Elizabethan Demonology Part 2

29. Such being the natural history of the conflict of religions, it will not be a matter of surprise that the leaders of our English Reformation should, in their turn, have attributed the miracles of the Roman Catholic saints to the same infernal source as the early Christians supposed to have been the origin of the prodigies and oracles of paganism. The impulse given by the secession from the Church of Rome to the study of the Bible by all cla.s.ses added impetus to this tendency. In Holy Writ the Reformers found full authority for believing in the existence of evil spirits, possession by devils, witchcraft, and divine and diabolic interference by way of miracle generally; and they consequently acknowledged the possibility of the repet.i.tion of such phenomena in the times in which they lived--a position more tenable, perhaps, than that of modern orthodoxy, that accepts without murmur all the supernatural events recorded in the Bible, and utterly rejects all subsequent relations of a similar nature, however well authenticated.

The Reformers believed unswervingly in the truth of the Biblical accounts of miracles, and that what G.o.d had once permitted to take place might and would be repeated in case of serious necessity. But they found it utterly impossible to accept the puerile and meaningless miracles perpetrated under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Church as evidence of divine interference; and they had not travelled far enough upon the road towards rationalism to be able to reject them, one and all, as in their very nature impossible. The consequence of this was one of those compromises which we so often meet with in the history of the changes of opinion effected by the Reformation. Only those particular miracles that were indisputably demonstrated to be impostures--and there were plenty of them, such as the Rood of Boxley[1]--were treated as such by them.

The unexposed remainder were treated as genuine supernatural phenomena, but caused by diabolical, not divine, agency. The reforming divine Calfhill, supporting this view of the Catholic miracles in his answer to Martiall's "Treatise of the Cross," points out that the majority of supernatural events that have taken place in this world have been, most undoubtedly, the work of the devil; and puts his opponents into a rather embarra.s.sing dilemma by citing the miracles of paganism, which both Catholic and Protestant concurred in attributing to the evil one. He then clinches his argument by a.s.serting that "it is the devil's cunning that persuades those that will walk in a popish blindness" that they are wors.h.i.+pping G.o.d when they are in reality serving him. "Therefore," he continues, consciously following an argument of St. Cypria.n.u.s against the pagan miracles, "these wicked spirits do lurk in shrines, in roods, in crosses, in images: and first of all pervert the priests, which are easiest to be caught with bait of a little gain. Then work they miracles. They appear to men in divers shapes; disquiet them when they are awake; trouble them in their sleeps; distort their members; take away their health; afflict them with diseases; only to bring them to some idolatry. Thus, when they have obtained their purpose that a lewd affiance is reposed where it should not, they enter (as it were) into a new league, and trouble them no more. What do the simple people then?

Verily suppose that the image, the cross, the thing that they have kneeled and offered unto (the very devil indeed) hath restored them health, whereas he did nothing but leave off to molest them. This is the help and cure that the devils give when they leave off their wrong and injury."[2]

[Footnote 1: Froude, History of England, cabinet edition, iii. 102.]

[Footnote 2: Calfhill, pp. 317-8. Parker Society.]

30. Here we have a distinct charge of devil-wors.h.i.+p--the old doctrine cropping up again after centuries of repose: "all the G.o.ds of our opponents are devils." Nor were the Catholics a whit behind the Protestants in this matter. The priests zealously taught that the Protestants were devil-wors.h.i.+ppers and magicians;[1] and the common people so implicitly believed in the truth of the statement, that we find one poor prisoner, taken by the Dutch at the siege of Alkmaar in 1578, making a desperate attempt to save his life by promising to wors.h.i.+p his captors' devil precisely as they did[2]--a suggestion that failed to pacify those to whom it was addressed.

[Footnote 1: Hutchinson's Essay, p. 218. Harsnet, Declaration, p. 30.]

[Footnote 2: Motley, Dutch Republic, ii. 400.]

31. Having thus stated, so far as necessary, the chief laws that are constantly working the extension of the domain of the supernatural as far as demonology is concerned, without a remembrance of which the subject itself would remain somewhat difficult to comprehend fully, I shall now attempt to indicate one or two conditions of thought and circ.u.mstance that may have tended to increase and vivify the belief during the period in which the Elizabethan literature flourished.

