[135] Lecky, History of European Morals, ii. 324. St. Gregory the Great, Dialogi, i. 10 (Migne, op. cit. lxxvii. 200 sq.).
[136] Albericus, Visio, ch. 5, p. 17. Delepierre, L’enfer décrit par ceux qui l’ont vu, p. 57 sq. On this subject see also Müller, Das sexuelle Leben der christlichen Kulturvölker, pp. 52, 53, 120 sq.
[137] St. Jerome, Epistola XLVIII. 15 (Migne, op. cit. xxii. 505). Fleury, Manners and Behaviour of the Christians, p. 75.
[138] Muratori, Dissertazioni sopra le antichità italiane, 20, vol. i. 347.
Holiness is a delicate quality which is easily destroyed if anything polluting is brought into contact with the holy object or person. The Moors believe that if anybody who is sexually unclean enters a granary the grain will lose its baraka, or holiness. A similar idea probably underlies the belief prevalent among various peoples that incontinence, and especially illicit love, injures the harvest.[139] In Efate, namim, or uncleanness, supposed to be contracted in various emergencies, was especially avoided by the sacred men, because it was believed to destroy their sacredness.[140] The priestly taboos, of which Sir J. G. Frazer has given such an exhaustive account in ‘The Golden Bough,’ have undoubtedly in a large measure a similar origin. Nay, it seems that pollution not only deprives the holy person of his holiness, but is also supposed to injure him in a more positive way. When the supreme pontiff in the kingdom of Congo left his residence to visit other places within his jurisdiction, all married people had to observe strict continence the whole time he was out, as it was believed that any act of incontinence would prove fatal to him.[141] In self-defence, therefore, gods and holy persons try to prevent polluted individuals from approaching them, and their worshippers are naturally anxious to do the same. But apart from the resentment which the sacred being would feel against the defiler, it appears that holiness is supposed to react quite mechanically against pollution, to the destruction or discomfort of the polluted individual. All Moors are convinced that anyone who in a state of sexual uncleanness dared to visit a saint’s tomb would be struck by the saint; but the Arabs of Dukkâla, in Southern Morocco, also believe that if an unclean person rides a horse some accident will happen to him on account of the baraka with which the horse is endowed. It should further be noticed that, owing to the injurious effect of pollution upon holiness, an act generally regarded as sacred would, if performed by an unclean individual, lack that magic efficacy which otherwise would be ascribed to it. Muhammed represented ceremonial cleanliness as “one-half of the faith and the key of prayer.”[142] The Moors say that a scribe is afraid of evil spirits only when he is sexually unclean, because then his reciting of passages of the Koran—the most powerful weapon against such spirits—would be of no avail. The Syrian philosopher Jamblichus speaks of the belief that “the gods do not hear him who invokes them, if he is impure from venereal connections.”[143] A similar notion prevailed among the early Christians; with reference to a passage in the First Epistle of the Corinthians,[144] Tertullian remarks that the Apostle added the recommendation of a temporary abstinence for the sake of adding an efficacy to prayers.[145] To the same class of beliefs belongs the notion that a sacrificial victim should be clean and without blemish.[146] The Chibchas of Bogota considered that the most valuable sacrifice they could offer was that of a youth who had never had intercourse with a woman.[147]
[139] Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 209 sqq. This is in my opinion a more natural explanation than the one suggested by Sir J. G. Frazer, namely, that uncivilised man imagines “that the vigour which he refuses to expend in reproducing his own kind, will form as it were a store of energy whereby other creatures, whether vegetable or animal, will somehow benefit in propagating their species.” This theory entirely fails to account for the fact that illicit love, by preference, is supposed to mar the fertility of the earth and to blight the crops—a belief which is in full accordance with my own explanation, in so far as such love is considered particularly polluting.
[140] Macdonald, Oceania, p. 181.
[141] Labat, Relation historique de l’Ethiopie occidentale, i. 259 sq.
[142] Pool, Studies in Mohammedanism, p. 27.
[143] Jamblichus, De mysteriis, iv. 11.