Chapter IV: Part 4

A long time must have been required for the festivals common to the natural religions of Europe to become extinct or be remodelled into Christian form. The external practices by which religious ideas obtain a sensuous expression, possess generally more tenacious power of existence than the ideas themselves, and continue in existence when these have disappeared, as the shell after the death of the nautilus. In certain religions of natural development adoration of the sun and the moon are the most important. Among the Celtic, Germanic and Slavic tribes, as before among Hebrews and Phoenicians, these divinities of the light were adored by kindling fires, by sacrifices and banquets on mountains and in groves, especially at the time of the vernal equinox (Easter), at the beginning of May (Valpurge's night), and on the night of the summer solstice. From the fact that traces of the custom still exist in our own day, though its original significance is lost, we can all the more safely assume that it continued to exist without interruption, openly at first, then in secret, retaining its significance, in spite of the efforts of spiritual and profane authorities to extirpate it, and assuming more and more in the popular mind that character of devil-worship with which the Church has branded these reminiscences, from heathen times. And when finally it ceased entirely, or was changed into seasons of popular festivity which had no dangerous suggestiveness even in the eyes of the Church, still the remembrance of the demoniacal festivals of mountain and grove must have been inherited from generation to generation, and then it was but another step to believe that they still continued and were participated in by persons who practiced magical arts, and had been invested with the suspicious wisdom of the ancient valas and druids--the female seers and physicians of the pagans. That the notion of the Witches' Sabbath, which was celebrated on the night before the first of May, and of the paschal journey of the witches to Blokulla have this historical origin is very probable. The ecclesiastical literature from the first half of the Middle Ages does not leave us without significant hints apparently corroborating this opinion. St. Egidius, who died in 659 A. D., speaks frequently against the _fire-worship_, practiced during midsummer nights, which as inherited from pagan forefathers was accompanied with dancing, and against the invocation of the sun and moon (which he calls "the demons Hercules and Diana"), and against worshipping in groves and by trees, springs and crossroads. The apostle of the Allemans, St. Firminus, who died in 754 A. D., preaches against the same customs, and especially dwells on the pertinacity with which old women adhere to the infernal festivals with their magical songs and dances. Modern authors on the subject in question speak of a _synodal decree_ which is said to date back to the council of Ancyra in 314 A. D., and which enjoins the bishops especially to watch the godless women who, deceived by the delusions of the demons, imagine that they traverse in the night, in the company of Diana and Herodias and riding on certain animals, wide tracts of country, and are required to assemble for a certain number of nights by the command of their mistress. But although this synodal decree is spurious and belongs to a far later period and a different locality (it is referred to for the first time in the ninth century, in a work composed by the Abbot Regino[44]), it is old enough to deserve our attention here. To the decree is appended a number of questions which the bishops must put to such women in confession. Among them are the following, which connect immediately the witch-journey with heathen traditions:--

"Have you followed the practice inherited from the heathen of considering the course of the stars, the moon and the eclipses of the new moon? And have you imagined that by the exclamation 'Conquer, moon' (_vince, Luna_), you could reproduce its light? When you wished to pray, have you resorted to other places than the church, as, for instance, to springs, stones, trees or crossroads? Have you there kindled fires and sacrificed bread or aught else?"

John of Salisbury, who died A. D. 1182, writes of women who, led by a "night-queen," assemble and celebrate banquets at which they most relish children stolen from their cradles. He still supposed that this may not really be a fact, but only demoniacal illusions, phantasmagorial tricks played by the devil, and empty dreams, especially as such things happen among women, and not among men, who possess a stronger reason. The same view of the case is held by William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris (died A. D. 1248). But already during the life of this prelate the belief in the reality of witch-feasts was sanctioned by the authority of Pope Gregory IX., and every doubt in regard to it was declared to be heresy.

