A History of The Inquisition of The Middle Ages Volume III Part 12

Michael.--After noting her contradictions, the story is declared a lie, and a presumptuous, seductory, and pernicious thing, derogatory to the dignity of the angelic Church.

III. Recognizing saints and angels by their teaching and the comfort they bring, and believing in them as firmly as in the faith of Christ.--Her reasons have been insufficient, and her belief rash; comparing faith in them to faith in Christ is an error of faith.

IV. Predictions of future events and recognition of persons not seen before through the Voices.--This is superst.i.tion and divination, presumptuous a.s.sertion, and vain boasting.

V. Wearing men's clothes and short hair, taking the sacrament while in them, and a.s.serting that it is by command of G.o.d.--This is blaspheming G.o.d, despising his sacraments, transgressing the divine law, holy writ, and canonical ordinances, wherefore, "thou savorest ill in the faith, thou boastest vainly and art suspect of idolatry, and thou condemnest thyself in not being willing to wear thy s.e.x's garments and in following the customs of the heathen and Saracen."

VI. Putting Jesus, Maria, and the sign of the cross on her letters, and threatening that if they were not obeyed that she would show in battle who had the best right.--"Thou art murderous and cruel, seeking effusion of human blood, seditious, provoking to tyranny, and blaspheming G.o.d, his commandments and revelations."

VII. Rendering her father and mother almost crazy by leaving them; also promising Charles to restore his kingdom, and all by command of G.o.d.--"Thou hast been wicked to thy parents, transgressing the commandment of G.o.d to honor them. Thou hast been scandalous, blaspheming G.o.d, erring in the faith, and hast made a rash and presumptuous promise to thy king."

VIII. Leaping from the tower of Beaurevoir into the ditch and preferring death to falling into the hands of the English, after the Voices had forbidden it.--This was pusillanimity, tending to desperation and suicide; and in saying that G.o.d had forgiven it, "thou savorest ill as to human free-will."

IX. Saying that St. Catharine and St. Margaret had promised her paradise if she preserved her virginity, feeling a.s.sured of it, and a.s.serting that if she were in mortal sin they would not visit her.--"Thou savorest ill as to the Christian faith."

X. Saying that St. Catharine and St. Margaret spoke French and not English because they were not of the English faction, and that, after knowing that these Voices were for Charles, she had not loved the Burgundians.--This is a rash blasphemy against those saints and a transgression of the divine command to love thy neighbor.

XI. Reverencing the celestial visitants and believing them to come from G.o.d without consulting any churchman; feeling as certain of it as of Christ and the Pa.s.sion; and refusing to reveal the sign made to Charles without the command of G.o.d.--"Thou art an idolater, an invoker of devils, erring in the faith, and hast rashly made an illicit oath."

XII. Refusing to obey the mandate of the Church if contrary to the pretended command of G.o.d, and rejecting the judgment of the Church on earth.--"Thou art schismatic, believing wrongly as to the truth and authority of the Church, and up to the present time thou errest perniciously in the faith of G.o.d."[388]

Maitre Pierre Maurice, who read to her this extraordinary doc.u.ment, proceeded to address her with an odious a.s.sumption of kindness as "_Jehanne ma chere amie_" urging her earnestly and argumentatively to submit herself to the judgment of the Church, without which her soul was sure of d.a.m.nation, and he had shrewd fears for her body. She answered firmly that if the fire was lighted and the executioner ready to cast her in the flames she would not vary from what she had already said.

Nothing remained but to cite her for the next day to receive her final sentence.[389]

On the 24th preparations for an _auto de fe_ were completed in the cemetery of St. Ouen. The pile was ready for lighting, and on two scaffolds were a.s.sembled the Cardinal of Beaufort and other dignitaries, while on a third were Pierre Cauchon, Jean le Maitre, Joan, and Maitre Guillaume Erard, who preached the customary sermon. In his eloquence he exclaimed that Charles VII. had been proved a schismatic heretic, when Joan interrupted him, "Speak of me, but not of the king; he is a good Christian!" She maintained her courage until the sentence of relaxation was partly read, when she yielded to the incessant persuasion mingled with threats and promises to which she had been exposed since the previous night, and she signified her readiness to submit. A formula of abjuration was read to her, and after some discussion she allowed her hand to be guided in scratching the sign of the cross, which represented her signature. Then another sentence, prepared in advance, was p.r.o.nounced, imposing on her, as a matter of course, the customary penance of perpetual imprisonment on bread and water. Vainly she begged for an ecclesiastical prison. Had Cauchon wished it he was powerless, and he ordered the guards to conduct her back whence she came.[390]

The English were naturally furious on finding that they had overreached themselves. They could have tried Joan summarily in a secular court for sorcery and burned her out of hand, but to obtain possession of her they had been obliged to call in the ecclesiastical authorities and the Inquisition, and they were too little familiar with trials for heresy to recognize that inquisitorial proceedings were based on the a.s.sumption of seeking the salvation of the soul and not the destruction of the body.

When they saw how the affair was going a great commotion arose at what they inevitably regarded as a mockery. Joan's death was a political necessity, and their victim was eluding them though in their grasp. In spite of the servility which the ecclesiastics had shown, they were threatened with drawn swords and were glad to leave the cemetery of St.

