Sketches of Imposture, Deception, and Credulity

by R. A. Davenport

The monks of Santa Croce determined that thirty psalms, said or sung, with an obligato accompaniment of one hundred stripes to each psalm, making in all three thousand, would be received as a set off for one year’s purgatory: the whole psalter, with fifteen thousand stripes, would redeem five years from the vast crucible, and twenty psalters, with three hundred thousand stripes fairly entered, would be equal to a receipt in full for one hundred years.

This Dominic the Cuirassier, being very ambitious, tasked himself generally at ten psalters, and thirty thousand lashes a day, at which rate he would have redeemed three thousand six hundred and fifty years of purgatory per annum. In addition to this, however, he used to petition for a supplementary task of a hundred years. Being, as he hoped, already a creditor to a large amount in the angel’s books, and as no good works can be lost, he recited and lashed away for the benefit of the great sinking fund of the Catholic Church, with more spirit than ever. During one Lent he entreated for, and obtained, the imposition of a thousand years; and St. Pietro Damiano affirms that, in these forty days, he actually recited the psalter two hundred times, and inflicted sixty millions of stripes; working away with a scourge in each hand. In an heroic mood he once determined to flog himself, in the jockey phrase, against time, and at the end of twenty-four hours had gone through the psalms twelve times, and begun them the thirteenth, the quota of stripes being one hundred and eighty-three thousand, reducing purgatory stock sixty-one years, twelve days, and thirty-three minutes. It still remains to be proved, how he could recite verses and count lashes at the same time, or consistently have continued to wear his cuirass, which would have nullified the infliction of so many stripes.

There is no event in the history of the religious opinions of mankind more singular than that of the Crusades; every circumstance that tends to explain, or give any rational account of, this extraordinary frenzy of delusion in the human mind is interesting. In the account which follows, that which is given from the elegant pen of Dr. Robertson, in his Life of the Emperor Charles V. has been taken advantage of.

The Crusades, or expeditions to rescue the Holy Land out of the hands of Infidels, seemed to be the first event that roused Europe from the lethargy in which it had been long sunk, and that tended to introduce any considerable change in government, or in manners. It is natural to the human mind to view those places which have been distinguished by being the residence of any illustrious personage, or the scene of any great transaction, with some degree of delight and veneration. To this principle must be ascribed the superstitious devotion with which Christians, from the earliest ages of the church, were accustomed to visit that country, which the Almighty had selected as the inheritance of his favourite people, and in which the Son of God had accomplished the redemption of mankind.

As this distant pilgrimage could not be performed without considerable expense, fatigue, and danger, it appeared the more meritorious, and came to be considered as an expiation for almost every crime. An opinion which spread with rapidity over Europe, about the close of the tenth and beginning of the eleventh century, and which gained universal credit, wonderfully augmented the number of credulous pilgrims, and increased the ardour with which they undertook this useless voyage.

The thousand years, mentioned by St. John in the twentieth chapter of Revelations, were supposed to be accomplished, and the end of the world to be at hand. A general consternation seized mankind: many relinquished their possessions; and abandoning their friends and families, hurried with precipitation to the Holy Land, where they imagined that Christ would quickly appear to judge the world.

This belief was so universal, and so strong, that it mingled itself with civil transactions. Many charters, in the latter part of the tenth century, began in this manner: “Appropinquante mundi termino,” &c.—“as the end of the world is now at hand, and by various calamities and judgments the signs of its approach are now manifest.”

While Palestine continued subject to the caliphs, they had encouraged the resort of pilgrims to Jerusalem; and considered this as a beneficial species of commerce, which brought into their dominions gold and silver, and carried nothing out of them but relics and consecrated trinkets. But the Turks having conquered Syria, about the middle of the eleventh century, pilgrims were exposed to outrages of every kind from these fierce barbarians.

This change, happening precisely at the juncture when the panic terror above mentioned rendered pilgrimages most frequent, filled Europe with alarm and indignation. Every person who returned from Palestine related the dangers which he had encountered in visiting the holy city, and described with exaggeration the cruelty and vexations of the Turks.

When the minds of men were thus prepared, the zeal of a fanatical monk, who conceived the idea of leading all the forces of Christendom against the infidels, and of driving them out of the Holy Land by violence, was sufficient to give a beginning to that wild enterprise. Peter the Hermit, for that was the name of this martial apostle, ran from province to province, with a crucifix in his hand, exciting princes and people to this holy war, and wherever he came he kindled the same enthusiastic ardour for it with which he himself was animated. The council of Placentia, where upwards of thirty thousand persons were assembled, pronounced the scheme to have been suggested by the immediate inspiration of Heaven. In the council of Clermont, still more numerous, as soon as the measure was proposed, all cried out with one voice, “It is the will of God!” Persons of rank caught the contagion; not only the gallant nobles of that age, with their martial followers, whom we may suppose apt to be allured by the boldness of a romantic enterprise, but men in more humble and pacific stations in life, ecclesiastics of every order, and even women and children, engaged with emulation in an undertaking which was deemed meritorious and even sacred.