“But to the preparations for our conjuration! First we are met with the question: Is the hour favorable? Do the aspects oppose? Aspect is the relative position of two planets to each other. Every calendar from the centuries which lie between youand me speaks of these aspects: of the conjunction of the planets (when they are on the same meridian, and consequently separated by no angular distance); their opposition (when in a directly opposite part of the heavens); their quadrature (distance of 90°), trigon (120°), and hexagon (60°). If the blood-red Mars, or the pale Saturn stand in quadrature or in opposition to one another, or to any of the other wandering stars, this portends destruction. But to-day both these planets are harmless; the aspects are good,and Mars itself being in the first ‘face’ of its own house,[33]is consequently even kindly disposed. Even the moon, whose assistance isneeded, is in the house of a friendly star, and in a favorable quadrature to Jupiter. Here we meet consequently with no hindrances. It remains, however, on the side of Astrology to find out what planets are the regents of the present year. In other words, what planets form the first aspect of the year. Look here in my calendarium. Mars was one of them. This suits us all the better as to-day is Tuesday, Mars’ own day, and as the hour will soon be here which, on this day, he presides over absolutely.[34]Itis therefore of importance that we use in our incantation the martial part of my magical apparatus. Among the elements fire is martial. We shall therefore kindle a fire upon this altar. Among the planets, the thorny, poisonous and nettle-like are martial. We shall therefore feed this fire with dry twigs and rose-bushes. Among the animals the ferocious and bold are connected with the blood-red star. Here you see three belts of lion’s hide fringed with the teeth of tigers, leopards and bears, and provided with clasps of iron, because iron is the martial metal. Let us fasten those belts, when the time has arrived, about our waists. Among the stones the diamond, amethyst, jasper and magnet are martial. I show you here three diadems which, though of pure iron, sparklewith these stones, and are furnished with the signs and signatures of our planet. Here you have three iron staves marked with the same signs: we must bear them in our hands. These breast-plates studded with amethysts, whose Hebrew inscriptions and characters refer to the same stars, we must wear over our hearts on the outside of the white clothing which we shall put on before our incantation begins. Here again you will notice three diamond rings: we shall wear them on our middle finger during the solemn and awful moment for which we are preparing. These two bells we place on the table; one of a reddish alloy and furnished with iron rings, summons the martial spirit hither, the other made ofelectrum magicum(i. e., a proportional alloy of all metals with some astral tincture added), serves to call celestial reserve-forces of all kinds, if needed. Further, we require these breast-plates and these rings of electrum, which do not bear the name of any planet, but the glorious and blessed name of God himself, as a protection for the conjurersagainst the conjured spirit. Who he is we shall soon find. Observe here, further, a terrible arsenal which is also necessary for our purpose. Mars is the star of war, murder and passion. The demons of Mars have a corresponding nature, and there exists between them and the tools by which their work on earth is accomplished, a power of attraction. Therefore we have here this heavy sword with which the magic circle is to be drawn; we therefore place in rows these skulls and bones which have been collected in places of execution, these nails, extracted from gallows, these daggers, knives and axes rusty with stains of blood. We must not forget the incense which was kindled on the altar shortly before the first citation. There is a different kind of incense for every planet and its demons. That appropriate for Mars is composed of euphorbia, bdellium, ammoniac, magnet, sulphur, brains of a raven, human blood and the blood of ablackcat.[35]It is highly important that the quality of this incense should be genuine. I might quote what Porphyrius says upon this point; but confine myself to pointing out that it has an influence on the conjurer as well as upon surrounding objects. It saturates both the air and the breast of the conjurer with substances that are connected with the planet and its demons. It draws down the conjured being and intoxicates him, as it were, with divine influences, which act on his mind and imagination. As a matter of course we must prepare besides, such implements as are needed in every incantation without bearing any relation to any certain planet. To them belong amulets inscribed with the names of seraphs, cherubs and thrones, and with sentences from the Bible and the sacred books of Zoroaster. To them belong further the magical candlestick of electrum with seven branches, every branch bearing the sign of a planet; and above all the pentagrams, those figures with fine points which no demon can overstep. We shall place the latteras a line of fortification around the magic circle, and we must be sure that no one of the points is broken. Inside the circle between the table, the seven-armed candlestick and the incense-altar there is room for the tripod with the bowl of holy water and the sprinkler.