Ouen in safety.[391]

In the afternoon Jean le Maitre and some of the a.s.sessors visited her in her cell, representing the mercy of the Church and the grat.i.tude with which she should receive her sentence, and warning her to abandon her revelations and follies, for if she relapsed she could have no hope. She was humbled, and when urged to wear female apparel she a.s.sented. It was brought and she put it on; her male garments were placed in a bag and left in her cell.[392]

What followed will never be accurately known. The reports are untrustworthy and contradictory--mere surmises, doubtless--and the secret lies buried in the dungeon of Rouen Castle. The brutal guards, enraged at her escape from the flames, no doubt abused her shamefully; perhaps, as reported, they beat her, dragged her by the hair, and offered violence to her, till at last she felt that her man's dress was her only safety. Perhaps, as other stories go, her Voices reproached her for her weakness, and she deliberately resumed it. Perhaps, also, Warwick, resolved to make her commit an act of relapse, had her female garments removed at night, so that she had no choice but to resume her male apparel. The fact that it was left within her reach and not conveyed away shows at least that there was a desire to tempt her to resume it. Be this as it may, after wearing her woman's dress for two or three days word was brought to her judges that she had relapsed and abandoned it. On May 28 they hastened to her prison to verify the fact.

The incoherence of her replies to their examination shows how she was breaking down under the fearful stress to which she had been subjected.

First she merely said that she had taken the dress; then that it was more suitable since she was to be with men; n.o.body had compelled her, but she denied that she had sworn not to resume it. Then she said that she had taken it because faith had not been kept with her--she had been promised that she should hear ma.s.s and receive the sacrament, and be released from her chains; she would rather die than be kept in fetters--could she hear ma.s.s and be relieved of her irons she would do all that the Church required. She had heard the Voices since her abjuration, and had been told that she had incurred d.a.m.nation by revoking to save her life, for she had only revoked through dread of the fire. The Voices are of St. Catharine and St. Margaret, and come from G.o.d: she had never revoked that, or, if she had, it was contrary to truth. She had rather die than endure the torture of her captivity, but if her judges wish she will resume the woman's dress; as for the rest she knows nothing more.[393]

These rambling contradictions, these hopeless e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of remorse and despair, so different from her former intrepid self-confidence, show that the jailers had understood their work, and that body and soul had endured more than they could bear. It was enough for the judges; she was a self-confessed relapsed, with whom the Church could have nothing more to do except to declare her abandoned to the secular arm without further hearing. Accordingly, the next day, May 29, Cauchon a.s.sembled such of his a.s.sessors as were at hand, reported to them how she had relapsed by resuming male apparel and declaring, through the suggestion of the devil, that her Voices had returned. There could be no question as to her deserts. She was a relapsed, and the only discussion was on the purely formal question, whether her abjuration should be read over to her before her judges abandoned her to the secular arm. A majority of the a.s.sessors were in favor of this, but Cauchon and le Maitre disregarded the recommendation.[394]

At dawn on the following day, May 30, Frere Martin l'Advenu and some other ecclesiastics were sent to her prison to inform her of her burning that morning. She was overcome with terror, threw herself on the ground, tore her hair and uttered piercing shrieks, declaring, as she grew calmer, that it would not have happened had she been placed in an ecclesiastical prison, which was an admission that only the brutality of her dungeon had led her to revoke her abjuration. She confessed to l'Advenu and asked for the sacrament. He was puzzled and sent for instructions to Cauchon, who gave permission, and it was brought to her with all due solemnity. It has been mistakenly argued that this was an admission of her innocence, but the sacrament was never to be denied to a relapsed who asked for it at the last moment, the mere asking, preceded by confession, being an evidence of contrition and desire for reunion to the Church.[395]

The platform for the sermon and the pile for the execution had been erected in the Viel Marche. Thither she was conveyed amid a surging crowd which blocked the streets. It is related that on the way Nicholas l'Oyseleur, the wretched spy, pierced the crowd and the guards and leaped upon the tumbril to entreat her forgiveness, but before she could grant it the English dragged him off and would have slain him had not Warwick rescued him and sent him out of Rouen to save his life. On the platform Nicholas Midi preached his sermon, the sentence of relaxation was read, and Joan was handed over to the secular authorities. Cauchon, le Maitre, and the rest left the platform, and the Bailli of Rouen took her and briefly ordered her to be carried to the place of execution and burned. It has been a.s.sumed that there was an informality in not having her sentenced by a secular court, but this, as we have seen, was unnecessary, especially in the case of a relapsed. On her head was placed a high paper crown inscribed "Heretic, Relapsed, Apostate, Idolater," and she was carried to the stake. One account states that her shrieks and lamentations moved the crowd to tears of pity; another that she was resigned and composed, and that her last utterance was a prayer.

When her clothes were burned off the blazing f.a.gots were dragged aside, that the crowd might see, from her blackened corpse, that she really was a woman, and when their curiosity was satisfied the incineration was completed, the ashes being thrown into the Seine.[396]

