Chapter XI: From "the Prince of the Power of the Air" to Meteorology (1)

I. GROWTH OF A THEOLOGICAL THEORY.

The popular beliefs of classic antiquity regarding storms, thunder, and lightning, took shape in myths representing Vulcan as forging thunderbolts, Jupiter as flinging them at his enemies, Aeolus intrusting the winds in a bag to Aeneas, and the like. An attempt at their further theological development is seen in the Pythagorean statement that lightnings are intended to terrify the damned in Tartarus.

But at a very early period we see the beginning of a scientific view. In Greece, the Ionic philosophers held that such phenomena are obedient to law. Plato, Aristotle, and many lesser lights, attempted to account for them on natural grounds; and their explanations, though crude, were based upon observation and thought. In Rome, Lucretius, Seneca, Pliny, and others, inadequate as their statements were, implanted at least the germs of a science. But, as the Christian Church rose to power, this evolution was checked; the new leaders of thought found, in the Scriptures recognized by them as sacred, the basis for a new view, or rather for a modification of the old view.

This ending of a scientific evolution based upon observation and reason, and this beginning of a sacred science based upon the letter of Scripture and on theology, are seen in the utterances of various fathers in the early Church. As to the general features of this new development, Tertullian held that sundry passages of Scripture prove lightning identical with hell-fire; and this idea was transmitted from generation to generation of later churchmen, who found an especial support of Tertullian's view in the sulphurous smell experienced during thunderstorms. St. Hilary thought the firmament very much lower than the heavens, and that it was created not only for the support of the upper waters, but also for the tempering of our atmosphere.(199) St. Ambrose held that thunder is caused by the winds breaking through the solid firmament, and cited from the prophet Amos the sublime passage regarding "Him that establisheth the thunders."(200) He shows, indeed, some conception of the true source of rain; but his whole reasoning is limited by various scriptural texts. He lays great stress upon the firmament as a solid outer shell of the universe: the heavens he holds to be not far outside this outer shell, and argues regarding their character from St. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians and from the one hundred and forty-eighth Psalm. As to "the waters which are above the firmament," he takes up the objection of those who hold that, this outside of the universe being spherical, the waters must slide off it, especially if the firmament revolves; and he points out that it is by no means certain that the OUTSIDE of the firmament IS spherical, and insists that, if it does revolve, the water is just what is needed to lubricate and cool its axis.

(199) For Tertullian, see the Apol. contra gentes, c. 47; also Augustin de Angelis, Lectiones Meteorologicae, p. 64. For Hilary, see In Psalm CXXXV. (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. ix, p. 773).

(200) "Firmans tonitrua" (Amos iv, 13); the phrase does not appear in
our version.

St. Jerome held that God at the Creation, having spread out the firmament between heaven and earth, and having separated the upper waters from the lower, caused the upper waters to be frozen into ice, in order to keep all in place. A proof of this view Jerome found in the words of Ezekiel regarding "the crystal stretched above the cherubim."(201)

(201) For Ambrose, see the Hexaemeron, lib. ii, cap. 3,4; lib. iii, cap. 5 (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xiv, pp. 148-150, 153, 165). The passage as to lubrication of the heavenly axis is as follows: "Deinde cum ispi dicant volvi orbem coeli stellis ardentibus refulgentem, nonne divina providentia necessario prospexit, ut intra orbem coeli, et supra orbem redundaret aqua, quae illa ferventis axis incendia temperaret?" For Jerome, see his Epistola, lxix, cap. 6 (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xxii, p.659).

The germinal principle in accordance with which all these theories were evolved was most clearly proclaimed to the world by St. Augustine in his famous utterance: "Nothing is to be accepted save on the authority of Scripture, since greater is that authority than all the powers of the human mind."(202) No treatise was safe thereafter which did not breathe the spirit and conform to the letter of this maxim. Unfortunately, what was generally understood by the "authority of Scripture" was the tyranny of sacred books imperfectly transcribed, viewed through distorting superstitions, and frequently interpreted by party spirit.

(202) "Major est quippe Scripturae hujas auctoritas, quam omnis humani ingenii capacitas."--Augustine, De Genesi ad Lit., lib. ii, cap. 5 (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xxxiv, pp. 266, 267). Or, as he is cited by Vincent of Beauvais (Spec. Nat., lib. iv, 98): "Non est aliquid temere diffiniendum, sed quantum Scriptura dicit accipiendum, cujus major est auctoritas quam omnis humani ingenii capacitas."

Following this precept of St. Augustine there were developed, in every field, theological views of science which have never led to a single truth--which, without exception, have forced mankind away from the truth, and have caused Christendom to stumble for centuries into abysses of error and sorrow. In meteorology, as in every other science with which he dealt, Augustine based everything upon the letter of the sacred text; and it is characteristic of the result that this man, so great when untrammelled, thought it his duty to guard especially the whole theory of the "waters above the heavens."

In the sixth century this theological reasoning was still further developed, as we have seen, by Cosmas Indicopleustes. Finding a sanction for the old Egyptian theory of the universe in the ninth chapter of Hebrews, he insisted that the earth is a flat parallelogram, and that from its outer edges rise immense walls supporting the firmament; then, throwing together the reference to the firmament in Genesis and the outburst of poetry in the Psalms regarding the "waters that be above the heavens," he insisted that over the terrestrial universe are solid arches bearing a vault supporting a vast cistern "containing the waters"; finally, taking from Genesis the expression regarding the "windows of heaven," he insisted that these windows are opened and closed by the angels whenever the Almighty wishes to send rain upon the earth or to withhold it.

This was accepted by the universal Church as a vast contribution to thought; for several centuries it was the orthodox doctrine, and various leaders in theology devoted themselves to developing and supplementing it.

