We can account for a man suffering death for what he believes to be right. He knows that he has the sympathy of all the truly good, and he hopes that his name will be gratefully remembered in the far future, and above all, he hopes to win the approval of a just God. But the man who confessed himself guilty of being a wizard, knew that his memory would be execrated and expected that his soul would be eternally lost. What motive could then have induced so many to confess? Strange as it is, I believe that they actually believed themselves guilty. They considered their case hopeless; they confessed and died without a prayer. These things are enough to make one think that sometimes the world becomes insane and that the earth is a vast asylum without a keeper. I repeat that I am convinced that the people that confessed themselves guilty believed that they were so. In the first place, they believed in witchcraft and that people often were possessed of Satan, and when they were accused the fright and consternation produced by the accusation, in connection with their belief, often produced insanity or something akin to it, and the poor creatures charged with a crime that it was impossible to disprove, deserted and abhorred by their friends, left alone with their superstitions and fears, driven to despair, looked upon death as a blessed relief from a torture that you and I cannot at this day understand. People were charged with the most impossible crimes. In the time of James the First, a man was burned in Scotland for having produced a storm at sea for the purpose of drowning one of the royal family. A woman was tried before Sir Matthew Hale, one of the most learned and celebrated lawyers of England, for having caused children to vomit-crooked pins. She was also charged with nursing demons. Of course she was found guilty, and the learned Judge charged the jury that there was no doubt as to the existence of witches, that all history, sacred and profane, and that the experience of every country proved it beyond any manner of doubt. And the woman was either hanged or burned for a crime for which it was impossible for her to be guilty. In those times they also believed in Lycanthropy—that is, that persons of whom the devil had taken possession could assume the appearance of wolves.
One instance is related where a man was attacked by what appeared to be a wolf. He defended himself and succeeded in cutting off one of the wolf's paws, whereupon the wolf ran and the man picked up the paw and putting it in his pocket went home. When he took the paw out of his pocket it had changed to a human hand, and his wife sat in the house with one of her hands gone and the stump of her arm bleeding. He denounced his wife as a witch, she confessed the crime and was burned at the stake. People were burned for causing frosts in the summer, for destroying crops with hail, for causing cows to become dry, and even for souring beer. The life of no one was secure, malicious enemies had only to charge one with witchcraft, prove a few odd sayings and queer actions to secure the death of their victim. And this belief in witchcraft was so intense that to express a doubt upon the subject was to be suspected and probably executed. Believing that animals were also taken possession of by evil spirits and also believing that if they killed an animal containing one of the evil spirits that they caused the death of the spirit, they absolutely tried animals, convicted and executed them. At Basle, in 1474, a rooster was tried, charged with having laid an egg, and as rooster eggs were used only in making witch ointment it was a serious charge, and everyone of course admitted that the devil must have been the cause, as roosters could not very well lay eggs without some help. And the egg having been produced in court, the rooster was duly convicted and he together with his miraculous egg were publicly and with all due solemnity burned in the public square. So a hog and six pigs were tried for having killed, and partially eaten a child, the hog was convicted and executed, but the pigs were acquitted on the ground of their extreme youth. Asiate as 1740 a cow was absolutely tried on a charge of being possessed of the devil. Our forefathers used to rid themselves of rats, leeches, locusts and vermin by pronouncing what they called a public exorcism.
On some occasions animals were received as witnesses in judicial proceedings.
The law was in some of the countries of Europe, that if a man's house was broken into between sunset and sunrise and the owner killed the intruder, it should be considered justifiable homicide.
But it was also considered that it was just possible that a man living alone might entice another to his house in the night-time, kill him and then pretend that his victim was a robber. In order to prevent this, it was enacted that when a person was killed by a man living alone and under such circumstances, the solitary householder should not be held innocent unless he produced in court some animal, a dog or a cat, that had been an inmate of the house and had witnessed the death of the person killed. The prisoner was then compelled in the presence of such animal to make a solemn declaration of his innocence, and if the animal failed to contradict him, he was declared guiltless,—the law taking it for granted that the Deity would cause a miraculous manifestation by a dumb animal, rather than allow a murderer to escape. It was the law in England that any one convicted of a crime, could appeal to what was called corsned or morsel of execration. This was a piece of cheese or bread of about an ounce in weight, which was first consecrated with a form of exorcism desiring that the Almighty, if the man were guilty, would cause convulsions and paleness, and that it might stick in his throat, but that it might if the man were innocent, turn to health and nourishment. Godwin, the Earl of Kent, during the reign of Edward the Confessor, appealed to the corsned, which sticking in his throat, produced death. There were also trials by water and by fire. Persons were made to handle red hot iron, and if it burned them their guilt was established; so their hands and feet were tied, and they were thrown into the water, and if they sank they were pronounced guilty and allowed to drown. I give these instances to show you what has happened, and what always will happen, in countries where ignorance prevails, and people abandon the great standard of reason. And also to show to you that scarcely any man, however great, can free himself of the superstitions of his time. Kepler, one of the greatest men of the world, and an astronomer second to none, although he plucked from the stars the secrets of the universe, was an astrologer and thought he could predict the career of any man by finding what star was in the ascendant at his birth. This infinitely foolish stuff was religiously believed by him, merely because he had been raised in an atmosphere of boundless credulity. Tycho Brahe, another astronomer who has been, and is called the prince of astronomers—not only believed in astrology, but actually kept an idiot in his service, whose disconnected and meaningless words he carefully wrote down and then put them together in such a manner as to make prophecies, and then he patiently and confidently awaited their fulfillment.
