Arnald declares that such diabolical practices should be shunned by all the faithful. Yet in the same treatise[2693] he tells of an almost identical procedure by which a priest cured him of over a hundred warts within ten days. The priest touched the warts, made the sign of the cross, turned to a parietary and kneeling repeated the Lord’s prayer, substituting for the words, “Deliver us from evil,” the request, “Deliver Master Arnald from the wens and warts on his hands.” After which, instead of the three peppercorns he plucked the tips of three of the stalks of the parietary, at the same time repeating three Paternosters, and placed those three tips in the ground in a damp and secluded spot. “And,” concludes Arnald, “when they began to wither, my warts began to disappear.” It is true that the couplet of jargon, which perhaps Arnald regarded as alone diabolical, is omitted and that a priest rather than a witch performed the rite, but the Lord’s prayer is still used as an incantation and the ceremony with the stalks is a clear case of magic transfer of disease and of sympathetic magic. In a third passage of the same treatise[2694] Arnald suggests the following “good prayer” against quinsy, “Lord Jesus Christ, truly our God, by the power of thy name Jesus and by the prayer of thy servant Blasius,[2695] deign to free A. thy servant.” The popularity of The Breviary of Practice from head to soles of feet, in which these passages occur is indicated by the fact that it had been printed three times during the later fifteenth century before any complete edition of Arnald’s works had been published.[2696]
Cures of old-wives.
Arnald does not always speak ill of the cures of the old-wives. At Rome he saw a poor woman cure quinsy sore-throat with a plaster of her own,[2697] and at Montpellier a good wife cured by some secret method a man who was threatened with death by a continuous hemorrhage.[2698]
Ligatures and suspensions.
It was not inappropriate that Arnald should have translated the treatise of Costa ben Luca on Incantations, Adjurations, and Suspension from the Neck, or that at least that treatise should appear among his works, in view of the specimens of prayers and formulae which we have just given and of the more numerous instances of ligatures and suspensions in his works which we shall next illustrate. In his De parte operativa he says that there are plants, stones, and parts of animals which, if suspended about the neck or bound about the body or sewn into the clothing, produce impotency, a belief which his Remedia contra maleficia have already illustrated. In his treatise on wines he states that coral suspended from the neck so that it touches the abdomen prevents disturbances of the stomach. In his work on epilepsy[2699] among other suspensions he mentions some which he has tried with boys, the wood of certain trees bound with silver. Kings are taught to suspend an emerald about their children’s necks as soon as they are born as a protection against epilepsy, or the gem may be worn in a ring as an amulet against that disease. “Socrates recites this marvelous experience,” of the two stones found in swallows’ gizzards and how one may be worn in skin as an amulet. In his Treatment for Gout Arnald tells how “some experimenters” bind a frog’s legs on the patient’s feet, right foot on right, and left on left; while “another philosopher and experimenter” binds on the stone magnet, and still others use the talon of an eagle or the foot of a tortoise.
Marvelous virtues in nature.
As these ligatures and suspensions suggest, Arnald was a believer in marvelous virtues in stones, plants, animals, and human beings, and he discusses the general subject of occult virtue at some length. He accepts the notion that the magnet cannot attract iron in the presence of adamant.[2700] A way to discover whether an epileptic has been cured is to make him inhale smoke from burning horn of goat or pulverized agate; if not perfectly cured, he will straightway fall in a fit.[2701] Fumigation of a villa or manor with a cow’s left horn keeps away locusts.[2702] Arnald enlarges upon the great virtue of wine in which a heated gold plate has been extinguished four or five times. Some persons merely hold a gold-piece in the mouth while drinking wine, but Arnald deems it wiser to reduce the gold to potable form, although he admits that there may be some efficacy in the other method, since merely holding silver in the mouth quenches thirst and holding coral in the mouth comforts the stomach.[2703]
Occult virtue defined.
In the eighteenth chapter of his Mirror of Introductions to Medicine Arnald defines occult virtue or proprietas, as he also calls it. Briefly it is a property which is not immediately perceptible to the senses as are heat and cold, color, odor, and taste, and also one for which reason cannot account and whose existence cannot be learned by reasoned experiment but only by chance discovery. This is because such occult virtue depends on two things: the mixture of the elements in the object possessing it and its “specific form.” But the ratio of components in compounds “varies infinitely” and cannot be learned by reason, and the same is true of their “specific forms.” Nor can they be discovered by rational experiment which requires some objective to aim at. Therefore the only way to discover the occult virtue of an object is to happen upon its manifestation by chance. Again in his Repetitio super Canon ‘Vita Brevis’[2704] Arnald declares that “properties” cannot be learned by reason but only by experience or revelation.
Due to the stars.