(355) For prescription of the whipping-post by Sir Thomas More, see D.
H. Tuke's History of Insanity in the British Isles, London, 1882, p. 41.
Interesting monuments of this idea, so fruitful in evil, still exist. In the great cities of central Europe, "witch towers," where witches and demoniacs were tortured, and "fool towers," where the more gentle lunatics were imprisoned, may still be seen.
In the cathedrals we still see this idea fossilized. Devils and imps, struck into stone, clamber upon towers, prowl under cornices, peer out from bosses of foliage, perch upon capitals, nestle under benches, flame in windows. Above the great main entrance, the most common of all representations still shows Satan and his imps scowling, jeering, grinning, while taking possession of the souls of men and scourging them with serpents, or driving them with tridents, or dragging them with chains into the flaming mouth of hell. Even in the most hidden and sacred places of the medieval cathedral we still find representations of Satanic power in which profanity and obscenity run riot. In these representations the painter and the glass-stainer vied with the sculptor. Among the early paintings on canvas a well-known example represents the devil in the shape of a dragon, perched near the head of a dying man, eager to seize his soul as it issues from his mouth, and only kept off by the efforts of the attendant priest. Typical are the colossal portrait of Satan, and the vivid picture of the devils cast out of the possessed and entering into the swine, as shown in the cathedral-windows of Strasburg. So, too, in the windows of Chartres Cathedral we see a saint healing a lunatic: the saint, with a long devil-scaring formula in Latin issuing from his mouth; and the lunatic, with a little detestable hobgoblin, horned, hoofed, and tailed, issuing from HIS mouth. These examples are but typical of myriads in cathedrals and abbeys and parish churches throughout Europe; and all served to impress upon the popular mind a horror of everything called diabolic, and a hatred of those charged with it. These sermons in stones preceded the printed book; they were a sculptured Bible, which preceded Luther's pictorial Bible.(356)
(356) I cite these instances out of a vast number which I have
personally noted in visits to various cathedrals. For striking examples
of mediaeval grotesques, see Wright's History of Caricature and the
Grotesque, London, 1875; Langlois's Stalles de la Cathedrale de Rouen,
1838; Adeline's Les Sculptures Grotesques et Symboliques, Rouen,
1878; Viollet le Duc, Dictionnaire de l'Architecture; Gailhabaud, Sur
l'Architecture, etc. For a reproduction of an illuminated manuscript in
which devils fly out of the mouths of the possessed under the influence
of exorcisms, see Cahier and Martin, Nouveaux Melanges d' Archeologie
for 1874, p. 136; and for a demon emerging from a victim's mouth in a
puff of smoke at the command of St. Francis Xavier, see La Devotion de
Dix Vendredis, etc., Plate xxxii.
Satan and his imps were among the principal personages in every popular drama, and "Hell's Mouth" was a piece of stage scenery constantly brought into requisition. A miracle-play without a full display of the diabolic element in it would have stood a fair chance of being pelted from the stage.(357)
(357) See Wright, History of Caricature and the Grotesque; F. J.
Mone, Schauspiele des Mittelalters, Carlsruhe, 1846; Dr. Karl Hase,
Miracle-Plays and Sacred Dramas, Boston,1880 (translation from the
German). Examples of the miracle-plays may be found in Marriott's
Collection of English Miracle-Plays, 1838; in Hone's Ancient Mysteries;
in T. Sharpe's Dissertaion on the Pageants.. . anciently performed at
Coventry, Coventry, 1828; in the publications of the Shakespearean and
other societies. See especially The Harrowing of Hell, a miracle-play,
edited from the original now in the British Museum, by T. O. Halliwell,
London, 1840. One of the items still preserved is a sum of money paid
for keeping a fire burning in hell's mouth. Says Hase (as above, p. 42):
"In wonderful satyrlike masquerade, in which neither horns, tails,
nor hoofs were ever... wanting, the devil prosecuted on the stage his
business of fetching souls," which left the mouths of the dying "in the
form of small images."
Not only the popular art but the popular legends embodied these ideas. The chroniclers delighted in them; the Lives of the Saints abounded in them; sermons enforced them from every pulpit. What wonder, then, that men and women had vivid dreams of Satanic influence, that dread of it was like dread of the plague, and that this terror spread the disease enormously, until we hear of convents, villages, and even large districts, ravaged by epidemics of diabolical possession!(358)
(358) I shall discuss these epidemics of possession, which form a
somewhat distinct class of phenomena, in the next chapter.
And this terror naturally bred not only active cruelty toward those supposed to be possessed, but indifference to the sufferings of those acknowledged to be lunatics. As we have already seen, while ample and beautiful provision was made for every other form of human suffering, for this there was comparatively little; and, indeed, even this little was generally worse than none. Of this indifference and cruelty we have a striking monument in a single English word—a word originally significant of gentleness and mercy, but which became significant of wild riot, brutality, and confusion—Bethlehem Hospital became "Bedlam."
Modern art has also dwelt upon this theme, and perhaps the most touching of all its exhibitions is the picture by a great French master, representing a tender woman bound to a column and exposed to the jeers, insults, and missiles of street ruffians.(359)