At the same time the connection between heresy and witchcraft was revived and confirmed by the Church, so that all heretics were to be considered as the sworn subjects of the devil, and initiated into sorcery, even though not all sorcerers and witches were necessarily heretics. The Church at this time threatened by several newly arisen sects, had recourse to every expedient to uphold its hierarchy and the unity of confession. In the year 1223 Gregory IX. promulgated a letter which exhorted to a crusade against the Stedinghs, a sect which had spread themselves in Friesland and Lower Saxony. He accused them of worshipping and having secret communion with the prince of darkness. According to the papal edict the Stedinghs considered the devil as the real and the good deity, expelled by the other and the evil from heaven, but returning thither in the fulness of time, when the usurper on account of his extreme tyranny, cruelty and injustice had made himself hated by the race of men and had finally become convinced of his own incapability and powerlessness. In truth if such a belief had sprung up it would not have been strange. Everywhere the power and the influence of the devil was seen, but nowhere God's, if not in the bloody and terrible laws and oppressive social system which were declared by spiritual and profane authorities to be divine. The very theory by which the Church sought to save for God his attribute of omnipotence--the theory of consent, according to which the devil exercises such power only by God's permission--this very theory was suited to augment the confusion and the terror. "Never," says Bunsen,[45] "has there been a time when a divine and universal government was so much despaired of as in the Middle Ages." Bunsen inclines to the view of the French historian Michelet, that from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, after the Waldenses and Albigenses in France had been exterminated by Romish persecution, and the lower classes had been reduced to serfs, a religion of despair, a real Satanic _cultus_ sprang up, and that the Witches' Sabbath was in fact founded upon nightly congregations, in which thousands of brutalized men driven by misery and oppression gathered themselves together in order to worship the devil and invoke his aid. But there exists no absolutely certain historical fact to prove that such meetings have really taken place. We consider it more probable, as pointed out above, that the Witches' Sabbath was as it were the lingering twilight, constantly deepening, and constantly painted in more monstrous colors, after the day of the degraded festivals in the religion of nature,--an incubus of imagination which oppressed the bosom of humanity buried in a world of dreams; and that nothing more than the belief in its reality, which the Church sanctioned, was necessary to produce the phenomena we describe. The Waldenses and the Albigenses were treated like the Stedinghs. "Let the judges know," writes an inquisitor, "that the sorcerers, the witches and the devil-workers are almost all Waldenses. The Waldenses are by profession, essentially and formally, devil-workers; and though not all conjurers, still conjuration and Waldenseism have much in common." The highest authorities of the Church constantly nourished that awe of the devil and his tools which filled the mind, and they could do it without scruple, being themselves seized by the same terror. Thus John XXII. promulgated, A. D. 1303, two letters, in which he complains that he himself, not less than countless numbers of his sheep, was in danger of his life by the arts of sorcerers who could send devils into mirrors and rings, and make away with men by their words alone. He mentions especially that his enemies have sought to kill him by piercing dolls which they had baptized with his name by needles, invoking the aid of the devil. It is needless to point out what influence such proclamations from Christ's vicar, the infallible head of the Church, would exercise over the common mind. The dualistic philosophy ripened more and more until that terrible crisis which broke out in the fifteenth century. That crisis was preceded by the trial of the Templars and by several great but local witch-processes, with subsequent executions, until finally, Dec. 5th, 1484, the bull of Pope Innocent VIII., "Ad forturan rei memoriam," appeared. This bull with its companion, the "Witch-hammer" (Malleus Malificarum), composed by the monk and inquisitor Sprenger, brought the evil to its climax. Hell was no longer a mere product of the imagination: we see it established on earth in dread reality and stretching its dominion over all Christendom.

Our space does not allow us to reproduce in a literal translation this bull of Pope Innocent, written in barbarous Latin worthy of its subject.[46] We must, however, give some account of its contents. "The serf of God's serfs" begins by testifying the care which as the guardian of souls he must exercise in promoting the growth of the Catholic faith and driving the infamy of heresy far from the proximity of the faithful. "But," he continues, "it is not without profound grief that I have learned recently that persons of both sexes, forgetting their own eternal welfare and erring from the Catholic faith, mix with devils, with _incubi_ and _succubi_, and injure by witch songs, conjurations and other shameful practices, revelries, and crimes, the unborn children of women, the young of animals, the harvests of the fields, the grapes of the vineyards and the fruit of the trees; that they also destroy, suffocate and annihilate men, women, sheep and cattle, vineyards, orchards, meadows, and the like; visit men, women, cattle and other animals with internal and external pains and sickness; prevent men from procreation and women from conception, and render them entirely unfit for their mutual duties, and cause them to recant, besides, with sacrilegious lips, the very faith which they have received in baptism."... The pope therefore appoints his beloved sons, the professors of theology Henry Institor and Jacob Sprenger, to be prime inquisitors with absolute power over all districts which are contaminated with those diseases; and since he knows that there are persons who are not ashamed to insist upon their perverse assertion that such crimes are only imaginary, and should not be punished, he threatens them, whatever be their position or dignity, with the severest punishments, in case they dare to counteract in any way the inquisitors, or interfere in behalf of the accused. Finally, he proclaims that no appeal from the tribunals of the inquisitors to other courts, not even to the pope himself, will be allowed. The inquisitors and their assistants are invested with unlimited power over life and death, and are exhorted to fulfil their commission with zeal and severity.

The bull contains no further indications as to how the judges should proceed in the trial of witches. The "Witch-hammer" was allowed to establish its own norm of procedure. It is of importance here to give a resume of the contents of this book, since it became a juridical authority which was followed in all countries, even in the Protestant, until after the beginning of the eighteenth century. The spirit of the time can not be better characterized than by this book; in no clearer or more tangible way can it be shown whither supernatural ideas in cosmic philosophy will lead, and how they finally will destroy reason, morality, human feeling, and change the world into a mad-house.

