The Magic of the Middle Ages

by Viktor Rydberg

The world is no longer an unbroken harmony, a moral unity. It is divided forever into two antagonistic kingdoms, those of Good and Evil. That God so wills, and permits the inevitable consequences, is confirmed by an immediate change in the structure of the universe. Death is sent forth commissioned to destroy all life. Hell opens its jaws in the once peaceful realms of earth’s bosom, and is filled with a fire which burns every thing, but consumes nothing.

The battle-field is the whole creation except the spaces of the Empyrean; for into its pure domain nothing corrupt can enter. Lucifer still adheres to his claims upon its throne, and in every thing seeks to imitate God. The fallen seraphim, cherubim and thrones constitute his princely retinue and his council of war. The rebel intelligences of the middle hierarchy, now transformed into demons, still love to rove among the same stars and planets which were once confided to their care, and war against the good angels who now guide the movements of the heavens. Other demons float upon the atmosphere, causing storm and thunder, hail and snow, drouth and awful omens (whence it is said the devil is a prince who controls the weather). Others again fill the earth; its seas, lakes, fountains and rivers; its woods, groves, meadows and mountains. They pervade the elements; they are everywhere.

Man, the chief occasion of the strife, is in a sad condition. The bodily pains and sufferings which the earth since its curse heaps upon the path that successive generations, all partakers of Adam’s sin, must tread, are as nothing compared with the perils which on all sides assail and threaten their immortal souls. And how can these dangers be averted? Each mortal is indeed followed from his birth by a guardian angel; but how can his promptings be distinguished from those that issue from the thousand hidden agents of the Evil. Lucifer can transform himself into an angel of light, his demons can entice with a voice which counterfeits that of God and conscience. Man’s will has no power to resist these temptations; it is depraved by the fall. Reason gives no guidance; darkened on account of man’s apostasy, it degenerates, if left to itself, into a Satanic instrument of heresy and error. Feeling is in subjection to matter, which, already from the beginning opposed to spirit, shares the curse. Is it then to be wondered at that the career of man, beginning with conception in a sinful womb, has for its end, behind the portals of death, the eternal torments of a hell? All these myriads of souls created by God and clothed in garments of clay,—all these microcosms, each of which is a master-piece, the glory of creation, a being of infinite value, form, link by link, a chain extending from that nothingness out of which God has created them, to that abyss in which, after a brief life on earth, they must be tormented through countless ages, despairing and cursing their Creator.

Lucifer triumphs. His kingdom increases; but the poor mortal has no right to complain. The vessel must not blame the potter. When man looks into his own heart he discovers a sinfulness and depravity as infinite as are his punishments. However severe the law of the universe appears, it still bears the impress of divine justice.

It is, therefore, but an act of pure grace, when God determines the salvation of mankind. The Church, prepared for by the election of the Jewish people, and founded by Jesus Christ the Son of God, who offered himself for crucifixion to atone for the sins of men, has grown up and disseminated its influences throughout regions where once demons, the gods of the heathen, possessed temples, idols and altars. The Church is the magic circle within which alone is salvation possible (Extra ecclesiam nullus salus). Within her walls the Son of God offers himself daily as a sacrifice for the transgressions of humanity; the Communion wine is by a miracle changed into his blood, and the bread into his flesh, which, eaten by the members of the Church, promote their growth in holiness and their power of resistance to the Tempter. The Church is one body, animated by the Holy Spirit of God; and thus one member compensated by surplus of virtue for the deficiencies of another. Holy men, resigning all sensual delights, and devoting their lives to the practice of penance and severities, the contemplation of spiritual things, and doing good, accumulate thereby a wealth of supererogatory works, which, deposited in the treasury of the Church, enables her to compound for the sins of less self-denying members. With liberal hand she grants remission of sins not to the living merely, but also to the dead. Thus the race of men may breathe more freely, and the multitude attach themselves again to the transient joys and pleasures of a wretched life on earth; and when a mortal plucks the flowers of pleasure which bloom in this vale of sorrows, he need not fear so much its hidden poison, for the remedy is near at hand. The knight in the castle yonder on the summit of the crag, or the burgher beneath him in the valley, may without scruple take a wife, rear children and live in conviviality according to his means; the happy student may sing and realize his “Gaudeamus igitur”; the undaunted soldier may seek a recompense for the hardships of his campaign by a merry life in taverns and in women’s company; even the followers of Mary Magdalene, sinning in expectation of grace, may obtain at the feet of the Church the same absolution which was given to their model at the feet of Jesus, provided only that, grateful for the mercy of Christ, who has made them members of his Church, they venerate it as their mother, partake of its sacraments, and seek its aid. The continually increasing number of cloisters, the homes of rigorous self-denial, uninterrupted penance, and mysterious contemplation, is a guarantee of the inexhaustibleness of those works of supererogation which the Church possesses. In these cloisters young maidens, who have consecrated themselves to Christ after a spiritual embrace for which the most intense impulses of their nature have been suppressed, yearn away their lives. Here in prayer and toil the pious recluse spends his days and nights. Those men also who, going forth barefooted, covered with coarse mantles, and wearing ropes about their waists, devote themselves like the apostles to poverty and the preaching of the gospel, who receive charity at the door of the layman, giving him in exchange the food of the word of God,—these all issue from the same cloisters.

