Plutarch, whose gravity and wisdom are well known, often speaks of spectres and apparitions. He says, for instance, that at the famous battle of Marathon against the Persians, several soldiers saw the phantom of Thesus, who fought for the Greeks against the enemy.
The same Plutarch, in the life of Sylla, says that that general saw in his sleep the goddess whom the Romans worshiped according to the rites of the Cappadocians (who were fire-worshipers), whether it might be Bellona or Minerva, or the moon. This divinity presented herself before Sylla, and put into his hand a kind of thunderbolt, telling him to launch it against his enemies, whom she named to him one after the other; at the same time that he struck them, he saw them fall and expire at his feet. There is reason to believe that this same goddess was Minerva, to whom, as to Jupiter Paganism attributes the right to hurl the thunder-bolt; or rather that it was a demon.
Pausanias, general of the Lacedemonians,[304] having inadvertently killed Cleonice, a daughter of one of the first families of Byzantium, was tormented night and day by the ghost of that maiden, who left him no repose, repeating to him angrily a heroic verse, the sense of which was,Go before the tribunal of justice, which punishes crime and awaits thee. Insolence is in the end fatal to mortals.
Pausanias, always disturbed by this image, which followed him everywhere, retired to Heraclea in Elis, where there was a temple served by priests who were magicians, calledPsychagogues, that is to say, who profess to evoke the souls of the dead. There Pausanias, after having offered the customary libations and funeral effusions, called upon the spirit of Cleonice, and conjured her to renounce her anger against him. Cleonice at last appeared, and told him that very soon, when he should be arrived at Sparta, he would be freed from his woes, wishing apparently by these mysterious words to indicate that death which awaited him there.
We see there the custom of evocations of the dead distinctlypointed out, and solemnly practiced in a temple consecrated to these ceremonies; that demonstrates at least the belief and custom of the Greeks. And if Cleonice really appeared to Pausanias and announced his approaching death, can we deny that the evil spirit, or the spirit of Cleonice, is the author of this prediction, unless indeed it were a trick of the priests, which is likely enough, and as the ambiguous reply given to Pausanias seems to insinuate.
Pausanias the historian[305] writes that, 400 years after the battle of Marathon, every night a noise was heard there of the neighing of horses, and cries like those of soldiers exciting themselves to combat. Plutarch speaks also of spectres which were seen, and frightful howlings that were heard in some public baths, where they had put to death several citizens of Chæronea, his native place; they had even been obliged to shut up these baths, which did not prevent those who lived near from continuing to hear great noises, and seeing from time to time spectres.
Dion the philosopher, the disciple of Plato, and general of the Syracusans, being one day seated, towards the evening, very full of thought, in the portico of his house, heard a great noise, then perceived a terrible spectre of a woman of monstrous height, who resembled one of the furies, as they are depicted in tragedies; there was still daylight, and she began to sweep the house. Dion, quite alarmed, sent to beg his friends to come and see him, and stay with him all night; but this woman appeared no more. A short time afterwards, his son threw himself down from the top of the house, and he himself was assassinated by conspirators.
Marcus Brutus, one of the murderers of Julius Cæsar, being in his tent during a night which was not very dark, towards the third hour of the night, beheld a monstrous and terrific figure enter. "Who art thou? a man or a God? and why comest thou here?" The spectre answered, "I am thine evil genius. Thou shalt see me at Philippi!" Brutus replied undauntedly, "I will meet thee there." And on going out, he went and related the circumstance to Cassius, who being of the sect of Epicurus, and a disbeliever in that kind of apparition, told him that it was mere imagination; that there were no genii or other kind of spirits which could appear unto men, and that even did they appear, they would have neither the human form nor the human voice, and could do nothing to harm us. Although Brutus was a little reassured by this reasoning, still it did not remove all his uneasiness.
But the same Cassius, in the campaign of Philippi, and in the midst of the combat, saw Julius Cæsar, whom he had assassinated, who came up to him at full gallop: which frightened him so muchthat at last he threw himself upon his own sword. Cassius of Parma, a different person from him of whom we have spoken above, saw an evil genius, who came into his tent, and declared to him his approaching death.
Drusus, when making war on the Germans (Allemani) during the time of Augustus, desiring to cross the Elbe, in order to penetrate farther into the country, was prevented from so doing by a woman of tallerstaturethan common, who appeared to him and said, "Drusus, whither wilt thou go? wilt thou never be satisfied? Thy end is near—go back from hence." He retraced his steps, and died before he reached the Rhine, which he desired to recross.
St. Gregory of Nicea, in the Life of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, says that, during a great plague which ravaged the city of Neocesarea, spectres were seen in open day, who entered houses, into which they carried certain death.
After the famous sedition which happened at Antioch, in the time of the Emperor Theodosius, they beheld a kind of fury running about the town, with a whip, which she lashed about like a coachman who hastens on his horses.
St. Martin, Bishop of Tours, being at Trèves, entered a house, where he found a spectre which frightened him at first. Martin commanded him to leave the body which he possessed: instead of going out (of the place), he entered the body of another man who was in the same dwelling; and throwing himself upon those who were there, began to attack and bite them. Martin threw himself across his way, put his fingers in his mouth, and defied him to bite him. The demoniac retreated, as if a bar of red-hot iron had been placed in his mouth, and at last the demon went out of the body of the possessed, not by the mouth but behind.
