La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages Part 10

[40] Leprosy has been traced to Asia and the Crusades; but Europe had it in herself. The war declared by the Middle Ages against the flesh and all cleanliness bore its fruits. More than one saint boasted of having never washed even his hands.

And how much did the rest wash? To have stripped for a moment would have been sinful. The worldlings carefully follow the teaching of the monks. This subtle and refined society, which sacrificed marriage and seemed inspired only with the poetry of adultery, preserved a strange scruple on a point so harmless. It dreaded all cleansing, as so much defilement.

There was no bathing for a thousand years!

What remedy does Christian Europe find for this twofold ill? Death and captivity; nothing more. When the bitter celibacy, the hopeless love, the pa.s.sion irritable and ever-goading, bring you into a morbid state; when your blood is decomposing, then you shall go down into an _In pace_, or build your hut in the desert. You must live with the handbell in your hand, that all may flee before you. "No human being must see you: no consolation may be yours. If you come near, 'tis death."

Leprosy is the last stage, the _apogee_ of this scourge; but a thousand other ills, less hideous but still cruel, raged everywhere.

The purest and the most fair were stricken with sad eruptions, which men regarded as sin made visible, or the chastis.e.m.e.nt of G.o.d. Then people did what the love of life had never made them do: they forsook the old sacred medicine, the bootless holy water, and went off to the Witch. From habit and fear as well, they still repaired to church; but thenceforth their true church was with her, on the moor, in the forest, in the desert. To her they carried their vows.

Prayers for healing, prayers for pleasure. On the first effervescing of their heated blood, folk went to the Sibyl, in great secrecy, at uncertain hours. "What shall I do? and what is this I feel within me?

I burn: give me some lenitive. I burn: grant me that which causes my intolerable desire."

A bold, a blamable journey, for which they reproach themselves at night. Let this new fatality be never so urgent, this fire be never so torturing, the Saints themselves never so powerless; still, have not the indictment of the Templars and the proceedings of Pope Boniface unveiled the Sodom lying hid beneath the altar? But a wizard Pope, a friend of the Devil, who also carried him away, effects a change in all their ideas. Was it not with the Demon's help that John XXII., the son of a shoemaker, a Pope no more of Rome, succeeded in ama.s.sing in his town of Avignon more gold than the Emperor and all the kings? As the Pope is, so is the bishop. Did not Guichard, Bishop of Troyes, procure from the Devil the death of the King's daughters? No death we ask for--we; but pleasant things--for life, for health, for beauty, and for pleasure: the things of G.o.d which G.o.d refuses. What shall we do? Might we but win them through the grace of the _Prince of this World_!

When the great and mighty doctor of the Renaissance, Paracelsus, cast all the wise books of ancient medicine into the fire, Latin, and Jewish, and Arabic, all at once, he declared that he had learned none but the popular medicine, that of the _good women_,[41] the _shepherds_, and the _headsmen_, the latter of whom made often good horse-doctors and clever surgeons, resetting bones broken or put out of joint.

[41] The name given in fear and politeness to the witches.

I make no doubt but that his admirable and masterly work on _The Diseases of Women_--the first then written on a theme so large, so deep, so tender--came forth from his special experience of those women to whom others went for aid; of the witches, namely, who always acted as the midwives: for never in those days was a male physician admitted to the woman's side, to win her trust in him, to listen to her secrets. The witches alone attended her, and became, especially for women, the chief and only physician.

What we know for surest with regard to their medicinal practice is, that for ends the most different, alike to stimulate and to soothe, they made use of one large family of doubtful and very dangerous plants, called, by reason of the services they rendered, _The Comforters_, or Solaneae.[42]

[42] Man's ingrat.i.tude is painful to see. A thousand other plants have come into use: a hundred exotic vegetables have become the fas.h.i.+on. But the good once done by these poor _Comforters_ is clean forgotten!--Nay, who now remembers or even acknowledges the old debt of humanity to harmless nature? The _Asclepias acida_, _Sarcostemma_, or flesh-plant, which for five thousand years was the _Holy Wafer_ of the East, its very palpable G.o.d, eaten gladly by five hundred millions of men,--this plant, in the Middle Ages called the Poison-queller (_vince-venenum_), meets with not one word of historical comment in our books of Botany. Perhaps two thousand years hence they will forget the wheat. See Langlois on the _Soma_ of India and the _Hom_ of Persia. _Mem. de l'Academie des Inscriptions_, xix. 326.

A vast and popular family, many kinds of which abound to excess under our feet, in the hedges, everywhere--a family so numerous that of one kind alone we have eight hundred varieties.[43] There is nothing easier, nothing more common, to find. But these plants are mostly dangerous in the using. It needs some boldness to measure out a dose, the boldness, perhaps, of genius.

[43] M. d'Orbigny's _Dictionary of Natural History_, article _Morelles_.