Thus is the Church a mole against the tide of Sin. The Christian has some reason to exclaim: “O hell, where is thy victory?” for although the place of torment is continually filled with lost spirits, there are thousands upon thousands of ransomed souls that wing their flight to the Empyrean,—whether immediately or by the way of Purgatory. First among the beatified who mingling with angels surround the throne of God, are those called saints. Their intercession is more efficacious even than that of seraphim, and their power in the contest against the demons surpasses that of cherubim. Therefore kingdoms, communities, orders, corporations and guilds, yea, even lawless and disreputable professions (so needing grace and intercession more than others) have their patron saints. The individual finally is protected by the saint in whose name he has been baptized.

The Church is the kingdom of God on earth; her ecclesiastical hierarchy is an image of the heavenly; her highest ruler, the Pope, is God’s vicar. Her destiny, which is extension over the whole earth so as to include all lands and nations within her magic circle, could not be realized unless she possessed the power to command the kings and armies of Christendom. It is evident, moreover, that spiritual power is above secular: the former protects the soul, the latter the body only. They stand related to one another as spirit is related to matter. Therefore it must be the Pope who shall invest with the highest secular dignity,—that of the Roman Cæsars. He is the feudal lord of the emperors, as the emperor is, or should be, of the kings, dukes and free cities. Were it not thus,—if the various rulers were independent of the guardians of religion,—then woe to the great mass of their subjects! To be sure these multitudes are placed on earth to be disciplined by humanity and obedience; they have indeed no rights upon which they may insist, since they stand outside the pale of freedom; but, on the other hand, the oppression exercised upon them would have no limit unless the Church, who is the common mother of all, reminded those in authority of their duty to love and cherish the lowly: indeed, all social order would crumble into dust, did not a higher power than that dependent upon the sword compel the stronger to fulfil those vows to protect the weaker which he made in the presence of the Holy Trinity. For the only existing rights are those of privilege and investiture, founded absolutely upon sealed stipulations.

According to the doctrines of the Church, which are the only key to salvation, man has received as a gift what he never could have attained by science,—a knowledge of the highest truths. Possessed of this knowledge he must no longer allow himself to be tempted by the devil to engage in efforts to penetrate the mysteries of the universe with nothing to aid him but his darkened intellect; for such attempts generally end in error and apostasy. Still the allurement is strong because the highest truths, when clothed in the garb of human conceptions, sometimes appear self-contradictory and absurd. They must therefore be submitted, not to the decisions of reason, but the arbitration of faith. Faith alone is able to penetrate and apprehend them. The doctrines which the Church, assisted by the Holy Spirit, promulgates, since they alone are true, offer to the believing investigator a mine of infinite treasures. There is consequently possible within the Church a system of philosophy, provided that its processes, always postulating the infallibility of the dogmas, be confined to devout analysis and humble contemplation of religious tenets. For such a purpose the adherent of the scholastic philosophy may employ the Aristotelian dialectics as he chooses, and wield the lever of syllogism at his pleasure. Even within the pale of orthodoxy there may arise many an if and but, many a pro and contra. The scholastic reasoner has to prove but the most probable; the infallible Pope and his synods sanction the true deductions and refute the errors which, when recanted, are forgiven. It is best for the inquirer to found his researches on the propositions laid down by the early fathers of the Church; for thus succeeding generations will build on foundations laid for them by their predecessors long before. Inasmuch as they all follow the same dialectic method of analysis and synthesis, so that the whole subject is pervaded and its masses grouped into architectural order by these processes, there is reared on the basis of the dogma a philosophical superstructure, resembling those cupolas with which the skilful masters of masonry amaze our eyes.