“Having thus made the necessary preparations for our feast, let us think of the guest who is to be invited.
“The air of the evening is cool. I close the window, move my study lamp to this table, and ask you to be seated around it. We must consult concerning the invitation, in which we must follow the directions given in this cabalistic manuscript.
“You have found from the table I first showed you that it is the orders of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones which are related by a reciprocal activity to Mars. But these three orders constitute the highest celestial hierarchy, which remain constantly in the presence of God and must not be summoned hither even if we were able to do so. We may onlyimplore their assistance. The orders of Dominions, Powers and Empires are the only intelligences connected with the stars. Among them we must address ourselves to the spirits of Mars, since Mars is the regent of this year, this day and of the intended incantation. The choice between thegoodand theevilspirits ruled by Mars is still open; but since it is not our purpose to invoke by supplication but to compel by conjuration, we must choose the wicked. This is no sin: it is only danger. It gives joy to the good angels to see the power of God’s image over their adversaries. But we can not force the whole host of Mars’ demons to appear in our circle. We must selectone onlyamong their legion and this one must be well chosen. It is therefore necessary to know his name, for with spirits, far more than men and terrestrial things, the name implies the essence and the qualities of the named. The Cabala teaches us the infinite significance of words and names. It proclaims and demonstrates the mysteries which dwell in all the holynames of God; it reveals to us the mysteries in the appellations of angels; it shows us that even the names of men are intimately related to the place in creation and the temporal destiny of those who bear them. Even names of material things show, though less distinctly, a connection between the sound and the thing itself or its nature. Who can hear, for instance, the wordswind, orswing, without perceiving in the very sound something airy or oscillating? Who can hearstand, andstrong, without perception of something stable and firm?
“Let us hasten to find the name of the demon who is to be summoned. Astrology as well as the Cabala gives various methods for this purpose.[36]Let us choose the simplest, which is perhaps also the most efficient.
“I must commence our work by pointing out the significance of number 72. To this number correspond the seventy-two languages, the seventy-two elders of thesynagogue, the seventy-two interpreters of the Old Testament and the seventy-two disciples of our Lord. This number is also closely connected with the sacred number twelve. If the twelve signs of the Zodiac are divided into six parts, we obtain the seventy-two so-called celestial quinaries, into which the seventy-two mystical names of God, his ‘schemhamphoras,’ infuse their power and which are each of them presided over by an angel-prince. The same number also corresponds to the joints of the human frame; and there are many other correspondences.
“Well, while the Cabalists were searching out the sacred inner meaning of the Bible; while they proceeded slowly, starting with the ‘In the beginning,’ and stopping at every word, every letter, and found in every word and every letter a mine of secrets,[37]they finally,after the lapse of centuries, came as far as to the 19th verse in the 14th chapter of Exodus, commencing: ‘And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel arose.’ The cabalistical rule which says wherever, in the Bible, an angel is spoken of, there is also the name of an angel hidden among the Hebrew letters of the verse, admonished them to pause and consider. They had at first no idea of the extraordinary discovery they were now on the point of making. But their attention was attracted by the fact that therewere seventy-two letters in the verse (in the Hebrew text). Still more surprised were they when they found that even the following verse, the 20th, contained exactly seventy-two letters; and then surprise grew into awe when even the 21st verse showed the same number. In the Bible there is no fortuity: a great secret was hidden here. Finally, by placing the three verses, letter by letter (the middle verse written from left to right, the others conversely), above one another, God’s seventy-two mystical names ‘schemhamphoras’ each consisting of three letters, from the three verses, was discovered. These names, provided with the suffixelorjah, are also the names of the seventy-two quinary angels, of which God has said that his name is in them.