32. It was an era of change. The nation was emerging from the dim twilight of mediaevalism into the full day of political and religious freedom. But the morning mists, which the rising sun had not yet dispelled, rendered the more distant and complex objects distorted and portentous. The very fact that doubt, or rather, perhaps, independence of thought, was at last, within certain limits, treated as non-criminal in theology, gave an impetus to investigation and speculation in all branches of politics and science; and with this change came, in the main, improvement. But the great defect of the time was that this newly liberated spirit of free inquiry was not kept in check by any sufficient previous discipline in logical methods of reasoning. Hence the possibility of the wild theories that then existed, followed out into action or not, according as circ.u.mstances favoured or discouraged: Arthur Hacket, with casting out of devils, and other madnesses, vehemently declaring himself the Messiah and King of Europe in the year of grace 1591, and getting himself believed by some, so long as he remained unhanged; or, more pathetic still, many weary lives wasted day by day in fruitless silent search after the impossible philosopher's stone, or elixir of life. As in law, so in science, there were no sufficient rules of evidence clearly and unmistakably laid down for the guidance of the investigator; and consequently it was only necessary to broach a novel theory in order to have it accepted, without any previous serious testing. Men do not seem to have been able to distinguish between an hypothesis and a proved conclusion; or, rather, the rule of presumptions was reversed, and men accepted the hypothesis as conclusive until it was disproved. It was a perfectly rational and sufficient explanation in those days to refer some extraordinary event to some given supernatural cause, even though there might be no ostensible link between the two: now, such a suggestion would be treated by the vast majority with derision or contempt. On the other hand, the most trivial occurrences, such as sneezing, the appearance of birds of ill omen, the crowing of a c.o.c.k, and events of like unimportance happening at a particular moment, might, by some unseen concatenation of causes and effects, exercise an incomprehensible influence upon men, and consequently had important bearings upon their conduct. It is solemnly recorded in the Commons' Journals that during the discussion of the statute against witchcraft pa.s.sed in the reign of James I., a young jackdaw flew into the House; which accident was generally regarded as _malum omen_ to the Bill.[1] Extraordinary bravery on the part of an adversary was sometimes accounted for by a.s.serting that he was the devil in the form of a man; as the Volscian soldier does with regard to Coriola.n.u.s. This is no mere dramatist's fancy, but a fixed belief of the times. Sir William Russell fought so desperately at Zutphen, that he got mistaken for the Evil One;[2] and Drake also gave the Spaniards good reason for believing that he was a devil, and no man.[3]

[Footnote 1: See also D'Ewes, p. 688.]

[Footnote 2: Froude, xii. 87.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid. 663.]

33. This intense credulousness, childish almost in itself, but yet at the same time combined with the strong man's intellect, permeated all cla.s.ses of society. Perhaps a couple of instances, drawn from strangely diverse sources, will bring this more vividly before the mind than any amount of attempted theorizing. The first is one of the tricks of the jugglers of the period.

"_To make one danse naked._

"Make a poore boie confederate with you, so as after charms, etc., spoken by you, he unclothe himself and stand naked, seeming (whilest he undresseth himselfe) to shake, stamp, and crie, still hastening to be unclothed, till he be starke naked; or if you can procure none to go so far, let him onlie beginne to stampe and shake, etc., and unclothe him, and then you may (for reverence of the companie) seeme to release him."[1]

[Footnote 1: Scott, p. 339.]

The second ill.u.s.tration must have demanded, if possible, more credulity on the part of the audience than this harmless entertainment. Cranmer tells us that in the time of Queen Mary a monk preached a sermon at St.

Paul's, the object of which was to prove the truth of the doctrine of transubstantiation; and, after the manner of his kind, told the following little anecdote in support of it:--"A maid of Northgate parish in Canterbury, in pretence to wipe her mouth, kept the host in her handkerchief; and, when she came home, she put the same into a pot, close covered, and she spitted in another pot, and after a few days, she looking in the one pot, found a little young pretty babe, about a shaftmond long; and the other pot was full of gore blood."[1]

[Footnote 1: Cranmer, A Confutation of Unwritten Verities, p. 66. Parker Society.]

