With the amulets and these conception-billets belong also in the armory of the Church, the wonder-working relics, and images of the saints. God has ordained graciously that the Church shall not give up its battle against the powers of sin for want of weapons. Its offensive and defensive appliances are manifold. Its warriors, the priests, are like knights encased in mail from head to foot, and armed with lance, sword, dagger and morning star. Almost every district has its treasure of relics, which, preserved in shrines and exhibited on solemn occasions to the pious people, constitutes its palladium, impedes or prevents the attack of hostile forces, and assuages or averts the ravages of plagues. Not only corporeal relics of saints and martyrs, but also every thing they may have touched during their lifetime, yea, even the very dew-drops upon their graves, are a terror to the fiends and a means of spiritual and bodily strength unto the faithful. The miraculous properties of the images are recounted in a hundred legends. By the direct agency of divine power, there exists uninterruptedly between them and the persons they represent a mystical relation. Upon this St. Hieronymus throws some light when he exclaims against Vigilantius, who had blindly opposed the worship of images: “You dare prescribe laws to God! You presume to put the apostles in chains so that they are kept even to the Day of Judgment in their prison, and are denied the privilege of being with their Lord, although it is written that they shall be with Him wherever they go! If the Lamb is omnipresent, we must believe that those who are with the Lamb are omnipresent also. If the devils and the demons rove through the world and by their inconceivable rapidity of motion are present everywhere, should then the martyrs, after shedding their blood, remain confined in their coffins and never be able to leave them!”
As old age and death are consequences of Adam’s fall, so are almost all ailments produced by that power over man’s corporeal nature conceded to Satan, when God pronounced his curse upon the race. So also are the remaining diseases and infirmities of man, called either rightly or wrongly natural, cured with greatest certainty by invoking the help of God. Therefore the mediator between God and men, the Church, through its servants is the only sure and only legitimate physician. [“Operatio sanandi est in ecclesia per verba, ritus, exorcismos, aquam, salem, herbas, idque nedum contra diabolos et effectus magicos, sed et morbos omnes.”] The priest effects cures in behalf of the Church and in the name of God by means of prayer, the laying on of hands, exorcism, relics and consecrated natural means, especially water, salt and oil. In doing this he acts as the visible delegate of an unseen higher physician, the saint ordained of God to be the healer of the sickness. For every affliction has its physician among the ranks of the saints. St. Valentine cures epilepsy, St. Gervasius rheumatic pains, St. Michael de Sanatis cancer and tumors, St. Judas coughs, St. Ovidius deafness, St. Sebastian contagious fevers and poisonous bites, St. Apollonia toothache, St. Clara and St. Lucia rheum in the eyes, and so on. The legends relate wonderful effects of the healing powers possessed by St. Damianus, St. Patrick and St. Hubert. The terrible disease of hydrophobia was cured by the last named. In the cloisters in Luxembourg named after this saint, hydrophobia was cured many years after his death by bringing the afflicted into the church during the progress of the service, and pressing a hair from the saint’s mantle into a slight incision made for the occasion in his forehead. For the benefit of those who lived far from the cloister, the so-called “Hubertus-bands” and “Hubertus-keys” were consecrated; these were applied, heated white-hot, to the wound.[22] Similar curative agencies might be mentioned by hundreds.
Among all afflictions, the state of being possessed by devils occupies the most remarkable place in the annals of the Church, and is seen to have required the most powerful exorcisms for its cure. The ecclesiastical pathology declares that in this disease the devil is unhidden, while in all others he is concealed. The exorciser who is to expel the fiend appears in full priestly vesture; incense and consecrated wax tapers are lighted, all the objects surrounding the demoniac are sprinkled with holy water, the air around is purified by the pronunciation of certain formulas; then follow fervent prayers and finally the desperate and awful struggle between the demon, now convulsively distorting the limbs of his victim and uttering by his lips the most harrowing blasphemies, and the priest, who employs more and more powerful adjurations until the victory finally is his.
The secular medical art—that relying upon natural means—as either superfluous, or as strongly tainted with heresy, must be despised. Dissection, in order to investigate the structure of the human body, is presumption; it can even be asked with reason if it does not argue contempt for the doctrine of the final resurrection. The secular art of healing was consequently for a long time confined to the infidel Jews. But when princes and the opulent, weakly apprehending the insufficiency of the word, the relics and the consecrated remedies, had begun to keep physicians, the profane art of medicine became a lucrative profession, and schools for its cultivation were established under royal protection. Such is that of Salerno, which the warders of Zion can not regard without suspicion. It is a school which prescribes pedantic rules for diet, as if one’s diet could protect against the attacks of the devil! The Greek pagan Hippocrates, who for a long time wandered about with Jews and Arabs, thus finds at last a settled abode within its walls,—Hippocrates who had to assert of demonianism (morbus sacer) itself that it is “nowise more divine, nowise more infernal, than any other disease!” When the teacher is such, what must the disciples be? The Church will not forbid absolutely the practice of medicine, since it may do some good in the case of external injury, or in time of pestilence; but she must keep strict watch over the orthodoxy of those who cultivate this art. At several councils (as at Rheims in 1131, the second Lateran in 1139, and at Tours, 1163) she has strenuously prohibited her servants from having any thing to do with this suspected profession. Experience has taught, however, not to exaggerate the dangers attending it. The secular physicians must frequently concede that such and such a sickness is caused by witchcraft, and consequently is of supernatural origin. Slanderers might allege that such a declaration is more convenient than an investigation into the causes of the disease in the natural way, and less unpleasant than acknowledging one’s ignorance. But be this as it may: the concession implies a recognition of the supernaturalism of the Church, and may therefore be rather recommended than reprehended.