It only remained for those who had taken part in the tragedy to justify themselves by blackening the character of their victim and circulating false reports as to the proceedings. That the judges felt that, in spite of sheltering themselves behind the University of Paris, they had incurred dangerous responsibility is shown by their obtaining royal letters s.h.i.+elding them from accountability for what they had done, the king pledging himself to const.i.tute himself a party in any prosecution which might be brought against them before a general council or the pope. That the regency felt that justification was needed in the face of Europe is seen in the letters which were sent to the sovereigns and the bishops in the name of Henry VI., explaining how Joan had exercised inhuman cruelties until the divine power had in pity to the suffering people caused her capture; how, though she could have been punished by the secular courts for her crimes, she had been handed to the Church, which had treated her kindly and benignantly, and on her confession had mercifully imposed on her the penance of imprisonment; how her pride had burst forth in pestilential flames, and she had relapsed into her errors and madness; how she had then been abandoned to the secular arm, and, finding her end approaching, had confessed that the spirits which she invoked were false and lying, and that she was deceived and mocked by them, and how she had finally been burned in sight of the people. This official lying was outdone by the reports which were industriously circulated about her and her trial. The honest Bourgeois of Paris, in entering her execution in his journal, details the offences for which she was condemned, mixing up with the real articles others showing the exaggerations which were industriously circulated. According to him she habitually rode armed with a great staff with which she cruelly beat her people when they displeased her, and in many places she pitilessly slew men and women who disobeyed her; once, when violence was offered her, she leaped from the top of a lofty tower without injury, and boasted that, if she chose, she could bring thunder and other marvels. He admits, however, that even in Rouen there were many who held her to be martyred for her lawful lord.[397] It evidently was felt that in her dreadful death she had fitly crowned her career, and that sympathy for her fate was continuing her work by arousing popular sentiment, for, more than a month later, on July 4, an effort was made to counteract it by a sermon preached in Paris by a Dominican inquisitor--probably our friend Jean le Maitre himself. At great length he expatiated on her deeds of wickedness, and the mercy which had been shown her. She had confessed that from the age of fourteen she had dressed like a man, and her parents would have killed her could they have done so without wounding their consciences. She had therefore left them, accompanied by the devil, and had thenceforth lived by the homicide of Christians, full of fire and blood, till she was burned. She recanted and abjured, and would have had as penance four years' prison on bread and water, but she did not suffer this a single day, for she had herself served in prison like a lady. The devil appeared to her with two demons, fearing greatly that he would lose her, and said to her, "Wicked creature, who through fear hast abandoned thy dress, be not afraid, for we will protect thee from all." Then at once she disrobed and dressed herself in her male attire, which she had thrust in the straw of her bed, and she so trusted in Satan that she said she repented of having abandoned it. Then, seeing that she was obstinate, the masters of the University delivered her to the secular arm to be burned, and when she saw herself in this strait she called on the devils, but after she was judged she could not bring them by any invocation. She then thought better of it, but it was too late. The reverend orator added that there were four of them, of whom we have caught three, this Pucelle, and Peronne and her companion, and one who is with the Armagnacs, named Catharine de la Roch.e.l.le, who says that when the host is consecrated she sees wonders of the highest secrets of the Lord.[398]

This last allusion is to certain imitators of Joan. The impression which she produced on the popular mind inevitably led to imitation, whether through imposture or genuine belief. The Peronne referred to was an old woman of Britanny who, with a companion, was captured at Corbeil, in March, 1430, and brought to Paris. She not only a.s.serted that Joan was inspired, but swore that G.o.d often appeared to her in human form, with a white robe and vermilion cape, ordering her to a.s.sist Joan, and she admitted having received the sacrament twice in one day--Frere Richard being the person who had given it to her at Jargeau. The two were tried by the University; the younger woman recanted, but Peronne was obstinate, and was burned September 3. Catharine de la Roch.e.l.le was another of the _protegees_ of the impressionable Frere Richard, who was much provoked with Joan for refusing to countenance her. She came to Joan at Jargeau and again at Montfaucon in Berri, saying that every night there appeared to her a white woman clad in cloth-of-gold, telling her that the king would give her horses and trumpets, and she would go through the cities proclaiming that all who had money or treasure should bring it forth to pay Joan's men, and if they concealed it she would discover all that was hidden. Joan's practical sense was not to be allured by this proposition. She told Catharine to go home to her husband and children, and on asking counsel of her Voices was told that it was all folly and falsehood. Still, she wrote to the king on the subject and accepted Catharine's offer to exhibit to her the nightly visitant. The first night Joan fell asleep and was told on waking that the apparition had shown itself during her slumber. Then she took a precautionary sleep during the day, and lay awake all night without seeing the white lady. Catharine was probably an impostor rather than an enthusiast, and seems to have escaped the Inquisition.[399]

During Joan's imprisonment her place for a time was taken by a peasant, variously known as Pastourel or Guillaume le Berger, who professed to have had divine revelations ordering him to take up arms in aid of the royal cause. He demonstrated the truth of his mission by exhibiting stigmata on hands, side, and feet, like St. Francis, and commanded wide belief. Pothon de Xaintrailles, Joan's old companion-in-arms, placed confidence in him and carried him along in his adventurous forays.

Guillaume's career, however, was short. He accompanied an expedition into Normandy under the lead of the Marechal de Boussac and Pothon, which was surprised and scattered by Warwick. Pothon and the shepherd were both captured and carried in triumph to Rouen. Experience of inquisitorial delays in the case of Joan probably caused the English to prefer more summary methods, and the unlucky prophet was tossed into the Seine and drowned without a trial. His sphere of influence had been too limited to render him worth making a conspicuous example.[400]