34. That the audiences before which these absurdities were seriously brought, for amus.e.m.e.nt or instruction, could be excited in either case to any other feeling than good-natured contempt for a would-be impostor, seems to us now-a-days to be impossible. It was not so in the times when these things transpired: the actors of them were not knaves, nor were their audiences fools, to any unusual extent. If any one is inclined to form a low opinion of the Elizabethans intellectually, on account of the divergence of their capacities of belief in this respect from his own, he does them a great injustice. Let him take at once Charles Lamb's warning, and try to understand, rather than to judge them. We, who have had the benefit of three hundred more years of experience and liberty of thought than they, should have to hide our faces for very shame had we not arrived at juster and truer conclusions upon those difficult topics that so bewildered our ancestors. But can we, with all our boasted advantages of wealth, power, and knowledge, truly say that all our aims are as high, all our desires as pure, our words as true, and our deeds as n.o.ble, as those whose opinions we feel this tendency to contemn? If not, or if indeed they have anything whatsoever to teach us in these respects, let us remember that we shall never learn the lesson wholly, perhaps not learn it at all, unless, casting aside this first impulse to despise, we try to enter fully into and understand these strange dead beliefs of the past.

35. It is in this spirit that I now enter upon the second division of the subject in hand, in which I shall try to indicate the chief features of the belief in demonology as it existed during the Elizabethan period.

These will be taken up in three main heads: the cla.s.sification, physical appearance, and powers of the evil spirits.

36. (i.) It is difficult to discover any cla.s.sification of devils as well authenticated and as universally received as that of the angels introduced by Dionysius the Areopagite, which was subsequently imported into the creed of the Western Church, and popularized in Elizabethan times by Dekker's "Hierarchie." The subject was one which, from its nature, could not be settled _ex cathedra_, and consequently the subject had to grow up as best it might, each writer adopting the arrangement that appeared to him most suitable. There was one rough but popular cla.s.sification into greater and lesser devils. The former branch was subdivided into cla.s.ses of various grades of power, the members of which pa.s.sed under the t.i.tles of kings, dukes, marquises, lords, captains, and other dignities. Each of these was supposed to have a certain number of legions of the latter cla.s.s under his command. These were the evil spirits who appeared most frequently on the earth as the emissaries of the greater fiends, to carry out their evil designs. The more important cla.s.s kept for the most part in a mystical seclusion, and only appeared upon earth in cases of the greatest emergency, or when compelled to do so by conjuration. To the cla.s.s of lesser devils belonged the bad angel which, together with a good one, was supposed to be a.s.signed to every person at birth, to follow him through life--the one to tempt, the other to guard from temptation;[1] so that a struggle similar to that recorded between Michael and Satan for the body of Moses was raging for the soul of every existing human being. This was not a mere theory, but a vital active belief, as the beautiful well-known lines at the commencement of the eighth canto of the second book of "The Faerie Queene," and the use made of these opposing spirits in Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus," and in "The Virgin Martyr," by Ma.s.singer and Dekker, conclusively show.

[Footnote 1: Scot, p. 506.]

37. Another cla.s.sification, which seems to retain a reminiscence of the origin of devils from pagan deities, is effected by reference to the localities supposed to be inhabited by the different cla.s.ses of evil spirits. According to this arrangement we get six cla.s.ses:--

(1.) Devils of the fire, who wander in the region near the moon.

(2.) Devils of the air, who hover round the earth.

(3.) Devils of the earth; to whom the fairies are allied.

(4.) Devils of the water.

(5.) Submundane devils.[1]

(6.) Lucifugi.

These devils' power and desire to injure mankind appear to have increased with the proximity of their location to the earth's centre; but this cla.s.sification had nothing like the hold upon the popular mind that the former grouping had, and may consequently be dismissed with this mention.

[Footnote 1: Cf. I Hen. VI. V. iii. 10; 2 Hen. VI. I. ii. 77; Coriola.n.u.s, IV. v. 97.]

38. The greater devils, or the most important of them, had distinguis.h.i.+ng names--strange, uncouth names; some of them telling of a heathenish origin; others inexplicable and almost unp.r.o.nounceable--as Ashtaroth, Bael, Belial, Zephar, Cerberus, Phoenix, Balam (why he?), and Haagenti, Leraie, Marchosias, Gusoin, Glasya Labolas. Scot enumerates seventy-nine, the above amongst them, and he does not by any means exhaust the number. As each arch-devil had twenty, thirty, or forty legions of inferior spirits under his command, and a legion was composed of six hundred and sixty-six devils, it is not surprising that the latter did not obtain distinguis.h.i.+ng names until they made their appearance upon earth, when they frequently obtained one from the form they loved to a.s.sume; for example, the familiars of the witches in "Macbeth"--Paddock (toad), Graymalkin (cat), and Harpier (harpy, possibly). Is it surprising that, with resources of this nature at his command, such an adept in the art of necromancy as Owen Glendower should hold Harry Percy, much to his disgust, at the least nine hours

"In reckoning up the several devils' names That were his lackeys"?