The book to which the bull of Pope Innocent and a diploma from the emperor Maximilian serve as a commendatory introduction, begins with an apology intended to show that its author does not introduce any thing novel and untried, but that its theories are entirely founded upon the Scriptures. To prove this he quotes passages from the Old and New Testaments, from the fathers, the decrees of the councils, the canonical letters, from the writings of Thomas Aquinas, Damianus and others. The devil, says the "Witch-hammer," has no power indeed to suspend natural laws, but the Bible shows incontestably that God has vouchsafed him a wide dominion over the natural powers of corporeal things. Witness only the history of Job, and the temptation of Jesus in the desert. Further, the existence of the many demoniacs spoken of in the New Testament proves that Satan can dwell in man and use the human body as his implement. "But," says the "Witch-hammer," constantly aiming to deduce all its conclusions ostensibly according to logic, "there must be no confusion between demoniacs and witches. The existence of the former does not prove the existence of the latter; this must be demonstrated in a different way. And this is the proof: The devil as a spiritual being is not capable of a real corporeal contact. He must therefore make use of an instrument to which he imparts his power; for every bodily effect is produced by contact. These instruments are the sorcerers and the witches. It being then incontestable on the one side that the power of the devil is great, and on the other that he can accomplish nothing without the aid of sorcerers and witches, the necessary conclusion is that these must exist. This conclusion is for the rest most decisively confirmed by the Bible. Moses ordains that witches should be put to death, a command which would be entirely superfluous if witches had not existed. He who asserts that there are no witches must therefore rightly be accounted a heretic."

The "Witch-hammer" then broaches the question, why it is that women are especially addicted to sorcery, and answers it as follows: The holy fathers have often said that there are three things which have no moderation in good or evil: _the tongue_, a _priest_, and a _woman_. Concerning woman this is evident. All ages have made complaints against her. The wise Solomon, who was himself tempted to idolatry by women, has often in his writings given the feminine sex a sad, but true, testimonial; and the holy Chrysostom says: "What is woman but an enemy of friendship, an unavoidable punishment, a necessary coil, a natural temptation, a desirable affliction, a constantly flowing source of tears, a wicked work of nature covered with a shining varnish?" Already had the first woman entered into a sort of compact with the devil; should not then her daughters do it also? The very word _femina_ (woman) means _one wanting in faith_; for _fe_ means "faith," and _minus_ "less."[47] Since she was formed of a crooked rib, her entire spiritual nature has been distorted and inclined more towards sin than virtue. If we here compare the words of Seneca, "Woman either loves or hates; there is no third possibility," it is easy to see that when she does not love God she must resort to the opposite extreme and hate him. It is thus clear why women especially are addicted to the practice of sorcery.[48]

It might now be asked: How is it possible that God permits sorcery? The "Witch-hammer" answers that God has allowed, without any detriment to his perfections, the fall of angels and of our first parents; and as he formerly sanctioned persecutions against the Christians, that the glory of the martyr might be increased, so he also now permits sorcery that the faith of the just may be the more manifest.

The crime of the witches exceeds all other. They unite in one person the heretic, the apostate, and the murderer. The "Witch-hammer" proves that they are worse than the devil himself, for he has fallen once for all, and Christ has not suffered for him. The devil sins therefore only against the Creator, but the witch both against the Creator and the Redeemer.

It is with these and similar questions that the first part of the "Witch-hammer" is occupied. The second part, describing the various kinds and effects of witchcraft and the celebration of the Witches' Sabbath is prefaced with an account of the power of witches. They produce hail, thunder and storms whenever they wish; they fly through the air from one place to another; they can make themselves insensible on the rack; they often subdue the judge's mind by charms, and _confuse him through compassion_; they deprive men and animals of reproductive power; they can see the absent, and predict coming events; they can fill, at their pleasure, human hearts with relentless hatred and passionate love; they destroy the foetus in the womb, cause miscarriages, change themselves and others into cats and were-wolfs; nay, they are able to enchant and kill men and beasts by their very looks. Their strongest passion is to eat the flesh of children; still they eat only unchristened children: if at any time a baptized child is taken by them, it happens by special divine concession.

Their compact with the devil is of two kinds: either a solemn one entered into with all formalities, or a mere private contract. The former is concluded as follows: The witches assemble upon a day set apart by the devil. He appears in the assembly, exhorts them to faithfulness, and promises them glory, happiness and long life, and orders the older witches to introduce the novices whom he puts to the test and causes to take the oath of allegiance; whereupon he teaches them to prepare from the limbs of new-born babes witch-potions and witch-salves, and presents them with a powder, instructing them how it is to be used to the injury of men and beasts.[49] When then the novice has renewed the ceremony of allegiance on the next Witch Sabbath she is a genuine witch. The children needed for the witches' kettles and the sabbath banquets are obtained as follows: The victims are killed by looks or by the above-mentioned powder, when they lie in their cradle or in bed with their mothers. Simple people will then believe that they have died from some natural cause,--from sickness or suffocation. Then when buried the witches steal them from the grave. It has happened that judges have opened, after similar confessions, the grave and found the child in it; but in such cases the judge must consider that the devil is a great taskmaster who may have cheated the eyes of the servants of justice, in order to protect his servants, and in such a case the confession of the witch (forced from her by torture) should prove more than the easily deluded vision of the judge. [What a triumph of supernaturalistic argumentation!]