About the beginning of the seventh century, Isidore, Bishop of Seville, was the ablest prelate in Christendom, and was showing those great qualities which led to his enrolment among the saints of the Church. His theological view of science marks an epoch. As to the "waters above the firmament," Isidore contends that they must be lower than, the uppermost heaven, though higher than the lower heaven, because in the one hundred and forty-eighth Psalm they are mentioned AFTER the heavenly bodies and the "heaven of heavens," but BEFORE the terrestrial elements. As to their purpose, he hesitates between those who held that they were stored up there by the prescience of God for the destruction of the world at the Flood, as the words of Scripture that "the windows of heaven were opened" seemed to indicate, and those who held that they were kept there to moderate the heat of the heavenly bodies. As to the firmament, he is in doubt whether it envelops the earth "like an eggshell," or is merely spread over it "like a curtain"; for he holds that the passage in the one hundred and fourth Psalm may be used to support either view.

Having laid these scriptural foundations, Isidore shows considerable power of thought; indeed, at times, when he discusses the rainbow, rain, hail, snow, and frost, his theories are rational, and give evidence that, if he could have broken away from his adhesion to the letter of Scripture, he might have given a strong impulse to the evolution of a true science.(203)

(203) For Cosmas, see his Topographia Christiana (in Montfaucon, Collectio nova patrum, vol. ii), and the more complete account of his theory given in the chapter on Geography in this work. For Isidore, see the Etymologiae, lib. xiii, cap. 7-9, De ordine creaturarum, cap. 3, 4, and De natura rerum, cap. 29, 30. (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. lxxxii, pp. 476, 477, vol. lxxxiii, pp. 920-922, 1001-1003).

About a century later appeared, at the other extremity of Europe, the second in the trio of theological men of science in the early Middle Ages--Bede the Venerable. The nucleus of his theory also is to be found in the accepted view of the "firmament" and of the "waters above the heavens," derived from Genesis. The firmament he holds to be spherical, and of a nature subtile and fiery; the upper heavens, he says, which contain the angels, God has tempered with ice, lest they inflame the lower elements. As to the waters placed above the firmament, lower than the spiritual heavens, but higher than all corporeal creatures, he says, "Some declare that they were stored there for the Deluge, but others, more correctly, that they are intended to temper the fire of the stars." He goes on with long discussions as to various elements and forces in Nature, and dwells at length upon the air, of which he says that the upper, serene air is over the heavens; while the lower, which is coarse, with humid exhalations, is sent off from the earth, and that in this are lightning, hail, snow, ice, and tempests, finding proof of this in the one hundred and forty-eighth Psalm, where these are commanded to "praise the Lord from the earth."(204)

(204) See Bede, De natura rerum (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xc).

So great was Bede's authority, that nearly all the anonymous speculations of the next following centuries upon these subjects were eventually ascribed to him. In one of these spurious treatises an attempt is made to get new light upon the sources of the waters above the heavens, the main reliance being the sheet containing the animals let down from heaven, in the vision of St. Peter. Another of these treatises is still more curious, for it endeavours to account for earthquakes and tides by means of the leviathan mentioned in Scripture. This characteristic passage runs as follows: "Some say that the earth contains the animal leviathan, and that he holds his tail after a fashion of his own, so that it is sometimes scorched by the sun, whereupon he strives to get hold of the sun, and so the earth is shaken by the motion of his indignation; he drinks in also, at times, such huge masses of the waves that when he belches them forth all the seas feel their effect." And this theological theory of the tides, as caused by the alternate suction and belching of leviathan, went far and wide.(205)

(205) See the treatise De mundi constitutione, in Bede's Opera (Migne,
Patr. Lat., vol. xc, p. 884).

In the writings thus covered with the name of Bede there is much showing a scientific spirit, which might have come to something of permanent value had it not been hampered by the supposed necessity of conforming to the letter of Scripture. It is as startling as it is refreshing to hear one of these medieval theorists burst out as follows against those who are content to explain everything by the power of God: "What is more pitiable than to say that a thing IS, because God is able to do it, and not to show any reason why it is so, nor any purpose for which it is so; just as if God did everything that he is able to do! You talk like one who says that God is able to make a calf out of a log. But DID he ever do it? Either, then, show a reason why a thing is so, or a purpose wherefore it is so, or else cease to declare it so."(206)

(206) For this remonstrance, see the Elementa philosophiae, in Bede's Opera (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol xc, p. 1139). This treatise, which has also been printed, under the title of De philosophia mundi, among the works of Honorius of Autun, is believed by modern scholars (Haureau, Werner, Poole) to be the production of William of Conches.

The most permanent contribution of Bede to scientific thought in this field was his revival of the view that the firmament is made of ice; and he supported this from the words in the twenty-sixth chapter of Job, "He bindeth up the waters in his thick cloud, and the cloud is not rent under them."

About the beginning of the ninth century appeared the third in that triumvirate of churchmen who were the oracles of sacred science throughout the early Middle Ages--Rabanus Maurus, Abbot of Fulda and Archbishop of Mayence. Starting, like all his predecessors, from the first chapter of Genesis, borrowing here and there from the ancient philosophers, and excluding everything that could conflict with the letter of Scripture, he follows, in his work upon the universe, his two predecessors, Isidore and Bede, developing especially St. Jerome's theory, drawn from Ezekiel, that the firmament is strong enough to hold up the "waters above the heavens," because it is made of ice.