Thus Joan pa.s.sed away, but the spirit which she had aroused was beyond the reach of bishop or inquisitor. Her judicial murder was a useless crime. The Treaty of Arras, in 1435, withdrew Burgundy from the English alliance, and one by one the conquests of Henry V. were wrenched from the feeble grasp of his son. When, in 1449, Charles VII. obtained possession of Rouen he ordered an inquest on the spot into the circ.u.mstances of her trial, for it ill comported with the dignity of a King of France to owe his throne to a witch condemned and burned by the Church. The time had not come, however, when a sentence of the Inquisition could be set aside by secular authority, and the attempt was abandoned. In 1452 another effort was made by Archbishop d'Estouteville of Rouen, but though he was a cardinal and a papal legate, and though he adjoined in the matter Jean Brehal, Inquisitor of France, he could do nothing beyond taking some testimony. The papal intervention was held to be necessary for the revision of a case of heresy decided by the Inquisition, and to obtain this the mother and the two brothers of Joan appealed to Rome as sufferers from the sentence. At length, in 1455, Calixtus III. appointed as commissioners to hear and judge their complaints the Archbishop of Rouen, the Bishops of Paris and Coutances, and the Inquisitor Jean Brehal. Isabelle Darc and her sons appeared as plaintiffs against Cauchon and le Maitre, and the proceedings were carried on at their expense. Cauchon was dead and le Maitre in hiding--concealed probably by his Dominican brethren, for no trace of him could be found. Although the University of Paris does not appear in the case, every precaution was taken to preserve its honor by emphasizing at every stage the fraudulent character of the twelve articles submitted to its decision, and in the final judgment special care was taken to characterize them as false and to order them to be judicially torn to pieces, though it may well be doubted whether they were any more deceptive than innumerable reports made habitually by inquisitors to their a.s.semblies of experts. Finally, on July 7, 1456, judgment was rendered in favor of the complainants, who were declared to have incurred no infamy; the whole process was p.r.o.nounced to be null and void; the decision was ordered to be published in Rouen and all other cities of the kingdom; solemn processions were to be made to the place of her abjuration and that of her execution, and on the latter a cross was to be erected in perpetual memory of her martyrdom. In its restored form it still remains there as a memorial of the utility of the Inquisition as an instrument of statecraft.[401]

CHAPTER VI.

SORCERY AND OCCULT ARTS.

Few things are so indestructible as a superst.i.tious belief once fairly implanted in human credulity. It pa.s.ses from one race to another and is handed down through countless generations; it adapts itself successively to every form of religious faith; persecution may stifle its outward manifestation, but it continues to be cherished in secret, perhaps the more earnestly that it is unlawful. Religion may succeed religion, but the change only multiplies the methods by which man seeks to supplement his impotence by obtaining control over supernatural powers, and to guard his weakness by lifting the veil of the future. The sacred rites of the superseded faith become the forbidden magic of its successor. Its G.o.ds become evil spirits, as the Devas or deities of the Veda became the Daevas or demons of the Avesta; as the bull-wors.h.i.+p of the early Hebrews became idolatry under the prophets, and as the G.o.ds of Greece and Rome were malignant devils to the Christian Fathers.

Europe thus was the unhappy inheritor of an acc.u.mulated ma.s.s of superst.i.tions which colored the life and controlled the actions of every man. They were vivified with a peculiar intensity by the powerful conception of the Mazdean Ahriman--the embodiment of the destructive forces of nature and the evil pa.s.sions of man--which, transfused through Judaism and adorned with the imaginings of the Haggadah, became a fixed article of the creed as the fallen prince of angels, Satan, who drew with him in rebellion half of the infinite angelic hosts, and thenceforth devoted powers inferior only to those of G.o.d himself to the spiritual and material perdition of mankind. Omnipresent, and well-nigh omnipotent and omniscient, Satan and his demons were ever and everywhere at work to obtain, by cunning arts, control over the souls of men, to cross their purposes, and to vex their bodies. The food of these beings was the suffering of the d.a.m.ned, and human salvation their most exquisite torment. To effect their objects human agents were indispensable, and Satan was always ready to impart a portion of his power, or to consign a subordinate demon, to any one who would serve him. Thus a dualistic system sprang up, less hopeful and inspiring than that of Zarathustra Spitama, which in its vivid realization of the ever-present and ever-acting Evil Principle, cast a sombre shadow over the kindly teachings of Christ. Some even held that human affairs were governed by demons, and this belief grew sufficiently prevalent to induce Chrysostom to undertake its refutation. He admitted that they were inspired with a fierce and irreconcilable hatred for man, with whom they carried on an immortal war, but he argued that the evil of the world was the just punishment inflicted by G.o.d.[402]

Man thus lived surrounded by an infinite world of spirits, good and bad, whose sole object was his salvation or his perdition, and who were ever on the watch to save him or to lure him to destruction. Thus was solved the eternal problem of the origin of evil, which has perplexed the human soul since it first began to think, and thus grew up a demonology of immense detail which formed part of the articles of faith. Almost every race has shared in such belief, whether the evil spirits were of supernatural origin, as with the Mazdeans and a.s.syrians, or whether, as with the Buddhists and Egyptians, they were the souls of the d.a.m.ned seeking to gratify their vindictiveness. Although Greece and Rome had no such distinctive cla.s.s, yet had they peopled the world with a countless number of genii and inferior supernatural beings, who were accepted by Christianity and placed at the service of Satan. As theology grew to be a science in which every detail of the dealings of G.o.d with man was defined with the most rigid precision, it became necessary to determine the nature and functions of the spirit world with exact.i.tude, and the ardent intellects which framed the vast structure of orthodoxy did not shrink from the task. The numberless references to the character and attributes of demons in patristic literature show how large a s.p.a.ce the subject occupied in the thoughts of men and the confidence which was felt in the accuracy of knowledge concerning it.[403]