The witch accomplishes her aerial voyages, says the "Witch-hammer," by smearing a vessel, a broom and a rake, a broomstick and a piece of linen, with the witch-salve; then rising she moves forth through the air, visible or invisible, according to her choice. The "Witch-hammer" reminds those who doubt these air-voyages, of Matt. iv. 5, where it is related how the devil carried Jesus up through the air to the pinnacle of the temple.

We now proceed to the third part of the "Witch-hammer," the criminal law of the witch-courts, which gives instructions how "sorcerers, witches and heretics are to be tried before spiritual as well as civil tribunals."

In regard to preliminary forms of procedure, the "Witch-hammer" lays down first, "That the trial may commence without any previous accusation, and on the strength of a simple report that witches are found somewhere; for it is the duty of the judge in a case fraught with many dangers to the soul, not to wait for an informer or accuser, but, _ex officio_, to institute immediate inquiry." When an inquisitor comes to a city or a village, he must exhort every body by means of proclamations nailed to the doors of churches and town-halls, and by threats of excommunication and punishment, to give information of all persons in any way suspected of the least connection with the practice of witchcraft, or otherwise of bad repute. The informers may be rewarded if the inquisitor thinks it well, by the blessing of the Church, and with money. A box to receive the statements of such informers as wish to be unknown should be placed in the Church.

Two or three witnesses are sufficient to prove guilt. In case so many do not present themselves, then the judge may take means to find and summon them, and force them to tell the truth under oath. He has also the right to examine witnesses previous to the actual trial. As for the qualifications necessary to appear as witnesses, the "Witch-hammer" declares that the excommunicate, accomplices, outlawed, runaway and dissolute women are irreproachable witnesses in cases where the faith is involved. A witch is allowed to testify against a witch, wife against husband, husband against wife, children against parents and so on, but if the testimonies of accomplices or relatives are to the advantage of the accused, then they are of no validity; _for blood is of course thicker than water_, and one raven does not willingly pick out the eyes of another.

The "Witch-hammer" allows an accused to have an advocate, but adds: "If the counsellor defends his suspected client too warmly, it is right and reasonable that he should be considered as far more criminal than the sorcerer or the witch herself; that is to say, as the protector of witches and heretics, he is more dangerous than the sorcerer. He should be looked upon with suspicion in the same degree as he makes a zealous defence." But a trial may be difficult enough without being clogged and hampered by a cunning advocate. In order to confuse such a one and ensnare the accused, it is necessary, says the "Witch-hammer," that a judge should remember the words of the apostle, "_Being crafty I caught you with guile_," and show himself crafty. The "Witch-hammer" informs the judge of five "honest and apostolical tricks" (these are the very words of the book); one of them consists in embodying in the copy of the proceedings which is given to the defending lawyer, a number of facts that have not occurred in the trial, and in mixing the names of the witnesses. "By that means the accused and their lawyer may be so confused that they nowise know who has said any thing, or what has been said."

Among the questions to be put to a person under accusation, the "Witch-hammer" recommends a number, the quality of which may be appreciated by reading the following examples: "Do you know that people hold you to be a witch? Why have you been observed upon the precincts of N. N.? Why have you touched N. N.'s child (or cow)? How did it happen that the child (or the cow) soon after fell sick? What was your business outside of your house when the storm broke forth? How can you explain that your cow yields three times as much milk as the cows of others?"

Sprenger's work gives a detailed account of the treatment to which a person who is accused of sorcery and handed over to the judge must be subjected. Before the trial the accused must be put on the rack in order that his mind may be inclined to confession. Some, rather than confess their guilt, allow themselves to be torn asunder limb by limb; they are "the worst witches," and their endurance is explained by the supposition "that the devil hardens them against their tortures." Others who have been less faithful to him he abandons, and are thus easily induced to confess. "If no confession has been wrung from the witch during the first day"--we quote the "Witch-hammer" literally--"the torture is to be continued the second and the third day. The civil law forbids, to be sure, to _repeat_ the torture, when no proof has been adduced, but it may be _continued_."

The judge should therefore use the following formula: "We ordain that the torture shall be _continued_ (not _repeated_) to-morrow."

The second day the instruments of torture are to be exhibited to the accused, and an attending priest shall read the following adjuration: "I adjure thee, N. N., in the name of the Holy Trinity, by the bitter tears of Jesus Christ which he shed upon the cross ... by the tears of God's saints and elect which they have shed over the world ... that, if thou art innocent, thou pour forth immediately abundant tears; but, if thou art guilty, no tears at all. In the name of God our Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen."

The person thus adjured seldom weeps. But if this should occur, the judge should see that it be not saliva or some other fluid that moistens the eye of the witch. The witch must be led into the court-room backwards, that the judge may see her before she sees him. Otherwise she may enchant him and move him to criminal compassion.

