Another institution which is referable to the same root was that of knight-errantry. The knights-errant were a species of Free Judges who appealed to God and their spears against all the oppressions of castellans and all the malice of necromancers. They were armed missionaries, who protected themselves with the sign of the cross and then clove miscreants asunder; after such manner did they earn the remembrance of some noble dame, sanctifying love by the martyrdom of a life which was one of utter self-devotion. We are far removed already from those pagan courtesans to whom slaves were offered in sacrifice and for whom the conquerors of the ancient world burnt cities. For the ladies of Christendom other sacrifices were requisite; life must have been risked in the cause of the weak and oppressed, captives must have been set free, punishment meted out to the profaners of holy affections; and then those lovely and white ladies, whose skirts were embroidered with heraldic badges; whose hands were pale and delicate; those living madonnas, proud as lilies, who came back from church, with Books of Hours under their arms and rosaries at their girdles, would remove a veil broidered with gold or silver and give it as a scarf to the knight who knelt before them, praying to them and dreaming of God. Let us forget Eve and her errors; they are forgiven a thousand times, and are more than atoned for by this ineffable grace of the noble daughters of Mary.
CHAPTER V
MAGICIANS
That fundamental dogma of transcendental science which consecrates the eternal law of equilibrium attained its plenary realisation in the constitution of the Christian world. Two living pillars—the Pope and Emperor—supported the structure of civilisation. But the empire suffered partition when it slipped from the feeble hands of Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald. The temporal power, abandoned to the chances of conquests or intrigue, lost the providential unity which kept it in harmony with Rome. The Pope had often to intervene as grand justiciary and, at his proper risk and peril, he restrained the ambitions and audacity of many competitive sovereigns.
Excommunication was at that time a terrible penalty, for it was sanctioned by universal belief, and it produced phenomena which awed the crowd, being mysterious effects of the magnetic current of condemnation. There is the example of Robert the Pious, who, having incurred this terrible penalty by an unlawful marriage, became the father of a monstrous child, similar to those effigies of demons which mediæval art represented in such ridiculous aspects of deformity. The melancholy fruit of a forbidden union bore witness at least to the tortured conscience and frightful dreams by which the mother was possessed. Robert accepted the event as a proof of the wrath of God and submitted to the papal judgment. Renouncing a marriage which the Church declared incestuous, he repudiated Bertha to espouse Constance of Provence, and it remained for him to recognise in the questionable morals and arrogant character of his new bride a second chastisement of heaven.
The makers of chronicles at the period were enamoured of diabolical legends, but their records exhibit more of credulity than of good taste. Every monkish malady, every unhealthy nightmare of nuns, is looked upon as a case of veridic apparition. The result is repellent phantasmagoria, stupid allocutions, impossible transfigurations, to which the artistic spirit of Cyrano de Bergerac is the one thing wanting to render them entertaining creations. From the reign of Robert to that of St. Louis there is nothing, however, which seems to deserve recounting.[183]
The famous Rabbi Jechiel, great Kabalist and truly remarkable physician, lived in the reign of St. Louis. All that is told of his lamp and magical nail goes to prove that he had discovered electricity, or was at least acquainted with its most important uses.[184] Ancient as that of Magic, the knowledge of this force was transmitted as one of the keys of the greater initiation. When the night came a radiant star appeared in the lodging of Jechiel, the light being so brilliant that no eye could gaze thereon without being dazzled, while the beam that it darted was tinted with rainbow colours. It was never known to fail and it was never replenished with oil or other combustible substance extant at that time. When importunity or ill-intentioned curiosity sought to intrude on Jechiel by knocking persistently at his door, the Rabbi struck a nail fixed in his cabinet, producing simultaneously a blue spark on the head of the nail and the door-knocker. The ill-advised person was shaken in such a manner that he cried for mercy, believing that the earth was opening under his feet. One day a hostile mob swarmed about the entrance, uttering murmurs and menaces, while they stood with interlaced arms to resist the commotion and supposed quaking of the ground. The boldest among them plied furiously at the knocker, but Jechiel pressed his nail; in a moment the assailants were tumbled one over another and fled crying out like people who have been burnt. They were quite sure that the earth had opened and swallowed them as far as the knees; they knew not how they got out; but nothing would persuade them to return and renew the attack. The sorcerer thus earned quietude by the terror which he diffused.