For centuries the authority of these three great teachers was unquestioned, and in countless manuals and catechisms their doctrine was translated and diluted for the common mind. But about the second quarter of the twelfth century a priest, Honorius of Autun, produced several treatises which show that thought on this subject had made some little progress. He explained the rain rationally, and mainly in the modern manner; with the thunder he is less successful, but insists that the thunderbolt "is not stone, as some assert." His thinking is vigorous and independent. Had theorists such as he been many, a new science could have been rapidly evolved, but the theological current was too strong. (207)

(207) For Rabanus Maurus, see the Comment. in Genesim and De Universo (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. cvii, cxi). For a charmingly naive example of the primers referred to, see the little Anglo-Saxon manual of astronomy, sometimes attributed to Aelfric; it is in the vernacular, but is translated in Wright's Popular Treatises on Science during the Middle Ages. Bede is, of course, its chief source. For Honorius, see De imagine mundi and Hexaemeron (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. clxxii). The De philosophia mundi, the most rational of all, is, however, believed by modern scholars to be unjustly ascribed to him. See note above.

The strength of this current which overwhelmed the thought of Honorius is seen again in the work of the Dominican monk, John of San Geminiano, who in the thirteenth century gave forth his Summa de Exemplis for the use of preachers in his order. Of its thousand pages, over two hundred are devoted to illustrations drawn from the heavens and the elements. A characteristic specimen is his explanation of the Psalmist's phrase, "The arrows of the thunder." These, he tells us, are forged out of a dry vapour rising from the earth and kindled by the heat of the upper air, which then, coming into contact with a cloud just turning into rain, "is conglutinated like flour into dough," but, being too hot to be extinguished, its particles become merely sharpened at the lower end, and so blazing arrows, cleaving and burning everything they touch.(208)

(208) See Joannes a S. Geminiano, Summa, c. 75.

But far more important, in the thirteenth century, was the fact that the most eminent scientific authority of that age, Albert the Great, Bishop of Ratisbon, attempted to reconcile the speculations of Aristotle with theological views derived from the fathers. In one very important respect he improved upon the meteorological views of his great master. The thunderbolt, he says, is no mere fire, but the product of black clouds containing much mud, which, when it is baked by the intense heat, forms a fiery black or red stone that falls from the sky, tearing beams and crushing walls in its course: such he has seen with his own eyes.(209)

(209) See Albertus Magnus, II Sent., Op., vol. xv, p. 137, a. (cited by Heller, Gesch. d. Physik, vol. i, p. 184) and his Liber Methaurorum, III, iv, 18 (of which I have used the edition of Venice, 1488).

The monkish encyclopedists of the later Middle Ages added little to these theories. As we glance over the pages of Vincent of Beauvais, the monk Bartholomew, and William of Conches, we note only a growing deference to the authority of Aristotle as supplementing that of Isidore and Bede and explaining sacred Scripture. Aristotle is treated like a Church father, but extreme care is taken not to go beyond the great maxim of St. Augustine; then, little by little, Bede and Isidore fall into the background, Aristotle fills the whole horizon, and his utterances are second in sacredness only to the text of Holy Writ.

A curious illustration of the difficulties these medieval scholars had to meet in reconciling the scientific theories of Aristotle with the letter of the Bible is seen in the case of the rainbow. It is to the honour of Aristotle that his conclusions regarding the rainbow, though slightly erroneous, were based upon careful observation and evolved by reasoning alone; but his Christian commentators, while anxious to follow him, had to bear in mind the scriptural statement that God had created the rainbow as a sign to Noah that there should never again be a Flood on the earth. Even so bold a thinker as Cardinal d'Ailly, whose speculations as to the geography of the earth did so much afterward in stimulating Columbus, faltered before this statement, acknowledging that God alone could explain it; but suggested that possibly never before the Deluge had a cloud been suffered to take such a position toward the sun as to cause a rainbow.

The learned cardinal was also constrained to believe that certain stars and constellations have something to do in causing the rain, since these would best explain Noah's foreknowledge of the Deluge. In connection with this scriptural doctrine of winds came a scriptural doctrine of earthquakes: they were believed to be caused by winds issuing from the earth, and this view was based upon the passage in the one hundred and thirty-fifth Psalm, "He bringeth the wind out of his treasuries."(210)

(210) For D'Ailly, see his Concordia astronomicae veritatis cum theologia (Paris, 1483--in the Imago mundi--and Venice, 1490); also Eck's commentary on Aristotle's Meteorologica (Ausburg, 1519), lib. ii, nota 2; also Reisch, Margarita philosophica, lib. ix, c. 18.

Such were the main typical attempts during nearly fourteen centuries to build up under theological guidance and within scriptural limitations a sacred science of meteorology. But these theories were mainly evolved in the effort to establish a basis and general theory of phenomena: it still remained to account for special manifestations, and here came a twofold development of theological thought.

On one hand, these phenomena were attributed to the Almighty, and, on the other, to Satan. As to the first of these theories, we constantly find the Divine wrath mentioned by the earlier fathers as the cause of lightning, hailstorms, hurricanes, and the like.

In the early days of Christianity we see a curious struggle between pagan and Christian belief upon this point. Near the close of the second century the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, in his effort to save the empire, fought a hotly contested battle with the Quadi, in what is now Hungary. While the issue of this great battle was yet doubtful there came suddenly a blinding storm beating into the faces of the Quadi, and this gave the Roman troops the advantage, enabling Marcus Aurelius to win a decisive victory. Votaries of each of the great religions claimed that this storm was caused by the object of their own adoration. The pagans insisted that Jupiter had sent the storm in obedience to their prayers, and on the Antonine Column at Rome we may still see the figure of Olympian Jove casting his thunderbolts and pouring a storm of rain from the open heavens against the Quadi. On the other hand, the Christians insisted that the storm had been sent by Jehovah in obedience to THEIR prayers; and Tertullian, Eusebius, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Jerome were among those who insisted upon this meteorological miracle; the first two, indeed, in the fervour of their arguments for its reality, allowing themselves to be carried considerably beyond exact historical truth.(211)

(211) For the authorities, pagan and Christian, see the note of Merivale, in his History of the Romans under the Empire, chap. lxviii. He refers for still fuller citations to Fynes Clinton's Fasti Rom., p. 24.