Before the examination of witnesses, the accused must be stripped of all her clothing and have all the hair on her body shaved off, and her limbs must be carefully examined to ascertain if they bear marks, for the devil marks his own. It must be further ascertained by pricking with a needle if any part of the body is devoid of feeling, for that is a sure sign of a witch. Still the absence of such a sign nowise proves innocence.

If the witch can not be made to confess by any means, then the judge must send her to a distant prison. The janitor, some friend and chaste women are to be persuaded to visit the prisoner, and promise to help her to escape, if she will only inform them of some of her arts. In this way, remarks the author of the "Witch-hammer," many a one has been ensnared by us.

We conclude here our account of Sprenger's dreadful book. The reader has contemplated sufficiently this fruit on the tree of the devil.--It may fill us with loathing to consider it, but its teachings are instructive. May we know the tree from the fruit, and may we tear it up with its roots--with those roots yet so abundantly watered by men who know not what they are doing. The fires which the bull of Pope Innocent kindled all over Europe, threw their weird light far into the times which have been called the modern,--far in the eighteenth century. To count these victims of the stake would be impossible. It is, however, sometimes attempted in our days; archives are searched through and discoveries are made which surpass every anticipation. The victims amount to millions.

No age was spared. Children were brought to the stake with their mothers. A silent, gloomy presentiment seized every community when the proclamation on the church doors announced that the inquisitor had arrived. All work in the shops and fields ceased, and all the evil passions flared up into greater activity. He who had an open enemy, or suspected secret envy, knew beforehand that he was lost. It was considered better to anticipate than to be anticipated in denouncing; and the tribunal had hardly commenced its activity, ere it was overcrowded with informers. "When they had commenced in one place to burn witches," says an author of the seventeenth century, "more were found in proportion as they were burned." In various communities in Germany and France _all_ the women were sent to the stake. In many instances it went so far that princes and potentates were forced, from fear of seeing their subjects exterminated, to stay by _authoritative command_ the madness of the inquisitors. Greed brought fuel to the flames which superstition and hatred kindled. We will quote but one example from the history of the Scotch witch-processes. A man named Hopkins who was sent to the gallows, convicted of murder, confessed there that he had brought two hundred women to the stake, and for a recompense of twenty shillings each,--a sum with which the judge rewarded him.

And there was heard in all Europe for many centuries not a single voice raised in the effort to stay the murder with weapons of reason or religion! If there was any who did not share the madness of his time, fear paralyzed his tongue, and learning and religion, far from impeding the evil, had yoked themselves to its triumphal ear. With the Bible in their hands, the theologians sanctioned these barbarous proceedings, and the learned defended them with reasons drawn from the fathers and with subtle argumentation. The Protestant theologians vied with the Catholic in learning. Even Luther and the first reformers did not check, but promoted, the belief in devils. If paganism had been described by the fathers as Satan's work and empire, Luther referred the preceding life of the Church from the beginning of papacy to the same sphere, and changed the whole history of humankind to a diabolical drama. The struggle between the Reformation and Catholicism contributed in still another way to intensify the faith in devils. The religious contest stirred the mind of the age in its innermost depths. Many who occupied middle ground between the reforming preacher on the one hand and the Catholic priest on the other, were hesitating between the old and the new, and many consciences which had already embraced the new were agitated by uneasiness and doubt. The Catholic divine saw in these doubts the beginning of the victory over Satanic error; the Protestant theologian declared the same doubts to be inspired by the originator of papacy, the devil. We can appreciate this state of things by reading Luther's "Tischreden." Men terrified, for instance, by a dream or a strange noise in the night (nothing more than this was required for such an effect) hurried to their pastor to lay their troubles before him. They were then informed, on the one hand, that the dream or the voice was caused by the devil, to whom their apostacy had bound them over, or, on the other, that Satan was trying to frighten them back into the errors which they had abandoned. In both cases the archfiend was the agent. "He was in the castle of the knight, the palaces of the mighty, the libraries of the learned, on every page of the Bible, in the churches, in the halls of justice, in the lawyer's chambers, in the laboratories of physicians and naturalists, in cottages, farmyards, stalls,--everywhere."[50]

He was indeed everywhere, and Christendom had become a hell. "The belief in the devil," says a British author,[51] speaking upon this subject, "had had the effect, that all rational knowledge had disappeared, that all sound philosophy was denounced, that the morality of the people was poisoned and humanity sunk in a whirlpool of folly, godlessness and brutality. All classes were carried away by this whirlpool. The God of nature and Revelation had no longer the reins of the world in his hand. The powers of hell and darkness, born of a diseased imagination, reigned upon the earth."

