A seizing and giving
The fire of the living.
’Tis thus at the roaring loom of Time I ply
And weave for God the garment thou seest Him by.
Now there are infinite numbers of these garments, but none of them are God, though the Church declared that what they had of them were truly Divine. So Oriental princes sent their old clothes to distant provinces to be worshipped, as Gessler sent his hat: it is an old, old story, and one which will be long repeated in many lands.
I have, not far back, mentioned a work on witchcraft by Paulus Grillandus. Its full title is “Tractatus de Hereticis et sortilegiis, omnifariam Coitio eorumque penis. Item de Questionibus et Tortura ac de Relaxatione Carceratorum”—that is, in brief, a work on Heretics, Witches breakers of the Seventh Commandment of all kinds, Examination by Torture, and Imprisonment. It was a leading vade mecum, or standard guide, in its time for lawyers and the clergy, especially the latter, and reads as if it had come from the library of hell, and been written by a devil, though composed, according to the preface, to promote the dignity and glory of the Christian Church. I can well believe that a sensitive humane person could be really maddened by a perusal and full comprehension of all the diabolical horrors which this book reveals, and the glimpses which it gives of what must have been endured literally by millions of heretics and “witches,” and all men or women merely accused by anybody of any kind of “immorality,” especially of “heresy.” I say suspected or accused—for either was sufficient to subject a victim to horrible agonies until he or she confessed. What is most revolting is the calm, icy-cold-blooded manner in which the most awful, infernal cruelties are carefully discussed—as, for instance, if one has already had any limbs amputated for punishment whether further tortures may then be inflicted? It is absolutely a relief to find that among the six kinds of persons legally exempted from the rack, &c.—there are only six and these do not include invalids—are pregnant women. But such touches of common humanity are rare indeed in it. I do not exaggerate in the least when I say that the whole spirit of this work—which faithfully reflects the whole spirit of the “justice” of the Middle Ages—inclines in a ferocious, wolfish manner to extend and multiply punishment of the most horrible kinds to every small offence against the Church—to manufacture and increase crime as if it were capital for business, and enlarge the sphere of torture so as to create power and awe.
Nous avons changé tout cela, say the descendants of those fiends in human form. But if it was wrong then why did you do it if you were infallible inspired judges? And if you now believe that to be atrocious which was once holy, and a vast portion of your whole system, how can you say that the Church does not follow the laws of evolution and progress—and if so, where will it stop? It is a curious reflection that if the Pope and Cardinals of 1890 had lived four hundred years ago they would (with the exception, perhaps, of the Spaniards) have all been burned alive for heresy. Which is literally true.
Within a minute’s walk from where I sit, and indeed visible from my window in this town of Homburg vor der Höhe, are two round towers of other days—grim and picturesque relics of the early Middle Ages. One is called the Hexenthurm or Witches’ Tower. In it gypsies, witches, and heretics were confined—it was the hotel specially reserved for them when they visited Homburg, and in its cells which are of the smallest between walls of the thickest, I or you, reader, might be confined to-day, but for one Martin Luther and certain laws of evolution or progress of which Paulus Grillandus did not dream.
As I was sketching the tower, an old woman told me that there were many strange tales about it. That I can well believe but I dare say they are all summed up in the following ballad from the German of Heine:—