As time went on, the fathers developed this view more and more from various texts in the Jewish and Christian sacred books, substituting for Jupiter flinging his thunderbolts the Almighty wrapped in thunder and sending forth his lightnings. Through the Middle Ages this was fostered until it came to be accepted as a mere truism, entering into all medieval thinking, and was still further developed by an attempt to specify the particular sins which were thus punished. Thus even the rational Florentine historian Villani ascribed floods and fires to the "too great pride of the city of Florence and the ingratitude of the citizens toward God," which, "of course," says a recent historian, "meant their insufficient attention to the ceremonies of religion."(212)

(212) See Trollope, History of Florence, vol. i, p. 64.

In the thirteenth century the Cistercian monk, Caesarius of Heisterbach, popularized the doctrine in central Europe. His rich collection of anecdotes for the illustration of religious truths was the favourite recreative reading in the convents for three centuries, and exercised great influence over the thought of the later Middle Ages. In this work he relates several instances of the Divine use of lightning, both for rescue and for punishment. Thus he tells us how the steward (cellerarius) of his own monastery was saved from the clutch of a robber by a clap of thunder which, in answer to his prayer, burst suddenly from the sky and frightened the bandit from his purpose: how, in a Saxon theatre, twenty men were struck down, while a priest escaped, not because he was not a greater sinner than the rest, but because the thunderbolt had respect for his profession! It is Cesarius, too, who tells us the story of the priest of Treves, struck by lightning in his own church, whither he had gone to ring the bell against the storm, and whose sins were revealed by the course of the lightning, for it tore his clothes from him and consumed certain parts of his body, showing that the sins for which he was punished were vanity and unchastity.(213)

(213) See Caesarius Heisterbacensis, Dialogus miraculorum, lib. x, c.
28-30.

This mode of explaining the Divine interference more minutely is developed century after century, and we find both Catholics and Protestants assigning as causes of unpleasant meteorological phenomena whatever appears to them wicked or even unorthodox. Among the English Reformers, Tyndale quotes in this kind of argument the thirteenth chapter of I. Samuel, showing that, when God gave Israel a king, it thundered and rained. Archbishop Whitgift, Bishop Bale, and Bishop Pilkington insisted on the same view. In Protestant Germany, about the same period, Plieninger took a dislike to the new Gregorian calendar and published a volume of Brief Reflections, in which he insisted that the elements had given utterance to God's anger against it, calling attention to the fact that violent storms raged over almost all Germany during the very ten days which the Pope had taken out for the correction of the year, and that great floods began with the first days of the corrected year.(214)

(214) For Tyndale, see his Doctrinal Treatises, p. 194, and for Whitgift, see his Works, vol. ii, pp. 477-483; Bale, Works, pp. 244, 245; and Pilkington, Works, pp. 177, 536 (all in Parker Society Publications). Bishop Bale cites especially Job xxxviii, Ecclesiasticus xiii, and Revelation viii, as supporting the theory. For Plieninger's words, see Janssen, Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, vol. v, p. 350.

Early in the seventeenth century, Majoli, Bishop of Voltoraria, in southern Italy, produced his huge work Dies Canicularii, or Dog Days, which remained a favourite encyclopedia in Catholic lands for over a hundred years. Treating of thunder and lightning, he compares them to bombs against the wicked, and says that the thunderbolt is "an exhalation condensed and cooked into stone," and that "it is not to be doubted that, of all instruments of God's vengeance, the thunderbolt is the chief"; that by means of it Sennacherib and his army were consumed; that Luther was struck by lightning in his youth as a caution against departing from the Catholic faith; that blasphemy and Sabbath-breaking are the sins to which this punishment is especially assigned, and he cites the case of Dathan and Abiram. Fifty years later the Jesuit Stengel developed this line of thought still further in four thick quarto volumes on the judgments of God, adding an elaborate schedule for the use of preachers in the sermons of an entire year. Three chapters were devoted to thunder, lightning, and storms. That the author teaches the agency in these of diabolical powers goes without saying; but this can only act, he declares, by Divine permission, and the thunderbolt is always the finger of God, which rarely strikes a man save for his sins, and the nature of the special sin thus punished may be inferred from the bodily organs smitten. A few years later, in Protestant Swabia, Pastor Georg Nuber issued a volume of "weather-sermons," in which he discusses nearly every sort of elemental disturbances--storms, floods, droughts, lightning, and hail. These, he says, come direct from God for human sins, yet no doubt with discrimination, for there are five sins which God especially punishes with lightning and hail--namely, impenitence, incredulity, neglect of the repair of churches, fraud in the payment of tithes to the clergy, and oppression of subordinates, each of which points he supports with a mass of scriptural texts.(215)

(215) For Majoli, see Dies Can., I, i; for Stengel, see the De judiciis divinis, vol. ii, pp. 15-61, and especially the example of the impurus et saltator sacerdos, fulmine castratus, pp. 26, 27. For Nuber, see his Conciones meteoricae, Ulm, 1661.

This doctrine having become especially precious both to Catholics and to Protestants, there were issued handbooks of prayers against bad weather: among these was the Spiritual Thunder and Storm Booklet, produced in 1731 by a Protestant scholar, Stoltzlin, whose three or four hundred pages of prayer and song, "sighs for use when it lightens fearfully," and "cries of anguish when the hailstorm is drawing on," show a wonderful adaptability to all possible meteorological emergencies. The preface of this volume is contributed by Prof. Dilherr, pastor of the great church of St. Sebald at Nuremberg, who, in discussing the Divine purposes of storms, adds to the three usually assigned--namely, God's wish to manifest his power, to display his anger, and to drive sinners to repentance--a fourth, which, he says, is that God may show us "with what sort of a stormbell he will one day ring in the last judgment."