John, Bishop of Atria, who lived in the sixth century, in speaking of the great plague which happened under the Emperor Justinian, and which is mentioned by almost all the historians of that time, says that they saw boats of brass, containing black men without heads, which sailed upon the sea, and went towards the places where the plague was beginning its ravages; that this infection having depopulated a town of Egypt, so that there remained only seven men and a boy ten years of age, these persons, wishing to get away from the town with a great deal of money, fell down dead suddenly.
The boy fled without carrying anything with him, but at the gate of the town he was stopped by a spectre, who dragged him, in spite of his resistance, into the house where the seven dead men were. Some time after, the steward of a rich man having entered therein, to take away some furniture belonging to his master, who had gone to reside in the country, was warned by the same boy to go away—but he died suddenly. The servants who had accompanied the steward ran away, and carried the news of all this to their master.
The same Bishop John relates that he was at Constantinople during a very great plague, which carried off ten, twelve, fifteen, and sixteen thousand persons a-day, so that they reckon that two hundred thousand persons died of this malady—he says, that during this time demons were seen running from house to house, wearing the habits of ecclesiastics or monks, and who caused the death of those whom they met therein.
The death of Carlostadt was accompanied by frightful circumstances, according to the ministers of Basle, his colleagues, who bore witness to it at the time. They[306] relate, that at the last sermon which Carlostadt preached in the temple of Basle, a tall black man came and seated himself near the consul. The preacher perceived him, and appeared disconcerted at it. When he left the pulpit, he asked who that stranger was who had taken his seat next to the chief magistrate; no one had seen him but himself. When he went home, he heard more news of the spectre. The black man had been there, and had caught up by the hair the youngest and most tenderly loved of his children. After he had thus raised the child from the ground, he appeared disposed to throw him down so as to break his head; but he contented himself with ordering the boy to warn his father that in three days he should return, and he must hold himself in readiness. The child having repeated to his father what had been said to him, Carlostadt was terrified. He went to bed in alarm, and in three days he expired. These apparitions of the demon's, by Luther's own avowal, were pretty frequent, in the case of the first reformers.
These instances of the apparitions of spectres might be multiplied to infinity; but if we undertook to criticise them, there is hardly one of them very certain, or proof against a serious and profound examination. Here follows one, which I relate on purpose because it has some singular features, and its falsehood has at last been acknowledged.[307]
Footnotes:
[304] Plutarch in Cimone.
[305] Pausanias, lib. i. c. 324.
[306] Moshovius, p. 22.
[307] See the following chapter.
Business[308] having led the Count d'Alais[309] to Marseilles, a most extraordinary adventure happened to him there: he desired Neuré to write to our philosopher (Gassendi) to know what he thought of it; which he did in these words: the count and countess being come to Marseilles, saw, as they were lying in bed, a luminous spectre; they were both wide awake. In order to be sure that it was not some illusion, they called their valets de chambre; but no sooner had these appeared with their flambeaux, than the spectre disappeared. They had all the openings and cracks which they found in the chamber stopped up, and then went to bed again; but hardly had the valets de chambre retired than it appeared again.
Its light was less shining than that of the sun; but it was brighter than that of the moon. Sometimes this spectre was of an angular form, sometimes a circle, and sometimes an oval. It was easy to read a letter by the light it gave; it often changed its place, and sometimes appeared on the count's bed. It had, as it were, a kind of little bucklers, above which were characters imprinted. Nevertheless, nothing could be more agreeable to the sight; so that instead of alarming, it gave pleasure. It appeared every night whilst the count stayed at Marseilles. This prince, having once cast his hands upon it, to see if it was not something attached to the bed curtain, the spectre disappeared that night, and reappeared the next.
Gassendi being consulted upon this circumstance, replied on the 13th of the same month. He says, in the first place, that he knows not what to think of this vision. He does not deny that this spectre might be sent from God to tell them something. What renders this idea probable is the great piety of them both, and that this spectre had nothing frightful in it, but quite the contrary. What deserves our attention still more is this, that if God had sent it, he would have made known why he sent it. God does not jest; and since it cannot be understood what is to be hoped or feared, followedup or avoided, it is clear that this spectre cannot come from him; otherwise his conduct would be less praiseworthy than that of a father, or a prince, or a worthy, or even a prudent man, who, being informed of somewhat which greatly concerned those in subjection to them, would not content themselves with warning them enigmatically.
If this spectre is anything natural, nothing is more difficult than to discover it, or even to find any conjecture which may explain it. Although I am well persuaded of my ignorance, I will venture to give my idea. Might it not be advanced that this light has appeared because the eye of the count was internally affected, or because it was so externally? The eye may be so internally in two ways. First, if the eye was affected in the same manner as that of the Emperor Tiberius always was when he awoke in the night and opened his eyes; a light proceeded from them, by means of which he could discern objects in the dark by looking fixedly at them. I have known the same thing happen to a lady of rank. Secondly, if his eyes were disposed in a certain manner, as it happens to myself when I awake: if I open my eyes, they perceive rays of light though there has been none. No one can deny that some flash may dart from our eyes which represents objects to us—which objects are reflected in our eyes, and leave their traces there. It is known that animals which prowl by night have a piercing sight, to enable them to discern their prey and carry it off; that the animal spirit which is in the eye, and which may be shed from it, is of the nature of fire, and consequently lucid. It may happen that the eyes being closed during sleep, this spirit heated by the eyelids becomes inflamed, and sets some faculty in motion, as the imagination. For, does it not happen that wood of different kinds, and fish bones, produce some light when their heat is excited by putrefaction? Why then may not the heat excited in this confined spirit produce some light? He proves afterwards that imagination alone may do it.
