PREFACE.

In this translation of a work rich in the raciest beauties and defects of an author long since made known to the British public, the present writer has striven to recast the trenchant humour, the scornful eloquence, the epigrammatic dash of Mr. Michelet, in language not all unworthy of such a word-master. How far he has succeeded others may be left to judge. In one point only is he aware of having been less true to his original than in theory he was bound to be. He has slurred or slightly altered a few of those passages which French readers take as a thing of course, but English ones, because of their different training, are supposed to eschew. A Frenchman, in short, writes for men, an Englishman rather for drawing-room ladies, who tolerate grossness only in the theatres and the columns of the newspapers. Mr. Michelet’s subject, and his late researches, lead him into details, moral and physical, which among ourselves are seldom mixed up with themes of general talk. The coarsest of these have been pruned away, but enough perhaps remain to startle readers of especial prudery. The translator, however, felt that he had no choice between shocking these and sinning against his original. Readers of a larger culture will make allowance for such a strait, will not be so very frightened at an amount of plain-speaking, neither in itself immoral, nor, on the whole, impertinent. Had he docked his work of everything condemned by prudish theories, he might have made it more conventionally decent; but Michelet would have been puzzled to recognize himself in the poor maimed cripple that would then have borne his name.

Nor will a reader of average shrewdness mistake the religious drift of a book suppressed by the Imperial underlings in the interests neither of religion nor of morals, but merely of Popery in its most outrageous form. If its attacks on Rome seem, now and then, to involve Christianity itself, we must allow something for excess of warmth, and something for the nature of inquiries which laid bare the rotten outgrowths of a religion in itself the purest known among men. In studying the so-called Ages of Faith, the author has only found them worthy of their truer and older title, the Ages of Darkness. It is against the tyranny, feudal and priestly, of those days, that he raises an outcry, warranted almost always by facts which a more mawkish philosophy refuses to see. If he is sometimes hasty and onesided; if the Church and the Feudal System of those days had their uses for the time being; it is still a gain to have the other side of the subject kept before us by way of counterpoise to the doctrines now in vogue. We need not be intolerant; but Rome is yet alive.

Taken as a whole, Mr. Michelet’s book cannot be called unchristian. Like most thoughtful minds of the day, he yearns for some nobler and larger creed than that of the theologians; for a creed which, understanding Nature, shall reconcile it with Nature’s God. Nor may he fairly be called irreverent for talking, Frenchman like, of things spiritual with the same freedom as he would of things temporal. Perhaps in his heart of hearts he has nearly as much religious earnestness as they who call Dr. Colenso an infidel, and shake their heads at the doubtful theology of Frederic Robertson. At any rate, no translator who should cut or file away so special a feature of French feeling would be doing justice to so marked an original.

For English readers who already know the concise and sober volumes of their countryman, Mr. Wright, the present work will offer mainly an interesting study of the author himself. It is a curious compound of rhapsody and sound reason, of history and romance, of coarse realism and touching poetry, such as, even in France, few save Mr. Michelet could have produced. Founded on truth and close inquiry, it still reads more like a poem than a sober history. As a beautiful speculation, which has nearly, but not quite, grasped the physical causes underlying the whole history of magic and illusion in all ages, it may be read with profit as well as pleasure in this age of vulgar spirit-rapping. But the true history of Witchcraft has yet to be written by some cooler hand.

L. T.

May 11th, 1863.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
[Introduction][1]
To One Wizard Ten Thousand Witches[1]
The Witch was the sole Physician of the People[4]
Terrorism of the Middle Ages[5]
The Witch was the Offspring of Despair[9]
She in her Turn created Satan[12]
Satan, Prince of the World, Physician, Innovator[13]
His School—of Witches, Shepherds, and Headsmen[15]
His Decline[16]
[BOOK I.]
[Chapter I.—The Death of the Gods][19]
Christianity thought the World was Dying[20]
The World of Demons[24]
The Bride of Corinth[26]
[Chapter II.—Why the Middle Ages fell into Despair][30]
The People make their own Legends[31]
But are forbidden to do so any more[35]
The People guard their Territory[38]
But are made Serfs[40]
[Chapter III.—The Little Devil of the Fireside][43]
Ancient Communism of the Villa[43]
The Hearth made independent[44]
The Wife of the Serf[45]
Her Loyalty to the Olden Gods[46]
The Goblin[53]
[Chapter IV.—Temptations][57]
The Serf invokes the Spirit of Hidden Treasures[58]
Feudal Raids[59]
The Wife turns her Goblin into a Devil[66]
[Chapter V.—Possession][69]
The Advent of Gold in 1300[69]
The Woman makes Terms with the Demon of Gold[71]
Impure Horrors of the Middle Ages[75]
The Village Lady[78]
Hatred of the Lady of the Castle[84]
[Chapter VI.—The Covenant][88]
The Woman-serf gives Herself up to the Devil[90]
The Moor and the Witch[93]
[Chapter VII.—The King of the Dead][96]
The dear Dead are brought back to Earth[97]
The Idea of Satan is softened[103]
[Chapter VIII.—The Prince of Nature][106]
The Thaw in the Middle Ages[108]
The Witch calls forth the East[109]
She conceives Nature[112]
[Chapter IX.—The Devil a Physician][116]
Diseases of the Middle Ages[116]
The Comforters, or Solaneæ[121]
The Middle Ages anti-natural[128]
[Chapter X.—Charms and Philtres][131]
Blue-Beard and Griselda[133]
The Witch consulted by the Castle[137]
Her Malice[141]
[Chapter XI.—The Rebels’ Communion—Sabbaths—The Black Mass][143]
The old Half-heathen Sabasies[144]
The Four Acts of the Black Mass[150]
Act I. The Introit, the Kiss, the Banquet[151]
Act II. The Offering: the Woman as Altar and Host[153]
[Chapter XII.—The Sequel—Love and Death—Satan Disappears][157]
Act III. Love of near Kindred[158]
Act IV. Death of Satan and the Witch[165]
[BOOK II.]
[Chapter I.—The Witch in her Decline—Satan multiplied and made Common][168]
Witches and Wizards employed by the Great[172]
The Wolf-lady[174]
The last Philtre[179]
[Chapter II.—Persecutions][180]
The Hammer for Witches[181]
Satan Master of the World[193]
[Chapter III.—Century of Toleration in France: Reaction][198]
Spain begins when France stops short[199]
Reaction: French Lawyers burn as many as the Priests[203]
[Chapter IV.—The Witches of the Basque Country][207]
They give Instructions to their own Judges[212]
[Chapter V.—Satan turns Priest][218]
Jokes of the Modern Sabbath[221]
[Chapter VI.—Gauffridi: 1610][228]
Wizard Priests prosecuted by Monks[232]
Jealousies of the Nuns[234]
[Chapter VII.—The Demoniacs of Loudun: Urban Grandier][255]
The Vicar a fine Speaker, and a Wizard[263]
Sickly Rages of the Nuns[264]
[Chapter VIII.—The Demoniacs of Louviers—Madeline Bavent][277]
Illuminism: the Devil a Quietist[277]
Fight between the Devil and the Doctor[285]
[Chapter IX.—The Devil Triumphs in the Seventeenth Century][294]
[Chapter X.—Father Girard and La Cadière][303]
[Chapter XI.—Cadière in the Convent][339]
[Chapter XII.—Trial of Cadière][367]
[Epilogue][395]
Can Satan and Jesus be reconciled?[396]
The Witch is dead, but the Fairy will live again[399]
Oncoming of the Religious Revival[399]

INTRODUCTION.