Albertus Magnus had the power to delude whole crowds, precisely as Indian necromancers do at the present. Cornelius Agrippa “at the request of Erasmus and other learned men called up from the grave many of the great philosophers of antiquity, among others Cicero, whom he caused to re-deliver his celebrated oration for Roscius.” He also showed Lord Surrey, when on the continent, “the resemblance in a glass” of his mistress, the fair Geraldine. “She was represented on a couch weeping for her lover. Lord Surrey made a note of the exact time at which he saw this vision and afterwards ascertained that his mistress was so employed at the very minute.” The famous Dr. Dee, whose whole life was devoted to the search for the philosophers stone, was an accomplished crystal-gazer and spirit-rapper.
It was, without doubt, the strong and crude element of magic in alchemy that prepared the way for the great change that came over the science at the beginning of the seventeenth century. With the revival of learning that followed the Renaissance, there arose a mysterious sect in Germany known as the Rosicrucians, who were destined to revolutionize the belief in the supernatural. They claimed to derive their name from a certain Christian Rosencreutz who, in a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, had been initiated into the mysteries of the wisdom of the East. The tenets of the Rosicrucians, as well as their existence, were first made known to the world at the beginning of the seventeenth century in an anonymous German work said to have been found in the tomb of Rosencreutz, who had died one hundred and twenty years previously.
The absurd legends concerning him have led many to deny that such a person as Rosencreutz ever existed. Such writers attribute the origin of the society to the theories of Paracelsus and Dr. Dee, who unconsciously became the real though unrecognized founders of the Rosicrucians. Be this as it may, no sooner were their doctrines generally known than all the alchemists and believers in the marvellous hastened to accept them. The influence thus acquired by the “Society of the Rose-Cross” was as beneficial as it was far-reaching. Its character was a sort of Protestant mysticism, and its chief aim the gratuitous healing of the sick. Hitherto alchemy and the belief in the supernatural had been grossly materialistic. The Rosicrucians refined the one and spiritualized the other. They claimed that by strictly conforming to the rules of their philosophy, of which chastity was the most rigorous and important, they could ignore hunger or thirst, enjoy perfect health, and prolong their lives indefinitely. Of the occult knowledge they possessed, that of transmuting metals into gold was stripped of its old significance. The philosopher’s stone was no longer to be regarded as merely the means of acquiring riches, but the instrument by which mankind could command the service of the spirits of the invisible world.
They denied that these were the horrible and terrifying demons with which the monks had peopled the unseen, but mild, beautiful, and beneficent sprites, anxious to be of service to men. In the Rosicrucian imagination there existed in each element a race of spirits peculiar to it. Thus the air was inhabited by Sylphs, the water by Undines, the earth by Gnomes, and the fire by Salamanders. It was by them that all that was marvellous was done. In the course of their development the mystical tendencies of the Rosicrucians became more and more pronounced. Thus they finally came to regard the philosopher’s stone as signifying contentment, the secret of which was compared in the mystical phraseology they adopted to “a spirit that lived within an emerald and converted everything near it to the highest perfection it was capable of.”
In fine, Rosicrucianism may be described as the bridge over which the belief in the supernatural passed from sorcery, witchcraft, and the grossest superstition to the highly spiritualized form in which it is manifested at the present. The transit, however, was not effected without interruption. Towards the beginning of the eighteenth century the bridge, undermined by the mockery and scepticism of the age, collapsed. About fifty years later it was reconstructed by Swedenborg on a new and spiritualistic system. In the meantime, as will be seen, superstition adrift on the ocean of unbelief, clutched credulously at every straw that floated by.
II
The old belief in alchemy as a magical science did not survive the seventeenth century. It is true the credulous and ignorant, deluded by swindlers and impostors, long continued to regard alchemy as supernatural; but the bona-fide alchemists themselves, who were able and intelligent men, had begun to understand the nature of their discoveries. The symbolic interpretation of the philosopher’s stone led to a new conception of the uses of the crucible. The alchemists of the eighteenth century, during which the name was still in common use, though its original signification had become obsolete, were really amateur chemists. From pseudo-science modern science was beginning to be evolved.
The great changes, however, that upset the convictions and disintegrated the whole fabric of society of the eighteenth century, were favourable to the increase and spread of superstition. The amazing recrudescence of the belief in the supernatural, which was one of the most conspicuous features of the age, was the direct result of the prevailing infidelity and indifference. Persecuted, banned, anathematized, but never exterminated, it crept from the hiding-places in which it had lurked for centuries, and in the age of unbelief emerged boldly into the light of day. The forms it assumed were many and various.
In 1729 Jansenism—a sort of evangelical movement in the Church of Rome—which in its war with Jesuitism in the previous century had been crushed, but not exterminated, took advantage of the apathy of the time to reassert itself. To do this with success it was necessary to make a powerful appeal to the popular imagination, and as no means are as sure of producing effect as supernatural ones, the world was startled by a series of miracles performed at the grave of Deacon Pâris, a famous martyr in the cause of Jansenism. These miracles, which at first took the form of cures such as at the present day are to be seen at Lourdes, soon acquired fame. All sorts of people, whom the doctors were unable to restore to health, began to flock to the Jansenist Cemetery of St. Médard, where it was discovered that other graves beside that of Deacon Pâris, and finally the whole cemetery shared the healing properties of his ashes. The hitherto simple character of the cures was changed. They were accompanied by extraordinary convulsions, considered more divine than the cures themselves, in which the bones cracked, the body was scorched with fever, or parched with cold, and the invalid fell into a prophetic transport.
The noise of these pathological phenomena attracted immense crowds to the Cemetery of St. Médard, where the spectators, who were drawn out of mere idle curiosity, as well as those who came to be cured, were seized or pretended to be seized with the convulsive frenzy. The popularity of St. Médard induced the Jansenists to attach similar virtues to other cemeteries. Convulsions became epidemic; the contagion spread to the provinces which, jealous of Paris, determined to have their share of the Jansenist deacon’s favours. Similar scenes to those at St. Médard were enacted in several towns all over France, notably at Troyes and Corbeil. The miracles now gave rise to scandalous scenes. Women convulsionnaires ran through the streets “searching for the prophet Elijah.” Some believing they had found him in a handsome priest named Vaillant, a visionary who had persuaded himself that he was the reincarnation of Elijah, testified their adoration for him in a manner that indicated their convulsions were caused by erotic hysteria rather than by the miraculous properties of the bones of Deacon Pâris. Others stretched themselves at full length on the ground of the cemetery, and invited the spectators to beat them and otherwise maltreat them, only declaring themselves satisfied when ten or twelve men fell upon them at once.