The Count d'Alais having returned to Marseilles, and being lodged in the same apartment, the same spectre appeared to him again. Neuré wrote to Gassendi that they had observed that this spectre penetrated into the chamber by the wainscot; which obliged Gassendi to write to the count to examine the thing more attentively; and notwithstanding this discovery, he dare not yet decide upon it. He contents himself with encouraging the count, and telling him that if this apparition is from God, he will not allow him to remain long in expectation, and will soon make known his will to him; and also, if this vision does not come from him, he will not permit it to continue, and will soon discover that it proceeds from a natural cause. Nothing more is said of this spectre any where.
Three years afterwards, the Countess d'Alais avowed ingenuously to the count that she herself had caused this farce to be played by one of her women, because she did not like to reside at Marseilles; that her woman was under the bed, and that she from time to time caused a phosphoric light to appear. The Count d'Alais related this himself to M. Puger of Lyons, who told it, about thirty-five years ago, to M. Falconet, a medical doctor of the Royal Academy of Belle-Lettres, from whom I learnt it. Gassendi, when consulted seriously by the count, answered like a man who had no doubt of the truth of this apparition; so true it is that the greater number of these extraordinary facts require to be very carefully examined before any opinion can be passed upon them.
Footnotes:
[308] Vie de Gassendi, tom. i. p. 258.
[309] Alais is a town in Lower Languedoc, the lords of which bear the title of prince, since this town has passed into the House of Angoulême and De Conty.
There are several kinds of spectres or ghosts which haunt certain houses, make noises, appear there, and disturb those who live in them: some are sprites, or elves, which divert themselves by troubling the quiet of those who dwell there; others are spectres or ghosts of the dead, who molest the living until they have received sepulture: some of them, as it is said, make the place their purgatory; others show themselves or make themselves heard, because they have been put to death in that place, and ask that their death may be avenged, or that their bodies may be buried. So many stories are related concerning those things that now they are not cared for, and nobody will believe any of them. In fact, when these pretended apparitions are thoroughly examined into, it is easy to discover their falsehood and illusion.
Now, it is a tenant who wishes to decry the house in which he resides, to hinder others from coming who would like to take his place; then a band of coiners have taken possession of a dwelling, whose interest it is to keep their secret from being found out; or a farmer who desires to retain his farm, and wishes to prevent others from coming to offer more for it; in this place it will be cats or owls, or even rats, which by making a noise frighten the master and domestics, as it happened some years ago at Mosheim, where large rats amused themselves in the night by moving and setting in motion the machines with which the women bruise hemp and flax. An honest man who related it to me, desiring to behold the thingnearer, mounted up to the garret armed with two pistols, with his servant armed in the same manner. After a moment of silence, they saw the rats begin their game; they let fire upon them, killed two, and dispersed the rest. The circumstance was reported in the country and served as an excellent joke.
I am about to relate some of these spectral apparitions upon which the reader will pronounce judgment for himself. Pliny[310] the younger says that there was a very handsome mansion at Athens which was forsaken on account of a spectre which haunted it. The philosopher Athenodorus, having arrived in the city, and seeing a board which informed the public that this house was to be sold at a very low price, bought it and went to sleep there with his people. As he was busy reading and writing during the night, he heard on a sudden a great noise, as if of chains being dragged along, and perceived at the same time something like a frightful old man loaded with iron chains, who drew near to him. Athenodorus continuing to write, the spectre made him a sign to follow him; the philosopher in his turn made signs to him to wait, and continued to write; at last he took his light and followed the spectre, who conducted him into the court of the house, then sank into the ground and disappeared.
Athenodorus, without being frightened, tore up some of the grass to mark the spot, and on leaving it, went to rest in his room. The next day he informed the magistrates of what had happened; they came to the house and searched the spot he designated, and there found the bones of a human body loaded with chains. They caused him to be properly buried, and the dwelling house remained quiet.
Lucian[311] relates a very similar story. There was, says he, a house at Corinth which had belonged to one Eubatides, in the quarter named Cranaüs: a man named Arignotes undertook to pass the night there, without troubling himself about a spectre which was said to haunt it. He furnished himself with certain magic books of the Egyptians to conjure the spectre. Having gone into the house at night with a light, he began to read quietly in the court. The spectre appeared in a little while, taking sometimes the shape of a dog, then that of a bull, and then that of a lion. Arignotes very composedly began to pronounce certain magical invocations, which he read in his books, and by their power forced the spectre into a corner of the court, where he sank into the earth and disappeared.
The next day Arignotes sent for Eubatides, the master of the house, and having had the ground dug up where the phantom haddisappeared, they found a skeleton, which they had properly interred, and from that time nothing more was seen or heard.
It is Lucian, that is to say, the man in the world the least credulous concerning things of this kind, who makes Arignotes relate this event. In the same passage he says that Democritus, who believed in neither angels, nor demons, nor spirits, having shut himself up in a tomb without the city of Athens, where he was writing and studying, a party of young men, who wanted to frighten him, covered themselves with black garments, as the dead are represented, and having taken hideous disguises, came in the night, shrieking and jumping around the place where he was; he let them do what they liked, and without at all disturbing himself, coolly told them to have done with their jesting.