“Here in this cabalistic manuscript these names are preserved. Let us select one of them at random. My eye happens to fall uponMizraelfirst. We will take that. This high name of an angel which we may not invoke, will give us the key to the name ofthe demon which is to appear presently. Here is the table that will help us. The three root-consonants of the wordMizra(el)correspond to three others in the planet Mars, which contain the name—let us pronounce it silently, let us merely whisper it, for it is the name of the desired demon—Tekfael![38]
“The sum of the numerical value of the letters in this name is 488. A remarkable number, every figure reminding us of the mysticalfour, of the elements and of their correspondences! We shall commune with one of the mightiest and most terrible among the demons. On the waxen tablet with an iron frame, I now inscribe the name of the demon, adding the number 488, and these peculiar strokes which make up his signature. Time does not allow me to tell you now the rules by which the signature is formed from the name.[39]
“The preparations are now completed, it only remains to order the apparatus, and to array ourselves. When we have put our implements in order, consecrated the room, cleansed ourselves by a bath, put on the white robe, wrapped a red mantle around (for red is the color of Mars), buckled the girdle of Mars about our waists, assumed the diadem, the breast-plates and the rings, I kindle on the altar my magical light, and the fire for incense, and draw the magical circle. Then an intense prayer for the protection of God, then the incantation.
“Here is the conjuration-book, the so-called Conjurer of Hell. I open at the page on which the martial incantations begin. The book is placed within the circle. When needed, I grasp it with the left hand; I hold the staff with my right.”...
The Gothic room in which the incantation was to take place, presented a strange and at the same time solemn and awful aspect. Themagician had arranged with practiced hand the things before mentioned. The skulls, the bones of men and beasts, the murderous weapons and the martial essence-flasks, the various and indescribable fragments from all the kingdoms of nature formed, nearest to the walls, different figures, triangles, squares and pentagons. Red drapery was hung over the naked walls. In the midst of the room and inside the circularly arranged pentagram were the fire and incense-altar with holy water. On a table in the rear, but partly within the circle, the magical lights were burning, and diffused an uncertain whitish-yellow light over the objects. Near the candlestick were the two bells. We were arrayed in our garments. The face of my companion was pale as death: probably mine also.
“Courage, fortitude! ... or you are lost!” whispered the magician, whose eye beamed with a dark, solemn determination, and whose every feature expressed at this moment a terrible resolution.
These were his last words before theincantation. We were allowed to answer nothing. I tried to be courageous, but my soul was shaken by a dreadful expectation. The prayer and religious ceremonies which we had performed after the bath and change of dress, had not diminished but only intensified this feeling.
The night wind shook the windows hidden behind the heavy draperies. It seemed as if ghosts from another world had been lurking behind the gently waving curtains.
Even the skulls appeared to me to bode from their sunken, vacant eyes, the arrival of something appalling. One of them attracted my attention for a long time, or rather exercised on me the same influence which the eye of the rattle-snake is said to have upon the bird which he approaches to devour. I noticed in the eye a metallic lustre. It was the gleam of the light reflected from a martial stone fastened in the skull.
In the mean time the magician had seized the blood-stained sword, and drew, murmuring a prayer the while, a threefold magicalcircle around the pentagram. Between the circumferences he wrote the names of the angels of the year, the season, the day and the hour. Towards the east he made the sign ofAlpha, towards the west ofOmega. Then he divided the circle by a cross into four fields. He assigned two of them, those behind him, to me and my companions. They were large enough to kneel upon. We were strictly enjoined not to leave them, not to allow even a fold of our mantles to wave outside the circle. Forgetfulness in this respect would cost us our lives. The magician put aside his sword in a triangle outside of the circle. He sprinkled himself and us with holy water, read formularies over the incense and the thorn twigs, and kindled them. This was the sign for us to give ourselves to prayer. We must not cease praying until we had heard the first word of the incantation. The incense spread, as it were, a dim transparent veil over the room. Here and there it was condensed into strange figures: now human, now fantastic animal shapesarose against the vaulted wall and sank again.
There must have been something narcotical in those vapory clouds. I looked at them in a half dreaming state while my lips repeated inaudibly the enjoined prayers.
I was aroused from this condition by the first word of the incantation which struck my soul like a thunder-bolt, and awakened me to full consciousness of my position and of the significance of the hour. The blood in my veins seemed changed to ice.
The magician stood before me, tall, erect and commanding. He had taken the incantation-book and now read from it with a hollow voice the first citation, which begins with a long formulary invoking the different mystical names of God.
I can not repeat the quotation. The highest and the lowest, the divine and the infernal, that for whose sacredness we feel an irrepressible reverence and that for whose impiety we experience the deepest horror, were united here in the most solemn and themost terrible words that human tongue has ever stammered. Now first I began to form an idea of the power of words.
The name of the demon was not yet uttered. The nearer the moment for its pronunciation approached, the deeper became the voice of the magician. Now came the formula of invocation, and now—resounded the nameTekfael.
It appeared as if a thousand-fold but whispering echo from the vault above, from the corners of the room, from all the skulls and from the very incantation-book itself, repeated that name.
The magician became silent, the incense was condensed and assumed a reddish tint which gradually became more and more diffused. We seemed to hear the thunder rolling, at first from a distance, then nearer, finally over our heads. It was as if the tower had been shaken and the vault over our heads been rent. My knees trembled. Suddenly a flash of lightning shot through the red mass. The magician extended hisstaff, as if he had wished to stop it. He raised his voice anew, strong and powerful amidst the continued peals of thunder. The smoke grew thin again; from its wreaths there appeared before the magician in the immediate vicinity of the circle, and at the opposite end of his staff, a dim apparition, a figure whose first aspect bereft me of my reason. I felt as if I had fallen to the floor,—as if I had been lost....
I awakened with the perspiration of agony on my forehead, but fortunately in my own bed and in the nineteenth century. The view from my window is cheerful and enlivening. I see a river which bears proud ships, quays swarming with men, and broad streets with houses in a graceful and lightrenaissancestyle. I lived again in the present which pleased me the best, next to dreaming of the future....
They strove for something great, however, those learned magicians of the Middle Ages. Theirs was a mighty imaginative creation. It lies in ruins never to arise again; but thecrumbleddebristestify to the belief in an all-embracing human power and knowledge.
These learned magicians were likewise restless Faust-natures, as distinct from the usual type of the learned of their time as Faust from the pedanticgloss-proud, unaspiring milk-sop Wagner. While they paid their tribute of weakness to tradition, and formed their system on received dicta, it was among them that presentiments of the future began to stir, and a longing for a clearer light than that with which the scholastics and doctorsangelici et seraphicifelt themselves well contented. When the study of ancient Greece was recommencing, when the dawn of therenaissanceappeared, it was these enthusiastic natures, still groping among the dreams of magic art, that first began to awake and think. It was a feeling of the insufficiency of the ruling theology and scholasticism which had driven them into the temple of “secret philosophy.” Since its pillars were brought from diverse spheres of culture, distrust and fear of magic had become moreuniversal than directly ecclesiastical; they had drunk as deeply from profane tradition as from Christian, considering them both to flow from the same divine source: their writers quote Porphyrius by the side of John, and the pretender Hermes by the side of Paul. The courage with which they tried to burst open the portals of the spirit-world served them afterwards when from the shores of their childhood’s belief they were to venture out on the ocean of thought. Campanella, Vanini, Giordano Bruno, and Cardanus stand on the dividing line between dogmatico-fantastical magic and a philosophy in the sense of the old Greeks and of modern times. If already previously some magicians of the old type had died from persecution, it was not to be wondered at that such “atheists” as Vanini and Bruno must now ascend the pile.
The occult sciences of the Middle Ages with their origin not from paradise and Noah’s ark, as believed by their adherents, but from an ancient Oriental culture and with their power over even the strongestand most independent souls that could arise under the influence of a Church which levels all thought, may properly remind those who are willing to forget it, of a sad but incontestable truth: That humanity may embrace during the course of many and long centuries with the most candid faith, and construct with immense labor into a system, dogmas which have been received without questioning, and which contain more of the false than of the true, the great antiquity of which does not give them more claim for validity than is possessed by the error which arose yesterday and vanished to-day. No special divine influence has saved or will save the generations from inheriting the errors less than the acquired truths of their predecessors—no other divine influence, I should say, than the impulse we feel to think for ourselves in order to attain to clearness.
THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE AND THE STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH AGAINST IT.
Wherever religious thought divides the empire of the world and humanity into two absolutely opposed powers, a good and an evil, there it also distinguishes two kinds of magic: the divine and the infernal. So with the Persians who knew a white and a black magic. So also in the Middle Ages of Christianity. The Greeks, on the contrary, knew nothing of this distinction. The world being to them a harmonious whole, both in moral and physical respects, magic was with them only a means of finding out and using the secret powers in the harmonious cosmos; and the wonder-worker who could not be thought of as deriving his powers from an evil source, was undoubtedly a favorite ofthe gods and an equal with the heroes, not unworthy of statues and temples, if he used his art for the benefit of humanity. For the rest, magical speculation was with the Greeks more and more pushed aside by philosophy,—by scepticism and rational investigation, until on account of the nearer contact between Europe and Asia, after the death of Alexander, it began again to exercise its influence, and finally celebrated its triumph in that dualistic form of religion which by the name of Christianity took possession of the Occident.
The struggle which the spirit of orientalism waged on its march through Europe, first against the Hellenic paganism, and then against the Christian paganism which had penetrated into the Church itself, has been briefly sketched above. When Christianity had spread later among the Germanic and Slavic nations, there arose a new process of attraction and repulsion between it and the natural religions of the barbarians, the elements of which were partly blended with itand partly repelled by it. The gods were transformed into devils, but their attributes and the festivities in their honor were transferred to the saints. Pope Gregory the Great ordained that the pagan festivities should be changed only gradually to Christian, and that they were to be imitated in many respects.[40]
In the time of Boniface there were many Christian priests in Germany who sacrificed to Thor and baptized in the name of Jesus at the same time. Of especial influence on the rapid spread of Christianity was the maxim of Gregory not to be particular in the choice of proselytes, because hope was to be placed in the better generations of the future. Tobe allowed to attend divine service, and to be buried in the churchyard, it was only necessary to have the benediction of the priest. Gifts to the Church, pilgrimages, self-scourgings, repeating of prayers in Latin, opened the gates of heaven to the proselytes easier than virtue and bravery those of Valhall to the heathen. For the rest the pagan could enter the community of the Church while retaining his whole circle of ideas. The Church did not deny, but it confirmed, the real existence of every thing which had been the object of his faith, but it treated these objects in accordance with its dualistic scheme, sometimes elevating them to the plane of sanctity, and again degrading them to something diabolical. Thus, for instance, it changed the elementary spirits—which the Celts and Germans believed in—from good or morally indifferent natural beings into fallen angels, envying man his heavenly inheritance; and if a thinking heathen could before accept or reject the existence of such beings at his pleasure, it now, when he had become a proselyte, became amatter of eternal bliss to believe in them. There was no superstitious idea gross enough not to receive the signet of the Church; nay, the grosser it was, the more likely was it to be appropriated. Even so cultured an intellect as Augustine, the most prominent of the fathers and authors of his time, declared it to be “insolent” to doubt the existence of fauns, satyrs and other demoniac beings which lie in wait for women, have intercourse with them and children by them.[41]Thus was laid the foundation of that immense labyrinth of superstition in the darkness of which humanity has groped during the thousand years of the Middle Ages.
In the rupture between the Church and the natural religion of the northern peoples we find, in a certain sense, the same spectaclerepeated which we have seen in the struggle between the Christian and the Greco-Roman culture. If the Neoplatonicians held up their Appolonius of Tyana as a type of the Christian sorcerers, Celts, Germans and Northmen had also their soothsayers endowed with supernatural powers whom the Christian missionaries must excel in the power of working miracles, if they would gain consideration for the new religion. There are many accounts of bishops and priests who have worn gloves of fire, walked on white-hot iron, and so forth, before the eyes of the astonished heathen. If the miracles worked by the apostles of Christianity had their source in divine agencies, then those performed by its opponents must have their origin in the assistance of the devil. Already here the white magic stood opposed to the black magic, the immediate and supernatural power of God in His agents to the devil: and if the chief significance of the Church was to be an institution for deliverance from the devil; if all her magical usages from the sacrament to the amuletwere so many weapons against his attacks; if the pagan religions which had succumbed to Christianity were nothing but varied kinds of the samedevil-worship, and their priests, seers and physicians but tools of Satan; then it was natural for all traditions from the pagan time which the Church had not transformed and appropriated should be banished within the pale of devil-worship, and partly also that every act to which supernatural effects were ascribed, but which was not performed by a Christian priest, or in the name of Jesus, should be referred to a black magic, partly in fine that the possibility of an immediate co-operation, a conscious league between the devil and men should be elevated to a dogma.
A struggle between good and evil, between God and Satan, between church and paganism, which is carried on with the weapons of miracles by two directly opposed human representatives of these principles, was a theme which must by necessity urge the power of creative imagination into activity, and we find also in one of the oldest monuments of Christianliterature[42]a tale of this character. It is Simon Peter, the rock on which the Church is built, who fights there against Simon the magician of Samaria, mentioned in the Acts. When the cities of Asia Minor had witnessed their emulation in miracle-working, the decisive battle was fought out to the end in Rome. In the presence of the assembled people, Simon the magician attempts an ascension into heaven, but falls and breaks his legs because Simon Peter had commanded the evil spirits who were carrying the magician towards the sky to let him drop. This fable appears still further embellished in later ecclesiastical authors. It is soon accompanied by others, such as that of Cyprianus, Theophilus, Militaris, Heliodorus, and many others, who from love of earthly glory abjure Christ and enter into solemn covenants with the devil. In the biography of the holy Basilius, archbishop of Cæsarea and Cappadocia (he was a contemporary of the apostate emperor Julian), there is a story of a young man whohad obtained from a heathen sorcerer a letter of recommendation to Satan. When the young man, according to the precept of the magician, had gone to a heathen grave and there taken out the letter, he was suddenly taken up and borne to the place where Satan, surrounded by his angels, sat on a throne. The youth abjured in writing his baptism and swore allegiance to his new master. But after some time the apostate repented and confessed to the holy Basilius what he had done. The bishop prayed for him forty days. When at length the day had come that Satan according to the compact should bear away his victim, the bishop had the young man placed in the midst of his congregation. Satan arrived: a battle between him and the bishop followed—a battle which was carried on with the people stretching forth their hands imploring God for assistance, and was ended when the compact fell from the claws of the fiend, and was torn by the bishop. The before-mentioned Theophilus had likewise pawned his soul to the devil, but thecontract was restored to him after urgent supplication, by the holy Virgin, after which, warned by his experience, he led a holy life, and became Saint Theophilus before he closed his eyes. These early legends of compacts between the devil and men end, as we see, with the sinner’s salvation; not so the later. If we now remember that it was one of the dogmas proclaimed by the Church that all magical and miraculous arts not performed by the priests in the name of Jesus were wrought by the devil; that he gives his adherents power over nature and that the demons as “incubi” and “succubi” seek and obtain carnal intercourse with human beings,[43]we discover already in the ideas ofthe first Christian centuries the elements of the sorcery of the Middle Ages. And when we read further the accusations which the first Christian sects hurled against one another,—when we learn that the party which was raised by the Council of Nice to the orthodox position accused the Gnostics, Marcionites and Arians of devil-worship, confederacy with Satan and sorcery, we meet already here that union of heresy and sorcery by which the Church of the Middle Ages acquired such a fearful weapon against dissenters,—a union which must not be looked upon as a mere casual invention of wickedness and theological hatred, but as the necessary consequence of the whole dualistic theory of morals, as the necessary fruit of the belief in devils.
A long time must have been required for the festivals common to the natural religionsof 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 Phœnicians, 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 andprofane 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 hintsapparently corroborating this opinion. St. Egidius, who died in 659A. D., speaks frequently against thefire-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 754A. 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 asynodal decreewhich is said to date back to the council of Ancyra in 314A. 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 certainnumber 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 orcrossroads? Have you there kindled fires and sacrificed bread or aught else?”
John of Salisbury, who diedA. 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 (diedA. 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, eventhough 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 andterrible 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 Sataniccultussprang 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 togetherin 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 theChurch 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 eternalwelfare and erring from the Catholic faith, mix with devils, withincubiandsuccubi, 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 upontheir 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 résumé 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 ormore 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 themany 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 shouldbe 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, apriest, and awoman. 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 ofcompact with the devil; should not then her daughters do it also? The very wordfemina(woman) meansone wanting in faith; forfemeans “faith,” andminus“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, withoutany 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 throughthe air from one place to another; they can make themselves insensible on the rack; they often subdue the judge’s mind by charms, andconfuse 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 fœtus 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 sabbathbanquets 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 waysuspected 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 areto 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 thebook); 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 ofthe 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, torepeatthe torture, when no proof has been adduced, but it may becontinued.”
The judge should therefore use the following formula: “We ordain that the torture shall becontinued(notrepeated) to-morrow.”
The second day the instruments of torture are to be exhibited to the accused, and anattending 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 devilmarks 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 allover 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 foundin proportion as they were burned.” In various communities in Germany and Franceallthe 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 byauthoritative commandthe 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 theBible 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. TheCatholic 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 morethe 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,—concludethe 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 whohears 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 yousell 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 himto 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]