* * * * *

Throwing its gloomy shadow even into the eighteenth century, it was, however, during the Middle Ages that the belief in sorcery sent down its deep and mighty roots. This is not to be wondered at. The men of the Middle Ages lived less in the real than in a world of magic, in a world resembling more the paintings of "Helvetes-Breughels" than the descriptions of Armidas isle. The air was saturated with demoniacal vapors. The popular literature consisted of legends of saints and stories about the devil. The Church, the general asylum against the devil, saw and taught the people to see everywhere the play of evil powers which must be conquered by magical practices, and amidst Ahriman and his hosts who had now established themselves in the Occident, and as heirs to the horns and tails of Pans and fauns, a crowd of native spirits moved; imps, giants, trolls, forest-spirits, elves and hobgoblins in and on the earth; nicks, river-sprites in the water, fiends in the air, and salamanders in the fire. And to these elementary spirits were added a whole fauna of monsters, such as dragons, griffins, were-wolves, witch-kine, Thor's-swine, and so on. But this does not conclude the review: spectres, ghosts, vampires, spirits causing the nightmare, and so on,--supernatural beings derived from the human world, but of dimmer outlines than the preceding,--conclude the motley procession. The mandrake has a place in it also. This being deserves a few lines here, inasmuch as it has now faded from the popular superstitions.

The mandragora or alrun[52] is originally a very rare herb which can hardly be found except below the gallows where a pure youth has been hanged.[53] He who seeks the herb should know that its lower part has the shape of a human being, and that its upper part consists of broad leaves and yellow flowers. When it is torn from the soil it sighs, shrieks and moans so piteously, that he who hears it must die. To find it one should go out before sunrise on a Friday morning, after having filled his ears carefully with cotton, wax or pitch, and bring with him a black dog without one white hair. The sign of the cross must be made three times over the mandrake, and the soil dug up carefully all around it, so that it be attached only by the fine rootlets. It is then tied by a string to the tail of the dog and he is attracted forward by a piece of bread. The dog pulls the plant out of the earth, but falls dead, struck by the terrible shriek of the mandragora. It is then brought home, washed in red wine, wrapped in red and white silk, laid in a shrine, washed again every Friday, and dressed in a white frock. The mandragora reveals hidden things and future events, and procures for the owner the friendship of all men. A silver coin deposited with it in the evening is doubled in the morning. Still the coin must not be too large in size. If you buy the mandragora it remains with you, throw it wherever you will, until you sell it again. If you keep it till your death you must depart with it to hell. But it can be sold only for a lower price than it was bought. Therefore is he who has bought it with the smallest existing coin, irretrievably lost.

The being called mandragora was, as we see, a kind of "_Spiritus familiaris_." But it appeared in still another form. It happened that adventurers represented themselves as mandragoras, and on account of this mystical origin had gained success at court, having first been spiritually made human by Christian baptism. But they lost by baptism their wonder-working power, greatly to their own and others' pecuniary disadvantage. Still greater was the number of those adventurers during the Middle Ages who asserted themselves or others to be the bastards of devils and human beings. But if they led a blameless life, evincing a firm belief in the dogmas of the Church, the danger of such a pedigree was not greater than the honor. The son of a fallen angel did not need to bend his head before a man of noble birth.

In the demoniacal fauna of the Middle Ages the were-wolf plays too important a role to be passed over in silence. He was the terror of rural districts. Were-wolves are men who change themselves for a time into wolves, and then rove about hunting for children. The belief in the were-wolf is very ancient. Antique authors speak of it as a superstition among the Scythians, and among shepherds and peasants in the eastern provinces.[54] Then the change was considered to result from certain herbs growing in Pontus; in the Middle Ages it was the devil who wrapped a wolf's hide around the witch or the enchanted person. Even this belief was embraced and proclaimed by Augustine. Augustine,--the same father who declared that he would not believe the gospel if the authority of the Church did not exhort him to do so,--found it worthy of a Sadducean or a pagan philosopher alone to deny the existence of so well-known a phenomenon as the were-wolf. The emperor Sigismund had the question investigated "scientifically" in his presence by theologians, and they came to the general agreement that the were-wolf is "a positive and constant fact"; for the existence of the devil being accepted, there is no reason to deny that of the were-wolf, sup-ported as it is by the authority of the fathers of the Church and by general experience.[55] This "general experience" finally became, like the belief in sorcery, a raging mental disease, an epidemic ("_insama zoanthropica_") infecting whole districts in various parts of Europe and sending many insane persons who had confessed before the courts their imagined sin, to the place of execution.[56]

Nearly related to this lycanthropy is the more horrible vampirism. The vampires, according to the belief of the Middle Ages, are disembodied souls which clothe themselves again in their buried bodies, steal at night into houses, and suck from the nipple of the sleeping all their blood. He who is thus bereft of the vital fluid is in his turn changed into a vampire and visits preferably his own relatives. If the corpse of a person suspected of vampirism is dug up, and its stomach pressed, an abundance of fresh blood flows from the mouth. The corpse is well preserved. The belief in vampires has likewise produced a kind of psychical pestilence which yet in the eighteenth century spread terror in the Austrian provinces.[57]

If sorcery was an imaginary people's magic, there existed also a real, and it consisted in an infinite variety of usages, observances and rules for all conditions of life. Not to speak of the astrologers' extensive hand-written calendars, which pointed out which constellations, seasons and days are auspicious for bathing, bleeding, hair-cutting, shaving, house-building, wooing, engaging servants, setting out on travels and so on, there existed among the people an incredibly large mass of rules for living which any body that would avoid the constant danger of bringing misfortune on himself and his family, must know.