I know not if the historian who wrote the life of St. Germain l'Auxerrois[312] had in his eye the stories we have just related, and if he did not wish to ornament the life of the saint by a recital very much like them. The saint traveling one day through his diocese, was obliged to pass the night with his clerks in a house forsaken long before on account of the spirits which haunted it. The clerk who read to him during the night saw on a sudden a spectre, which alarmed him at first; but having awakened the holy bishop, the latter commanded the spectre in the name of Jesus Christ to declare to him who he was, and what he wanted. The phantom told him that he and his companion had been guilty of several crimes; that having died and been interred in that house, they disturbed those who lodged there until the burial rites should have been accorded them. St. Germain commanded him to point out where their bodies were buried, and the spectre led him thither. The next day he assembled the people in the neighborhood; they sought amongst the ruins of the building where the brambles had been disturbed, and they found the bones of two men thrown in a heap together, and also loaded with chains; they were buried, prayers were said for them, and they returned no more.
If these men were wretches dead in crime and impenitence, all this can be attributed only to the artifice of the devil, to show the living that the reprobate take pains to procure rest for their bodies by getting them interred, and to their souls by getting them prayed for. But if these two men were Christians who had expiated their crimes by repentance, and who died in communion with the church, God might permit them to appear, to ask for clerical sepulture and those prayers which the church is accustomed to say for the repose of defunct persons who die while yet some slight fault remains to be expiated.
Here is a fact of the same kind as those which precede, but which is attended by circumstances which may render it more credible. It is related by Antonio Torquemada, in his work entitledFlores Curiosas, printed at Salamanca in 1570. He says that a little before his own time, a young man named Vasquez de Ayola, being gone to Bologna with two of his companions to study the law there, and not having found such a lodging in the town as they wished to have, lodged themselves in a large and handsome house, which was abandoned by everybody, because it was haunted by a spectre which frightened away all those who wished to live in it; they laughed at such discourse, and took up their abode there.
At the end of a month, as Ayola was sitting up alone in his chamber, and his companions sleeping quietly in their beds, he heard at a distance a noise as of several chains dragged along upon the ground, and the noise advanced towards him by the great staircase; he recommended himself to God, made the sign of the cross, took a shield and sword, and having his taper in his hand, he saw the door opened by a terrific spectre that was nothing but bones, but loaded with chains. Ayola conjured him, and asked him what he wished for; the phantom signed to him to follow, and he did so; but as he went down the stairs, his light blew out; he went back to light it, and then followed the spirit, which led him along a court where there was a well. Ayola feared that he might throw him into it, and stopped short. The spectre beckoned to him to continue to follow him; they entered the garden, where the phantom disappeared. Ayola tore up some handfuls of grass upon the spot, and returning to the house, related to his companions what had happened. In the morning he gave notice of this circumstance to the Principals of Bologna.
They came to reconnoitre the spot, and had it dug up; they found there a fleshless body, but loaded with chains. They inquired who it could be, but nothing certain could be discovered, and the bones were interred with suitable obsequies, and from that time the house was never disquieted by such visits. Torquemada asserts that in his time there were still living at Bologna and in Spain some who had been witnesses of the fact; and that on his return to his own country, Ayola was invested with a high office, and that his son, before this narration was written, was President in a good city of the kingdom (of Spain).
Plautus, still more ancient than either Lucian or Pliny, composed a comedy entitled "Mostellaria," or "Monstellaria," a name derived from "Monstrum," or "Monstellum," from a monster, a spectre, which was said to appear in a certain house, and which on that account had been deserted. We agree that the foundation of thiscomedy is only a fable, but we may deduce from it the antiquity of this idea among the Greeks and Romans.
The poet[313] makes this pretended spirit say that, having been assassinated about sixty years before by a perfidious comrade who had taken his money, he had been secretly interred in that house; that the god of Hades would not receive him on the other side of Acheron, as he had died prematurely; for which reason he was obliged to remain in that house of which he had taken possession.
"Hæc mihi dedita habitatio;Nam me Acherontem recipere noluit,Quia præmaturè vitâ careo."
The pagans, who had the simplicity to believe that the Lamiæ and evil spirits disquieted those who dwelt in certain houses and certain rooms, and who slept in certain beds, conjured them by magic verses, and pretended to drive them away by fumigations composed of sulphur and other stinking drugs, and certain herbs mixed with sea water. Ovid, speaking of Medea, that celebrated magician, says[314]—
"Terque senem flammâ, ter aquâ, ter sulphure lustrat."
And elsewhere he adds eggs:—
"Adveniat quæ lustret anus lectumque locumque,Deferat et tremulâ sulphur et ova manu."
In addition to this they adduce the instance of the archangel Raphael,[315] who drove away the devil Asmodeus from the chamber of Sarah by the smell of the liver of a fish which he burnt upon the fire. But the instance of Raphael ought not to be placed along with the superstitious ceremonies of magicians, which were laughed at by the pagans themselves; if they had any power, it could only be by the operation of the demon with the permission of God; whilst what is told of the archangel Raphael is certainly the work of a good spirit, sent by God to cure Sarah the daughter of Raguel, who was as much distinguished by her piety as the magicians are degraded by their malice and superstition.
Footnotes:
[310] Plin. junior, Epist. ad Suram. lib. vii. cap. 27.