Origen informs us that every man is surrounded by countless spirits eager to help or harm him. His virtues and good deeds are attributable to good angels; his sins and crimes are the work of demons of pride and l.u.s.t and wrath, and of all pa.s.sions and vices. Powerful as these are, however, the human soul is still superior to them and can destroy their capacity for evil; if a holy man baffles the spirit of l.u.s.t who has tempted him, the conquered demon is cast into outer darkness or into the abyss, and loses his potency forever. This was received throughout the Middle Ages as orthodox doctrine. Gregory the Great tells us how the nun of a convent, walking in the garden, ate a lettuce-leaf without making the cautionary sign of the cross, and was immediately possessed of a demon. St. Equitius tortured the spirit with his exorcisms till the unhappy imp exclaimed, "What have I done? I was sitting on the leaf and she ate me;" but Equitius would listen to no excuse and forced him to depart. Caesarius of Heisterbach relates a vast number of cases proving the perpetual interference of demons with human affairs, though he a.s.serts as a well-known fact that Satan drew with him only one tenth of the hosts of heaven, and he proceeds to show, on the authority of Gregory the Great, that at the Day of Judgment the saved will be nine times as numerous as the devils, and of course the d.a.m.ned greatly more in excess; yet at the death-bed of a monk of Hemmenrode fifteen thousand demons gathered together, and at that of a Benedictine abbess more a.s.sembled than there are leaves in the forest of Kottinhold. Thomas of Cantimpre, though less profuse in his ill.u.s.trative examples, is equally emphatic in showing that man is surrounded with evil spirits, who lose no opportunity to tempt, to seduce, to mislead, and to vex him. The blessed Reichhelm, Abbot of Schongau, about 1270, had received from G.o.d the gift of being able to discern the aerial bodies of these creatures, and often saw them as a thick dust, or as motes in a sunbeam, or as thickly falling rain. He describes their numbers as so great that the atmosphere is merely a crowd of them; all material sounds, water falling, stones clas.h.i.+ng, winds blowing, are their voices. Sometimes they would materialize as a woman to tempt him, or as a huge cat or a bear to terrify him, but their efforts were mostly directed to diverting the thoughts from pious duties and contemplations, and to inciting to evil pa.s.sions, which they could well do, as an innumerable army was a.s.signed to each individual man. These enemies of man were ever on the watch to take advantage of every unguarded thought or act. Sprenger tells us that if an impatient husband says to a pregnant wife, "Devil take you," the child will be subject to Satan; such children, he says, are often seen; five nurses will not satisfy the appet.i.te of one, and yet they are miserably emaciated, while their weight is great. Thus man was at all times exposed to the a.s.saults of supernatural enemies, striving to lead him to sin, to torture his body with disease, or to afflict him with material damage. We cannot understand the motives and acts of our forefathers unless we take into consideration the mental condition engendered by the consciousness of this daily and hourly personal conflict with Satan.[404]

It is true that all demons were not equally malignant. The converted Barbarians of Europe could not wholly give up their belief in helpful spirits, and as Christianity cla.s.sed them all as devils, it was necessary to find an explanation by suggesting that their characters varied with the amount of pride and envy of G.o.d which they entertained before the fall. Those who merely followed their companions and have repented are not always malicious. Caesarius tells us of one who faithfully served a knight for a long while, saved him from his enemies, and cured his wife of a mortal illness by fetching from Arabia lion's milk with which to anoint her. This aroused the knight's suspicions, and the demon confessed, explaining that it was a great consolation to him to be with the children of men. Fearing to retain such a servitor, the knight dismissed him, offering half of his possessions as a reward, but the demon would accept only five sous, and these he returned, asking the knight to purchase with them a bell and hang it on a certain desolate church, that the faithful might be called to divine service on Sundays.

Froissart's picturesque narrative is well known of the demon Orton, who served the Sieur de Cora.s.se out of pure love, bringing to him every night tidings of events from all parts of the world, and finally abandoning him in consequence of his imprudent demand to see his nocturnal visitor. Froissart himself was at Ortais in 1385, when the Count of Foix miraculously had news of the disastrous battle of Aljubarotta in Portugal the day after it occurred, and the courtiers explained that he heard of it through the Sieur de Cora.s.se. Thus, for good or for evil, the barriers which divided the material from the spiritual world were slight, and intercourse between them was too frequent to excite incredulity.[405]

It was inevitable that this facility of intercourse should encourage belief in the Incubi and Succubi who play so large a part in mediaeval sorcery, for such a belief has belonged to superst.i.tion in all ages. The Akkads had their Gelal and Kiel-Gelal, the a.s.syrians their Lil and Lilit, and the Gauls their Dusii, l.u.s.tful spirits of either s.e.x who gratified their pa.s.sions with men and women, while the Welsh legends of the Middle Ages show the continuance of the belief among the Celtic tribes. The Egyptians drew a distinction and admitted of Incubi but not of Succubi. The Jews accepted the text concerning the sons of G.o.d and daughters of men (Gen. VI. 1) as proving that fruitful intercourse could occur between spiritual and human beings, and they had their legends of the evil spirit Lilith, the first wife of Adam, who bore to him the innumerable mult.i.tude of demons. The anthropomorphic mythology and hero-wors.h.i.+p of Greece consisted of little else, and the name of Satyr has pa.s.sed into a proverb. The simpler and purer Latin pantheon had yet its Sylvans and Fauns, who, as St. Augustin tells us, "are commonly called Incubi." The medical faculty in vain explained the belief by Ephialtes or nightmare, and recommended for it belladonna rather than exorcisms. Though St. Augustin, who did so much to transmit pagan superst.i.tions to succeeding ages, hesitates to believe in the possibility of such powers on the part of aerial spirits, even he dares not deny it, and though Chrysostom ridiculed it, other authorities accepted it as a matter of course. Thus it came to be received as a truth which few thought of disputing. In 1249 an incubus child was born on the Welsh marches, which in half a year had a full set of teeth and the stature of a youth of seventeen, while the mother wasted away and died. The belief grew still more definite as perfected processes of trial enabled judges to extort from their victims whatever confessions they desired, such as that of Angele de la Barthe, who, in the Toulousain in 1275, admitted that she had habitual intercourse with Satan, to whom, seven years before, at the age of fifty-three, she had borne a son--a monster with a wolf's head and a serpent's tail, which she fed for two years on the flesh of year-old babies whom she stole by night, after which it disappeared; or those of the witches of Arras, in 1460, who were brought to confess that their demon lovers wore the shapes of hares, or foxes, or bulls. Innocent VIII. a.s.serts the existence of such connections in the most positive manner, and Silvester Prierias declares that to deny it is both unorthodox and unphilosophical, and could only be prompted by sheer wantonness.[406]