From waking up in the morning to going asleep at night, such maxims were to be observed: putting the wrong foot first out of bed in the morning was as sure to be followed by annoyances in the course of the day as a neglect to place the shoes with the heels toward the bed at night was certain to cause the visit of ghosts or evil dreams. When children are born, no one must go out or in, or open the door without bringing fire with him, that the trolls may not find their way in and exchange the child; and no one entering must say a word before he has touched the fire. For the same reason the child, while unchristened, must be watched carefully every night, and a fire must be kept constantly burning on the hearth. Before the christening a child must not be moved from one room to another without putting steel beside it. If two boys are baptized on the same occasion, that one who obtains his name and blessing first will be best endowed both bodily and mentally. On the day of christening the mother should avoid handling an axe, knife or other cutting instruments, otherwise the child will some time be murdered. If the floor under a cradle is swept, the child will be bereft of its sleep. If the cradle is moved while the child is not in it, the child becomes peevish. When a child yawns, the sign of the cross must be made over its mouth, and the words "Jesus, God's son!" added; otherwise the devil will then enter into it. If a child looks out through the window or looks in a mirror at night, it will fall sick. Children punished on Sunday become disobedient; but a child whipped on Good Friday before sunset, will become obedient and well-behaved. If the child walks about in one shoe, the mother will have a sore back. If a child walks or runs backwards, it drives its parents so many steps into hell. A child eating and reading at the same time gets a bad memory. If a suitor's first gift to his betrothed consists of shoes, she will be unfaithful, if of stockings, she will be jealous. Nuptials on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays are unfortunate. If a bridal procession comes to a stop for any reason, the married pair will meet with dissensions. If the marriage-ring is too small, misfortune is in store. Of the bridal pair, that one dies first who first kneels down or rises from kneeling. Those who hold the canopy must not change hands or touch the bride's crown, for that prognosticates misfortune and ennui. If in going out an old woman or one carrying water is met, the room should be re-entered. When the table is set, the bread must be laid upon it immediately. Bread must never be placed with the upper crust down. Great care must be taken to remove all substances separated from the body, as hair, nails, blood; they must be buried in the soil so as not to come in contact with diseased persons, or fall into the hands of witches.

We have selected the preceding observances and rules as examples of those thousands of precepts for all conditions of life which have been collected by investigations in this field from the mouths of the people. A full collection would require a large volume. In all of them is seen a servile fear of mysterious evil influences, lurking on all sides, and whose power or impotency as regards man nowise depends on his morality, but only on the way in which he observes certain ethically indifferent acts. Many of them seem to have arisen only by faulty application of the theory of causality; others depend on a symbolical method of contemplating nature. What a difference between this popular wisdom and that stored up in the gnomes of the Greeks or in the heathen Havamal! Part of the former may be likewise an heirloom, but how exuberantly these superstitions grew during the centuries of ripe and glaring belief in personified evil; how deeply they struck root among the people, while Havamal has been saved from the flood of time only by the hand of the student!

Among the superstitions are to be counted the magical prognosis of diseases and death. Many were the tokens of the approaching skeleton-figure with his scythe and glass. They were heard in the cawing of crows and ravens, in the howling of dogs, in the chirping of the cricket, and the regular ticking of the wood-worm concealed in the wall. If the horse of a priest riding to visit a sick person in his parish lowered its head upon arriving at a house, if a gnat was caught gnawing any clothing, if a light suddenly went out, if an image fell down, if a glass or a mirror was broken, it indicated an approaching death in the house. To determine the fate of a sick person, a piece of bread of which he had eaten was laid in a dark corner, and its change of color was observed; or a piece of fat with which the soles of the sick had been smeared was offered to a dog, or a stone was lifted to see if any thing was concealed beneath it. If the bread became dark, or if the dog refused to eat what was offered him, or if there was no living thing under the stone, then the sick person was considered incurable, and nothing could be hoped even from the inherited medical skill of the wise old men and women. The exercise of this skill consisted in the use, along with "reading" and conjurations, partly of herbs of more or less known efficiency, and partly also, as it appears, of magnetic forces, resorted to mechanically without reflection.