Let us, step by step, mount the ladder of their powers.[44] The first are simply pot-herbs, good for food, such as the mad-apples and the tomatoes, miscalled "love-apples." Other, of the harmless kinds, are sweetness and tranquillity itself, as the white mullens, or lady's fox-gloves, so good for fomentations.

[44] I have found this ladder nowhere else. It is the more important, because the witches who made these essays at the risk of pa.s.sing for poisoners, certainly began with the weakest, and rose gradually to the strongest. Each step of power thus gives its relative date, and helps us in this dark subject to set up a kind of chronology. I shall complete it in the following chapters, when I come to speak of the Mandragora and the Datura. I have chiefly followed Pouchet's _Solanees_ and _Botanique Generale_.

Going higher up, you come on a plant already suspicious, which many think a poison, a plant which at first seems like honey and afterwards tastes bitter, reminding one of Jonathan's saying, "I have eaten a little honey, and therefore shall I die." But this death is serviceable, a dying away of pain. The "bittersweet" should have been the first experiment of that bold h.o.m.opathy which rose, little by little, up to the most dangerous poisons. The slight irritation and the tingling which it causes might point it out as a remedy for the prevalent diseases of that time, those, namely, of the skin.

The pretty maiden who found herself woefully adorned with uncouth red patches, with pimples, or with ringworm, would come crying for such relief. In the case of an elder woman the hurt would be yet more painful. The bosom, most delicate thing in nature, with its innermost vessels forming a matchless flower, becomes, through its injective and congestive tendencies, the most perfect instrument for causing pain.

Sharp, ruthless, restless are the pains she suffers. Gladly would she accept all kinds of poison. Instead of bargaining with the Witch, she only puts her poor hard breast between her hands.

From the bittersweet, too weak for such, we rise to the dark nightshades, which have rather more effect. For a few days the woman is soothed. Anon she comes back weeping. "Very well, to-night you may come again. I will fetch you something, as you wish me; but it will be a strong poison."

It was a heavy risk for the Witch. At that time they never thought that poisons could act as remedies, if applied outwardly or taken in very weak doses. The plants they compounded together under the name of _witches' herbs_, seemed to be but ministers of death. Such as were found in her hands would have proved her, in their opinion, a poisoner or a dealer in accursed charms. A blind crowd, all the more cruel for its growing fears, might fell her with a shower of stones, or make her undergo the trial by water--the _noyade_. Or even--most dreadful doom of all!--they might drag her with a rope round her neck to the churchyard, where a pious festival was held and the people edified by seeing her thrown to the flames.

However, she runs the risk, and fetches home the dreadful plant. The other woman comes back to her abode by night or morning, whenever she is least afraid of being met. But a young shepherd, who saw her there, told the village, "If you had seen her as I did, gliding among the rubbish of the ruined hut, looking about her on all sides, muttering I know not what! Oh, but she has frightened me very much! If she had seen me, I was a lost man. She would have changed me into a lizard, a toad, or a bat. She took a paltry herb--the paltriest I ever saw--of a pale sickly yellow, with red and black marks, like the flames, as they say, of h.e.l.l. The horror of the thing is, that the whole stalk was hairy like a man, with long, black, sticky hairs. She plucked it roughly, with a grunt, and suddenly I saw her no more. She could not have run away so quick; she must have flown. What a dreadful thing that woman is! How dangerous to the whole country!"

Certainly the plant inspires dread. It is the henbane, a cruel and dangerous poison, but a powerful emollient, a soft sedative poultice, which melts, unbends, lulls to sleep the pain, often taking it quite away.

Another of these poisons--the Belladonna, so called, undoubtedly, in thankful acknowledgment, had great power in laying the convulsions that sometimes supervened in childbirth, and added a new danger, a new fear, to the danger and the fear of that most trying moment. A motherly hand instilled the gentle poison, casting the mother herself into a sleep, and smoothing the infant's pa.s.sage, after the manner of the modern chloroform, into the world.[45]

[45] Madame La Chapelle and M. Chaussier have renewed to good purpose these practices of the older medicine. Pouchet, _Solanees_.

Belladonna cures the dancing-fits while making you dance. A daring h.o.m.opathy this, which at first must frighten: it is _medicine reversed_, contrary in most things to that which alone the Christians studied, which alone they valued, after the example of the Jews and Arabs.

How did men come to this result? Undoubtedly by the simple effect of the great Satanic principle, that _everything must be done the wrong way_, the very opposite way to that followed by the holy people. These latter have a dread of poisons. Satan uses them and turns them into remedies. The Church thinks by spiritual means, by sacraments and prayers, to act even on the body. Satan, on the other hand, uses material means to act even upon the soul, making you drink of forgetfulness, love, reverie, and every pa.s.sion. To the blessing of the priest he opposes the magnetic pa.s.ses made by the soft hands of women, who cheat you of your pains.

By a change of system, and yet more of dress, as in the subst.i.tution of linen for wool, the skin-diseases lost their intensity. Leprosy abated, but seemed to go inwards and beget deeper ills. The fourteenth century wavered between three scourges--the epileptic dancings, the plague, and the sores which, according to Paracelsus, led the way to syphilis.

The first danger was not the least. About 1350 it broke out in a frightful manner with the dance of St. Guy, and was singular especially in this, that it did not act upon each person separately.

As if carried on by one same galvanic current, the sick caught each other by the hand, formed immense chains, and spun and spun round till they died. The spectators, who laughed at first, presently catching the contagion, let themselves go, fell into the mighty current, increased the terrible choir.

What would have happened if the evil had held on as long as leprosy did even in its decline?

It was the first step, as it were, towards epilepsy. If that generation of sufferers had not been cured, it would have begotten another decidedly epileptic. What a frightful prospect! Think of Europe covered with fools, with idiots, with raging madmen! We are not told how the evil was treated and checked. The remedy prescribed by most, the falling upon these jumpers with kicks and cuffings, was entirely fitted to increase the frenzy and turn it into downright epilepsy.[46] Doubtless there was some other remedy, of which people were loth to speak. At the time when witchcraft took its first great flight, the widespread use of the _Solaneae_, above all, of belladonna, vulgarized the medicine which really checked those affections. At the great popular gatherings of the Sabbath, of which we shall presently speak, the _witches' herb_, mixed with mead, beer, cider,[47] or perry (the strong drinks of the West), set the mult.i.tude dancing a dance luxurious indeed, but far from epileptic.

[46] We should think that few physicians would quite agree with M. Michelet.--TRANS.

[47] Cider was first made in the twelfth century.

But the greatest revolution caused by the witches, the greatest step _the wrong way_ against the spirit of the Middle Ages, was what may be called the reenfeoffment of the stomach and the digestive organs. They had the boldness to say, "There is nothing foul or unclean."

Thenceforth the study of matter was free and boundless. Medicine became a possibility.

That this principle was greatly abused, we do not deny; but the principle is none the less clear. There is nothing foul but moral evil. In the natural world all things are pure: nothing may be withheld from our studious regard, nothing be forbidden by an idle spiritualism, still less by a silly disgust.

It was here especially that the Middle Ages showed themselves in their true light, as _anti-natural_, out of Nature's oneness drawing distinctions of castes, of priestly orders. Not only do they count the spirit _n.o.ble_, and the body _ign.o.ble_; but even parts of the body are called n.o.ble, while others are not, being evidently plebeian. In like manner heaven is n.o.ble, and h.e.l.l is not; but why?--"Because heaven is high up." But in truth it is neither high nor low, being above and beneath alike. And what is h.e.l.l? Nothing at all. Equally foolish are they about the world at large and the smaller world of men.

This world is all one piece: each thing in it is attached to all the rest. If the stomach is servant of the brain and feeds it, the brain also works none the less for the stomach, perpetually helping to prepare for it the digestive _sugar_.[48]

[48] This great discovery was made by Claude Bernard.

There was no lack of injurious treatment. The witches were called filthy, indecent, shameless, immoral. Nevertheless, their first steps on that road may be accounted as a happy revolution in things most moral, in charity and kindness. With a monstrous perversion of ideas the Middle Ages viewed the flesh in its representative, woman,--accursed since the days of Eve--as a thing impure. The Virgin, exalted as _Virgin_ more than as _Our Lady_, far from lifting up the real woman, had caused her abas.e.m.e.nt, by setting men on the track of a mere scholastic puritanism, where they kept rising higher and higher in subtlety and falsehood.

Woman herself ended by sharing in the hateful prejudice and deeming herself unclean. She hid herself at the hour of childbed. She blushed at loving and bestowing happiness on others. Sober as she mostly was in comparison with man, living as she mostly did on herbs and fruits, sharing through her diet of milk and vegetables the purity of the most innocent breeds, she almost besought forgiveness for being born, for living, for carrying out the conditions of her life.

The medical art of the Middle Ages busied itself peculiarly about the man, a being n.o.ble and pure, who alone could become a priest, alone could make G.o.d at the altar. It also paid some attention to the beasts, beginning indeed with them; but of children it thought seldom: of women not at all.

The romances, too, with their subtleties pourtray the converse of the world. Outside the courts and highborn adulterers, which form the chief topic of these romances, the woman is always a poor Griselda, born to drain the cup of suffering, to be often beaten, and never cared for.

In order to mind the woman, to trample these usages under foot, and to care for her in spite of herself, nothing less would serve than the Devil, woman's old ally, her trusty friend in Paradise, and the Witch, that monster who deals with everything the wrong way, exactly contrariwise to that of the holier people. The poor creature set such little store by herself. She would shrink back, blus.h.i.+ng, and loth to say a word. The Witch being clever and evil-hearted, read her to the inmost depths. Ere long she won her to speak out, drew from her her little secret, overcame her refusals, her modest, humble hesitations.