Of the twenty devils mentioned by Shakspere, four only belong to the cla.s.s of greater devils. Hecate, the princ.i.p.al patroness of witchcraft, is referred to frequently, and appears once upon the scene.[1] The two others are Amaimon and Barbazon, both of whom are mentioned twice.

Amaimon was a very important personage, being no other than one of the four kings. Ziminar was King of the North, and is referred to in "Henry VI. Part I.;"[2] Gorson of the South; Goap of the West; and Amaimon of the East. He is mentioned in "Henry IV. Part I.,"[3] and "Merry Wives."[4] Barbazon also occurs in the same pa.s.sage in the latter play, and again in "Henry V."[5]--a fact that does to a slight extent help to bear out the otherwise ascertained chronological sequence of these plays. The remainder of the devils belong to the second cla.s.s. Nine of these occur in "King Lear," and will be referred to again when the subject of possession is touched upon.[6]

[Footnote 1: It is perhaps worthy of remark that in every case except the allusion in the probably spurious Henry VI., "I speak not to that railing Hecate," (I Hen. VI. III. ii. 64), the name is "Hecat," a di-syllable.]

[Footnote 2: V. iii. 6.]

[Footnote 3: II. iv. 370.]

[Footnote 4: II. ii. 311.]

[Footnote 5: II. i. 57. Scot, p. 393.]

[Footnote 6: -- 65.]

39. (ii.) It would appear that each of the greater devils, on the rare occasion upon which he made his appearance upon earth, a.s.sumed a form peculiar to himself; the lesser devils, on the other hand, had an ordinary type, common to the whole species, with a capacity for almost infinite variation and trans.m.u.tation which they used, as will be seen, to the extreme perplexity and annoyance of mortals. As an ill.u.s.tration of the form in which a greater devil might appear, this is what Scot says of the questionable Balam, above mentioned: "Balam cometh with three heads, the first of a bull, the second of a man, and the third of a ram. He hath a serpent's taile, and flaming eies; riding upon a furious beare, and carrieng a hawke on his fist."[1] But it was the lesser devils, not the greater, that came into close contact with humanity, who therefore demand careful consideration.

[Footnote 1: p. 361.]

40. All the lesser devils seem to have possessed a normal form, which was as hideous and distorted as fancy could render it. To the conception of an angel imagination has given the only beautiful appendage the human body does not possess--wings; to that of a devil it has added all those organs of the brute creation that are most hideous or most harmful.

Advancing civilization has almost exterminated the belief in a being with horns, cloven hoofs, goggle eyes, and scaly tail, that was held up to many yet living as the avenger of childish disobedience in their earlier days, together perhaps with some strength of conviction of the moral hideousness of the evil he was intended, in a rough way, to typify; but this hazily retained impression of the Author of Evil was the universal and entirely credited conception of the ordinary appearance of those bad spirits who were so real to our ancestors of Elizabethan days. "Some are so carnallie minded," says Scot, "that a spirit is no sooner spoken of, but they thinke of a blacke man with cloven feet, a paire of hornes, a taile, and eies as big as a bason."[1]

Scot, however, was one of a very small minority in his opinion as to the carnal-mindedness of such a belief. He in his day, like those in every age and country who dare to hold convictions opposed to the creed of the majority, was a dangerous sceptic; his book was publicly burnt by the common hangman;[2] and not long afterwards a royal author wrote a treatise "against the d.a.m.nable doctrines of two princ.i.p.ally in our age; whereof the one, called Scot, an Englishman, is not ashamed in public print to deny that there can be such a thing as witchcraft, and so mainteines the old error of the Sadducees in denying of spirits."[3] The abandoned impudence of the man!--and the logic of his royal opponent!

[Footnote 1: p. 507. See also Hutchinson, Essay on Witchcraft, p. 13; and Harsnet, p. 71.]

[Footnote 2: Bayle, ix. 152.]

[Footnote 3: James I., Daemonologie. Edinburgh, 1597.]