Notwithstanding the fact that the spirit of Christianity in its early days was strenuously opposed to all magical and superstitious practices, the nations it subdued to the faith of Christ were so wedded to their ancient practices that they could not be entirely divorced from them, and thus in the case of amulets and charms it was necessary to substitute Christian words and emblems in place of the heathen words and symbols previously in use.
Anglo-Saxon charms and amulets were used by the monks of Glastonbury Abbey, who treated disease. In the “Leech book”[567] we find a holy amulet “against every evil rune lay,[568] and one full of elvish tricks, writ for the bewitched man, this writing in Greek letters: Alfa, Omega, Iesvm, Beronikh. Again, another dust and drink against a rune lay; take a bramble apple,[569] and lupins, and pulegium, pound them, then sift them, put them in a pouch, lay them under the altar, sing nine masses over them, put the dust into milk, drip thrice some holy water upon them, administer this to drink at three hours.... If a mare[570] or hag ride a man, take lupins, and garlic, and betony, and frankincense, bind them on a fawn skin, let a man have the worts on him, and let him go into his house.” For typhus fever the patient is to drink of a decoction of herbs over which many masses have been sung, then say the names of the four gospellers and a charm and a prayer. Again, a man is to write in silence a charm, and silently put the words in his left breast and take care not to go indoors with the writing upon him, the words being Emmanuel, Veronica.
Mr. Cockayne, the editor of Saxon Leechdoms, has pointed out that the greatest scientific men of antiquity, even those who set themselves against the prevailing medical superstitions of their times, and did their utmost to establish observation and experiment in opposition to speculation and old wives’ fables, were by no means liberated from a belief in magic and incantations. Chrysippus believed in amulets for quartan fevers.[571] Serapion, one of the chiefs of the Empiric school, prescribed crocodile’s dung and turtle’s blood in epilepsy. Soranos will not use incantations in the cure of diseases, yet he testifies that they were so employed. Pliny has an amulet for almost every disorder. He tells of a chief man in Spain who was cured of a disease by hanging purslane root round his neck; he teaches that an amulet of the seed of tribulus cures varicose veins; that the longest tooth of a black dog cures quartan fevers; or you may carry a wasp in your left hand or half a dozen other equally absurd things for the same purpose. A holly planted in the courtyard of a house keeps off witchcrafts; an herb picked from the head of a statue and tied with a red thread will cure headache, and so on.[572]
Josephus tells a tale which was probably the foundation of what was afterwards told about the mandrake. Xenocrates had a fancy for advising people to eat human brains, flesh or liver, or to swallow for various complaints the ground bones of parts of the human frame. Alexander of Tralles says that even Galen did homage to incantations.[573] He gives his words: “Some think that incantations are like old wives’ tales; as I did for a long while. But at last I was convinced that there is virtue in them by plain proofs before my eyes. For I had trial of their beneficial operations in the case of those scorpion-stung, nor less in the case of bones stuck fast in the throat, immediately, by an incantation thrown up. And many of them are excellent, severally, and they reach their mark.” Yet Galen is angry with Pamphilos for “his babbling incantations,” which were “not merely useless, not merely unprofessional, but all false: no good even to little boys, not to say students of medicine.”[574]
Alexander of Tralles frequently prescribes amulets and the like. Mr. Cockayne calls them periapts. “Thus for colic, he guarantees by his own experience, and the approval of almost all the best doctors, dung of a wolf, with bits of bone in it if possible, shut up in a pipe, and worn during the paroxysm, on the right arm, or thigh, or hip, taking care it touches neither the earth nor a bath. A lark eaten is good. The Thracians pick out its heart, while alive, and make a periapt, wearing it on the left thigh. A part of the cæcum of a pig prepared with myrrh, and put in a wolf’s or dog’s skin, is a good thing to wear. A ring with Hercules strangling a lion on the Median stone[575] is good to wear.