About the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century we find, in Switzerland, even the eminent and rational Professor of Mathematics, Scheuchzer, publishing his Physica Sacra, with the Bible as a basis, and forced to admit that the elements, in the most literal sense, utter the voice of God. The same pressure was felt in New England. Typical are the sermons of Increase Mather on The Voice of God in Stormy Winds. He especially lays stress on the voice of God speaking to Job out of the whirlwind, and upon the text, "Stormy wind fulfilling his word." He declares, "When there are great tempests, the angels oftentimes have a hand therein,... yea, and sometimes evil angels." He gives several cases of blasphemers struck by lightning, and says, "Nothing can be more dangerous for mortals than to contemn dreadful providences, and, in particular, dreadful tempests."

His distinguished son, Cotton Mather, disentangled himself somewhat from the old view, as he had done in the interpretation of comets. In his Christian Philosopher, his Thoughts for the Day of Rain, and his Sermon preached at the Time of the Late Storm (in 1723), he is evidently tending toward the modern view. Yet, from time to time, the older view has reasserted itself, and in France, as recently as the year 1870, we find the Bishop of Verdun ascribing the drought afflicting his diocese to the sin of Sabbath-breaking.(216)

(216) For Stoltzlin, see his Geistliches Donner- und Wetter-Buchlein (Zurich, 1731). For Increase Mather, see his The Voice of God, etc. (Boston, 1704). This rare volume is in the rich collection of the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester. For Cotton Mather's view, see the chapter From Signs and Wonders to Law, in this work. For the Bishop of Verdun, see the Semaine relig. de Lorraine, 1879, p. 445 (cited by "Paul Parfait," in his Dossier des Pelerinages, pp. 141-143).

This theory, which attributed injurious meteorological phenomena mainly to the purposes of God, was a natural development, and comparatively harmless; but at a very early period there was evolved another theory, which, having been ripened into a doctrine, cost the earth dear indeed. Never, perhaps, in the modern world has there been a dogma more prolific of physical, mental, and moral agony throughout whole nations and during whole centuries. This theory, its development by theology, its fearful results to mankind, and its destruction by scientific observation and thought, will next be considered.

II. DIABOLIC AGENCY IN STORMS.

While the fathers and schoolmen were labouring to deduce a science of meteorology from our sacred books, there oozed up in European society a mass of traditions and observances which had been lurking since the days of paganism; and, although here and there appeared a churchman to oppose them, the theologians and ecclesiastics ere long began to adopt them and to clothe them with the authority of religion.

Both among the pagans of the Roman Empire and among the barbarians of the North the Christian missionaries had found it easier to prove the new God supreme than to prove the old gods powerless. Faith in the miracles of the new religion seemed to increase rather than to diminish faith in the miracles of the old; and the Church at last began admitting the latter as facts, but ascribing them to the devil. Jupiter and Odin sank into the category of ministers of Satan, and transferred to that master all their former powers. A renewed study of Scripture by theologians elicited overwhelming proofs of the truth of this doctrine. Stress was especially laid on the declaration of Scripture, "The gods of the heathen are devils."(217) Supported by this and other texts, it soon became a dogma. So strong was the hold it took, under the influence of the Church, that not until late in the seventeenth century did its substantial truth begin to be questioned.

(217) For so the Vulgate and all the early versions rendered Ps. xcvi,
5.

With no field of action had the sway of the ancient deities been more identified than with that of atmospheric phenomena. The Roman heard Jupiter, and the Teuton heard Thor, in the thunder. Could it be doubted that these powerful beings would now take occasion, unless hindered by the command of the Almighty, to vent their spite against those who had deserted their altars? Might not the Almighty himself be willing to employ the malice of these powers of the air against those who had offended him?

It was, indeed, no great step, for those whose simple faith accepted rain or sunshine as an answer to their prayers, to suspect that the untimely storms or droughts, which baffled their most earnest petitions, were the work of the archenemy, "the prince of the power of the air."

The great fathers of the Church had easily found warrant for this doctrine in Scripture. St. Jerome declared the air to be full of devils, basing this belief upon various statements in the prophecies of Isaiah and in the Epistle to the Ephesians. St. Augustine held the same view as beyond controversy.(218)

(218) For St. Jerome, see his Com. in Ep. ad Ephesios (lib. iii, cap.6): commenting on the text, "Our battle is not with flesh and blood," he explains this as meaning the devils in the air, and adds, "Nam et in alio loco de daemonibus quod in aere isto vagentur, Apostolus ait: In quibus ambulastis aliquando juxta Saeculum mundi istius, secundum principem potestatis aeris spiritus, qui nunc operatur in filos diffidentiae (Eph, ii,2). Haec autem omnium doctorum opinio est, quod aer iste qui coelum et terram medius dividens, inane appellatur, plenus sit contrariis fortitudinibus." See also his Com. in Isaiam, lib. xiii, cap. 50 (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. xxiv, p. 477). For Augustine, see the De Civitate Dei, passim.

During the Middle Ages this doctrine of the diabolical origin of storms went on gathering strength. Bede had full faith in it, and narrates various anecdotes in support of it. St. Thomas Aquinas gave it his sanction, saying in his all authoritative Summa, "Rains and winds, and whatsoever occurs by local impulse alone, can be caused by demons." "It is," he says, "a dogma of faith that the demons can produce wind, storms, and rain of fire from heaven."