Luther believed that he had actually seen the devil not only, but that he had had discussions with him upon points of theology. On one occasion getting excited, he threw an inkstand at his majesty's head, and the ink stain is still to be seen on the wall where the stand was broken. The devil I believe, was untouched, he probably having an inkling of Luther's intention, made a successful dodge.
In the time of Charles the Fifth, Emperor of Germany, Stoefflerer, a noted mathematician and astronomer, a man of great learning, made an astronomical calculation according to the great science of astrology and ascertained that the world was to be visited by another deluge. This prediction was absolutely believed by the leading men of the empire not only, but of all Europe. The commissioner general of the army of Charles the Fifth recommended that a survey be made of the country by competent men in order to find out the highest land. But as it was uncertain how high the water would rise this idea was abandoned.
Thousands of people left their homes in low lands, by the rivers and near the sea and sought the more elevated ground. Immense suffering was produced. People in some instances abandoned the aged, the sick and the infirm to the tender mercies of the expected flood, so anxious were they to reach some place of security.
At Toulouse, in France, the people actually built an ark and stocked it with provisions, and it was not till long after the day upon which the flood was to have come, had passed, that the people recovered from their fright and returned to their homes. About the same time it was currently reported and believed that a child had been born in Silesia with a golden tooth. The people were again filled with wonder and consternation. They were satisfied that some great evil was coming upon mankind. At last it was solved by some chapter in Daniel wherein is predicted somebody with a golden head. Such stories would never have gained credence only for the reason that the supernatural was expected. Anything in the ordinary course of nature was not worth telling. The human mind was in chains; it had been deformed by slavery. Reason was a trembling coward, and every production of the mind was deformed, every idea was a monster. Almost every law was unjust. Their religion was nothing more or less than monsters worshiping an imaginary monster. Science could not, properly speaking, exist. Their histories were the grossest and most palpable falsehoods, and they filled all Europe with the most shocking absurdities. The histories were all written by the monks and bishops, all of whom were intensely superstitious, and equally dishonest. Everything they did was a pious fraud. They wrote as if they had been eye-witnesses of every occurrence that they related. They entertained, and consequently expressed, no doubt as to any particular, and in case of any difficulty they always had a few miracles ready just suited for the occasion, and the people never for an instant doubted the absolute truth of every statement that they made. They wrote the history of every country of any importance. They related all the past and present, and predicted nearly all the future, with an ignorant impudence actually sublime. They traced the order of St. Michael in France back to the Archangel himself, and alleged that he was the founder of a chivalric order in heaven itself. They also said that the Tartars originally came from hell, and that they were called Tartars because Tartarus was one of the names of perdition. They declared that Scotland was so called after Scota, a daughter of Pharaoh, who landed in Ireland and afterward invaded Scotland and took it by force of arms. This statement was made in a letter addressed to the Pope in the 14th century and was alluded to as a well-known fact. The letter was written by some of the highest dignitaries of the church and by direction of the king himself. Matthew, of Paris, an eminent historian of the 13th century, gave the world the following piece of valuable information: "It is well known that Mohammed originally was a Cardinal and became a heretic because he failed in his design of being elected Pope."
The same gentleman informs us that Mohammed having drank to excess fell drunk by the roadside, and in that condition was killed by pigs. And this is the reason, says he, that his followers abhor pork even unto this day. Another historian of about the same period, tells us that one of the popes cut off his hand because it had been kissed by an improper person, and that the hand was still in the Lateran at Rome, where it had been miraculously preserved from corruption for over five hundred years. After that occurrence, says he, the Pope's toe was substituted, which accounts for this practice. He also has the goodness to inform his readers that Nero was in the habit of vomiting frogs. Some of the croakers of the present day against progress would, I think, be the better of such a vomit. The history of Charlemagne was written by Turpin the Archbishop of Rheims, and received the formal approbation of the Pope. In this it is asserted that the walls of a city fell down in answer to prayer; that Charlemagne was opposed by a giant called Fenacute who was a descendant of the ancient Goliath; that forty men were sent to attack this giant, and that he took them under his arms and quietly carried them away. At last Orlando engaged him singly; not meeting with the success that he anticipated, he changed his tactics and commenced a theological discussion; warming with his subject he pressed forward and suddenly stabbed his opponent, inflicting a mortal wound. After the death of the giant, Charlemagne easily conquered the whole country and divided it among his sons.