“A bit of a child’s navel, shut up in something of gold or silver with salt, is a periapt which will make the patient at ease entirely. Have the setting of an iron ring octagonal, and engrave upon it, ‘Flee, Flee, Ho, Ho, Bile, the lark was searching’; on the head of the ring have an N[576] engraved; this is potent, and he thinks it must be strange not to communicate so powerful an antidote, but begs it may be reserved from carnal folk, and told only to such as can keep secrets and are trusty. For the gout he recommends a certain cloth—ἐκ τῶν καταμηνίων; also the sinews of a vulture’s leg and toes tied on, minding that the right goes to the right, the left to the left; also the astragali of a hare, leaving the poor creature alive; also the skin of a seal for solesῖια], on gold-leaf, when the moon is in Libra; also a natural magnet found when the moon is in Leo. Write on gold-leaf, in the wane of the moon, ‘mei, threu, mor, for, teux, za, zon, the, lou, chri, ge, ze, ou, as the sun is consolidated in these names, and is renewed every day; so consolidate this plaster as it was before, now, now, quick, quick, for, behold, I pronounce the great name, in which are consolidated things in repose, iaz, azuf, zuon, threux, bain, chook; consolidate this plaster as it was at first, now, now, quick, quick.’[577]
“Then bits were to be chopped off a chameleon, and the creature living was to be wrapped up in a clean linen rag, and buried towards the sunrise, while the chopped bits were to be worn in tubes; all to be done when the moon was in the wane. Then again for gout, some henbane, when the moon is in Aquarius or Pisces, before sunset, must be dug up with the thumb and third finger of the left hand, and must be said, I declare, I declare, holy wort, to thee; I invite thee to-morrow to the house of Fileas, to stop the rheum of the feet of M. or N., and say I invoke thee, the great name, Jehovah, Sabaoth, the God who steadied the earth and stayed the sea, the filler of flowing rivers, who dried up Lot’s wife and made her a pillar of salt, take the breath of thy mother earth and her power, and dry the rheum of the feet or hands of M. or N. The next day, before sunrise, take a bone of some dead animal, and dig the root up with this bone, and say, I invoke thee by the holy names, Iao, Sabaoth, Adonai, Elai; and put on the root one handful of salt, saying, ‘As this salt will not increase, so may not the disorder of N. or M.’ And hang the end of the root as a periapt on the sufferer,” etc.[578]
Although Alexander of Tralles was an enlightened and skilful physician, he recommended for epilepsy a metal cross tied to the arm; and went to the Magi for assistance in his art, and was recommended to use jasper and coral with root of nux vomica tied in a linen cloth as an amulet. It seems strange that, although Hippocrates and the scepticism of the Epicureans had apparently destroyed the faith in magicians amongst the learned, that men should have so soon reverted to the absurdities from which they had been delivered; but there is an element in our nature which can only be satisfied by that which magic represents, and even in the present age of science we have reverted to the same things under the names of Spiritualism, Theosophy, and Occultism.
It would be grossly unfair to the Catholic Church to complain of the slavery in which it kept the minds of the ignorant barbarians whom it had converted from paganism to Christianity. When we read of medicine masses, of herbs and decoctions placed under the altar, of holy water mixed with drugs, and the sign of the cross made over the poultices and lotions prescribed, we are apt to say that the priests merely substituted one form of superstition for another, which was a little coarser. A little reflection will serve to dispel this idea. A belief in magic influence is, as we have abundantly shown, inseparable from the minds of primitive and savage man. It is as certain that a savage will worship his fetish, pray to his idol, and believe in disease-demons, and their expulsion by charms and talismans, as that he will tattoo or paint his body, stick feathers in his hair, and rings in his nose and ears; it is part of the evolution of man on his way to civilization. To suddenly deprive a savage or barbarian of all his magic remedies, his amulets and charms, would be as foolish as it would be futile: foolish, because many amulets and charms are perfectly harmless, and help to quiet and soothe the patient’s mind; futile, because whatever the ecclesiastical prohibition, the obnoxious ceremonies would certainly be practised in secret. It was therefore wiser for the Church to compromise the matter, to wink at innocent superstitions, and endeavour to substitute a religious idea such as the sign of the cross would imply, for the meaningless, if not idolatrous, ceremonies of a pagan religion. Let us never forget that the Church delivered the nations from “the tyranny and terror of the poisoner and the wizard.”