St. Louis, great Catholic as he was, was also a great king, and wishing to know Jechiel, he summoned him to his court,[185] had several conversations with him, was satisfied fully by his explanations, protected him from his enemies, and during the rest of his life never failed to testify esteem for him and to act benevolently towards him.
Albertus Magnus lived at the same period, and he still passes among the people as grand master of all magicians.[186] Historians of the time affirm that he possessed the Philosophic Stone[187] and that after studying for thirty years he had succeeded in solving the problem of the android—in other words, that he had fabricated an artificial man who was endowed with life and speech, who could, in fact, answer questions with such precision and subtlety that St. Thomas Aquinas, infuriated at being unable to silence the image, broke it with a blow of his stick. Such is the popular fable; let us now see what it signifies.
The mystery of the formation of man and of his primitive appearance on earth have continually absorbed seekers after the problems of Nature. Man, as a fact, appears last in the world of fossils, and the Mosaic days of creation have deposited their successive remains, bearing witness that those days were in reality long periods of time. How then was humanity formed? Genesis testifies that God made Adam from the slime of the earth and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life—a statement the truth of which we do not question for a moment; but we repudiate notwithstanding the heretical and anthropomorphic idea of a Deity moulding clay with His fingers. God, being a pure spirit, has no hands, and He causes His creatures to develop one from another by the power which He has imparted to Nature. If therefore the Lord made Adam from the dust of the earth, we must understand that man came out of that earth under the Divine Influence and yet after a natural manner. The name Adam in Hebrew signifies red earth,[188] but what is this earth actually? It is that which the alchemists sought, and it follows that the Great Work was not the secret of metallic transmutation—a trivial and accessory result—but the universal secret of life.[189] It was the quest for the middle point of transformation, at which light becomes matter and condenses into an earth containing within itself the principle of motion and of life. It was the generalization of the phenomenon which tinges the blood red by the creation of those innumerable corpuscles which are magnetic even as the worlds and are alive like animals. For disciples of Hermes, the metals were the coagulated blood of earth, passing, like that of man, from white to black and from black to crimson, following the work of the light.[190] To set this fluid in motion by means of heat and impart thereto the tingeing fructification of light by the aid of electricity—such was the first part of the work of wisdom. The end was more arduous and sublime; it was a question of recovering the adamic earth, which is the coagulated blood of the vital earth; and the supreme dream of philosophers was to accomplish the work of Prometheus by imitating the work of God—that is to say, by producing a man who should be the child of science, as Adam was child of divine omnipotence. The dream was insensate perhaps, and yet it was sublime.
Black Magic, which ever apes the Magic of Light, but takes it, as it were, backwards, was also concerned with the android, that it might be used as an instrument of passion and an oracle of hell. For this object it was requisite to outrage Nature and obtain a species of venomous fungus, full of concentrated human malice—the living realisation of all crime. For this reason magicians sought the mandragore beneath a gibbet from which some corpse was suspended; they caused it to be torn up by a dog tied to the plant, a mortal blow being inflicted on the animal. The eradication was effected by the convulsions of the agonised beast; the dog’s soul passed into the plant and also attracted thereto that of the hanged man. Enough of these horrors and absurdities; those who are curious in such knowledge may consult the common grimoire known along the countryside under the name of Little Albert. They will find further the method of making a mandragore in the form of a cock with a human face. Stupidity and impiety vie one with another in all such processes, for Nature cannot be outraged wilfully without at the same time reversing the laws of reason.