[311] In Philo pseud. p. 840.
[312] Bolland, 31 Jul. p. 211.
[313] Plaut. Mostell. act. ii. v. 67.
[314] Vide Joan. Vier. de Curat. Malific. c. 215.
[315] Tob. viii.
Father Pierre Thyree,[316] a Jesuit, relates an infinite number of anecdotes of houses haunted by ghosts, spirits, and demons; for instance, that of a tribune, named Hesperius, whose house was infested by a demon who tormented the domestics and animals, and who was driven away, says St. Augustin,[317] by a good priest of Hippo, who offered therein the divine sacrifice of the body of our Lord.
St. Germain,[318] Bishop of Capua, taking a bath in one particular quarter of the town, found there Paschaus, a deacon of the Roman Church, who had been dead some time, and who began to wait upon him, telling him that he underwent his purgatory in that place for having favored the party of Laurentius the anti-pope, against Pope Symachus.
St. Gregory of Nicea, in the life of St. Gregory of Neocæsarea, says that a deacon of this holy bishop, having gone into a bath where no one dared go after a certain hour in the evening, because all those who had entered there had been put to death, beheld spectres of all kinds, which threatened him in a thousand ways, but he got rid of them by crossing himself and invoking the name of Jesus.
Alexander ab Alexandro,[319] a learned Neapolitan lawyer of the fifteenth century, says that all the world knows that there are a number of houses at Rome so much out of repute on account of the ghosts which appear in them every night that nobody dares to inhabit them. Nicholas Tuba, his friend, a man well known for his probity and veracity, who came once with some of his comrades to try if all that was said of those houses was true, would pass the night in one of them with Alexander. As they were together, wide awake, and with plenty of light, they beheld a horrible spectre, which frightened them so much by its terrific voice and the great noise which it made, that they hardly knew what they did, nor what they said; "and by degrees, as we approached," says he, "with thelight, the phantom retreated; at last, after having thrown all the house into confusion, it disappeared entirely."
I might also relate here the spectre noticed by Father Sinson the Jesuit, which he saw, and to which he spoke at Pont-à-Mousson, in the cloister belonging to those fathers; but I shall content myself with the instance which is reported in theCauses Célèbres,[320] and which may serve to undeceive those who too lightly give credit to stories of this kind.
At the Château d' Arsillier, in Picardy, on certain days of the year, towards November, they saw flames and a horrible smoke proceeding thence. Cries and frightful howlings were heard. The bailiff, or farmer of the château, had got accustomed to this uproar, because he himself caused it. All the village talked of it, and everybody told his own story thereupon. The gentleman to whom the château belonged, mistrusting some contrivance, came there near All-saints' day with two gentlemen his friends, resolved to pursue the spirit, and fire upon it with a brace of good pistols. A few days after they arrived, they heard a great noise above the room where the owner of the château slept; his two friends went up thither, holding a pistol in one hand and a candle in the other; and a sort of black phantom with horns and a tail presented itself, and began to gambol about before them.
One of them fired off his pistol; the spectre, instead of falling, turns and skips before him: the gentleman tries to seize it, but the spirit escapes by the back staircase; the gentleman follows it, but loses sight of it, and after several turnings, the spectre throws itself into a granary, and disappears at the moment its pursuer reckoned on seizing and stopping it. A light was brought, and it was remarked that where the spectre had disappeared there was a trapdoor, which had been bolted after it entered; they forced open the trap, and found the pretended spirit. He owned all his artifices, and that what had rendered him proof against the pistol shot was buffalo's hide tightly fitted to his body.
Cardinal de Retz,[321] in his Memoirs, relates very agreeably the alarm which seized himself and those with him on meeting a company of black Augustine friars, who came to bathe in the river by night, and whom they took for a troop of quite another description.
A physician, in a dissertation which he has given on spirits or ghosts, says that a maid servant in the Rue St. Victor, who had gone down into the cellar, came back very much frightened, saying she had seen a spectre standing upright between two barrels. Some persons who were bolder went down, and saw the same thing. Itwas a dead body, which had fallen from a cart coming from the Hôtel-Dieu. It had slid down by the cellar window (or grating), and had remained standing between two casks. All these collective facts, instead of confirming one another, and establishing the reality of those ghosts which appear in certain houses, and keep away those who would willingly dwell in them, are only calculated, on the contrary, to render such stories in general very doubtful; for on what account should those people who have been buried and turned to dust for a long time find themselves able to walk about with their chains? How do they drag them? How do they speak? What do they want? Is it sepulture? Are they not interred? If they are heathens and reprobates, they have nothing to do with prayers. If they are good people, who died in a state of grace, they may require prayers to take them out of purgatory; but can that be said of the spectres spoken of by Pliny and Lucian? It is the devil, who sports with the simplicity of men? Is it not ascribing to him most excessive power, by making him the author of all these apparitions, which we conceive he cannot cause without the permission of God? And we can still less imagine that God will concur in the deceptions and illusions of the demon. There is then reason to believe that all the apparitions of this kind, and all these stories, are false, and must be absolutely rejected, as more fit to keep up the superstition and idle credulity of the people than to edify and instruct them.
Footnotes:
[316] Thyræi Demoniaci cum locis infestis.
[317] S. Aug. de Civ. lib. xxii. 8.
[318] S. Greg. Mag. Dial. cap. 39.
