[18] The discovery made in our days by the Danish theologian Martensens that the food obtained in the Supper of our Lord is not for the soul only, but also for the body,—for the nourishment of our ascension-body, is not really new; the pagan initiated into the Mithras mysteries was taught that the consecrated bread and wine, being assimilated into his flesh and blood, gave immortality to his corporeal being. Like presuppositions produce in different times like ideas.
An important question in the Middle Ages and one which had been already argued with great heat from the time of Petrus Lombardus until the seventeenth century, is propounded as follows: Has a rat which has eaten of the host thereby partaken of Christ’s body? In connection with this it was further asked: How is a rat which has eaten of Christ’s body to be treated,—ought it to be killed or honored? Ought the sacrament to be venerated even in the stomach of the rat? If some of the consecrated bread is found in the stomach of a rat, is it a duty to eat it? What must be done if immediately after partaking of the sacrament one is attacked by vomiting? When a rat can eat the host, can not the devil also do it?—One of the last products of these important investigations is a book published in Tübingen in 1593, entitled: “Mus exenteratus, hoc est tractatus valde magistralis super quæstione quadam theologica spinosa et multum subtili,” etc.
[19] During the period of political reaction in 1815, when Schlegel and de Maistre praised the Middle Ages as man’s era of bliss, and Görres sought to restore to credence during the “state period of enlightenment” all the forgotten ghost and vampire stories, the clergy of Brussels were celebrating with processions and other solemnities the anniversary of this persecution of the Jews in Namur.
At the synod in A. D. 1099 a proclamation was issued forbidding priests to enter into any servile relations with laymen, because it were shameful if the most holy hands which prepared the flesh and blood of Almighty God should serve the unconsecrated laity. The famous orator Bourdaloue requested that greater homage should be paid to the priest than to the holy Virgin, because God had been incarnated in her bosom only once, but was in the hands of the priest daily, as often as the mass was read.
[20] The oldest Christian art in which the dying spirit of antiquity yet reveals itself, represented Jesus as a shepherd youth carrying a lamb upon his bosom. Many a one could only turn away sadly from the beaming world of Olympus to the new Christian ideal, and when they must needs so do, they would fain transfer to the new “puer redemptor” the mild beauty of the former youthful mediator, Dionysus Zagreus. In the hymns, still preserved to us, of Synesius, who combined in one person the bishop and the Greek who still longs for wisdom and beauty (doubtless known to many of our readers by Kingsley’s novel of Hypatia), this sadness is in wonderful harmony with Christian devotion. With the ruin of the antique world, this longing as well as the capability of satisfying it ceased. The material symbol obtained thereafter a more prominent place. If the Phœnicians and Canaanites represented their god corporeally as the powerful steer, the Christians chose the patient and inoffensive lamb as the type of theirs. The Council of Constantinople in A. D. 692 confirmed this lamb-symbol. As Aaron had made a golden calf, Pope Sergius III. procured a lamb to be made of gold and ivory. All who rebelled against its worship were treated as disorderly and heretical. In the time of Charlemagne one of them, Bishop Claudius of Turin, from whom the Waldenses derive their origin, complained: “Isti perversorum dogmatum auctores agnos vivos volunt vorare et in pariete pictos adorare.”
[21] Pope Urban Vitus presented an agnus Dei to the Byzantine Emperor. An accompanying note described its wonderful powers in the following monkish-Latin hexameters:—
Balsamus et munda cera cum chrismatis unda
Conficiunt agnum, quod munus do tibi magnum
Fonte velut natum per mystica sanctificatum.
Fulgura desursum depellit, et omne malignum
Peccatum frangit, ut Christi sanguis et angit.
Prægnans servatur, simul et partus liberatur.
Dona refert dignis, virtutem destruit ignis.
Portatus munde de fluctibus eripit undæ.
[22] As late as 1784 a statute was issued by Carl Theodor, Elector of Pfalz, referring to the magic power of St. Hubert-relics, and forbidding the employment of “worldly” remedies against the bite of mad dogs.
[23] In the year 1240 a large rain-procession was held in Lüttich. Three times repeated it failed of all effect, “because in the supplication of all saints God’s mother had been forgotten.” In a new procession “Salve regina” was therefore sung, and the rain immediately came down with such violence that the devout procession was dispersed.—The clergy sometimes, in order to produce rain, would lead a donkey before the gate of the church, hang the litany about his neck, put a wafer in his mouth, and then bury the animal alive.
[24] Especially was the Church of the Middle Ages rich in awful formularies of malediction, testifying to an enormous brutalization of thought and feeling. A single specimen of these formularies will be more than sufficient to illustrate:—