The world grows worse. The Church can pardon sin, but can not hinder its increase. Every generation inherits from the preceding a burden of evil dispositions, habits and examples, which it lays in its turn still heavier on the shoulders of posterity. Every son has better reason for sighing than his father. “Happy those who died ere beholding the light of day! who tasted death ere the experience of life!”[6] The hosts of Satan assail the Church on every side. From his tower the watchman of Zion looks out over the world, and beholds the billows of history, now lashed fiercely by the demons, roll against the rock upon which Christ has built his temple. With great difficulty the cross-adorned hosts of Europe repel the invasion of the Saracens, whose coming has been prefigured by pestilences and portents. The emblem of the Church is an ark tossed about on a stormy sea amid a tempest of rain and lightning. History is a spiritual comedy, enacted on a stage of which the broad foreground, like that of the mysteries, is a theatrum diabolorum; while in the narrow background the Church of God, like a beleaguered citadel, points its pinnacles above the turmoil towards the gloomy sky, from which its defenders expect Jesus and his angels to come to their relief.

But before this relief arrives, iniquity shall have reached its height. It is at work already within the sacred precincts of the Church itself. It is with greater difficulty that God’s vicar subdues the inner than the outer enemies. On the one hand many a man believes that he has found in his own reason and conscience leading truths, which he arrays, without any authority outside of himself, against those commandments which have come from above, and the divine origin of which is confirmed by the faith of a hundred generations. He places himself in an attitude of opposition to the common faith. Thus originate the heresies,—those cancers on the body of the congregation which must be cured by the iron, when salves will not restore, and by fire when the iron is ineffective. On the other hand men are so overpowered by their passions that they abandon the God who rebukes them, and become the bondsmen of another god who shows them favor. Pride, fettered by obscure descent, and keen appetite for pleasure chained from gratification by penury and privation, shake their shackles in despair, and finally call the Morning Star of old to their assistance. The archfiend promises pleasures without stint, and power without limitation. The poor mortal for dread of the pains which afflict his body is urged on to his destruction. His body formed from the dust of the accursed earth, and always a centre of sensual desires, is abandoned by God a prey to the assaults of the devil. “Here somebody loses an eye, somebody there a hand; one falls into the fire and is burned to death, one into the water and is drowned; another climbs a ladder and breaks his neck, another again stumbles on the even ground and breaks a leg. All such unforeseen accidents, occurring daily, are but the devil’s thumps and strokes which he inflicts upon us from sheerest malice.”[7] Still more: the demon is able to take possession so thoroughly of the human body that he becomes, as it were, its second soul, moves its limbs, utters blasphemies with its tongue at which even their fiendish author can not but tremble. But though the God-fearing man, like pious Job, is benefited by such afflictions, and although prayer is a powerful refuge, still there is a continually growing number of those who, driven by cowardly dread of the might of the Prince of Evil, seek their safety in a league with him; so much the more as he lends them a partial control of the elements, and thus a means of employment and of doing harm to others. Thus the dire pestilence of sorcery multiplies its victims; and in the black hours of midnight hundreds of thousands who bear the name of Christian, on mountains and in deserts perform clandestine rites in honor of their Satanic master. Time ripens for the advent of Antichrist, for the Day of Judgment and the final conflagration.