The Northern nations of ancient Europe, Grimm tells us, believed that hell was a place of burning pitch, whence arose an intolerable stench. Our English word “smell” is obviously related to a German dialect word for hell—smela—which in turn is itself akin to the Bohemian smola, resin or pitch.
The Christian “hell” was thus the lineal descendant of the subterranean “Hades” of the pagans, and what its stench was like may be gathered from that of the noxious fumes that rise out of clefts in volcanic rocks, such fumes, we may suppose, as in earlier days threw the Oracle at Delphi into her prophetic trances. (Some authorities, however, say that it was the smoke of burning bay-leaves that the Oracle inhaled.)
The offensive odour of hell adheres to all the devils right down to modern times. In the Middle Ages you could always tell the Evil One by his sulphurous stink, but, unfortunately for the tempted, it was not usually observed until after his departure.
But evil odours not only attended the devil himself: they were also generated by the sins. For St. Joseph of Copertino, “seeing beneath the envelope of the body,” was able to recognise the sins of the flesh by their odour. And St. Paconi, so it was said, could even smell out heretics in his day, presumably in the same way as witches are now discovered in Africa.
Moreover, as the devil and his minions are attended with a vile smell, the odour of their infernal home, so naturally they detest what we call sweet and aromatic perfumes and are repelled by them, as the following tale from Sinistrari of Ameno shows. I give it verbatim as it appears in Sax Rohmer’s “Romance of Sorcery”:
“In a certain monastery of holy nuns there lived as a boarder a young maiden of noble birth who was tempted by an Incubus, that appeared to her by day and by night, and with the most earnest entreaties, the manners of a most passionate lover, incessantly incited her to sin; but she, supported by the grace of God and the frequent use of the Sacraments, stoutly resisted the temptation. But all her devotions, fasts, and vows notwithstanding, despite the exorcisms, the blessings, the injunctions showered by exorcists on the Incubus that he should desist from molesting her, in spite of the crowd of relics and other holy objects collected in the maiden’s room, of the lighted candles kept burning there all night, the Incubus none the less persisted in appearing to her as usual in the shape of a very handsome young man.
“At last among other learned men whose advice had been taken on the subject was a very erudite Theologian, who, observing that the maiden was of a thoroughly phlegmatic temperament, surmised that the Incubus was an aqueous demon (there are in fact, as is testified by Guaccius, igneous, aerial, phlegmatic, earthly, subterranean demons, who avoid the light of day) and prescribed an uninterrupted fumigation of the room.
“A new vessel, made of glass like earth, was accordingly brought in, and filled with sweet cane, cubeb seed, roots of both aristolochies, great and small cardamom, ginger, long-pepper, caryophylleae, cinnamon, cloves, mace, nutmegs, calamite, storax, benzoin, aloes wood and roots, one ounce of triapandalis, and three pounds of half brandy and water; the vessel was then set on hot ashes in order to distil the fumigating vapour, and the cell was kept closed.
“As soon as the fumigation was done, the Incubus came, but never dared enter the cell; only, if the maiden left it for a walk in the garden or the cloister, he appeared to her, though invisible to others, and, throwing his arms around her neck, stole or rather snatched kisses from her, to her intense disgust.
“At last, after a new consultation, the Theologian prescribed that she should carry about her person pills made of the most exquisite perfumes, such as musk, amber, chive, Peruvian balsam, etc. Thus provided, she went for a walk in the garden, where the Incubus suddenly appeared to her with a threatening face, and in a rage. He did not approach her, however, but, after biting his finger as if meditating revenge, disappeared, and was nevermore seen by her.”
On the other hand, the odour of sanctity in mediæval times was a much more real perfume than that in which the Jackdaw of Reims died. It does not seem, so far as I can make out from my reading, that the sweet smell of the Saints was ever remarked in the early centuries of the Christian era. The odour diffused around his pillar by St. Simeon Stylites, for example, was by no means pleasant. But by A.D. 1000 the sweetness of the Saints’ persons was beginning to pervade the religious atmosphere. Writing about that time, Odericus Vitalis tells us that “from the sepulchre of St. Andrew” (at Patras, Asia Minor) “manna like flour and oil of an exquisite odour flow, which indicate to the inhabitants of that country” what the crops will be like that year. And the example thus set by this apostle is followed by all other saintly personages for many centuries.
In England, we read that when the Blessed Martyr Alban’s burial place on the hill above Verulamium was opened, in obedience to a sign from heaven in the shape of a flash of lightning, the good people were enraptured by the delicious fragrance of the Saint’s remains, and the same characteristic attended those of the later martyr Thomas à Becket.
St. Thomas à Kempis is credited with the statement that the chamber of the blessed Leduine was so charmingly odorous that people who were privileged to enter it were delighted, and wishing to enjoy her perfume to the full, were wont to approach their faces close to the bosom of the Saint, “who seemed to have become a casket in which the Lord had deposited His most precious perfumes.” After the death of St. Theresa a salt-cellar which had been placed in her bed preserved for a long time a most delicious odour. And so on indefinitely, some of the stories being, as might be expected, a little too plain-spoken and artless for modern readers.
It is difficult to account for the pleasant odour of Saints whose pride it was to live without change of raiment, to harbour parasites, and to abstain from washing. Nevertheless that certain persons exhale a naturally pleasant aroma from their bodies is true. Alexander the Great is noted by Plutarch as having so sweet an odour that his tunics were soaked with aromatic perfume, and taking a flying leap through the pages of history, we come to Walt Whitman, who had the same characteristic. Indeed, a piny aromatic odour, of considerable strength, is occasionally noticeable in certain people, and I can myself testify that it becomes stronger on the approach of their death.