Albert the Great taught the same doctrine, and showed how a certain salve thrown into a spring produced whirlwinds. The great Franciscan--the "seraphic doctor"--St. Bonaventura, whose services to theology earned him one of the highest places in the Church, and to whom Dante gave special honour in paradise, set upon this belief his high authority. The lives of the saints, and the chronicles of the Middle Ages, were filled with it. Poetry and painting accepted the idea and developed it. Dante wedded it to verse, and at Venice this thought may still be seen embodied in one of the grand pictures of Bordone: a shipload of demons is seen approaching Venice in a storm, threatening destruction to the city, but St. Mark, St. George, and St. Nicholas attack the vessel, and disperse the hellish crew.(219)

(219) For Bede, see the Hist. Eccles., vol. i, p. 17; Vita Cuthberti, c. 17 (Migne, tome xliv). For Thomas Aquinas, see the Summa, pars I, qu. lxxx, art. 2. The second citation I owe to Rydberg, Magic of the Middle Ages, p. 73, where the whole interesting passage is given at length. For Albertus Magnus, see the De Potentia Daemonum (cited by Maury, Legendes Pieuses). For Bonaventura, see the Comp. Theol. Veritat., ii, 26. For Dante, see Purgatorio, c. 5. On Bordone's picture, see Maury, Legendes Pieuses, p. 18, note.

The popes again and again sanctioned this doctrine, and it was amalgamated with various local superstitions, pious imaginations, and interesting arguments, to strike the fancy of the people at large. A strong argument in favour of a diabolical origin of the thunderbolt was afforded by the eccentricities of its operation. These attracted especial attention in the Middle Ages, and the popular love of marvel generalized isolated phenomena into rules. Thus it was said that the lightning strikes the sword in the sheath, gold in the purse, the foot in the shoe, leaving sheath and purse and shoe unharmed; that it consumes a human being internally without injuring the skin; that it destroys nets in the water, but not on the land; that it kills one man, and leaves untouched another standing beside him; that it can tear through a house and enter the earth without moving a stone from its place; that it injures the heart of a tree, but not the bark; that wine is poisoned by it, while poisons struck by it lose their venom; that a man's hair may be consumed by it and the man be unhurt.(220)

(220) See, for lists of such admiranda, any of the early writers--e. g.,
Vincent of Beauvais, Reisch's Margarita, or Eck's Aristotle.

These peculiar phenomena, made much of by the allegorizing sermonizers of the day, were used in moral lessons from every pulpit. Thus the Carmelite, Matthias Farinator, of Vienna, who at the Pope's own instance compiled early in the fifteenth century that curious handbook of illustrative examples for preachers, the Lumen Animae, finds a spiritual analogue for each of these anomalies.(221)

(221) See the Lumen animae, Eichstadt, 1479.

This doctrine grew, robust and noxious, until, in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, we find its bloom in a multitude of treatises by the most learned of the Catholic and Protestant divines, and its fruitage in the torture chambers and on the scaffolds throughout Christendom. At the Reformation period, and for nearly two hundred years afterward, Catholics and Protestants vied with each other in promoting this growth. John Eck, the great opponent of Luther, gave to the world an annotated edition of Aristotle's Physics, which was long authoritative in the German universities; and, though the text is free from this doctrine, the woodcut illustrating the earth's atmosphere shows most vividly, among the clouds of mid-air, the devils who there reign supreme.(222)

(222) See Eck, Aristotelis Meteorologica, Augsburg, 1519.

Luther, in the other religious camp, supported the superstition even more zealously, asserting at times his belief that the winds themselves are only good or evil spirits, and declaring that a stone thrown into a certain pond in his native region would cause a dreadful storm because of the devils, kept prisoners there.(223)

(223) For Luther, see the Table Talk; also Michelet, Life of Luther
(translated by Hazlitt, p. 321).

Just at the close of the same century, Catholics and Protestants welcomed alike the great work of Delrio. In this, the power of devils over the elements is proved first from the Holy Scriptures, since, he declares, "they show that Satan brought fire down from heaven to consume the servants and flocks of Job, and that he stirred up a violent wind, which overwhelmed in ruin the sons and daughters of Job at their feasting." Next, Delrio insists on the agreement of all the orthodox fathers, that it was the devil himself who did this, and attention is called to the fact that the hail with which the Egyptians were punished is expressly declared in Holy Scripture to have been brought by the evil angels. Citing from the Apocalypse, he points to the four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the winds and preventing their doing great damage to mortals; and he dwells especially upon the fact that the devil is called by the apostle a "prince of the power of the air." He then goes on to cite the great fathers of the Church--Clement, Jerome, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas.(224)

(224) For Delrio, see his Disquisitiones Magicae, first printed at Liege in 1599-1600, but reprinted again and again throughout the seventeenth century. His interpretation of Psalm lxxviii, 47-49, was apparently shared by the translators of our own authorized edition. For citations by him, see Revelation vii, 1,; Ephesians ii, 2. Even according to modern commentators (e.g., Alford), the word here translated "power" denotes not MIGHT, but GOVERNMENT, COURT, HIERARCHY; and in this sense it was always used by the ecclesiastical writers, whose conception is best rendered by our plural--"powers." See Delrio, Disquisitiones Magicae, lib. ii, c. 11.

This doctrine was spread not only in ponderous treatises, but in light literature and by popular illustrations. In the Compendium Maleficarum of the Italian monk Guacci, perhaps the most amusing book in the whole literature of witchcraft, we may see the witch, in propria persona, riding the diabolic goat through the clouds while the storm rages around and beneath her; and we may read a rich collection of anecdotes, largely contemporary, which establish the required doctrine beyond question.