Liaisons of this kind would be entered into with demons, and would be maintained with the utmost fidelity on both sides for thirty or forty years; and the connection thus established was proof against all the ordinary arts of the exerciser. Alvaro Pelayo relates that in a nunnery under his direction it prevailed among the nuns, and he was utterly powerless to put a stop to it. In fact, it was peculiarly frequent in such pious establishments. As a special crime it grew to have a special name, and was known among canonists and casuists as Demoniality; and Sprenger, whose authority in such matters is supreme, a.s.sures us that to its attractiveness was due the alarming development of witchcraft in the fifteenth century. The few who, like Ulric Molitoris, while admitting the existence of Incubi, denied to them the power of procreation, were silenced by the authority of Thomas Aquinas, who explained how, by acting alternately as Succubus and Incubus, the demon could accomplish the object, and by the indubitable facts that the Huns were sprung from demons, and that an island in Egypt, or, as some said, Cyprus, was peopled wholly by descendants of Incubi, to say nothing of the popular legend which attributed such paternity to the prophet and enchanter, Merlin. Into the physiological speculations by which these possibilities were proved, it is not worth our while to enter. There is nothing fouler in all literature than the stories and ill.u.s.trative examples by which these theories were supported.[407]

As Satan's princ.i.p.al object in his warfare with G.o.d was to seduce human souls from their divine allegiance, he was ever ready with whatever temptation seemed most likely to effect his purpose. Some were to be won by physical indulgence such as that just alluded to; others by conferring on them powers enabling them apparently to forecast the future, to discover hidden things, to gratify enmity, and to acquire wealth, whether through forbidden arts or by the services of a familiar demon subject to their orders. As the neophyte in receiving baptism renounced the devil his pomps and his angels,[408] it was necessary for the Christian who desired the aid of Satan to renounce G.o.d. Moreover, as Satan when he tempted Christ offered him the kingdoms of the earth in return for adoration--"If thou therefore wilt wors.h.i.+p me all shall be thine" (Luke IV. 7)--there naturally arose the idea that to obtain this aid it was necessary to render allegiance to the princes of h.e.l.l. Thence came the idea, so fruitful in the development of sorcery, of compacts with Satan by which sorcerers became his slaves, binding themselves to do all the evil they could encompa.s.s and to win over as many converts as they could to follow their example. Thus the sorcerer or witch was an enemy of all the human race as well as of G.o.d, the most efficient agent of h.e.l.l in its sempiternal conflict with heaven. His destruction, by any method, was therefore the plainest duty of man.

This was the perfected theory of sorcery and witchcraft by which the gentile superst.i.tions inherited and adopted from all sides were fitted into the Christian dispensation and formed part of its accepted creed.

From the earliest periods of which records have reached us there have been pract.i.tioners of magic who were credited with the ability of controlling the spirit world, of divining the future, and of interfering with the ordinary operations of nature. When this was accomplished by the ritual of an established religion it was praiseworthy, like the augural and oracular divination of cla.s.sic times, or the exorcism of spirits, the excommunication of caterpillars, and the miraculous cures wrought by relics or pilgrimages to noted shrines. When it worked through the invocation of hostile deities, or of a religion which had been superseded, it was blameworthy and forbidden. The Yatudhana, or sorcerer of the Vedas, doubtless sought his ends through the invocation of the Rakshasas and other dethroned divinities of the conquered Dasyu.

His powers were virtually the same as those of the mediaeval sorcerer: with his _yatu_, or magic, he could encompa.s.s the death of his enemies or destroy their harvests and their herds; his _kritya_, or charmed images and other objects, had an evil influence which could only be overcome by discovering and removing them, exactly as we find it in the Europe of the fifteenth century; while the counter-charms and imprecations employed against him show that there was virtually no difference between sacred and prohibited magic.[409] The same lesson is taught by Hebrew tradition, which admitted that wonders could be wrought by the _Elohim acherim_, or "other G.o.ds," as instanced in the contest between Moses and the Chakamim, or wise men of Egypt. The Talmudists inform us that when he changed his rod into a serpent Pharaoh laughed at him for parading such tricks in a land full of magicians, and sent for some little children who readily performed the same feat, but the failure of Jannes and Jambres to cope with him when he came to the plague of the lice was because their art would not extend to the imitation of things smaller than a barley-corn. The connection between their magic and the wors.h.i.+p of false G.o.ds is seen in the legend that it was Jannes and Jambres who fabricated for Aaron the golden calf. A similar indication is seen in the Samaritan tradition that the falling away of the Hebrews from the ancient faith was explicable by the magic arts of Eli and Samuel, who studied them in the books of Balaam, gaining thereby wealth and power, and seducing the people from the wors.h.i.+p of Jehovah.[410]

How great was the impression produced on the surrounding nations by the powers of the Egyptian Chakamim is shown by the later Jews, who, familiar as they were with the mysteries of the Magi and Chaldeans, yet declared that of the ten portions of magic bestowed upon the earth, nine had fallen to the lot of Egypt. That kingdom therefore furnishes naturally enough the oldest record of a trial for sorcery, occurring about 1300 B.C., showing that the use of magic was not regarded as criminal of itself, but only when employed by an unauthorized person for wrongful ends. The proceedings in the case recite that a certain Penhaiben, a farm superintendent of cattle, when pa.s.sing by chance the Khen, or hall in the royal palace where the rolls of mystic lore were kept, was seized with a desire to obtain access to their secrets for his personal advantage. Procuring the a.s.sistance of a worker in stone named Atirma, he penetrated into the sacred recesses of the Khen and secured a book of dangerous formulas belonging to his master, Rameses III.