The medical art inherited among the people from generation to generation is a subject which none but a clear-sighted and unprejudiced scientist of the medical profession can treat, and which has been left hitherto without that investigation which the subject undoubtedly deserves, at least from a historical point of view. There was, at the end of the Middle Ages, among the devotees of the Galenic art a man of genius who, despairing to find in the folios of the medical scholastics any traces of truth, abandoned the lecture-room and went forth into the world without in order, as he himself said, to read the book of nature and learn something of that medical instinct with which God, as he believed, must have endowed men as well as animals, and which must find a true expression only in the people living in immediate reciprocity with nature. This man was Paracelsus. He who despised and overwhelmed with mockery the coryphei of his days in the medical faculties, did not disdain to listen to "the experience of peasants, old women, night-wanderers, and vagabonds," and the magnetical system which he constructed "by the illumination of nature's light, and not by the lamp-flare of an apothecary's shop," rest in all probability on the general principles which he found in the plurality of sympathetic cures practiced among the people. In the "reading" by which these cures were accompanied, Paracelsus saw rightly nothing but a subjective moment, and means of making faith and imagination the allies of the physician. A mass of these conjuration-formulae in different diseases have been collected and published in various countries of Europe. They offer the reader little or nothing of interest.[58]

A very common usage during the Middle Ages was to measure the sick person, at one time to cure him, at another to find out if the disease was decreasing or increasing. Another means was to drag him through a hole. Sick children were pulled through holes dug in the earth or through a cleft cherry-tree. Sick sheep were forced to creep through the cleft of an oak, and so on. Another remedy against many kinds of sufferings was the binding of a thread or a band which had been read over, around the neck or some limb of the sick. Connected with this is the tying of witch-knots, used only with evil intent. Bands of different colors and material[59] were required for these. They were buried near the dwelling of the person to be injured. It was thought that by this means any limb or bodily power of an enemy could be impaired. A French jurist and witch-judge, Pierre Delancre, complains that in his days there were few married couples in France whose happiness had not been marred by this means; young men hardly dared to marry from fear of it. Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, advised, as a remedy against this influence, a diligent use of the sacraments. In French rituals church-prayers against the effects of witch-knots are prescribed. Hardly less universally was it the custom to make dolls of rags, dough, wax or clay, baptize them with the name of the hated person, put them in the fire or pierce them with needles, and bury them under the threshold of that individual, all in order to inflict sufferings on him.[60] Diseases could also be transferred to dolls by reading certain formulae, and placing them in some inaccessible place, or in running water.

Not only against diseases, but also against the dangers of fire and war, against ill-luck in love or chase, on voyages and the like, magical remedies were freely resorted to by the people. The "Witch-hammer" complains bitterly against the criminal practice of the soldiers in mutilating crucifixes in order to harden themselves against the sword and bullets. The executioner in Passau gained, during the Thirty Years' War, a wide reputation for his skill in hardening the human frame, which he did by means of scraps of paper with cabalistic figures (Passauer Henkers-Zettel), which were eaten. The belief that hunters procured, by means of conjurations, "free-arrows" and "free-bullets" was very common. The "Witch-hammer" accuses various potentates of having in their pay "diabolical archers" who hit their mark from a long distance without aiming. It was customary at fires to throw into the flames so-called shields of David,--plates with two intersecting triangles and the motto "Agla" (the initials of four Hebrew words meaning: "Thou art strong eternally, O Lord!") and "_consummatum est_." As late as in the middle of the last century the magistrate of Leipzig ordered that such plates should be laid up in the rathhaus to be used in case of fires. In Catholic countries the clergy took the employment of magical appliances against fires into their own hands; processions singing and bearing relics went around the burning house three times, and if this had no salutary effect, it was a sure sign that God had allowed the devil to wield the consuming element unto destruction.

The extent of this treatise does not allow a detailed exposition of the many divinatory arts which had their adepts among the people. The Church preaching mightily against those arts and representing them as devices of the devil, the father of lies and founder of oracles, did not, however, deny, but could confirm by biblical quotation, their power to unveil futurity.

Every thing that we have here described was to the Church black magic: all mystical practices among the people, whether resorted to for good or evil purposes, to heal or cure, were looked upon as implying contempt for the divine magic of the Church itself, and also a league with the devil, if not a formal one, at any rate a "_pactum implicitum_." It was therefore the possessors of the traditional popular art of healing who were first sent to the stake wherever the inquisition commenced its trials. But no terrorism could eradicate the popular magic so long as the persecutors themselves believed in its efficiency, and fought only for a consecrated superstition against its outlawed counterfeit. The struggle against the superstition of the Church as well as of the people, was reserved for another time and for another theory of the universe and of morals.

The so-called wandering scholastics (_scholastici vagantes_, _scholares erratici_) formed a kind of connecting link between the magic of the learned and that of the common people. They were ruined and adventurous students, priests and monks who wandered about in the rural districts of most of the European states, especially Germany, representing themselves as treasure-diggers, selling "_spiritus familiares_," amulets, love-potions, and life-elixirs, conjuring spirits, divining by the stars, and healing men and cattle. These adventurers were associated in a regular guild, and had like other vagrant tradesmen, their lodgings and hospitals in the cities. They were dreaded competitors of the witch-fathers of the cloisters, were several times excommunicated by the Church, and seem to have nearly disappeared when the witch-trials commenced in earnest. It is to a person of that kind that the Faust-legend is attached. It reflects the popular opinions concerning the power of learned magicians.[61]