The first and most natural means taken against this work of Satan in the air was prayer; and various petitions are to be found scattered through the Christian liturgies--some very beautiful and touching. This means of escape has been relied upon, with greater or less faith, from those days to these. Various medieval saints and reformers, and devoted men in all centuries, from St. Giles to John Wesley, have used it with results claimed to be miraculous. Whatever theory any thinking man may hold in the matter, he will certainly not venture a reproachful word: such prayers have been in all ages a natural outcome of the mind of man in trouble.(225)

(225) For Guacci, see his Compendium Maleficarum (Milan, 1608). For the cases of St. Giles, John Wesley, and others stilling the tempests, see Brewer, Dictionary of Miracles, s. v. Prayer.

But against the "power of the air" were used other means of a very different character and tendency, and foremost among these was exorcism. In an exorcism widely used and ascribed to Pope Gregory XIII, the formula is given: "I, a priest of Christ,... do command ye, most foul spirits, who do stir up these clouds,... that ye depart from them, and disperse yourselves into wild and untilled places, that ye may be no longer able to harm men or animals or fruits or herbs, or whatsoever is designed for human use." But this is mild, indeed, compared to some later exorcisms, as when the ritual runs: "All the people shall rise, and the priest, turning toward the clouds, shall pronounce these words: 'I exorcise ye, accursed demons, who have dared to use, for the accomplishment of your iniquity, those powers of Nature by which God in divers ways worketh good to mortals; who stir up winds, gather vapours, form clouds, and condense them into hail.... I exorcise ye,... that ye relinquish the work ye have begun, dissolve the hail, scatter the clouds, disperse the vapours, and restrain the winds.'" The rubric goes on to order that then there shall be a great fire kindled in an open place, and that over it the sign of the cross shall be made, and the one hundred and fourteenth Psalm chanted, while malodorous substances, among them sulphur and asafoetida, shall be cast into the flames. The purpose seems to have been literally to "smoke out" Satan.(226)

(226) See Polidorus Valerius, Practica exorcistarum; also the Thesaurus
exorcismorum (Cologne, 1626), pp. 158-162.

Manuals of exorcisms became important--some bulky quartos, others handbooks. Noteworthy among the latter is one by the Italian priest Locatelli, entitled Exorcisms most Powerful and Efficacious for the Dispelling of Aerial Tempests, whether raised by Demons at their own Instance or at the Beck of some Servant of the Devil.(227)

(227) That is, Exorcismi, etc. A "corrected" second edition was printed at Laybach, 1680, in 24mo, to which is appended another manual of Preces et conjurationes contra aereas tempestates, omnibus sacerdotibus utiles et necessaria, printed at the monastery of Kempten (in Bavaria) in 1667. The latter bears as epigraph the passage from the gospels describing Christ's stilling of the winds.

The Jesuit Gretser, in his famous book on Benedictions and Maledictions, devotes a chapter to this subject, dismissing summarily the scepticism that questions the power of devils over the elements, and adducing the story of Job as conclusive.(228)

(228) See Gretser, De benedictionibus et maledictionibus, lib. ii, c.
48.

Nor was this theory of exorcism by any means confined to the elder Church. Luther vehemently upheld it, and prescribed especially the first chapter of St. John's gospel as of unfailing efficacy against thunder and lightning, declaring that he had often found the mere sign of the cross, with the text, "The word was made flesh," sufficient to put storms to flight.(229)

(229) So, at least, says Gretser (in his De ben. et aml., as above).

From the beginning of the Middle Ages until long after the Reformation the chronicles give ample illustration of the successful use of such exorcisms. So strong was the belief in them that it forced itself into minds comparatively rational, and found utterance in treatises of much importance.

But, since exorcisms were found at times ineffectual, other means were sought, and especially fetiches of various sorts. One of the earliest of these appeared when Pope Alexander I, according to tradition, ordained that holy water should be kept in churches and bedchambers to drive away devils.(230) Another safeguard was found in relics, and of similar efficacy were the so-called "conception billets" sold by the Carmelite monks. They contained a formula upon consecrated paper, at which the devil might well turn pale. Buried in the corner of a field, one of these was thought to give protection against bad weather and destructive insects.(231)

(230) "Instituit ut aqua quam sanctum appellamus sale admixta interpositus sacris orationibus et in templis et in cubiculis ad fugandos daemones retineretur." Platina, Vitae Pontif. But the story is from the False Decretals.

(231) See Rydberg, The Magic of the Middle Ages, translated by Edgren,
pp. 63-66.

But highest in repute during centuries was the Agnus Dei--a piece of wax blessed by the Pope's own hand, and stamped with the well-known device representing the "Lamb of God." Its powers were so marvellous that Pope Urban V thought three of these cakes a fitting gift from himself to the Greek Emperor. In the Latin doggerel recounting their virtues, their meteorological efficacy stands first, for especial stress is laid on their power of dispelling the thunder. The stress thus laid by Pope Urban, as the infallible guide of Christendom, on the efficacy of this fetich, gave it great value throughout Europe, and the doggerel verses reciting its virtues sank deep into the popular mind. It was considered a most potent means of dispelling hail, pestilence, storms, conflagrations, and enchantments; and this feeling was deepened by the rules and rites for its consecration. So solemn was the matter, that the manufacture and sale of this particular fetich was, by a papal bull of 1471, reserved for the Pope himself, and he only performed the required ceremony in the first and seventh years of his pontificate. Standing unmitred, he prayed: "O God,... we humbly beseech thee that thou wilt bless these waxen forms, figured with the image of an innocent lamb,... that, at the touch and sight of them, the faithful may break forth into praises, and that the crash of hailstorms, the blast of hurricanes, the violence of tempests, the fury of winds, and the malice of thunderbolts may be tempered, and evil spirits flee and tremble before the standard of thy holy cross, which is graven upon them."(232)

(232) These pious charms are still in use in the Church, and may be found described in any ecclesiastical cyclopaedia. The doggerel verses run as follows:

"Tonitrua magna terret, Inimicos nostras domat Et peccata nostra delet; Praegnantem cum partu salvat, Ab incendio praeservat, Dona dignis multa confert, A subersione servat, Utque malis mala defert. A morte cita liberat, Portio, quamvis parva sit, Et Cacodaemones fugat, Ut magna tamen proficit."