“It is,” says Thomas Aquinas, “a dogma of faith that the demons can produce wind, storms, and rain of fire from heaven. The atmosphere is a battle-field between angels and devils. The latter work the constant injury of man, the former his melioration; and the consequence is that changeableness of weather which threatens to frustrate the hopes of husbandry. And when Lucifer is able to bestow even upon man—on sorcerers and wizards—the power to destroy the fields, the vineyards and dwellings of man by rain, hail and lightning, is it to be wondered at if the Church, which is man’s protection against the devil, and whose especial calling it is to fight him, should in this sphere also be his counterpoise, and should seek from the treasury of its divine power, means adequate to frustrate his atmospheric mischiefs? To these means belong the church bells, provided they have been duly consecrated and baptized. The aspiring steeples around which cluster the low dwellings of men, are to be likened, when the bells in them are ringing, to the hen spreading its protecting wings over its chickens; for the tones of the consecrated metal repel the demons and avert storm and lightning” (“Vivos voco, mortuos plango, SULPHURA FRANGO,” a common inscription on church bells). Tillers of the soil who desire especial protection from the Church for their harvests, pay it tithes for a blessing. During protracted drought the priests make intercession and inaugurate rain-processions, in which images of the Virgin are borne into the fields, which are sprinkled with holy water while the weather-collect is chanted.[23] If the fields are visited by hurtful insects, the Church has remedies against them also. It commands them in the name of God to depart, and if they do not obey, a regular process is instituted against them, which ends in their exemplary punishment; for they are excommunicated by the Church. Such processes were very frequently resorted to in the Middle Ages, and a couple of such instances will be cited.
In the year 1474, the may-bug committed great depredations in the neighborhood of Berne. When the authorities of the city had sought relief from the bishop of Lausanne, Benoit de Montferrand, against this scourge, he determined to issue a letter of excommunication, which was solemnly read by a priest in the churchyard of Berne. “Thou irrational, imperfect creature, thou may-bug,” thus the letter commenced, “thou whose kind was never enclosed in Noah’s ark! in the name of my gracious lord, the bishop of Lausanne, by the power of the glorified Trinity through the merits of Jesus Christ, and by the obedience you owe the Holy Church, I command you may-bugs, all in common and each one in particular, to depart from all places where nourishment for men and cattle germinates and grows.” The letter ends with a summons to the insects, to present themselves on the sixth day thereafter, if they do not disappear before that time, at one o’clock, P. M., at Wivelsburg, and assume the responsibility before the court of the gracious lord of Lausanne. This letter was likewise read from the pulpit while the congregation, kneeling, repeated “three Paternosters and three Ave Marias.” Arrangements were made beforehand for a legal trial with strict attention to all professional forms. Among these was of course that the accused should have a lawyer. But when no advocate in Berne would consent to appear in behalf of the insects, the bishop devised the plan of summoning from hell the shade of an infamous lawyer named Perrodet, who had died a few years previously, and of directing him to plead the cause of the may-bugs with the same diligence he had so often displayed in his lifetime in defence of vile clients. But in spite of many summons, neither Perrodet nor his clients deigned to appear. After the expiration of the time fixed for beginning the defence, and when certain doubts concerning the proper form of procedure had been removed, the episcopal tribunal finally gave its verdict, which was excommunication in the name of the Holy Trinity, “to you, accursed vermin, that are called may-bugs, and which can not even be counted among the animals.” The government ordered the authorities of the afflicted district to report concerning the good effects of the excommunication; “But,” a chronicle of the time complains, “no effect was observed, because of our sins.”
Since any neglect of legal forms was thought to deprive a judgment of its magical as well as legal power, the most scrupulous care was exercised in the conduct of these frequently recurring processes against may-bugs, grasshoppers, cabbage-worms, field-rats and other noxious vermin. There is yet extant a detailed and luminous document by the learned Bartholomeus Chassanæus (born 1480), in which the question if, and how, such pests should be proceeded against in the courts is carefully considered: whether they should appear personally or by deputy; whether they are subject to a spiritual or a secular tribunal, and if the penalty of excommunication can be applied to them. He proves on many grounds that the jurisdiction to which they are accountable is the spiritual, and that they may properly be excommunicated. Still the question of jurisdiction remained unsettled, and a civil prosecution of the field-rats in Tyrol, 1519-20, proves among other things that a secular tribunal sometimes considered itself justified in deciding such suits. The peasant Simon Fliss appeared before William of Hasslingen, judge in Glurns and Mals (Ober-In-valley), as plaintiff against the field-rats which were committing great depredations in his parish. The court then appointed Hans Grinebner, a citizen of Glurns, to be the advocate of the accused, and furnished him, before witnesses, with the requisite commission. Thereupon the plaintiff chose as his advocate Schwarz Minig, and obtained from the tribunal upon demand a warrant of authority for him likewise. On the day of trial, the Wednesday after St. Philip’s and St. James’s day, many witnesses were examined, establishing that the rats had caused great destruction. Schwarz Minig then made his final plea that the noxious animals should be charged to withdraw from mischief, as otherwise the people of Stilf could not pay the annual tithes to their high patron. Grinebner, counsel for the defence, could not and would not make exception to the testimony, but tried to convince the court that his clients “enjoyed a certain right of usufruct which could hardly be denied them.” If the court were of another opinion and considered it best to eject them, he yet hoped they would first be granted another place where they could support themselves. Besides there should be given them at their departure a sufficient escort to protect them against their enemies, whether cat, dog, or other adversaries; and he also hoped that, if any of the rats were pregnant, time might be allowed them to be delivered and afterwards depart in safety with their progeny. The decision was rendered in the following terms: “After accusation and defence, after statement and contradiction, and after due consideration of all that pertains to justice, it is by this sentence determined that those noxious animals which are called field-rats must, within two weeks after the promulgation of this judgment, depart and forever remain far aloof from the fields and the meadows of Stilf. But if one or several of the animals are pregnant, or unable on account of their youth to follow, then shall they enjoy during further two weeks safety and protection from every body, and after these two weeks depart.”
We can form some impression of the immense power of prayer and exorcism when we consider that the influence of the will and the idea expressed in the word co-operate in them with the power of the word itself as a mere form. For the material word, the sound caught by the ear, the formula, as such, exercises a magical effect without one’s knowing its meaning. The mass of the people with their ignorance of the official language of the Church and of learning, would be badly off if those “Paternosters” and “Ave Marias,” committed to memory without understanding them, should be spiritually ineffectual,—if the Latin mass to which the congregation listens should be wanting in edifying and sanctifying power because it is not comprehended. The formularies of the Church established at different times and for various purposes are for this reason of high importance and must be followed conscientiously.[24] A single proof of their extraordinary power may be instanced here. In the year 1532 the devil brought into the heavens a huge comet, which threatened earth and man with drought and pestilence; but the pope solemnly banished the forbidding omen,—and behold! in a short time it disappeared, having day by day diminished through the power of the papal anathema. What a holy word may avail by virtue of its sound (flatus vocis) alone, is indicated in the legend of the tame starling, which was saved from the claws of the hawk just at the moment its death-agony had forced from it the words it had learned to repeat “Ave Maria.”
Upon the power of the word as its foundation, rests the papal custom of consecrating bread, wine, oil, salt, tapers, water, bells, fields, meadows, houses, standards and weapons. “With such abuses, such superstition, and diabolical arts was the priesthood filled during papal ascendency”—thus complains an old Protestant theologian who had an eye to that surplus of magic which the Catholic Church possessed over and above that of the Lutheran, but who was blind to the common welfare—“and therefore such things are in vogue even among common men. What was the chief thing in the mass if not the wonder-working words of blessing, when the priest pronounced the four words or the six syllables ‘Hoc est corpus meum’ (this is my body) over the bread, breathed upon it, and made the sign of the cross three times over it, pretending that the bread was thereby converted into the flesh of Christ? In the same way he transformed the wine in the chalice into the blood of Christ, though no such power is given to syllables and words. He bound the Holy Ghost in the water, the salt, the oil, the tapers, the spices, the stone, wood or earth, when he consecrated churches, altars, churchyards, when he blessed the meat, the eggs, and the like, and when on Easter Eve he consecrated the fire that it should do no damage (though I, God save me, have found out that our village was utterly consumed four days after such consecration), when he baptized and sanctified bells that their ringing might dispel evil influences, quiet tempests, and the like.”
The organization of monasteries is to be regarded as the defensive system of the Church, guarding and protecting the territory it has conquered from the devil. As the Mongolian on his irruption into Europe found innumerable steeps crowned with strongly fortified castles, the very number of which deterred from any attempt at siege, so Satan and his hosts find the Christian world strewn with spiritual strongholds, each of which encloses an arsenal filled with mighty weapons for offensive as well as defensive warfare. Every monastery has its master magician, who sells agni Dei, conception-billets, magic incense, salt and tapers which have been consecrated on Candlemas Day, palms consecrated on Palm Sunday, flowers besprinkled with holy water on Ascension Day, and many other appliances belonging to the great magical apparatus of the Church.