Mastering their use, he soon was able to perform all the feats of the doctors of mysteries. He composed charms which, when carried into the royal palace, corrupted the concubines of the Pharaoh; he caused hatred between men, fascinated or tormented them, paralyzed their limbs, and in short, as the report of the tribunal states, "He sought and found the real way to execute all the abominations and all the wickedness that his heart conceived, and he performed them, with other great crimes, the horror of every G.o.d and G.o.ddess. Consequently he has endured the great punishment, even unto death, which the divine writings say that he merited."[411]

Hebrew belief, which necessarily served as a standard for orthodox Christianity, drew from these various sources an ample store of magic pract.i.tioners. There was the _At_, or charmer; the _a.s.shaph_, _Ka.s.shaph_, _Meka.s.sheph_, the enchanter or sorcerer; the _Kosem_, or diviner; the _Ob_, _Shoel Ob_, _Baal Ob_, the consulter with evil spirits, or necromancer (the Witch of Endor was a _Baalath Ob_); the _Chober Chaber_, or worker with spells and ligatures; the _Doresh el Hammathim_, or consulter with the dead; the _Meonen_, or augur, divining by the drift of clouds or voices of birds--the "observer of times" of the A. V.; the _Menachesh_, or augur by enchantments; the _Jiddoni_, or wizard; the _Chakam_, or sage; the _Chartom_, or hierogrammatist; the _Mahgim_, or mutterers of spells; and in later times there were the _Istaginen_, or astrologer; the _Charori_, or soothsayer; the _Magush, Amgosh_, or enchanter; the _Raten_, or magus; the _Negida_, or necromancer; and the _Pithom_, inspired by evil spirits. There was here an ample field in which Christian superst.i.tion could go astray.

Greece contributed her share, although of strictly Goetic magic--the invocation of malignant spirits or the use of illicit means for wrongful ends--there was little need, in a religion of which the deities, great and small, were subject to all the weaknesses of humanity, were ready at any moment to inflict on man the direst calamities to gratify their love or their spleen or their caprice, and could be purchased by a prayer or a sacrifice to exercise their omnipotence irrespective of justice or morality. In such a religion the priest exercises the functions which in purer faiths are relegated to the sorcerer. Yet it is only necessary to mention the names of Zetheus and Amphion, of Orpheus and Pythagoras, of Epimenides, Empedocles, and Apollonius of Tyana to show that both tradition and history taught the existence and power of thaumaturgy and theurgy.[412] This theurgy was developed to its fullest extent in the marvels related of the Neo-Platonists, thus directly influencing Christian thought, which necessarily ascribed its miracles to the invocations of demons.[413] Yet by the side of all this there was no lack of Goetic magic, such as the legends attribute to the Cretan Dactyls or Curetes, to the Telchines, to Medea, and to Circe.[414] This is said to have received a powerful impetus in the Medic wars, when the Magian Osthanes, who accompanied Xerxes, scattered the seeds of his unholy lore throughout Greece. Plato speaks with the strongest reprobation of the venal sorcerers who hire themselves at slender wages to those desirous of destroying enemies with magic arts and incantations, ligatures, and the figurines, or waxen images, which have always been one of the favorite resources of malignant magic, and which in Greece wrought their evil work by being set up in the cross-roads, or affixed to the door of the victim or to the tomb of his ancestors.

Philtres, or love-potions, which would excite or arrest love at will were among their ordinary resources. Even the triform Hecate was subject to their spells; they could arrest the course of nature and bring the moon to earth. The fearful rites which superst.i.tion attributed to these sorcerers are indicated in one of the charges brought against Apollonius of Tyana when tried before Domitian--that of sacrificing a child.[415]

In Rome the G.o.ds of the nether world furnished a link between the sacred ceremonies of the priest and the incantations of the sorcerer, for while they were objects of wors.h.i.+p to the pious, they were also the customary sources of the magician's power. Lucan's terrible witch, Erichtho, is a favorite with Erebus; she wanders among tombs from which she draws their shades; she works her spells with funeral-torches and with the bones and ashes of the dead; her incantations are Stygian; gluing her lips to those of a dying man, she sends her dire messages to the under-world.