[319] Alexander ab Alexandro, lib. v. 23.
[320] Causes Célèbres, tom. xi. p. 374.
[321] Mém. de Cardinal de Retz, tom. i. pp. 43, 44
As soon as we admit it as a principle that angels and demons are purely spiritual substances, we must consider, not only as chimerical but also as impossible, all personal intercourse between a demon and a man, or a woman, and consequently regard as the effect of a depraved or deranged imagination all that is related of demons, whether incubi or succubi, and of theephialtesof which such strange tales are told.
The author of the Book of Enoch, which is cited by the fathers, and regarded as canonical Scripture by some ancient writers, has taken occasion, from these words of Moses,[322] "The children of God, seeing the daughters of men, who were of extraordinary beauty, tookthem for wives, and begat the giants of them," of setting forth that the angels, smitten with love for the daughters of men, wedded them, and had by them children, which are those giants so famous in antiquity.[323] Some of the ancient fathers have thought that this irregular love of the angels was the cause of their fall, and that till then they had remained in the just and due subordination which they owed to their Creator.
It appears from Josephus that the Jews of his day seriously believed[324] that the angels were subject to these weaknesses like men. St. Justin Martyr[325] thought that the demons were the fruit of this commerce of the angels with the daughters of men.
But these ideas are now almost entirely given up, especially since the belief in the spirituality of angels and demons has been adopted. Commentators and the fathers have generally explained the passage in Genesis which we have quoted as relating to the children of Seth, to whom the Scripture gives the name ofchildren of God, to distinguish them from the sons of Cain, who were the fathers of those here calledthe daughters of men. The race of Seth having then formed alliances with the race of Cain, by means of those marriages before alluded to, there proceeded from these unions powerful, violent, and impious men, who drew down upon the earth the terrible effects of God's wrath, which burst forth at the universal deluge.
Thus, then, these marriages between thechildren of Godand thedaughters of menhave no relation to the question we are here treating; what we have to examine is—if the demon can have personal commerce with man or woman, and if what is said on that subject can be connected with the apparitions of evil spirits amongst mankind, which is the principal object of this dissertation.
I will give some instances of those persons who have believed that they held such intercourse with the demon. Torquemada relates, in a detailed manner, what happened in his time, and to his knowledge, in the town of Cagliari, in Sardinia, to a young lady, who suffered herself to be corrupted by the demon; and having been arrested by the Inquisition, she suffered the penalty of the flames, in the mad hope that her pretended lover would come and deliver her.
In the same place he speaks of a young girl who was sought in marriage by a gentleman of good family; when the devil assumed the form of this young man, associated with the young lady for several months, made her promises of marriage, and took advantage of her. She was only undeceived when the young lord who sought her in marriage informed her that he was absent from town, andmore than fifty leagues off, the day that the promise in question had been given, and that he never had the slightest knowledge of it. The young girl, thus disabused, retired into a convent, and did penance for her double crime.
We read in the life of St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux,[326] that a woman of Nantes, in Brittany, saw, or thought she saw the demon every night, even when lying by her husband. She remained six years in this state; at the end of that period, having her disorderly life in horror, she confessed herself to a priest, and by his advice began to perform several acts of piety, as much to obtain pardon for her crime as to deliver herself from her abominable lover. But when the husband of this woman was informed of the circumstance, he left her, and would never see her again.
This unhappy woman was informed by the devil himself that St. Bernard would soon come to Nantes, but she must mind not to speak to him, for this abbot could by no means assist her; and if she did speak to him, it would be a great misfortune to her; and that from being her lover, he who warned her of it would become her most ardent persecutor.
The saint reassured this woman, and desired her to make the sign of the cross on herself on going to bed, and to place next her in the bed the staff which he gave her. "If the demon comes," said he, "let him do what he can." The demon came; but, without daring to approach the bed, he threatened the woman greatly, and told her that after the departure of St. Bernard he would come again to torment her.
On the following Sunday, St. Bernard repaired to the Cathedral church, with the Bishop of Nantes and the Bishop of Chartres, and having caused lighted tapers to be given to all the people, who had assembled in a great crowd, the saint, after having publicly related the abominable action of the demon, exorcised and anathematized the evil spirit, and forbade him, by the authority of Jesus Christ, ever again to approach that woman, or any other. Everybody extinguished their tapers, and the power of the demon was annihilated.
This example and the two preceding ones, related in so circumstantial a manner, might make us believe that there is some reality in what is said of demons incubi and succubi; but if we deeply examine the facts, we shall find that an imagination strongly possessed, and violent prejudice, may produce all that we have just repeated.
St. Bernard begins by curing the woman's mind, by giving her a stick, which she was to place by her side in the bed. This staffsufficed for the first impression; but to dispose her for a complete cure, he exorcises the demon, and then anathematizes him, with all theéclathe possibly could: the bishops are assembled in the cathedral, the people repair thither in crowds; the circumstance is recounted in pompous terms; the evil spirit is threatened; the tapers are extinguished—all of them striking ceremonies: the woman is moved by them, and her imagination is restored to a healthy tone.