See these verses cited in full faith, so late as 1743, in Father Vincent of Berg's Enchiridium, pp. 23, 24, where is an ample statement of the virtues of the Agnus Dei, and istructions for its use. A full account of the rites used in consecrating this fetich, with the prayers and benedictions which gave colour to this theory of the powers of the Agnus Dei, may be found in the ritual of the Church. I have used the edition entitled Sacrarum ceremoniarum sive rituum Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae libri tres, Rome, 1560, in folio. The form of the papal prayer is as follows: "Deus... te supplicater deprecamur, ut... has cereas formas, innocentissimi agni imagine figuritas, benedicere... digneris, ut per ejus tactum et visum fideles invitentur as laudes, fragor grandinum, procella turbinum, impetus tempestatum, ventorum rabies, infesta tonitrua temperentur, fugiant atque tremiscant maligni spiritus ante Sanctae Crucis vexillum, quod in illis exculptum est...."(Sacr. Cer. Rom. Eccl., as above). If any are curious as to the extent to which this consecrated wax was a specific for all spiritual and most temporal ills during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, let them consult the Jesuit Litterae annuae, passim.

Another favourite means with the clergy of the older Church for bringing to naught the "power of the air," was found in great processions bearing statues, relics, and holy emblems through the streets. Yet even these were not always immediately effective. One at Liege, in the thirteenth century, thrice proved unsuccessful in bringing rain, when at last it was found that the image of the Virgin had been forgotten! A new procession was at once formed, the Salve Regina sung, and the rain came down in such torrents as to drive the devotees to shelter.(233)

(233) John of Winterthur describes many such processions in Switzerland in the thirteenth century, and all the monkish chronicles speak of them. See also Rydberg, Magic of the Middle Ages, p. 74.

In Catholic lands this custom remains to this day, and very important features in these processions are the statues and the reliquaries of patron saints. Some of these excel in bringing sunshine, others in bringing rain. The Cathedral of Chartres is so fortunate as to possess sundry relics of St. Taurin, especially potent against dry weather, and some of St. Piat, very nearly as infallible against wet weather. In certain regions a single saint gives protection alternately against wet and dry weather--as, for example, St. Godeberte at Noyon. Against storms St. Barbara is very generally considered the most powerful protectress; but, in the French diocese of Limoges, Notre Dame de Crocq has proved a most powerful rival, for when, a few years since, all the neighbouring parishes were ravaged by storms, not a hailstone fell in the canton which she protected. In the diocese of Tarbes, St. Exupere is especially invoked against hail, peasants flocking from all the surrounding country to his shrine.(234)

(234) As to protection by special saints as stated, see the Guide du touriste et du pelerin a Chartes, 1867 (cited by "Paul Parfait," in his Dossier des Pelerinages); also pp. 139-145 of the Dossier.

But the means of baffling the powers of the air which came to be most widely used was the ringing of consecrated church bells.

This usage had begun in the time of Charlemagne, and there is extant a prohibition of his against the custom of baptizing bells and of hanging certain tags(235) on their tongues as a protection against hailstorms; but even Charlemagne was powerless against this current of medieval superstition. Theological reasons were soon poured into it, and in the year 968 Pope John XIII gave it the highest ecclesiastical sanction by himself baptizing the great bell of his cathedral church, the Lateran, and christening it with his own name.(236)

(235) Perticae. See Montanus, Hist. Nachricht van den Glocken (Chenmitz,
1726), p. 121; and Meyer, Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters, p. 186.

(236) For statements regarding Pope John and bell superstitions, see Higgins's Anacalypsis, vol. ii, p. 70. See also Platina, Vitae Pontif., s. v. John XIII, and Baronius, Annales Ecclesiastici, sub anno 968. The conjecture of Baronius that the bell was named after St. John the Baptist, is even more startling than the accepted tradition of the Pope's sponsorship.

This idea was rapidly developed, and we soon find it supported in ponderous treatises, spread widely in sermons, and popularized in multitudes of inscriptions cast upon the bells themselves. This branch of theological literature may still be studied in multitudes of church towers throughout Europe. A bell at Basel bears the inscription, "Ad fugandos demones." Another, in Lugano, declares "The sound of this bell vanquishes tempests, repels demons, and summons men." Another, at the Cathedral of Erfurt, declares that it can "ward off lightning and malignant demons." A peal in the Jesuit church at the university town of Pont-a-Mousson bore the words, "They praise God, put to flight the clouds, affright the demons, and call the people." This is dated 1634. Another bell in that part of France declares, "It is I who dissipate the thunders"(Ego sum qui dissipo tonitrua).(237)

(237) For these illustrations, with others equally striking, see Meyer, Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters, pp. 185, 186. For the later examples, see Germain, Anciennes cloches lorraines (Nancy, 1885), pp. 23, 27.

Another, in one of the forest cantons of Switzerland, bears a doggerel couplet, which may be thus translated:

"On the devil my spite I'll vent, And, God helping, bad weather prevent."(238)

(238) "An dem Tufel will cih mich rachen, Mit der hilf gotz alle bosen
wetter erbrechen." (See Meyer, as above.)

Very common were inscriptions embodying this doctrine in sonorous Latin.

Naturally, then, there grew up a ritual for the consecration of bells. Knollys, in his quaint translation of the old chronicler Sleidan, gives us the usage in the simple English of the middle of the sixteenth century: