writing from the ink-horn which he carried in his girdle; but this explanation was too simple to satisfy those who first observed him or those who afterward tried him: a mob was raised and he was thrown into prison. Being tortured, he at first did not know what to confess; but, on inquiring from the jailer and others, he learned what the charge was, and, on being again subjected to torture utterly beyond endurance, he confessed everything which was suggested to him; and, on being tortured again and again to give the names of his accomplices, he accused, at hazard, the first people in the city whom he thought of. These, being arrested and tortured beyond endurance, confessed and implicated a still greater number, until members of the foremost families were included in the charge. Again and again all these unfortunates were tortured beyond endurance. Under paganism, the rule regarding torture had been that it should not be carried beyond human endurance; and we therefore find Cicero ridiculing it as a means of detecting crime, because a stalwart criminal of strong nerves might resist it and go free, while a physically delicate man, though innocent, would be forced to confess. Hence it was that under paganism a limit was imposed to the torture which could be administered; but, when Christianity had become predominant throughout Europe, torture was developed with a cruelty never before known. There had been evolved a doctrine of "excepted cases"—these "excepted cases" being especially heresy and witchcraft; for by a very simple and logical process of theological reasoning it was held that Satan would give supernatural strength to his special devotees—that is, to heretics and witches—and therefore that, in dealing with them, there should be no limit to the torture. The result was in this particular case, as in tens of thousands besides, that the accused confessed everything which could be suggested to them, and often in the delirium of their agony confessed far more than all that the zeal of the prosecutors could suggest. Finally, a great number of worthy people were sentenced to the most cruel death which could be invented. The records of their trials and deaths are frightful. The treatise which in recent years has first brought to light in connected form an authentic account of the proceedings in this affair, and which gives at the end engravings of the accused subjected to horrible tortures on their way to the stake and at the place of execution itself, is one of the most fearful monuments of theological reasoning and human folly.

To cap the climax, after a poor apothecary had been tortured into a confession that he had made the magic ointment, and when he had been put to death with the most exquisite refinements of torture, his family were obliged to take another name, and were driven out from the city; his house was torn down, and on its site was erected "The Column of Infamy," which remained on this spot until, toward the end of the eighteenth century, a party of young radicals, probably influenced by the reading of Beccaria, sallied forth one night and leveled this pious monument to the ground.

Herein was seen the culmination and decline of the bull Summis Desiderantes. It had been issued by him whom a majority of the Christian world believes to be infallible in his teachings to the Church as regards faith and morals; yet here was a deliberate utterance in a matter of faith and morals which even children now know to be utterly untrue. Though Beccaria's book on Crimes and Punishments, with its declarations against torture, was placed by the Church authorities upon the Index, and though the faithful throughout the Christian world were forbidden to read it, even this could not prevent the victory of truth over this infallible utterance of Innocent VIII.(333)

(333) As to the fearful effects of the papal bull Summis Desiderantes in
south Germany, as to the Protestant severities in north Germany, as to
the immense number of women and children put to death for witchcraft
in Germany generally for spreading storms and pestilence, and as to the
monstrous doctrine of "excepted cases," see the standard authorities on
witchcraft, especially Wachter, Beitrage zur Geschichte des Strafrechts,
Soldan, Horst, Hauber, and Langin; also Burr, as above. In another
series of chapters on The Warfare of Humanity with Theology, I hope to
go more fully into the subject. For the magic spreading of the plague at
Milan, see Manzoni, I Promessi Sposi and La Colonna Infame; and for
the origin of the charges, with all the details of the trail, see the
Precesso Originale degli Untori, Milan, 1839, passim, but especially
the large folding plate at the end, exhibiting the tortures. For the
after-history of the Column of Infamy, and for the placing of Beccaria's
book on the Index, see Cantu, Vita di Beccaria. For the magic spreading
of the plague in general, see Littre, pp. 492 and following.

As the seventeenth century went on, ingenuity in all parts of Europe seemed devoted to new developments of fetichism. A very curious monument of this evolution in Italy exists in the Royal Gallery of Paintings at Naples, where may be seen several pictures representing the measures taken to save the city from the plague during the seventeenth century, but especially from the plague of 1656. One enormous canvas gives a curious example of the theological doctrine of intercession between man and his Maker, spun out to its logical length. In the background is the plague-stricken city: in the foreground the people are praying to the city authorities to avert the plague; the city authorities are praying to the Carthusian monks; the monks are praying to St. Martin, St. Bruno, and St. Januarius; these three saints in their turn are praying to the Virgin; the Virgin prays to Christ; and Christ prays to the Almighty. Still another picture represents the people, led by the priests, executing with horrible tortures the Jews, heretics, and witches who were supposed to cause the pestilence of 1656, while in the heavens the Virgin and St. Januarius are interceding with Christ to sheathe his sword and stop the plague.

In such an atmosphere of thought it is no wonder that the death statistics were appalling. We hear of districts in which not more than one in ten escaped, and some were entirely depopulated.

Such appeals to fetich against pestilence have continued in Naples down to our own time, the great saving power being the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius. In 1856 the present writer saw this miracle performed in the gorgeous chapel of the saint forming part of the Cathedral of Naples. The chapel was filled with devout worshippers of every class, from the officials in court dress, representing the Bourbon king, down to the lowest lazzaroni. The reliquary of silver-gilt, shaped like a large human head, and supposed to contain the skull of the saint, was first placed upon the altar; next, two vials containing a dark substance said to be his blood, having been taken from the wall, were also placed upon the altar near the head. As the priests said masses, they turned the vials from time to time, and the liquefaction being somewhat delayed, the great crowd of people burst out into more and more impassioned expostulation and petitions to the saint. Just in front of the altar were the lazzaroni who claimed to be descendants of the saint's family, and these were especially importunate: at such times they beg, they scold, they even threaten; they have been known to abuse the saint roundly, and to tell him that, if he did not care to show his favour to the city by liquefying his blood, St. Cosmo and St. Damian were just as good saints as he, and would no doubt be very glad to have the city devote itself to them. At last, on the occasion above referred to, the priest, turning the vials suddenly, announced that the saint had performed the miracle, and instantly priests, people, choir, and organ burst forth into a great Te Deum; bells rang, and cannon roared; a procession was formed, and the shrine containing the saint's relics was carried through the streets, the people prostrating themselves on both sides of the way and throwing showers of rose leaves upon the shrine and upon the path before it. The contents of these precious vials are an interesting relic indeed, for they represent to us vividly that period when men who were willing to go to the stake for their religious opinions thought it not wrong to save the souls of their fellowmen by pious mendacity and consecrated fraud. To the scientific eye this miracle is very simple: the vials contain, no doubt, one of those mixtures fusing at low temperature, which, while kept in its place within the cold stone walls of the church, remains solid, but upon being brought out into the hot, crowded chapel, and fondled by the warm hands of the priests, gradually softens and becomes liquid. It was curious to note, at the time above mentioned, that even the high functionaries representing the king looked at the miracle with awe: they evidently found "joy in believing," and one of them assured the present writer that the only thing which COULD cause it was the direct exercise of miraculous power.