Jerome Cardan[327] relates two singular examples of the power of imagination in this way; he had them from Francis Pico de Mirandola. "I know," says the latter, "a priest, seventy-five years of age, who lived with a pretended woman, whom he called Hermeline, with whom he slept, conversed, and conducted in the streets as if she had been his wife. He alone saw her, or thought he saw her, so that he was looked upon as a man who had lost his senses. This priest was named Benedict Beïna. He had been arrested by the Inquisition, and punished for his crimes; for he owned that in the sacrifice of the mass he did not pronounce the sacramental words, that he had given the consecrated wafer to women to make use of in sorcery, and that he had sucked the blood of children. He avowed all this while undergoing the question.
Another, named Pineto, held converse with a demon, whom he kept as his wife, and with whom he had intercourse for more than forty years. This man was still living in the time of Pico de Mirandola.
Devotion and spirituality, when too contracted and carried to excess, have also their derangements of imagination. Persons so affected often believe they see, hear, and feel, what passes only in their brain, and which takes all its reality from their prejudices and self-love. This is less mistrusted, because the object of it is holy and pious; but error and excess, even in matters of devotion, are subject to very great inconveniences, and it is very important to undeceive all those who give way to this kind of mental derangement.
For instance, we have seen persons eminent for their devotion, who believed they saw the Holy Virgin, St. Joseph, the Saviour, and their guardian angel, who spoke to them, conversed with them, touched the wounds of the Lord, and tasted the blood which flowed from his side and his wounds. Others thought they were in company with the Holy Virgin and the Infant Jesus, who spoke to them and conversed with them; in idea, however, and without reality.
In order to cure the two ecclesiastics of whom we have spoken, gentler and perhaps more efficacious means might have been madeuse of than those employed by the tribunal of the Inquisition. Every day hypochondriacs, or maniacs, with fevered imaginations, diseased brains, or with the viscera too much heated, are cured by simple and natural remedies, either by cooling the blood, and creating a diversion in the humors thereof, or by striking the imagination through some new device, or by giving so much exercise of body and mind to those who are afflicted with such maladies of the brain that they may have something else to do or to think of, than to nourish such fancies, and strengthen them by reflections daily recurring, and having always the same end and object.
Footnotes:
[322] Gen. vi. 1, 2.
[323] Athenagorus and Clem. Alex. lib. iii. & v. Strom. & lib. ii. Pedagog.
[324] Joseph. Antiq. lib. i. c. 4.
[325] Justin. Apolog. utroque.
[326] Vita St. Bernard, tom. i. lib. 20.
[327] Cardan, de Variet. lib. xv. c. lxxx. p. 290.
The dogma of the immortality of the soul, and of its existence after its separation from the body which it once animated, being taken for indubitable, and Jesus Christ having invincibly established it against the Sadducees, the return of souls and their apparition to the living, by the command or permission of God, can no longer appear so incredible, nor even so difficult.
It was a known and received truth among the Jews in the time of our Saviour; he assumed it as certain, and never pronounced a word which could give any one reason to think that he disapproved of, or condemned it; he only warned us that in common apparitions spirits have neither flesh nor bones, as he had himself after his resurrection. If St. Thomas doubted of the reality of the resurrection of his Master, and the truth of his appearance, it was because he was aware that those who suppose they see apparitions of spirits are subject to illusion; and that one strongly prepossessed will often believe he beholds what he does not see, and hear that which he hears not; and even had Jesus Christ appeared to his apostles, that would not prove that he was resuscitated, since a spirit can appear, while its body is in the tomb and even corrupted or reduced to dust and ashes.
The apostles doubted not of the possibility of the apparition of spirits: when they saw the Saviour coming towards them, walking upon the waves of the Lake of Gennesareth,[328] they at first believed that it was a phantom.
After St. Peter had left the prison by the aid of an angel, and came and knocked at the door of the house where the brethren were assembled, the servant whom they sent to open it, hearing Peter's voice, thought it was his spirit, or an angel[329] who had assumed his form and voice. The wicked rich man, being in the flames of hell, begged of Abraham to send Lazarus to earth, to warn his brothers[330] not to expose themselves to the danger of falling like him in the extreme of misery: he believed, without doubt, that souls could return to earth, make themselves visible, and speak to the living.
In the transfiguration of Jesus Christ, Moses, who had been dead for ages, appeared on Mount Tabor with Elias, conversing with Jesus Christ then transfigured.[331] After the resurrection of the Saviour, several persons, who had long been dead, arose from their graves, went into Jerusalem and appeared unto many.[332]
In the Old Testament, King Saul addresses himself to the witch of Endor, to beg of her to evoke for him the soul of Samuel;[333] that prophet appeared and spoke to Saul. I know that considerable difficulties and objections have been formed as to this evocation and this apparition of Samuel. But whether he appeared or not—whether the Pythoness did really evoke him, or only deluded Saul with a false appearance—I deduce from it that Saul and those with him were persuaded that the spirits of the dead could appear to the living, and reveal to them things unknown to men.
St. Augustine, in reply to Simplicius, who had proposed to him his difficulties respecting the truth of this apparition, says at first,[334] that it is no more difficult to understand that the demon could evoke Samuel by the help of a witch than it is to comprehend how that Satan could speak to God, and tempt the holy man Job, and ask permission to tempt the apostles; or that he could transport Jesus Christ himself to the highest pinnacle of the Temple of Jerusalem.
We may believe also that God, by a particular dispensation of his will, may have permitted the demon to evoke Samuel, and make him appear before Saul, to announce to him what was to happen to him, not by virtue of magic, not by the power of the demon alone, but solely because God willed it, and ordained it thus to be.
He adds that it may be advanced that it is not Samuel who appears to Saul, but a phantom, formed by the illusive power of the demon, and by the force of magic; and that the Scripture, in giving the name of Samuel to this phantom, has made use of ordinary language, which gives the name of things themselves to that which is but their image or representation in painting or in sculpture.
If it should be asked how this phantom could discover the future, and predict to Saul his approaching death, we may likewise ask how the demon could know Jesus Christ for God alone, while the Jews knew him not, and the girl possessed with a spirit of divination, spoken of in the Acts of the Apostles,[335] could bear witness to the apostles, and undertake to become their advocate in rendering good testimony to their mission.
Lastly, St. Augustine concludes by saying that he does not think himself sufficiently enlightened to decide whether the demon can, or cannot, by means of magical enchantments, evoke a soul after the death of the body, so that it may appear and become visible in a corporeal form, which may be recognized, and capable of speaking and revealing the hidden future. And if this potency be not accorded to magic and the demon, we must conclude that all which is related of this apparition of Samuel to Saul is an illusion and a false apparition made by the demon to deceive men.
In the books of the Maccabees,[336] the High-Priest Onias, who had been dead several years before that time, appeared to Judas Maccabæus, in the attitude of a man whose hands were outspread, and who was praying for the people of the Lord: at the same time the Prophet Jeremiah, long since dead, appeared to the same Maccabæus; and Onias said to him, "Behold that holy man, who is the protector and friend of his brethren; it is he who prays continually for the Lord's people, and for the holy city of Jerusalem." So saying, he put into the hands of Judas a golden sword, saying to him, "Receive this sword as a gift from heaven, by means of which you shall destroy the enemies of my people Israel."
In the same second book of the Maccabees,[337] it is related that in the thickest of the battle fought by Timotheus, general of the armies of Syria, against Judas Maccabæus, they saw five men as if descended from heaven, mounted on horses with golden bridles, who were at the head of the army of the Jews, two of them on each side of Judas Maccabæus, the chief captain of the army of the Lord; they shielded him with their arms, and launched against the enemy such fiery darts and thunderbolts that they were blinded and mortally afraid and terrified.
These five armed horsemen, these combatants for Israel, are apparently no other than Mattathias, the father of Judas Maccabæus,[338] and four of his sons, who were already dead; there yet remained of his seven sons but Judas Maccabæus, Jonathan, and Simon. We may also understand it as five angels, who were sent by God to the assistance of the Maccabees. In whatever way we regard it, these are not doubtful apparitions, both on account of the certainty of the bookin which they are related, and thetestimonyof a whole army by which they were seen.
Whence I conclude, that the Hebrews had no doubt that the spirits of the dead could return to earth, that they did return in fact, and that they discovered to the living things beyond our natural knowledge. Moses expressly forbids the Israelites to consult the dead.[339] But these apparitions did not show themselves in solid and material bodies; the Saviour assures us of it when he says, "Spirits have neither flesh nor bones." It was often only an aërial figure which struck the senses and the imagination, like the images which we see in sleep, or that we firmly believe we hear and see. The inhabitants of Sodom were struck with a species of blindness,[340] which prevented them from seeing the door of Lot's house, into which the angels had entered. The soldiers who sought for Elisha were in the same way blinded in some sort,[341] although they spoke to him they were seeking for, who led them into Samaria without their perceiving him. The two disciples who went on Easter-day to Emmaus, in company with Jesus Christ their Master, did not recognize him till the breaking of the bread.[342]
Thus, the apparitions of spirits to mankind are not always in a corporeal form, palpable and real; but God, who ordains or permits them, often causes the persons to whom these apparitions appear, to behold, in a dream or otherwise, those spirits which speak to, warn, or threaten them; who makes them see things as if present, which in reality are not before their eyes, but only in their imagination; which does not prove these visions and warnings not to be sent from God, who, by himself, or by the ministration of his angels, or by souls disengaged from the body, inspired the minds of men with what he judges proper for them to know, whether in a dream, or by external signs, or by words, or else by certain impressions made on their senses, or in their imagination, in the absence of every external object.
If the apparitions of the souls of the dead were things in nature and of their own choice, there would be few persons who would not come back to visit the things or the persons which have been dear to them during this life. St. Augustine says it of his mother, St. Monica,[343] who had so tender and constant an affection for him, and who, while she lived, followed him and sought him by sea and land. The bad rich man would not have failed, either, to come in person to his brethren and relations to inform them of the wretched condition in which he found himself in hell. It is a pure favor of the mercy or the power of God, and which he grants to very few persons,to make their appearance after death; for which reason we should be very much on our guard against all that is said, and all that we find written on the subject in books.
Footnotes:
[328] Matt. vi. 16. Mark vi. 43.
[329] Acts xii. 13, 14.
[330] Luke xxi. 14, 15.
[331] Luke ix. 32.
[332] Matt. xxvii. 34.
[333] 1 Sam. xxviii. 7, ad finem.
[334] Augustin de Diversis Quæst. ad Simplicium, Quæst. cxi.
[335] Acts xxvi. 17.
[336] Macc. x. 29.
[337] 2 Macc. x. 29.
[338] 1 Macc. xi. 1.
[339] Deut. xviii. 11.
[340] Gen. xix. 11.
[341] 2 Kings vi. 19.
[342] Luke xxvi. 16.
[343] Aug. de Curâ gerendâ pro Mortuis, c. xiii.