Horace's Canidia and Sagana seek their power at the same source, and the description of their hideous doings bears a curious resemblance to much that sixteen centuries later occupied the attention of half the courts in Christendom. It is the same throughout all the allusions to Latin sorcery--the deities invoked are infernal, and the rites are celebrated at night,[416] The ident.i.ty of the means employed with those of modern sorcery is perfect. When Germanicus Caesar, the idol of the empire, was doomed by the secret jealousy of Tiberius; when his subordinate in command of the East, Cneius Piso, was commissioned to make way with him, and Germanicus was stricken with mortal illness, it reads like a pa.s.sage in Grillandus or Delrio to see that his friends, suspecting Piso's enmity, dug from the ground and the walls of his house the objects placed there to effect his destruction--fragments of human bodies, half-burned ashes smeared with corruption, leaden plates inscribed with his name, charms, and other accursed things, by which, says Tacitus, it is believed that souls may be dedicated to the infernal G.o.ds. The ordinary feats of the witch could be more easily performed. A simple incantation would blight the harvest or dry the running fountain, would destroy the acorn on the oak and the ripening fruit on the bough. The figurine, or waxen image, of the person to be a.s.sailed, familiar to Hindu, Egyptian, and Greek sorcery, a.s.sumes in Rome the shape in which we find it in the Middle Ages. Sometimes the name of the victim was traced on it in letters of red wax. If a mortal disease was to be induced in any organ, a needle was thrust in the corresponding part of the image; or if he was to waste away in an incurable malady, it was melted with incantations at a fire. The victim could moreover be transformed into a beast--a feat which St. Augustin endeavors to explain by daemonic delusion.[417] It is observable that the terrible magician is almost always an old woman--the _saga_, _strix_, or _volatica_--the wise-woman or nocturnal bird or night-flyer--corresponding precisely with the hag who in mediaeval Europe almost monopolized sorcery. But the male sorcerer, like his modern descendant, had the power of transforming himself into a wolf, and was thus the prototype of the wer-wolves, or _loups-garoux_, who form so picturesque a feature in the history of witchcraft.[418]

The philtres, charms, and ligatures for exciting desire or preventing its fruition, or for arousing hatred, which meet us at every step in modern sorcery, were equally prevalent in that of Rome. The virtual insanity of Caligula was attributed to powerful drugs administered to him in a love-potion by Caesonia, whom he married after the death of his sister and concubine Drusilla, and so firm was the conviction of this that when he was a.s.sa.s.sinated she was likewise put to death for having thus brought the greatest calamities on the republic. That such a man as Marcus Aurelius could be supposed to have caused his wife Faustina to bathe in the blood of the luckless gladiator who was the object of her affections before seeking his own embraces, while doubtless invented to account for the character of his son Commodus, shows the profound belief accorded to such arts. Appuleius found this to his cost when he was tried for his life on the charge of having by incantations and sorcery secured the affections of his bride Pudentilla, a woman of mature age who had been fourteen years a widow. Had the court, like those of the Middle Ages, enjoyed the infallible resource of torture, he would readily have been forced to confession, with the attendant death-penalty; but as there was no charge of treason involved, he was free to disculpate himself by evidence and argument, and he escaped.[419]

The severest penalties of the law, in fact, were traditionally directed against all pract.i.tioners of magic. The surviving fragments of the Decemviral legislation show that this dated from an early period of the republic. With the spread of the Roman conquests, the introduction of Orientalized h.e.l.lenism was followed by the magic of the East, more imposing than the homelier native practices, arousing the liveliest fear and indignation. In 184 B.C. the praetor L. Naevius was detained for four months from proceeding to his province of Sardinia, by the duty a.s.signed to him of prosecuting cases of sorcery. A large portion of these were scattered through the suburbicarian regions; the culprits had a short shrift, and he manifested a diligence which Pierre Cella or Bernard de Caux might envy, if the account be true that he condemned no less than two thousand sorcerers. Under the empire decrees against magicians, astrologers, and diviners were frequent, and from the manner in which accusations of sorcery were brought against prominent personages the charge would seem to have been then, as it proved in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, one of those convenient ones, easy to make and hard to disprove, which are welcome in personal and political intrigue. Nero persecuted magic with such severity that he included philosophers among magicians, and the cloak or distinctive garment of the philosopher was sufficient to bring its wearer before the tribunals. Musonius the Babylonian, who ranked next to Apollonius of Tyana in wisdom and power, was incarcerated, and would have perished as intended but for the exceptional robustness which enabled him to endure the rigors of his prison. Caracalla went even further and punished those who merely wore on their necks amulets for the cure of tertian and quartan fevers. The darker practices of magic were repressed with relentless rigor. To perform or procure the performance of impious nocturnal rites with the object of bewitching any one was punished with the severest penalties known to the Roman law--crucifixion or the beasts. For immolating a man or offering human blood in sacrifices the penalty was simple death or the beasts, according to the station of the offender. Accomplices in magic practices were subjected to crucifixion or the beasts, while magicians themselves were burned alive. The knowledge of the art was forbidden as well as its exercise; all books of magic were to be burned, and their owners subjected to deportation or capital punishment, according to their rank. When the cross became the emblem of salvation, it of course pa.s.sed out of use as an instrument of punishment; with the abolition of the arena the beasts were no longer available; but the f.a.got and stake remained, and for long centuries continued to be the punishment for more or less harmless impostors.[420]

With the triumph of Christianity the circle of forbidden practices was enormously enlarged. A new sacred magic was introduced which superseded and condemned as sorcery and demon-wors.h.i.+p a vast array of observances and beliefs, which had become an integral and almost ineradicable part of popular life. The struggle between the rival thaumaturgies is indicated already in Tertullian's complaint, that when in droughts the Christians by prayers and mortifications had extorted rain from G.o.d, the credit was given to the sacrifices offered to Jove; he challenges the pagans to bring before their own tribunals a demoniac, when a Christian will force the possessing spirit to confess himself a demon. The triumph of the new system was typified in the encounter between St. Peter and Simon Magus, when the flight through the air of the heathen theurgist was arrested by the prayers of the Christian, and he fell with a disastrous crash, breaking a hip-bone and both heels. If, as conjectured by some modern critics, Simon Magus is the Petrine designation of St.