Many unhappy persons affected by ambitious mania, or theomania, are looked upon as prophets, and their delusions taken for revelations; and this is the origin of a number of sects which have intensified the struggle between religion and liberty both in the Middle Ages and in modern times.
Picard, for example, imagined himself to be a son of God, sent on earth as a new Adam, to re-establish the natural laws, which consisted, according to him, in going naked, and in the community of women. He met with believers and imitators, and founded the sect of the Adamites, who were exterminated by the Hussites in 1347, but were afterwards revived under the name of Turlupins.
In the same way, the Anabaptists, at Münster, at Appenzell, and in Poland, believed that they saw luminous forms of angels and dragons fighting in the sky, that they received orders to kill their brothers or their best-beloved children (homicidal mania), or to abstain from food for months together, and that they could paralyze whole armies by their breath or by a look. Later on, those sects of Calvinists and Jansenists which caused the shedding of so much blood, had—as Calmeil has demonstrated—an analogous origin. This is also the origin of the belief in wizards and demoniacs.
If we glance over the lists of literary madmen and illuminati given by Delepierre, Philomneste, and Adelung, the number of followers found by many of them makes us laugh and sigh in the same breath at the extent of human folly. Let us mention, for example, Kleinov, who, in the middle of the eighteenth century, claimed to represent the King of Zion, whose sons his followers asserted themselves to be; and Joachim of Calabria, who declared that the Christian era was to end in 1200, when a new Messiah was to appear with a new gospel. Swedenborg, who believed that he had spoken with the spirits of the various planets for whole days, and even for months together, who had seen the inhabitants of Jupiter walking partly on their hands and partly on their feet, those of Mars speaking with their eyes, and those of the Moon with their stomachs, incredible as it may seem, has believers and followers even up to the present time.[384]
Irving, in 1830, asserted that he had received, by divine inspiration, the gift of unknown tongues, and founded the sect of the Irvingites.
John Humphrey Noyes, of the United States, believed himself to have the gift of prophecy, and founded the sect of “Perfectionists” established at Oneida, who considered marriage and property as theft, did not recognize human laws, and believed every action, even the commonest, to be inspired by God.
At the beginning of the century that prophetess of monarchy, Julie de Krüdener, possessed great influence. She was hysterical, and so far erotic as to throw herself on her knees in public before a tenor; afterwards, impelled by disappointment in love towards the ancient faith, she believed herself chosen to redeem humanity, and found in this belief the vigour of a burning eloquence. She went to Bâle and turned the city upside down by preaching the speedy coming of the Messiah. Twenty thousand pilgrims responded to her call; the Senate became alarmed and banished her. She hastened to Baden, where four thousand people were waiting on the square to kiss her hands and her dress. A woman offered her ten thousand florins to build a new church; she distributed them to the poor “whose reign was at hand.” She was exiled from Baden, and returned to Switzerland, followed by crowds. Though persecuted by the police, she passed from town to town, followed by acclamations and blessings. She said that her works were dictated to her by angels. Napoleon, who had treated her with contempt, became, for her, the “dark angel,” Alexander of Russia, the angel of light. Her influence became the inspiration of the latter; so much so, that the idea of the Holy Alliance seems to be due to her alone.[385]
Loyola, when wounded, turned his thoughts to religious subjects, and, terrified by the Lutheran revolt, planned and founded the great Company. He believed that he received the personal assistance of the Virgin Mary in his projects, and heard heavenly voices encouraging him to persevere in them.
Analogous phenomena may be observed in the lives of George Fox and the early Quakers.[386]